“First, what is the population of the community?” he asked, when we were seated on the veranda of their hotel.
“That’s hard to say, because we’re growing so fast. There were about a thousand when I left there two days ago, although by no means all gathered in what you would recognize as a town. The tendency has been to live on mining claims, which in turn are scattered over a considerable area.”
“Are there any women there?” Faith wanted to know.
“There are a few.” I didn’t look at her as intently as I usually did, when her questioning granted me the opportunity. The age of innocence had passed for Dead Warrior, and a handful of rugged harridans were doing very well. “No doubt,” I said, after clearing my throat, “there will be a great many others, as soon as the mines become productive.”
“I don’t understand why there has been so long a delay,” the minister said.
“The ore-crushing mills aren’t yet completed.” Glad to leave the dubious ground of Dead Warrior’s social life, I gave him my full attention. “It would be far too expensive to carry unprocessed ore the seventy miles to Tucson, say. The Dead Warrior Mining Company is building a stamping mill, though the Sometimes — that’s the creek which sometimes flows by the town, and sometimes isn’t moist enough — can’t be relied upon for water power. They’ve built a dam six or seven miles away, just below where the Sometimes joins a larger and wetter stream.”
“And you really think they have gold in quantities there?”
As on the occasion of our first encounter, I was made to know that the Fosters were at least as interested in financial details as they were in more spiritual matters. “Eastern capital has been invested on a large scale,” I declared. “The Pan-Western, a large mine-developing company with headquarters in San Francisco, has started the exploitation of its holdings. Other corporations are now showing interest. Unless a great many mineral experts and shrewd businessmen are being fooled, Dead Warrior is such a depository of treasure as America has seen only once or twice before, if ever.”
I spoke from conviction, and they knew I did. “But all you do in Cibola is drive a stage,” Faith observed, when father and daughter had exchanged glances. “Or are you still a judge?”
“Only of beauty and impudence, of which some people have more than their share,” I answered.
“He means he has mining property and is feeling very smug about his prospects,” she told her parent. “Are we going there, Father?”
He gave her the smile of a man who is not to be stampeded. “I must say Mr. Carruthers makes a report to take notice of, though I will want to talk to a Tucson banker or so, to get a more detached point of view.”
As Tucson capital was backing half of Dead Warrior’s commercial enterprises and grubstaking many of its prospectors, I had no fear of what the bankers would tell him. “If you don’t have your own transportation, the Carruthers line will be glad to serve you. I only make the trip once a week myself, but you will find the drivers of the other two stages competent and obliging.”
“If we do go, it won’t be immediately,” Foster said. “There is a church in New Mexico from which I must first sever my connections, and in any case I’ll have to think it over.”
His lack of decision was not to my liking, and something of my disappointment must have been manifest. Faith took no apparent notice, however, until I had to leave, in order to take my place on the driver’s seat.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered, as she accompanied me to the head of the porch steps, “Father has already seen the bankers.”
“The dev — the deuce he has,” I caught myself. “What did they tell him?”
Keeping her hand on my arm, she stepped away, the better to watch my expression. “Well, when Father came back to the hotel, he told me that they seemed very godly men.”
Her eyes were alive with amusement, and I couldn’t help smiling in sympathy, even if I couldn’t keep pace with her thoughts. “And what did he mean by that?”
“They plainly gave him such a good report that he feared they were trying to take him in. That’s why he was so glad to get your information.”
It was such a rare treat to be sharing mirth with a charming young woman that I didn’t mind the fact that she seemed to be enjoying some joke at my expense. “And how could you gather all that from your father’s remark about godliness?” I inquired.
“Oh, we can tell those who aren’t church people when we meet them; and there’s an old New England saying that it’s well to deal with the godly in most things, but — ”
She let her hand slip off my arm, but I caught it. “But what?” I demanded.
“ — in money matters the Devil is safer, because Heaven didn’t endow him with very much sense.” Having finished the proverb, she snatched her hand away and used it to wave at me. “I’ll see you in Dead Warrior, Mosby.”
The next encounter of any significance likewise took place in Tucson. Involved this time was a man I had never seen before.
My schedule was such that I spent two or three nights of every ten in what was still the territorial capital, although the seat of government was in the process of being moved back to its original stamping ground at Prescott. Strolling toward one of the restaurants I patronized, I was witness to a mid-street meeting.
The street in question was muddy, following one of the region’s infrequent rains. There was passageway between a couple of tawny puddles, but only for one pedestrian at a time. As I walked toward the corner which gave access to one end of this causeway, I saw four men. Two of these were carrying on a long-range conversation with a wearer of two guns on the opposite side of the street. The fourth man, also on my side of the thoroughfare, walked around the pair and started picking his way in and out among the soft and watery spots which would have ruined the gloss on his black boots.
His light gray suit was well tailored and the entire figure he cut was so at variance with the loose-hung frontier that I could not help wondering how he would react if he slipped and fell amidst the unlovely sludge through which he was mincing. The same profane thought must have occurred to the hulking two-gun man. Of a sudden he started to make the crossing himself.
There was a point where a pair who showed consideration for one another could edge by with no damage done to the gear of either. The big frontiersman reached it first, but he did not pause there. Deliberately striding forward, he gave the smaller man the choice between taking to the muck and retreating all the way back to the sidewalk.
Half sympathetic toward the dandy and half amused at a type of humor so characteristic of the West, I stopped to see what would happen. I saw. The fellow in gray kept on walking, as though conscious of no difficulties, until he was within two strides of the other. Then, after first lunging forward with his left leg, he swung the right one. In response to the vicious kick which caught him under the kneecap, the big chap gasped and flexed his injured limb. While thus off balance, he received a shove. An instant later he and his two guns all had their butts in a deep puddle.
He voiced retaliatory threats in the terms expected of a robust savage, and I for one did not question his will to carry them out. What happened, though, was that he took a few pursuing steps and halted.
For the slender man in gray had turned to stand looking back over the muddy thoroughfare. Of the raging, bedraggled monster in the middle of it he took not the slightest heed. Instead he put a short, slim cigar in his mouth and lighted a match with a deft snap of his left thumb.
There was something so sinister about the dandy’s complete assurance that it got home to me, who had nothing to do with the case. The burly frontiersman reacted by reaching for one of his guns. It would have fired, for its holster had protected it from mud during its brief immersion, and it takes more than moisture to keep a revolver from operating. He did not draw it because his antagonist, still holding the lighted match, now gazed thoughtfully in his direction. At that juncture the big fellow remembered his injured knee. Growli
ng to himself, he spun around and hobbled toward his two waiting cronies.
There was nothing to prove that the man with the cigar was himself armed. He on his part completed the incident by lighting his smoke, flicking the match into the mud from which he had emerged in unsullied triumph, and turning to leave.
Crossing the street in his wake, I saw that he was stopped by a fellow who emerged from the apothecary shop on the corner. “I had a good view from the window,” he commented. “That was cute, Colonel. Real cute.”
The newcomer was one of the leading professional gamblers of Tucson, a lanky magician by the name of Bill Overton. Identifying me as a man who sometimes contributed to his support, he extended his hand.
“Howdy, Mr. Carruthers. It’s a nice evening for faro, if you’re going to be in town. If not, just leave your wallet with the bartender, and I’ll pick it up when I go on trick.”
Having clapped me on the shoulder, he strolled in the direction whence I had come. About to proceed toward my dinner, I found myself confronted by the man the gambler had first addressed.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said with a slight but deferential inclination of his head, “but I heard Overton address you as Carruthers. Might you be Mr. Mosby Carruthers?”
The speech was Southern, although the accent had been flattened under the influence of the West. The face was that of a brooding ascetic, incongruously wearing a dashing combination of goatee and waxed mustache. I was sure I had never met the man before, but there was something familiar about him.
“Yes, sir; I was so christened,” I replied, thinking how few people now used my given name.
“Then, sir, I am beholden to you for certain services rendered to a charming mutual acquaintance of ours in or about a place called Midas Touch.”
My pulse acknowledged this reference to Dolly Tandy, however circuitous. “Let us say,” I told him, unconsciously adopting something of his formality, “that although I did serve her to the best of my ability, it was in the capacity of a private in the line. It was her wit that took command.”
“She is not one to be daunted by emergencies.” He smiled for the first time in answer to my disclaimer, and his eyelids, which had been languidly half closed, rose to give me a shock. If the rest of his face was disciplined and still, the eyes were glaringly intense. “Permit me to present myself,” he went on. “The name is Colonel Clarence Edwin Peters.”
I tried not to gawk. Inevitably I had formed a mental image of a man mentioned so frequently in Western camp talk. The real Droop-eye Peters — so nicknamed because his faculty of seeing without letting his eyes be seen made him doubly formidable as a gambler — resembled the one of my imagination about as closely as I do the Apollo Belvedere.
“I have heard of you, naturally,” was the best I could manage.
“I am not unknown.” He dismissed the obvious with a deprecatory flourish of his cigar. “I made an excursion to Midas Touch myself, but our bird had flown, broken wing and all.”
The way he looked at me when he said that let me know that he was aware of my responsibility for the outlaw’s broken arm. “Where do you think Barringer went?” I asked him.
Peters got his bearings from the low-lying sun and flourished the cigar southward. “Over the border, but I don’t wish to give the impression he was flying from me. He’s too bold a man by all accounts, in addition to being one who always has henchmen at his beck. I understand the territorial government took some notice of him, pursuant to a report that somebody turned in at Santa Fe, but he’ll turn up one of these days.”
If Droop-eye didn’t know who had alerted authorities, I thought I did. Dolly had gone to New Mexico’s capital for other reasons besides gambling, making things as hot for Barringer as the latter had feared she might.
While my mind was forming that conclusion, Peters spoke again. “I have an engagement in the capacity of guest, or I would insist on the pleasure of your company for dinner. Do you reside in Tucson?”
“No, sir; I spend most of my time in a place called Dead Warrior. Possibly you’ve heard of it?”
That was local pride fishing, for I knew that he could not go any place in the Southwest without hearing talk of the great gold discovery. Gratified by the show of interest in his face, I nodded toward a nearby saloon.
“Could your host spare you long enough for you to join me in a drink?”
“What is the gambling situation there?” he asked, when we had our boots hooked on the rail together.
“It’s still small-scale by professional standards,” I had to admit. “Money’s free in Dead Warrior but not yet running wild. Up to now, you see, only the small miners, using donkey power, have had any answer to their reduction problem. However, the first stamping mill will be ready to operate next week, it won’t be long before gold floods the place, and there can be no doubt that the gambling tables will get the king’s piece of pie.”
“That should follow.” Colonel Peters sipped the brandy he had ordered in preference to whiskey. “Have you any real gaming establishments?”
“There’s nothing fancy in that line yet.” I didn’t like to dwell on the insignificance of the present, so I pushed on to the splendors of the future. “Two or three of our saloons have already moved into frame buildings, though; and I know, from having talked with the proprietors, that there’ll be first-class premises, as soon as the money’s available.”
“I won’t be back in this part of the country for some while in any case, as I have business which will take me to the Coast — and perhaps elsewhere.” There was a pause while he evidently considered the undertaking he had mentioned, and then he turned to me again. “You’re from Maryland, I believe, Mr. Carruthers. A divided state.”
Although the shift of subject surprised me, I had no difficulty in understanding that he was referring to the war which had torn the country apart during my boyhood. “Yes,” I said, thinking of some that were dead and of the gulf which continued to separate some of the living, “and I come of a divided family.”
I had thought by that remark to forestall any further discussion of so sore a subject, but he was not to be sidetracked. “And to which division did you belong, sir?”
“I’m of the West,” I replied, “which properly belongs to neither.”
It seemed possible that my answer might displease a man of such partisan leanings as I took him to have. What appeared to happen, however, was that it diverted him to some new and by no means unsatisfactory train of thought.
“No, the West does not really belong to any section, or indeed any country.” About to go on, he suddenly thought to look at his watch. “I’m almost late for my appointment, but I trust we can talk of this and other matters at another time.”
I had just left town, making the Tucson run a month later, when I met a second professional gambler. This one was riding.
“Dead Warrior-Tucson,” he read aloud, after we had stopped to greet each other. “Is it the same coach, Baltimore?”
“Allowing for a wheel that had to be replaced, following a collision with a runaway ore wagon, yes. How’s Fort Griffin, Terry?”
“Vanishing with the buffalo,” McQuinn said. “I think this fall will be its last season as anything but a place for cowhands to play seven-up, so I thought I’d see if there was any basis for the Arabian Nights lies being told about the big gold find. By the way, is there a caravansary?”
“There’s a really good one being built, and a kind of hotel operating now, but there’s no need for you to languish in squalor, when there’s plenty of room for an extra bunk in my brand-new shanty.” Knowing that my passengers would be annoyed by the unscheduled halt, I clucked to my horses. “Sam Wheeler — I think you know him, but anyhow we’ve just gone into partnership — will tell you where it is. He’s at our stage and freight depot.”
Halfway to Tucson there was now a stage station where wayfarers could buy meals and other such popular requirements as tobacco, whiskey, cartridges, sheath knives and post
cards featuring cancan dancers. I was watering my horses there the day of my meeting with Blackfoot Terry when a heavily loaded wagon approached.
“Good evening, Bradford,” I said.
Although our one conversation at Three Deuces had fallen short of being a pleasant one, the merchant looked glad to see me. “Why hello, there!” His greenish eyes next went to the lettering on the stage, and he became even more cordial. “I see you’re from Dead Warrior.”
“One of the oldest inhabitants and stoutest pillars of its society,” I said. “Are you headed there yourself?”
“At least to have a look. How is the place progressing, Carruthers?”
Now I had no reason for encouraging the immigration of this fellow; but my enthusiasm for Dead Warrior was so strong that I seized any opportunity to enlarge upon its advantages. “You couldn’t do better than to start a store there,” I followed up my eulogy by stating. “It’s on its way to be the marketing center of the Southwest.”
While so saying I noted the changes implicit in my observation. Dead Warrior had started out by being the name of a mining claim. Then it had spread out to represent the entire local gold field. Now, although it was still so used, it was coming more and more to mean the commercial center and the concentrated settlement which was growing up around it.
Bradford had been listening to everything I said, yet with the air of a man who is going through a miscellany in search of certain objects only. “Is it actually a town?” he now demanded. “I mean is it incorporated or otherwise officially set up?”
Where everybody was excitedly watching the pot of his own fortunes come to a boil no one was interested in community affairs. Even Dick Jackson hadn’t yet tried to promote municipal organization.
“Things are moving too fast, and we haven’t had time to think about that,” I airily dismissed Eben’s query. “What does it matter if a town’s chartered or what not? The mayor won’t sweep the store out for you.”
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