Gunsight Pass

by Raine, William MacLeod

  Joyce delivered a little lecture on the culture of roses, not because she considered herself an authority, but because her guest's conversation was mostly of the monosyllabic order. He was not awkward or self-conscious; rather a man given to silence.

  "Say, Mr. Sanders, how does it feel to be wounded?" Keith blurted out.

  "You mustn't ask personal questions, Keith," his sister told him.

  "Oh! Well, I already ast this one?" the boy suggested ingenuously.

  "Don't know, Keith," answered the young man. "I never was really wounded. If you mean this scratch in the shoulder, I hardly felt it at all till afterward."

  "Golly! I'll bet I wouldn't tackle a feller shootin' at me the way that

  Miller was at you," the youngster commented in naïve admiration.

  "Bedtime for li'l boys, Keith," his sister reminded him.

  "Oh, lemme stay up a while longer," he begged.

  Joyce was firm. She had schooled her impulses to resist the little fellow's blandishments, but Dave noticed that she was affectionate even in her refusal.

  "I'll come up and say good-night after a while, Keithie," she promised as she kissed him.

  To the gaunt-faced man watching them she was the symbol of all most to be desired in woman. She embodied youth, health, charm. She was life's springtime, its promise of fulfillment; yet already an immaculate Madonna in the beauty of her generous soul. He was young enough in his knowledge of her sex to be unaware that nature often gives soft trout-pool eyes of tenderness to coquettes and wonderful hair with the lights and shadows of an autumn-painted valley to giggling fools. Joyce was neither coquette nor fool. She was essential woman in the making, with all the faults and fine brave impulses of her years. Unconsciously, perhaps, she was showing her best side to her guest, as maidens have done to men since Eve first smiled on Adam.

  Dave had closed his heart to love. It was to have no room in his life. To his morbid sensibilities the shadow of the prison walls still stretched between him and Joyce. It did not matter that he was innocent, that all his small world would soon know of his vindication. The fact stood. For years he had been shut away from men, a leprous thing labeled "Unclean!" He had dwelt in a place of furtive whisperings, of sinister sounds. His nostrils had inhaled the odor of musty clothes and steamed food. His fingers had touched moisture sweating through the walls, and in his small dark cell he had hunted graybacks. The hopeless squalor of it at times had driven him almost mad. As he saw it now, his guilt was of minor importance. If he had not fired the shot that killed George Doble, that was merely a chance detail. What counted against him was that his soul was marked with the taint of the criminal through association and habit of thought. He could reason with this feeling and temporarily destroy it. He could drag it into the light and laugh it away. But subconsciously it persisted as a horror from which he could not escape. A man cannot touch pitch, even against his own will, and not be defiled.

  "You're Keith's hero, you know," the girl told Dave, her face bubbling to unexpected mirth. "He tries to walk and talk like you. He asks the queerest questions. To-day I caught him diving at a pillow on the bed. He was making-believe to be you when you were shot."

  Her nearness in the soft, shadowy night shook his self-control. The music of her voice with its drawling intonations played on his heartstrings.

  "Think I'll go now," he said abruptly.

  "You must come again," she told him. "Keith wants you to teach him how to rope. You won't mind, will you?"

  The long lashes lifted innocently from the soft deep eyes, which rested in his for a moment and set clamoring a disturbance in his blood.

  "I'll be right busy," he said awkwardly, bluntly.

  She drew back within herself. "I'd forgotten how busy you are, Mr. Sanders. Of course we mustn't impose on you," she said, cold and stiff as only offended youth can be.

  Striding into the night, Dave cursed the fate that had made him what he was. He had hurt her boorishly by his curt refusal of her friendship. Yet the heart inside him was a wild river of love.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  AT THE JACKPOT

  The day lasted twenty-four hours in Malapi. As Sanders walked along Junipero Street, on his way to the downtown corral from Crawford's house, saloons and gambling-houses advertised their attractions candidly and noisily. They seemed bursting with raw and vehement life. The strains of fiddles and the sound of shuffling feet were pierced occasionally by the whoop of a drunken reveler. Once there rang out the high notes of a woman's hysterical laughter. Cowponies and packed burros drooped listlessly at the hitching-rack. Even loaded wagons were waiting to take the road as soon as the drivers could tear themselves away from the attractions of keno and a last drink.

  Junipero Street was not the usual crooked lane that serves as the main thoroughfare for business in a mining town. For Malapi had been a cowtown before the discovery of oil. It lay on the wide prairie and not in a gulch. The street was broad and dusty, flanked by false-front stores, flat-roofed adobes, and corrugated iron buildings imported hastily since the first boom.

  At the Stag Horn corral Dave hired a horse and saddled for a night ride. On his way to the Jackpot he passed a dozen outfits headed for the new strike. They were hauling supplies of food, tools, timbers, and machinery to the oil camp. Out of the night a mule skinner shouted a profane and drunken greeting to him. A Mexican with a burro train gave him a low-voiced "Buenos noches, señor."

  A fine mist of oil began to spray him when he was still a mile away from the well. It grew denser as he came nearer. He found Bob Hart, in oilskins and rubber boots, bossing a gang of scrapers, giving directions to a second one building a dam across a draw, and supervising a third group engaged in siphoning crude oil from one sump to another. From head to foot Hart and his assistants were wet to the skin with the black crude oil.

  "'Lo, Dave! One sure-enough little spouter!" Bob shouted cheerfully. "Number Three's sure a-hittin' her up. She's no cougher—stays right steady on the job. Bet I've wallowed in a million barrels of the stuff since mo'nin'." He waded through a viscid pool to Dave and asked a question in a low voice. "What's the good word?"

  "We had a little luck," admitted Sanders, then plumped out his budget of news. "Got the express money back, captured one of the robbers, forced a confession out of him, and left him with the sheriff."

  Bob did an Indian war dance in hip boots. "You're the darndest go-getter ever I did see. Tell it to me, you ornery ol' scalawag."

  His friend told the story of the day so far as it related to the robbery.

  "I could 'a' told you Miller would weaken when you had the rope round his soft neck. Shorty would 'a' gone through and told you-all where to get off at."

  "Yes. Miller's yellow. He didn't quit with the robbery, Bob. Must have been scared bad, I reckon. He admitted that he killed George Doble—by accident, he claimed. Says Doble ran in front of him while he was shooting at me."

  "Have you got that down on paper?" demanded Hart.

  "Yes."

  Bob caught his friend's hand. "I reckon the long lane has turned for you, old socks. I can't tell you how damn glad I am. Doble needed killin', but I'd rather you hadn't done it."

  The other man made no comment on this phase of the situation. "This brings Dug Doble out into the open at last. He'll come pretty near going to the pen for this."

  "I can't see Applegate arrestin' him. He'll fight, Dug will. My notion is he'll take to the hills and throw off all pretense. If he does he'll be the worst killer ever was known in this part of the country. You an' Crawford want to look out for him, Dave."

  "Crawford says he wants me to be treasurer of the company, Bob. You and I are to manage it, he says, with Burns doing the drilling."

  "Tha's great. He told me he was gonna ask you. Betcha we make the ol'

  Jackpot hum."

  "D' you ever hear of a man land poor, Bob?"

  "Sure have."

  "Well, right now we're oil poor. According to what the old man says ther
e's no cash in the treasury and we've got bills that have to be paid. You know that ten thousand he paid in to the bank to satisfy the note. He borrowed it from a friend who took it out of a trust fund to loan it to him. He didn't tell me who the man is, but he said his friend would get into trouble a-plenty if it's found out before he replaces the money. Then we've got to keep our labor bills paid right up. Some of the other accounts can wait."

  "Can't we borrow money on this gusher?"

  "We'll have to do that. Trouble is that oil isn't a marketable asset until it reaches a refinery. We can sell stock, of course, but we don't want to do much of that unless we're forced to it. Our play is to keep control and not let any other interest in to oust us. It's going to take some scratching."

  "Looks like," agreed Bob. "Any use tryin' the bank here?"

  "I'll try it, but we'll not accept any call loan. They say Steelman owns the bank. He won't let us have money unless there's some nigger in the woodpile. I'll probably have to try Denver."

  "That'll take time."

  "Yes. And time's one thing we haven't got any too much of. Whoever underwrites this for us will send an expert back with me and will wait for his report before making a loan. We'll have to talk it over with Crawford and find out how much treasury stock we'll have to sell locally to keep the business going till I make a raise."

  "You and the old man decide that, Dave. I can't get away from here till we get Number Three roped and muzzled. I'll vote for whatever you two say."

  An hour later Dave rode back to town.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  DAVE MEETS A FINANCIER

  On more careful consideration Crawford and Sanders decided against trying to float the Jackpot with local money except by the sale of enough stock to keep going until the company's affairs could be put on a substantial basis. To apply to the Malapi bank for a loan would be to expose their financial condition to Steelman, and it was certain that he would permit no accommodation except upon terms that would make it possible to wreck the company.

  "I'm takin' the train for Denver to-morrow, Dave," the older man said.

  "You stay here for two-three days and sell enough stock to keep us off

  the rocks, then you hot-foot it for Denver too. By the time you get there

  I'll have it all fixed up with the Governor about a pardon."

  Dave found no difficulty in disposing of a limited amount of stock in Malapi at a good price. This done, he took the stage for the junction and followed Crawford to Denver. An unobtrusive little man with large white teeth showing stood in line behind him at the ticket window. His destination also, it appeared, was the Colorado capital.

  If Dave had been a believer in fairy tales he might have thought himself the hero of one. A few days earlier he had come to Malapi on this same train, in a day coach, poorly dressed, with no job and no prospects in life. He had been poor, discredited, a convict on parole. Now he wore good clothes, traveled in a Pullman, ate in the diner, was a man of consequence, and, at least on paper, was on the road to wealth. He would put up at the Albany instead of a cheap rooming-house, and he would meet on legitimate business some of the big financial men of the West. The thing was hardly thinkable, yet a turn of the wheel of fortune had done it for him in an hour.

  The position in which Sanders found himself was possible only because Crawford was himself a financial babe in the woods. He had borrowed large sums of money often, but always from men who trusted him and held his word as better security than collateral. The cattleman was of the outdoors type to whom the letter of the law means little. A debt was a debt, and a piece of paper with his name on it did not make payment any more obligatory. If he had known more about capital and its methods of finding an outlet, he would never have sent so unsophisticated a man as Dave Sanders on such a mission.

  For Dave, too, was a child in the business world. He knew nothing of the inside deals by which industrial enterprises are underwritten and corporations managed. It was, he supposed, sufficient for his purpose that the company for which he wanted backing was sure to pay large dividends when properly put on its feet.

  But Dave had assets of value even for such a task. He had a single-track mind. He was determined even to obstinacy. He thought straight, and so directly that he could walk through subtleties without knowing they existed.

  When he reached Denver he discovered that Crawford had followed the Governor to the western part of the State, where that official had gone to open a sectional fair. Sanders had no credentials except a letter of introduction to the manager of the stockyards.

  "What can I do for you?" asked that gentleman. He was quite willing to exert himself moderately as a favor to Emerson Crawford, vice-president of the American Live Stock Association.

  "I want to meet Horace Graham."

  "I can give you a note of introduction to him. You'll probably have to get an appointment with him through his secretary. He's a tremendously busy man."

  Dave's talk with the great man's secretary over the telephone was not satisfactory. Mr. Graham, he learned, had every moment full for the next two days, after which he would leave for a business trip to the East.

  There were other wealthy men in Denver who might be induced to finance the Jackpot, but Dave intended to see Graham first. The big railroad builder was a fighter. He was hammering through, in spite of heavy opposition from trans-continental lines, a short cut across the Rocky Mountains from Denver. He was a pioneer, one who would take a chance on a good thing in the plunging, Western way. In his rugged, clean-cut character was much that appealed to the managers of the Jackpot.

  Sanders called at the financier's office and sent in his card by the youthful Cerberus who kept watch at the gate. The card got no farther than the great man's private secretary.

  After a wait of more than an hour Dave made overtures to the boy. A dollar passed from him to the youth and established a friendly relation.

  "What's the best way to reach Mr. Graham, son? I've got important business that won't wait."

  "Dunno. He's awful busy. You ain't got no appointment."

  "Can you get a note to him? I've got a five-dollar bill for you if you can."

  "I'll take a whirl at it. Jus' 'fore he goes to lunch."

  Dave penciled a line on a card.

  If you are not too busy to make $100,000 to-day you had better see me.

  He signed his name.

  Ten minutes later the office boy caught Graham as he rose to leave for lunch. The big man read the note.

  "What kind of looking fellow is he?" he asked the boy.

  "Kinda solemn-lookin' guy, sir." The boy remembered the dollar received on account and the five dollars on the horizon. "Big, straight-standin', honest fellow. From Arizona or Texas, mebbe. Looked good to me."

  The financier frowned down at the note in doubt, twisting it in his fingers. A dozen times a week his privacy was assailed by some crazy inventor or crook promoter. He remembered that he had had a letter from some one about this man. Something of strength in the chirography of the note in his hand and something of simple directness in the wording decided him to give an interview.

  "Show him in," he said abruptly, and while he waited in the office rated himself for his folly in wasting time.

  Underneath bushy brows steel-gray eyes took Dave in shrewdly.

  "Well, what is it?" snapped the millionaire.

  "The new gusher in the Malapi pool," answered Sanders at once, and his gaze was as steady as that of the big state-builder.

  "You represent the parties that own it?"

  "Yes."

  "And you want?"

  "Financial backing to put it on its feet until we can market the product."

  "Why don't you work through your local bank?"

  "Another oil man, an enemy of our company, controls the Malapi bank."

  Graham fired question after question at him, crisply, abruptly, and

  Sanders gave him back straight, short answers.

  "Sit down," ordered th
e railroad builder, resuming his own seat. "Tell me the whole story of the company."

  Dave told it, and in the telling he found it necessary to sketch the

  Crawford-Steelman feud. He brought himself into the narrative as little

  as possible, but the grizzled millionaire drew enough from him to set

  Graham's eye to sparkling.

  "Come back to-morrow at noon," decided the great man. "I'll let you know my decision then."

  The young man knew he was dismissed, but he left the office elated. Graham had been favorably impressed. He liked the proposition, believed in its legitimacy and its possibilities. Dave felt sure he would send an expert to Malapi with him to report on it as an investment. If so, he would almost certainly agree to put money in it.

  A man with prominent white front teeth had followed Dave to the office of Horace Graham, had seen him enter, and later had seen him come out with a look on his face that told of victory. The man tried to get admittance to the financier and failed. He went back to his hotel and wrote a short letter which he signed with a fictitious name. This he sent by special delivery to Graham. The letter was brief and to the point. It said:

  Don't do business with David Sanders without investigating his record. He is a horsethief and a convicted murderer. Some months ago he was paroled from the penitentiary at Cañon City and since then has been in several shooting scrapes. He was accused of robbing a stage and murdering the driver less than a week ago.

  Graham read the letter and called in his private secretary. "McMurray, get Cañon City on the 'phone and find out if a man called David Sanders was released from the penitentiary there lately. If so, what was he in for? Describe the man to the warden: under twenty-five, tall, straight as an Indian, strongly built, looks at you level and steady, brown hair, steel-blue eyes. Do it now."