Dead Warrior

by John Myers Myers

  “In the morning I only go to our Presbyterian church, naturally, but I usually attend the Unitarian services in the evening out of respect to Mr. Foster.” She sipped a weak syrup of the sort usually served at such gatherings and looked up at me from under fluttering lashes. “I think some of the young men attend the same service out of respect for Faith Foster, or do you think that’s possible?”

  “Possible but regrettable,” I said, determined to slash her with her own knife. “A man of principle should be above such a frivolous motive for attending devotions.”

  “You’re right about that.” Her setback was only temporary, though, and in another moment her voice was more confidential than ever. “As a friend of yours, I’ll give you some advice.”

  Not knowing what else to do, I drank from the glass in my hand. The saccharine concoction which they falsely called punch gagged me, and while I was gloomily noting its bilious effects Mrs. Weatherby went on.

  “If you want to stay in a certain young lady’s good graces, you’d better disassociate yourself from that awful variety hall.” Half smiling, she shook her finger at me. “I know the things that go on there.”

  If she did, she had a fuller knowledge of the entertainment world than I took to be the case. “We don’t get any complaints from most of the camp,” I told her.

  She was quick to catch this reminder that she and her friends represented only a small portion of the town. Doffing the role of my fond but disapproving aunt, she set her lips.

  “In the very near future this place is not going to be just a Western mining camp; it’s going to be an American city, and one that respectable people can be proud to live in.” The ostrich plumes on her hat fluttered when she bobbed her head for emphasis. “That’s why I said what I did, Mr. Carruthers. In the coming struggle for the soul of Dead Warrior, the lines will be drawn between the forces of good and evil; and people had better begin making up their minds right now as to which side they’re going to be on.”

  She left me then, and I went to look for Faith, so that I could get out of there. On the way to bid her farewell, I met Duncan, who had been away for some months.

  “I’ve been making mineralogical surveys of several areas,” he said, when I quizzed him about his absence, “and then I had to go to California to place certain recommendations before the company’s directors.” He hesitated, seemingly undecided as to whether he should enlarge on that statement. “If Pan-Western pays any attention to my report, its local holdings will be expanded considerably.”

  Taking that as a word to the wise from a friend, I tipped him an appreciative salute. “Let’s ride out to my claim some time when you have nothing better to do,” I suggested. “I’m about at the point where I could finance operations in a modest way; but I’m more interested in town development than mining just now, and I’ll sell at any price you tell me is fair.”

  Duncan was one of those men who could stand at a bar or mingle with people drinking fruit slop with the same air of indifference toward either what he was imbibing or his surroundings. “Why don’t you get capital to go in with you?” he asked, when he had gulped down half a glass of pinkish liquid.

  “Not everybody has the knack of interesting big business, and still fewer can hold their own when they’ve done it.” Recalling Seth Potter’s narrow escape, I added a sentence. “Getting in capital is like inviting a grizzly bear to dinner.”

  “There’s less of a gamble in selling,” he conceded, “but I’m not the man to advise you on price. I’m leaving the first thing in the morning on another field trip, but I’ll send you a professional appraiser when I return, if you can wait that long.”

  After accepting that offer, I insinuated myself into the group of men chatting with Faith. She stopped laughing when she saw me; and I myself achieved no more than a conventional smile when I told her what a pleasant time I had had. While I regretted the fact, it appeared to me that the situation between us had grown too difficult to make continuance worth while.

  I was through the front door and down the steps when I heard her voice. “Mosby, wait!”

  “You didn’t say anything about calling again.” Reproach was still in her tone, as she caught up with me, but this time there was no coldness.

  “I didn’t know you’d want me to,” I said. Suddenly irritation over all that had happened during the evening welled up in me. “See here, Faith; I don’t visit people just to be grouched at.”

  “You weren’t coming back. I thought so when you left.” She moved close, big-eyed in the darkness. “You shouldn’t mind my scolding you a little, when you do wrong. I wouldn’t, if I didn’t like you. Don’t you know that?”

  One thing I did know was that if I had stayed to win forgiveness I would have been brushed into a corner, whereas by walking off I had made myself worth keeping. “And I wouldn’t do this, if I didn’t like you,” I said, getting a tight grip around her waist.

  Her mouth was warm, but she was coolly self-possessed when I released her. “All right; we’ve both overstepped, and now we’re even. Laura Slater wants to go on a picnic to Antelope Tank Sunday, if she and Ralph Powell can recruit another couple.”

  “They’re in luck,” I said. “Now that the weather’s turned warm, it should be a pleasant trip.”

  It was an accurate prophecy. Loaded in a buckboard, we drove east across Sometimes Creek to the tree-shaded water hole in a notch between the hills. Nothing much happened; it was simply a fine day, with the entertainment furnished by high spirits.

  Everybody felt gaited for enjoyment, especially the Slater girl, who shared the front seat with me on the drive home. A friendly but very plain lass, she had a good thing in the West and knew it. “I just love it here,” she remarked in the course of her incessant chatter. “Back East I was just hoping somebody would marry me, but out here I have so many beaux I don’t care whether I have a hope chest or not. Oh, look, Mosby, there’s one of your stages.”

  We were by then on the Dead Warrior side of the creek once more. Pat Scanlan was guiding the vehicle at which she pointed, but I hardly noticed him. A feminine passenger had lifted one of the curtains, dropped to shield the inmates from the glare of the setting sun, with a view to appraising progress. Notwithstanding the dust which covered it, her face was one of forceful beauty. After a moment her eyes came around to where I was waiting for them, hat in hand.

  “How are you, Miss Dolly?” I asked.

  She had once said that we were willy-nilly a part of each other’s lives. As we gazed at each other, I — and I think she, too — relived the death ride out of Midas Touch, the fierce action which had earned our escape and our moment of lonely nearness while Roy Sparks lay stunned on the other side of the campfire.

  She smiled but showed no surprise, and her words made it plain that she had none. “Hello, Baltimore; I had heard that you were here.” She withdrew her head and let the curtain fall, and after waiting for the dust to settle, I turned the buckboard into the road behind the coach.

  Although part of my mind was busy guessing Droop-eye as the source of Dolly’s information about me, the rest of it was on the alert for any sign that Faith had noticed the exchange of greetings. Busy talking with Laura’s escort, she had apparently not observed Dolly, but Miss Slater had.

  “Baltimore,” she echoed, as though Dolly had used a term of endearment. “Is that her special name for you?”

  Faith never used my nickname, as she thought it vaguely suggestive of outlaw connections, so I wasn’t astonished that Laura had never heard it. “It’s just a thing that old friends call me,” I said, in an effort to kill the subject.

  “She’s very pretty, and she didn’t look old to me,” Laura announced. “But if she’s such a good friend of yours, you must bring her around to call on all of us.”

  “By all means,” I mumbled, trying to picture Faith’s face if she were asked to entertain a woman who was a professional gambler. “Do you like the novels of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Laura?”

/>   But if my immediate problem was to silence Miss Slater without choking her, I saw a second difficulty facing me. Now that Dolly Tandy was in town, I had no idea of what our footing might be. Blackfoot Terry had once hinted a more than casual interest in her, so there was his friendship to consider as well as her own possible disinclination to associate with any but colleagues of the fleecing craft.

  Chapter 15

  IN ANTICIPATION OF THE PAN-WESTERN appraiser Duncan had promised to have call upon me, I visited my claim for the first time in weeks. Approaching, I noticed rock piled by a freshly dug shaft.

  The man standing by it caught up a rifle and waited for me to dismount. “Nice day to shoot somebody what ain’t got no business here,” he observed.

  Down below in the shaft the sounds of shoveling had stopped. “Well, I thought I had,” I said. “This claim happens to be mine.”

  Lean and hatchet-faced, my immediate opponent looked tough, but when his eyes flickered sidewise toward the shaft, I knew his weakness. He didn’t like to act alone.

  Nevertheless, he tried to face me down. “This was maybe yourn up till a few days ago. Seein’ as how you wasn’t doin’ nothin’ with it, me and my pardner done took it over.”

  “Call him up,” I suggested. “I’d like to talk to him, too.”

  Actually his associate was already clambering out. I could hear his feet scuffling against the wall of the shaft; and a minute later I could see his head out of the corner of my eye.

  The man confronting me could not forbear to glance toward his badly wanted ally. When he did so, I knocked his rifle askew and, with the aid of my revolver, relieved him of it. The other fellow had scrambled erect by then, but as I had marked where his pistol belt was folded atop a keg of powder, I didn’t interfere.

  This second man was a heavy, curly-haired knave who looked too seasoned in the wars to have blundered as his comrade had just done. He growled at the latter before he turned to scowl at me.

  “I’m Baltimore Carruthers,” I said, “and I’ve had this claim since before there was a town here. Clear out.”

  Neither was known to me, even by sight. There were now so many people in Dead Warrior that I didn’t know half of them, where once every face had been familiar. It was plain from their faces, though, that they knew me, or knew of me.

  “We didn’t know it was your claim,” the curly-haired fellow said, “though somebody would’ve told you, when we was ready to prove on it. We’ll get off now seein’ as how this mud brain let you get the drop on us, but if you want us to stay off, you’d better see Ace Ferguson.”

  This surprised me. Violence and thievery, singly or combined, had always been the products of individual enterprise in Dead Warrior. Now I found myself up against a gang and its lord.

  “Where do I find Ace?” I demanded.

  “Any saloon you catch him in,” I was told.

  Upon my return to town Short-fuse told me that Ferguson was a former San Francisco citizen, lately come to Arizona. After trying ten other places, I located him in the Sultan’s Palace. Its main function was that of a dance hall, but there was a gambling room in the back. Ace was pointed out to me as one of those sitting in on a poker game banked by Bill Overton, who had moved his headquarters from Tucson.

  At my request Overton halted the game between deals. “A couple of claim jumpers tell me you’re their backer,” I put it to Ferguson. “How’s for calling them off my property?”

  He was a dark man with the long lines of his face sharpened to meanness. His look of alert suspicion was of the cast native to the city dweller, and he aggravated me by giving me a cosmopolitan-to-bumpkin glance.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” he said. “I’m playing poker.”

  With my left hand I swept his chips to the floor. “You’ve just quit,” I told him. “What about those men on my claim?”

  He had a gun in a hip holster, for I could see the bulge it made beneath the flap of his jacket. I was also watching for him to produce some other hideaway, but his hands stayed empty as he rose to lean against the otherwise hastily vacated table.

  “Let’s see; you run the stage and freight lines and a couple of more things, don’t you?” he mused. “What’s it worth to you to get your claim back?”

  “I haven’t lost my claim,” I snapped. He looked so amused that I lost my temper altogether. “Draw if you don’t believe me.”

  He stopped smiling, but he didn’t move. “Where I come from it ain’t nice to shoot where somebody might see you. Now if you work your claim, or sell it to some outfit that will work it, there won’t be no doubt as to who owns it. But if you want to just sit on it, you’ll have to make up your mind whether it’s cheaper to hire guards or pay me.”

  That was in the morning. During the afternoon a Mr. Dan Smiley, representing a new mining brokerage, called on me. His visit seemed timely, for I felt an impulse to sell, thus getting rid of the trouble my unexploited property was causing me. The price Smiley offered, on behalf of some unnamed client, was so low, however, that I wound up by telling him not to bother me further until he was ready to talk sense.

  “That’s funny,” he said, sticking his cigar into his sack-of-pudding face and cocking it at an angle. “Ace Ferguson said you wanted to unload.”

  After he had gone I thought it all out. Dead Warrior was almost living up to Seth Potter’s expectations. Six lesser companies were now digging gold, and the two big ones had increased their output by working two shifts. Meanwhile claim owners were cashing in on their holdings, either by working their mines in a small way or by leasing or selling outright to the growing number of capitalists who now prowled the region.

  Everybody had money. It welled up out of the earth, to be funneled through prodigal pockets into the gambling saloons and dance halls of the town. Recently, though, one faintly sour note had been struck. A limit had been placed on what had at first seemed the infinite, when intensive investigation had at length defined the scope of the ore field.

  Up to that time prospectors had been selling claims on the theory that they could find replacements by scratching gravel a few miles farther out. Mining companies had no doubt had the same idea, and it was the discovery that they were wrong which had launched a race to get possession of as many of the available claims as possible.

  Ferguson’s gang I could tag as one by-product of that competition. I could see something else, too. What Ferguson had told me, when declaring his repugnance to witnessed shootings, was that if I didn’t sell to one company or another I would be bushwhacked.

  When I believed I understood the basic facts of the case I rode out to the Dead Warrior Mining Company to see Irah Weaver. Dick Jackson was conferring with the mine superintendent, when I reached the latter’s office. I had time to smoke a whole pipe down before Weaver called to me, where I stood watching the wood-burning steam hoist bring up gold-veined ore.

  “What can I do for you?” Irah asked, when we were seated in the room where his uncle had once threatened to scalp him. My visit didn’t surprise him, as his company was a client of our freight line. “We have all the cordwood we need for the present.”

  “How are you fixed for mining claims?” I asked him.

  Weaver had taken on quite a bit of weight, and it showed when he shoved the flaps of his jacket back and hooked his thumbs under his suspenders. “Well,” he said, “we might be willing to make you an offer.”

  “I’m not selling,” I told him, “but the funny thing is that a Mr. Smiley thought I was, too.”

  Although his eyes remained blank while I related the details of the Ferguson-Smiley incident, I was convinced that I was not telling him news. He overdid the pose of ignorant indifference, and his comment was self-betrayal.

  “I have nothing to do with the purchasing of property,” he said, forgetting that he had just mentioned the possibility of making an offer for my claim. “As for the other outfits, they may be up to no good, but that’s none of my concern.”

  “In ot
her words, you know your company’s buying on Smiley’s market, and you think Pan-Western and the rest do the same,” I translated. “How many men have been strong-armed out of their claims so far, would you say?”

  At that he hardened his face to show that he felt there was nothing I could do about it. “Go ahead and suspect us, if you have nothing better to do. Personally I’m pretty busy, Carruthers.”

  Back in town I dropped around to the War Whoop, where Jackson was engaged in looking over the issue he had just published. “Some of these mining companies are starting to crowd people out of here,” I began.

  “Old stuff,” he yawned, when I had enlarged somewhat on that statement. “The War Whoop takes note of the fall of even the tiniest buzzard, so you’ll have to come around a lot earlier than you did this time, if you seek to amaze us.”

  “I’m not asking you to be amazed,” I replied, miffed at his attitude but trying not to show it. “All I want is action. How about unlimbering with an exposé?”

  For answer Dick opened his paper at a certain page and turned it around so that I could read. There was a large space devoted to advertising the Smiley Real Estate and Mine Development Company. Next Jackson showed me a news story on the front page, dealing with a prospector who was in despair about what to do with his claim until he had suddenly encountered good fortune in the form of the benevolent Mr. Smiley.

  “I was showing Weaver proofs of those items while you were cooling your heels.” With these words Jackson put his own heels on his desk and smiled at me. “Any remarks?”

  “Well, hell, Dick,” I protested, “it never occurred to me that you were honest, but I didn’t think you’d hire out to clean spittoons for a louse like Irah.”

  “This is venality with a difference, Baltimore.” He pointed a pencil at me didactically, then replaced it behind his ear. “Money is not the object, nor am I anything more than the agent of the benefits to be exchanged for services rendered. Has it come to your attention that nothing has been done about our petition to be chartered as a city?”