AS A LOAN
Rimrock Jones left town with four burro-loads of powder, some
provisions and a cargo of tools. He paid cash for his purchases and
answered no question beyond saying that he knew his own business. No
one knew or could guess where he had got his money--except Miss
Fortune, and she would not tell. From the very first she had told
herself that the loan was nothing to hide, and yet she was too much of
a woman not to have read aright the beacon in Rimrock's eyes. He had
spoken impulsively, and so had she; and they had parted, as it turned
out, for months.
[Illustration: Rimrock Jones left town with four burro-loads of powder,
some provisions and a cargo of tools]
The dove that had crooned so long in the umbrella tree built a nest
there and cooed on to his mate. The clear, rainless winter gave place
to spring and the giant cactus burst into flower. It rained, short and
hard, and the desert floor took on suddenly a fine mat of green; and
still he did not come. He was like the rain, this wild man of the
desert; swift and fierce, then gone and forgotten. Once she saw his
Mexican, the old, bearded Juan, with his string of shaggy burros at the
store; but he brought her no word and went off the next day with more
powder and provisions in his packs.
It was all new to Mary Fortune, this stern and barren country; and its
people were new to her, too. The women, for some reason, had regarded
her with suspicion and her answer was a patrician aloofness and
reserve. When the day's work was done she took off her headband and
sat reading in the lobby, alone. As for the men of the hotel, the
susceptible young mining men who passed to and fro from Gunsight, they
found her pleasant, but not quite what they had expected--not quite
what Dame Rumor had painted her. They watched her from the distance,
for she was undeniably goodlooking--and so did the women upstairs.
They watched, and they listened, which was not the least of the reasons
why Mary Fortune laid her ear-'phone aside. No person can enjoy the
intimacies of life when they are shouted, ill-advisedly, to the world.
But if when she first came to town, worn and tired from her journey,
she had seemed more deaf than she was, Mary Fortune had learned, as her
hearing improved, to artfully conceal the fact. There was a certain
advantage, in that unfriendly atmosphere, in being able to overhear
chance remarks. But no permanent happiness can come from small talk,
and listening to petty asides; and, for better or worse, Mary took off
her harness and retired to the world of good books. She read and she
dreamed and, quite unsuspected, she looked out the window for him.
The man! There is always a man, some man, for every woman who dreams.
Rimrock Jones had come once and gone as quickly, but his absence was
rainbowed with romance. He was out on the desert, far away to the
south, sinking shafts on his claims--their claims. He had discovered a
fortune, but, strong as he was, he had had to accept help from her. He
would succeed, this fierce, ungovernable desert-man; he would win the
world's confidence as he had won her faith by his strength and the bold
look in his eyes. He would finish his discovery work and record all
his claims and then--well, then he would come back.
So she watched for him, furtively, glancing quickly out the window
whenever a horseman passed by; and one day, behold, as she looked up
from her typing, he was there, riding by on his horse! And as he
passed he looked in, under the shadow of his hat, and touched a bag
that was tied behind his saddle. He was more ragged than ever, and one
hand had a bandage around it; but he was back, and he would come. She
abandoned her typewriting--one of those interminable legal papers that
McBain was always leaving on her desk--and stepped out to look down the
street.
The air, warm and soft, was spiced with green odors and the resinous
tang of the greasewood; the ground dove in his tree seemed swooning
with passion as he crooned his throaty, Kwoo, kwoo-o. It was the
breath of spring, but tropical, sense-stealing; it lulled the brain and
bade the heart leap and thrill. This vagabond, this rough horseman
with his pistol and torn clothing and the round sack of ore lashed
behind; who would ever dream that an adventurer like him could make her
forget who she was? But he came from the mine she had helped him to
save and the sack might be heavy with gold. So she watched,
half-concealed, until he stopped at the bank and went striding in with
the bag.
As for Rimrock Jones, he rode by the saloon and went direct to L. W.,
the banker. It was life or death, as far as the Tecolote was
concerned, for his four hundred dollars was gone. That had given him
the powder to shoot out his holes to the ten feet required by law, and
enough actual cash to pay his Mexican locators and make a legal
transfer of the claims; but four hundred dollars will not last a
lifetime and Rimrock Jones was broke. He needed more money and he went
perforce to the only man who could give it. It would be a fight, for
L. W. was stubborn; but Rimrock was stubborn himself.
"L. W.," he said, when he found the banker in his private office in the
rear, "you used to be white and I want you to listen before you spit
out what you've got in your craw. You may have a grievance, and I
don't deny it; but remember, I've got one, too. No, it isn't about my
mine--I wouldn't sell you one share in it for your whole little
jim-crow bank. I've done my first work and I've recorded my claims,
and I'll offer them--somewhere's else. All you know is gold and before
we go any further, just run your eyes over that."
He dumped the contents of his bag on the polished desk and L. W.
blinked as he looked. It was picked gold quartz of the richest kind,
with jewelry specimens on top, and as L. W. ran his hand through it his
tight mouth relaxed from its bulldog grip on the cigar.
"Where'd you get it?" he grunted and Rimrock's eyes flashed as he
answered shortly:
"My mine."
"How much more you got?"
L. W. asked it suspiciously, but the gold-gleam had gone to his heart.
"About two tons of the best, scattered around on the different dumps,
and a whole scad more that will ship. I knew you wouldn't lend on
anything but gold-ore and I need money to pay off my Mexicans. I've
got to save some ore bags to sack that picked rock in, and hire
freighters to haul it in. Then there's the freight and the milling and
with one thing and another I need about two thousand dollars."
"Oh! Two thousand dollars. Seems to me," observed L. W., "I've heard
that sum mentioned before."
"You have, dad-burn ye, and this time I want it. What's the matter,
ain't that ore good for it all?"
"It is, if you've got it, but I've come to the point where I don't
place absolute confidence in your word."
"Oh, the hell you have!" said Rimrock sarcastically, "that sounds like
some lawyer talk. You might've learned it from Apex McBain when you
was associated with him in a deal. I won't say _what_ deal, but,
refreshing your memory now, ain't my word as good as yours?"
He gazed intently at the hard-visaged L. W. whose face slowly turned
brick red.
"Now to get down to business," went on Rimrock quietly, "I tell you
that ore is there. If you'll loan me the money to haul in that rock
I'll pay you back from my check. And I'll give you my note at one per
cent. a month, compounded monthly and all that. I guess a man that can
show title to twenty claims that turn out picked ore like that--well,
he's entitled, perhaps, to a little more consideration than you boys
have been showing me of late."
L. W. sat silent, his burning eyes on the gold, the cigar clutched
fiercely in his teeth--then without a word he wrote a check and threw
it across the desk.
"Much obliged," said Rimrock and without further words he stepped out
and cashed the check. And then Rimrock Jones disappeared.
The last person in Gunsight to hear what had happened was Mary Fortune.
She worked at her desk that day in a fever of expectation, now stopping
to wonder at the strange madness that possessed her, now pounding
harder to still her tumultuous thoughts. She did not know what it was
that she expected, only something great and new and wonderful,
something to lift her at last from the drudgery of her work and make
her feel young and gay. Something to rouse her up to the wild joy of
living and make her forget her misfortunes. To be poor, and deaf, and
alone--all these were new things to Mary Fortune; but she was none of
them when he was near. What need had she to hear when she could read
in his eyes that instant admiration that a woman values most? And
poor? The money she had given had helped him, perhaps, to gain
millions!
She worked late, that afternoon; and again, in the evening, she made an
excuse to keep her office lit up. Still he did not come and she paced
up the street, even listened as she passed by the saloons--then,
overwhelmed with shame that she had seemed to seek him, she fled to her
room and wept. The next day, and the next, she watched and listened
and at last she overheard the truth. It was Andrew McBain, the hard,
fighting Scotchman, who told the dreadful news--and she hated him for
it, always.
"Well, I'm glad he's gone," he had replied to L. W., who had beckoned
him out to the door. "He's a dangerous man--I've been afraid of
him--you're lucky to get off at that."
"Lucky!" yelled L. W., suddenly forgetting his caution, "he touched me
for two thousand dollars! Do you call that lucky? And here's the
latest--he hasn't got a pound of picked ore! Even took away what he
had; and that old, whiskered Mexican says he up and borrowed that from
him!"
"That's a criminal act," explained McBain exultantly, as he signaled L.
W. to be calm. "Shh, not so loud, the girl might hear you. Let him
go, and hold it over his head."
"No, I'll kill the dastard!" howled L. W. rebelliously and slammed the
door in a rage.
A swooning sickness came over Mary Fortune as she sat, waiting stonily,
at her desk; but when McBain came back and sat down beside her she
typed on, automatically, as he spoke. Then she woke at last, as if
from a dream, to hear his harsh, discordant voice; and a sudden
resentment, a fierce, passionate hatred, swept over her as he shouted
in her ear. A hundred times she had informed him politely that she was
not deaf when she wore her ear-'phone, and a hundred times he had
listened impatiently and gone on in his sharp, rasping snarl. She drew
away shuddering as he looked over some papers and cleared his throat
for a fresh start; and then, without reason that he could ever divine,
she burst into tears and fled.
She came back later, but the moment he began dictating she pushed back
her chair and rose up.
"Mr. McBain," she said tremulously, "you don't need to shout at me. I
give you notice--I shall leave on the first."
It was plainly a tantrum, such as he had observed in women, a case,
pure and simple, of nerves; but Andrew McBain let it pass. She could
spell--a rare quality in typists--and was familiar with legal forms.
"Ah, my dear Miss Fortune," he began propitiatingly, "I hope you will
reconsider, I'm sure. It's a habit I have, when dictating a brief, to
speak as though addressing the court. Perhaps, under the
circumstances, you could take off your instrument and my voice would
be--ahem--just about right."
"No! It drives me crazy!" she cried in a passion. "It makes everybody
think I'm so deaf!"
She broke down at that and McBain discreetly withdrew and was gone for
the rest of the day. It was best, he had learned, when young women
became emotional, to absent himself for a time. And the next day, sure
enough, she came back, smiling cheerfully, and said no more of leaving
her job. She was, in fact, more obliging than before and he judged
that the tantrum had passed.
With L. W., however, the case was different. He claimed to be an
Indian in his hates; and a mining engineer, dropping in from New York,
told a story that staggered belief. Rimrock Jones was there, the talk
of the town, reputed to be enormously rich. He smoked fifty-cent
cigars, wore an enormous black hat and put up at the Waldorf Hotel.
Not only that but he was in all the papers as associating with the
kings of finance. So great was his prestige that the engineer, in
fact, had been requested to report on his mine.
"A report?" shouted L. W., "what, a report on the Tecolotes? Well, I
can save you a long, dusty trip. In the first place Rimrock Jones is a
thorough-paced scoundrel, not only a liar but a crook; and in the
second place these claims are forty miles across the desert with just
two sunk wells on the road. I wouldn't own his mines if you would make
me a present of them and a million dollars to boot. I wouldn't take
them for a gift if that mountain was pure gold--how's he going to haul
the ore to the railroad? Now listen, my friend, I've known that boy
since he stood knee-high to a toad and of all the liars in Arizona he
stands out, preëminently, as the worst."
"You question his veracity, then?" enquired the engineer as he fumbled
for some papers in his coat.
"Question nothing!" raved L. W. "I'm making a statement! He's not
only a liar--he's a thief! He robbed me, the dastard; he got two
thousand dollars of my money without giving me the scratch of a pen.
Oh, I tell you----"
"Well, that's curious," broke in the engineer as he stared at a paper,
"he's got your name down here as a reference."