GOLD AND PEARLS
Bim Bagley, on the trail of the information brought by Doc Stooder’s
pipe line, found himself against a blank wall the instant he passed
through the barrier of the Line into Sonizona. He was too conversant
with the ways of Mexican officialdom to make any inquiry in high
places, knowing that to do so would be but to jeopardize Grant Hickman,
however he might be placed, and win for himself naught but suave
denials. Nor did he even go to the American consul, who, in the usual
course of things, would be the last man in Sonizona to hear of the
disappearance of an American citizen there.
Rather, with Doc Stooder’s counsel, Bim circulated warily among the
gambling halls and in the _cantinas_ where the rurales were wont to go
for their salt and mescal. Here ten pesos slipped into a complacent
palm; there twenty. Then weary waiting for results.
Bit by bit the story came to him, and behind the fragments was always
the dim figure of Colonel Hamilcar Urgo. Bagley knew Urgo for the
tyrant politician that he was: how he used his position in the garrison
as a cloak to cover his manipulations of government all along the
Sonora border. No man was stronger, not even the governor of Sonora
himself; and the central regime in Mexico City was forced to wink at
Colonel Urgo’s obliquities else run the risk of his firing the train to
revolution.
But why this little sand viper in uniform should have conceived a
desire to be rid of Grant Hickman, a total stranger to the country, not
even the most astute of Bagley’s informers could guess. “’E’s not like
theese gringo” appeared to cover the whole case.
The saturnine doctor, repenting him of his brusque reception of the
New York man--prompted, after all, by his superlative caution in the
presence of a possible impostor--sent the tip to the farthermost
ganglions of his news system: “Fifty gold dollars to the man bringing
information of the missing American’s whereabouts.”
Doc Stooder’s proffer of that amount of money was not all humanitarian.
Below his surface show of concern, designed for the benefit of Bim
Bagley, good Dr. Stooder did not care a plugged nickel what might
be the fate of the Eastern man. He was not one to lose sleep over
the misfortunes of others if those misfortunes were not attributable
to strictly physical causes and under materia medica. Then only they
interested him.
No, Doc Stooder’s real concern was the delay caused by the disappearance
of this third party to his scheme for a “great killing.” The killing in
question was one he could not make single-handed. Circumstances which
have no place in this tale had forced him to share the secret of it with
Bagley, and the latter had refused to move a step in the enterprise until
he had his pal from overseas in on the game. The Doc fretted aloud one
day, which was the tenth after Grant had dropped from sight.
“Son, I’m tellin’ you ’less we make tracks for that Four Evangelists
mission purty pronto this here O’Donoju Spaniard down in the Garden’s
goin’ to get what’s in the wind and shove in on us. He’s got every
Papago from here to the Gulf runnin’ to him with every whisper a little
bird lets spill. He gets wind you an’ me are raising sand to lay hands
on an engineer out from Noo Yawk an’ he smells a mice.”
“You go dig alone for your dam’d mission.” Bim Bagley’s temper had been
ground fine by days of restless anxiety. “Me, I roost right here till
I get the lay where my buddy is.”
Next day all the silver of subsidy Bim had distributed bore fruit an
hundred-fold. There came to the office of Doc Stooder unquestioned
report that the missing American was alive, though shot through the
body, and under the care of El Doctor Coyote Belly at a speck in the
desert called Babinioqui away down beyond the Line.
Bagley was off in his car that night. Doc Stooder, alone in his office
and with a graduating glass and bottle of fiery tequila at his elbow,
dreamed of gold plate brought to light from caverns of sand, of altar
jewels and hoards of nuggets--riches of crafty priests--salvaged from
the crypt of a holy place lost to sight of man a century and a quarter.
“Gold all hammered into crosses an’ such!” The Doc tipped his brimming
graduating glass against the electric bulb and studied with fond eye
the liquor made golden by the light.
“--Pearls, my Papago says. Pearls big as _bisnaga_ fruit an’
greeny-white like a high moon. Gold an’ pearls! Pearls an’ gold!
Stooder, you’re goin’ be a prancin’, r’arin’ aristocrat!”