by Zane Grey
“Ah-uh. I savvy. I reckon you’re giving me a hunch that in your private opinion Matthews isn’t exactly straight where some interests are concerned. Hardman’s for instance. I’ve run across that sort of deal in half a dozen towns.”
“You got me,” replied Brown, soberly. “But please regard that as my confidential opinion. I couldn’t prove it. This town hasn’t grown up to political corruption an’ graft. But it’s headed that way.”
“Well, I was lucky to run into you,” said Pan with satisfaction. “I’ll tell you why some other time. I’m pretty sure to stick here.… Now let’s go out and see the town, especially the Yellow Mine.”
Pan had not strolled the length of the main street before he realized that there was an atmosphere here strangely unfamiliar to him. Yet he had visited some fairly wild and wide-open towns. But they had owed their wildness and excitement and atmosphere to the range and the omnipresent cowboy. Old-timers had told him stories of Abilene and Dodge, when they were in their heyday. He had gambled in the hells of Juárez, across the Texas border where there was no law. Some of the Montana cattle towns were far from slow, in cowboy vernacular. But here he sensed a new element. And soon he grasped it as the fever of the rush for gold. The excitement of it took hold of him, so that he had to reason with himself to shake it off.
The town appeared about a mile long, spread out on two sides of the main street, graduating from the big buildings of stone and wood in the center to flimsy frame structures and tents along the outskirts. Pan estimated that he must have passed three thousand people during his stroll, up one side of the street and down the other. Even if these made up the whole population it was enough to insure a good-sized town. There were no street lamps. And the many yellow lights from open doors and windows fell upon the throngs moving to and fro, in the street as well as on the sidewalks.
Pan’s guide eventually led him into the Yellow Mine.
He saw a long wide room full of moving figures, thin wreaths of blue smoke that floated in the glaring yellow lights. A bar ran the whole length of this room, and drinkers were crowded in front of it. The clink of glass, the clink of gold, the incessant murmur of hoarse voices almost drowned faint strains of music from another room that opened from this one.
The thousand and one saloons and gambling dives that Pan had seen could not in any sense compare with this one. This was on a big scale without restraint of law or order. Piles of gold and greenbacks littered the tables where roulette, faro, poker were in progress. Black garbed, pale hard-faced gamblers sat with long mobile hands on the tables. Bearded men, lean-faced youths bent with intent gaze over their cards. Sloe-eyed Mexicans in their high-peaked sombreros and gaudy trappings lounged here and there, watching, waiting—for what did not seem clear to Pan. Drunken miners in their shirt sleeves stamped through the open door, to or from the bar. An odor of whisky mingled with that of tobacco smoke. Young women with bare arms and necks and painted faces were in evidence, some alone, most of them attended by men.
The gambling games attracted Pan. Like all cowboys he had felt the fascination of games of chance. He watched the roulette wheel, then the faro games. In one corner of the big room, almost an alcove, Pan espied a large round table at which were seated six players engrossed in a game of poker. He saw thousands of dollars in gold and notes on that table. A pretty flashy girl with bold eyes and a lazy sleepy smile hung over the shoulder of one of the gamblers.
Pan’s comrade nudged him in the side.
“What? Where?” whispered Pan answering quickly to the suggestion and his glance swept everywhere.
Brown was gazing with gleaming eyes at the young card player over whose shoulder the white-armed girl hung.
Then Pan saw a face that was strangely familiar—a handsome face of a complexion between red and white, with large sensual mouth, bold eyes, and a broad low brow. The young gambler was Dick Hardman.
Pan knew him. The recognition meant nothing, yet it gave Pan a start, a twinge, and then sent a slow heat along his veins. He laughed to find the boyishness of old still alive in him. After eight years of hard life on the ranges! By that sudden resurging of long forgotten emotion Pan judged the nature of what the years had made him. It would be interesting to see how Dick Hardman met him.
But it was the girl who first seemed drawn by Pan’s piercing gaze. She caught it—then looked a second time. Sliding off the arms of Hardman’s chair she moved with undulating motion of her slender form, and with bright eyes, round the table toward Pan. And at that moment Dick Hardman looked up from his cards and watched her.
CHAPTER SIX
“Hello, cowboy. How’d I ever miss you?” she queried roguishly, running her bright eyes from his face down to his spurs and back again.
“Good evening, Lady,” replied Pan, removing his sombrero and bowing, with his genial smile. “I just come to town.”
She hesitated as if struck by a deference she was not accustomed to. Then she took his hands in hers and dragged him out a little away from Brown, whom she gave a curt nod. Again she looked Pan up and down.
“Did you take off that big hat because you know you’re mighty good to look at?” she asked, archly.
“Well, no, hardly,” answered Pan.
“What for then?”
“It’s a habit I have when I meet a pretty girl.”
“Thank you. Does she have to be pretty?”
“Reckon not. Any girl, Miss.”
“You are a stranger in Marco. Look out somebody doesn’t shoot a hole in that hat when you doff it.”
While she smiled up at him, losing something of the hawklike, possession-taking manner that had at first characterized her, Pan could see Dick Hardman staring hard across the table. Before Pan could find a reply for the girl one of the gamesters, an unshaven scowling fellow, addressed Hardman.
“Say, air you playin’ cairds or watchin’ your dame make up to that big hat an’ high boots?”
Pan grasped the opportunity, though he never would have let that remark pass under any circumstances. He disengaged his right hand from the girl’s, and stepping up to the table, drawing her with him, he bent a glance upon the disgruntled gambler.
“Excuse me, Mister,” he began in the slow easy cool speech of a cowboy, “but did you mean me?”
His tone, his presence, drew the attention of all at the table, especially the one he addressed, and Hardman. The former laid down his cards. Shrewd eyes took Pan’s measure, surely not missing the gun at his hip.
“Suppose I did mean you?” demanded the gambler, curiously.
“Well, if you did I’d have to break up your game,” replied Pan, apologetically. “You see, Mister, it hurts my feelings to have anyone make fun of my clothes.”
“All right, cowboy, no offense meant,” returned the other, at which everyone except Hardman, let out a laugh. “But you’ll break up our game anyhow, if you don’t trot off with Louise there.”
His further remark, dryly sarcastic, mostly directed at Hardman did not help the situation, so far as Pan was concerned. It was, however, exactly what Pan wanted. Dick stared insolently and fixedly at Pan. He appeared as much puzzled as annoyed. Manifestly he was trying to place Pan, and did not succeed. Pan had hardly expected to be recognized, though he stood there a moment, head uncovered, under the light, giving his old enemy eye for eye. In fact his steady gaze disconcerted Dick, who turned his glance on the amused girl. Then his face darkened and he spat out his cigar to utter harshly: “Go on, you cat! And don’t purr round me any more!”
Insolently she laughed in his face. “You forget I can scratch.” Then she drew Pan away from the table, beckoning for Brown to come also. Halting presently near the wide opening into the dance hall she said:
“I’m always starting fights. What might your name be, cowboy?”
“Well, it might be Tinkerdam, but it isn’t,” replied Pan nonchalantly.
“Aren’t you funny?” she queried, half-inclined to be affronted. But she thought better of it
, and turned to Brown. “I know your face.”
“Sure you do, Miss Louise,” said Brown, easily. “I’m a miner. Was here when you came to town, an’ I often drop in to see the fun.”
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Charley Brown, an’ that’s straight.”
“Thanks, Charley. Now tell me who’s this big good-looking pard of yours? I just want to know. You can’t fool me about men. He doffs his hat to me. He talks nice and low, and smiles as no men smile at me. Then he bluffs the toughest nut in this town.… Who is he?”
“All right, I’ll introduce you,” drawled Brown. “Meet Panhandle Smith, from Texas.”
“Well,” she mused, fastening her hands in the lapels of his coat. “I thought you’d have a high-sounding handle.… Will you dance with me?”
“Sure, but I’m afraid I step pretty high and wide.”
They entered another garish room, around which a throng of couples spun and wagged and tramped and romped. Pan danced with the girl, and despite the jostling of the heavy-footed miners acquitted himself in a manner he thought was creditable for him. He had not been one of the dancing cowboys.
“That was a treat after those clodhoppers,” she said, when the dance ended. “You’re a modest boy, Panhandle. You’ve got me guessing. I’m not used to your kind—out here.… Let’s go have a drink. I’ve got to have whisky.”
That jarred somewhat upon Pan and, as she led him back to Brown and then both of them to an empty table, he began to grasp the significance of these bare-armed white-faced girls with their dark-hollowed eyes and scarlet lips.
She drank straight whisky, and it was liquor that burned Pan like fire. Brown, too, made a wry face.
“Panhandle, are you going to stay here in Marco?” she inquired, leaning on her white round arms.
“Yes, if I find my folks,” he replied simply. “They lost all they had—ranch, cattle, horses—and moved out here. I never knew until I went back home. Makes me feel pretty mean. But Dad was doing well when I left home.”
“Mother—sister, too?”
“Yes. And my sister Alice must be quite a girl now,” mused Pan.
“And you’re going to help them?” she asked softly.
“I should smile,” said Pan feelingly.
“Then, you mustn’t buy drinks for me—or run after me—as I was going to make you do.”
Pan was at a loss for a reply to that frank statement. And as he gazed at her, conscious of a subtle change, someone pounded him on the back and then fell on his neck.
“My Gawd—if heah ain’t Panhandle!” burst out a husky voice.
Pan got up as best he could, and pulled free from the fellow. The voice had prepared Pan for an old acquaintance, and when he saw that lean red face and blue eyes he knew them.
“Well, I’ll be darned. Blinky Moran! You son of a gun! Drunk—the same as when I saw you last.”
“Aw, Pan, I ain’t jes drunk,” he replied. “Mebbe I was—but shein’ you—ole pard—my Gawd! It’s like cold sweet water on my hot face.”
“Blink, I’m sure glad to see you, drunk or sober,” replied Pan warmly. “What’re you doing out here?”
Moran braced himself, not without the help of his hold upon Pan, and it was evident that this meeting had roused him.
“Pan, meet my pard heah,” he began, indicating a stalwart young man in overalls and high boots. “Gus Hans, puncher of Montana.”
Pan shook hands with the grinning cowboy.
“Pard, yore shakin’ the paw of Panhandle Smith,” announced Moran in solemn emotion. “This heah’s the boy, frens. You’ve heerd me rave many’s the time. He was my pard, my bunkmate, my brother. We rode the Cimarron together, an’ the Arkansaw, an’ we was the only straight punchers in the Long Bar C outfit that was drove out of Wyomin’.… His beat never forked a hoss or coiled a rope. An’ shorer’n hell, pard, I’d been a rustler but fer Panhandle. More’n onct he throwed his gun fer me an—”
“Say, Blink, I’ll have to choke you,” interrupted Pan, laughing. “Now, you meet my friends here, Miss Louise—and Charley Brown.”
Pan did not miss the effect the bright-eyed red-lipped girl made upon the cowboys, especially Moran who, he remembered, had always succumbed easily to feminine charms.
“Blinky, you’ve been drinking too much to dance with a lady,” presently remarked Louise.
“Wal, now, Miss, I’m as sober as Panhandle there,” replied Moran ardently.
She shook her curly head smilingly and, rising from the table, went round to Pan and leaned up to him with both wistfulness and recklessness in her face.
“Panhandle Smith, I’ll leave you to your friends,” she said. “But don’t you drift in here again—for if you do—I’ll forget my sacrifice for little Alice.… There!”
She kissed him square on the lips and ran off without a backward glance.
Blinky fell into a chair, overcome with some unusual kind of emotion. He stared comically at Pan.
“Say, ole pard, you used to be shy of skirts!” he expostulated.
“Reckon I am yet, for all the evidence,” retorted Pan, half amused and half angry at the unexpected move of the girl.
Charley Brown joined in the mirth at Pan’s expense.
“Guess the drinks are on me,” he said. “And they’ll be the last.”
“Pan, thet there girl is Louie Melliss!” ejaculated Moran.
“Is it? Well, who in the deuce is she?”
“Say, cowboy, quit your foolin’!”
“Honest, I never saw or heard of the young lady till a few minutes ago. Ask Brown.”
“That’s a fact,” corroborated Brown, thus appealed to. “She’s the belle of this hell. Sure, Smith, you savvy that?”
“No,” rejoined Pan bluntly. He began to fear he had been rather thickheaded. “I’ve holed up in a few gambling hells where drinks and scraps went pretty lively. But this is the first one for me where there were a lot of half-naked girls.”
“You’re west of the Rockies, now,” replied Brown, grimly. “An’ you’ll soon find that out in more ways than one.… Louie Melliss is straight from Frisco, an’ chain-lightnin’ to her fingertips, so they say. Been some bad messes over her. But they say too, she’s as white an’ square as any good woman.”
“Aw!… Reckon I’m pretty much of a tenderfoot,” returned Pan. His regret was for the pretty audacious girl whose boldness of approach he had not understood.
“For Gawd’s sake, pard,” began Moran, recovering from his shock. “Don’t you come ridin’ around heah fer thet little devil to get stuck on you. She’s shore agoin’ to give young Hardman a bootiful trimmin’. An’ let her do it!”
“Oh. So you don’t care much about young Hardman?” inquired Pan with interest. He certainly felt that he was falling into news.
“I’d like to throw a gun on him an’ onct I damn near done it,” declared Moran.
“What for?”
“He an’ another fellar jumped the only claim I ever struck thet showed any color,” went on the cowboy with an earnestness that showed excitement had sobered him. “I went back one mawnin’ an’ there was Hardman an’ a miner named Purcell. They ran me off, swore it was their claim. Purcell said he’d worked it before an’ sold it to Jard Hardman. Thet’s young Hardman’s dad, an’ he wouldn’t fit in any square hole. I went to Matthews an’ raised a holler. But I couldn’t prove nothin’.… An’ by Gawd, Pan, thet claim is a mine now, payin’ well.”
“Tough luck, Blink. You always did have the darndest luck.… Say, Brown, is that sort of deal worked often?”
“Common as dirt, in the early days of a find,” replied Brown. “I haven’t heard of any claim jumpin’ just lately, though. It’s somethin’ like rustlin’ cattle. You know most every cowman now and then picks up some unbranded stock that he knows isn’t his. But he takes it along. Now claim jumpin’ is somethin’ like that. If a fellar leaves his claim for a day or a week he’s liable to come back an’ find someone ha
s jumped it. I never leave mine in the daytime, an’ I have witnesses to that.”
“Blinky, I came out here to find my dad,” said Pan. “Have you ever run across him?”
“Nope. Never heerd of him. I’d shore have asked aboot you.”
“How am I going to find out quick if Dad is here, and where?”
“Easy as pie. Go to the stage office, where they get the mail an’ express. Matty Smith has been handlin’ thet since this heah burg was a kid in short dresses.”
“Good. I’ll go the first thing in the morning.… Now, you little knock-kneed, bow-legged two-bit cowpuncher! What’re you doing with those things on your boots?”
“Huh! What things?” queried Moran.
“Why, those long shiny things that jingle when you walk.”
“Haw! Haw!… Say, Pan, I might ask you the same. What you travel with them spurs on your boots fer?”
“I tried traveling without them, but I couldn’t feel that I was moving.”
“Wal, by gum, I been needin’ mine. Ask Gus there. We’ve been wranglin’ wild hosses. Broomtails they calls them heah. We’ve been doin’ pretty good. Hardman an’ Wiggate pay twelve dollars an’ four bits a hoss on the hoof. Right heah in Marco. We could get more if we could risk shippin’ to St. Louis. But thet’s a hell of a job. Long ways to the railroad, an’ say, mebbe drivin’ them broomies isn’t tough! Then two of us anyhow would have to go on the freight train with the hosses. Shore we cain’t figger it thet way now. But later when we ketch a thousand haid we may try it.”
“A thousand head! Blinky, are you still on the ground? You’re talkin’ fifteen thousand dollars.”
“Shore. An’ I’m tellin’ you, Pan, thet we can make it. But ketchin’ these wild hosses in any number hasn’t been done yet. Hardman has an outfit ridin’. But them fellars couldn’t get away from their own dust. We’re not so blame swift, either. S’pose you throw in with us, Pan. You’ve chased wild hosses.”