The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  "I'm glad it is," said Joyce emphatically.

  "Any news to-day from Jackpot Number Three?" asked the president of that company.

  "Bob Hart sent in to get some supplies and had a note left for me at the post-office," Miss Joyce mentioned, a trifle annoyed at herself because a blush insisted on flowing into her cheeks. "He says it's the biggest thing he ever saw, but it's going to be awf'ly hard to control. Where is that note? I must have put it somewhere."

  Emerson's eyes flickered mischief. "Oh, well, never mind about the note. That's private property, I reckon."

  "I'm sure if I can find it--"

  "I'll bet my boots you cayn't, though," he teased.

  "Dad! What will Mr. Sanders think? You know that's nonsense. Bob wrote because I asked him to let me know."

  "Sure. Why wouldn't the secretary and field superintendent of the Jackpot Company keep the daughter of the president informed? I'll have it read into the minutes of our next board meetin' that it's in his duties to keep you posted."

  "Oh, well, if you want to talk foolishness," she pouted.

  "There's somethin' else I'm goin' to have put into the minutes of the next meetin', Dave," Crawford went on. "And that's yore election as treasurer of the company. I want officers around me that I can trust, son."

  "I don't know anything about finance or about bookkeeping," Dave said.

  "You'll learn. We'll have a bookkeeper, of course. I want some one for treasurer that's level-haided and knows how to make a quick turn when he has to, some one that uses the gray stuff in his cocoanut. We'll fix a salary when we get goin'. You and Bob are goin' to have the active management of this concern. Cattle's my line, an' I aim to stick to it. Him and you can talk it over and fix yore duties so's they won't conflict. Burns, of course, will run the actual drillin'. He's an A1 man. Don't let him go."

  Dave was profoundly touched. No man could be kinder to his own son, could show more confidence in him, than Emerson Crawford was to one who had no claims upon him.

  He murmured a dry "Thank you"; then, feeling this to be inadequate, added, "I'll try to see you don't regret this."

  The cattleman was a shrewd judge of men. His action now was not based solely upon humanitarian motives. Here was a keen man, quick-witted, steady, and wholly to be trusted, one certain to push himself to the front. It was good business to make it worth his while to stick to Crawford's enterprises. He said as much to Dave bluntly.

  "And you ain't in for any easy time either," he added. "We've got oil. We're flooded with it, so I hear. Seve-re-al thousand dollars' worth a day is runnin' off and seepin' into the desert. Bob Hart and Jed Burns have got the job of puttin' the lid on the pot, but when they do that you've got a bigger job. Looks bigger to me, anyhow. You've got to get rid of that oil--find a market for it, sell it, ship it away to make room for more. Get busy, son." Crawford waved his hand after the manner of one who has shifted a responsibility and does not expect to worry about it. "Moreover an' likewise, we're shy of money to keep operatin' until we can sell the stuff. You'll have to raise scads of mazuma, son. In this oil game dollars sure have got wings. No matter how tight yore pockets are buttoned, they fly right out."

  "I doubt whether you've chosen the right man," the ex-cowpuncher said, smiling faintly. "The most I ever borrowed in my life was twenty-five dollars."

  "You borrow twenty-five thousand the same way, only it's easier if the luck's breakin' right," the cattleman assured him cheerfully. "The easiest thing in the world to get hold of is money--when you've already got lots of it."

  "The trouble is we haven't."

  "Well, you'll have to learn to look like you knew where it grew on bushes," Emerson told him, grinning.

  "I can see you've chosen me for a nice lazy job."

  "Anything but that, son. You don't want to make any mistake about this thing. Brad Steelman's goin' to fight like a son-of-a-gun. He'll strike at our credit and at our market and at our means of transportation. He'll fight twenty-four hours of the day, and he's the slickest, crookedest gray wolf that ever skulked over the range."

  The foreman of the D Bar Lazy R came in after supper for a conference with his boss. He and Crawford got their heads together in the sitting-room and the young people gravitated out to the porch. Joyce pressed Dave into service to help her water the roses, and Keith hung around in order to be near Dave. Occasionally he asked questions irrelevant to the conversation. These were embarrassing or not as it happened.

  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 there'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.