the amount of his pay. Bill's hand would clamp down on the man's
shoulder for an instant with a friendly pressure as he spun the fellow
out of the way of the next. He spoke to none, but he had a nod and a
smile for many. He looked into the faces of men whom he believed were
guilty of treachery to the Company and to him, but he gave no sign of
suspicion. There were others who could have told him much, but he
asked no question. The routine of payday was observed without comment.
The only change was the paying of the men in the office.
So presently the last man had clumped down the stairs and into the
bank, and only Tommy remained, sitting grimly in his corner, staring
owlishly through his thick-lensed glasses. Bill shot him a sidelong
glance, lifted an eyebrow and bent over the check book before Emmett.
John had a wonderful head for figures. The balance on the last stub
would not have bought a dinner at the O'Hara House.
"Not much chance to graft off that," grinned Bill, and pointed at the
figures. "Now, you spoke about debts. Dig 'em up, John."
"What's that roughneck doing here?" Emmett growled, looking at Tommy
insultingly. "We don't owe him anything."
"Oh, yes, you do," Bill retorted evenly. "You owe him about the only
thing in the world you're able to pay. Implicit obedience." He paused
to let those two words sink in. "I never thought I'd ever have to call
in a gun-man to camp on your shadow. But he's here, and he's got too
many notches on his gun to be scared about adding another one or two.
Tommy, you'll go with Mr. Emmett into the other office, and stand over
him while he digs up Bills Payable. He should find them in a book--not
in the right-hand drawer of his desk! You're a gun-man. You know what
I mean, I guess."
"I do that, Mr. Dale," Tommy rumbled ominously. "He'll return wit' the
Bills Payable, have no doubt of that."
"Bill, this is an outrage!" Walter Rayfield reached for the telephone,
but Bill snatched it away from his finger tips.
"You're damned right, it's an outrage. But the remedy is going to be
applied as fast as possible."
"You're letting the lies that Al Freeman told poison your mind. John
and I have worked hard for this Company. We've gone without our
salaries for three months now, because the funds were getting low. And
this is all the thanks we get. You come blustering in here at the last
minute, trying to bully and play the bad man. You can't get away with
it, Bill." Rayfield shook his head sorrowfully. "Bluffing won't lift
the Company out of the hole it's in. You've paid off the men--but
there are the stockholders to think of, and the debts. And the ore has
petered out, Bill. One of those rich surface deposits with no depth
to it." He pursed his lips, drumming on the table with his fingers.
"Your fine friends from San Francisco dug out the last of it, Bill,
for souvenirs. A fitting end to Parowan and the fortunes of Hopeful
Bill Dale. A picturesque ending--but the end, nevertheless."
Bill did not trouble to answer him. In a moment, Emmett returned with
his arms full of books, the dangerous Tommy treading close on his
heels.
"Not knowin' which would be the right wan, I had him bring them all,
Mr. Dale. An' his gun was not in the right-hand drawer. It was in his
pocket. Here it is, Mr. Dale,--in case yuh've neglected to pack wan
yourself. An' if yuh don't mind, Mr. Dale, I'd like fer to have yuh
search him fer a knife. Them's the kind of crooks that packs 'em, Mr.
Dale,--as it's been my experience to know. An' I'd search the other
wan whilst I was about it, Mr. Dale. I would that."
Tommy's suggestion was gravely complied with, in the presence and to
the horror of the wide-eyed typist. Bill apologized to her with a
smile, but he did not suggest that she leave the room. Messrs.
Rayfield and Emmett were wily gentlemen. The girl might easily be in
their confidence and their private pay. He did not know where they had
gotten her, but he remembered that she had reigned supreme over the
outer office ever since Parowan Consolidated had established itself
there.
"Now, John, write checks for all these bills. All of them, that is,
that are authentic. Have this girl get them ready for the mail. If
you'll come with me, young lady, I'll help you bring your typewriter
in here for sake of convenience. Mr. Emmett and Mr. Rayfield are not
moving about much, to-day."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BILL BUYS PAROWAN
On the streets groups of men stood and talked together, scanned
eagerly the faces of pedestrians, asked questions that halted men in
their stride, formed new groups as some fresh bit of news became
known. And without exception, all up and down the town, men talked of
Bill Dale and Parowan Consolidated.
Before the bank a prominent group had gathered. Men went up and down
the stairs to the office, coming out upon the street to run the
gauntlet of human eyes, and sometimes saying, "I got mine, all
right--maybe." A trip in to the teller's window, and a nod of
assurance as they came out again.
Glances went up and clung to the windows of the office where a queer
gathering sat silent, or did what Bill Dale commanded. Emmett and
Rayfield had turned surly. The typist was in tears, having broken
unexpectedly into speech. Things she had seen, sentences which she had
overheard, trifles most of them, she told to Bill. Nothing was
sufficiently definite to serve as evidence of fraud, but she
accomplished one thing at least: She convinced Bill that she was not
in their plot, that she was innocent of all knowledge of the inner
workings of the office.
Bill had a lawyer there,--a man whom he trusted to a certain extent,
though he was not really trusting any one save Tommy, just now. The
lawyer took the girl's name and address, and told her that she might
go for the time being. "Which left Bill freer in his mind. He had not
wanted to seem harsh with the girl if he could possibly avoid it.
Rayfield looked up at him and sneered when the door closed behind her.
"Now you've done every melodramatic stunt you can think of, with a
lawyer in one room and an auditor in the next, and a roughneck with a
gun at our backs, just what do you really expect to accomplish? It's
all well enough to dissolve the Corporation, as you say you intend to
do; but you surely don't expect to keep us here until that is
accomplished, do you?"
"It won't take so long," said Bill. "The written consent of the
stockholders, waiving a meeting, and so on--Fuller, here, has all the
dope, and can give you the details--why, it won't take long, at all."
"With stock scattered from Coast to Coast? You'll have a nice time,
Bill, getting the signatures of the stockholders!" Then the necessity
of fighting for his honor occurred to Rayfield. He blustered a good
deal about the outrage, and about Bill's insanity and his ingratitude.
"That's all right," Bill retorted imperturbably. "And Parowan stock is
not scattered as badly as you think, maybe. I hold most of it myself.
Been picking it up all summer, fast as I could without sending the
price up. And you've helped quite a lot, unloading what you held, and
lying about me and the way I've been squandering the money. I didn't
know all of it, until yesterday. I thought you meant to carry things
along smooth on the surface till the last minute, and then duck. I was
ready for that. But you took me by surprise, working it this way.
However," he yawned, "I'm an adaptable cuss.
"You don't know it, but there's a bunch of bulletins being put up,
right now, saying that Bill Dale will buy Parowan Consolidated at two
dollars a share. Some will make money at that, and some will lose. But
it can't be helped; I can't trail down every buyer and find out just
what he paid. And the losers won't lose so much as if you had played
it through your way."
"You damn fool," said Rayfield softly, "You'll spend your last dime
for nothing. The ore's gone. I made sure of that. No depth--like so
many of these rich strikes." His good eye dwelt speculatively upon the
lawyer. "Everything has been done properly, Mr. Fuller. Bill's biting
off more than a mouthful, and it's your duty to tell him that he is
not obliged to buy in the stock. John knows to a dollar what his
income has been. It was big, I admit that. He's had close to a million
dollars out of the mine so far--and the town site. What he's managed
to spend is not my business, of course. But if he hadn't spent a
dollar, you can see where he will wind up if he tries to buy up
Parowan stock. I wish he would," he sighed. "I hold some shares I
should like to dispose of."
"Oh, you're going to get rid of them," said Bill. "Right now while I'm
in the mood, if you've got any sense. But don't think I'll pay you any
fancy price. Ten cents a share for all you've got will be about
right."
Rayfield studied him, gave up trying to read his mind, and accepted
the price. With less grace, Emmett followed. They hadn't much, and the
insignificance of their holdings, their acceptance of his offer which
he had intended as an insult, was more enlightening to Bill than all
their protestations had been.
They believed the mine had been worked out. They had held up the faith
of the public until they could unload their stock; it was quite
possible that his agents had bought in theirs and paid them a good
price for it. The market was broken now. A panic was growing in the
town. People were leaving by the dozens. They could not have gone out
of the office and sold Parowan stock for one tenth of what Bill had
contemptuously offered them.
A man came in, holding a long envelope in his hand. He moved
deprecatingly toward Bill.
"It says down on the street that you're paying two dollars for
Parowan," he said. "I paid six for mine, but if you'll take it at two
dollars you can have it--and glad to get rid of it," he added in a
mutter that Bill caught quite plainly.
"Here's your money. Go back and tell the rest it's no dream," Bill
said shortly, blotting the check with a vicious thump of his fist.
"Ask them not to obstruct the traffic, if they can help it, and to
please form in line."
The man folded his check and hurried out, ashamed of his act, but
manifestly relieved to have recovered a part of his investment. In
five minutes there were five other men in the office.
All that day, Bill bought Parowan. The broker down the street, having
been enterprising enough to wire Goldfield, Tonopah, all the towns
within reach, came and sold to Bill Parowan stock,--stock which he
could not deliver until the mail came in.
That night Doris met him in the door of the big house on the hill. Her
face was white, her eyes clouded with troubled anger.
"Bill, you haven't been buying Parowan stock!" she began, trembling
all over. "They told me you've been buying like a madman, for two
dollars a share. It must be a lie. You aren't _that_ crazy!"
Her emphasis hit Bill's pride. He grinned down at her, though his eyes
were tired and a bit sunken in his head.
"Yup, I'm _that_ crazy," he said. "Sign this slip of paper, and I'll
have bought yours, too. Only I'm paying top price for yours, old girl.
You get five dollars."
"Five hundred thousand dollars?" She looked at him strangely. "All
right, Bill. Only, where's the money? I'd have to sell for cash,
dear."
"Cash in the bank, sure. I haven't that much on me, right now." Bill
sat down at the nearest table, pushed away a costly vase with flowers
from Los Angeles drooping toward him, and shook his fountain pen.
His check fluttering faintly in her white fingers, he watched her
scrawl her name under the agreement of sale. "Doris Mary Dale," she
wrote, and he saw how her right hand shook, and that there was no
breeze to flutter his check in her left hand. She stood up, breathing
quickly.
"There's that much you can't throw away on strangers," she said
triumphantly. "And you can't possibly have much more. But what
possessed you to buy stock you know is worthless? These people have
made their money out of Parowan. Let them go! They'll get it back in
the next boom. They're just rushing out of town as if we had the
plague here," she continued. "The bottom's dropped out of everything,
I heard. And you stayed in that office and paid two dollars a share
for Parowan stock! Bill, what did you _do_ it for?"
"Well, because I wanted Parowan stock, I guess," Bill evaded her
flippantly. "And these poor devils needed to sell, I reckon. And there
is such a thing as honor."
"Honor!" Doris stared at him. "Do you mean to tell me there is any
honor in throwing away your last dollar? I wonder," she said, "whether
you've got enough to cover this check! Have you gone over your
account, Bill, since you started this--this orgy of honor? You
_can't_ have this much left!"
Bill flushed, then paled slowly.
"So you think I'd give you a bad check?" His own voice shook slightly.
"Do you think that? When I've given you all of myself, and let this
mine go to hell because I couldn't be away from you, and you wanted to
be where you could dazzle and be dazzled--do you think, when the whole
thing smashes, I'd give you a bad check for your stock? You can give
that check back to me, Doris." His eyes burned into hers. "As soon as
mail can travel to Frisco and back, I'll have the money for you. Or
place it on deposit for you at the Hibernian--if you can trust the
bank's word when you get it! Since the committee called here at the
house, I've been writing checks. There hasn't been a drunken Bohunk
that asked if my check was good! Parowan has mopped them up and been
glad to get them. It remains for my _wife_ to question my honesty!"
He picked up his hat and left the house again, going back into the
town. His nerves were raw, his pride had been seared over and over by
the open distrust of men who had grown prosperous in the town he had
created. He wanted sympathy, Doris' arms around his neck, her
indignant condemnation of the thieves who had after all wrecked the
mine. He had thought that Doris would understand his reasons for doing
what he had done. He had believed that her own pride would demand that
they stand back of Parowan with their last dollar.
He sent a long code telegram to Baker Cole, and one to his bank. Then,
with hell still in his heart, he walked up the other slope, across the
gulch, and entered the tent (now boarded and roofed and floored, but
otherwise not changed) where he felt that he could at least call
himself at home.
Luella, banished since the fateful party that had set the gossips
talking, greeted him with hysterical chatter. Hez poked a cold nose
ingratiatingly into his palm. Even Sister Mitchell, long ago retrieved
from her winter quarters under a rock by the cellar, crawled from
under the stove and craned her long neck at him, begging for something
green. Bill looked in the cupboard and found nothing eatable. He had
been away too long, he remembered now. He had lost count of the time,
so completely had his mind been given to meet a humiliating situation
in such a way that he need never be ashamed to look any man in the
face.
Well, his menagerie was hungry and begging for food. He went out
again, hurried to the nearest grocery and bought what he wanted,
careless of the curious looks he excited. He stopped at Tommy's Place
and told Tommy that he wouldn't be needed, close-herding anybody. The
auditor had reported to Bill that he could find nothing wrong with the
books, and there was not much chance of getting hold of any actual
proof of crookedness against either Rayfield or Emmett.
"And are yuh still buyin' Parowan stock, Mr. Dale?" Tommy's soft voice
was softer, more plaintive than ever.
"As long as there's a share out, I'm in the market," Bill answered
shortly--defiantly too, though there was no reason for defiance.
He returned to his camp and fed Sister Mitchell her lettuce, Luella a
cookie, and flung a stale mutton chop outside the door for Hez. He did
not cook anything for himself. He was too heartsick to think of food.
The whole damnable robbery, the treachery,--and then, Doris!
He tried to recall what words had passed between them; to remember
just what Doris had said. But then he knew that it was not the words;
she had not actually said anything awful, he suspected. But her tones,
the hard, condemning look in her eyes! He could see her again,
trembling with anger because he was spending money to keep his
name--and hers--above reproach among men. In all the time since they
were married, Bill had never seen Doris like that. The months had not
been altogether peaceful, to be sure. Doris had frequently found
something in her husband that required correcting, had enumerated his
faults to him many, many times. She had often hurt Bill, had made him
angry, so that he would go away until he forgot it. But there had been
nothing like this.
"Damn money, if that's what it does to people!" Bill groaned aloud,
when Luella recalled him to his surroundings by crying, "Give us a
light! Give us a light!" He lighted a lantern and hung it from the
hook on the ridgepole, and for a long while he stood staring at the
cased saxophone.
Only two years ago he had dreamed of learning to play that thing,--to
forward his wooing of Doris!
"I didn't need music," he told himself bitterly, all her hysteria over
money and luxury flooding his mind with a nauseating enlightenment.
"She took me, quick enough, when she saw the gold! Money, money!
That's all she has thought of, from the day I showed her the vein.
Little peacock, strutting around, showing off her finery. What a blind
fool a man can be. And it had to wind up this way. She took money from
me for her stock--thinking it was my last dollar. Afraid my account
wouldn't cover it! If she thinks I'm that near broke, why did she take
that check? Sell out, just like all the rest, because Parowan's on the
rocks and the stock's not worth a damn, and she stood to lose
something if she didn't unload quick. So she unloaded--five dollars a
share because I offered it--to _me_! Her own husband, the man who gave
her the claim that put her in the Company to begin with.
"What has she ever done to help? What's she doing now? Looking after
her own little dollar pile--that's what. And she didn't _need_ it! I
gave her half a million in bonds, last Christmas. My God, even
Rayfield wouldn't have done what she did to-night! And the way she's
treated her folks. That shows the stuff she's made of. I don't blame
Don for turning me down every time I tried to do something for him.
They're proud--the right kind of pride. They're proud to make their
own way. But Doris--neglecting them and not wanting them in California
for a visit--excuses, the thinnest kind of excuses. Ashamed to have
them at the hotels, that was why. She couldn't bear the thought of
leading her pudgy old mother and her big, awkward dad into the dining
room to her table! Afraid they might eat their salad with the fork
dedicated to fish! Old Don might possibly put his soup spoon into his
mouth front end forward! Snob! Cold-blooded, heartless little snob!"
So he railed at her, lashing his anger with the memory of her
foolishness. But when he thought of baby Mary, his heart failed him.
Beginning to toddle now, she was. And squinting her nose at him and
laughing, and hiding her head in a cushion when he went down on his
hands and knees and boo-ooed at her. Holding out her little arms to
him and pleading "Take!" when the nurse came to carry her off to bed.
She must be in her little white nightgown now, with pink toes
wriggling, little white teeth flashing when she laughed. He wondered,
hungrily, if she missed her daddy,--wanted him to come and play
little-pigs-going-to-market.
Bill couldn't stand it. He put on his hat and went out, locking the
gate after him and steeling himself against Luella's protestations. He
would go back to the big house on the hill. He couldn't leave his baby
girl to go "bye-bye" without kissing her daddy good night.
But when he had walked to where the house stood revealed to him, bold
against the starry sky, his steps slowed, faltered, stopped
altogether. All the big rooms were lighted brilliantly, as if there
were a party in the house. He knew the look,--having had his fill of
that mockery of hospitality which Doris called entertaining. It would
be like her, he told himself between clenched teeth. With Parowan
fortunes sliding into the abyss of cataclysmic failure, it would be
like Doris to throw wide her doors to merrymaking, to fling her
defiance into the face of the town over which disaster hovered
vulturelike, waiting to feed upon the broken fortunes left in the wake
of the boom.
He looked for what seemed a long while at the window upstairs, where a
dim light was burning in the corner room. He knew well the meaning of
that light also. It meant that baby Mary was in her bed, tucked in by
the nurse, while her mother laughed and talked and "entertained" in
the drawing-rooms below.
Bill muttered a great oath, turned and went back to his dingy little
board-and-canvas camp.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
BILL IS BACK WHERE HE STARTED
Bill bought Parowan stock. When he saw that the price he had named was
holding back many sales, that many a stockholder suspected a shrewd
motive in his buying and held on in the hope of riding another high
wave of frenzied finance, Bill gave a snort and sent another bulletin
out from Parowan headquarters. He would buy Parowan stock at
one-fifty.
That day he wrote checks, an unpleasant curl of the lip betraying his
consciousness of his wife, of the look in her eyes, of the hard
bitterness of her tones because he was spending money on something
other than her whims. His anger held and hardened with the congealing
quality of his contempt for her selfishness, her cold-blooded
acquisitiveness. He felt that the greatest ease he could know was
never to see Doris again so long as he lived.
Wherefore, he did not go home. But Doris called him on the telephone,
just before noon.
"Bill, are you going to be home for luncheon?"
"No."
"When _are_ you coming, then? Don't you realize what people will be
saying? I should think you might have some little consideration for
_me_."
"I can trust you to attend to that matter," Bill replied evenly. "I
have never yet known you to fail. When I hear from San Francisco I
shall let you know. I wired last evening, and should hear to-day or
to-morrow."
"Bill Dale, you----"
"Yes. Certainly. Good-by." Bill hung up and turned back unemotionally
to his work. His lawyer, who sat within three feet of him, believed
that Bill was speaking to a client, or an employee of some kind.
The next day, Parowan Consolidated dropped to one dollar, and people
were selling by wire,--and Bill was buying. He was appalled at the
amount of stock which had been placed on the market and sold at boom
prices. The incorporation had been for two million shares. There had
been two million, seven hundred thousand shares issued. The auditor
had discovered that for Bill.
Bill had a happy half-hour, thinking that he had "got the goods" on
Rayfield and Emmett. But Fuller, the attorney, dug into the records
and discovered just when and where and how the capital stock had been
increased nearly one million shares. Bill called to mind the times
when he had been asked, just as he put on his hat to leave after some
brief visit to the office, "Oh, just sign up these minutes, Mr.
President. Catch you while I can, is the only way I can get at you!"
And Bill, knowing that Doris was waiting for him, had signed minutes,
documents, stock and check books hastily, without giving the time he
should have devoted to the reading. So the capital stock had been
increased with his official sanction, but without his knowledge. There
was nothing that he could say, nothing that he could do. An officer of
a corporation is supposed to know the official acts of his
organization.
Well, he had himself to blame, if there were more Parowan stock
floating around than he had any idea of. He was prepared to buy every
share that he himself did not hold,--and Doris. He had counted on
Doris standing at his shoulder, since she had more than half a million
in her own right and could never want for money unless she
deliberately squandered it. Now, when he should be nearing the end of
his buying, he found himself far from the goal.
He went out and wired again to Baker Cole--an urgent call to liquidate
at once all his holdings in the big Baker-Cole oil interests--and to
place the money at his disposal in the Hibernian.
Then he went back to the office and continued to buy Parowan at one
dollar. More stock was coming in. The gamblers, having no inside
information--though they tried hard enough to get hold of it--lost
their nerve and began to let go. But not fast enough for Bill, who was
impatient to be through with the thing.