CHAPTER V
A Load of Buckshot
Since he had turned back, far out on the desert, and braved the storm to inspect the Paymaster Mine, Wiley Holman had met nothing but disaster; but as he lay on the ground with one leg full of buckshot he blamed it all on the Widow. Without warning or justification, without even giving him a chance, she had sneaked up and potted him like a rabbit; and now, as men came running to witness his shame, she gloried in her badness.
“Aha-ah!” she jeered, coming back to stand over him and Wiley reached for a stone.
“You old she-cat,” he burst out, “you say another word to me and I’ll bounce this rock off your head!”
He groaned and dropped the rock to take his leg in both hands, and then Virginia rushed to the rescue.
“How badly are you hurt?” she asked, kneeling down beside him, but he jerked ungraciously away.
“Go away and leave me alone!” he shouted to the world at large and the Widow took the hint to withdraw. Then in a series of frenzied curses Wiley stripped off his puttee and felt of his injured leg. It was wet with blood and two shot-holes in his shin-bone were giving him the most exquisite pain; the rest were just flesh-wounds where the buckshot had pierced his leggings and imbedded themselves in the muscles. He looked them over hastily by the light of a flashing lantern and then he rose up from the ground.
“Gimme that gun for a crutch!” he demanded of the Widow; and Mrs. Huff, who had been surveying her work with awe, passed over the shotgun in silence. “All right, now,” he went on, turning to Death Valley Charley, who had been patiently holding his lantern, “just show me the trail and I’ll get out of camp before some crazy dastard ups and kills me.”
“That was Stiff Neck George,” observed Charley mysteriously. “He’s guarding the Paymaster for Blount.”
“Who–that fellow that was after me?” burst out Wiley in a passion as he hobbled off down the trail. “What the hell was he trying to do? The whole rotten mine isn’t worth stealing from anybody. What’s the matter with you people–are you crazy?”
“Well, that’s all right!” returned the Widow from the darkness. “You can’t sneak in and jump mymine!”
“Yourmine, you old tarrier!” yelled Wiley furiously. “You’d better go to town and look it up. The whole danged works is mine–I bought it in for taxes!”
“You–what?” cried the Widow, brushing Virginia and Charley aside and halting him in the trail. “You bought the Paymaster for taxes!”
“Yes, for taxes,” answered Wiley, “and got stung at that! Gimme eighty-three dollars and forty-one cents and you can have it back, with costs. But now listen, you old battle-ax; I’ve taken enough off of you. You went up on my property when I was making an inspection of it and made an attempt on my life; and if I hear a peep out of you, from this time on, I’ll go down and swear out a warrant.”
“I didn’t aim to kill you,” defended the Widow, weakly. “I just tried to shoot you in the leg.”
“Well, you did it,” returned Wiley, and, pushing; her aside, he limped on down the trail. The Widow followed meekly, talking in low tones with her daughter, and at last Virginia came up beside him.
“Take him right to our house,” she said to Charley, “and I’ll nurse him until he gets well.”
“No, you take me to the Holman house!” directed Wiley, obstinately. “I guess we’ve got a house of our own.”
“Well, suit yourself,” she murmured, and fell back to the rear while Wiley went hobbling on. At every step he jabbed the muzzle of the shotgun vindictively into the ground, but as he reached the flat and met a posse of citizens, he submitted to being carried on a door. The first pain had passed and a deadly numbness seemed to take the place of its bite; but as he moved his stiffened muscles, which were beginning to ache and throb, he realized that he was badly hurt. With a leg like that he could not drive out across the desert, seventy-four long miles to Vegas; nor would he, on the other hand, find the best of accommodations in the deserted house of his father. It had been a great home in its day, but that day was past, and the water connections too, and somebody must be handy to wait on him.
“Say,” he said, turning to Death Valley Charley, “have you got a house here in town? Well, take me to it and I’ll pay you well, and for anything else that you do.”
“It won’t cost you nothing,” answered Charley quickly. “I used to know your father.”
“Well, you knew a good man then,” replied Wiley grimly, but Death Valley did not respond. The Widow Huff was listening behind; and besides, he had his doubts.
“I’ll run on ahead,” said Charley noncommittally, and when Wiley arrived a canvas cot was waiting for him, fully equipped except for the sheets. Virginia came in later with a pair on her arm, and after a look at Charley’s greasy blankets Wiley allowed her to spread them on the bed. Then, as Death Valley laid a grimy paw on his leg and began to pick out the shot Wiley jerked away and asked Virginia impatiently if she didn’t have a little carbolic.
“Aw, he’ll be all right,” protested Charley cheerfully, as Virginia pushed him aside; “them buckshot won’t hurt him much, nohow. Jest put on some pine pitch and a chew of tobacco and he’ll fall off to sleep like a child.”
He stood blinking helplessly as Virginia heated some water and poured in a teaspoonful of carbolic, then as she bathed the wounds and picked out the last shot, Charley placed a disc on his phonograph.
“Does he want some music?” he inquired of Heine, who was sitting up and begging, but Virginia put down her foot. “No, Charley,” she said with a forbidding frown, “you go ask mother for a needle and thread.”
“He’s kind of crazy to-night,” she whispered to Wiley, when Death Valley was safely out of sight, “you’d better come over to the house.”
“Huh, I guess we’re all crazy,” answered Wiley, laughing shortly. “I can stand it–but how does he act?”
“Oh, he hears things–and gets messages–and talks about Death Valley. He got lost over there, three years ago last August, and the heat kind of cooked his brains. He heard your automobile, when you came back to-night–that’s why mother and all the rest of them went over to the mine to get you. I’m sorry she shot you up.”
“Well, don’t you care,” he said reassuringly. “But she sure overplayed her hand.”
“Yes, she did,” acknowledged Virginia, trying not to quarrel with her patient, “but, of course, she didn’t know about that tax sale.”
“Well, she knows it now,” he answered pointedly, and when Charley came back they were silent. Virginia bandaged up his wound and slipped away and then Wiley lay back and sighed. There had been a time when he and Virginia had been friends, but now the fat was in the fire. It was her fighting mother, of course, and their quarrel about the Paymaster; but behind it all there was the old question between their fathers, and he knew that his father was right. He had not rigged the stock market, he had not cheated Colonel Huff, and he had not tried to get back the mine. That was a scheme of his own, put on foot on his own initiative–and brought to nothing by the Widow. He had hoped to win over Virginia and effect a reconciliation, but that hole in his leg told him all too well that the Widow could never be fooled. And, since she could not be placated, nor bought off, nor bluffed, there was nothing to do but quit. The world was large and there were other Virginias, as well as other Paymasters–only it seemed such a futile waste. He sighed again and then Death Valley Charley burst out into a cackling laugh.
“I heard you,” he said, “I heard you coming–away up there in the pass. Chuh, chuh, chuh, chud, chud, chud, chud; and I told Virginny you was coming.”
“Yes, I heard about it,” answered Wiley sourly, “and then you told the Widow.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t!” exulted Charley. “She’d’ve killed you, sure as shooting. I just told Virginny, that’s all.”
“Oh!” observed Wiley, and lay so still that Charley regarded him intently. His eyes were blue and staring like a newborn babe’s, but behind their look of childlike innocence there lurked a crafty smile.
“I told her,” went on Charley, “that you was coming to git her and take her away in your auto. She’s a nice girl, Virginny, and never rode in one of them things–I never thought you’d try to steal her mine.”
“I did not!” denied Wiley, but Death Valley only smiled and waved the matter aside.
“Never mind,” he said, “they’re all crazy, anyhow. They get that way every north wind. I’m here to take care of them–the Colonel asked me to, and keep people from stealing his mine. It’s electricity that does it–it’s about us everywhere–and that’s what makes ’em crazy; but electricity is my servant; I bend it to my will; that’s how I come to hear you. I heard you coming back, away out on the desert, and I knowed your heart wasn’t right. You was coming back to rob the Colonel of his mine; and the Colonel, he saved my life once. He ain’t dead, you know, he’s over across Death Valley in them mountains they call the Ube-Hebes. Yes, I was lost on the desert and he followed my tracks and found me, running wild through the sand-hills; and then Virginia and Mrs. Huff, they looked after me until my health returned.”
“You can hear pretty well, then,” suggested Wiley diplomatically. “You must know everything that goes on.”
“It’s the electricity!” declared Charley. “It’s about us everywhere, and that’s what makes them crazy. All these desert rats are crazy, it’s the electric storms that does it–Nevada is a great state for winds. But when they comes a sandstorm, and Mrs. Huff she wraps up her head, I feel the power coming on. I can hear far away and then I can hear close–I make the electricity my slave. But the rest, they go crazy; they have headaches and megrims, and Mrs. Huff she always wants to fight; but I’m here to take care of ’em–the Colonel asked me to, so you keep away from that mine.”
“Oh, sure,” responded Wiley, “I won’t bother the mine. As soon as I’m well I’ll go home.”
“No, you stay,” returned Charley, becoming suddenly confidential. “I’ll show you a mountain of gold. It’s over across Death Valley, in the Ube-Hebes; the Colonel is over there now.”
“Is that so?” inquired Wiley, and Charley looked at him strangely, as if dazed.
“Aw, no; of course not!” he burst out angrily. “I forgot–the Colonel is dead. You Heine; come over here, sir.”
Heine crept up unwillingly and Charley slapped him. “Now–shut up!” he admonished and went off into crazy mutterings.
“What’s that?” he cried, rousing up suddenly to listen, and a savage look replaced the blank stare. “Can’t you hear him?” he asked. “It’s Stiff Neck George–he’s coming up the alley to kill you. Here, take my gun; and when he opens the door you fill him full of holes!”
Wiley listened intently, then he reached for the heavy pistol and sat up, watching the door. The wind soughed and howled and rattled at the windows, over which Charley had stretched heavy blankets, and it seemed to his startled imagination that someone was groping at the door. The memory of the skulking form that had followed him rose up with the distinctness of a vision and at a knock on the door he cocked his pistol and beckoned Death Valley to one side.
“Come in!” he called, but as the door swung open it was Virginia who stood facing his gun.
“O–oh!” she screamed, and then she flushed angrily as Charley began to laugh.
“Well, laugh then, you fool,” she said to Wiley, “and when you’re through, just look at this that we found!”
She held up the ore-bag that Wiley had lost and strode dramatically in. “Look at that!” she cried, and strewing the white quartz on the table she pointed her finger in his face. “You stole my specimen!” she cried accusingly. “That’s why you came back for more. But you give it back to me–I want it this minute. I see you’re honest–like your father!”
She spat it out venomously, more venomously than was needful, for he was already fumbling for the rock; and when he gave it back he smiled over-scornfully and his lower lip mounted up.
“All right,” he said, “you don’t have to holler for it. You’re getting to be just like your mother.”
“I’m not!” she denied, but after looking at him a minute she burst into tears and fled.
CHAPTER VI
All Crazy
The wind was still blowing when Wiley was awakened by the cold of the October morning. In the house all was dark, on account of the blankets which Death Valley had nailed over the windows, but outside he could hear the thump of an axe and the whining yelp of a dog. Then Charley came in, his arms full of wood, and lit a roaring fire in the stove. Wiley dozed off again, for his leg had pained him and kept him awake half the night, and when he woke up it was to the strains of music and the mournful howls of Heine.
“Ah, you are so confectionate!” exclaimed Charley in honeyed tones and laughed and patted him on the back. “Don’t you like the fiddle, Heine? Well, listen to this now; the sweetest song of all.”
He stopped the rasping phonograph to put on another record and when Heine heard “Listen to the Mocking-bird” he barked and leapt with joy. Wiley listened for awhile, then he stirred in bed and at last he tried to get up; but his leg was very stiff and old Charley was oblivious, so he sank back and waited impatiently. Heine sat upon the floor before the largest of three phonographs, which ground out the Mocking-bird with variations; and each time he heard the whistled notes of the bird he rolled his eyes on Charley with a soulful, beseeching glance. The evening before, when his master had cuffed him, Wiley had considered Heine badly abused; but now as the concert promised to drag on indefinitely he was forced to amend his opinion.
“Say,” he spoke up at last, in a pause between records, “what’s the chance of getting something to eat?”
“Yes, there’s plenty,” answered Charley, and went on with his frolic until Wiley rose up in disgust. He had heated some water, besides tearing down a blanket and letting the daylight in, when there came a hurried knock at the door and the Widow appeared with his breakfast. She avoided his eyes, but her manner was ingratiating and she supplied the conversation herself.
“Good morning!” she smiled,–“Charley, stop that awful racket and let Heine go out for his scraps. Well, I brought you your breakfast–Virginia isn’t feeling very well–and I hope you’re going to be all right. No, get right back into bed and I’ll prop you up with pillows; Charley’s got a hundred or so. I declare, it’s a question which can grab the most; old Charley or Stiff Neck George. Every time anyone moves out–and sometimes when they don’t–you’ll see those two ghouls hanging around; and the minute they’re gone, well, you never saw anything like it, the way they will fight for the loot. Charley’s got a whole room filled up with bedding, and stoves and tables and chairs; and George–he’s vicious–he takes nearly everything and piles it up down in his warehouse. It isn’t his, of course, but─”
“He hauls it off in a wheelbarrow,” broke in Charley, virtuously. “He don’t care what he does. They was a widow woman here whose daughter got sick and she had to go out for a week, and when she came back─”
“Yes, her whole house was looted–he carried off even her sewing-machine!”
“And a deep line of wheelbarrow tracks,” added Charley, unctuously, “leading from her house right down to his. She nailed up all her windows before she went, but he─”
“Yes, he broke in,” supplied the Widow. “He’s a desperate character and everybody is afraid of him, so he can do whatever he pleases; but you bet your life he can’t run it over me–I filled him up with buckshot twice. Oh–that is–er–did you ever hear how he got his head twisted? Well, go right ahead now and eat up your toast. I asked him one time–that was before we’d had our trouble–what was the cause of his head being to one side. He looks, you know, for all the world like he was watching for a good kick from behind; but he tried to appear pathetic and told me a long story about saving a mother and her child in a flood. And when it was all over, according to him, he fell down in a faint in the mud; but the best accounts I get say he was dead drunk in the gutter and woke up with his head on one side.”
She ended with a sniff and Wiley glanced at Charley, but he was staring blankly away.
“I don’t like that man,” spoke up Charley at last, “he kicked my dog, one time.”
“And he bootlegs something awful,” added the Widow, desperately, for fear that the chatter would lag. “There doesn’t a day go by but some drunken Piute comes whooping up the road, and that bunch of Shooshonnies─”
“Yes, he sells to the bucks,” observed Death Valley, slyly. “They’re no good–they get drunk and tell. But you can trust the squaws–I had one here yesterday─”
“You what?” shrieked the Widow, and Charley looked up startled, then rose and whistled to his dog.
“Go lay down!” he commanded and slapped him till he yelped, after which he slipped fearfully away.
“The very idea!” exclaimed the Widow frigidly and then she glanced at Wiley.
“Mr. Holman,” she began, “I came out here to talk business–there’s nothing round-the-corner about me. Now what about this tax sale, and what does Blount mean by allowing you to buy it in for nothing?”
“Well, I don’t know,” answered Wiley. “He refused to pay the taxes, so I bought in the property myself.”
“Yes, but what does he mean?”
The Widow’s voice rose to the old quarrelsome, nagging pitch, and Wiley winced as if he had been stabbed.
“You’ll have to ask him, Mrs. Huff, to find out for sure; but to a man with one leg it looks like this. Whatever you can say about him, Samuel J. is a business man, and I think he decided that, as a business investment, the Paymaster wasn’t worth eighty-three, forty-one. Otherwise he would have bought it himself.”
“Unless, of course,” added the Widow scornfully, “there was some understanding between you.”
“Oh, yes, sure,” returned Wiley, and went on with his eating with a wearied, enduring sigh.
“Well, I declare,” exclaimed the Widow, after thinking it over, “sometimes I get so discouraged with the whole darned business you could buy me out for a cent!”
She waited for a response, but Wiley showed no interest, so she went on with her general complaint.
“First, it was the Colonel, with his gambling and drinking and inviting the whole town to his house; and then your father, or whoever it was, started all this stock market fuss; and from that time it’s gone from bad to worse until I haven’t a dollar to my name. I was brought up to be a lady–and so was Virginia–and now we’re keeping a restaurant!”
Wiley pulled down his lip in masterful silence and set the breakfast tray aside. It was nothing to him what the Widow Huff suffered–she had brought it all on herself. And whenever she was ready to write to his father she could receive her ten cents a share. That would keep her as a lady for several years to come, if she had as many shares as she claimed; but there was nothing to his mind so flat, stale and unprofitable as a further discussion of the Paymaster. Indeed, with one leg wound up in a bandage, it might easily prove disastrous. So he looked away and, after a minute, the Widow again took up her plaint.
“Of course,” she said, “I’m not a business woman, and I may have made some mistakes; but it doesn’t seem right that Virginia’s future should be ruined, just because of this foolish family quarrel. The Colonel is dead now and doesn’t have to be considered; so–well, after thinking it over, and all the rest of it, I think I’ll accept your offer.”
“Which offer?” demanded Wiley, suddenly startled from his ennui, and the Widow regarded him sternly.
“Why, your offer to buy my stock–that paper you drew up for me. Here it is, and I’m willing to sign it.”
She drew out the paper and Wiley read it silently, then rolled it into a ball and chucked it into the corner.
“No,” he said, “that offer doesn’t hold. I didn’t know you then.”
“Well, you know me now!” she flashed back resentfully, “and you’d better come through with that money. I’ve taken enough off of you and your father without standing for any more of your gall. Now you write me out a check for twenty thousand dollars and here’s my two hundred thousand shares. I know you’re robbing me but I simply can’t endure it–I can’t stay here a single day longer!”
She burst into angry tears as he shook his head and regarded her with steady eyes.
“No,” he said, “you can’t do business that way. I haven’t got twenty thousand dollars.”
“But–you offered it to me! You wrote out this paper and put it right under my eyes─”
“No,” he said, “I never offered you twenty thousand–I offered to take an option at that price. I wanted to see that mine, and I wanted to see it peaceably, and I thought I could do it that way; but that piece of paper simply gave me the option of buying the stock if I wanted to.”
“Well, you wanted to buy the stock–you were crazy to get hold of it–and now, when I’m willing, you won’t take it!”
“No, that’s right,” agreed Wiley, leaning back against his pillow. “And now, what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to kill you!” shrieked the Widow in a frenzy. “I’m going to makeyou take it! I declare, it seems like every single soul is against me–and me a poor helpless woman!”
She sank back in a chair and began to sob hysterically and Wiley looked about for the old shotgun. It was far too short, but it had served once as a crutch, and in a pinch it must serve him again. Keno was no place for him, he saw that very plainly, and it was better to risk the long drive across the desert than to stay with this weeping virago. If she didn’t kill him then she would kill him later, and he was powerless to strike back in defense. She would take advantage of every immunity of her sex to obtain her own way in the end. He located the gun–it was down behind his bed where he had dropped it when they helped him in–but as he was fishing it up the door burst open and Virginia stood looking at her mother. Behind her appeared Death Valley Charley, his eyes blinking fearfully; but at sight of the Widow he ducked around the corner while Virginia came resolutely in.
“Oh, mother!” she burst out in a pleading, reproachful voice, “can’t you see that Wiley is sick? Well, what’s the use of creating a scene when it’s likely to make him worse?”
“I don’t care!” wailed the Widow. “I hope he dies. I wish I’d killed him–I do!”
“You do not!” returned Virginia, and shook her reprovingly. “I declare, I wonder what poor father would think if he heard how we’d treated a guest. Now you go back to the house and don’t you come out again until Mr. Holman sends for you.”
“You shut up!” burst out the Widow, pushing her brusquely aside. “I guess I know what I’m about. But I’ll fool you,” she cried, whirling about on Wiley as she started towards the door. “I’ll sell my stock to Blount!”
She paused for the effect but Wiley did not answer and she returned to pursue her advantage.
“I know you!” she announced. “You and old Honest John–you’re trying to steal my mine. But I’m going to fool you, I’m going right down to Vegas and sell every share to Blount!”
“Well, go to it,” returned Wiley after a long, defiant silence, “and I hope you stick him a-plenty!”
“Why, what’s the matter?” inquired the Widow, brushing Virginia away again and swaggering up to his bed. “I thought you and Blount were good friends.”
“Yeh, guess again,” replied Wiley grimly. “I’ll tell him the mine shows up fine.”
“Well, it does!” she asserted. “The Colonel said it wasn’t scratched. And didn’t you steal that piece of quartz from Virginia? Oh, you gave it back, eh? Well, how did it assay? I know you found somethingpretty good!”
“How could I give it back, if I’d had it assayed?” asked Wiley with compelling calm.
“Well what didyou come back for?” demanded the Widow, triumphantly. “You must have figured to win somewhere.”
“Yes, I did,” sighed Wiley, “but I was badly mistaken. All I want now is to get out of town.”
“Well, how about your father? That offer he made me! Has he backed out on that, too?”
“No, he hasn’t,” answered Wiley, “my father keeps his word. You can get your money any time.”
“Well, of all the crazy crooked deals,” the Widow began to rave, and then Wiley grabbed for the shotgun.
“It may be crazy!” he shouted savagely, “but believe me, it isn’t crooked. My father never did a crooked thing in his life, and you know it as well as I do; and if it wasn’t that you’re such a crook yourself─”
“Wiley Holman!” raged the Widow, but he rose up on his crutch and shouldered his way out the door.
“You’re crazy!” he yelled, “the whole danged town’s crazy. All except old Charley and me.”
He jerked his head and winked at Charley as he hobbled towards the street and Death Valley nodded gravely. There was a long, hateful silence; then the great motor roared out and the white racer rushed away across the desert.
“Well, I don’t care!” declared the Widow as she gazed after his dust and when the stage went out that day it took a lady passenger to Vegas.