The Voice at Johnnywater




                           By B. M. Bower

                    Good Indian
                    Lonesome Land
                    The Ranch at the Wolverine
                    The Flying U’s Last Stand
                    The Phantom Herd
                    The Heritage of the Sioux
                    Starr, of the Desert
                    Cabin Fever
                    Skyrider
                    Rim o’ the World
                    The Quirt
                    Cow-Country
                    Casey Ryan
                    The Trail of the White Mule
                    The Voice at Johnnywater




[Illustration: “Oh, Monty Girard! Gary _is_ up here somewhere! I
heard him!”]




                      THE VOICE AT JOHNNYWATER

                                 BY

                            B. M. BOWER

              WITH FRONTISPIECE BY REMINGTON SCHUYLER

                              TORONTO
                       McCLELLAND AND STEWART
                                1923




                          Copyright, 1923,

                   By Little, Brown, and Company.

                        All rights reserved

                      Published February, 1923

              Printed in the United States of America




                              CONTENTS

         I. Patricia Entertains
        II. Patricia Explains
       III. Patricia Takes Her Stand
        IV. Gary Goes on the Warpath
         V. Gary Does a Little Sleuthing
        VI. Johnnywater
       VII. The Voice
      VIII. “The Cat’s Got ’Em Too!”
        IX. Gary Writes a Letter
         X. Gary Has Speech with Human Beings
        XI. “How Will You Take Your Millions?”
       XII. Monty Appears
      XIII. “I Don’t Believe in Spooks”
       XIV. Patricia Registers Fury
        XV. “What’s the Matter with This Place?”
       XVI. “There’s Mystery Here----”
      XVII. James Blaine Hawkins Finds His Courage--and Loses It
     XVIII. Gary Rides to Kawich
       XIX. “Have Yuh-All Got a Gun?”
        XX. “That Cat Ain’t Human!”
       XXI. Gary Follows the Pinto Cat
      XXII. The Pat Connolly Mine
     XXIII. Gary Finds the Voice--and Something Else
      XXIV. “Steve Carson--Poor Devil!”
       XXV. The Value of a Hunch
      XXVI. “Gary Marshall Mysteriously Missing”
     XXVII. “Nobody Knows but a Pinto Cat”
    XXVIII. Monty Meets Patricia
      XXIX. Gary Robs the Pinto Cat of Her Dinner
       XXX. “Somebody Hollered up on the Bluff”
      XXXI. “God Wouldn’t Let Anything Happen to Gary!”
     XXXII. “It’s the Voice! It Ain’t Human!”
    XXXIII. “He’s Nearly Starved,” Said Patricia
     XXXIV. Let’s Leave Them There




                            CHAPTER ONE

                        PATRICIA ENTERTAINS


The telephone bell was shrilling insistent summons in his apartment
when Gary pushed open the hall door thirty feet away. Even though he
took long steps, he hoped the nagging jingle would cease before he
could reach the ’phone. But the bell kept ringing, being an
automatic telephone, dependent upon no perfunctory Central for the
persistency of its call. Gary was tired, and from his neck to his
waist his skin was painted a coppery bronze which, having been
applied at six-thirty that morning, was now itching horribly as the
grease paint dried. He did not feel like talking to any one; but he
unlocked his door, jerked down the receiver and barked a surly
greeting into the mouthpiece of the ’phone. Almost immediately the
wrinkles on his forehead slid down into smoothness.

“Oh, _how_-do, Gary! I was just wondering if you had changed your
apartments or something,” called the girl whom he hoped some day to
marry. “Did you just get in?”

“No-o--certainly not! _I_’ve been having a fit on the floor! Say, I
heard you ringing the ’phone a block away. Every tenant in the joint
is lined up on the sidewalk, watching for the Black Maria or the
ambulance; they don’t know which. But I recognized your ring. What’s
on your mind, Girlie?”

“Not a thing in the world but a new shell comb. If I’d known you
were so terrifically cross this evening, I wouldn’t have a lovely
dinner all waiting and a great big surprise for you afterwards. Now
I won’t tell you what it is. And, furthermore, I shall not give you
even a hint of what you’re going to eat when you get here. But I
should think a man who could recognize a certain telephone ring a
block away might smell fried chicken and strawberry shortcake clear
across the city--with oodles of butter under the strawberries, and
double cream----”

“Oh-h, _boy_!” Gary brightened and smacked his lips into the
mouthpiece, just as any normal young man would do. Then, recalling
his physical discomfort, he hedged a little.

“Will it keep? I’m in a starving condition as usual--but listen, Pat;
I’m a savage under my shirt. Just got in from location away up in
Topanga Cañon, and I never stopped to get off anything but the
rainbow on my cheeks and my feathered war bonnet. Had a heck of a
day--I’ll tell the world! You know, honey; painted warriors hurtling
down the cliff shooting poisoned arrows at the hapless
emigrants--_that_ kind of hokum. Big Chief Eagle Eye has been
hurtling and whooping war whoops since ten o’clock this morning.
Dinner’ll have to wait while I take a bath and clean up a little. I
look like a bum and that’s a fact. Say, listen, honey----”

“Aw, take that mush off the line. Ha-ang up!” Some impatient
neighboring tenant with a bad temper was evidently cutting in.

“Aw, go lead yourself out by the ear!” Gary retorted sharply. “Say,
Pat!” His voice softened to the wooing note of the young male human.
“Best I can do, honey, it’ll be forty minutes. That’s giving me ten
minutes to look like a white man again. You know it’ll take me
thirty minutes to ride out there----”

“You could walk, you bum, whilst you’re tellin’ her about it. Get
off the line! There ought to be a law against billy-cooin’ over the
’phone----”

“Seddown! You’re rockin’ the boat!” Gary flung back spiritedly.
“Better make it forty-five, Girlie. It may take me five minutes to
lick this cheap heavy on the third floor that’s tryin’ to put on a
comedy act.”

“Say, one more crack like that an’ I’ll be down to your place an’
save yuh some valuable time. It’ll take me about two seconds to
knock yuh cold!” The harsh male voice interrupted eagerly.

“Are you there, Pat?”

“Right here, Gary. How did _that_ get into a respectable house,
dear? You ought to call the janitor.” The girl he hoped to marry had
spirit and could assuredly hold her own in a wicked city. “Take your
time, Gary boy. But remember, I’ve the biggest surprise in your life
waiting for you out here. Something _wonderful_!”

It is astonishing how a woman can pronounce a few simple words so
that they sound like a hallelujah chorus of angels. Gary thrilled to
her voice, in spite of an intensely practical nature. Patricia went
on, after an impressive pause.

“Never mind that noise in the ’phone, Gary. It’s just some
mechanical deficiency caused by using cheap material. Never mind the
grease paint, either. You--you won’t always have to smear around in
it--partner!”

While he hurried to make himself presentable, Gary’s thoughts dwelt
upon that word “partner” and the lingering sweetness of Patricia’s
tone. Patricia Connolly was not a feather-brained creature who would
repeat parrotlike whatever phrase she happened to have heard and
fancied. She did not run to second-hand superlatives. When she told
Gary that she had a wonderful surprise for him, she would not, for
instance, mean that she had done her hair in a new fashion or had
bought a new record for the phonograph. And she had never before
called him partner in any tone whatever. Gary would have remembered
it if she had.

“What the heck is she going to spring on me _now_?” he kept
wondering during the hour that intervened between the ’phone call
and his entrance into the scrap of bungalow in a bepalmed court
where Patricia had her milk and her mail delivered to the tiny front
porch.

The extra fifteen minutes had not been spent in whipping the
harsh-voiced tenant on the third floor; indeed, Gary had forgotten
all about him the moment he hung up the receiver. One simply cannot
annihilate all the men one abuses in the course of a day’s strained
living in Los Angeles or any other over-full city. Gary had been
delayed first by the tenacity of the grease paint on his person, and
after that by the heavy traffic on the street cars. Two cars had
gone whanging past him packed solidly with peevish human beings and
with men and boys clinging to every protuberance on the outside.
When the third car stopped to let a clinging passenger drop
off--shaking down his cuffs and flexing his cramped fingers--Gary had
darted in like a hornet, seized toe-hold and finger-hold and hung
on.

And so, fifteen minutes late, he arrived at Patricia’s door and was
let into Paradise and delectable odors and the presence of Patricia,
who looked as though Christmas had come unexpectedly and she was
waiting until the candles were lighted on the tree so she could
present Gary with a million dollars. Her honest sweetness and her
adorable little way of mothering Gary--though she was fours years
younger--tingled with an air of holding back with difficulty the news
of some amazing good fortune.

Patricia shared the bungalow with a trained nurse who was usually
absent on a “case”, so that Patricia was practically independent and
alone. Most girls of twenty couldn’t have done it and kept their
mental balance; but Patricia was herself under any and all
conditions, and it did not seem strange for her to be living alone
the greater part of the time. Freedom, to her, spelled neither
license nor loneliness; she lived as though her mother were always
in the next room. Patricia felt sometimes that her mother was
closer, very close beside her. It made her happier to feel so, but
never had it made her feel ashamed.

She had evolved the dinner in this manner: while her boss was
keeping her waiting until he had refreshed his memory of a certain
special price on alfalfa molasses and oil cakes, etc., etc., in
carload and half-carload lots, Patricia had jotted down in good
shorthand, “chicken, about two pounds with yellow legs and a limber
wishbone or nothing doing; cost a dollar, I expect--is Gary worth it?
I’ll say he is. God love ums. Strawberries, two boxes--Hood Rivers,
if possible--try the City Market. Celery--if there’s any that looks
decent; if not, then artichokes or asparagus--Gary likes asparagus
best--says he eats artichokes because it’s fun--Dear Sir:--In response
to your favor of the 17th inst.,--” and so on.

Some girls would have quoted asparagus in carload lots, transcribing
from such notes, and would have put alfalfa molasses on the dinner
menu; but not Patricia.

On her way home from the office in the dusty, humming barn of a
building that housed the grain milling company which supported her
in return for faithful service rendered, Patricia shopped at the big
City Market where the sales people all had tired eyes and mechanical
smiles, and a general air of hopelessly endeavoring to please every
one so that no harassed marketers would complain to the manager.
Patricia made her purchases as painless to the sales girl as
possible, knowing too well what that strained smile meant. The great
market buzzed like a bee-tree when you strike its trunk with a club.

She bought a manila paper shopping bag, but her packages overflowed
the bag, so that she carried the two boxes of strawberries in her
hand, and worried all the way home for fear the string would break;
and held the warm tea biscuits under her arm, protecting them as
anxiously as a hen protects her covered chicks. By prodding with her
elbows and bracing her feet against the swaying crush, and giving
now and then a haughty stare, Patricia achieved the miracle of
arriving at Rose Court with her full menu and only one yellow leg of
the chicken protruding stiffly from its wrappings.

She dumped her armload on the table in the kitchenette and rushed
out again to buy flowers from the vendor who was chanting his wares
half a block away. She was tingling all over with nerve weariness,
yet she could smile brightly at the Greek so that he went on with a
little glow of friendliness toward the world. At the rose-arched
entrance to the Court she tilted her wrist, looked at her watch and
said, “Good Lord! That late?” and dashed up to her door like a
maiden pursued.

Yet here she was at seven, in a cool little pansy-tinted voile,
dainty and serene as any young hostess in Westmoreland Place half a
mile away. Even the strawberry stain on her finger tips could easily
be mistaken for the new fad in manicuring. Can you wonder that Gary
forgot every disagreeable thing he ever knew--including frowsy,
unhomelike bachelor quarters, crowded street cars, all the petty
aches and ills of movie work--when he unfolded his napkin and looked
across the table at Patricia?

“Coffee now, or with dessert? Gary, don’t you dare look question
marks at me! I can’t have your mind distracted with food while I’m
telling you the most wonderful thing in the world. Moreover, this
dinner deserves a little appreciation.” Patricia’s lips trembled,
but only because she was tired and excited and happy. Her happiness
would have been quite apparent to a blind man.

I do not mean to hint that Patricia deliberately fed Gary to
repletion with the things he liked best, before imparting her
_won_-derful surprise. She had frequently cooked nice little dinners
for him when there was nothing surprising to follow. But it is a
fact that when she had stacked the dishes neatly away for a later
washing, and returned the dining table to its ordinary library-table
guise, Gary looked as if nothing on earth could disturb him. Mental,
emotional and physical content permeated the atmosphere of his
immediate neighborhood. Patricia sat down and laid her arms upon the
table, and studied Gary, biting her lips to hide their quiver.




                            CHAPTER TWO

                         PATRICIA EXPLAINS


Womanlike, Patricia began in a somewhat roundabout fashion and in a
tone not far from cajolery.

“Gary! You do know all about ranch life and raising cattle and hay
and horses and so on, don’t you?”

Gary was lighting a cigarette. If he had learned the “picture value”
of holding a pose, he was at least unconscious of his deliberation
in waving out the match flame before he replied. His was a profile
very effective in close-ups against the firelight. Holding a pose
comes to be second nature to an actor who has to do those things for
a living.

“Dad would rather feature the so-on stuff. Subtitle, father saying,
‘You ain’t much on raisin’ cattle but you’re shore an expert at
raisin’ hell!’ Cut back to son on horse at gate, gazing wistfully
toward house. Sighs. Turns away. Iris out, son riding away into
dusk. Why?”

“Fathers are like that. Of course you know all about those things.
You were raised on a ranch. Have you landed that contract with Mills
yet, to play Western leads?”

“Not yet--Mills is waiting for his chief to come on from New York.
He’s due here about the First. I was talking with Mills to-day, and
he says he’s morally certain they’ll give me a company of my own and
put on Western Features. You know what that would mean, Pat--a year’s
contract for me. And we could get married----”

“Yes, never mind that, since you haven’t landed it.” Patricia drew
in her breath. “Well, you know what I think of the movie game; we’ve
thrashed that all out, times enough. I simply can’t see _my_ husband
making movie love to various and sundry females who sob and smile
and smirk at him for so many dollars per. We’ll skip that. Also my
conviction that the movies are lowering--cheapening to any full-sized
man. Smirking and frowning before a camera, and making mushy love
for kids on the front seats to stamp and whistle at--well, never
mind; we won’t go into that at this time.

“You know, Gary. I just love you to be Western; but I want you to be
_real_ Western--my own range hero. Not cheap, movie make-believe. I
want you to get out and live the West. I can close my eyes and see
you on a cattle ranch, riding out at dawn after your own
cattle--doing your part in increasing the world’s production of
food--being something big and really worth while!”

“Can you? You’re a good little seer, Pat. Golly, grandma! I wish I’d
saved half of that shortcake to eat after a while. Now I’m so full I
can’t swallow a mouthful of smoke. What’s the surprise, kid? Don’t
hold the suspense till the interest flags--that’s bad business. Makes
the story drag.”

“Why, I’m telling you, Gary!” Patricia opened her eyes at him in a
way that would have brought any movie queen a raise in salary. “It’s
just that you’re going to have a chance to live up to what’s really
in you. You’re going to manage a cattle ranch, dear. Not a real big
one--yet. But you’ll have the fun of seeing it grow.”

“Oh-ah-h--I’ll have the fun--er-r--all right, Pat, _I_ give it up.”
Gary settled back again with his head against the cushion  “Tell us
the joke. My brain’s leather to-night; had a heck of a day.”

“The joke? Why, the joke is--well, just that you don’t get it! I knew
you wouldn’t, just at first. Think, Gary! Just close your eyes and
think of miles and miles of open range and no fences, and herds of
cattle roaming free. Picture a home ranch against the mountains, in
a cañon called--let’s play it’s called Johnnywater. Are you doing
it?”

“Uh-huh. I’m thinking----” But he sounded drowsy, as if he would be
asleep presently if he continued holding his eyes shut. “Open range
and cattle roaming free--there ain’t no such animal.”

“That’s where the big surprise comes in, Gary. Listen. This is the
most important thing that ever happened to either of us. I--I can
hardly talk about it, it’s so perfectly _wonderful_. You’d never
guess in a million years. But I--well, read these papers, Gary
boy--I’ll explain them afterwards.”

Gary opened his eyes somewhat reluctantly, smiled endearingly at the
flushed Patricia and accepted two legal-looking documents which she
proffered with what might almost have been termed a flourish. He
glanced at them somewhat indifferently, glanced again, gave Patricia
a startled look, and sat up as if some one had prodded him
unexpectedly in the back. He read both papers through frowningly,
unconsciously registering consternation. When he had finished, he
stared blankly at Patricia for a full minute.

“Pat Connolly, what the heck is this trick deed? I can’t feature it.
I don’t _get_ it! What’s the big idea?”

“That’s just a deed, Gary. The cattle and the brand and the water
right to Johnnywater Spring, and the squatter’s right to the
pasturage and improvements are all included--as you would have seen
if you had read it carefully. The other paper is the water right,
that he got from the State. Besides that, I have the affidavits of
two men who swear that William Waddell legally owned one hundred
head of cattle and the funny X brand, and that everything is all
straight to the best of their knowledge and belief.

“I insisted upon the affidavits being furnished, since I couldn’t
afford to make a trip away up there myself. It’s all right, Gary. I
could send them all to jail for perjury and things of that sort if
they have lied about it.”

Patricia pressed her palms hard upon the table and gave a subdued
little squeal of sheer ecstasy.

“Just think of it, Gary! After almost despairing of ever being able
to have a ranch of our own, so that you could ride around and really
manage things, instead of pretending it in pictures, Fate gave me
this wonderful chance!

“I was working up our mailing list, and ran across an ad in the
Tonopah paper, of this place for sale. The ‘Free grazing and water
rights in open range country’ caught my eye first. And the price was
cheap--scandalously cheap for a stock ranch. I answered the ad right
away--that was over a month ago, Gary. I’ve kept it a secret, because
I hate arguments so, and I knew you’d argue against it. Any,
anyway,” she added naïvely, “you’ve been away on location so I
couldn’t tell you.

“That country is all unsurveyed for miles and miles and _miles_. Mr.
Waddell writes that there are absolutely no grazing restrictions
whatever, and that even their saddle and work horses run loose the
year around. He says the winters are open----”

That last bit of information was delivered somewhat doubtfully.
Patricia had lived in Southern California since she was a tiny tot
and did not know exactly what an “open” winter meant.

“It’s scarcely settled at all, and there are no sheep in the
country. I knew that would be important, so I asked, particularly.
It’s in a part of the country that has been overlooked, Mr. Waddell
says, just because it’s quite a long way from the railroad. I never
dreamed there was any unsurveyed country left in America. Did you,
Gary?”

Gary had slumped down in the big chair and was smoking his cigarette
with thoughtful deliberation. His eyes veiled themselves before
Patricia’s glowing enthusiasm.

“Death Valley is unsurveyed,” he observed grimly.

“I’m not talking about Death Valley,” Patricia retorted impatiently.
“I mean cattle range. I’ve been corresponding with Mr. Waddell for a
month, so I have all the facts.”

“_All_ the facts, kid?” Gary was no fool. He was serious enough now,
and the muscles along his jaw were hardening a little. His director
would have been tickled with that expression for a close-up of
slow-growing anger.

“The only country left unsurveyed to-day is desert that would starve
a horn toad to death in a week. Some one has put one over on you,
Pat. Where does he live? If you’ve paid him any money yet, I’ll have
to go and get it back for you. You’ve bought a gold brick, Pat.”

“I have not! I investigated, I tell you. I have really bought the
Waddell outfit--cattle, horses, brand, ranch, water rights and
everything. It took all the insurance money dad left me, except just
a few hundred dollars. That Power of Attorney--I pinned it on the
back of the deed to surprise you, and you haven’t looked at it
yet--cost me ten dollars, Gary Marshall! It gives you the right to go
over there and run the outfit and transact business just as if you
were the owner. I--I thought you might need it, and it would be just
as well to have it.”

Gary leaned forward, his jaw squared, his right hand shut to a
fighting fist on the table.

“Do you think for a minute I’m crazy enough to go over _there_? To
quit a good job that’s just opening up into something big, and go
off in the sand somewhere to watch cattle starve to death? It just
happens that I do know a little about the cow business. Cattle have
to eat, my dear girl. They don’t just walk around in front of a
camera to give dolled-up cowboys a chance to ride. They require food
occasionally.

“Why, Pat, take a look at that deed! That in itself ought to have
been enough to warn you. It’s recorded in Tonopah. _Tonopah!_ I was
there on location once when we made _The Gold Boom_. It’s a mining
town--not a cow town, Pat.”

Patricia smiled patiently.

“I know it, Gary. I didn’t say that Johnnywater lies inside the city
limits of Tonopah. Mines and cattle are not like sheep and cattle;
they don’t clash. There are cattle all around in that country.”
Patricia swept out an arm to indicate vast areas. “We have inquiries
from cattle men all over Nevada about stock food. I’ve billed out
alfalfa molasses and oil cakes to several Nevada towns. And
remember, I was making up a mailing list for our literature when I
ran across the ad. We don’t mail our price lists to milliners,
either. They raise cattle all through that country.”

“Well, _I_ don’t raise ’em there--that’s flat.” Gary settled back in
his chair with absolute finality in tone, words and manner.

“Then I’m a ruined woman.” But Patricia said it calmly, even with a
little secret satisfaction. “I shall have to go myself, then, and
run the ranch, and get killed by bronks and bitten to death by Gila
monsters and carried off by the Indians----”

“Piffle!” from the big chair. “You couldn’t get on a bronk that was
dangerous, and Gila monsters live farther south, and the Injuns are
too lazy to carry anybody off. Besides, I wouldn’t let you go.”

“Then I’m still a ruined woman, except that I’m ruined quicker. My
cows will die and my calves will be rustled and my horses ridden
off--_my_ cows and _my_ calves and _my_ horses!”

“Sell!” shouted Gary, forgetting other Bungalow Courters in his
sudden fury. “You’re stung, I tell you. Sell the damned thing!”

Patricia looked at him. She had a pretty little round chin, but
there were times when it squared itself surprisingly. And whenever
it did square itself, you could souse Patricia and hold her head
under water until air bubbles ceased to rise; and if you brought her
up and got her gasping again, Patricia would gasp, “Scissors!” like
the old woman in the story.

“No. I shall not sell. I shall not do anything more than I have done
already. If you refuse to go to Nevada and take charge of
Johnnywater, I shall go myself or I shall let my cattle starve.”

She would, too. Gary knew that. He looked steadily at her until he
was sure of the square chin and all, and then he threw out both
hands as if in complete surrender.

“Oh, very well,” he said tolerantly. “We won’t quarrel about it,
Pat.”




                           CHAPTER THREE

                      PATRICIA TAKES HER STAND


A young man of intelligence may absorb a great many psychological
truths while helping to build in pictures mock dramas more or less
similar to real, human problems. Gary wore a brain under his mop of
brown hair, and he had that quality of stubbornness which will adopt
strategy--guile, even--for the sake of winning a fight. To-night, he
chose to assume the air of defeat that he might win ultimate
victory.

Gary had not the slightest intention of ruining his own future as
well as Patricia’s by yielding with an easy, “Oh, very well”
surrender, and going away into the wilds of Nevada to attempt the
raising of cattle in a district so worthless that it had never so
much as seen a surveyor’s transit. Desert it must be; a howling
waste of sand and lizards and snakes. The very fact that Patricia
had been able, with a few thousands of dollars, to buy out a
completely equipped cattle ranch, damned the venture at once as the
mad freak of a romantic girl’s ignorance. He set himself now to the
task of patiently convincing Patricia of her madness.

Patricia, however, was not to be convinced. For every argument of
Gary’s she found another to combat it. She repeated more than once
the old range slogan that you simply can’t lose money in cattle. She
told Gary that here was an opportunity, sent by a watchful
Providence, for him to make good in a really worth-while business;
and urged upon him the theory that pioneering brings out the best
qualities in a man.

She attacked furiously Gary’s ambition to become a screen star,
reminding him how cheap and paltry is that success which is based
only upon a man’s good looks; and how easily screen stars fall
meteorically into the hopeless void of forgotten favorites.

“It isn’t just that I’ve dreamed all my life of owning cattle and
living away out in the wilderness,” she finished, with reddened
cheeks and eyes terribly in earnest. “I know the fine mettle you’re
made of, Gary, and I couldn’t see it spoiled while they fed your
vanity at the studios.

“I had the money to buy this cattle ranch at Johnnywater--but of
course I knew that I should be perfectly helpless with it alone. I
don’t know the business of raising cattle, except that I know the
most popular kinds of stock food and the prices and freight rates to
various points. But you were born on a cattle ranch, Gary, and I
knew that you could make a success of it. I knew that you could go
and take charge of the ranch, and put the investment on a paying
basis; which is a lot better than just leaving that money in the
bank, drawing four and a half per cent. And I’ll go on with the
milling company until the ranch is on its feet. My salary can go
into what improvements are necessary. It’s an ideal combination, I
think.”

She must have felt another argument coming to speech behind Gary’s
compressed lips; for she added, with a squared chin to give the
statement force,

“This isn’t threatening--a threat is always a sign of conscious
weakness. I merely wish to make the statement that unless you go
over and take charge of the Johnnywater ranch, I shall go myself. I
absolutely _refuse_ to sell. I don’t know anything about running a
ranch, and I was never on a horse in my life, so I’d undoubtedly
make a beautiful mess of it. But I should have to tackle it, just
the same; because I really can’t afford to positively throw away
five thousand dollars, you know. I should have to make some attempt
to save it, at least. When I failed--as I probably should--I’d have to
go away somewhere and get a job I hated, and develop into a sour old
maid. Because, Gary, if you flatly refused to take charge over
there, as you _threaten_ to do, we certainly couldn’t marry and
expect to live together happily with Johnnywater ranch as a skeleton
in our closet.

“So that’s where I stand, Gary. Naturally, the prospect doesn’t
appeal to you at this moment. You’re sitting here in a big,
overstuffed chair, fed on good things, with a comfy cushion behind
your shoulders and a shaded light over your head. You look very
handsome indeed--and you know it just as well as I do. You are
perfectly aware of the fact that this would make a stunning close-up
of you--with the camera set to show your profile and that
heart-disturbing wave over your right temple.

“Just at this minute you don’t particularly care about sitting on a
wooden chair in a cabin away out in the wilderness, hearing coyotes
howl on a hill and your saddle horses champing hay in a sod-roofed
stable, and you thinking how it’s miles to the nearest neighbor--and
an audience! You’ve reached the point, Gary, where a little mental
surgery is absolutely necessary to your future mental health. I can
see that your soul is beginning to show symptoms of going a tiny bit
flabby. And I simply _loathe_ flabby-souled men with handsome faces
and shoulders as broad as yours!”

That was like jabbing Gary in the back with a hatpin. He sat up with
a jerk.

“Flabby-souled! Good Lord, Pat! Why pile up the insults? This is
getting good, I must say!” He leaned back in the chair again, the
first effect of the jab having passed. “I can stand all this
knocking the movie game--I’m used to it, heck knows. I might just
point out, however, that making a living by expressing the emotions
of men in stories is no worse than pounding a typewriter for a
living. What’s the difference whether you sell your profile or your
fingers? And what do you think----”

“I think it’s ten o’clock, Gary Marshall, and I’ve said what I have
to say and there’s no argument, because I simply won’t argue. I
suppose you’ll need sleep if you still have to be at the studio at
seven o’clock in the morning so that you can get into your painted
eyebrows and painted eyelashes and painted lips for the day’s
smirk.”

Gary heaved himself out of his chair and reached for his hat,
forgetting to observe subconsciously how effectively he did it.
Patricia’s mental surgery had driven the lance deep into his pride
and self-esteem, which in a handsome young man of twenty-four is
quite as sensitive to pain as an eyeball. Patricia had omitted the
mental anesthetic of a little flattery, and she had twisted the
knife sickeningly. Painted eyelashes and painted lips nauseated Gary
quite suddenly; but scarcely more than did the thought of that ranch
of a hundred cattle in a Nevada desert, which Patricia had beggared
herself to buy.

“Well, good night, Pat. I must be going. Awfully pleasant
evening--great little dinner and all that. I wish you all kinds of
luck with your cattle ranch. ’Bye.”

Patricia did not believe that he would go like that. She thought he
was merely bluffing. She did not so much as move a finger until he
had shut the door rather decisively behind him and she heard his
feet striking firmly on the cement walk that led to the street.

A slight chill of foreboding quivered along her spine as the
footsteps sounded fainter and fainter down the pavement. She had
known Gary Marshall for three years and had worn a half-carat
diamond for six months. She had argued with him for hours; they had
quarreled furiously at times, and he had registered anger,
indignation, arrogance and hurt pride in several effective forms.
But she had never before seen him behave in just this manner.

Of course he would hate that little slam of hers about the paint and
the profile, she told herself hearteningly. She had struck
deliberately at his pride and his vanity, though in justice she was
compelled to confess to herself that Gary had very little vanity for
a man so good-looking as he was. She had wanted him to hate what she
said, so that he would be forced to give up the movie life which she
hated. Still, his sudden going startled her considerably.

It occurred to her later that he had absent-mindedly carried off her
papers. She remembered how he had stuffed them into his coat
pocket--just as if they were his and didn’t amount to much
anyway--while the argument was going on. Well, since he had taken
them away with him he would have to return them, no matter how mad
he was; and in the meantime it might do him good to read them over
again. He couldn’t help seeing how she had burned her financial
bridges behind her--for his sake.

Patricia brushed her eyes impatiently with her fingers and sighed.
In a moment she pinned on an apron and attacked the dinner dishes
savagely, wondering why women are such fools as to fall in love with
a man, and then worry themselves into wrinkles over his
shortcomings. Six months ago, Gary Marshall had not owned a fault to
his name. Now, her whole heart was set upon eradicating faults which
she had discovered.

“He shall _not_ be spoiled--if I have to quarrel with him every day!
There’s something more to him than that mop of wavy brown hair that
won’t behave, and those straight eyebrows that won’t behave either,
but actually _talk_ at you--and those eyes---- That darned leading girl
can’t make _me_ believe it’s all acting, when she rolls her eyes up
at him and snuggles against his shoulder. That’s _my_ shoulder! And
Gary says selling your profile is like selling your fingers! It
might be--if the boss bought my fingers to _kiss_! And I don’t care!
It was positively indecent, the way Gary kissed that girl in his
last picture. If he wasn’t such a dear----”

Patricia snuffled a bit while she scraped chicken gravy off a plate.
Gary’s plate. “Let him sulk. He’ll come back when he cools off. And
he’ll _have_ to give in and go to Nevada. He’ll never see me lose
five thousand dollars. And those nasty little movie queens can find
somebody else to roll up their eyes at. Oh, darn!”




                            CHAPTER FOUR

                      GARY GOES ON THE WARPATH


One thing which a motion-picture actor may not do and retain the
tolerance of any one who knows him is to stop work in the middle of
a picture. If there is an unforgivable sin in the movie world, that
is it. Nevertheless, even sins called unforgivable may be condoned
in certain circumstances; even the most stringent rules may be
broken now and then, or bent to meet an individual need.

Gary spent a sleepless night wondering how he might with impunity
commit the unforgivable sin. In spite of his anger at Patricia and
his sense of her injustice, certain words of hers rankled in a way
that would have pleased Patricia immensely, had she known it.

He rode out to the studio one car earlier than usual, and went
straight to the little cubbyhole of a dressing room to put on his
make-up as Chief Eagle Eye. Such was the force of Patricia’s speech
that Gary swore vaguely, at nothing in particular, while he painted
his eyebrows, lashes and lips, and streaked the vermilion war paint
down his cheeks. He scrubbed the copper-colored powder into the
grease paint on his arms and chest, still swearing softly and
steadily in a monotonous undertone that sounded, ten feet away, like
a monk mumbling over his beads.

With the help of a fellow actor he became a noble red man from the
scalp lock to his waist, got into fringed buckskin leggings,
lavishly feathered war bonnet, some imitation elk-tooth necklaces
and beaded moccasins. Then, with his quiver full of arrows (poisoned
in the sub-titles) slung over his painted shoulders, and the mighty
bow of Chief Eagle Eye in his hand, Gary stalked out into the lot in
search of the director, Mills.

When one knows his director personally as a friend, one may, if he
is a coming young star and not too insufferably aware of his
starlike qualities, accomplish much in the way of emergency
revisions of story and stringent rules.

Wherefore, to the future amazement of the author, Chief Eagle Eye
that day died three different deaths, close up in front of two
grinding cameras; though Chief Eagle Eye had not been expected to
die at all in the picture. The director stood just behind the
camera, his megaphone under his arm, his hands on his hips, his hat
on the back of his head and a grin on his perspiring face.

“Thattaboy, Gary! Just sag at the knees and go down slowly, as you
try to draw the bow. That’s it--try to get up--well, that’s good
business, trying to shoot from the ground! Now try to heave yourself
up again--just lift your body, like your legs is paralyzed--shot in
the back, maybe. All right--that’s great stuff. Now rouse yourself
with one last effort--lift your head and chant the death song! Gulp,
man!

“Run in there, Bill--you’re horrified. Try to lift him up and drag
him back out of danger. Say! Wince, man, like you’re shot through
the lungs--no, _I meant Gary_!--well, damn it, let it go--but
how-the-hell-do-you-expect-to-drag-a-man-off-when-you’ve-got-a-slug-in-your-_lungs_?
You acted like some one had stuck you with a pin! Git outa the
scene--Gary’s doing the dying, you ain’t!---- _Cut_--we’ll have to do
that over. A kid four years old would never stand for that damfool
play.

“Now, Gary, try that again. Keep that business with the bow. And try
and get that same vindictive look--you know, with your lips drawn
back while you’re trying to bend the bow and let fly one last arrow.
This time you die alone. Can’t have a death scene like that gummed
up by a boob like Bill lopin’ in and actin’ like he’d sat on a
bee--all right--come in--_camera_----

“That’s fine--now take your time, take your time--now, as the bow
sags--you’re growing weaker--rouse yourself and chant your death song!
That’s the stuff! Lift your head--turn it so your profile shows”
(Gary swore without moving his lips “--hold that, while you raise
your hand palm out--peace greeting to your ancestors you see in the
clouds! _Great!_ H-o-o-l-d
it--one--two--three--now-go-slack-all-at-once----_Cut!_”

Gary picked himself up, took off his war bonnet and laid it on a
rock, reached into his wampum belt and produced a sack of Bull
Durham and a book of papers. The director came over and sat down
beside him, accepting the cigarette Gary had just rolled.

“Great scene, Gary. By gosh, that ought to get over big. When you
get back, call me up right away, will you? I ought to know something
definite next week, at the latest. Try and be here when Cohen gets
here; I want you to meet him. By gosh, it’s a crime not to give you
a feature company. Well, have Mack drive you back in my car. You
haven’t any too much time.”

That’s what it means to have the director for your friend. He can
draw out your scenes and keep you working many an extra week if you
are hard up, or he can kill you off on short notice and let you go,
if you happen to have urgent business elsewhere; and must travel
from Toponga Cañon to the studio, take off your make-up--an ungodly,
messy make-up in this case--pack a suit case, buy a ticket and catch
the eight o’clock train that evening.

Gary, having died with much dignity and a magnificent profile in
full view of future weeping audiences, was free from further
responsibility toward the company and could go where he did not
please. Which, of course, was Tonopah.

He was just boyish enough in his anger, hurt enough in his man’s
pride, to go without another word to Patricia. Flabby-souled, hunh?
Painted eyebrows, painted lashes, painted lips--golly grandma! Pat
surely could take the hide off a man, and smile while she did it!

He meant to take that Power of Attorney she had so naïvely placed in
his hands, and work it for all there was in it. He meant to sell
that gold brick of a “stock ranch” Waddell had worked off on her,
and lick Waddell and the two men who had signed affidavits for him.
He meant to go back, then, and give Pat her money, and tell her for
the Lord’s sake to have a little sense, and put her five thousand
dollars in a trust fund, where she couldn’t get hold of it for the
first faker that came along and held out his hand. After that--Gary
was not sure what he would do. He was still very angry with
Patricia; but after he had asserted his masculine authority and
proved to her that the female of our species is less intelligent
than the male, it is barely possible that he might forgive the girl.




                            CHAPTER FIVE

                    GARY DOES A LITTLE SLEUTHING


Tonopah as a mining town appealed strongly to Gary’s love of the
picturesque. Tonopah is a hilly little town, with a mine in its very
middle, and with narrow, crooked streets that slope steeply and take
sharp turnings. Houses perched on knobs of barren, red earth, or
clung precariously to steep hillsides. The courthouse, a modern,
cement building with broad steps flanked by pillars, stood with
aloof dignity upon a hill that made Gary puff a little in the
climbing.

On the courthouse steps he finished his cigarette before going
inside, and stood gazing at the town below him and at the barren
buttes beyond. As far as he could see, the world was a forbidding,
sterile world; unfriendly, inhospitable--a miserly world guarding
jealously the riches deep-hidden within its hills. When he tried to
visualize range cattle roaming over those hills, Gary’s lips twisted
contemptuously.

He turned and went in, his footsteps clumping down the empty,
echoing corridor to the office of the County Recorder. A
wholesome-looking girl with hair almost the color of Patricia’s rose
from before a typewriter and came forward to the counter. Her eyes
widened a bit when she looked at Gary, and the color deepened a
little in her cheeks. Perhaps she had seen Gary’s face on the screen
and remembered it pleasantly; certainly a man like Gary Marshall
walks but seldom into the Recorder’s office of any desert county
seat. Gary told her very briefly what he wanted, and the County
Recorder herself came forward to serve him.

Very obligingly she looked up all the records pertaining to
Johnnywater. Gary himself went in with her to lift the heavy record
books down from their places in the vault behind the office. The
County Recorder was thorough as well as obliging. Gary lifted
approximately a quarter of a ton of books, and came out of the vault
wiping perspiration from inside his collar and smoothing his plumage
generally after the exercise. It was a warm day in Tonopah.

Gary had not a doubt left to pin his hopes upon. The County Recorder
had looked up water rights to Johnnywater and adjacent springs, and
had made sure that Waddell had made no previous transfers to other
parties, a piece of treachery which Gary had vaguely hoped to
uncover. Patricia’s title appeared to be dishearteningly
unassailable. Gary would have been willing to spend his last dollar
in prosecuting Waddell for fraud; but apparently no such villainy
had brought Waddell within his clutches.

From the County Recorder, who had a warm, motherly personality and
was chronically homesick for Pasadena and eager to help any one who
knew the place as intimately as did Gary, he learned how great a
stranger Tonopah is to her county corners. Pat was right, he
discovered. Miles and miles of country lay all unsurveyed; a vast
area to be approached in the spirit of the pioneer who sets out to
explore a land unknown.

Roughly scaling the district on the county map which the Recorder
borrowed from the Clerk (and which Gary promptly bought when he
found that it was for sale) he decided that the water holes in the
Johnnywater district were approximately twenty to forty miles apart.

“Pat’s cows will have to pack canteens where village bossies wear
bells on their lavallieres,” Gary grinned to the County Recorder.
“Calves are probably taboo in the best bovine circles of
Nevada--unless they learn to ride to water on their mammas’ backs,
like baby toads.”

The Recorder smiled at him somewhat wistfully. “You remind me of my
son in Pasadena,” she said. “He always joked over the drawbacks. I
wish you were going to be within riding distance of here; I’ve an
extra room that I’d love to have you use sometimes. But--” she
sighed, “--you’ll probably never make the trip over here unless you
come the roundabout way on the train, to record something. And the
mail is much more convenient, of course. What few prospectors record
mining claims in that district nearly always send them by mail, I’ve
noticed. In all the time I’ve been in office, this Mr. Waddell is
the only man from that part of the county who came here personally.
He said he had other business here, I remember, and intended going
on East.”

“So Waddell went East, did he?” Gary looked up from the map. “He’s
already gone, I suppose.”

“I suppose so. I remember he said he was going to England to visit
his old home. His health was bad, I imagine; I noticed he looked
thin and worried, and his manner was very nervous.”

“It ought to be,” Gary mumbled over the map. “Isn’t there any road
at all, tapping that country from here?”

The Recorder didn’t know, but she thought the County Clerk might be
able to tell him. The County Clerk had been much longer in the
country and was in close touch with the work of the commissioners.
So Gary thanked her with his nicest manner, sent a vague smile
toward the girl with hair like Patricia’s, and went away to
interview the County Clerk.

When he left the court house Gary had a few facts firmly fixed in
his mind. He knew that Patricia’s fake cattle ranch was more
accessible to Las Vegas than to Tonopah. Furthermore, the men who
had signed the affidavits vouching for Waddell did not belong in
Tonopah, but could probably be traced from Las Vegas more easily.
And there seemed no question at all of the legality of the
transaction.

Gary next day retraced the miles halfway back to Los Angeles, waited
for long, lonesome hours in a tiny desert station for the train from
Barstow, boarded it and made a fresh start, on another railroad,
toward Patricia’s cattle ranch. So far he had no reason whatever for
optimism concerning the investment. The best he could muster was a
faint hope that some other trustful soul might be found with five
thousand dollars, no business sense whatever and a hunger for
story-book wilderness. Should such an improbable combination stray
into Gary’s presence before Patricia’s Walking X cattle all starved
to death, Gary promised himself grimly that he would stop at nothing
short of a blackjack in his efforts to sell Johnnywater. He felt
that Providence had prevailed upon Patricia to place that Power of
Attorney in his hands, and he meant to use it to the limit.

In Las Vegas, where Gary continued his inquiries, he tramped here
and there before he discovered any one who had ever heard of
Johnnywater. One man knew Waddell slightly, and another was of the
opinion that the two who had made affidavit for Waddell must live
somewhere in the desert. This man suggested that Gary should stick
around town until they came in for supplies or something. Gary
snorted at that advice and continued wandering here and there,
asking questions of garage men and street loiterers who had what he
called the earmarks of the desert. One of these interrupted himself
in the middle of a sentence, spat into the gutter and pointed.

“There’s one of ’em, now. That’s Monty Girard just turned the corner
by the hotel. When he lights som’eres, you can talk to ’im. Like as
not you can ride out with ’im to camp, if you got the nerve. Ain’t
many that has. I tried ridin’ with ’im once for a mile, down here to
the dairy, and I sure as hell feel the effects of it yet. Give me a
crick in the back I never _will_ git over. I’d ruther board a raw
bronk any day than get in that Ford uh his’n. You go speak to Monty,
mister. He can tell yuh more about what you want to know than any
man in Vegas, I reckon.”

Gary watched the man in the Ford go rattling past, pull up to the
sidewalk in the next block and stop. He sauntered toward the spot.
It was a day for sauntering and for seeking the shady side of the
street; Monty Girard was leaving the post-office with a canvas bag
in his hand when Gary met him. Gary was not in the mood for much
ceremony. He stopped Girard in the middle of the sidewalk.

“I believe you signed an affidavit for a man named Waddell, in
regard to the Johnnywater outfit. I’d like to have a few minutes’
talk with you.”

“Why, shore!” Monty Girard glanced down at the mail bag, stepped
past Gary and tossed the bag into the back of his car. “Your name’s
Connolly, I guess. Going out to Johnnywater?”

Gary had not thought of friendliness toward any man connected with
the Johnnywater transaction; yet friendliness was the keynote of
Monty Girard’s personality. The squinty wrinkles around his young
blue eyes were not all caused by facing wind and sun; laughter lines
were there, plenty of them. His voice, that suggested years spent in
the southwest where men speak in easy, drawling tones, caressing in
their softness, was friendliness itself; as was his quick smile,
disclosing teeth as white and even as Gary himself could boast. In
spite of himself, Gary’s hostility lost its edge.

“If you haven’t got your own car, you’re welcome to ride out with
me, Mr. Connolly. I’m going within fifteen miles of Johnnywater, and
I can take yuh-all over as well as not.”

Gary grinned relentingly.

“I came over to see how much of that outfit was faked,” he said.
“I’m not the buyer, but I have full authority to act for Pat
Connolly. The deal was made rather--er--impulsively, and it is
unfortunate that the buyer was unable to get over and see the place
before closing the deal. Waddell has gone East, I hear. But you
swore that things were as represented in the deal.”

Monty Girard gave him one searching look from under the brim of his
dusty, gray Stetson range hat. He looked down, absently reaching out
a booted foot to shake a front wheel of his Ford.

“What I swore to was straight goods, all right. I figured that if
Mr. Connolly was satisfied with the deal as it stood, it was no
put-in of mine. I don’t know of a thing that was misrepresented. Not
if a man knows this country and knows what to expect.”

“Now we’re coming to the point, I think.” Gary felt oddly that here
was a man who would understand his position and perhaps sympathize
with the task he had set himself to accomplish.

Monty Girard hesitated, looking at him inquiringly before he glanced
up and down the street.

“Say, mister----”

“Marshall. Pardon me. Gary Marshall’s my name.”

“Well, Mr. Marshall, it’s like this. I’m just in off a
hundred-and-forty-mile drive--and it shore is hot from here to
Indian. If you don’t mind helpin’ me hunt a cool spot, we’ll have a
near beer or something and talk this thing over.”

Over their near beer Gary found the man he had intended to lick even
more disarming. Monty Girard kept looking at him with covert
intentness.

“Gary Marshall, you said your name was? I reckon yuh-all must be the
fellow that done that whirlwind riding in a picture I saw, last time
I was in town. I forget the name of it--but I shore don’t forget the
way yuh-all handled your hawse. A range rider gets mighty particular
about the riding he sees in the movies. I’ll bet yuh-all never
learned in no riding school, Mr. Marshall; I’ll bet another glass uh
near beer you’ve rode the range some yourself.”

“I was born on the Pecos,” grinned Gary. “My old man had horses
mostly; some cattle, of course. I left when I was eighteen.”

“And that shore ain’t been so many years it’d take all day to count
’em. Well, I shore didn’t expect to meet that fellow I saw in the
picture, on my next trip in to town.”

Gary drank his beer slowly, studying Monty Girard. Somehow he got
the impression that Girard did not welcome the subject of
Johnnywater. Yet he had seemed sincere enough in declaring that he
had told the truth in the affidavit. Gary pushed the glass out of
his way and folded his arms on the table, leaning a little forward.

“Just where’s the joker in this Johnnywater deal?” he asked
abruptly. “There is one, isn’t there?”

“Wel-l--you’re going out there, ain’t yuh?” Monty Girard hesitated
oddly. “I don’t know as there’s any joker at all; not in the way
yuh-all mean. It’s a long ways off from the railroad, but Waddy
wrote that in his letter to Mr. Connolly. I know that for a fact,
because I read the letter. And uh course, cattle is down now--a man’s
scarcely got a livin’ chance runnin’ cattle, the way the market is
now. But Mr. Connolly must uh known all that. The price Waddy put on
the outfit could uh told ’im that, if nothin’ else. I dunno as Waddy
overcharged Connolly for the place. All depends on whether a man
wanted to buy. Connolly did--I reckon. Leastways, he bought.”

“Yes, I see your point. The deal was all right if a man wanted the
place. But you’re wondering what kind of a man would _want_ the
place. It’s a lemon of some kind. That’s about it--stop me if I’m
wrong.”

Monty Girard laughed dryly. “I’m mounted on a tired hawse, Mr.
Marshall. I couldn’t stop a run-down clock, and that’s a fact.”

“Well, I think I’ll go out with you if you don’t mind. I suppose
I’ll need blankets and a few supplies.”

“Well, I reckon Waddy left pretty much everything he had out there.
Soon as he got his money at the bank he fanned it for Merrie
England. He just barely had a suit case when I saw him last. I
reckon maybe yuh-all better take out a few things you’d hate to get
along without. Flour, bacon an’ beans you can pretty well count on.
And, unless yuh-all want to take blankets of your own, you needn’t
be afraid to use Waddy’s. Frank Waddell was shore a nice, clean
housekeeper, and a nice man all around, only--kinda nervous.”

Gary listened, taking it all in. His eyes, trained to the profession
of putting emotions, thoughts, even things meant to be hidden, into
the human face, so that all might see and read the meaning, watched
Monty’s face as he talked.

“Just what _is_ it that made Waddell sell the Johnnywater ranch and
clear out of the country?” he asked. “Just what makes you hate the
place?”

Monty sent him a startled look.

“I never said I hated it,” he parried. “It ain’t anything to me, one
way or the other.”

“You _do_ hate it. Why?”

“Wel-l--I dunno as I can hardly say. A man’s got feelin’s sometimes
he can’t hardly put into words. Lots of places in this country has
got histories, Mr. Marshall. I guess--Johnnywater’s all right. Waddy
was a kind of nervous cuss.”




                            CHAPTER SIX

                            JOHNNYWATER


Please do not picture a level waste of sand and scant sagebrush when
you think of the Nevada desert. Barren it is, where water is not to
be had; but level it is not, except where the beds of ancient lakes
lie bare and yellow, hard as cement except when the rains soften the
surface to sticky, red mud. Long mesas, with scattering clumps of
greasewood and sage, lie gently tilted between sporadic mountain
ranges streaked and scalloped with the varying rock formations that
tell how long the world was in the making. Here and there larger
mountains lift desolate barriers against the sky. Seen close, any
part of the scene is somber at best. But distance softens the
forbidding bleakness of the uplifted hummocks and crags, and paints
them with magic lights and shadows.

In the higher altitudes the mountains are less bare; more friendly
in a grim, uncompromising way and grown over scantily sometimes with
piñons and juniper and the flat-leafed cedar whose wood is never too
wet to burn with a great snapping, and is as likely to char
temperamentally and go black. In these great buttes secret stores of
water send little searching streams out through crevices among the
rocks. Each cañon has its spring hidden away somewhere, and the
water is clear and cold, stealing away from the melting snows on
top.

A rough, little-used trail barely passable to a car, led into
Johnnywater Cañon. To Gary the place was a distinct relief from the
barren land that stretched between this butte and Las Vegas. The
green of the piñon trees was refreshing as cool water on a hot day.
The tiny stream that trickled over water-worn rocks in the little
gully beside the cabin astonished him. For hours he had ridden
through the parched waste land. For hours Monty had talked of scanty
grazing and little water. In spite of himself, Gary’s eyes
brightened with pleasure when he first looked upon Johnnywater.

The sun still shone into the cañon, though presently it would drop
behind the high shoulder of the butte. The little cabin squatting
secretively between two tall piñons looked an ideal “set” for some
border romance.

“It’s not a bad-_looking_ place,” he commented with some reluctance.
“Maybe Pat didn’t pull such a boner after all.” He climbed out of
the car and walked toward the tiny stream. “Golly grandma, what’s
that! Chickens?”

“It shore enough is--but I kinda thought the coyotes and link-cats
would of got all Waddy’s chickens. He’s been gone a week away.”

“Good heck! I thought chickens liked to partake of a little
nourishment occasionally. All the kinds I’ve met do.”

Monty laughed lazily.

“Oh, Waddell he fixed a kind of feed box for ’em that lets down a
few grains at a time. I reckon he filled it up before he went.”
Monty sent seeking glances into the undergrowth along the creek.
“There ought to be a couple of shoats around here, too. And a cat.”

Gary went into the cabin and stood looking around him curiously.
Some attempt had been made to furnish the place with a few comforts,
but the attempt had evidently perished of inanition. Flowered calico
would have hidden the cubboard decently, had the curtains been
clean. A box tacked against the wall held magazines and a book or
two. The bunk was draped around the edge with the same flowered
calico, with an old shoe protruding from beneath. One square window
with a single sash looked down upon the little creek. Its twin
looked down the cañon. Cast-off garments hung against the wall at
the foot of the bunk.

“Great interior set for a poverty scene,” Gary decided, rolling
himself a smoke. “I don’t intend to stay out on this location, you
know. I’m here to sell the damned place. What’s the quickest way to
do that--quietly? I mean, without advertising it.”

Monty Girard turned slowly and stared.

“There ain’t no quick way,” he said finally. “Waddy, he’s been
tryin’ for three months to sell it--advertisin’ in all the papers. He
was in about as much of a hurry as a man could get in--and he was
just about at the point where he was goin’ to walk off and leave it,
when this Mr. Connolly bit.”

“Bit?”

“Bought. Yuh-all must have misunderstood.”

“Either way, I don’t feature it.” Gary lighted the cigarette
thoughtfully. “It looks a pretty fair place--for a hermit, or a man
that’s hiding out. What did this man Waddell buy it for? And how
long ago?”

“I reckon he thought he wanted it. A couple of years ago, I reckon
he aimed to settle down here.”

“Well, why the heck didn’t he do it then?” Gary sat down on the edge
of the table and folded his arms. “Spread ’em out on the table,
Monty. I won’t shoot.”

“You say yuh-all don’t aim to stay here?” Monty leveled a glance at
him.

“Not any longer than it takes to sell out. You look like a live
wire. I’m going to appoint you my agent and see if you can’t rustle
a buyer--_quick_. I’ll go back with you, when you go. That will be in
a couple of days, you said. So tell me the joke, Monty. I asked you
in town, yesterday, and you didn’t do it.”

“I can’t say as I rightly know. I reckon maybe it was Waddy himself
that was wrong, and nothin’ the matter with Johnnywater. He got
along all right here for awhile--but I guess he got kind of edgey,
livin’ alone here so much. He got to kinda imaginin’ he was seein’
things. And along last spring he got to hearin’ ’em. So then he
wanted to sell out right away quick.”

“Oh.” Gary sounded rather crestfallen. “A nut, hunh? I thought there
was something faked about the place itself.”

“Yuh-all read what I swore to,” Monty reminded him with a touch of
dignity. “I wouldn’t help nobody fake a deal; not even a fellow in
the shape Waddy was in. He had his money in here, and he had to git
it out before he could leave. At that, he sold out at a loss. This
is a right nice little place, Mr. Marshall, for anybody that wants a
place like this.”

“But you don’t, hunh? Couldn’t you buy the cattle?”

Monty shook his head regretfully.

“No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t buy out the Walkin’ X brand now at a
dime a head, and that’s a fact. Cattle’s away down. I’m just hangin’
on, Mr. Marshall, and that’s the case with every cattle owner in the
country. It ain’t my put-in, maybe, but if Johnnywater was mine, I
know what I’d do.”

“Well, let’s hear it.”

“Well, I’d fix things up best I could around here, and hang on to it
awhile till times git better. Waddell asked seven thousand at
first--and it’d be worth that if there was any market at all for
cattle. Up the cañon here a piece, Waddy’s got as pretty a patch of
alfalfa as you’d want to look at. And a patch of potatoes that was
doing fine, the last I see of ’em. He was aimin’ to put the whole
cañon bottom into alfalfa; and that’s worth money in this country,
now I’m tellin’ yuh.

“Yuh see, Johnnywater’s different from most of these cañons. It’s
wider and bigger every way, and it’s got more water. A man could
hang on to his cattle, and by kinda pettin’ ’em along through the
winter, and herdin’ ’em away from the loco patches in the spring, he
could make this a good payin’ investment. That’s what I reckoned
this Mr. Connolly aimed to do.”

“Pat Connolly bought this place,” said Gary shortly, “because it
sounded nice in the ad. It was a nut idea from the start. I’m here
to try and fish the five thousand up out of the hole.”

“Well, I reckon maybe that same ad would sound good to somebody
else,” Monty ventured.

But Gary shook his head. Since Patricia made up her mailing lists
from the newspapers, Gary emphatically did not want to advertise.

They ended by cooking late dinner together, frying six fresh eggs
which Gary discovered in the little dugout chicken house. After
which Monty Girard unloaded what supplies Gary had brought, smoked a
farewell cigarette and drove away to his own camp twenty miles
farther on.

“It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” Gary observed tritely. “I
might get a kick out of this, if Pat hadn’t been so darned fresh
about the movies, and so _gol_-darned stubborn about me camping here
and doing the long-haired hick act for the rest of my life.”

He went away then to hunt for the chicken feed; found it in another
dugout cellar, and fed the chickens that came running hysterically
out of the bushes when Gary rattled the pan and called them as he
had seen gingham-gowned ingénues do in rural scenes.

“Golly grandma! If I could catch a young duck now, and cuddle it up
under my dimpled chin, I’d make a swell Mary Pickford close-up,” he
chuckled to himself. “Down on the farm, by gum! ‘_Left the town to
have some fun, and I’m a goin’ to have some, yes, by gum!_’ Pat
Connolly’s going to do some plain and fancy knuckling under, to pay
for this stunt. Gosh, and there’s the cat!”




                           CHAPTER SEVEN

                             THE VOICE


Gary got up from his chair three separate times to remove the lamp
chimney (using a white cambric handkerchief to protect his manicured
fingers from blisters). In the beginning, the flame had flourished
two sharp points that smoked the chimney. After the third clipping
it had three, and one of them was like a signal smoke in miniature.

Gary eyed it disgustedly while he filled his pipe. Smoking a pipe
while he dreamed in the fire glow had made so popular a close-up of
Gary Marshall that he had used the pose in his professional
photographs and had, to date, autographed and mailed sixty-seven of
the firelight profiles to sixty-seven eager fans. Nevertheless, he
forgot that he had a profile now.

“Hunh! Pat ought to get a real kick out of this scene,” he snorted.
“Interior cabin--sitting alone--lifts head, listens. Sub-title: THE
MOURNFUL HOWL OF THE COYOTE COMES TO HIM MINGLED WITH THE SOUND OF
HORSES CHAMPING HAY. Only there ain’t no horses, and if there were
they wouldn’t champ. Only steeds do that--in hifalutin’, gol-darned
poetry. Pat ought to take a whirl at this Johnnywater stuff,
herself. About twenty-four hours of it. It might make a different
girl of her. Give her some sense, maybe.”

Slowly his pessimistic glance went around the meager rectangle of
the cabin. Think of a man holding up here for two years! “No wonder
he went out of here a nut,” was Gary’s brief summary. “And it’s my
opinion the man’s judgment had begun to skid when he bought the
place. Good Lord! Why, he’d probably _seen_ it before he paid down
the money! He was a tough bird, if you ask me, to hang on for two
years.”

Gary’s pipe, on its way to his lips that had just blown out a small,
billowy cloud of smoke, stopped halfway and was held there
motionless. His whole face stilled as his mind concentrated upon a
sound.

“That’s no coyote,” he muttered, and listened again.

He got up and opened the door, leaning out into the starlight, one
hand pressed against the rough-hewn logs of cedar. He listened
again, turning his head slightly to determine the location of the
sound.

A wind from the west, flowing over the towering butte, shivered the
tops of the piñons. A gust it was, that died as it had been born,
suddenly. As it lessened Gary heard distinctly a far-off, faint
halloo.

“Hello!” he called back, stepping down upon the flat rock that
formed the doorstep. “What’s wanted? _Hello!_”

“’ll-_oo-ooh_!” cried the voice, from somewhere beyond the creek.

“_Hello!_” shouted Gary, megaphoning with his cupped palms. Some one
was lost, probably, and had seen the light in the cabin.

Again the voice replied. It seemed to Gary that the man was shouting
some message; but distance blurred the words so that only the
cadence of the voice reached his ears.

Gary cupped his hands again and replied. He went down to the little
creek and stood there listening, shouting now and then encouragement
to the man on the bluff. He must be on the bluff, or at least far up
its precipitous slope; for beyond the stream the trees gave way to
bowlders, and above the bowlders rough outcroppings in ledge
formation made steep scrambling. The top of the bluff was guarded by
a huge rampart of solid rock; a “rim-rock” formation common
throughout the desert States.

Gary tried to visualize that sheer wall of rock as he had seen it
before dark. Without giving it much thought at the time, he somehow
took it for granted that the cañon wall on that side was absolutely
impassable. Still, there might be a trail to the top through some
crevice invisible from below.

“Gosh, if a fellow’s hurt up there, I’ll have a merry heck of a time
getting him down in the dark!” Gary told the mottled cat with one
blue eye, that rubbed against his ankle. “There ought to be a
lantern hanging somewhere. Never saw an interior cabin set in my
life where a tin lantern didn’t register.”

He found the lantern, but it had no wick. Gary spent a profane
fifteen minutes holding the smoky lamp in one hand and searching a
high, littered shelf with the other, looking for lantern wicks. That
he actually found one at last, tucked into a tomato can among some
bolts and nails, seemed little short of a miracle. He had to rob the
lamp of oil, because he did not know where Waddell kept his supply.
Then the wick was a shade too wide, and Gary was obliged to force it
through the burner with the point of his knife. When he finally got
the lantern burning it was more distressingly horned than the lamp,
and the globe immediately began an eclipse on one side. But Gary
only swore and wiped his smeared fingers down his trousers,
man-fashion.

Almost constantly the voice had called to him from the bluff. Gary
went out and shouted that he was coming, and crossed the creek, the
mottled cat at his heels. Gary had never been friendly toward cats,
by the way; but isolation makes strange companions sometimes between
animals and men, and Gary had already made friends with this one. He
even waited, holding the lantern while the cat jumped the creek,
forgetting it could see in the dark.

He made his way through the bushy growth beyond the stream, and
scrambled upon a huge bowlder, from where he could see the face of
the bluff. He stood there listening, straining his eyes into the
dark.

The voice called to him twice. A wailing, anxious tone that carried
a weight of trouble.

Gary once more megaphoned that he was coming, and began to climb the
bluff, the smoking lantern swinging in his hands (a mere pin-prick
of light in the surrounding darkness), the mottled cat following him
in a series of leaps and quick rushes.

The lamp had gone out when Gary returned to the cabin. The lantern
was still smoking vilely, with fumes of gas. Gary put the lantern on
the table and sat down, wiping his face and neck with his
handkerchief. The mottled cat crouched and sprang to his knee, where
it dug claws to hang on and began purring immediately.

For an hour Gary had not heard the voice, and he was worried. Some
one must be hurt, up there in the rocks. But until daylight came to
his assistance Gary was absolutely helpless. He looked at his watch
and saw that he had been stumbling over rocks and climbing between
bowlders until nearly midnight. He had shouted, too, until his
throat ached.

The man had answered, but Gary had never been able to distinguish
any words. Always there had been that wailing note of pain, with now
and then a muffled shriek at the end of the call. High up somewhere
on the bluff he was, but Gary had never seemed able to come very
close. There were too many ledges intervening. And at last the voice
had grown fainter, until finally it ceased altogether.

“We’ll have to get out at daylight and hunt him up,” he said to the
cat. “I can’t feature this mountain goat stuff in the dark. But
nobody could sit still and listen to that guy hollering for help.
It’ll be a heck of a note if he’s broken a leg or something. That’s
about what happened--simplest thing in the world to break legs in
that rock pile.”

He stroked the cat absent-mindedly, holding himself motionless now
and then while he listened. After awhile he put the cat down and
went to bed, his thoughts clinging to the man who had called down
from the bluff.




                           CHAPTER EIGHT

                      “THE CAT’S GOT ’EM TOO!”


Monty Girard did not return on the second day. A full week dragged
itself minute by minute across Johnnywater; days began suddenly with
a spurt of color over the eastern rim of the cañon, snailed it
across the blue space above and after an interminable period ended
in a red riot beyond the western rim, letting night flow into the
cañon.

The first day went quickly enough. At sunrise Gary and the spotted
cat searched the bluff where the voice had called beseechingly in
the night. Gary carried a two-quart canteen filled with water,
knowing that a man who has lain injured all night will have a
maddening thirst by morning.

At noon he sat on a bowlder just under the rim rock, helped himself
to a long drink from the canteen and stared disheartened down into
the cañon. He was hoarse from shouting, but not so much as a whisper
had he got in reply. The spotted cat had given up in disgust long
ago and gone off on business of her own. He was willing to swear
that he had covered every foot of that hillside, and probably he
had, very nearly. And he had found no trace of any man, living or
dead.

He slid off the bowlder and went picking his way down the steep
bluff to the cabin. A humane impulse had sent him out as soon as he
opened his eyes that morning. He was half-starved and more nearly
exhausted than he had ever been after a hard day’s work doing
“stunts” for the movies.

Now and then he looked up the cañon to where Pat’s alfalfa field
lay, a sumptuous patch of deep green, like an emerald set deep in
some dull metal. Nearer the cabin were the rows of potato plants
which Monty had mentioned. There was a corral, too, just beyond a
clump of trees behind the cabin. And from the head of the cañon to
the mouth he could glimpse here and there the twisted thread of
Johnnywater Creek.

By the time he had cooked and eaten breakfast and lunch together,
and had fed the chickens, and located the whereabouts of two pigs
whose grunting came to him from the bushes, the afternoon was well
gone. And, on the whole, it had not gone so badly; except that he
rather resented his fruitless search for a man who had shouted in
the night and then disappeared.

“Drunk, maybe,” Gary finally dismissed the subject from his mind.
“He sure as heck couldn’t be hurt so bad, if he was able to get out
of the cañon in the dark. It’ll be something to tell about when I
get back. I’ll ask Monty what he thinks about it, to-morrow.”

But he didn’t ask Monty. He rather expected that Monty would be
along rather early in the forenoon, and he was ready by nine
o’clock. He had filled the feed box for the chickens, had given the
cat a farewell talk, and locked his pyjamas into his suit case. The
rest of the day he spent in waiting.

One bit of movie training helped him now. By the time an actor has
reached stardom, he knows how to sit and wait; doing nothing,
thinking nothing in particular, gossiping a little, perhaps, but
waiting always. Gary had many a time sat around killing time for
hours at a stretch, that he might work for fifteen minutes on a
scene. Waiting for Monty, then, was not such a hardship that second
day.

But when the third day and the fourth and the fifth had gone, Gary
began to register impatience and concern. He walked down the cañon
and out upon the trail as far as was practical, half hoping that he
might see some chance traveler. But the whole world seemed to be
empty and waiting, with a still patience that placed no limit upon
its quiescent expectancy.

Steeped in that desert magic which makes beautiful all distances,
the big land shamed him somehow and sent him back into the cañon in
a better frame of mind. Any trivial thing could have delayed Monty
Girard. It was slightly comforting to know that the big world out
there was smiling under the sky.

He was sitting at supper just after sundown that evening when a
strange thing happened. The spotted cat--Gary by this time was
calling her Faith because of her trustful disposition--was squatted
on all fours beside the table, industriously lapping a saucer of
condensed milk. For the want of more human companionship, Gary was
joking with the cat, which responded now and then with a slight wave
of her tail.

“You’re the only thing I like about the whole darn outfit,” Gary was
saying. “I don’t remember your being mentioned in the deed, so I
think I’ll just swipe you when I go. As a souvenir. Only I don’t
know what the heck I’ll do with you--give you to Pat, I reckon.”

Faith looked up with an amiable mew, but she did not look at Gary.
Had a person been standing near the foot of the bunk six feet or so
away, she would have been looking up into his face. She went back to
lapping her milk, but Gary eyed her curiously. There was something
odd about that look and that friendly little remark of hers, but for
the life of him he could not explain just what was wrong.

Once again, while Gary watched her, the cat looked up at that
invisible point the height of a man from the floor. She finished her
milk, licked her lips satisfiedly and got up. She glanced at Gary,
glanced again toward the bunk, arched her back, walked deliberately
over and curved her body against nothing at all, purring her
contented best.

Gary watched her with a contraction of the scalp on the back of his
head. Faith stood there for a moment rubbing her side against empty
air, looked up inquiringly, came over and jumped upon Gary’s knee.
There she tucked her feet under her, folded her tail close to her
curiously mottled fur and settled herself for a good, purry little
nap. Now and then she opened her eyes to look toward the bunk, her
manner indifferent.

“The cat’s got ’em, too,” Gary told himself--but it is significant
that he did not speak the words aloud as he had been doing those
five days, just to combat the awful stillness of the cañon.

He stared intently toward the place where the cat had stood arching
her body and purring. There was nothing there, so far as Gary could
see. But slowly, as he stared toward the place, a mental picture
formed in his mind.

He pictured to himself a man whom he had never seen; a tall, lean
man with shoulders slightly stooped and a face seamed by rough
weather and hard living more than with the years he had lived. The
man was, Gary guessed, in his late forties. His eyes were a keen
blue, his mouth thin-lipped and firm. Gary felt that if he removed
the stained gray hat he wore, he would reveal a small bald spot on
the crown of his head. Over one eye was a jagged scar. Another
puckered the skin on his left cheek bone. He was dressed in gray
flannel shirt and khaki overalls tucked into high, laced boots.

Gary visualized him as being the man who had built this cabin. He
thought that he was picturing Waddell, and it occurred to him that
Waddell might have been mining a little in Johnnywater Cañon. The
man he was mentally visualizing seemed to be of the type of miner
who goes prospecting through the desert. And Johnnywater Cañon
certainly held mineral possibilities, if one were to judge by the
rock formation and the general look of the cañon walls.

Gary himself had once known something about minerals, his dad having
sent him to take a course in mineralogy at Denver with a view to
making of his son a respectable mining engineer. Gary had spent two
years in the school and almost two years doing field work for
practice, and had shown a certain aptitude for the profession. But
Mills, the motion-picture director, had taken a company into Arizona
where Gary was making a report on the minerals of a certain
district, and Gary had been weaned away from mines. Now, he was so
saturated in studio ideals and atmosphere that he had almost
forgotten he had ever owned another ambition than to become a star
with a company of his own.

Well, this man then--the man about whom he found himself thinking so
intently--must have found something here in the cañon. He did not
know why he believed it, but he began to think that Waddell had
found gold; though it was not, properly speaking, a gold country.
But Gary remembered to have noticed a few pieces of porphyry float
on the bluff the morning that he had spent in looking for the man
who shouted in the night. The float might easily be gold-bearing.
Gary had not examined it, since he had been absorbed in another
matter. It is only the novice who becomes excited and builds air
castles over a piece of float.

Gary turned his head abruptly and looked back, exactly as he would
have done had a man approached and stood at his shoulder. He was
conscious of a slight feeling of surprise that the man of whom he
was thinking did not stand there beside him.

“I’ll be getting ’em too, if I don’t look out,” he snorted, and
dumped the mottled cat unceremoniously on the floor.

It has been said by many that thoughts are things. Certainly Gary’s
thoughts that evening seemed live things. While he was washing the
dishes and sweeping the cabin floor, he more than once glanced up,
expecting to see the man who looked like a miner. The picture he had
conjured seemed a living personality, unseen, unheard, but
nevertheless present there in the cabin.

Gary was an essentially practical young man, not much given to
fanciful imaginings. He did not believe in anything to which one may
permissibly attach the word psychic. Imagination of a sort he had
possessed since he was a youngster, and stories he could weave with
more or less originality. He did not, therefore, run amuck in a maze
of futile conjecturing. He believed in hunches, and there his belief
stopped short, satisfied to omit explanations.

That night fell pitch black, with inky clouds pushing out over the
rim rock and a wind from the west that bellowed across the cañon and
whipped the branches of the pines near the cabin. Above the clouds
played the lightning, the glare of it seeping through between the
folds and darting across small open spaces.

Gary sat in the doorway watching the clouds with the lightning
darting through. True to his type and later training, he was
thinking what a wonderful storm scene it would make in a picture.
And then, without warning, he heard a voice shouting a loud halloo
from the bluff. Again it called, and ended with a wail of pain.

Gary started. He turned his face to the cañon side and listened,
deep lines between his eyebrows. It was almost a week since he had
heard the call, and it did not seem natural that the man should be
shouting again from the same point on the bluff. He had been so sure
that the fellow, whoever he was, had left the cañon that first
night. It was absolutely illogical that he should return without
coming near the cabin.

Gary got up and stood irresolute in the doorway. The voice was
insistent, calling again and again a summons difficult to resist.

“Hel_lo-oo-ooh_! Hel_lo-oo-ooh_!” called the voice.

Gary cupped his hands around his mouth to reply, then hesitated and
dropped them to his side. He turned to go in for the lantern and
abandoned that idea also. On that first night he had answered
repeatedly the call and had searched gropingly amongst the bowlders
and ledges. His trouble had gone for nothing, and Gary could think
of but one reason why he had failed to find the man: he believed the
man had not wanted to be found, although there was no sense in that
either. The stubborn streak in Gary dominated his actions now. He
meant to find the fellow and have it out with him. He remembered
Monty’s remark about Waddell imagining he heard things, and selling
out in a hurry, his nerves gone to pieces. Probably the man up on
the bluff could explain why Waddell left Johnnywater!

Gary crossed the creek during spurts of lightning, and made his way
cautiously up the bluff. After spending a long forenoon there he
knew his way fairly well and could negotiate ledges that had stopped
him that first night. He went carefully, making himself as
inconspicuous as possible. The voice kept shouting, with now and
then a high note that almost amounted to a shriek.

The storm broke, and Gary was drenched to the skin within five
minutes. Flashes of lightning blinded him. He stumbled back down the
bluff and reached the cabin, the storm beating upon him furiously.
As he closed the door, the voice on the bluff shrieked at him, and
Gary thought there was a mocking note in the call.




                            CHAPTER NINE

                        GARY WRITES A LETTER


“Johnnywater Cañon.

“Dear Pat:

“I take it all back. There’s a new model of cow called Walking X,
that don’t need grass. It has a special food-saving device somewhere
in its anatomy, which enables it to subsist on mountain scenery,
sagebrush and hopes. I haven’t discovered yet whether the late model
of Walking X chews a cud or merely rolls a rock under its tongue to
prevent thirst. I’m guessing it’s the rock. There’s darned little
material for cuds in the country. If I were going to stay here and
make you a cattle queen, I should ask you to get prices on gum in
carload lots.

“Yesterday I was hiking out on the desert--for exercise, my dear
girl. Can’t afford to grow flabby muscled as well as flabby souled.
Souls don’t register on the screen anyway--but it takes muscle to
throw the big heavy around in the blood-curdling scrap which occurs
usually in the fourth reel. Besides, I’m going to throw a fellow
down the bluff--when I get him located. Don’t know how big he is, as
I haven’t met the gentleman yet. It’s a cinch he hasn’t got lung
trouble though; he’s the longest-winded cuss I ever heard holler.

“He’s been trying to get fresh with me ever since I came. Picks
wild, stormy nights when a man wants to stay indoors and then gets
up on the bluff and hollers for help. First couple of nights I heard
him, I bit. But I don’t fall for that hokum any more. A man that can
holler the way he does and come back strong the next night don’t
need any assistance from me.

“I hoed your spuds to-day, Pat. Did a perfect imitation of Charlie
Ray--except that I wasn’t costumed for the part. Didn’t have no
gallus to hitch up and thereby register disgust with my job. But I
featured the sweat--a close-up of me would have looked like Gary out
in a rain. It was accidental. I was chasing Pat Connolly’s pigs,
trying to round them up and get acquainted. They headed for Pat
Connolly’s alfalfa and they went through the potato patch. There
ought to be a fence around those spuds, Pat; or else the pigs ought
to be shut up. You’re a darn shiftless ranch lady to let pigs run
loose to root up your spuds. They’re in full blossom--and don’t ask
me which I mean, pigs or potatoes. They needed a little strong-arm
work, bad. The pigs ducked out of the scene into the alfalfa--and
that sure needs cutting, too. There’s a scythe in the shed, and a
fork or two and a hay rake. If Waddell’s got horses he couldn’t have
used them much. Maybe he couldn’t afford a mowing machine, and cut
his hay with a scythe. There’s a wagon here, and a comedy hayrack.
But I can’t feature handsome Gary scything hay.

“Anyway, every darned spud blossom in the patch peeked up at me
through a jungle of weeds. That wouldn’t look good to a buyer (you
won’t get a chance to read this letter, old girl, so I don’t mind
telling you you’ve played right into my hands with that Power of
Attorney, and I’m going to sell out, if Monty Girard ever comes and
hauls me back to town). They’re not finished yet, but I can do the
rest in the morning if Monty don’t come.

“Monty Girard has plumb forgotten me, I guess. He was a friendly
cuss, too. He’s seven days overdue, and I’d get out and hunt him up,
only he forgot to leave me his address and I can’t get his ’phone
number from Information. Can’t get Information. There ain’t no
telephone. He said his camp was about twenty miles off. But I’m wise
to these desert miles. More likely it’s thirty. I tried to trail him
yesterday, but he took our back track for five miles or so, and for
all I know he may have beat it back to town. That’s not walking
distance, I’ll tell a heartless world.

“I’m stuck here until somebody comes and hauls me away. The last
house I saw was back down the road a nice little jaunt of about
sixty-five miles. Monty Girard drives his Ford like he was working
in one of those comedy chases. And it’s four hours by the watch from
that last shack to this shack--Monty Girard driving. Figure it
yourself, Pat, and guess how many afternoon calls I’ve made on my
neighbors. I’m afraid the pinto cat couldn’t walk that far, and it
would hurt her feelings if I didn’t ask her to join the party.

“Said pinto cat is a psychic. Waddell was a nut of some kind, and
the cat caught it. Seems Waddell got the habit of seeing
things--though I haven’t located any still yet--and now the cat looks
up and meows at the air, and rubs her fur against her imagination.
Got my goat the first time she did it--I admit it. I can’t say I
feature it yet, her talking and playing up to some gink I can’t see.
But I named her Faith and I’ve no kick coming, I reckon, if the eyes
of Faith looks up to things of which I kennest not.

“I’m wondering if Waddell wasn’t a tall, round-shouldered gink with
a bald spot on top of his head the size of a dollar and a half, and
a puckered scar on his cheek; a Bret Harte type, before he puts on
the mustache. I keep thinking about a guy like that, as if he
belonged here. When Faith takes one of her psychic fits, I get a
funny idea she’s trying to rub up against that kind of a man. Sounds
nutty, but heck knows I never did feature the spook stuff, and I
don’t mean I’m goofy now about it. I just keep thinking about that
fellow, and there’s times when I get a funny notion he’s standing
behind me and I’ll see him if I look around. But get this--it’s good.
_I don’t look around!_ It’s over the hills to the bug-house when a
fellow starts that boob play.

“There’s something wrong about this trick cañon, anyway. I can’t
seem to feature it. You can’t make me believe that boob up on the
bluff thinks he’s a cuckoo clock and just pops out and hollers
because he’s made that way. He’s trying to get my goat and make me
iris out of the scene. There’s going to be a real punch in the next
reel, and that guy with the big voice will be in front of it. His
head is swelled now since he’s scared Waddell out. But he’s going to
get a close-up of yours truly--and the big punch of the story.

“The other night just after dark I sneaked up the bluff as high as I
could get without making a noise so he’d hear me, and laid for him.
I was all set to cut loose with that blood-curdling Apache yell
dad’s riders used to practice when I was a kid. But he never opened
his mouth all night. Made a fool out of me, all right, losing my
sleep like that for nothing. Then the next night he started in at
sundown and hollered half the night.

“I’m overdue at the studio now, by several days. If Mills could get
that contract for me, it’s gone blooey by this time. And he can’t
get word to me or hear from me--I’m not even famous enough yet to
make good publicity out of my disappearance. Soon as Monty comes, I
intend to beat it in to Las Vegas and wire Mills. Then if there’s
nothing doing for me in pictures right now, I’ll get out and see how
good I am as a salesman.

“But I hate to let that four-flusher up here in the rocks think he’s
got the laugh on me. And that alfalfa ought to be put up, and no
mistake. The spuds need water, too. After the trusty hoe has got in
its deadly work on the weeds, a good soaking would make them look
like a million dollars. And I suppose the pigs ought to be shut up
before they root up all the spuds on the place--but then some one
would have to be here to look after them. That’s the heck of it,
Pat. When you get a place on your hands, you simply let yourself in
for a dog’s life, looking after it.

“You had a picture of me riding out at dawn after the cattle! That
shows how much you don’t know. All told there’s about fifteen head
of stock that water here at the mouth of the creek. I mean, at the
end of the creek where it flows into a big hole and forgets to flow
out again. It acts kind of tired, anyway, getting that far; no pep
to go farther. As for horses, Monty and I looked for your horses as
we came across the desert out here. There wasn’t a hoof in sight,
and Monty says they’re probably watering over at another spring
about fifteen miles from here. It’s too far to walk and drag a loop,
Pat. So your dashing Western hee-ro can’t dash. Nothing to dash on.
That’s a heck of a note, ain’t it?

“Did you ever try to make three meals fill up a day? Well, don’t.
Can’t be did. I’ve read all the magazines--the whole two. I also have
read Mr. Waddell’s complete library. One is ‘Cattle and Their
Diseases,’ and the other is ‘Tom Brown’s School Days,’ with ten
pages gone just when I was getting a kick out of it. That was one
day when it rained. I knew a man once who could go to bed at sundown
and sleep till noon the next day. I don’t believe he kept a psychic
cat, though, or chased voices all over the hills. Anyway, I forgot
to find out how he did it.

“This looks a good cañon for mineral. Something tells me some rich
stuff has been taken out of here. If I were going to stay any length
of time, I might look around some. I keep thinking about gold--but I
guess it’s just a notion. Monty Girard ought to be here to-morrow,
sure. I’ve packed my pyjamas every morning and unpacked them every
night. I’ve got as much faith as the pinto cat--but it don’t get me a
darn bit more than it gets her. Packing my pyjamas and waiting for
Monty Girard is just about as satisfactory as the cat’s rubbing up
against nothing. You’d think she’d get fed up on that sort of thing,
but she don’t. Just before I started to write, she trotted toward
the door looking up and purring like she does when I come in. Only
nobody came in. You wouldn’t notice it if there was anybody else
around. Being alone makes it creepy.

“I started this because I wanted to talk to somebody. Being alone
gets a fellow’s goat in time. And seeing I don’t intend to send this
to you, Pat, I’ll say I’m crazy about you. There’s not another girl
in the world I’d want. I love the way you stand by your own ideas,
Pat, and use your own brains. If you only knew how high you stack up
alongside most of the girls, you wouldn’t worry about who played
opposite me. I was sore when I left you that night--but that was just
because I hate to see you lose your money, and that ‘flabby-soul’
wallop put me down for the count.

“I’ll admit now that you didn’t get cheated as much as I thought;
but I’m here to remark also that Johnnywater Cañon is no place for
my Princess Pat to live. And it’s a cinch that Handsome Gary is not
going to waste his splendid youth in this hide-out. There goes that
darned nut on the bluff again, yelling hello at me.

“If Monty Girard doesn’t show up to-morrow I’m sure as heck going to
figure out some way of getting at that bird. Yesterday he was
hollering in the daytime. He’s crazy, or he’s trying to make a nut
out of me. I believe he wants this cañon to himself for some reason,
and tries to scare everybody out. But I don’t happen to scare quite
as easy as Waddell. Though the joke of it is, I couldn’t get out of
here till Monty Girard comes, no matter how scared I got. I’m sure
glad I never get sick.

“Golly grandma, how I hate that howling! I’d rather have coyotes
ringed around the cañon four deep than listen to that merry
roundelay of the gink on the bluff. I’d take a shot at him if I had
a gun.

“Good night, Pat. You’re five hundred miles away, but if every inch
was a mile I wouldn’t feel any farther or any lonesomer. Your
flabby-souled movie man is going to bed.

                                                             “Gary.”




                            CHAPTER TEN

                 GARY HAS SPEECH WITH HUMAN BEINGS


Since Gary was not a young man of pronounced literary leanings, he
failed to chronicle all of the moods and the trivial incidents which
borrowed importance from the paucity of larger events. He finished
hoeing the potatoes and spent a mildly interested half-day in
running the water down the long rows, as Waddell’s primitive system
of irrigation permitted.

That evening there was no voice shouting from the hillside, and Gary
spent a somberly ruminative hour in cleaning the mud off his shoes.
He was worried about his clothes, which were looking the worse for
his activities; until it occurred to him that he had passed and
repassed a very efficient-looking store devoted to men’s clothing
alone. It comforted him considerably to reflect that he could buy
whatever he needed in Las Vegas.

On the eleventh day he started down the cañon on the chance that he
might see Monty coming across the desert. The tall piñon trees shut
out the view of the open country beyond until he came almost abreast
of the last pool of the creek where the cattle watered. He was
worrying a good deal now over Monty Girard. He could not believe
that he had been deliberately left afoot there in the cañon, as
effectively imprisoned as if four stone walls shut him in, held
within the limit of his own endurance in walking. Should he push
that endurance beyond the limit, he would die very miserably.

Gary was not particularly alarmed over that phase of his desertion,
however. He knew that he was not going to be foolish enough to start
out afoot in the hope of getting somewhere. Only panic would drive a
man to that extreme, and Gary was not of the panicky type. He had
food enough to last for a long time. The air, as he told himself
sardonically, was good enough for any health resort. He didn’t feel
as if he could get sick there if he tried. His physical well-being,
therefore, was not threatened; but he owned himself willing to tell
a heartless world that he was most ungodly lonesome.

He was walking down the rough trail with his hands in his pockets,
whistling a doleful ditty, the spotted cat at his heels like a dog.
He was trying to persuade himself that this was about the time of
day when Monty would be most likely to show up, when Faith ran
before him, stopped abruptly, arched her back and ruffled her tail
at something by the water hole.

Gary stopped also and stared suspiciously at two men who were
filling canteens at the water hole. What roused Gary’s suspicion was
the manner of the two men. While they sunk their canteens beneath
the surface of the water and held them so, they kept looking up the
cañon and at the bluff across the creek; sending furtive, frightened
glances into the piñon grove.

“Hello!” shouted Gary, going toward them. The cañon wall echoed the
shout. The two dropped their canteens and fled incontinently out
toward the open. Gary walked over to the pool, caught the two
canteen straps, filled the canteens and went after the men,
considerably puzzled. He came upon them at their camp, beside a
ten-foot ledge outcropping, a hundred yards or so below the pool.
They were standing by their horses, evidently debating the question
of moving on.

“Here’s your canteens,” Gary announced as he walked up to them.
“What’s the big idea--running off like that?”

“Hello,” one responded guardedly. “We don’t see who hollers. That’s
bad place. Don’t like ’m.”

They were Indians, though by their look they might almost be
Mexicans. They were dressed much as Monty Girard had been clothed,
in blue overalls and denim jacket, with old gray Stetson hats and
coarse, sand-rusted shoes.

Gary lowered the canteens to the ground beside their little camp
fire and got out his tobacco and papers, while he looked the two
over.

“So you think it’s a bad place, do you? Is that why you camp out
here?”

“Them cañon no good,” stated the other Indian, speaking for the
first time. “Too much holler all time no see ’m. That’s bad luck.”

“You mean the man up on the bluff, that hollers so much?” Gary eyed
them interestedly. “Who is he? You fellows know anything about it?”

They looked at one another and muttered some Indian words. The old
man began to unpack the apathetic mule standing with dropped lip
behind the two saddle horses.

“You know Monty Girard?” Gary asked, lighting his cigarette and
proffering his smoking material to the younger Indian when he saw an
oblique glance go hungrily to the smoke.

“Yass! Monty Girard. His camp by Kawich,” the old man answered in a
tone of relief that the subject had changed.

“Well, I don’t know where Kawich is--I’m a stranger in the country.
Seen him lately?” Gary waved his hand for the younger Indian to pass
the tobacco and papers to the older buck. “Seen Monty lately?”

“Nah. We don’t see him, two months, maybe.” The old buck was trying
to conceal his pleasure over the tobacco.

Gary thought of something. “You see any Walking X horses--work
horses, or saddle horses?”

With characteristic Indian deliberation the two waited until their
cigarettes were going before either replied. Then the old man,
taking his time in the telling, informed Gary that the horses were
ranging about ten miles to the east of Johnnywater, and that they
were watering at a small spring called Deer Lick. It occurred to
Gary that he might be able to hire these Indians to run in the
horses so that he could have a saddle horse at least and be less at
the mercy of chance. With a horse he could get out of the country
without Monty and the Ford, if worst came to worst.

He squatted with the Indians in the shade of the ledge while they
waited for the water to boil in a bent galvanized bucket blackened
with the smoke of many camp fires, and set himself seriously to the
business of winning their confidence. They were out of tobacco, and
Gary had plenty, which helped the business along amazingly. He
caught himself wishing they wore the traditional garb of the redman,
which would have been picturesque and satisfying. But these Piutes
were merely unkempt and not at all interesting, except that their
speech was clipped to absolutely essential words. They were stodgy
and apathetic, except toward the tobacco. He found that they could
dicker harder than a white man.

They wanted ten dollars for driving in his horses, and even then
they made it plain to Gary that the price did not include getting
them into the corral. For ten dollars they would bring the horses
right there to the mouth of the cañon.

“Not go in,” the old man stipulated. “Bring ’m here, this place. Not
corral. No. No more. You take my horse, drive ’m to corral. I wait
here.”

Gary knew a little about Indians, and at the moment he did not ask
for a reason. The corral was not a quarter of a mile farther on; as
a matter of fact it was just beyond the cabin at the edge of the
grove of piñons.

Faith came out from a clutter of rocks and hopped into Gary’s arms,
purring and rubbing herself against him. The Piutes eyed the cat
askance.

“B’long ’m Steve Carson, them cat,” the young Indian stated
abruptly. “You ain’t scare them cat bad luck?”

Gary laughed. “No--I’m not afraid of the cat. Faith and I get along
pretty well. Belongs to a Steve Carson, you say? I thought this was
Waddell’s cat. It was left here when Waddell sold out.”

They deliberated upon this, as was their way. “Waddell sell this
place?” The old Indian turned his head and looked into the cañon.
“Hunh. You buy ’m?”

“No. A friend of mine bought it. I came here to see if it’s any
good.” Gary began to feel as if he were making some headway at last.

They smoked stolidly.

“No good.” The old man carefully rubbed the ash from his cigarette.
“Bad spirits. You call ’m bad luck.” He looked at Gary searchingly.
“You hear ’m holler?”

Gary grinned. “Somebody hollers about half the time. Who is it?”

The two looked at each other queerly. It was the younger one who
spoke.

“Them’s ghos’. When Steve go, comes holler. Nobody holler when
Steve’s all right. Five year them ghos’ holler. Same time Steve go.
Nobody ketchum Steve. Nobody stop holler.”

“Well, that’s a heck of a note!” Gary smoothed the cat’s back
mechanically and tried to laugh. “So the Voice is Steve Carson’s
ghost, you think? And what happened to Steve?”

“Dunno. Don’ nobody know. Steve, he makes them shack. Got cattle,
got horses, got chickens. Mine a little, mebby. One time my brother
she go there. No ketchum Steve Carson no place. Hears all time
holler up there. My brother holler. Thinks that’s Steve, mebby. My
brother wait damn long time. Steve don’t come. All time them holler
up on hill. My brother thinks Steve’s hurt, mebby. My brother goes.
Hunts damn long time. Looks all over. No ketchum Steve. My brother
scare, you bet!

“My brother comes my place. Tells Steve Carson, he’s hurt, hollers
all time. Tells no ketchum Steve no place. I go, my father goes.
Other mans go. Hunt damn long time. Nobody hollers. No ketchum Steve
Carson. Saddle in shed, wagon by tree, canteens hang up, beans on
stove--burnt like hell. Them cat holler all time.

“By ’m by we go. Hunt two days, then go. We get on horses, then
comes holler like hell up on hill. Get off horses. Hunt some more.
All night. No ketchum holler. No ketchum Steve no place. Them cat go
‘Yeouw! Yeouw!’ all time like hell.

“My brother, she’s damn ’fraid for ghos’. My brother gets on horse
and goes away from that place. Pretty soon my brother dies. That’s
five years we don’t find Steve Carson. All them time holler comes
sometimes. This place bad luck. Injuns don’t come here no more, you
bet. We come here now little while when sun shines. Comes night time
it’s damn bad place. You hear them hollers you don’t get scared?” It
would seem that Gary’s assertion had not quite convinced them. The
young Indian was plainly skeptical. According to the judgment of his
tribe, it was scarcely decent for a man to foregather with ghosts
and feel no fear.

The mottled cat squirmed out of Gary’s embrace and went bounding
away among the rocks. The eyes of the Indians followed it
inscrutably. The old man got up, clawed in his pack, pulled out a
dirty cloth in which something was tied. He opened the small bundle,
scooped a handful of tea and emptied it into the bucket of boiling
water. The young man opened a savage-looking pocket knife and began
cutting thick slices of salt pork. The old Indian brought a dirty
frying pan to the fire.

Gary leaned against the rock ledge and watched them interestedly.
After so long an exile from all human intercourse, even two grimy
Piutes meant much to him in the way of companionship. They talked
little while they were preparing the meal. And when they ate,
squatting on their heels and spearing pork from the frying pan with
the points of their big jackknives, and folding the pieces around
fragments of hard, untempting bannock, they said nothing at all.
Gary decided that eating was a serious business with them and was
not to be interrupted by anything so trivial as conversation.

He wanted to hear more about the Johnnywater ghost and about Steve
Carson. But the Piutes evidently considered the subject closed, and
he could get nothing more out of them. He suspected that he had his
sack of Bull Durham to thank for the unusual loquacity while they
smoked.

After they had eaten they led their horses up to the pool and let
them drink their fill. After that they mounted and rode away, in
spite of Gary’s urging them to camp where they were until they had
brought in the Walking X horses. They would go back, they said, to
Deer Lick and camp there for the night. In the morning they would
round up his horses and drive them over to Johnnywater.

Gary was not quite satisfied with the arrangement, but they had
logic on their side so far as getting the horses was concerned.
Their own mounts would be fresh in the morning for the work they had
to do. But the thing Gary hated most was their flat refusal to spend
a night at Johnnywater Cañon.




                           CHAPTER ELEVEN

                 “HOW WILL YOU TAKE YOUR MILLIONS?”


                                        “Johnnywater Cañon,
                                        “On a Dark and Gloomy Night.

“My Princess Pat:

“You are the possessor of a possession of which you wittest not. You
have a ghost. Wire Conan Doyle, Sir Oliver Lodge and others of their
ilk. Ask them what is the best recipe for catching a Voice. The gink
up on the bluff that does so much vocal practice is not a gink--he’s
a spook. He’s up there vocaling right now, doing his spookish
heckest to give me the willies.

“Pat, did you send me out here just from curiosity, to see if I’d go
goofy? Tut, tut! This is no place for a flabby-souled young man;
broad shoulders, my dear girl, don’t amount to a darn in grappling
with a man-size Voice. I believe you did, you little huzzy. I
remember you distinctly mentioned howling on a hill, and my sitting
in the cabin listening to it. Great idea you had. I’m sitting here
listening. What am I supposed to do next?

“You also indicated business of listening to a horse champing hay in
a stable. Well, I have a horse at last, but the property man
overlooked the sod-roofed stable. Not having the prop in which my
horse should champ, he’s picketed up the cañon, and he’s supposed to
be champing sagebrush or grass or something. He isn’t doing it
though. He absolutely refuses to follow direction. He’s up there
going ‘MMMH-_hmmm-Hmmm_-hm-hm-hm!!!!’ I’m sorry, Pat, but that’s
exactly what he’s doing--as close as it can be put into human
spelling. He can’t feature this cañon, honey. I suspect he’s flabby
souled, too.

“He wants to chase off with the rest of the bunch about ten or
fifteen miles. Nobody loves this cañon except the psychic cat and
the two pigs. And the pigs don’t love it any more; not since I made
a rock corral and waylaid the little devils when they went snooping
in there after some stuff I put in a trough. I baited the trap, you
see--oh, this gigantic brain of mine has been hitting on all two
cylinders lately!--and then I hid. Lizards crawled over me, and the
sun blistered the back of my neck while I waited for those two
brutes to walk into the foreground. Animal pictures are hard to get,
as you may have heard while you were enduring a spasm of Handsome
Gary’s shop talk. Cut. Iris in Gary sneaking up with the board gate
he’d artcrafted the day before. So the pigs don’t love Handsome Gary
any more, and they’re spending most of their spare time talking
about me behind my back and hunting for a soft place where they can
run a drift under my perfectly nice rock fence, and then stope up to
the surface and beat it, registering contempt. I’ll call ’em shoats
if they don’t behave.

“I scythed some alfalfa to-day, Pat. Put on a swell rural comedy,
featuring Handsome Gary making side-swipes at his heels. It was a
scream, I reckon. But I came within an inch of scything Faith, only
she’s a wizard at jumping over rocks and things, and she did as
pretty a side-slip as you ever saw, and made her get-away. I’ve
wondered since--would I have had two pinto cats, or only one psychic
Voice? I mean one more psychic Voice. This one up on the bluff used
to belong to Steve Carson, according to the yarn the Piutes told me.
He’d have made a great director, if the rest of him measured up to
his lung power. The Piutes say he faded out very mysteriously, five
years ago, leaving his holler behind him. I’m afraid folks didn’t
like him very well. At any rate his Voice is darned unpopular. I
can’t say it makes any great hit with me, either. Though it’s not so
bad, at that. The main trouble seems to be not having any man to go
with the Voice. The Piutes couldn’t feature it at all. They wouldn’t
drive the horses into the corral, even. I had to double for them
when they got the bunch down there at the mouth of the cañon. Jazzed
around for two hours on an Injun pony with a gait like a pile
driver, getting your horses into your corral. You seem to have four
or five fair imitations, Pat. The rest are the bunk, if you ask me.
Not broken and not worth breaking. Don’t even look good to eat.

“There is one work team which I mean to give a try-out when I put on
my character part entitled, Making Hay Whether the Sun Shines or
Not. They have collar marks, and they’re old enough to be my dad’s
wedding team. Lips hang down like a mule, and hollows over their
eyes you could drop an egg in. I hate to flatter you, kid, but your
horse herd, take it by and large, is not what I’d be proud of.
You’re a wonderful girl--you got stung in several places at once.

“Haven’t seen anything yet of Monty Girard. Can’t think what’s the
matter, unless that savage Ford of his attacked him when he wasn’t
looking. It will be just as well now if he holds off till I get your
alfalfa cut and stacked. I’ll have a merry heck of a time doing it
alone. There’s about four acres, I should judge. To-morrow morning I
start in and do a one-step around the patch with that cussed scythe.
You needn’t think it’s going to be funny--not for Handsome Gary. I
tried to get the youngest Piute to double for me in the part, but
nothing doing. ‘Them holler no good,’ is what he said. Funny--I kinda
feel that way myself. Money wouldn’t tempt ’em. He spoke well of
Steve Carson, too; but he sure as heck don’t like his voice.

“What would you say, kid, if I found you a mine in here? I’ve had
the strongest hunch--I can’t explain it. I keep thinking there’s a
mine up on the bluff where that Voice is. I suppose I can trace the
idea back to that porphyry float I picked up the day after I landed
here. I found another piece yesterday, lying out here behind the
cabin. It must have been packed in from somewhere else. Pretty
rich-looking rock, kid. If I could find enough of that, you wouldn’t
need to pound out invoices and gol-darned letters about horse feed
and what to wean calves on. You could have a white mansion topping
that hill of ours, where we climb up and sit under the oak while we
build our air castles. Will we ever again? You feel farther away
than the sun, kid. I have to write just to keep my thoughts from
growing numb with the damned chill of this place. You know--I wrote
it down before. It’s hell to be wondering what you’d see if you
looked around....

“Well, if I find you a mine you can have your mansion on the hill.
Because, if the mine stacked up like the rock I found, you could
carry a million dollars around with you careless-like for spending
money--street-car fare, you know, and a meal at the cafeteria, and
such luxuries. And if your pocket was picked or your purse snatched
or anything, you could wave your hand airily and say, ‘Oh, that’s
all right. I’ve hundreds of millions more at home!’ How’d you like
that, old girl?

“Because I mortared a piece of that rock and panned it. It was rich,
Pat--so darned rich it scared me for a minute. I thought I had a bad
case of Desert Rat’s Delusion. I wouldn’t tell you this, kid, if I
ever meant to send the letter. I’m just writing to please myself,
not you. No, sir, I wouldn’t tell you a word about it. I’d just go
ahead and open up the mine--after I’d found it--and get about a
million dollars on the dump before I let a yip out of me. Then maybe
I’d send you word through your lawyer saying ‘I begged to inform you
that I had dug you a million dollars, and how would you have it?’
Golly grandma, if I could only find the ledge that rock came from!

“You know, Pat, you got me all wrong that night. What made me so
doggoned sore was to think how you’d handed over five thousand
dollars to a gink, just on the strength of his say-so. It showed on
the face of it that it was no investment for you to make. It wasn’t
that I am so stuck on the movies. Heck knows I’m not. But I sure am
stuck on the job that will pay me the money I can get from working
in the movies. I’ll rent my profile any time--for a hundred dollars a
day, and as much more as I can get. That’s what the contract would
have paid me the first year, Pat, and double that the second if I
made good. So I was dead willing to put paint on my eyebrows and
paint on my lips, and let my profile--if you insist that’s all I got
over on the screen--earn a little home for my Princess Pat and me.

“But if I could find a mine to match that chunk of rock, the studios
would never see Handsome Gary--never no more. I’d kiss my own girl on
the lips--for love. Honest, Pat, those kisses, that looked so real on
the screen and made you so sore, were awfully faked. I never told
you. I guess I’m a mean cuss. But I never touched a girl’s lips,
Lady, after I met you. I had one alibi guaranteed never to slip. I
told ’em, one and all, confidentially before we went into the scene,
that they could trust me. I swore I’d remember and not smear their
lips all over their cheeks. I said I knew girls hated that, and I’d
be careful. Then it was up to me to do some plain and fancy faking.
And when my Lady Patricia put up her chin and registered supreme
indifference, it always tickled me to see how well I’d put it over.
I always meant to tell you some time, girlie.

“I had a wild idea when I left the city that I’d maybe write down a
story I’d been framing in my mind when I was on location and waiting
between scenes. I told Mills just enough of it to get him curious to
hear the rest. He told me to write it out in scenario form and if it
was good he’d see that the company bought it. That would have been a
couple of hundred more toward our home, kid. The point is, I laid in
a lot of paper. Now that darn story’s gone stale on me and I’m using
up the paper writing letters to you that you’ll never read. As a
little blond jane in our company was always saying, ‘Isn’t life a
perfect _scream_?’ I’ll say it is.

                                                “Your Grouchy Gary.”




                           CHAPTER TWELVE

                           MONTY APPEARS


Monty Girard, mounted on a lean-flanked sorrel, came jogging up the
trail into Johnnywater Cañon. His eyes, that managed to see
everything within their range of vision, roved questingly here and
there through the grove, seeking some sign of the fastidiously
tailored young man he had left there two weeks before. His horse
went single-footing up to the cabin and stopped when Monty lifted
his rein hand as a signal.

“Hello!” Monty shouted buoyantly, for all he had just finished a
twenty-mile ride through desert heat. He waited a minute, got no
reply, and dismounted.

He pushed open the door and went in, his eyes betraying a shade of
anxiety. The cabin was clean, blankets spread smoothly on the bunk.
He lifted a square of unbleached cloth that had once been a flour
sack which covered sugar, salt, pepper, condensed milk and four tin
teaspoons, lately scoured until they almost shone, leaning bowls up
in an empty milk can. Also a white enameled bowl two thirds full of
dried apples and raisins stewed together. Monty heaved a sigh of
relief. The movie star was evidently keeping house just like a
human.

Monty went out and stood at the corner of the cabin near the horse.
There was nothing the matter with his lungs, but the rest of him was
tired. He hunted Gary by the simplest means at his command. That is,
he cupped his palms around his mouth, curved his spine inward,
planted his feet rather far apart, and sent a loud “Hello!” echoing
through the cañon.

The thin-flanked sorrel threw up its head violently and backed,
stepped on the dragging reins and was brought up short. Monty
turned, picked up the reins and drawled a reproof before he called
again. Four times he shouted and proceeded then to unsaddle. If the
movie star were anywhere within Johnnywater Cañon he could not fail
to know that he had a caller come to see him.

Five minutes later Monty glanced up and stared with his mouth
slightly open. Gary was sneaking around the corner of the cabin with
raised pitchfork in his hands and a glitter in his eyes. When he saw
who it was, Gary lowered the pitchfork and grinned sheepishly.

“When you holler hello in this cañon, _smile_!” he paraphrased
whimsically, and drew his shirt sleeve across his forehead. “Thought
I’d landed that trick Voice at last. Well, darn it, how are you?”

“All right,” Monty grinned slowly, “if you just put down that hay
fork. What’s the matter? You gittin’ like Waddell?”

Gary leaned the pitchfork against the cabin. He pushed his hair back
from his forehead with a gesture familiar to audiences the country
over.

“By heck, I hope not,” he exclaimed brusquely. “I’d given up looking
for you, Monty. And that cussed Voice sounded to me like it had
slipped. I’ve got used to it up on the hill, but I sure as heck will
take a fall out of it if it comes hollering around my humble
hang-out. Where’s the Ford?”

Monty pulled saddle and blanket together from the back of the
sorrel, leaving the wet imprint shining in the sun. The sorrel
twitched its hide as the air struck through the moisture coldly.

“Well, now, the old Ford’s done been cremated ever since the night I
left here,” Monty informed him pensively. “Yuh-all recollect we had
quite a wind from the west that night. Anyway, it blowed hard over
to my camp. I started a fire and never thought a word about the Ford
being on the lee side of camp, so first I knew the whole top of the
car was afire. I just had time to give her a start down the hill
away from camp before the gas tank blowed up. So that left me afoot,
except for a saddle horse or two. Then I had some ridin’ to do off
over the other way. And I knew yuh had grub enough to last a month
or two, so I didn’t hurry right over like I would have done if
yuh-all needed anything.” His keen eyes dwelt upon Gary’s face with
unobtrusive attention.

The young movie star, he thought, had changed noticeably. He was a
shade browner, a shade thinner, more than a shade less immaculate.
Monty observed that he was wearing a pair of Waddell’s old trousers,
tucked into a pair of Waddell’s high-laced boots with the heels worn
down to half their height, the result of climbing over rocks. Gary’s
shirt was open with a deep V turned in at the collar, disclosing a
neck which certain sentimental extra girls at the studio had likened
to that of a Greek god. Gary’s sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.
He looked, in short, exactly as any upstanding city chap looks when
he is having the time of his life in the country, wearing old
clothes--the older, the better suited to his mood--and roughing it
exuberantly.

Yet there was a difference. Exuberant young fellows from the city
seldom have just that look in the eyes, or those lines at the
corners of the mouth. Monty unconsciously adopted a faintly
solicitous tone.

“How yuh-all been making it, anyway?” he asked, watching Gary roll a
cigarette.

“Finest ever!” Gary declared cheerfully, lighting a match with his
thumb nail, a trick he had learned from an old range man because it
lent an effective touch sometimes to his acting.

“A couple of Piutes happened along the other day, and I had them run
in the horses for me. Thought I’d keep up a saddle horse so I could
round up a team of work horses when I get ready to haul the hay.” He
blew a mouthful of smoke and gave a short laugh. “I’m a heck of a
stock hand for a gink that was born on a horse ranch.” He blew
another mouthful of smoke deliberately, not at all conscious that he
was making what is termed a dramatic pause, nor that he was making
it with good effect. “I owe Pat Connolly,” he said slowly, “a cheap
saddle horse. I’m glad Pat hadn’t learned to love that scrawny bay.
Where can I get a horse for about a dollar and six bits?”

Monty eyed him dubiously. “Yuh-all mean yuh lost a hawse?”

“No-o, I didn’t exactly _lose_ a horse. It died.” Gary sat down in
the doorway and folded his arms upon his knees.

“I ought to have had more sense,” he sighed, “than to stake him out
so close to the shed where the sack of grain was. I sort of knew
that rolled barley is not good as an exclusive diet for horses. I
had a heck of a job,” he added complainingly, “digging a hole big
enough to plant him in.”

Monty swore sympathetically; and after the manner of men the world
over, related sundry misfortunes of his own by way of giving
comfort. Gary listened, made profane ejaculations in the proper
places, and otherwise deported himself agreeably. But when Monty
ceased speaking while he attended to the serious business of
searching his most inaccessible pockets for a match, Gary broached a
subject altogether foreign to Monty’s plaintive reminiscences.

“Say, Monty! Was Waddell tall and kind of stoop-shouldered and bald
under his hat? And did he have blue eyes and a kind of sandy
complexion and lips rather thin--but pleasant, you know; and did he
always wear an old gray Stetson and khaki pants tucked into boots
like these?”

Monty found the match, in his shirt pocket after all. A shadow
flicked across his face. Perhaps even Monty Girard had an instinct
for dramatic pauses and hated to see one fall flat.

“Naw. Waddell wasn’t a very tall man and he was dark complected; the
sallow kind of dark. His eyes was dark, too.” He examined the match
rather carefully, as if he were in some doubt as to its proper use.
He decided to light it and lifted a foot deliberately, so that he
might draw the match sharply across the sole.

“That description of yours,” he said, flipping the match stub away
from him and watching to see just where it landed, “tallies up with
Steve Carson. Yuh ain’t----” He turned his head and regarded curiously
the Gary Marshall profile, which at that moment was absolutely
impassive. “It was Steve cut the logs and built this cabin,” he
finished lamely.

Gary unfolded his arms and stretched his legs out straight before
him. “What happened to this Steve Carson?” he asked innocently. “Did
he sell out to Waddell?”

Monty smoked absent-mindedly, one spurred heel digging a little
trench in the dirt.

“That’s Steve’s cat,” he observed irrelevantly, glancing up as Faith
came out of the bushes, picking her way carefully amongst the small
rocks that littered the dooryard.

“Uh-huh.” Gary drew up his legs and clasped his hands around his
knees. “If this Steve Carson didn’t sell out to Waddell, then where
does Waddell come into the scene? Did Steve Carson give the darned
thing away?”

Monty leaned forward, inspecting the small trench his spur had dug.
Very carefully he began to rake the dirt back into it.

“It ain’t gettin’ yuh, is it?” He did not look up when he asked the
question. He was painstakingly patting the dirt smooth with the toe
of his boot.

“_Getting_ me! Hell!” said Gary.

“It got Waddell--bad,” drawled Monty, biting a corner of his lip.
“That’s why he sold out. It was gettin’ him. Bad.” Having filled the
trench and patted the dirt smooth, Monty straightway began to dig
another trench beside it.

“What is there to get a fellow?” Gary looked challengingly at Monty.
“I’ve stayed with it two weeks, and I haven’t been got yet.” He
laughed a little. “The Piutes told me a man disappeared here and
left his Voice behind him. Of course that’s Injun talk. What’s the
straight of it, Monty?”

“Well--nobody ever called me superstitious yet,” Monty grinned, “but
that’s about the size of it. Steve Carson came up missing. Since
then, there’s that Voice. I know it started in right away. I was
over here helping hunt for him, and I heard it. Some says Steve went
loco and tried to walk out. If he did, he left mighty onexpected,
and he didn’t take anything at all with him. Not even a canteen, far
as I could see. He had two, I know--and they was both hangin’ on the
same nail beside the door. Uh course, he might a had another one--I
hadn’t been over to Johnnywater for a coupla months, till I come
over to see what was wrong. I was scoutin’ around the country for a
week or more, tryin’ to get some trace of him.”

Having completed the second trench, Monty filled that one as
carefully as he had filled the first. Abruptly he looked at Gary.
“Yuh-all ain’t--_seen_ anything, have yuh?”




                          CHAPTER THIRTEEN

                    “I DON’T BELIEVE IN SPOOKS”


A silence significant, almost sinister, fell. Gary rose from the
doorsill, took a restless step or two and turned, so that he faced
Monty, and the open doorway. He looked past Monty, into the cabin. A
quick glance, almost a furtive one. Then he laughed, meeting Monty’s
inquiring eyes mockingly.

“Seen anything? No. Nothing I shouldn’t see, at least. Why?” He
laughed again, a mirthless kind of laugh. “Did Waddell throw in a
spook along with the Voice?”

“Waddy got powerful oneasy,” Monty observed, choosing his words with
some care. “Waddy claimed he seen Steve Carson frequent. I didn’t
know----Say! Did the Piutes tell yuh-all how Steve Carson looked?”

Gary’s eyes slid away from Monty’s searching look.

“No. I didn’t ask. I just got a notion that Waddell maybe looked
like that.” He lifted his chin, his glance once more passing Monty
by to go questing within the cabin.

“I don’t believe in spooks,” he stated clearly, a defiant note
creeping into his voice in spite of him. “That’s the bunk. When
people start seeing spooks, it’s time they saw a doctor and had
their heads X-rayed. I’ll tell you what I think, Monty. I think that
when we check out, we stay _out_. Get me? I can’t feature giving
death all these encores--when, damn it, the audience is sitting
hunched down into its chairs with its hands over its faces, afraid
to look. If we clapped and stamped and whistled to get ’em out
before the curtain, then I’d say they had some excuse.

“I tell you, Monty, I’ve got a lot of respect for the way this Life
picture is being directed. And it don’t stand to reason that a
director who’s on to his job is going to let a character that was
killed off in the first reel come slipping back into the film in the
fourth reel. I know what _that_ would mean at Cohen’s. It would mean
that some one in the cutting room would get the gate. No, sir,
that’s bad technique--and the Big Director up there won’t stand for
any cut-backs that don’t help the story along.” His eyes left
Monty’s face to send another involuntary glance through the open
door. “So all this hokum about ghosts is pure rot to me.”

“Well, I ain’t superstitious none myself,” Monty repeated somewhat
defensively. “I never seen anything--but one time I was here when
Waddy thought _he_ seen something. He tried to point it out to me.
But I couldn’t see nothin’. I reckon you’re right. And I’m shore
glad yuh-all feel that way.”

The spotted cat, having dined well upon a kangaroo rat caught down
by the creek, was sitting near them calmly washing her face. She got
up, looked up into the open doorway, and mewed a greeting. Then she
trotted to meet--a memory, perhaps. She stopped three feet from the
doorstep and stood there purring, her body arched with a rubbing
movement.

Monty Girard turned his head and stared at the cat over his
shoulder. Three deep creases formed between Gary’s eyebrows while he
also watched the pantomime. The cat turned, looked up ingratiatingly
(still, perhaps, clinging to a memory) and trotted away toward the
creek exactly as if she were following some one. Monty got up and
the eyes of the two men met unsmilingly.

“Oh, heck,” said Gary, shrugging his shoulders. “Come on and see the
hay I’ve put up!”

They walked in a constrained silence to the alfalfa field. Monty
cast a critical eye over the raggedy edge of the cutting. He grinned
slowly, tilting his head sidewise.

“Whereabouts did yuh-all learn to swing a scythe?” he asked
banteringly. “I reckon yuh could do it a heap better on a hawse.”

“But the darned horse idea blew up on me. Did the balloon stunt. You
get me, don’t you?” Gary’s laugh hinted at overstrained nerves. “I
wish you’d been here then, Monty. Why, I didn’t dig any grave. I had
to excavate a cellar to plant him in.” He waved a hand toward the
haycocks. “How do you like the decorations? You will observe that
they are somewhat larger than were being worn by meadows last year.
These are the new 1921 models, specially designed with the
stream-line effect, with a view to shedding rain. Also hail, snow
and any other form of moisture. They are particularly good where
horses are unavailable for hauling hay to a stack.”

“I’ll run in the horses to-morrow,” Monty volunteered casually. “The
two of us together ought to get that hay hauled in a day, all right.
Spuds is lookin’ good. I reckon this ain’t your first attempt at
farming.”

“The first and the last--I’ll tell a waiting world. Say, I forgot you
might be hungry. If this new hay won’t give your horse acute
gastritis, why not tie him down by the cabin and carry him a forkful
or two? I can’t feature this corral stuck off here by itself where
we can’t keep an eye on it. Still, if you say it’s all right, we’ll
put him in.”

Monty said it was all right, and Gary did not argue. His spirits had
reacted to the stimulus of Monty’s presence, and he was conscious
now and then of a heady feeling, as if he had been drinking
champagne. His laughter was a bit too frequent, a shade too loud to
be perfectly normal. The mental pendulum, having been tilted too far
in one direction, was swinging quite as far the other way in an
effort to adjust itself to normalcy.

Monty Girard was not of an analytical temperament, though
circumstance had forced him to observe keenly as a matter of
self-protection. He apprehended Gary’s mood sufficiently to let him
set the tempo of their talk. Gary, he remembered, had been two weeks
alone in Johnnywater Cañon. By his own account he was wholly
unaccustomed to isolation of any degree. Monty, therefore, accepted
Gary’s talkative mood as a perfectly natural desire to make up for
lost time.

But there was a reserve in Gary’s talk, nevertheless, an invisible
boundary which he would not pass and which held Monty Girard within
certain well-defined conversational limits. It seemed to pass
directly through Gary’s life at Johnnywater, and to shut off
completely the things which Monty wanted most to know. Of all the
trivial, surface incidents of those two weeks, Gary talked
profusely. His amusing efforts to corral the pigs and keep them
there; his corraling of the horses on the old Piute’s hard-gaited
pony; his rural activities with hoe and irrigating shovel; all these
things he described in great detail. But of his mental life in the
cañon he would not speak.

But Monty Girard was observing, and he watched Gary rather closely
during the three days which he spent at Johnnywater. He saw Gary’s
lips tighten when, on the second evening just after supper, the
Voice shouted unexpectedly from high up on the bluff. He saw a
certain look creep into Gary’s eyes, and the three little creases
show themselves suddenly between his eyebrows. But the next moment
Gary was looking at Monty and laughing as though he had not heard
the Voice.

Monty Girard, having eyes that saw nearly everything that came
within their range of vision, saw also this: He saw Gary frequently
rise, walk across the cabin and stand with his back leaning against
the wall, facing the place where he had been sitting. He would
continue his laughing monologue, perhaps--but his eyes would glance
now and then with reluctance toward that place, as if he were
testing an impression. After a bit of that, Gary would return and
sit down again, resuming his old careless manner. The strange,
combative look would leave his eyes and his forehead would smooth
itself.

Gary never spoke of these things, and Monty Girard respected his
silence. But he felt that, although he knew just what the pigs had
done and how long it took to corral the horses and how many blisters
it took to “scythe” the hay, he would remain in ignorance of Gary’s
real life in Johnnywater Cañon, the life that was changing him
imperceptibly but nevertheless as surely as old age creeps upon a
man who has passed the peak of his activities.

“Yuh-all better ride on over with me to my camp and stop there till
you get a chance to ride in to town,” Monty said, when they were
unhooking the team from the hay wagon after hauling in the last load
of alfalfa. “Yuh can turn the pigs loose again and let ’em take
their chances on the coyotes, same as they was doin’ when yuh come.
Some one’s liable to come drivin’ in to my camp any day. But,” he
added significantly, “yuh’ll set a long time before anybody comes to
Johnnywater.”

“That’s all right,” Gary said easily, pulling the harness off the
horse he was attending to, and beginning to unbuckle the collar
strap, stiff and unruly from disuse. “I’ll just stick here for
awhile, anyway. Er--the potatoes need a lot of man-with-the-hoe
business.” His fingers tugged at the collar strap. He would not look
up from his work, though he knew that Monty was eyeing him steadily
over the sweaty backs of the horses.

“I’d kill that damned cat if I was you,” Monty exploded with a venom
altogether foreign to his natural manner. “Waddy’d never let it near
the house. He never did and I never knowed why till the other day.”

Gary had one expression which usually silenced all argument.
Patricia called it his stubborn smile. Dead men who have gone out
fighting sometimes wear that same little smile frozen immutably upon
their features. It was that smile which answered Monty Girard.

Monty looked at him again, puzzled and more than slightly uneasy.

“Yuh better come along with me,” he said again, persuasively, as one
urges the sick to follow the doctor’s orders.

“No--I think I’ll just stick around for awhile.” Having removed the
collar, Gary gave the horse a slap on the shoulder that sent it off
seeking a soft spot on which to roll.

“Well, for God’s sake, kill that cat! By gosh, it’s enough to drive
a fellow crazy. It’s wrong in the head and--and yuh know it might
have hydrophoby.”

Gary laughed. “Why, I couldn’t keep house without the pinto cat!
That’s great business. Furnishes atmosphere and--er--entertainment.”

It was perfectly apparent that Gary had some secret reason for
staying. Something which he would not tell Monty Girard, although
the two had become rather good friends. Monty’s face clouded; but
Gary slapped him reassuringly on the shoulder.

“Tell you what you do, old fellow. You draw me a map so I can find
my way over to your place later on. And if one of these horses is
any good under the saddle, I’ll keep him in the corral so I’ll have
something to ride. Now I’ve got hay, the beggar ought to make out
all right.”

Monty had to be content with that and rode away to his own camp
somewhat reluctantly, leaving Gary standing in the doorway of the
cabin, his hands braced against the frame on either side, smoking
and staring after him a bit wistfully.




                          CHAPTER FOURTEEN

                      PATRICIA REGISTERS FURY


Patricia waited a week. One day at the office when she happened to
be alone for half an hour, she jerked the telephone hook off its
shelf and looked up Cohen’s studio number. Inwardly she was furious.
She would be a long time forgiving Gary for forcing her to speak the
first word. She could see no possible excuse for such behavior, and
her voice, when she spoke into the mouthpiece, was coldly
impersonal.

“Will you please tell me where I can get into touch with Mr. Mills’
company?” Patricia might have been calling up the freight office to
put a tracer on a lost shipment of ground barley.

“Mr. Mills’ company is out on location,” replied a voice which
Patricia mentally dubbed snippy.

“I asked you where I could get in touch with Mr. Mills’ company.
This is important.” Patricia spoke into a dead telephone. The snippy
one in Cohen’s office had hung up.

While Patricia was still furious, she wrote a note to Gary. And,
since her chin had squared itself and her head ached and she hated
her job and the laundry had lost the collar to her favorite vestee,
Patricia’s note read like this:

                                                “Los Angeles, Calif.
                                                “June 17, 1921.

        “Gary Herbert Marshall,
        “Cohen’s Studio,
        “Hollywood, Calif.

        “Dear Sir:

        “Kindly return the papers which you carried
        off with you a week ago last night.

                                                    “Very truly,
                                                    “P. Connolly.”

Patricia mailed this letter along with a dozen invoices, fourteen
“please remits” and a letter to the main office in Kansas City. She
felt better after she had poked it into the mail box. She could even
contemplate buying a new vestee set without calling the laundry
names.

Patricia waited a week and then called Cohen’s studio again. She was
quite prepared for another snub, and perhaps that is the reason why
she got it. Mr. Mills’ company was on location; and Patricia could
believe that or not, just as she chose. Patricia did not believe it.
She barked a request for Mr. Gary Marshall.

“We do not deliver telephone messages to actors,” the snippy one
informed Patricia superciliously, and hung up before Patricia could
enunciate the scathing retort she had ready.

That night at seven o’clock Patricia called Gary’s apartment. Her
mood was such, when she dialed the number, that a repair man had to
come the next day and replace a broken spring in the instrument. She
held the receiver to her ear a full five minutes and listened to the
steady drone of the bell calling Gary. Had Gary been there to
answer, he would have had a broken engagement within five minutes to
hold him awake nights.

After awhile little Pat Connolly wiped the tears of rage from her
eyes and called the landlady of Gary’s apartment.

The landlady assured her that Mr. Marshall hadn’t been near the
place for two weeks. At least, she had not seen him. He might have
come in late and gone out early--a good many of her tenants did--and
in that case she wouldn’t be so apt to see him. But she hadn’t
noticed him around last Sunday, and most generally she did see him
Sundays because he slept late and if she didn’t see him she was
pretty sure to hear his voice in the hall speaking to some one. She
could always tell Mr. Marshall’s voice as far as she could hear it,
it was so pleasant----

“Oh, my good heavens!” gritted Patricia and followed the example of
the snippy office girl at Cohen’s. She hung up while the landlady
was still talking. Which was not polite of Patricia, but excusable.

Well, perhaps Gary was out on location. But that seemed strange,
because even after quarrels Gary had never failed to call Patricia
up and let her know that he was leaving town. After quarrels his
voice would be very cool and dignified, it is true; but nevertheless
he had never before failed to let her know that he was leaving town.

Patricia spent another week in mentally reviewing that last evening
with Gary and in justifying herself for everything she had said to
him. Gary really did need to be told the plain truth, and she had
told him. If he wanted to go away and nurse his injured vanity and
sulk, that merely proved how much he had needed the plain truth told
him.

She waited until Friday morning. On Friday, because she had not
heard from Gary, and because she had lain awake Thursday night
telling herself that she was thankful she had found him out in time,
and that it didn’t make a particle of difference to her whether she
ever heard from him or not, Patricia manufactured an errand down
town for her employers. Because she was a conscientious young woman
she attended to the manufactured errand first. Immediately
thereafter she marched into the branch office of the _Examiner_.

In years Patricia’s chin had never looked so square. She was not in
the habit of wetting her pencil, but now she stood at the ad
counter, licked an indelible pencil defiantly, and wrote this, so
emphatically that the pad was marked with the imprint of the letters
seven pages deep:

    WANTED: Man to take charge of small cattle ranch in
    Nevada. Open range, living springs, imp. Completely
    furnished on shares. Phone 11270 Sun.

Patricia read this over twice with her lips buttoned in tightly.
Then she licked the pencil again--indelibly marking her pink tongue
for an inch down the middle--and inserted just before the ’phone
number, the word “_permanent_” and drew two lines underneath for
emphasis. This was meant as a trenchant warning to Gary Marshall
that he need not trouble himself any further concerning Patricia’s
investment nor about Patricia herself, for that matter.

Patricia paid the display ad rate and marched out, feeling as
irrevocably committed to cynical maidenhood as if she had taken the
veil. Men as such were weak, vain creatures who thought to hold the
heart of a woman in the curve of an eyelash. Meaning, needless to
say, Gary Marshall’s eyelash which should _not_ longer hold the
heart of Patricia Connolly.

Patricia’s telephone began ringing at six o’clock on Sunday morning
and continued ringing spasmodically until ten minutes past twelve,
when Patricia dropped the receiver off the hook and let it dangle,
thereby giving the busy signal whenever 11270 was dialed.

For six hours and ten minutes Patricia had felt a definite sinking
sensation in her chest when a strange voice came to her over the
’phone. She would have wanted to murder any one who so much as
hinted that she hoped to hear Gary say expostulatingly, “For heck’s
sake, Pat, what’s the big idea of this ad? I can’t _feature_ it!”

Had she heard that, Patricia would have gloried in telling him, with
the voice that went with the square chin, that she was sorry, but
the place was already taken. Then she would have hung up and waited
until he recovered from that wallop and called again. Then--well,
Patricia had not decided definitely just what she would do, except
that she was still firmly resolved upon being an old maid.

At seven o’clock in the morning the first man called to see her.
Patricia was ready for him, clothed in her office tailored suit and
her office manner. The man’s name was Hawkins, and he seemed much
surprised to find that a young woman owned the “small cattle ranch
in Nevada.”

Hawkins informed Patricia, in the very beginning of their
conversation, that he was a fair man who never yet had cheated any
one out of a nickel. He said that if anything he was too honest, and
that this was the reason why he hadn’t a ranch of his own and was
not independent. He said that he invariably let the other fellow
have the big end of a bargain, rather than have the load on his
conscience that he had possibly not been perfectly square. As to
cheating a woman, well, he hinted darkly that killing was too good
for any man who would take advantage of a woman in a business deal.
Hawkins was so homely that Patricia knew he must be honest as he
said he was. She believed practically everything he said, and by
eight o’clock on a calm Sunday morning, P. Connolly and James Blaine
Hawkins were partners in the ranch at Johnnywater.

James Blaine Hawkins was so anxious that Patricia should have
practically all the profits in the deal, that he dictated terms
which he facetiously urged her never to tell on him; they were so
one-sided (Patricia’s side). Hawkins, in his altruistic
extravagance, had volunteered to devote his time, labor and long
experience in cattle raising, to almost the sole benefit of
Patricia. He was to receive merely two thirds of the increase in
stock, plus his living expenses. For good measure he proposed to
donate the use of his car, charging Patricia only for the gas and
oil.

Patricia typed the agreement on her machine, using all the business
phrases she had learned from taking dictation in the office. The
document when finished was a beautiful piece of work, absolutely
letter perfect and profusely decorated with whereases, be it
therefore agreeds and--of course--hereofs, party of the first parts
and party of the second parts. Any lawyer would have gasped over the
reading. But James Blaine Hawkins considered it a marvelous piece of
work and said so. And Patricia was mightily pleased with herself and
drew a sigh of relief when James Blaine Hawkins had departed with a
signed copy of the Patricia-made AGREEMENT OF CONTRACT in his
pocket. Patricia held the original; held it literally for the next
two hours. She read it over and over and couldn’t see where one word
could be changed for the betterment of the document.

“And what’s the use of haggling and talking and whittling sticks
over a simple thing like this?” Patricia asked a critical world.
“Mr. Hawkins knew what he wanted to do, and I knew what I wanted to
do--and talking for a week wouldn’t have accomplished anything at
all. And anyway, that’s settled, and I’ve got Johnnywater off my
mind for the next five years, thank Heaven. Gary Marshall can go on
smirking the rest of his life if he wants to. I’m sure it’s
absolutely immaterial to me.”

Gary Marshall was so absolutely immaterial to Patricia that she
couldn’t sleep nights, but lay awake telling herself about his
absolute immateriality. She was so pleased over her agreement with
James Blaine Hawkins that her boss twice stopped his dictation to
ask her if she were sick or in trouble. On both occasions Patricia’s
glance turned him red in the face. And her “Certainly not” gave the
poor man a guilty feeling that he must have insulted her somehow.

Patricia formed a habit of walking very fast from the car line to
Rose Court and of having the key to her mail box in her fingers when
she turned in from the street. But she absolutely did not want or
expect to receive a letter from Gary Marshall.

Curiously, Cohen’s telephone number kept running through her mind
when her mind had every reason to be fully occupied with her work.
She even wrote “Hollywood 741” when she meant to write “Hollister,
Calif.” on a letter she was transcribing. The curious feature of
this freak of her memory is that Patricia could not remember firm
telephones that she used nearly every day, but was obliged to keep a
private list at her elbow for reference.

Patricia did not call Hollywood 741. She did, however, write a
second stern request for her papers which Gary had taken away.

On the heels of that, Patricia’s boss--a kindly man in gold-bowed
spectacles and close-cropped whiskers--gave Patricia a terrific shock
when she had taken the last letter of the morning’s correspondence
and was slipping the rubber band over her notebook.

“Oh, by the way, Miss Connolly, day after to-morrow I leave for
Kansas City. I’m to have charge of the purchasing department there,
and I should like to have you with me if you care to make the
change. The salary will be twenty-five a month more--to start; if the
work justifies it, I think you could safely look forward to another
advance. And of course your traveling expenses will be met by the
firm.”

Patricia twisted her pencil in the rubber band. “My laundry won’t be
back till Friday,” she informed him primly. “But I suppose I can go
out there and pay for it and have it sent on by mail. What train are
you taking, Mr. Wilson?”

In this manner did the dauntless Patricia meet the shock of
opportunity’s door slamming open unexpectedly in her face. Patricia
did not know that she would like Kansas City. She had a vague
impression of heat and cyclones whenever she thought of the place.
But it seemed to her a Heaven-sent chance to show Gary Marshall just
how immaterial he was in her life.

She debated the wisdom of sending back Gary’s ring. But the debate
did not seem to get much of anywhere. She left for Kansas City with
the ring still on her finger and the hope in her heart that Gary
would be worried when he found she was gone, and would try to find
her, and would fail.

And Providence, she told herself confidently, had surely been
looking after her all along and had sent James Blaine Hawkins to
take that darned Johnnywater white elephant off her hands just
nicely in time for the boss to offer her this change. And she didn’t
care how much she hated Kansas City. She couldn’t hate it half as
much as she hated Los Angeles.

It merely illustrates Patricia’s firmness with herself that she did
not add her reason for hating Los Angeles. In May she had loved it
better than any other place on earth.




                          CHAPTER FIFTEEN

                “WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH THIS PLACE?”


With his beautifully typed AGREEMENT OF CONTRACT in his inner coat
pocket, and two hundred dollars of Patricia’s money in his purse,
James Blaine Hawkins set out from Los Angeles to drive overland to
Johnnywater, Nevada. He knew no more of Johnnywater than Patricia
had told him, but he had worked through three haying seasons on a
big cattle ranch in King County, California, and he felt qualified
to fulfill his share of the agreement, especially that clause
concerning two thirds of the increase of the stock and other profits
from the ranch.

James Blaine Hawkins belonged to that class of men which is tired of
working for wages. A certain percentage of that class is apparently
tired of working for anything; James Blaine Hawkins formed a part of
that percentage. His idea of raising range cattle was the popular
one of sitting in the shade and watching the cattle grow. In all
sincerity he agreed with Patricia that one simply _cannot_ lose
money in cattle.

I am going to say right here that James Blaine Hawkins owned many of
the instincts for villainy. He actually sat in Patricia’s trustful
presence and wondered just how far the law protected an absent owner
of squatter’s rights on a piece of unsurveyed land. He thought he
would look it up. He believed that the man who lives on the place is
the real squatter, and that Waddell, in leaving Johnnywater, had
legally abandoned the place and had no right to sell his claim on it
to Patricia or any one else.

James Blaine Hawkins did not look Patricia in the eyes and actually
plan to rob her of Johnnywater, but he did sit there and wonder who
would have the best title to the place, if he went and lived there
for a year or two, and Patricia failed to live there at all. To
James Blaine Hawkins it seemed but common justice that the man who
lived on a ranch so isolated, and braved the hardships of the
wilderness, should acquire unqualified title to the land. He did not
discuss this point, however, with Patricia.

Patricia’s two hundred dollars had been easily obtained as an
advance for supplies, which, under the terms of the contract,
Patricia was to furnish. So James Blaine Hawkins was almost
enthusiastic over the proposition and couldn’t see why three or four
years at the most shouldn’t put him on Easy Street, which is
rainbow’s end for all men of his type.

He made the trip without mishap to Las Vegas, and was fortunate
enough to find there a man who could--and did--give him explicit
directions for reaching Johnnywater. And along about four o’clock on
the afternoon of the fourth day, Patricia’s new partner let down a
new wire gate in the mended fence across the cañon just above the
water hole, and gazed about him with an air of possession before he
got into the car and drove on to the cabin. He did not know, of
course, that the gate was very new indeed, or that the fence had
been mended less than a week before. He was therefore considerably
astonished when a young man with his sleeves rolled to his elbows
and the wind blowing through his hair came walking out of the grove
to meet him.

James Blaine Hawkins frowned. He felt so much the master of
Johnnywater that he resented the sight of a trespasser who looked so
much at home as did Gary Marshall. He grunted a gruff hello in
response to Gary’s greeting, drove on into the dooryard and killed
his engine.

Gary turned back and came close to the car. He was rather quick at
reading a man’s mood from little, indefinable signs which would have
been overlooked by another man. Something in the general attitude of
James Blaine Hawkins spelled insolence which Gary instinctively
challenged.

“Are you lost?” Gary asked rather noncommittally. “You’re pretty
well off the beaten track, you know. This trail ends right here.”

“Well, that suits me. Right here is where I headed for. Might I ask
what you’re doing here?”

“Why, I suppose you might.” Now that Gary had taken a good look at
James Blaine Hawkins, he did not like him at all.

James Blaine Hawkins waited a reasonable time for Gary to say what
he was doing in Johnnywater Cañon. But Gary did not say. He was
rolling a cigarette with maddening precision and a nonchalant manner
that was in itself an affront; or so James Blaine Hawkins chose to
consider it.

“Well, damn it, what _are_ you doing here?” he blurted arrogantly.
James Blaine Hawkins was of the physical type which is frequently
called beefy. His red face darkened and seemed to swell.

“I? Why, I’m stopping here,” drawled Gary. “What are _you_ doing
here?”

James Blaine Hawkins leaned against the side of the car, folded his
arms and spat into the dust. Then he laughed.

“I’m here to stay!” he announced somewhat pompously. “I don’t reckon
it’s any of your business, but I’ve got a half interest in this
place--better ’n a half interest. I got what you might call a
straight two thirds interest in everything. Two thirds and _found_.”
He laughed again. “So, I guess mebby I got a right to know why
you’re stopping here.”

Not for nothing was Gary Marshall an actor. When he learned to
portray emotion before the camera, he also learned to conceal
emotion. Not even Patricia in her most suspicious mood could have
discovered how astonished, how utterly taken aback Gary was at that
moment.

He lighted his cigarette, blew out the match and flipped it from
him. He took three long, luxurious inhalations and studied James
Blaine Hawkins more carefully from under the deep-fringed eyelashes
that had helped to earn him a living. Patricia, he perceived, had
been attacked by another “wonderful” idea. Though it seemed rather
incredible that even the impulsive Patricia should have failed to
read aright a man so true to type as was James Blaine Hawkins.

“Well, I’ve saved you a few tons of alfalfa hay,” Gary observed
carelessly. “Fellow I was with left me here while he went on to
another camp. I found Waddell gone, and my friend hasn’t come after
me yet. So I’m stuck here for the present, you see. And Waddy’s hay
needed cutting, so I cut it for him. Had to kill time somehow till
he gets back.” Gary blew a leisurely mouthful of smoke. “Isn’t
Waddell coming back?” he asked with exactly the right degree of
concern in voice and manner.

James Blaine Hawkins studied that question for a minute. But he
could see nothing to doubt or criticize in the elucidation, so he
decided to accept it at face value. He failed to see that Gary’s
explanation had been merely suggested.

“Waddell, as you call him, has sold out to a girl in Los Angeles,”
James Blaine Hawkins explained in a more friendly tone. “I got an
agreement here to run the place on shares. I don’t know nothing
about Waddell. He’s out of it.”

Gary’s eyebrows lifted slightly in what the camera would record as
his terribly worried expression.

“He isn’t--in the--er--asylum, is he? Was I too late to save poor
Waddy?”

James Blaine Hawkins looked blank.

“Save him from what? What yuh talkin’ about, anyway?”

Gary opened his lips to answer, then closed them and shook his head.
When he really did speak it was quite plain to James Blaine Hawkins
that he had reconsidered, and was not saying as much as he had at
first intended to say.

“If you’re here to stay, I hope you’ll be all right and don’t have
the same thing happen to you that happened to Waddy,” he said
cautiously. “I think, myself, that Waddell had too keen an
imagination. He was a nervous cuss, anyway; I really don’t think
you’ll be bothered.”

“Bothered with what?” James Blaine Hawkins demanded impatiently. “I
can’t see what you’re driving at.”

Gary gave him a little, secretive smile and the slight head-shake
that always went with it on the screen.

“Well, I sure hope you never do--see.” And with that he deliberately
changed the subject and refused artfully to be led back toward it.

He went in and started the fire going, saying that he knew a man
couldn’t drive out from Las Vegas without being mighty hungry when
he arrived. He made fresh coffee, warmed over his pot of Mexican
beans cooked with chili peppers, and opened a can of blackberry jam
for the occasion. He apologized for his biscuits, which needed no
apology whatever. He went down to the creek and brought up the
butter, bewailing the fact that there was so little of it. But then,
as he took pains to explain again, he had not expected to stay so
long when he arrived.

James Blaine Hawkins warmed perceptibly under the good-natured
service he was getting. It was pleasant to have some one cook his
supper for him after that long drive across the desert and it was
satisfying to his vanity to be able to talk largely of his plans for
running Johnnywater ranch at a profit. By the time he had mopped up
his third helping of jam with his fourth hot biscuit, James Blaine
Hawkins felt at peace with the world and with Gary Marshall, who was
a fine young man and a good cook.

“Didn’t make such a bad deal with that girl,” he boasted, leaning
back against the dish cupboard and heaving a sigh of repletion.
“Kinda had a white elephant on her hands, I guess. Had this place
here and nobody to look after it. Yes, sir, time I’d talked with her
awhile, she was ready to agree to every damned thing I said. Got my
own terms, ab-so-lute-ly. Five years’ contract, and two thirds the
increase of stock--cattle _and_ horses--two thirds of all the
crops--and _found_!”

“Get out!” exclaimed Gary, and grinned when he said it. “I suppose
there _are_ such snaps in the world, but I never saw one. She agreed
to that? _On paper?_”

“On paper!” James Blaine Hawkins affirmed solemnly. He reached into
his coat pocket (exactly as Gary had meant that he should). “Read it
yourself,” he invited triumphantly. “Guess that spells Easy Street
in less than five years. Don’t it?”

“It’s a bird,” Gary assured him heartily. Then his face clouded. He
sat with his head slightly bowed, drumming with his fingers on the
table, in frowning meditation.

“What’s wrong?” James Blaine Hawkins looked at him anxiously.
“Anything wrong with that contract?”

Gary started and with a noticeable effort pulled himself out of his
mood. He laughed constrainedly.

“The contract? Why, the contract’s all right--fine. I was just
wondering----” He shook his shoulders impatiently. “But you’ll be all
right, I guess. A man of your type----” He forced another laugh. “Of
course it’s all right!”

“You got something on your mind,” James Blaine Hawkins challenged
uneasily. “What is it? You needn’t be afraid to tell _me_.”

But Gary forced a laugh and declared that he had nothing at all on
his mind. And by his very manner and tone James Blaine Hawkins knew
that he was lying.

The mottled cat hopped upon the doorstep, hesitated when she saw
James Blaine Hawkins sitting there, then walked in demurely.

“Funny-looking cat,” James Blaine Hawkins commented carelessly.

Gary looked up at him surprisedly; saw the direction of his glance,
and turned and looked that way with a blank expression of
astonishment.

“Cat? What cat?”

“_That_ cat! Hell, can’t you see that _cat_?” James Blaine Hawkins
leaned forward excitedly.

Gary’s glance wandered over the cabin floor. Toward Faith, over
Faith and beyond Faith. He might have been a blind man for all the
expression there was in his eyes. He turned and eyed James Blaine
Hawkins curiously.

“You mean to say you--you see a _cat_?” he asked solicitously.

“Ain’t there a cat?” James Blaine Hawkins half rose from his seat
and pointed a shaking finger. “Mean to tell me that ain’t a cat
walkin’ over there to the bunk?”

Gary looked toward the bunk, but it was perfectly apparent that he
saw nothing.

“Waddell used to see--a cat,” he murmured regretfully. “There used to
be a cat that belonged to a man named Steve Carson, that built this
cabin and used to live here. Steve disappeared very mysteriously
awhile back. Five years or so ago. Ever since then----” He broke off
suddenly. “Really, Mr. Hawkins, maybe I hadn’t better be telling you
this. I didn’t think a man of your type would be bothered----”

“What about it?” A sallow streak had appeared around the mouth and
nostrils of James Blaine Hawkins. “Yuh needn’t be afraid to go on
and tell me. If that ain’t a cat----”

“There _was_ a cat, a few years back,” Gary corrected himself
gently. “There was the cat’s master, too. Now--they say there’s a
Voice--away up on the bluff, that calls and calls. Waddell--poor old
duffer! He used to see Steve Carson--and the cat. It was, as you say,
a funny-looking cat. White, I believe, with black spots and
yellowish-brown spots. And half of its face was said to be white,
with a blue eye in that side.”

Gary leaned forward, his arms folded on the table. His voice dropped
almost to a whisper.

“Is that the kind of a cat you see?” he asked.

James Blaine Hawkins got up from the bench as if some extraneous
force were pulling him up. His jaw sagged. His eyes had in them a
glassy look which Gary recognized at once as stark terror. A cold
feeling went crimpling up Gary’s spine to his scalp.

James Blaine Hawkins was staring, not at the cat lying curled up on
the bunk, but at something midway between the bunk and the door.

Gary could see nothing. But he had a queer feeling that he knew what
it was that James Blaine Hawkins saw. The eyes of the man followed
something to the bunk. Gary saw the cat lift its head and look,
heard it mew lazily, saw it rise, stretch itself and hop lightly
down. He saw that terrified stare of James Blaine Hawkins follow
something to the open doorway. The cat trotted out into the dusky
warmth of the starlit night. It looked to Gary as if the cat were
following some one--or some _thing_.

James Blaine Hawkins relaxed, drew a deep breath and looked at Gary.

“Did you see it?” he whispered, and licked his lips.

Gary shivered a little and shook his head. The three deep creases
stood between his eyebrows, and his lips were pressed together so
that the deep lines showed more distinctly beside his mouth.

“Didn’t yuh--_honest_?” James Blaine Hawkins whispered again.

Again Gary shook his head. He got up and began clearing the table,
his hands not quite steady. He lifted the dented teakettle, saw that
it needed water and picked up the bucket. He hesitated for an
instant on the doorstep before he started to the creek. He heard a
scrape of feet behind him on the rough floor and looked back. James
Blaine Hawkins was following him like a frightened child.

They returned to the cabin, and Gary washed the dishes and swept the
floor. James Blaine Hawkins sat with his back against the wall and
smoked one cigarette after another, his eyes roving here and there.
They did not talk at all until Gary had finished his work and seated
himself on the bunk to roll a cigarette.

“What’s the matter with this damn place, anyway?” James Blaine
Hawkins demanded abruptly in that tone of resentment with which a
man tacitly acknowledges himself completely baffled.

Gary shrugged his shoulders expressively and lifted his eyebrows.

“What would you say was the matter with it?” he countered. “I know
that one man disappeared here very mysteriously. An Indian, so they
tell me, heard a Voice calling, up on the bluff. He died soon
afterwards. And I know Waddell was in a fair way to go crazy from
staying here alone. But as to what ails the place--one man’s guess is
as good as another man’s.” He lighted his cigarette. “I’ve quit
guessing,” he added grimly.

“You think the cabin’s haunted?” James Blaine Hawkins asked him
reluctantly.

Again Gary shrugged. “If the cabin’s haunted, the whole darn cañon
is in the same fix,” he stated evenly. “You can’t drag an Indian in
here with a rope.”

“It’s all damn nonsense!” James Blaine Hawkins asserted
blusteringly.

Gary made no reply, but smoked imperturbably, staring abstractedly
at the floor.

“Wherever there’s a spook there’s a man at the back of it,” declared
James Blaine Hawkins, gathering courage from the continued calm.
“That was a man I seen standin’ by the bunk. Felt slippers, likely
as not--so he wouldn’t make no noise walkin’. He likely come in when
I wasn’t looking. And yuh needn’t try to tell _me_,” he added
defiantly, “that wasn’t no cat!”

Gary turned his head slowly and looked at James Blaine Hawkins.

“If there was a cat,” he argued, “why the heck didn’t I see it?
There’s nothing wrong with _my_ eyes.”

“I dunno why you never seen it,” James Blaine Hawkins retorted
pettishly. “_I_ seen it, plain as I see you this minute. Funny you
never seen it. I s’pose you’ll say next yuh never seen that man
standin’ there by the bunk! He went outside, and the cat follered
him.”

Gary looked up quickly. “I didn’t see any man,” he said gravely.
“There wasn’t any man. I think you just imagined it. Waddell used to
imagine the same thing. And he used to see a cat. He particularly
hated the cat.” James Blaine Hawkins gave a gasp. Gary looked at him
sharply and saw that he was once more staring at the empty air near
the door. The cat had come in again and was gazing questioningly
about her as if trying to decide where she would curl herself down
for a nap. The eyes of James Blaine Hawkins pulled themselves away
from the terrifying vision near the door, and turned toward Faith.
He gave a sudden yell and rushed out of the cabin.

Faith ran and jumped upon the bunk, her tail the size of a bologna
sausage. Gary got up and followed James Blaine Hawkins as far as the
door.

“Look out you don’t hear the Voice, Mr. Hawkins,” he said
commiseratingly. “If I let my imagination get a fair running start,
I couldn’t stay in this cañon over night. I’d be a plain nut inside
twenty-four hours.”

James Blaine Hawkins was busy cranking his car. If he heard Gary
speak he paid no attention. He got a sputter from the engine, rushed
to the wheel and coaxed it with spark and gas-lever, straddled in
over the side and went careening away down the trail to the open
desert beyond.

Faith came inquisitively to the door, and Gary picked her up in his
hands and held her, purring, against his face while he stroked her
mottled back.

“I think you’ve saved little Pat Connolly a darned lot of trouble,”
he murmured into the cat’s ear. “Thrashing that bird wouldn’t have
had half the effect.”




                          CHAPTER SIXTEEN

                      “THERE’S MYSTERY HERE----”


“Dear Pat:--

“In God’s name, what were you thinking of when you sent this fellow
Hawkins over here with a five years’ contract? Couldn’t you see the
man’s a crook? Are the lawyers in Los Angeles all _dead_, that you
couldn’t call one up on the ’phone and ask a question or two about
letting places on shares? Of course you’d want to write the contract
yourself. Perfect Patricia is the little lady that invented brains!
If she doesn’t know all there is to know in the world, she’ll go as
far as she does know and fake the rest.

“Permit me to congratulate you, Miss Connolly, upon the artistic
manner in which you handed over to James Blaine Hawkins the best
imitation of a legacy that I ever saw! Of course you’d have to
invent a new way of having your pocket picked. Two thirds and found!
My word!

“Any ordinary, peanut-headed man would have given the usual one half
of increase in stock, and the old stock made good at the end of the
term of contract. And _not_ found, Pat! No one but you would ever
dream of doing a thing like that. And he says you agreed to buy his
gas and oil. Pat, if ever a girl needed some one to look after her,
you’re that small person. And he bragged about it--the dirty whelp.
Laughed at the way you met his terms and thought they were all
right!

“He never came nearer a licking in his life and missed it, Pat. But
I had another scheme, and I didn’t want to gum it up by letting on I
knew you. I had to sit pretty and let him brag, and register
admiration for the rotter. He’s gone now--it worked. But he’ll come
back--to-morrow, when the sun is shining and his blood thaws out
again. I may have to lick him yet. If he were a white man, with the
intelligence of a hen turkey, I could play the joker and make him
lay down his hand. But I’ll probably have to take a few falls out of
him before I can convince him he’s whipped from the start.

“You know, Pat, you’ve made an ungodly mess of things. In the whole
sorry assortment of blunders you did just one thing that gives me a
chance to save you. Before I left the city I made it a point to find
out what kind of power runs a Power of Attorney, anyway. I happen to
know a darned good lawyer, and I had a talk with him.

“Pat, you did something when you gave me that Power of Attorney. You
gave me more right over the disposal of this place than if I were
your husband. I came over here to use this right and sell
Johnnywater. I think even James Blaine Hawkins will stop, look and
listen when I tell him how come to-morrow.

“He’ll come back. A good, strong dose of sunlight will bring him
back--on the rampage, I’m guessing--mad to think how scared he was
when he left. I played a dirty trick on him, Pat. I made him think
the psychic cat was a spook.

“He thought it all right! But you see, I didn’t know.

“I wonder if he really did see something. I think he did--or at any
rate he kidded himself into thinking he did. I never dreamed he’d
see.

“Pat, you called me flabby souled. That hurt--and it wasn’t my vanity
you hit. I’ve wanted you to respect me, Pat, in spite of my
profession. And when you flung that at me, I saw you didn’t
understand. Lord knows I hate a whiner, and I won’t try to explain
just why I called you unjust.

“But after I got over here, Pat, I began to see the way I must have
looked to you. You took at face value all the slams you’ve heard
about the movies. You lumped us all together and called us cheap and
weak and vain. Just puppets strutting around before the camera like
damned peacocks. You couldn’t see that maybe it takes quite as much
character for a man to make good in the movies and live clean and
honest, as it does to drive cows to water.

“But after all these hills and the desert out here beyond the cañon
are mighty big and clean--my God, Pat, they’d shame the biggest man
that ever lived! When you get out here and measure yourself
alongside them you feel like a buffalo gnat on an elephant. And
there’s things in this cañon it takes a man to meet.

“There’s mystery here; the kind you can’t put your finger on. The
kind the movies can’t feature on the screen. Until James Blaine
Hawkins drove into the scene, I’d have sworn a man could live here
for forty years in the wilderness like the children of Israel--or
maybe it was Noah and the ark--and never meet a villain who’s out to
make you either the goat or a corpse--both, maybe, if the story runs
that way.

“But I’ve learned something I never knew before. I’ve learned there
are things a man can fight that’s worse than crooks. Dad was kind of
religious, and he used to quote Bible at me. One of his favorite
lines was about ‘He that is master of himself is greater than he
that taketh a city.’ It sounded like the bunk to me when I was a
kid. Now I kind of see what the old man was driving at. This country
puts it right up to you, Pat.

“So, I’m going to find out something before I leave here, Pat. I
want to know who’s going to lick: Gary Marshall, or Johnnywater
Cañon. It sort of dawned on me gradually that if I leave here now,
I’ll leave here licked. Licked by something that’s never laid a
finger on me! Scared out--like Waddell. Pat, my dear, I never could
go back and face you if I had that to remember. Every time you
looked at me I’d feel that you were calling me flabby souled in your
heart--and I’d know I had it coming.

“Of course, I don’t need to be hit with an axe in order to take a
hint. I got the slap you sent me, Pat--along with James Blaine
Hawkins. _You_ know I’m over here. You know it as well as you know
anything. Even if I didn’t say I was coming--even though I _did_ say
I wasn’t coming--you knew I came. You’d call up the studio, and Mills
would tell you I was out of town on business. So you’d know; there’s
nothing else could take me out.

“So I got the slam you handed me, when you let the place to Hawkins
for five years. You couldn’t go into court, Pat, and swear that you
didn’t offer me the management of Johnnywater. The very fact that I
have all the documents pertaining to the deal, plus the Power of
Attorney, will prove that anywhere. Then Monty Girard knows it--a
valuable witness, Monty. So I can save you from your own
foolishness, and I’ll do it, young lady, if I have to fight you in
court. Hawkins is not going to get his two thirds and _found_! The
two hundred he grafted off you I may not be able to save. But I’ll
keep the rest out of his clutches, make no mistake.

“I’ve got the glooms to-night, Pat. Feel sort of blue and sick at
heart. It hit me pretty hard, reading that contract you drew up for
Hawkins to brag about. It hurt to see him take that paper out of his
pocket--paper that you had handled, Pat, words that you had typed.
He’s not fit to touch it. He left it here--lying on the table when he
beat it, scared silly. You were stubborn when you signed your
name--you did that to spite Gary. Own up now, Pat; didn’t you do it
just for spite--because I left without saying good-by? I wonder if it
hurt you like it hurt me. I reckon not. Girls are so damned
self-righteous--but then, they have the right. God knows, the best of
men don’t amount to much.

“There’s something I want to do for you; if I don’t do it before I
leave here, it won’t be for want of trying. You’ll never make one
dollar off this investment, just hanging on to it as it stands. This
country’s full of loco, for one thing. The percentage of loss is
higher than my dad would ever have stood for. Practically every
horse you own has got a touch of loco. And Monty says the calf crop
is never up to normal. It’s a losing game, in dollars and cents. A
man could stay with it and make a bare living, I suppose. He could
raise his own vegetables, put up enough hay to keep a horse or two,
and manage to exist. But that would be the extent of it. And I don’t
want to see you lose--you won’t, if I can help it. Having Hawkins in
the deal may complicate matters--unless he quits. And, honey, I’ll
make the quitting as good as possible for him.

“I was sore when I started to write. But now I’m just sorry--and I
love you, Pat. I wouldn’t have you different if I could.

                                                             “Gary.”




                         CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

        JAMES BLAINE HAWKINS FINDS HIS COURAGE--AND LOSES IT


Gary had measured his man rather accurately, and his guess hit close
to the mark. He slept late that morning, probably because he had
lain awake until the morning star looked at him through the window.
The sun was three hours high when he got up, and he loitered over
his breakfast, gave Faith a severe talking to and fed her all the
canned milk she would drink, so that she would not be teasing him
for it later on when her insistence might be embarrassing. Faith was
a methodical cat and a self-reliant cat. She loved her milk
breakfast and her little talk with Gary afterward. Then she would
head straight for the creek, cross it and go bounding away up the
bluff. She always took the same direction, and Gary had sometimes
wondered why. Of course, she hunted birds and kangaroo rats and
mice; she was an expert huntress. Gary thought she must keep a
private game preserve up on the bluff somewhere. However that might
be, Faith was off for her daily prowl on the bluff and would not
show up again at the cabin until noon or later.

Gary was up at the corral rubbing down the chunky little sorrel
horse he called Jazz, when he heard the chug of a motor coming
up-grade through the sand. James Blaine Hawkins, he knew without
looking, had discounted his terror of last night and was returning
to take possession.

“Well, Jazz, if I get the gate, there’s your new master.” Gary
slapped the horsefly that was just settling on the sorrel’s neck.
“But I won’t tell you good-by till I’m gone.”

He turned and went down to the cabin, reaching it just as James
Blaine Hawkins stopped in the dooryard. Gary chose to take the
return as a matter of course.

“Had your breakfast, Mr. Hawkins?” Gary asked him genially. “The
coffee may still be hot. I had a pretty good fire while I was
washing the dishes. Thought I’d cook up a mess of beans. Takes a
heck of a while to cook them in this altitude.”

James Blaine Hawkins gave him a look that might easily be called
suspicious. But Gary met it innocently.

“I’ve et,” James Blaine Hawkins grunted. “Camped out on the
desert--better than walking distance away from whoever it was that
tried to get funny last night. Feller don’t know what he’s going up
against, in a strange place like that after dark. But there can’t
nobody bamboozle me, once I’ve got my bearings!”

His whole manner was a challenge. He eyed Gary boldly, watching for
some overt act of hostility. He climbed out of the car and began to
unpack, with a great deal of fussing and mighty little accomplished.

Gary did not say anything. He leaned against the cabin with his arms
folded and watched James Blaine Hawkins indifferently. His silence
affected the other unpleasantly.

“Well, why don’t you say something? What yuh standin’ there grinnin’
that way for? Why don’t yuh own up you know a damn sight more’n what
yuh let on?” he demanded pugnaciously.

James Blaine Hawkins came toward him, his fists opening and closing
nervously at his side. “I ain’t to be bluffed, you know! I ain’t to
be bluffed _nor_ scared!”

Gary’s lip curled. He rubbed the ash from his cigarette against a
splinter on the log wall beside him.

“You’re brighter than I thought,” he drawled. “I _do_ know a damn
sight more than I’m saying. I’ll say as much of what I know as I
happen to choose. No more--and bullying won’t get you anything at
all. I might have told you a few things last night, if you hadn’t
got scared and beat it.”

“Scared? Who was scared?” fleered James Blaine Hawkins. “Not me,
anyway. I seen right away there was some kind of frame-up agin me
here and I didn’t want no trouble. Any fool can go head down into
trouble, but a man uh brains’ll side-step till he knows what he’s up
against.”

“Well,” smiled Gary, “do you know what you’re up against?”

“Sure, I know! For some reason, somebody don’t want me here. They
tried to scare me last night--but I seen through that right off.”

“Yes, you saw more than I did,” Gary told him quietly.

“Well, and what’s all this you know?” Hawkins’ voice was rising
angrily. “I’m here to stay. I want to know what’s back of all this.”

Gary took an exasperating time to reply. “If you find out, you’ll do
more than Waddell did,” he said at last. His face was sober, his
tone convincing. “I’ve a little matter of my own to discuss with
you, but that has nothing whatever to do with last night. Last night
you claimed to see a man--and there _wasn’t_ any man. You know darned
well there wasn’t, or you wouldn’t have been so scared. That’s
something I have nothing to do with. I didn’t see any one in the
cabin--but you.” He smoked for another minute. “You also claimed you
saw a cat.” He looked at James Blaine Hawkins steadily.

“I claimed to and I _did_! There’s a frame-up of some kind. You said
yourself----”

“I said Waddell thought _he_ saw things here. That’s the plain
truth, Hawkins. It worried Waddell so he nearly went crazy, from all
accounts. You needn’t take my word for that. You can ask the
Indians, or Monty Girard--any one who knows this place.”

He stopped and drew some legal papers from his pocket. “Here’s
something I meant to show you last night--if you had stayed,” he
said. “I’m not in the habit of babbling my business to every chance
stranger. I didn’t tell you, because I wanted to make sure that it
concerned you. But it happens that I have a prior right here. That’s
what brought me over here in the first place. It’s true I wanted to
see Waddell, and he was gone when I arrived. But I knew all about
the sale, Mr. Hawkins. I know Miss Connolly very well. She begged me
to undertake the complete management of Johnnywater ranch, and to
that end she signed this Power of Attorney. You will see, Mr.
Hawkins, that it has been duly certified and that the date is much
earlier than your first knowledge of the place. Miss Connolly also
gave me the deed and this certificate of the water rights.
Everything is perfectly legal and straight, and I’m sorry to say--No,
by heck, I’m not sorry! It’s a relief to me to know that your
contract isn’t worth a lead nickel. In order to get this place on
shares, you would need to make an agreement with me. And you would
not get the terms Miss Connolly was so generous as to give you. One
half the increase in stock, any loss in the old stock during the
term of contract to be made good when you turned the place back to
its owner, are the usual terms. Your expenses would not be paid for
you.

“However, that is beside the point. I am not in favor of letting the
place go on shares--not at present, anyway. So this is what you did
not wait last night to hear.”

“It’s a frame-up!” snorted James Blaine Hawkins indignantly. “It’s a
rotten frame-up! I’ll bet them papers is forged. There’s a law made
to handle just such cases as yours, young feller. And yuh needn’t
think I’m going to stand and be held up like that.”

“Well, I’ve told you all you’re entitled to know. I’ve no objection
to your camping here for a while, so long as you behave yourself.”
Gary threw away his cigarette stub. His tone had been as casual as
if he were gossiping with Monty, but was not so friendly. He really
did not want to fight James Blaine Hawkins, in spite of the fact
that he had discussed the possibility quite frankly with the cat.

But James Blaine Hawkins had spent an uncomfortable night and he
wanted some one else to pay for it. He began to shake his fists and
to call names, none of which were nice. Gary was up to something,
and Hawkins was not going to stand for it, whatever it was. Gary was
a faker, a thief--though what he had stolen James Blaine Hawkins
failed to stipulate. Gary was a forger (Hawkins hinted darkly that
he had, in some mysterious manner, evolved those papers during the
night for the express purpose of using them as a bluff this morning)
and he was also a liar.

Wherefore Gary reached out a long arm and slapped James Blaine
Hawkins stingingly on the ear. When the head of James Blaine Hawkins
snapped over to his right shoulder, Gary reached his other long arm
and slapped the head upright. James Blaine Hawkins backed up and
felt his ear; both ears, to be exact.

“I didn’t come here to have no trouble,” James Blaine Hawkins
protested indignantly. “A man of brains can always settle things
_with_ his brains. I don’t want to fight, and I ain’t goin’ to
fight. I’m goin’ to settle this thing----”

“With your brains. Well, go on and settle it then. Only be careful
and don’t sprain your head! Thinking’s dangerous when you’re not
used to it. And if you do any more talking--which I certainly don’t
advise--be careful of the words you use, Mr. Hawkins. I’m not a liar
or a thief. Don’t call me either one.”

James Blaine Hawkins spluttered and swore and argued one-sidedly.
Gary leaned against the cabin with his arms folded negligently and
listened with supreme indifference if one were to believe his
manner.

“Rave on,” he said indulgently. “Get it all out of your system--and
then crank your little Ford and iris out of this scene, will you? I
did say you could stay for a day or so if you behaved yourself. But
you better beat it. The going may not be so good after awhile.”

James Blaine Hawkins intimated that he would go when he got good and
ready. So Gary went in and shut the door. He was sick of the fellow.
The man was the weakest kind of a bully. He wouldn’t fight.
Heretofore Gary had believed that only a make-believe villain in a
story would refuse to fight after he had been slapped twice.

When Gary came out of the cabin for a bucket of water, James Blaine
Hawkins was fumbling in the car and talking to himself. He
straightened up and renewed his aimless accusations when Gary passed
him going to the creek.

The Voice suddenly shouted from the bluff, but Gary continued on his
way, seemingly oblivious to the sound.

“Who’s that hollerin’ up there? Thought you said you was alone here.
What does that feller want?” James Blaine Hawkins left the Ford and
started after Gary.

“Beg pardon?” While the Voice continued to shout, Gary looked
inquiringly at Hawkins.

“I asked yuh who was hollerin’ up there! What does he want?”

Gary continued to look at James Blaine Hawkins. “Hollering?” His
eyes narrowed a bit. “On the bluff, did you say?”

“Not over on _that_ bluff,” James Blaine Hawkins bellowed. “Up
there, across the creek! Good Lord, are yuh deef? Can’t yuh hear
that hollering?”

Gary half turned his head and listened carefully. “Can you still
hear it?” he asked in the midst of a loud halloo.

“You must be deef if _you_ don’t,” James Blaine Hawkins spluttered.

Gary shook his head. “My hearing is splendid,” he stated calmly. “I
was a wireless operator on a sub-chaser during the war. Do you still
hear it?”

James Blaine Hawkins testified profanely that he did. He was looking
somewhat paler than was normal. He stared at Gary anxiously.

“What was that damfool yarn you was telling last night----”

“Oh, about the Indian that heard some one hollering on the bluff
after Steve Carson disappeared? By Jove! I wonder if it can be the
_Voice_ you hear!” He looked at Hawkins blankly. “Say, I’m sorry I
slapped you, Mr. Hawkins. I’d like to feel--afterwards--that you
didn’t hold any grudge against me for that.” He held out his hand
with the pitying smile of one who wishes to make amends before it is
too late.

James Blaine Hawkins swallowed twice. Gary set down the bucket and
laid a hand kindly on the man’s shoulder.

“Aw, buck up, Mr. Hawkins. I--I guess they lied about that Injun
dying right after--don’t you believe it, anyway.” And then,
anxiously, “Do you still hear it, old fellow?”

Gary felt absolutely certain that James Blaine Hawkins did hear.
Above the sound of the wind in the tree tops, the Voice was calling
imperiously from the bluff.

“You can keep the damn place for all of me,” James Blaine Hawkins
exploded viciously. “I wouldn’t have it as a gift. There’s that
damned cat I seen last night! A man’s crazy that’d think of staying
in a hole like this.”

He was cranking furiously when Gary tapped him on the shoulder.

“Since you aren’t going to stay and fulfill the contract,” Gary said
evenly, “you better hand over that two hundred dollars which Miss
Connolly advanced you under the ‘found’ clause of your agreement.
I’ll give you a receipt for it, of course.”

James Blaine Hawkins meant to refuse, but Gary’s fingers slid up to
his ear and pulled him upright.

“We’ll just go in the cabin where I can write that receipt,” he
explained cheerfully, and led James Blaine Hawkins inside. “You’re
in a hurry to go, and I’m in a hurry to have you. So we’ll make this
snappy.”

It must have been snappy indeed, for within five minutes James
Blaine Hawkins was driving down the trail toward the mouth of the
cañon, quite as fast as he had driven the night before. Only this
time he went in broad daylight and he had no intention of ever
coming back.




                          CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

                        GARY RIDES TO KAWICH


Gary saddled Jazz, filled the two canteens at the creek, tied some
food for himself and rolled barley for Jazz in a flour sack--with a
knot tied between to prevent mixing--and rode down the trail before
the dust had fully settled after the passing of James Blaine
Hawkins.

Primarily he wanted to make sure that Hawkins was actually leaving
for town. After that he meant to ride over to Kawich, if he could
find the place. In the mental slump that followed close on the heels
of his altercation, Gary felt an overwhelming hunger for speech with
a friend. Monty Girard was practical, wholesome and loyal as a man
may be. Not for a long while had Gary known a man of Monty Girard’s
exact type. He confessed frankly to himself that certain phases of
the James Blaine Hawkins incident had shaken his nerves. He was not
at all sure that he meant to tell Monty about that side of the
encounter, but he felt that he needed the mental tonic of Monty
Girard’s simple outlook on life. There was nothing subtle, no
complexities in Monty’s nature.

He dismounted and fastened the gate carefully behind him with a
secret twist of the wire that would betray the fact if another
opened the gate in his absence. As an added precaution he brushed
out the trail of his own passing, as far as he could reach inside
the gate with a pine branch. It was not likely that any one would
visit Johnnywater Cañon; but Gary felt an unexplained desire to know
it if they did. There was not one chance in a hundred that any one
passing through the gate would observe the untracked space just
within. An Indian might. But Gary had no fear that any Indian would
invade Johnnywater Cañon. For that matter, it was not fear at all
that impelled the caution. He simply wanted to know if any one
visited the place.

Far down the mesa a cloud of gray dust rolled swiftly along a brown
pencil-marking through the sage. That would be James Blaine Hawkins
heading for Las Vegas as fast as gas and four cylinders would take
him. Gary pulled up and watched the dust cloud, his eyes laughing.

“God bless that pinto cat!” he murmured, and leaned to smooth the
sorrel’s mane which the wind was tossing and tangling. “We won’t see
him again--for a while, anyway. But golly grandma, won’t Pat be sore
at the way I jimmed her revenge on Handsome Gary! But you know,
Jazz, I expect to have to live with Pat, and I don’t expect to do
all my walking on my knees, either. A little demonstration of manly
authority now and then does ’em good. They won’t own it, Jazz, but
they all like to feel they’ve tamed a cave man, and goodness knows
when he may get rough. I worked in ‘The Taming of the Shrew,’ and I
learned a lot about women from that.”

The dust cloud rolled out of sight around a lonesome black butte,
and Gary waved it a mocking farewell and got out the map which Monty
had made of the trail to Kawich.

“Five miles down the trail toward town, and then turn short off to
the left,” he mumbled, studying the crude map. “That’s simple
enough--and no wonder I couldn’t trail Monty afoot. I didn’t walk to
where he turned off. But hold on here! Dotted line shows faint stock
trail straight across country to the Kawich road. Monty did say
something about a cut-off, Jazz. All right, we’ll hunt around here
in the sage till we find that dotted line. This is great stuff. Feel
so good now I don’t have to go see Monty to get cheered up. But
we’ll go just the same--and see the country.”

The trail, when he found it, was so faint that it was scarcely
distinguishable in the gravelly soil. In places where they followed
a rocky ridge Gary would have missed it altogether; but once on the
trail Jazz followed it by instinct and his familiarity with the
country. Probably he had traveled that way before, carrying Waddell,
or perhaps Steve Carson, since Jazz was well past his youth.

Unconsciously Gary laid aside his movie habit of weaving in and out
among the sage at a gallop, and dropped back into the old, shacking
trail-trot he had learned from his father’s riders. It was the gait
to which Jazz was long accustomed, and it carried them steadily over
the rough mesa to where the road angled off through the foothills.

The distant hills looked more unreal than ever. The clouds that
grouped themselves around the violet-tinted peaks were like dabs of
white paint upon a painted sky line. Again the sense of waiting in a
tremendous calm impressed Gary with the immeasurable patience of the
universe.

Insensibly the mental burden of loneliness, the nameless dread of
things unseen and incomprehensible, lightened. The strained look
left his eyes; the lines in his face relaxed as if he slept and,
sleeping, forgot the worries of his waking hours. The world around
him was so big, so quiet--the forces of nature were so invincible in
their strength--that the cares of one small human being seemed as
pettily unimportant as the scurrying of a lizard down the road. It
occurred to Gary whimsically that the lizard’s panicky retreat
before the approaching cataclysm of the horse’s shadow was very real
and tremendously important--to the lizard. Quite as important, no
doubt, as the complexity of emotions that filled the human soul of a
certain Gary Marshall in Johnnywater Cañon. And the great butte that
stood in its immutable strength under the buffetings of wind and sun
and rain looked alike upon the troubles of the lizard and of Gary
Marshall.

“After all, Jazz, we haven’t got such a heck of a lot to worry
about. If I was a jack rabbit I reckon I’d still have troubles of my
own. Take your ears off your neck, Jazz, and shack along. Packing me
over to Kawich isn’t the worst thing could happen you, you lazy
brute.”

Gradually it dawned upon Gary that the road was creeping around the
great butte that held Johnnywater Cañon gashed into the side turned
toward the southeast. He wondered if the place called Kawich might
not be just across the butte from Johnnywater. There was a certain
comfort in the thought that Monty might not be so far from him,
after all. Above him towered the bold outline of the butte, capped
by the sheer wall of rock that rose like a cliff above its
precipitous slopes. The trail itself followed the line of least
resistance through the wrinkles formed in the foothills when this
old world was cooling. But however deep the cañon, wherever the
winding trail led, always the butte stood high-shouldered and grim
just under the clouds. Gary could not wonder at the dilapidated
condition of Monty’s Ford, when he saw the trail it had been
compelled to travel.

He ate his lunch beside a little spring that trickled out from
beneath a rock just above the trail. Another hour’s riding brought
him into the very dooryard of a camp which he judged was Monty’s,
though no one appeared in answer to his call.

In point of picturesqueness and the natural beauty of its
surroundings, Gary felt impelled to confide to Jazz that Johnnywater
had Kawich beaten to a pulp. Kawich lacked the timber and the
talkative little stream that distinguished Johnnywater Cañon. The
camp itself was a rude shack built of boards and canvas, with a roof
of corrugated iron and a sprinkle of tin cans and bits of broken
implements surrounding it. The sun beat harshly down upon the barren
knoll, and heat waves radiated from the iron roof. A cattle-trodden
pathway led down to a zinc-lined trough in a hollow. The trough was
full, with little lips of water pushing out over the edge here and
there in a continuous drip-drip that muddied the ground immediately
beneath the trough and made deep trampling tracks when the cattle
crowded down to water. A crude corral was built above the trough,
enclosing one end so that corralled stock could drink at will. The
charred remains of the burnt Ford tilted crazily on the slope with
its nose toward a brushy little gulch.

Gary took in all the bleak surroundings and the general air of
discomfort that permeated the place. It struck him suddenly that
Johnnywater Cañon was not so bad a place after all, with its
whispery piñons, its picturesque log cabin set in the grove and the
little gurgling stream just beyond. If it were not for the Voice and
the eerie atmosphere of the place, he thought a person might rather
enjoy a month or two there in the summer. Certainly it held more of
the vacation elements than did this camp at Kawich.

He dismounted, led Jazz down into the corral, unsaddled him and left
him to his own devices. There did not seem to be any feed about the
place, and he was glad that he had brought plenty of grain for Jazz.
He could do very well for twenty-four hours on rolled barley
rations, Gary thought.

Monty could not be very far away, for he had eaten his breakfast
there and had left cooked food covered under a cloth on the table
for his next meal. As to the comforts of living, Monty seemed to be
no better off than was Gary in Johnnywater Cañon. A camp bed in its
canvas tarp was spread upon the board bunk in one corner of the
shack. The cook stove was small and rusty from many rains that had
beaten down through the haggled hole in the corrugated iron roof.
The stovepipe was streaked with red lines of rust. There was the
inevitable cupboard built of boxes nailed one above the other,
bottoms against the wall. There was the regulation assortment of
necessary supplies: coffee, salt, lard, a can of bacon grease, rice,
sugar, beans and canned corn and tomatoes. Of reading matter, Monty
seemed to have a little more than Waddell had left behind him. There
was a small pile of _Stock Growers Journals_, some old Salt Lake
papers and half a dozen old _Populars_ with the backs torn off.

Gary chose a magazine that had a complete novel by an author whose
work he liked. He stretched himself out on his back on the bunk,
crossed his feet, wriggled his shoulders into a comfortable position
just under Monty’s only pillow, and in two sentences was away back
in Texas after a mysterious gang of cattle rustlers.




                          CHAPTER NINETEEN

                     “HAVE YUH-ALL GOT A GUN?”


He was still hot on the trail and expecting every moment to have his
horse shot from under him, when Monty pulled open the door and
walked in upon him, swearing affectionately. Gary sat up, turned
down a corner of the page to mark his place, and reached for his
smoking material.

“Golly grandma, I meant to have supper ready!” he exclaimed. “But I
got to reading and forgot all about eating.”

“How yuh-all been making out?” Monty wanted to know. “Going to catch
a ride back to town?”

Gary licked the cigarette paper and shook his head while he pressed
it into place. “No, the action is just beginning to get snappy now,”
he said.

“Meanin’ what?” Monty paused in the act of lifting a stove lid.

“Meaning that I just put on a fight scene, and ran the heavy clean
out of the cañon as per usual.”

“Yeah?” Monty’s tone betrayed a complete lack of understanding.

“You bet. Never saw a leading man get licked, did you? I’m starring
in this piece--so naturally I just _had_ to put the heavy on the
run.”

“What’s a heavy?”

“The villain. Pat Connolly went and had another impulse. She let the
place on shares to a gink that I’ll bet has done time. He had every
mark of a crook, and he had the darndest holdup game you ever saw.
Pat Connolly doesn’t know anything at all about ranches. She went
and----”

“Pat Connolly--_she_?” Monty was dipping cold water into the
coffeepot, and he spilled a cupful.

“Er--yes.” Gary reddened a bit. “She’s a girl all right. Finest in
the world. Patricia Connolly’s her name, and if I can pull her clear
on this damned Johnnywater investment and remain on speaking terms
with Pat, I expect she’ll become Mrs. Marshall. She’s not at all
like other girls, Monty. Pat’s got brains. A crackerjack
stenographer and bookkeeper. Got a man-sized job with the
Consolidated Grain and Milling Company in the city. You may have
heard of them.”

“Sure,” said Monty. “Sent there once for some oil cakes to winter my
she stock on. Costs too much, though. A cow ain’t worth what it
costs to feed one through the winter. What about this feller yuh run
off?”

Gary got up and began helping with the supper while he told all
about James Blaine Hawkins and his AGREEMENT OF CONTRACT.

Monty was in the position of a man who dips into the middle of a
story and finds it something of a jumble because he does not know
what went before. He asked a good many questions, so that the
telling lasted through supper and the dishwashing afterwards. By the
time they were ready to sit down and smoke with the comfortable
assurance that further exertion would not be necessary that night,
Monty was pretty well up-to-date on the affairs of Gary Marshall and
Patricia Connolly, up to and including the arrival of James Blaine
Hawkins at Johnnywater and his hurried departure that morning.

“And yuh-all say the feller seen something,” Monty drawled
meditatively after a minute or two of silence. “Did he tell yuh what
it was he saw?”

“No, except that he thought it was a man who had slipped into the
cabin when he wasn’t looking. But it was the cat that really put him
on the run. Seems he hated to see a cat unless I saw it too.”

Monty looked up quickly. In Gary’s tone he had caught a certain
reluctance to speak of the man which James Blaine Hawkins declared
he saw. He was willing enough to explain all about James Blaine
Hawkins and the cat, and he had laughed when he told how he had
pretended not to hear the Voice. But of the possible apparition of a
man Gary did not like to talk.

“Tell the truth, now--ain’t yuh scared to stay there alone?” Monty’s
question was anxious.

Gary shrugged his shoulders and blew a smoke ring, watching it drift
up toward the ceiling. “Being scared or not being scared makes no
difference whatever. I’m going to stay. For a while, anyway.”

“I wisht you’d tell me what for,” Monty urged uneasily. “A man that
can hold down the position and earn the money yuh did in pictures
kain’t afford to set around in Johnnywater Cañon lookin’ after two
shoats and a dozen or fifteen hens. I don’t agree with Miss Connolly
at all. I’d be mighty proud if I could do what I’ve seen yuh-all do
in pictures. Your actin’ was real--and I reckon that’s what puts a
man at the top. I know the top-notchers all act so good you kain’t
ketch ’em at it. Yuh just seem to be lookin’ in on ’em whilst
they’re livin’.”

“The best acting I’ve done,” chuckled Gary, “was last night and this
morning. I was scared to death that the pinto cat would come and hop
up on my lap like she usually does. I’d have had a merry heck of a
time acting like she wasn’t there. But I put it over--enough to send
him breezing down the cañon, anyway.”

“You’re liable to have trouble with that feller yet,” warned Monty.
“If he got an agreement out of Miss Connolly, he ain’t liable to
give up the idea of holding her to it. Have yuh-all got a gun?”

“An automatic, yes.” Gary pulled the gun from his hip pocket. “I
carry this just in case. I was born and raised where men pack
guns--but they didn’t ride with ’em cocked and in their hands ready
to shoot, like we do in the movies. There’s a lot of hokum I do
before the camera that gives me a pain. So if I should happen to
need a gun, I’ve got one. But don’t you worry about James Blaine
Hawkins. _He_ won’t show up again.”

“I wouldn’t be none too sure of that,” Monty reiterated
admonishingly. “He’s liable to get to thinkin’ it over in town and
git his courage back. Things like Johnnywater has got don’t look so
important when you’re away off somewhere just thinkin’ about it.”

“I guess you’re right, at that,” Gary admitted. “He’ll probably get
over the cat and the Voice, all right, and--that other spell of
imagination. But without meaning to brag on myself, I think he’ll
study it over a while before he comes around trying to bully me
again. You see, Monty, the man’s an awful coward. I slapped him
twice and even then he wouldn’t fight. He just backed up away from
me and cooled right down.”

“Them’s the kind uh skunks yuh want to look out for,” Monty declared
sententiously.

But Gary only laughed at him and called him the original gloom, and
insisted upon talking of something altogether different.

Monty, it transpired, had promised to help a man through haying over
in Pahranagat Valley and meant to start the next day. He was frankly
relieved to know that Gary was still all right. He had wanted to
ride over to Johnnywater again before going to Pahranagat, but had
had too much riding of his own to do.

“But if you’re bent on hangin’ out there,” he said, after some
futile argument, “I’ll ride on over when I get through with this
job. What yuh-all trying to do over there, anyway? Hate yourself to
death?”

“Well, I hope I’m pleasing Pat,” Gary laughed evasively.

“Well, I hate to be butting in,” Monty said diffidently, “but if she
wanted yuh to stay over here and run Johnnywater, it don’t seem to
me like she’d ’a’ sent this Hawkins feller over with a five years’
contract to run the place on shares. Didn’t she send yuh no word
about why she done it?”

“She did not! I have a hunch Pat’s pretty sore at me. You see, she
sprung this deal on me kinda sudden, right on top of a strawberry
shortcake when I didn’t want to think. I told her what I thought
about it--and I told it straight. So we had a little--er--argument. She
up and threw my profile in my face, and called me flabby souled. So
I up and left. And I didn’t go back to tell her good-by when I
started over here, so I wouldn’t be surprised if little Pat Connolly
is pretty well peeved.”

Monty smoked and studied the matter. “Does she know you’re over
here?” he asked abruptly. “Seems kinda funny to me, that she’d go
and send Hawkins over here without sayin’ a word to yuh about it.
She could ’a’ wrote, couldn’t she? If yuh-all didn’t tell her yuh
was coming, how would she know yuh was here?”

“Why, she could call up the studio and get the dope from Mills, my
director,” Gary explained uncomfortably.

“But would she? Seems like as if _I_ was a girl and had any spunk, I
wouldn’t want to let on that the feller I was engaged to had gone
off somewheres without letting me know about it.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Gary admitted. “But Pat’s nobody’s
fool. She could find out all right, without letting on.”

“Well, it’s none of my put-in--but I don’t reckon yuh-all are
pleasing Pat Connolly much by sticking over here.”

Gary got up and stretched his arms above his head. “She wanted me to
sit in my cabin and listen to a saddle horse champing hay,” he
contended lightly. “I think I’ll go down and give Jazz a feed of
barley to champ.”

Monty understood quite well that Gary meant to end the discussion
right there. He said no more about it, therefore. But he promised
himself--and mentally he promised Patricia as well--that he would
manage somehow to bring about a complete understanding between these
two obstinate young people.

They slept shoulder to shoulder that night in Monty’s bunk, and the
next morning they saddled early and each rode his way, feeling the
better for the meeting.




                           CHAPTER TWENTY

                      “THAT CAT AIN’T HUMAN!”


Monty rode rather anxiously into Johnnywater Cañon, determined to
take whatever means he found necessary to persuade Gary to return to
Los Angeles and “make it up with his girl.” With three weeks’ wages
in his pocket Monty felt sufficiently affluent to buy the pigs and
chickens if Gary used them for a point in his argument against
going.

Monty had spent a lot of time during those three weeks in mulling
over in his mind the peculiar chain of circumstances that had
dragged Gary to Johnnywater. What bond it was that held him there,
Monty would have given much to know. He was sure that Gary disliked
the place, and that he hated to stay there alone. It seemed
unreasonable that any normal young man would punish himself like
that from sheer stubbornness; yet Gary would have had Monty believe
that he was staying to spite Patricia.

Monty did not believe it. Gary had shown himself to be too
intelligent, too level-headed and safely humorous in his viewpoints
to harbor that peculiar form of egotism. Monty was shrewd enough to
recognize the fact that “cutting off the nose to spite the face” is
a sport indulged in only by weak natures who own an exaggerated ego.
Wherefore, Gary failed to convince him that he was of that type of
individual.

At the same time, he could think of no other reason that could
possibly hold a man like Gary Marshall at Johnnywater. Monty had a
good memory for details. Certain trivial incidents he remembered
vividly: Gary’s stealthy approach around the corner of the cabin
with the upraised pitchfork in his hands; Gary’s forced gayety
afterwards, and the strained look in his eyes--the lines beside the
mouth; Gary’s reluctance to speak of the uncanny, nameless
_something_ that clung to Johnnywater Cañon; the incomprehensible
behavior of the spotted cat. And always Monty brought up short with
a question which he asked himself but could not answer.

Why had Gary Marshall described Steven Carson--who had dropped from
sight of mortal eyes five years and more ago?--why had Gary described
Steve Carson and asked if that description fitted Waddell?

“Gary never saw Steve Carson--not when he was alive, anyway. He says
the Indians never told him how Steve looked. I reckon he really
thought Waddell was that kind uh lookin’ man. But how in thunder did
he _get the idea_?” Monty frequently found himself mentally asking
that question, but he never attempted to put an answer into words.
He couldn’t. He didn’t know the answer.

So here he was, peering anxiously at the cabin squatted between the
two great piñon trees in the grove and hoping that Gary was still
all right. He had consciously put aside an incipient dread of James
Blaine Hawkins and his possible vengefulness toward Gary. Monty told
himself that there was no use in crossing that bridge until he came
to it. He had come over for the express purpose of offering to take
the Walking X cattle on shares and look after them with his own. He
would manage somehow to take charge of the pigs and chickens as
well. He decided that he could kill the pigs and pack the meat over
on his horse. And he could carry the chickens on a pack horse in a
couple of crates. There would be nothing then to give Gary any
excuse for staying.

Remembering how he had startled Gary before with calling, Monty did
not dismount at the cabin. Instead, he rode close to the front
window, leaned and peered in like an Indian; and finding the cabin
empty, he went on through the grove to the corral. Jazz was there,
standing hip-shot in a shady corner next the creek, his head nodding
jerkily while he dozed. Monty’s horse whinnied a greeting and Jazz
awoke with a start and came trotting across the corral to slide his
nose over the top rail nearest them.

Monty rode on past the potato patch and the alfalfa meadow where a
second crop was already growing apace. There was no sign of Gary,
and Monty rode on to the very head of the cañon and back to the
cabin.

A vague uneasiness seized Monty in spite of his efforts to throw it
off. Gary should be somewhere in the cañon, since he would not leave
it afoot, not while he had a horse doing nothing in the corral. Of
course, if anything were wrong with Jazz----Monty turned and rode back
to the corral, where he dismounted by the gate. He went in and
walked up to Jazz, and examined him with the practiced palms of the
expert horseman. He slapped Jazz on the rump and shooed him around
the corral at a lope.

“There ain’t a thing in the world the matter with _you_,” he told
the horse, after a watchful minute or two. Then he rolled a
cigarette, lighted and smoked it while he waited and meditated upon
the probable whereabouts of Gary.

He went out into the open and studied the steep bluff sides, foot by
foot. The entire width of the cañon was no more than a long
rifle-shot. If Gary were climbing anywhere along its sides, Monty
would be able to see him. But there was no sign of movement
anywhere, though he took half an hour for the examination.

He returned to the cabin, leaving his horse in the corral with
saddle and bridle off and a forkful of hay under his eager nose. He
shouted Gary’s name.

“Hey, _Gary! Oh-h-h_, Gary!” he called, over and over, careful to
enunciate the words.

From high up on the bluff somewhere the Voice answered him
mockingly, shouting again and again a monotonous, eerie call. There
was no other sound for a time, and Monty went into the cabin to see
if he could find there some clue to Gary’s absence.

Little things bear a message plain as print to those dwellers of the
wilderness who depend much upon their eyes and their ears. The cabin
told Monty with absolute certainty that Gary had not planned an
absence of more than a few hours at most. Nor had he left in any
great haste. He had been gone, Monty judged, since breakfast. Of the
cooked food set away in the cupboard, two pancakes lay on top of a
plate containing three slices of fried bacon. To Monty that meant
breakfast cleared away and no later meal prepared. He looked at his
watch. He had taken an early start from Kawich, and it was now two
o’clock.

He lifted the lid of the stove and reached in, feeling the ashes.
There had been no fire since morning; he was sure of that. He stood
in the middle of the room and studied the whole interior
questioningly. Gary’s good clothes--which were not nearly so good as
they had been when Monty first saw him--hung against the wall
farthest from the stove, the coat neatly spread over a makeshift
hanger. Gary’s good hat was in the cupboard nailed to the wall. A
corner of his suit case protruded from under the bunk. Gary was in
the rough clothes he had gleaned from Waddell’s leavings.

Monty could not find any canteen, but that told him nothing at all.
He could not remember whether Waddell had canteens or not. The vague
uneasiness which he had at first smothered under his natural
optimism grew to a definite anxiety. He knew the ways of the desert.
And he could think of no plausible reason why Gary should have left
the cañon afoot.

He went out and began looking for tracks. The dry soil still held
the imprint of automobile tires, but it was impossible to tell just
how long ago they had been made. Several days, at least, he judged
after a careful inspection. He heard a noise in the bushes across
the little creek and turned that way expectantly.

The spotted cat came out of the brush, jumped the tiny stream and
approached him, meowing dolefully. Monty stood stock still, watching
her advance. She came directly toward him, her tail drooping and
waving nervously from side to side. She looked straight up into his
face and yowled four or five times without stopping.

“Get out, damn yuh!” cried Monty and motioned threateningly with his
foot. “Yuh can’t stand there and yowl at _me_--I got enough on my
mind right now.”

The mottled cat ducked and started back to the creek, stopping now
and then to look over her shoulder and yowl at Monty. Monty picked
up a pebble and shied it after her. The cat gave a final squall and
ran into a clump of bushes a few yards up-stream from where Monty
had first seen her.

“That damned cat ain’t human!” Monty ejaculated uncomfortably.
“That’s the way she yowled around when Steve Carson----” He lifted his
shoulders impatiently at the thought.

After a minute or two spent in resisting the impulse, Monty yielded
and started out to see where the cat had gone. Beyond the clump of
bushes lay an open space along the bank of the creek. On the farther
side he saw the mottled cat picking her way through weeds and small
bushes, still going up the creek and yowling mournfully as she went.
Monty walked slowly after her. He noticed, while he was crossing the
open space, a man’s footprints going that way and another set coming
back. The soil was too loose to hold a clear imprint, so that Monty
could not tell whose tracks they were; though he believed them to
have been made by Gary.

The cat looked back and yowled at Monty, then went on. At a point
nearly opposite the potato patch the cat stopped near a bushy little
juniper tree that stood by itself where the creek bank rounded up to
a tiny knoll. As Monty neared the spot the cat leaped behind the
juniper and disappeared.

Monty went closer, stopped with a jerk and stood staring. He felt
his knees quiver with a distinct tendency to buckle under him. The
blood seeped slowly away from his face, leaving it sallow under the
tan.

Monty was standing at the very edge of a narrow mound of earth that
still bore the marks of a shovel where the mound had been smoothed
and patted into symmetrical form. A grave, the length of a man.

Here again were the blurred footprints in the loose soil. Who had
made them, what lay buried beneath that narrow ridge of heaped sand,
Monty shrank from conjecturing.

With an involuntary movement, of which Monty was wholly unconscious,
his right hand went up to his hat brim. He stood there for a space
without moving. Then he turned and almost ran to the corral. It was
not until he reached to open the gate that Monty discovered his hat
in his hand.

He was thinking swiftly now, holding his thoughts rigidly to the
details of what he must do. The name Hawkins obtruded itself
frequently upon his mind, but he pushed the thought of Hawkins from
him. Beyond the details of his own part, which he knew he must play
unfalteringly from now on, he would not think--he could not bear to
think. He saddled Jazz, mounted and led his own horse down to the
cabin. Working swiftly, he packed a few blankets, food for three
days and his own refilled canteens upon the led horse.

Then with a last shrinking glance around the cañon walls, he mounted
Jazz. He remembered then something that he must do, something that
Gary would wish to have him do. He rode back to the stone pen and
opened the gate so that the pigs could run free and look after
themselves.

He remounted, then half-turned in the saddle and took up the slack
in the lead rope, got the led horse straightened out behind him and
kicked Jazz into a trot. In his mental stress he loped the horses
all the way down to the cañon’s mouth. And then, striking into the
dim trail, he went racking away over the small ridges and into the
hollows, heading straight for the road most likely to be traveled in
this big, empty land; the road that stretched its long, long miles
between Goldfield and Las Vegas.




                         CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

                     GARY FOLLOWS THE PINTO CAT


Gary had prospected pretty thoroughly the whole cañon, following the
theory that some one--he felt that it was probably Steve Carson--had
carried that rich, gold-bearing rock down to the cabin. Waddell had
left neither chemicals nor appliances by which he could test any of
the mineralized rock he found; but Gary was looking for one
particular kind, the porphyry that carried free gold.

Greater than the loneliness, stronger than his dread of the cañon
and the cabin, was his desire to find more of that gold-bearing
rock. It would not take much of it to make Pat’s investment in
Johnnywater more than profitable. He even climbed to the top of the
butte--a heart-breaking effort accomplished at the risk of his neck
on the sheer wall of the rim rock. There was no means of knowing
just where that porphyry had come from. In some prehistoric eruption
it might have been thrown for miles, though Gary did not believe
that it had been. The top of the bluff gave no clue whatever. Malapi
bowlders strewed much of the surface with outcroppings of country
rock. Certainly there was no sign of mineral up there. He tramped
the butte for miles, however, and spent two days in doing it. Then,
satisfied that the porphyry must be somewhere in the cañon, he
renewed his search on the slope.

Prospecting here was quite as difficult, because so much of the
upper slopes was covered with an overburden of the malapi that
formed the rim rock. Portions of the rim would break and slide when
the storms beat upon it. Considerable areas of loose rock had formed
during the centuries of wear and tear, and if there had been mineral
outcroppings they were as effectually hidden as if they had never
come to the surface at all. But a strain of persistence which Gary
had inherited from pioneering forebears held him somewhat doggedly
to the search.

He reasoned that he had more time than he knew what to do with, and
if a fortune were hidden away in this cañon, it would be inexcusable
for him to mope through the days without making any systematic
effort to find it. Patricia deserved the best fortune the world had
to bestow. To find one for her would, he told himself whimsically,
wipe out the stain of owning a profile and a natural marcel wave
over his temples. Pat might possibly forgive even his painted
eyebrows and painted lashes and painted lips, if he found her a gold
mine.

So he tramped and scrambled and climbed from one end of the cañon
walls to the other, and would not hint to Monty Girard what it was
that held him in Johnnywater Cañon. He would not even put his hopes
on paper in the long, lonely evenings when he wrote to Patricia.
After the jibing letter concerning the millions she might have if
she owned a mine as rich as the rock he had found behind the cabin,
Gary had not put his search into words even when he talked to Faith.

He found himself thinking more and more about Steve Carson. The
weak-souled Waddell he had come practically to ignore. Waddell had
left no impress upon the cañon, at least, so far as Gary was
concerned. And that in spite of the fact that he was walking about
in Waddell’s boots and trousers, wearing Waddell’s hat, tending
Waddell’s pigs. Walking in Waddell’s boots, Gary wondered about
Steve Carson, speculated upon his life and his hopes and the things
he had put away in his past when he came to Johnnywater to live
alone, wholly apart from his fellows. Steve Carson’s hands had built
the cabin between the two piñons. Steve Carson--Gary did not attempt
any explanation of why he knew it was so--had brought the
gold-bearing rock to the cabin. A prospector of sorts, he must have
been, to have found gold-bearing rock in that cañon.

It was during the forenoon after Gary had returned from Kawich that
he obeyed a sudden, inexplicable impulse to follow Faith, the
mottled cat.

Ever since Gary had come to Johnnywater he had seen Faith go off
across the creek after breakfast. Usually she returned in the course
of three or four hours, and frequently she brought some small rodent
or a bird home with her. Gary had been faintly amused by the pinto
cat’s regular hours and settled habits of living. He used to
compliment her upon her decorous behavior, stroking her back while
she purred on his knee, her paws tucked snugly close to her body.

On this morning Gary rose abruptly from the doorstep, and,
bareheaded, he followed Faith across the creek and up the bluff. It
was hot climbing, but Gary did not think about the heat. Indeed, he
was not consciously thinking of anything much. He was simply
following Faith up the bluff, because he had got up from the
doorstep to follow Faith.

Faith climbed up and up quite as if she knew exactly where she was
going. Gary, stopping once on a bowlder to breathe for a minute
after an unusually stiff bit of climbing, saw the cat look up in the
queer way she had of doing. In a minute she went on and Gary
followed.

It began to look as if Faith meant to climb to the top of the butte.
She made her way around the lower edge of a slide, went out of sight
into a narrow gulch which Gary, with all his prospecting had never
noticed before--or at least had never entered--and reappeared farther
up, just under the rim rock where many slides had evidently had
their birth. For the first time since he had left the cabin, the cat
looked back at Gary, gave an amiable mew and waited a minute before
she started on.

Gary hesitated. He was thirsty, and the rapid climb was beginning to
tell on him. He looked back down the bluff to the cool green of the
grove, and for the first time wondered why he had been such a fool
as to follow a cat away up here on a hunting trip in which he could
not possibly take any active interest or part. He told himself what
a fool he was and said he must be getting goofy himself. But when he
moved it was upward, after the cat.

He brought up at the foot of a high ledge seamed and cracked as one
would never suspect, looking up from below. It was up here somewhere
that the Voice always seemed to be located. He stopped and listened,
but the whole cañon lay in a somnolent calm under the mounting sun.
It looked as if nothing could disturb it; as if there never could be
a Voice other than the everyday voices of men. While he stood there
wiping his forehead and panting with the heat and the labor of
climbing, the red rooster down in the grove began to crow lustily.
The sound came faintly up to Gary, linking him lightly to
commonplace affairs.

A little distance away the cat had curled herself down in a tiny
hollow at the edge of the slide. Gary made his way over to her. She
opened one eye and regarded him sleepily, gave a lazy purr or two
and settled herself again more comfortably. Gary saw, from certain
small scratchings in the gravel, that the pinto cat had made this
little nest for herself. She had not been hunting at all. She had
come to a spot with which she was very familiar.




                         CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

                       THE PAT CONNOLLY MINE


Gary decided offhand that he had been neatly sold. He sat down on
the loose rubble near Faith and made himself a smoke. The grove and
the cabin were hidden from him by the narrow little ridge that
looked perfectly smooth from the cañon bottom. But the rest of the
cañon--the corral, the potato patch, the alfalfa--lay blocked out in
miniature far below him. He stared down upon the peaceful picture it
made and wondered why he had climbed all the way up here just
following the pinto cat. For the matter of that, his following the
cat was not half so purposeless as the cat’s coming had been.

He looked down at her curled asleep in her little hollow. It struck
him that this must have been her destination each time she crossed
the creek and started up the bluff. But why should the cat come away
up here every day? Gary did not attempt to explain the vagaries of a
cat so eccentric as Faith had proved herself to be. He wondered idly
if he were becoming eccentric also, just from constant association
with Faith.

He laughed a little to himself and picked up a piece of malapi rock;
balanced it in his hand while he thought of other things, and tossed
it down the slide. It landed ten feet below him and began rolling
farther, carrying with it a small avalanche of loose rocks. Gary
watched the slide with languid interest. Even so small a thing could
make a tiny ripple in the dead calm of the cañon that day.

The slide started by that one rock spread farther. Other rocks
loosened and went rolling down the bluff, and Gary’s eyes followed
them and went higher, watching to see where next a rock would slip
away from the mass and go rolling down. It seemed to him that the
whole slide might be easily set in motion with no more than a kick
or two at the top. He got up and began to experiment, kicking a rock
loose here and there. There was no danger to himself, since he stood
at the top of the slide. As for Faith, she had sprung up in a furry
arch at the first slithering clatter and was now viewing the scene
with extreme disfavor from the secure vantage point of a shelf on
the ledge above Gary.

In a very few minutes Gary had set the whole surface of the slide in
motion. The noise it made pleased him immensely. It served to break
that waiting silence in the cañon. When the rocks ceased rolling, he
started others. Finally he found himself standing upon firm ground
again, with an outcropping of gray quartz just below him. His eyes
fixed themselves upon the quartz in a steady stare before he dug
heels into the slope and edged down to it.

With a malapi rock bigger than his two fists he hammered off a piece
of quartz and held it in the shade of his body while he examined it
closely. He turned it this way and that, fearful of deceiving
himself by the very strength of his desire. But all the while he
knew what were those little yellow specks that gleamed in the shade.

He knelt and pounded off other pieces of the quartz and compared
them anxiously with the first. They were all identical in character:
steel gray, with here and there the specks of gold in the gray, and
the chocolate brown streaks and splotches of hematite--the “red
oxide” iron which runs as high as seventy per cent. iron. Hematite
and free gold in gray quartz----

“A prettier combination for free gold I couldn’t have made to
order!” he whispered, almost as if he were praying. “It’s good
enough for my girl’s ‘million-dollar mine’--though they _do_ get rich
off a piece of gold float in the movies!” He began to laugh
nervously. A weaker-souled man would probably have wept instead.

With the side of his foot he tore away the rubble from the quartz
outcropping. There, just where he had been kneeling, he discovered a
narrow vein of the bird’s-eye porphyry such as he had found at the
cabin. Here, then, lay the object of all his tiresome prospecting.
So far as he could judge, with only his hands and feet for digging,
the vein averaged about eight inches in width. Whether the porphyry
formed a wall for the quartz he could not tell at the surface; but
he hoped fervently that it did. With hematite, gray quartz and
bird’s-eye porphyry he would have the ideal combination for a rich,
permanent gold mine. And Pat, he reflected breathlessly, might
really have her millions after all.

He picked up what he believed to be average samples of the vein and
started back down the bluff, his imagination building air castles,
mostly for Patricia. If he dramatized the event and cast himself for
the leading man playing opposite Patricia, who was the star, surely
he had earned the right to paint rose tints across the veil that hid
his future and hers.

He had forgotten all about the cat; but when he reached the cabin,
there she was at his heels looking extremely self-satisfied and
waving her tail with a gentle air of importance. Gary laid his ore
samples on the table and stood with his hands on his hips, looking
down at Faith with a peculiar expression in his eyes. Suddenly he
smiled endearingly at the cat, stooped and picked her up, holding
her by his two hands so that he could look into her eyes.

“Doggone you, Faith, I wish to heck you could talk! I wouldn’t put
it past you to think like humans. I’ll bet you’ve been trying all
along to show me that outcropping. And I thought you were hunting
mice and birds and gophers just like a plain, ordinary cat! You
can’t tell _me_--you knew all about that gold! I’ll bet you’ve got a
name all picked out for the mine, too. But it won’t go, I’ll tell a
meddlesome world. That is, unless you’ve decided it ought to be
called ‘The Pat Connolly.’ Because that’s the way it’s going on
record, if Handsome Gary has anything to say about it--and I rather
think he has!”

Faith blinked at him and mewed understandingly. Gary wooled her a
bit and put her down, considerately smoothing down the fur he had
roughed. Faith was a forgiving cat, and she immediately began
purring under his fingers. After that she tagged him indefatigably
while he got mortar, pestle and pan, and carried them down to a
shady spot beside the creek.

Gary’s glance strayed often to the bluff while he broke bits off
each sample of quartz and dropped them into the iron mortar. Then,
with the mortar held firmly between his knees, Gary picked up the
eight-inch length of iron with the round knob on the end and began
to pulverize the ore. For a full quarter of an hour the quiet air of
the grove throbbed to the steady _pung, pung, pung_, of the iron
pestle striking upon rock particles in the deep iron bowl.

About twice in every minute, Gary would stop, dip thumb and finger
into the mortar, and bring up a pinch of pulverized rock at which he
would squint with the wholly unconscious eagerness of a small boy.
Naturally, since he was not flattening a nugget of solid gold in the
mortar, he failed to see anything except once when he caught an
unmistakable yellow gleam from a speck of gold almost half the size
of a small pinhead.

He gloated over that speck for a full minute before he shook it
carefully back into the mortar. And then you should have heard him
pound!

He was all aquiver with hope and eager expectancy when at last he
poured the pulverized quartz into the gold pan and went digging his
heels down the bank to the water. Faith came forward and stood upon
a dry rock, mewing and purring by turns, and waving her tail
encouragingly while she watched him.

Those who plod along the beaten trail toward commercial success can
scarcely apprehend the thrill of winning from nature herself the
symbol that promises fulfillment of hope and dreams coming true. The
ardency of Gary’s desire was measurable only by the depth of his
love for Patricia. For himself he had a man’s normal hunger for
achievement. To discover a gold mine here in Johnnywater Cañon, to
develop it in secret to the point where he could command what
capital he needed for the making of a real mine, that in itself
seemed to Gary a goal worth striving for. To fill Patricia’s hands
with virgin gold which he had found for her, there spoke the
primitive desire of man since the world was young; to bring the
spoils of war or the chase and lay them, proud offering of love, at
the feet of his Woman.

Gary turned and tilted the pan, tenderly as a young mother cradles
her first-born. He dipped and rocked and spilled the water carefully
over the rim; dipped and rocked and tilted again. The three deep
creases stood between his straight, dark eyebrows, but now they
betokened eager concentration upon his work. At last, he poured
clear water from the pan carefully, almost drop by drop. He tilted
the pan slowly in the sunlight and bent his head, peering sharply
into the pan. His heart seemed to be beating in his throat when he
saw the trail of tiny yellow particles following sluggishly the
spoonful of black sand when he tilted the pan.

“I’ve got it, Steve,” he exclaimed, looking up over his shoulder. He
caught his breath in the sudden realization that he was looking into
the empty sunlight. Absorbed as he had been in the gold, the felt
presence of Steve Carson looking over his shoulder had seemed
perfectly natural and altogether real.

The momentary shock sobered him. But the old dread of that felt
presence no longer assailed him as something he must combat by
feigning unconsciousness. The unreasoning impression that Steve
Carson--the mind of him--was there just behind his shoulder, watching
and sharing in his delight, persisted nevertheless. Gary caught
himself wondering if the thing was really only a prank of his
imagination. Feeling a bit foolish, but choosing to indulge the
whimsy, he stood up and turned deliberately, the pan held out before
him.

“Steve Carson, if dead people go on living and thinking, and if you
really are hanging around just out of sight but watching the game,
I’m here to say that I hope you’re glad I found this vein. And I
want to tell you right now that if there’s any money to be made out
of it, it’s going to the finest, squarest little girl in the world.
So if there is such a thing as a spirit, just take it from me
everything’s going to be on the square.”

He carried the pan up to the cabin and carefully rinsed the gold
down into a jelly glass. He made no apology to himself for the
little speech to a man dead and gone these five years. Having made
himself as clear on the subject as was diplomatic--supposing Steve
Carson’s spirit had been present and could hear--he felt a certain
relief and could lay the subject aside and devote himself to the
fascination of hunting the gold out of the hills where it had lain
buried for ages.

It occurred to him that he might find some particularly rich
specimens, mortar them by hand and pan them for Patricia. A wedding
ring made from the first gold taken and panned by hand--the hand of
Gary Marshall--from “The Pat Connolly” mine, appealed to him
irresistibly. Before he had mortared a lump of porphyry the size of
a pigeon’s egg, Gary had resolved to pan enough gold for that very
purpose. He pictured himself pulling the ring from his vest pocket
while the minister waited. He experienced a prophetic thrill of
ecstasy when he slipped the ring upon Patricia’s finger. The dreamed
sentence, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” intoned by an
imaginary minister, thrilled him to the soul.

_Pung, pung, pung!_ It wouldn’t take so very long, if he mortared
rock evenings, say, instead of killing time minute by minute playing
solitaire with the deck of cards Waddell had thumbed before him.
_Pung, pung, pung!_ He could mortar the quartz in the evenings and
pan it in the morning before he went to work. _Pung, pung, pung,
pung!_ He would hunt up a cow’s horn and fix it as he had seen old
prospectors do, so that he could blow the sand from the panned gold
and carry it unmixed to the jeweler. _Pung, pung!_ The porphyry
sample was fine as corn meal under the miniature stamp-mill of
Gary’s pounding.

He was mighty careful of that handful of pulp. He even dipped the
mortar half full of water and sloshed it round and round, pouring it
afterward into the pan to rinse out what gold may have stuck to the
iron. His finger tips stirred the wet mass caressingly in the pan,
muddying the water with the waste matter and pouring that out before
he squatted on his heels at the edge of the stream.

The result was gratifying in the extreme. Granting that the values
were inclined to “jump” from quartz to porphyry and back again to
the quartz, he would still lose none of the gold. He tried to be
very conservative in estimating the probable value of the vein. He
knew that, granting quartz and porphyry were in place from the
surface downward, the values should increase with depth. It would
take some digging, however, to determine that point. He was glad
that Patricia knew nothing at all about it. If there were to be
disappointment later on, he wanted to bear it alone. The joys of
success he was perfectly willing to share; but not the sickening
certitude of failure. He judged that the outcropping would run
several hundred dollars to the ton, provided his panned samples had
run a fair average of the vein.

Material for air castles aplenty, that! Gary was afraid to believe
it. He kept warning himself headily that the world would be peopled
entirely with multimillionaires if every man’s dream of wealth came
true and every man’s hopes were realized.

“Ninety-nine per cent. of all mineral prospects are failures,
Faith,” he told the spotted cat admonishingly. “We may get the
raspberry yet on this proposition. I’m just waiting to see whether
you’re a mascot or a jinx. I wish to heck you were a dog--I’d make
you get busy and help dig!”




                        CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

              GARY FINDS THE VOICE--AND SOMETHING ELSE


“Here’s where Handsome Gary raises a crop of callouses big as birds’
eggs in his mad pursuit of the fickle jade, Fortune. Come on, Faith,
doggone you; I want you handy in case this gold thing is a fluke.”

Gary had remembered that eating is considered necessary to the
preservation of life and had delayed his further investigation of
the outcropping until he had scrambled together some sort of a meal.
He had bolted food as if he must hurry to catch a train that was
already whistling a warning. Now he took down a canteen from behind
the door, shouldered an old pick and shovel he had found in the
shed, and started back up the bluff, stopping just long enough to
fill the canteen at the creek as he passed.

Loaded with canteen and tools, the climb was a heart-breaking one.
The spotted cat led the way, going as straight as possible toward
the tiny ridge behind which lay the outcropping. At the top, Gary
decided that hereafter he would bring a lunch and spend the day up
there, thus saving a valuable hour or two and a good deal of energy.
Energy, he realized, would be needed in unlimited quantities if he
did much development work alone.

By hard labor he managed to clear away the rubble of the slide and
uncover the vein for a distance of several feet before dusk began to
fill the cañon. He carried down with him the richest pieces of rock
that he could find, and that night he worked with mortar and pestle
until his arms ached with the unaccustomed exercise.

Several times that evening he was pulled away from his air castles
by the peculiar sensation of some one standing very close to him. It
was not the first time he had experienced the sensation, but never
before had the impression brought him a comforting sense of friendly
companionship. It struck him suddenly that he must be growing used
to the idea, and that Johnnywater Cañon was not at all likely to
“get” him as it had got Waddell. He had not heard the Voice all day,
but he believed that he could now listen to it with perfect
equanimity.

He had just one worry that evening; rather, he had one difficult
problem to solve. In order to work in that quartz, dynamite was
absolutely necessary. Unless he could find some on the place, it
began to look very much as if he would not be able to do much unless
he could get some brought out to him from town.

The result of his cogitations that evening was a belief that Steve
Carson must have had dynamite, caps and fuse on hand. Men living out
in a country known to produce minerals of one sort and another
usually were supplied with explosives. Even if they never did any
mining, they might want to blow a bowlder out of the way now and
then. He had never seen any powder about the place; but on the other
hand, he had not looked for any.

The next morning he panned the pulped rock immediately after
breakfast and was overjoyed at the amount of gold he gleaned from
the pint or so of pulp. At that rate, he told himself gleefully, the
wedding ring would not need to wait very long. After that he went
hunting dynamite in the storehouse and shed. He was lucky enough to
find a couple of dozen sticks of powder and some caps and fuse
wrapped in a gunny sack and hung from the ridgepole of the shed. The
dynamite did not look so very old, and he guessed that it had been
brought there by Waddell. This seemed to him an amazing bit of good
luck, and he shouldered the stuff and went off up the bluff with an
extra canteen and his lunch, whistling in an exuberance of good
humor with the world. Faith, of course, went with him and curled
herself in her little hollow just under the frowning malapi ledge.

Gary worked for three days, following the quartz and porphyry down
at an incline of forty-five degrees. The vein held true to form, and
the samples he panned each morning never failed to show a drag of
gold after the concentrate. It was killing work for a man unused to
pick and shovel. In the afternoon of the third day even Gary’s
driving energy began to slow down. He had learned how to drill and
shoot in rock, but the steady swing of the four-pound hammer (miners
call them single-jacks) lamed his right arm so that he could not
strike a forceful blow. Moreover, he discovered that twisting a
drill in rock is not soothing to broken blisters. So, much as he
wanted to make Patricia rich in the shortest possible time,
protesting flesh prevailed upon him to knock off work for the time
being.

He was sitting on the edge of what would one day be an incline
shaft--when he had dug it deep enough--inspecting his blistered hands.
After several days of quiet the wind began to blow in gusts from off
the butte. Somewhere behind Gary and above him there came a
bellowing halloo that made him jump and slide into the open cut.
Again and again came the bellow above him--and after his first
astonishment Gary’s mouth relaxed into a slow grin.

“I’ll bet right there’s the makings of that spook Voice!” he said
aloud. “Up there in the rim rock somewhere.”

He climbed out of the cut and stood facing the cliff, listening. At
close quarters the call became a bellow with only a faint
resemblance to a Voice shouting hello. He remembered now that on
that first morning when he had searched for the elusive “man” on the
bluff, the wind had died before he had climbed very high. After that
he had not heard the Voice again that day.

He made his way laboriously up to the rim rock, listening always to
locate the exact source of the sound. The bluff was almost
perpendicular just under the rim, and huge bowlders lay where they
had fallen in some forgotten time from the top. Gary scrambled over
the first of these and confronted a narrow aperture which seemed to
lead back into the cliff. The opening was perhaps three feet wide at
the bottom, drawing in to a pointed roof a few feet above his head.

The Voice did not seem to come from this opening, but Gary’s
curiosity was roused. He went into the cave. Fifteen feet, as he
paced the distance, brought him to the rear wall--and to a small
recess where a couple of boxes sat side by side with a three-pound
coffee can on top and a bundle wrapped in canvas. Gary forgot the
Voice for the time being and began to investigate the cache.

It was perfectly simple; perfectly amazing also. The boxes had been
opened, probably in order to carry the contents more easily up the
bluff; the most ambitious man would scarcely want to make that climb
with a fifty-pound box of dynamite on his shoulder. But both boxes
were full, or so nearly full that the few missing sticks did not
matter. The coffee can contained six boxes of caps, and in the
canvas bundle were eight full coils of fuse.

“Golly grandma, if this ain’t movie luck!” Gary jubilated to the
cat, which had tagged him into the cave. “Or it would be if the
dynamite were fresh. From the weird tales I’ve heard about men who
got fresh with stale dynamite and landed in fragments before a
horrified audience, Handsome Gary’s liable to lose his profile if he
doesn’t watch his step. But it’s giant powder, and if it will shoot
at all, I’ve simply got to use it. It’s just about as necessary a
prop in this scene as a rope is in a lynching bee. Well, now we’ll
go ketchum that Voice.”

By dint of hard climbing he made his way higher, to where the ledge
seemed broken in splintered clefts above the slide. As he went, the
Voice bellowed at him with a rising tone which distance might easily
modify to a human cry. Even so close, he was some time in
discovering just how the sound was made. But at last, after much
listening and investigating the splintered slits, he caught the rush
of wind up through a series of small, chimneylike openings. Here,
then, was the Voice that had given Johnnywater Cañon so weird a
reputation.

As to the appearance of the Voice just after Steve Carson’s
disappearance, Gary considered that an exaggeration, unconscious,
perhaps, but nevertheless born of superstitious fear. Steve Carson
might have told a different story could he have been questioned
about the sound.

“I’d say that Injun was about due to check out, anyway,” he told
Faith, who was nosing a crack that probably held a rat or two. “Now
I see how it’s done, the Voice isn’t half so mysterious or spookish
as all that giant powder right on hand where I need it. Don’t even
have to pack it up the bluff. And that’s Providence, I’ll tell the
cock-eyed world! When I think how I chased that supernatural Voice
all over the bluff and then sat and shivered in the cabin because I
couldn’t find it--Faith, I should think you might have told me! You
can’t kid _me_ into believing you weren’t wise all the while. You
know a heap more than you let on. You can’t string _me_.”

He made his way back to the cave and examined more carefully the
giant powder cached there. He cut a foot length of fuse, lighted and
timed it with his watch. The fuse burned with almost perfect
accuracy--a minute to the foot. Then he capped a two-foot length,
broke a stick of powder in two, carefully inserted the cap in the
dynamite and went out and laid it under a bowlder the size of a
half-barrel. He scraped loose dirt over it, split the fuse end back
an inch, “spitted” it with his cigarette and ducked into the cave
with his watch in his hand to await the result.

The explosion lifted the bowlder, and broke it in three pieces, and
Gary felt that the experiment had been a success. The powder would
probably miss fire occasionally, since it was crystallized with age.
It might also explode when he least expected it to do so, but Gary
was prepared to take that risk; though many an old miner would have
refused profanely to touch the stuff.

“Well, I used to take a chance on breaking my neck every time I put
over a stunt before the camera,” he mused. “That was just to hold
down a job. I ought to be dead willing to take a chance with this
junk when it means millions for my girl--maybe.”

With explosives enough to last him a couple of months at the very
least, Gary felt that Fate was giving him a broad smile of
encouragement. He acknowledged to himself, while he mortared rich
pieces of porphyry and quartz that night, the growing belief that he
had been all wrong in blaming Patricia for making the investment. It
was, he was beginning to think, the whispering of Destiny that had
urged Patricia to buy Johnnywater in the first place; and it was
Destiny again at work that had pushed him out of pictures and over
here to work out the plan.

Perhaps he did not reduce the thought to so definite a form, but
that was the substance of his speculations.

So he dreamed and worked with untiring energy through the days,
dreamed and pulped gold-bearing rock for the wedding ring during the
evenings when he should have been resting, and slept like a tired
baby at night. Whenever he heard the Voice shouting from the bluff,
he shrugged his shoulders and grinned at the joke the wind was
trying to play. Whenever he felt that unseen presence beside him, if
he did not grin he at least accepted it with a certain sense of
friendly companionship. And the spotted cat, Faith, was always
close, like a pet dog.




                        CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

                     “STEVE CARSON--POOR DEVIL!”


Gary went down ten feet at an incline so sharp he could not carry
the muck up in the buckets he had expected to use for the purpose.
He knew, because he spent two perspiring hours in the attempt. Could
he have done it, it would have been slow, toilsome work. But at
least he could have gone down. He would not take the time to
experiment with a ladder. To carry the necessary material up the
bluff and build a thing would consume the best part of a day, and
the richness of the vein bred impatience that could not brook delay.

He therefore decided to crosscut on the side where the vein showed
the highest values and continue throwing out the muck. It would be
slow, but Gary was thankful that he could make headway working by
himself. So he drilled a round of holes in the left wall of the
shaft, with the quartz and porphyry in the center of the face of the
proposed crosscut. The vein on that side was wider, and the values
were fully as high as on the other. He was pleased with his plan and
tried to remember all he had learned about mining, so that he would
waste neither time, effort, nor ore.

It takes practice to handle dynamite to the best advantage, and Gary
did not always shoot the gangue cleanly away from the ore, but mixed
some of his richest values with the muck. To offset that, he used
the pick as much as possible and sorted the ore carefully at the
bottom of the incline shaft, before he threw it to the surface.

Any experienced miner would have made better footage in a day, but
it is doubtful if any man would have put in longer shifts or worked
harder. And it is a great pity that Patricia could not have watched
him for a day and appreciated the full strength of his devotion to
her interests.

At the end of ten days, Gary had gone five feet into his crosscut,
and was hoping to make better footage now that his muscles had
adjusted themselves somewhat to the labor. His hands, too, had
hardened amazingly. Altogether, Gary felt that he was justified in
thinking mighty well of himself. There were so many things for which
he was thankful, and there were so few for which he felt regret.

He did not even worry about Patricia, now that he was accomplishing
something really worth while for her. It amused him to picture
Patricia’s astonishment when he returned to Los Angeles and told her
that he had investigated Johnnywater ranch very carefully, and that
she could not expect to make a nickel running cattle over there. He
would tell her that his hunch had been a bird. He dramatized for
himself her indignation and chuckled at the way she would fly at him
for daring to convince her that she had made a foolish investment.

Then, when she had called him a lot of names and argued and squared
her chin--_then_ he would tell her that he had found the makings of a
wedding ring at Johnnywater, and that he would expect her finger to
be ready for it the minute it was cool enough to wear. After he had
teased her sufficiently, he would tell her how he and the pinto cat
had located “The Pat Connolly” mine; he would ask her for the job of
general manager, because he would want to make sure that half of
Patricia’s millions were not being stolen from her.

Now that the cañon held a potential fortune, Gary could appreciate
its picturesque setting and could contemplate with pleasure the
prospect of spending long summers there with Patricia. He would
locate sufficient claims to protect the cañon from an influx of
strangers, and they would have it for their own special little
corner of the world. It is astonishing how prosperity will change a
man’s point of view.

Six feet into the crosscut, Gary’s round of holes shot unexpectedly
through hard rock into a close-packed mass of broken malapi. The
stuff had no logical right to be there, breaking short off the
formation and vein. Had the vein pinched out and the malapi come in
gradually, he might have seen some geologic reason for the change.
But the whole face of his crosscut opened up malapi bowlders and
“nigger-heads.”

Gary filled his two buckets and carried them out into the shaft,
dumping them disgustedly on the floor. It was like being shaken out
of a blissful dream. He would have given a good deal just then for
the presence of his old field boss, who was wise in all the vagaries
of mineral formations. But there was ore still in the loosened muck,
and Gary went back after it, thinking that he would make a clean job
of that side before he started crosscutting the vein to the right of
the shaft.

He filled one bucket. Then his shovel struck into something tough
and yielding. Gary stooped, holding his candle low. He groped with
his hand and pulled out a shapeless, earth-stained felt hat, with
part of a skull inside it.

He dropped the gruesome thing and made for the opening, took the
steep incline like a scared centipede and sat down weakly on a rock,
drawing the back of his hand again and again across his clammy
forehead. His knees shook. The flesh of his entire body was all
aquiver with the horror of it.

Some time elapsed before Gary could even bring himself to think of
the thing he had uncovered. He moved farther away, pretending that
he was seeking the shade; in reality, he wanted to push a little
more sunlight between the shaft and himself.

Faith came and mewed suddenly at his elbow, rubbing herself against
his arm, and Gary jumped as if some one had struck him from behind.
The contact of the cat set him quivering again, and he pushed her
away from him with a backward sweep of his arm. Faith retreated to
another rock and stood there with her back arched, regarding him
fixedly in round-eyed amazement. Gary slid off the bowlder and
started down the bluff, his going savoring strongly of retreat. He
was not particularly squeamish, nor had he ever been called a
coward; nevertheless the grisly discovery drove him from the spot
with the very unexpectedness of the disinterment.

At the cabin he stopped and looked back up the bluff, ashamed of his
flight.

“Steve Carson--the poor devil!” he muttered under his breath. “A
cave-in caught him, I reckon. And nobody ever knew what became of
him.”

He walked aimlessly to the corral, perhaps seeking the small comfort
of even the horse’s presence. He gave Jazz an extra forkful of hay
and stood leaning his elbows upon the top rail of the corral,
watching Jazz nose the heap for the tenderest morsels. The
phlegmatic content of the old horse steadied him. He could think of
the horror now, without shaking inside like joggled jelly.

He looked at his watch and saw that it lacked half an hour until
noon. There would be time enough to do what he knew must be done, if
he were to have any future peace in Johnnywater Cañon.

He found an extra pick, shouldered the long-handled irrigating
shovel and set out to find a suitable spot--not too close to the
house--where he might give the shattered bones of Steve Carson decent
burial. He chose the tiny knoll crowned with the thick-branched
juniper and dug the grave there that afternoon. For the time being
he must leave the body where it was, crushed under the cave-in.

“But he stayed there for five years,” Gary excused the seeming
slight. “One more night shouldn’t hurt him.”

It was an uncomfortable night, however, for Gary. Even in his sleep
the thought of that broken body would not leave him. It overshadowed
all his hopes and dreams, and even Patricia seemed very far away,
and life seemed very short and uncertain.

The next day Gary devoted to moving what little was left of Steve
Carson from under the mass of broken rock and burying the remains in
the grave under the juniper. The mottled cat walked solemnly behind
him all the way; and it seemed to Gary that the unseen yet sentient
spirit of the man walked beside him.




                        CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

                        THE VALUE OF A HUNCH


The resiliency of youth, aided by the allurement of riches to be
gained by digging, drove Gary back up the bluff to his work. Here
again circumstances had forced him to continue where he would
voluntarily have left off. In digging out the body of Steve Carson,
Gary had dug completely through the broken stuff to a continuation
of the vein and its contact beyond.

He felt that he understood in a general way what had happened five
years ago. Steve Carson had undoubtedly discovered the gold-bearing
quartz and had started to sink on the vein much as Gary had done.
The calamity of a cave-in--or perhaps a slide--had overtaken him while
he was at work underground. He had never known what hit him, which
was a mercy. And since no one in the country had heard of the
prospect up on the bluff, the discovery of his body would never have
been made if Gary had not followed the cat up there and so stumbled
upon the vein.

He thought he also understood now why Faith had shown her strange
penchant for that particular spot on the bluff. Monty had told him
that the cat had belonged to Steve Carson. She had undoubtedly been
in the habit of following Steve Carson to work, just as she followed
Gary. Very likely she had been somewhere near at the time when her
master was killed. That she should continue the habit of going each
day to the spot where she had last seen him was not unlikely. So
another small mystery was cleared to Gary’s satisfaction. Save for
its grim history, Johnnywater Cañon was likely to drop at last to
the dead level of commonplace respectability.

If Steve Carson had worked in an open shaft that had been filled by
a slide, the opening had been effectually blocked afterward. For on
the surface Gary could see no evidence whatever, among the piled
bowlders, of an opening beneath. And the roof, when he lifted his
candle to examine it, looked to be a smooth expanse of rock.

For himself, he pronounced his own incline shaft safe from any
similar catastrophe. He had started it at the extreme edge of the
slide, and above it the rocks seemed firmly in place. He was working
under dangerous conditions, it is true; but the danger lay in using
five-year-old dynamite. Still, he must chance it or let the
development of Patricia’s claim stand still.

Pondering the necessary steps to protect Patricia in case anything
happened to him, Gary wrote a copy of his location notice, declared
the necessary location work done, described the exact spot as
closely as possible--lining it up with blazed trees in the grove
behind the cabin, and placed the papers in his suit case. That, he
knew, would effectually forestall any claim-jumping; unless James
Blaine Hawkins or some other crook appeared first on the scene and
ransacked his belongings, destroying the papers and placing their
own location notices on the claim. He felt that the danger of such
villainy was slight and not worth considering seriously. Monty would
probably ride over as soon as he had finished his work in Pahranagat
Valley; and when he did, Gary meant to tell him all about it and
take him up and show him the claim.

Monty would keep the secret for him, he was sure. He did not want
Patricia to know anything about it until he was sure that the vein
was not going to peter out before it yielded at least a modest
fortune.

One night soon after he had made these elaborate arrangements, Gary
woke sweating from a nightmare. He was so sure that James Blaine
Hawkins was rummaging through his suit case, looking for the
information of the mine, that he swung out of bed, kicking viciously
with both feet. When they failed to land upon the man he believed
was there, Gary drew back and kicked again at a different angle.

Not a sound save Gary’s breathing disturbed the midnight quiet of
the cabin. Gary waited, wondering foolishly if he had been dreaming
after all. He leaned and reached for his trousers, found a match and
lighted it. The tiny blaze flared up and showed him an empty cabin.
It was a dream, then--but a disagreeably vivid one, that impressed
upon Gary’s mind the thought that James Blaine Hawkins, returning
while he was at work up the bluff, would be very likely to go
prowling. If he found and read Gary’s explicit description of the
mine and the way to find it, together with his opinion of its
richness, James Blaine Hawkins might be tempted to slip up there and
roll a rock down on Gary.

Wherefore, Gary dragged his suit case from under the bed, found the
papers, lighted another match and burned them. When that was done to
his satisfaction, he lay down again and went to sleep. Books might
be written--and possibly have been--about hunches, their origin and
value, if any. Gary’s nightmare and the strong impulse afterward to
guard against danger, took a wrong turning somewhere. He provided
against a danger which did not exist in reality and felt an instant
relief. And soon after sunrise he shouldered a full canteen, stuffed
a five-pound lard bucket as full of lunch as he could cram it, got a
handful of fresh candles and went blithely up the bluff to meet the
greatest danger that had ever threatened him in his life.

He had driven the crosscut in a good twelve feet by now, and he was
proud of his work. The vein seemed to be widening a bit, and the
values still held. Already he had an ore dump which he estimated
should bring Patricia almost as much money as she had paid for
Johnnywater. He hoped there was more than that in the dump, but he
was clinging to the side of conservatism. If the claim yielded no
more than that, he could still feel that he had done Patricia a real
service. To-day he carried his gold dust knotted in a handkerchief
in his pocket, lest his nightmare should come true and James Blaine
Hawkins should return to rob him. He even carried the mortar and
pestle to the shed and threw them down in a corner with the gold pan
tucked under some steel traps, so that no one could possibly suspect
that they had been used lately.

He was thinking of James Blaine Hawkins while he drilled the four
holes in the face of the crosscut. He stopped to listen and looked
down the cañon and out as far as he could see into the desert when
he went up into the hot sunlight to get the powder, fuse and caps
from the cave to load the holes. As he sat in the shade crimping the
caps on the four lengths of fuse, a vague uneasiness grew upon him.

“I got a hunch he’ll turn up to-day--and maybe bring some strong-arm
guy with him,” Gary said to himself. “Just so he doesn’t happen
along in time to hear the shots up here, I don’t know what harm he
could do. He never could find this place, even if he got some hint
there was a mine somewhere. Anyway, I could hear him drive up the
cañon, all right.”

Still he was charging his mental disturbance to James Blaine
Hawkins--which proves how inaccurate a “hunch” may be. He carried his
four loads to the incline shaft and let himself carefully down, the
explosive cuddled in one arm while he steadied himself with the
other. At the bottom he noticed his second canteen lying in the full
glare of the sun and moved it inside the crosscut with the other
canteen and his lunch. It was an absent-minded act, since he would
presently move everything outside clear of flung rocks from the
blasting.

Still fighting the vague depression that seemed the aftermath of his
nightmare, Gary loaded the holes with more care than usual,
remembering that he was playing with death whenever he handled that
old powder. He flung shovel and pick toward the opening, split the
fuse ends with his knife and turned to hurry out of the shaft.

He faced the opening just in time to see it close as a great bowlder
dropped into the shaft, followed by the clatter of smaller rocks.

Instinctively Gary recoiled and got the smell of the burning fuse in
his nostrils. Without conscious thought of what he must do, he
whipped out his knife, tore open a blade and cut the fuses, one by
one, close to the rock. He stamped upon them--though they were
harmless, writhing there on the floor of the crosscut until the
powder was exhausted.

Not until the last fuse stopped burning did Gary approach the
blocked opening to see how badly he was trapped. A little rift of
sunlight showed at the upper right-hand corner. The rest was black,
solid rock. Gary felt the rock all over with his hands, then stooped
and lifted his lunch and the two canteens and set them farther back
in the crosscut, as if he feared they might yet be destroyed.

He moved the candle here and there above the floor, looking
desperately for his pick and shovel. But the heave he had given them
had sent them out into the shaft directly in the path of the falling
bowlder. He searched the crosscut for other tools, and found his
single-jack leaning against the wall where he had dropped it; beside
it were two of the shorter drills, the bits nicked and dull.

He returned to the closed mouth of the crosscut and attempted to pry
away the bowlder, using the longer of the two drills thrust into the
opening as a lever. He could as easily have tilted the rim rock
itself. Sunlight streamed in through a crack possibly eighteen
inches long and the width of his hand, but except for the
ventilation it gave, the opening merely served to emphasize the
hopelessness of his prison.

He looked at his watch mechanically, and saw that it was just
fifteen minutes past twelve. He had timed his work, like all good
miners, so that he could “shoot” at noon and let the smoke clear
away from the workings while he rested and ate his lunch. He did not
feel like eating now. He did not feel like much of anything. His
brain refused to react immediately to the full horror of his
position.

That he, Gary Marshall, should actually be entombed alive in
Patricia’s gold mine--“The Pat Connolly” mine--was a thing too
incredible for his mind to grasp. He simply could not take the thing
seriously.

The unreasoning belief that Mills would presently shout, “Cut!” and
Gary would walk out into the sunlight, persisted for a time. The
dramatic element loomed high above the grim reality of it. The thing
was too ghastly to be true. To believe in the horrible truth of it
would drive a man crazy, he told himself impatiently.

He put his face to the widest part of the opening between the
bowlder and the wall, and shouted again and again frenziedly.

“_Monty! Oh-h, Monty!_” he called.

The pity of it was that Monty Girard was at that moment jogging into
the mouth of Johnnywater Cañon, swinging his feet boyishly in the
stirrups and humming a little song as he rode, his thoughts with
Gary, wondering how he was “making it” these days.




                         CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

                “GARY MARSHALL MYSTERIOUSLY MISSING”


By riding as late as he dared that night, and letting the horses
rest until daylight the next morning, and then pushing them forward
at top desert speed--which was a steady trail trot--Monty reached the
first ranch house a little after noon the next day. In all that time
he had not seen a human being, though he had hoped to be overtaken
or to meet some car on the road.

Nerve-racking delay met him at the ranch. The woman and two small
children were there, but the man (Ben Thompson was his name) had
left that morning for Las Vegas in the car. Monty was too late by
about four hours.

He ate dinner there, fed his horses hay and grain, watered them the
last minute and started out again, still hoping that some car would
be traveling that way. But luck was against him and he was forced to
camp that night thirty miles out from Las Vegas.

Long before daylight he was up and on his way again, to take
advantage of the few hours before the intense heat of the day began.
Jazz was going lame, traveling barefooted at the forced pace Monty
required of him. It was nearly five o’clock when he limped into town
with the dusty pack roped upon his sweat-encrusted back.

Monty went directly to the depot and climbed the steep stairs to the
telegraph office, his spur rowels burring along the boards. He
leaned heavily upon the shelf outside the grated window while he
wrote two messages with a hand that shook from exhaustion.

The first was addressed to the sheriff of Nye County, notifying him
that a man had disappeared in Johnnywater Cañon and that it looked
like murder. The other read as follows:

    “P. Connolly,
    Cons. Grain & Milling Co.,
    Los Angeles, Calif.

    “Gary Marshall mysteriously missing from
    Johnnywater evidence points to foul play suspect
    Hawkins wire instructions.

                                        “M. Girard.”

Monty regretted the probable shock that message would give to
Patricia, but he reasoned desperately that she would have to know
the worst anyway, and that a telegram never permits much softening
of a blow. She might know something about Hawkins that would be
helpful. At any rate, he knew of no one so intimately concerned as
Patricia.

He waited for his change, asked the operator to rush both messages
straight through, and clumped heavily down the stairs. He remounted
and made straight for the nearest stable and turned the horses over
to the proprietor himself, who he knew would give them the best care
possible. After that he went to a hotel, got a room with bath, took
a cold plunge and crawled between the hot sheets with the window as
wide open as it would go, and dropped immediately into the heavy
slumber of complete mental and physical exhaustion.

While Monty was refreshing himself with the cold bath, Gary,
squatted on his heels against the wall of his dungeon, was fingering
half of a hoarded biscuit and trying to decide whether he had better
eat it now and turn a bold face toward starvation, or put it back in
the lard bucket and let the thought of it torture him for a few more
hours.

The telegram to the sheriff at Tonopah arrived while the sheriff was
hunting down a murderer elsewhere. His deputy read the wire and
speared it face down upon a bill-hook already half filled with a
conglomerate mass of other communications. The deputy was not
inclined to attach much significance to the message. He frequently
remarked that if the sheriff’s office got all fussed up over every
yarn that came in, the county would be broke inside a month paying
mileage and salary to a dozen deputies. Monty had not said that a
man had been murdered. He merely suspected something of the sort.
The deputy slid down deeper into the armchair he liked best, cocked
his feet higher on the desk and filled his pipe. Johnnywater Cañon
and the possible fate of the man who had disappeared from there
entered not at all into his somnolent meditations.

The telegram to Patricia reached the main office in Los Angeles
after five o’clock. The clerk who telephones the messages called up
the office of the Consolidated Grain & Milling Company and got no
reply after repeated ringing. Patricia’s telegram was therefore held
until office hours the next morning. A messenger boy delivered it
last, on his first trip out that way with half-a-dozen messages. The
new stenographer was not at first inclined to take it, thinking
there must be some mistake. The new manager was in conference with
an important customer and she was afraid to disturb him with a
matter so unimportant. And since she had quarreled furiously with
the bookkeeper just the day before, she would not have spoken to him
for anything on earth. So Patricia’s telegram lay on the desk until
nearly noon.

At last the manager happened to stroll into the outer office and
picked up the yellow envelope which had not been opened. Being half
in love with Patricia--in spite of a wife--he knew at once who “P.
Connolly” was. He was a conscientious man though his affections did
now and then stray from his own hearthside. He immediately called a
messenger and sent the telegram back to the main office with
forwarding instructions.

At that time, Gary was standing before the sunny slit at the end of
the crosscut, pounding doggedly with the single-jack at the corner
of the rock wall. He had given up attempting to use the dulled drill
as a gadget. He could no longer strike with sufficient force to make
the steel bite into the rock, nor could he land the blow accurately
on the head of the drill.

The day before he had managed to crack off a piece of rock twice the
width of his hand; and though it had broken too far inside the
crosscut to accomplish much in the way of enlarging the opening,
Gary was nevertheless vastly encouraged. He could now thrust out his
hand to the elbow. He could feel the sun shine hot upon it at
midday. He could feel the warm wind in his face when he held it
pressed close against the open space. He could even smooth Faith’s
sleek head when she scrambled upon the bowlder and peered in at him
round-eyed and anxious. The world that day had seemed very close.

But to-day, while the telegram to Patricia was loitering in Los
Angeles, the sky over Johnnywater was filled thick with clouds.
Daylight came gray into the deep gloom of the crosscut. And Gary
could not swing a steady blow, but pounded doggedly at the rock with
quick, short-arm strokes like a woodpecker hammering at the bole of
a dead tree.

He was obliged to stop often and rest, leaning against the wall with
his hunger-sharpened profile like a cameo where the light shone in
upon him. He would stand there and pant for a while and then lift
the four-pound hammer--grown terribly heavy, lately--and go on
pounding unavailingly at the rock.




                        CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

                   “NOBODY KNOWS BUT A PINTO CAT”


Patricia liked Kansas City even less than she had anticipated. She
dragged herself through the heat to the office each morning, worried
somehow through her work and returned to her room too utterly
depressed and weary to seek what enjoyment lay close at hand. A
little park was just across the street, but Patricia could not even
summon sufficient interest to enter it. Every cloud that rose over
the horizon was to her imagination a potential cyclone, which she
rather hoped would sweep her away. She thought she would like to be
swept into a new world; and if she could leave her memory behind her
she thought that life might be almost bearable.

No mail had been forwarded to her from Los Angeles, and the utter
silence served to deepen her general pessimism. And then, an hour
before closing time on the hottest day she had ever experienced in
her life, here came the telegram for P. Connolly.

“Gary Marshall mysteriously missing from Johnnywater----” Patricia
blinked and read again incredulously. The remainder of the message,
“evidence points to foul play suspect Hawkins wire instructions”
sounded to her suspiciously like one of Gary’s jokes. She was
obliged to read the signature, “M. Girard,” over several times, and
to make sure that it was sent from Las Vegas, Nevada, before she
could even begin to accept the message as authentic.

How in the world could Gary be mysteriously missing from Johnnywater
when he had flatly refused to go there? How could Hawkins be
suspected? P. Connolly went suddenly into a white, wilted heap in
her chair.

When she opened her eyes the assistant bookkeeper was standing over
her with a glass of water, and her boss was hurrying in from his
office. Some one had evidently called him. Her boss was not the kind
of man who wastes time on nonessentials. He did not ask Patricia if
she were ill or what was the matter. He picked up the open telegram
and read it with one long, comprehensive glance. Then he placed his
hand under Patricia’s arm, told her that she was all right, that the
heat did those things in Kansas City, and added the information that
there was a breeze blowing in the corner window of his office.
Patricia suffered him to lead her away from the gaping office force.

“Sit right there until you feel better,” her boss commanded, pushing
her rather gently into a chair in the coolest corner of the room.

“I feel better now,” Patricia told him gamely. “I received a
telegram that knocked me over for a minute. I didn’t know what it
meant. If you don’t mind, Mr. Wilson, I should like to go and attend
to the matter.”

Mr. Wilson handed her the telegram with a dry smile. “It sounds
rather ominous, I admit,” he observed, omitting an apology for
having read it. “Naturally I cannot advise you, since I do not
understand what it is all about. But if you wish to wire any
instructions, just write your message here while I call the
messenger. There was a delay, remember. The message was forwarded
from Los Angeles.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wilson,” Patricia answered in her prim office tone.
“I should like to reply at once, if you don’t mind. And, Mr. Wilson,
if you will be so good as to O. K. a check for me, I shall take the
next train to Las Vegas, Nevada.”

“I’ll ’phone for a ticket and reservations,” her boss announced
without hesitation. “You will want to be sure of having enough money
to see you through, of course. I can arrange an advance on your
salary, if you wish.”

Patricia told him, in not quite so prim a tone, that it would not be
necessary. She wrote her message asking Monty Girard to wait until
she arrived, as she was taking the next train. The messenger, warned
by a certain look in the eye of the boss, ducked his head and
departed almost running. Patricia wrote her check and the boss sent
it to the cashier by the office boy; and telephoned the ticket
office. Patricia read the telegram again very slowly.

“Johnnywater is the name of a cattle ranch which I happen to own in
Nevada, Mr. Wilson,” Patricia said in the steadiest voice she could
command. “Hawkins is a man I sent over to take charge of the ranch
and run it on shares. You’ll see why I must go and look into this
matter.” You will observe that Patricia, having come up gasping for
breath, was still saying, “Scissors!” with secret relish.

Even in her confused state of apprehension, there was a certain
gratification to Patricia in seeing that the boss was impressed by
the fact that she owned a cattle ranch in Nevada. She was also glad
that it had not been necessary to explain the identity of Gary
Marshall. But immediately it became necessary.

“This Gary Marshall who disappeared; do you know him?”

“I’m engaged to marry him,” Patricia replied in as neutral a tone as
she could manage. “I didn’t know he was at Johnnywater,” she added
truthfully. “That’s why I thought it was a joke when I first read
it. I still don’t understand how he could be there at all. He was
playing the lead in a picture when I left Los Angeles.”

“You don’t mean Gary Marshall, the Western star?” The boss’s tone
was distinctly exclamatory. Patricia saw that her engagement to Gary
Marshall impressed the boss much more deeply than did her ownership
of Johnnywater ranch. “That young man is going right to the top in
pictures. He acts with his brains and forgets his good looks. Most
of ’em do it the other way round. Why, I’d rather go and see Gary
Marshall in a picture than any star I know! And you’re engaged to
him! Well, well! I didn’t know, Miss Connolly, that I was so closely
related to my favorite movie star. May I see that telegram again?
Lord, I’d hate to think anything’d happened to that boy--but don’t
you worry! If I’m not mistaken, he’s a lad that can take care of
himself where most men would go under. By all means, go and see
what’s wrong. And I wish, Miss Connolly, you’d wire me as soon as
you find that everything is all right. You _will_ find it all
right--I’m absolutely positive on that point.”

Patricia cherished a deep respect for her boss. She felt suddenly
convicted of a great wrong. She had never dreamed that a man with
the keen, analytical mind of John S. Wilson could actually respect a
fellow who worked in the movies. She left the office humbled and
anxious to make amends.

That evening the boss himself took her to the train and saw that she
was comfortable, and spoke encouragingly of Gary’s ability to take
care of himself, no matter what danger threatened. His
encouragement, however, only served to alarm Patricia the more. She
was a shrewd young woman, and she read deep concern in the mind of
her boss, from the very fact that he had taken the pains to reassure
her.

That night Gary dreamed that Steve Carson stood suddenly before him
and spoke to him. He dreamed that Steve Carson told him he would not
starve to death in there, for his sweetheart was coming with men who
would dig him out.

Gary woke with the dream so vivid in his mind that he could scarcely
reason himself out of the belief that Steve Carson had actually
talked with him. Gary lay thinking of Sir Ernest Shackleton, of
whose voyages to the Antarctic he had read again and again. He
recalled how close Shackleton and his companions had shaved
starvation, not from necessity, but from choice, in the interests of
science. He tried to guess what Shackleton would do, were he in
Gary’s predicament, with four candles and the stub of a fifth in his
possession, and approximately two gallons of water.

“I bet he’d go strong for several days yet,” Gary whispered. “He’d
cut the candles into little bits and eat one piece and call it a
meal. And he’d figure out just how many wallops he could give that
damned rock on the strength of his gorgeous feed of one inch of
candle. And then, when he’d dined on the last wick and hit the rock
a last wallop, he’d grin and say it had been a great game.” He
turned painfully over upon the other side and laid his face upon his
bent arm.

“Shackleton never was shut up in a hole a hundred miles from
nowhere,” he murmured, “with nobody knowing a word about it but a
pinto cat that’s crazy over spiritualism. If Shackleton was here, I
bet he’d say, ‘Eat the candles, boy, and take your indigestion all
at one time and finish the game.’ No use dragging out the suspense
till the audience gets the gapes. First time I ever starred in a
story that had an unhappy ending. I didn’t think the Big Director
would do it!”

He lay for a time dozing and trying to forget the terrible gnawing
in his stomach. Then his thoughts wandered on and he mumbled,

“I’m not kicking--if this is the way it’s supposed to be. But I did
want Pat to have her gold mine. And now the location work is all
covered up--so maybe it won’t count. And some other gink will maybe
come along and jump the claim, and my Pat won’t get her gold mine. I
guess it’s all right. But I didn’t think the Big Director would do
this!”




                        CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

                        MONTY MEETS PATRICIA


Monty had made up his mind to go on to Los Angeles and see for
himself why Patricia would not answer his telegram, when he received
the word that she was coming from Kansas City. He swore a good deal
over the delay that would hold him inactive in town. To fill in the
time he wrote a long letter to the sheriff in Tonopah, stating all
the facts in the case so far as he knew them. He hoped that the
sheriff was already on his way to Johnnywater, though Monty could
not have told just what he expected the sheriff to accomplish when
he arrived there.

He tried to trace James Blaine Hawkins, but only succeeded in
learning from a garage man that Hawkins had come in off the desert
at least three weeks before, cursed the roads and the country in
general and had left for Los Angeles. Or at least that was the
destination he had named.

Even Monty could find no evidence in that of Hawkins’ guilt. His
restless pacing up and down the three short blocks that comprised
the main business street of the town got on the nerves of the men
who knew him. His concern over Gary Marshall gradually infected the
minds of others; so that news of a murder committed in Johnnywater
Cañon was wired to the city papers, and the Chief of Police in Los
Angeles was advised also by wire to trace James Blaine Hawkins if
possible.

Old cuts of Gary Marshall were hastily dug up in newspaper offices
and his picture run on the first page. A reporter who knew him well
wrote a particularly dramatic special article, which was copied more
or less badly by many of the papers. Cohen got to hear of it, and
his publicity agents played up the story magnificently, not because
Cohen wished to immortalize one of his younger leading men who was
out of the game, but because it made splendid indirect advertising
for Cohen.

Monty, of course, never dreamed that he had done all this. He was
sincerely grieving over Gary, whose grave he thought he had
discovered by the bushy juniper. The mere fact that James Blaine
Hawkins had appeared in Las Vegas approximately three weeks before
did not convince him that Gary had not been murdered. He believed
that Hawkins had lain in wait for Gary and had killed him on his
return from Kawich. The grave might easily be that old.

Of course there was a weak point in that argument. In fact, Monty’s
state of mind was such that he failed to see the fatally weak point
until the day of Patricia’s arrival. When he did see it he abandoned
the theory in disgust, threw out his hands expressively, and
declared that he didn’t give a damn just how the crime had been
committed, or when. Without a doubt his friend, Gary Marshall, had
been killed, and Monty swore he would never rest until the murderer
had paid the price. The weak point, which was the well-fed comfort
of the pigs and Jazz, he did not attempt to explain away. Perhaps
James Blaine Hawkins had not gone to Los Angeles at all. Perhaps he
was still out there at Johnnywater, and Monty had failed to discover
him.

He was in that frame of mind when he met the six o’clock train that
brought Patricia. Naturally, he had no means of identifying her. But
he followed a tired-looking girl with a small black handbag to one
of the hotels and inspected the register just as she turned away
from the desk. Then he took off his hat, extended his hand and told
her who he was.

Patricia was all for starting for Johnnywater that night. Monty gave
her one long look and told her bluntly that it simply couldn’t be
done; that no one could travel the road at night. His eyes were very
blue and convincing, and his southern drawl branded the lie as
truth. Wherefore, Patricia rested that night in a bed that remained
stationary, and by morning Monty was better satisfied with her
appearance and believed that she would stand the trip all right.

“I reckon maybe yuh-all better find some woman to go on out, Miss
Connolly,” Monty suggested while they breakfasted.

“I can’t see why that should be necessary, Mr. Girard,” Patricia
replied in her primmest office tone. “I am perfectly able to take
care of myself, I should think.”

“You’ll be the only woman in the country for about sixty-five or
seventy miles,” Monty warned her diffidently. “Uh course there
couldn’t anything happen to yuh-all--but I expect the sheriff and
maybe one or two more will be down from Tonopah when we get there,
and I thought maybe yuh-all might like to have some other woman
along for company.”

He dipped three spoons of sugar into his coffee and looked at
Patricia with a sympathetic look in his eyes.

“I was thinkin’ last night, Miss Connolly, that I dunno as there’s
much use of your going out there at all. Yuh-all couldn’t do a
thing, and it’s liable to be mighty unpleasant. When I sent that
wire to yuh-all, I never thought a word about yuh-all comin’ to
Johnnywater. What I wanted was to get a line on this man, Hawkins. I
thought maybe yuh-all could tell me something about him.”

Patricia glanced unseeingly around the insufferably hot little café.
She was not conscious of the room at all. She was thinking of Gary
and trying to force herself to a calmness that could speak of him
without betraying her feelings.

“I don’t know anything about Mr. Hawkins, other than that I arranged
with him to run the ranch on shares,” she said, and the effort she
was making made her voice sound very cold and impersonal. “I
certainly did not know that Mr. Marshall was at Johnnywater, or I
should not have sent Mr. Hawkins over. I had asked Mr. Marshall
first to take charge of the ranch, and Mr. Marshall had refused, on
the ground that he did not wish to give up his work in motion
pictures. Are you sure that he came over here and was at Johnnywater
when Mr. Hawkins arrived?” Patricia did not know it, but her voice
sounded as coldly accusing as if she were a prosecuting attorney
trying to make a prisoner give damaging testimony against himself.
Her manner bred a slight resentment in Monty, so that he forgot his
diffidence.

“I hauled Gary Marshall out to Johnnywater myself, over six weeks
ago,” he told her bluntly. “He hunted me up and acted like he wanted
to scrap with me because he thought I’d helped to cheat yuh-all. He
was going to sell the place for yuh-all if he could--and I sure
approved of the idea. It ain’t any place for a lady to own. A man
could go there and live like a hermit and make a bare living, but
yuh-all couldn’t divide the profits and break even. I dunno as
there’d _be_ any profits to divide, after a feller’d paid for his
grub and clothes.

“Gary saw it right away, and I was to bring him back to town in a
couple of days; but I had an accident to my car so I couldn’t come
in. I reckon Gary meant to write anyway and tell yuh-all where he
was. But he never had a chance to send out a letter.”

Patricia dipped a spoon into her cereal and left it there. “Even so,
I don’t believe Gary disappeared very mysteriously,” she said, her
chin squaring itself. “He probably got tired of staying there and
went back to Los Angeles by way of Tonopah. However, I shall drive
out and see the ranch, now that I’m here. I’m very sorry you have
been put to so much trouble, Mr. Girard. I really think Mr. Marshall
should have left some word for you before he left. But then,” she
added with some bitterness, “he didn’t seem to think it necessary to
let _me_ know he was coming over here. And we have telephones in Los
Angeles, Mr. Girard.”

Monty’s eyes were very blue and steady when he looked at her across
the table. He set down his cup and leaned forward a little.

“If yuh spoke to Gary in that tone of voice, Miss Connolly,” he
drawled, “I reckon he wouldn’t feel much like usin’ the telephone
before he left town. Gary’s as nice a boy as I ever met in my life.”

Patricia bit her under lip, and a tinge of red crept up over her
cheek bones to the dark circles beneath her eyes, that told a tale
of sleepless nights which Patricia herself would have denied.

The remainder of the breakfast was a silent meal, with only such
speech as was necessary and pertained to the trip before them. Monty
advised the taking out of certain supplies and assisted Patricia in
making up a list of common comforts which could be carried in a
touring car.

He left her at the hotel while he attended to the details of getting
under way, and when he returned it was with a Ford and driver, and
many parcels stacked in the tonneau. Patricia’s suit case was wedged
between the front fender and the tucked-up hood of the motor, and a
bundle of new bedding was jammed down upon the other side in like
manner. Patricia herself was wedged into the rear seat beside the
parcels and packages of food. Her black traveling bag Monty
deposited between his feet in front with the driver.

At the last moment, while the driver was cranking the motor, Monty
reached backward with a small package in his hand.

“Put on these sun goggles,” he said. “Your eyes will be a fright if
you ride all day against this wind without any protection.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Girard,” said Patricia with a surprising
meekness--for her. What is more, she put on the hideous amber
glasses; though she hated the jaundiced look they gave to the world.

Patricia had a good deal to think about during that interminable,
jolting ride. She was given ample opportunity for the thinking,
since Monty Girard never spoke to her except to inquire now and then
if she were comfortable.




                        CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

               GARY ROBS THE PINTO CAT OF HER DINNER


That same morning Gary finished his third candle and tried his best
to make one swallow of water, held long in his parched mouth,
suffice for two hours.

He could no longer lift the single-jack to the height of his
shoulder, much less strike a blow upon the rock. He leaned against
the bowlder and struck a few feeble blows with the head of the
longer of the two drills; but the steel bounced back futilely, and
the exertion tired him so that he was forced to desist after a few
minutes of heart-breaking effort.

He sat down with his back against the wall where the sunlight could
find him and give a little cheer to his prison, and fingered his
fourth candle longingly. He licked his cracked lips and lifted the
canteen, his emaciated fingers fumbling the screw-top thirstily. He
tried to reason sensibly with himself that only a cowardly
reluctance to meet death--which was the inevitable goal of life--held
him fighting there in that narrow dungeon, scheming to add a few
more tortured hours to his life.

He told himself angrily that he was merely holding up the action of
the story, and that the scene should be cut right there. In other
words, there was absolutely no hope of his ever getting out of
there, alive or dead. Steve Carson, he mumbled, had been lucky. He
had at least taken his exit quickly.

“But I ain’t licked yet,” he croaked, with a cracked laugh. “There’s
a lot of fight in me yet. Never had any use for a quitter. Steve
Carson wouldn’t have quit--only he got beaned with the first rock and
couldn’t fight. I’m not hurt--yet. Trained down pretty fine, is all.
When I’m a ghost, maybe I’ll come back and tell fat ladies with
Ouija boards in their laps how to reduce. Great scheme. I’ll do that
little thing. But I ain’t whipped yet--not until I’ve tried out my
jackknife on that damned rock. Have a drink, old son. And then get
to work! What the hell are you loafing for?”

He lifted the lightened canteen, his arms shaking with weakness, and
took another drink of water. Then, carefully screwing on the top of
the canteen, he set it down gently against the wall and reached
wearily into his pocket. The blade of his knife had never been so
hard to open; but he accomplished it and pulled himself laboriously
to his feet. Steadying himself with one hand against the malapi
bowlder that shut him in, he went to the opening--widened now so that
he could thrust forth his arm to the shoulder--and began carefully
chipping at a seam in the rock with the largest blade of his
jackknife.

He really did not expect to free himself by that means; nor by any
other. Since he began to weaken he had come to accept his fate with
such calmness as his pride in playing the game could muster. But he
could not sit idle and wait for death to creep upon him. Nor could
he hurry it, which he held to be a coward’s trick. He still believed
that the “Big Director” should be obeyed. It was too late now to ask
for another part in the picture. He had been cast for this rôle and
he would play it to the final scene.

So he stood hacking and prying with his knife blade, stopping now
and then to stare out into the hot sunshine. He could even see a
wisp of cloud drift across the bit of blue sky revealed to him
through the narrow rock window of his prison. The sight made him
grit his teeth. He was so close to that free, sun-drenched world,
and he was yet so utterly helpless!

He was standing so, resting from his unavailing task, when the
spotted cat hopped upon the bowlder where every day she sat to be
stroked by Gary’s hand. Gary’s eyes narrowed and he licked his lips
avidly. Faith was carrying a wild dove that she had caught and
brought to the bowlder where she might feast in pleasant company.

“Thanks, old girl,” he said grimly; and stretching out his arm,
snatched the bird greedily from Faith’s mouth. “Some service! Now
beat it and go catch a rabbit; a big one. Catch two rabbits!”

He slid down to a sitting position and began plucking the limp body
of the dove, his fingers trembling with eagerness. The “third
hunger” was upon him--that torment of craving which men who have been
entombed in mines speak of with lowered voices--if they live to tell
about it. Gary longed to tear the bird with his teeth, just as it
was.

But he would not yield an inch from his idea of the proper way to
play the game. He therefore plucked the dove almost clean of
feathers, and lighting his one precious remaining candle, he turned
the small, plump body over the candle flame, singeing it before he
held the flame to its breast.

The instant that portion was seared and partially broiled, Gary set
his handsome white teeth into it and chewed the morsel slowly while
he broiled another bite. His impulse--rather, the agonized craving of
his whole famished body--was to tear the body asunder with his teeth
and devour it like an animal. But he steeled himself to
self-control; just as he had held himself sternly in hand down in
the cabin when loneliness and that weird, felt presence plucked at
his courage.

He would have grudged the melting of even the half-inch of tallow it
required to broil the bird so that he could eat it and retain his
self-respect; but the succulent flesh was too delicious. He could
not think of anything but the ecstasy of eating.

He crunched the bones in his teeth, pulping them slowly, extracting
the last particle of flavor and nourishment. When he had finished
there remained but the head and the feet--and he flung them through
the opening lest he should be tempted to devour them also. After
that he indulged himself in a sip of water, stretched himself full
length upon the rock floor, and descended blissfully into the
oblivion of deep slumber.




                           CHAPTER THIRTY

                “SOMEBODY HOLLERED UP ON THE BLUFF”


The left front tire of the town Ford persisted in going flat with a
slow valve leak. The driver, a heedless young fellow, had neglected
to bring extra valves; so that the tire needed pumping every ten
miles or such a matter. Then the Ford began heating on the long,
uphill pull between the Pintwater Mountains and the Spotted Range,
and some time was lost during the heat of the day because of the
necessity for cooling the motor. Delays such as these eat away the
hours on a long trip; wherefore it was nearly dusk when Patricia got
her first glimpse of Johnnywater Cañon.

Up in the crosscut, Gary heard the rumbling throb of the motor, and
shouted until he was exhausted. Which did not take long, even with
the nourishment of the broiled dove to refresh his failing strength.

He consoled himself afterward with the thought that it was James
Blaine Hawkins come sneaking back, and that he would like nothing
better than to find Gary hopelessly caged in the crosscut. Gary was
rather glad that James Blaine Hawkins had failed to hear him shout.
At any rate, the secret of Patricia’s mine was safe from him, and
Gary would be spared the misery of being taunted by Hawkins. It was
a crazy notion, for it was not at all likely that even James Blaine
Hawkins would have let him die so grisly a death. But Gary was
harboring strange notions at times during the last forty-eight
hours. And the body of one wild dove was pitifully inadequate for
the needs of a starving man.

Monty had not meant to be cruel. Now that he was on the spot, he
tried his best to soften the shock of what he knew Patricia must
discover. That morning he had purposely avoided speaking of his
reasons for fearing the worst. Then Patricia’s manner--assumed merely
to hide her real emotion--had chilled Monty to silence on the whole
subject. With the driver present they had not discussed the matter
at all during the trip, so that Patricia was still ignorant of what
Monty believed to be the real, tragic state of affairs.

Monty looked up from lighting a fire in the stove and saw Patricia
go over to Gary’s coat and smooth it caressingly with her hand. Then
and there he forgave Patricia for her tone at breakfast. She took
Gary’s hat from the cupboard and held it in her hands, her eyes
questioning Monty.

“Gary was saving that hat till he went to town again,” Monty
informed her in his gentle drawl. “He was wearing an old hat of
Waddell’s, and some old clothes Waddell left here when he pulled
out. You see now, Miss Connolly, one reason why I don’t believe Gary
went to Tonopah. His suit case is there, too, under the bunk. But
don’t yuh-all worry--we’ll find him.”

He turned back to his fire-building, and Patricia sat down on the
edge of the bunk and stared wide-eyed around the cabin.

So this was why she had failed to hear from Gary in all these weeks!
He had come over here to Johnnywater after all, because she wished
it. She had never dreamed the place would be so lonely. And Gary had
lived here all alone!

“Is this all there is to the house--just this one room?” she asked
Monty abruptly, in her prim, colorless tone.

“Yes, ma’am, this is the size of it,” Monty replied cheerfully.
“Folks don’t generally waste much time on buildin’ fancy houses, out
here. Most generally they’re mighty thankful if the walls keep out
the wind and the roof don’t leak. If it’s dry and warm, they don’t
care if it ain’t stylish.”

“Is this the way Gary left it?” she asked next, glancing down at the
rough board floor that gave evidence of having been lately scrubbed.

“Yes, ma’am, except for the dust on things. Gary Marshall was a
right neat housekeeper, Miss Connolly.”

“_Was?_” Patricia stood up and came toward him. “Do you think
he’s--what makes you say _was_?”

Monty hedged. “Well, he ain’t been keepin’ house here for a week,
anyway. It’s a week ago yesterday I rode over here from my camp.
Things are just as they was then.”

“You have something else on your mind, Mr. Girard. What was it that
made you wire about foul play? I’ll have to know anyway, and I wish
you’d tell me now, before that boy comes in from fussing with the
car.”

Monty was filling the coffeepot. He set it on the hottest part of
the stove and turned toward her commiseratingly.

“I reckon I had better tell yuh-all,” he said gently. “The thing
that scared me was that this man, Hawkins, come here and made his
brags about how he got the best of yuh-all in that agreement. Him
and Gary had some words over it, the way I got it, and they like to
have had a fight--only Hawkins didn’t have the nerve. He beat it out
of here and Gary rode over to my place that same day and was tellin’
me about it.

“I told him then to look out for Hawkins. He sounded to me like a
bad man to have trouble with; or dealin’s of any kind. That was
three weeks ago, Miss Connolly--four weeks now, it is. I was away for
three weeks, and when I got back I rode over here and found the
place deserted. Gary’s hawse was in the corral and the two pigs was
shut up in the pen, so it looked like he ought to be around
somewheres close. Only he wasn’t. I hunts the place over, from one
end to the other. But there wasn’t no sign of him, except----”

“Except what? I want to know all that you know about it, Mr.
Girard.”

Monty hesitated, and when he spoke his reluctance was perfectly
apparent to Patricia.

“Well, there’s something else I didn’t like the looks of. Up the
creek here a piece, there’s a grave that wasn’t there the last time
I was over here. I’m pretty sure about that, because I recollect I
led my hawse down to the creek right about there, to water him. It’s
about straight down from the corral, and I’d have noticed it.”

“I don’t believe a word of it--that it has anything to do with Gary!”
cried Patricia vehemently, and she went over and pressed her face
against Gary’s coat.

Monty took a step toward her but reconsidered and went on with his
preparations for supper. Instinctively he felt that he would do
Patricia the greatest possible service if he made her physically
comfortable and refrained from intruding upon the sacred ground of
her thoughts concerning Gary.

The boy who had driven the car out came in, and Monty sent him to
the creek for a bucket of fresh water. The boy came back with the
water and a look of concern on his face.

“I thought I heard somebody holler, up on the bluff,” he said to
Monty. “Do you think we’d better go see----?”

Monty shook his head at him, checking the sentence. But Patricia had
turned quickly and caught him at it. She came forward anxiously.

“Certainly we ought to go and see!” she said with characteristic
decision. “It’s probably Mr. Marshall. He may be hurt, up there.”
She started for the door, but Monty took one long step and laid a
detaining hand upon her arm.

“That Voice has been hollerin’ off and on for five years,” he told
her gravely. “I’ve heard it myself more than once. Gary used to hear
it--often. Yuh can’t get an Injun past the mouth of the cañon on
account of it. It was that Voice hollerin’ that made Waddell sell
out and quit the country.”

Patricia looked at him uncomprehendingly. “What _is_ it?” she
demanded. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Neither can anybody else understand it--that I ever heard of,” Monty
retorted dryly, and gently urged her toward the one homemade chair.
“Supper’s about ready, Miss Connolly. I guess you’re pretty hungry,
after that long ride.” Then he added in his convincing drawl--which
this time was absolutely sincere--“I love Gary Marshall like I would
my own brother, Miss Connolly. Yuh-all needn’t think I’d leave a
stone unturned to find him. But that Voice--it ain’t anything human.
It--it scares folks, but nobody has ever been able to locate it. You
can’t pay any attention to it. You set up here to the table and let
me pour yuh-all a cup of coffee. And here’s some bacon and some
fresh eggs I fried for yuh-all. And that bread was warm when I
bought it off the baker this morning.”

Patricia’s lips quivered, but she did her best to steady them. And
because she appreciated Monty’s kindness and his chivalrous attempts
to serve her in the best way he knew, she ate as much of the supper
as she could possibly swallow, and discovered that she was hungry
enough to relish the fried eggs and bacon, though she was not in the
habit of eating either.

The boy--Monty called him Joe--gave Patricia the creeps with his
wide-eyed uneasiness; staring from one to the other and suspending
mastication now and then while he listened frankly for the Voice.
Patricia tried not to notice him and was grateful to Monty for his
continuous stream of inconsequential talk on any subject that came
into his mind, except the one subject that filled the minds of both.

The boy, Joe, helped Monty afterward with the dishes, Patricia
having been commanded to rest; a command impossible for her to obey,
though she sat quiet with her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Too
tightly, Monty thought, whenever he looked her way.

Monty was a painstaking young man, and he had learned from long
experience in the wilderness to provide for possible emergencies as
well as present needs. He wiped out the dishpan, hung it on its nail
and spread the dishcloth over it, and then took a small, round box
from his pocket. He opened it and took out a tablet with his thumb
and finger. He dropped the tablet into a jelly glass--the same which
Gary had used to hold his gold dust--and added a little water. He
stood watching it, shaking it gently until the tablet was dissolved.

“We-all are going to spread our bed out in the grove, Miss
Connolly,” he drawled easily, approaching Patricia with the glass.
“I reckoned likely yuh-all would be mighty tired to-night, and maybe
kinda nervous and upset. So I asked the doctor what I could bring
along that would give yuh-all a night’s rest without doin’ any harm.
He sent this out and said it would quiet your nerves so yuh-all
could sleep. Don’t be afraid of it--I made sure it wasn’t anything
harmful.”

Patricia looked at him for a minute, then put out her hand for the
glass and drank the contents to the last dregs.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Girard,” she said simply. “I was wondering
how I’d get through this night.”




                         CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

            “GOD WOULDN’T LET ANYTHING HAPPEN TO GARY!”


Having slept well during the night--thanks to Monty’s forethought in
bringing a sedative--Patricia woke while the sun was just gilding the
top of the butte. The cañon and the grove were still in shadow, and
a mocking bird was singing in the top of the piñon beside the cabin.
Patricia dressed hurriedly, and tidied the blankets in the bunk. She
pulled open the door, gazing upon her possessions with none of that
pleasurable thrill she had always pictured as accompanying her first
fair sight of Johnnywater.

She did not believe that harm had befallen Gary. Things _couldn’t_
happen to Gary Marshall. Not for one moment, she told herself
resolutely, had she believed it. Yet the mystery of his absence
nagged at her like a gadfly.

Fifty feet or so away, partially hidden by a young juniper, Patricia
could discern the white tarp that covered the bed where Monty Girard
and Joe were still asleep. She stepped down off the doorsill and
made her way quietly to the creek, and knelt on a stone and laved
her face and hands in the cool water.

Standing again and gazing up through the fringe of tree tops at the
towering, sun-washed butte, Patricia told herself that now she knew
what people meant when they spoke of air like wine. She could feel
the sparkle, the heady stimulation of this rare atmosphere untainted
by the grime, the noise, the million conflicting vibrations created
by the world of men. After her sleep she simply _could not_ believe
that any misfortune could have befallen her Gary, whose ring she
wore on her third finger, whose kisses were the last that had
touched her lips, whose face, whose voice, whose thousand endearing
little ways she carried deep in her heart.

“The God that made all this _wouldn’t_ let anything happen to Gary!”
she whispered fiercely, and drew fresh courage from the utterance.

The mottled cat appeared, coming from the bushes across the tiny
stream. It halted and looked at her surprisedly and gave an
inquiring meow. Patricia stooped and held out her hands, calling
softly. She liked cats.

“Come, kitty, kitty--you pretty thing!”

Faith regarded her measuringly, then hopped across the creek on two
stones and rubbed against Patricia’s knees, purring and mewing
amiably by turns. Patricia took the cat in her arms and stroked its
sleek fur caressingly, and Faith radiated friendliness.

Patricia made her way through the grove, glimpsed the corral and
went toward it, her big eyes taking in everything which Gary may
have touched or handled. Standing by the corral, she looked out
toward the creek, seeking the bushy juniper of which Monty had
spoken. Carrying the cat still in her arms she started forward
through the tall weeds and bushes, burrs sticking to her skirt and
clinging to her silken stockings.

Abruptly Faith gave a wriggle and a jump, landed on all four feet
two yards in advance of Patricia, and started off at an angle up the
creek, looking back frequently and giving a sharp, insistent meow.
Patricia hesitated, watching the cat curiously. She had heard often
enough of dogs who led people to a certain spot when some one the
dog loved was in trouble. She had never, so far as she could
remember, heard of a cat doing the same thing; but Patricia owned a
brain that refused to think in grooves fixed by the opinions of
others.

“I can’t see any reason why cats can’t lead people the same as
dogs,” she told herself after a moment’s consideration, and
forthwith turned and followed Faith.

Just at first she was inclined to believe that the cat was walking
at random; but later she decided that Monty Girard had been slightly
inaccurate in his statement regarding the exact location of the
juniper beside the creek. The mottled cat led her straight to the
grave and stopped there, sniffing at the dirt and patting it
daintily with her paws.

Monty was frying bacon with a great sizzling and sputtering on a hot
stove when Patricia entered the cabin. Her cheeks showed more color
than had been seen in them for weeks. Her eyes were clear and met
Monty’s inquiring look with their old, characteristic directness.

“Have a good sleep?” he asked with that excessive cheerfulness which
is seldom genuine. Monty himself had not slept until dawn was
breaking.

“Fine, thank you,” Patricia answered more cordially than she had yet
spoken to Monty. “Mr. Girard, this may not be a pleasant subject
before breakfast, but it’s on my mind.” She paused, looking at Monty
inquiringly.

“Shoot,” Monty invited calmly. “My mind’s plumb full of unpleasant
things, and talking about them can’t make it any worse, Miss
Connolly.”

“Well, then, I’ve been up to that grave. And it wasn’t made by any
murderer. I somehow know it wasn’t. A murderer would have been in a
hurry, and I should think he’d try to hide it--and he wouldn’t pick
the prettiest spot he could find. And I know perfectly well, Mr.
Girard, that if _I_ had killed a man, I wouldn’t spat the dirt down
over his grave and make it as nice and even as that grave is up
there. And somebody picked some flowers and laid them at the head,
Mr. Girard. They had wilted--and I don’t suppose you noticed them.

“Besides,” she finished, after an unconscious pause that seemed to
sum up her reasoning and lend weight to the argument, “the cat knows
all about it. She tried as hard as ever she could to tell me. I--this
may sound foolish, but I can’t help believing it--I think the cat was
there looking on, and I’m pretty sure it was some one the cat knew
and liked.”

Monty poured coffee all over Patricia’s plate, his hand shook so.
“Gary kinda made a pal uh that cat,” he blurted, before he realized
what meaning Patricia must read into the sentence.

“The cat was here when Gary arrived, I suppose,” Patricia retorted
sharply, squaring her chin. “I can’t imagine him bringing a cat with
him.”

A look of relief flashed into Monty’s face. “That cat’s been here on
the place for about eight years, as close as I can figure. Steve
Carson got it from a woman in Vegas when it was a kitten, and packed
it out here in a nose bag hung on his burro’s pack. Him and the cat
wasn’t ever more than three feet apart. There’s been something queer
about that cat, ever since Steve came up missing.”

Monty started for the door, having it in his mind to call the boy to
breakfast. But a look in Patricia’s eyes stopped him, and he turned
back and sat down opposite her at the table.

“I’d let that boy sleep--all day if he wants to,” Patricia remarked.
“He’ll do enough talking about us and our affairs, as it is. I wish
you’d tell me about this Steve Carson. I never heard of him before.”

Whereupon Monty related the mysteriously gruesome story to Patricia,
who listened so absorbedly that she neglected a very good breakfast.
Afterward she announced that she would wash the dishes and keep
breakfast warm for Joe, who appeared to be afflicted with a mild
form of sleeping sickness, since Monty yelled at him three times at
a distance of no more than ten feet, and elicited no response save a
grunt and a hitch of the shoulders under the blankets. Monty left
him alone, after that, and started off on another exhaustive search
of the cañon, tactfully leaving Patricia to herself.

Patricia was grateful for the temporary solitude. Never in her life
had she been so full of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Her
forced resentment against Gary had suffered a complete collapse; the
revulsion of feeling was overwhelming. It seemed to Patricia that
her very longing for him should bring him back.

She pulled his suit case from under the bunk, touching lock and
clasps and the smooth leather caressingly with her fingers. Its
substantial elegance spoke intimately to her of Gary’s unfailing
good taste in choosing his personal belongings. The square-blocked
initials, “G. E. M.” (Gary Elbert Marshall, at which Patricia had
often laughed teasingly), brought a lump into her throat. But
Patricia boasted that she was not the weepy type of female. She
would not yield now to tears.

She almost believed it was accident that raised the lid. For a
moment she hesitated, not liking to pry into the little intimacies
of Gary’s possessions. But she saw her picture looking up from under
a silk shirt still folded as it had come from the laundry, and the
sight of her own pictured eyes and smiling lips gave her a
reassuring sense of belonging there.

It was inevitable that she should find the “Dear Pat:” letters;
unfolded, the pages stacked like a manuscript, and tucked flat on
the bottom under the clothing.

Patricia caught her breath. Here, perhaps, was the key to the whole
mystery. She lifted out the pages with trembling eagerness and set
her lips upon the bold scribbling she knew so well. She closed the
suit case hastily, pushed it out of sight beneath the bunk and
hurried out of the cabin, clasping the letters passionately to her
breast. She wanted to be alone, to read them slowly, gloatingly,
where no human eye could look upon her face.

She went down to the creek, crossed it and climbed a short distance
up the bluff, to where a huge bowlder shaded a smaller one beside
it. There, with the butte staring down inscrutably upon her, she
began to read.




                         CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

                 “IT’S THE VOICE! IT AIN’T HUMAN!”


Gary had been imprisoned in the crosscut eight days, counting the
time until noon. He had stretched his lunch to the third day; human
endurance could not compass a longer abstinence than that, so long
as the smallest crumb remained. He had drunk perhaps a quart of
water from the canteen he had carried up the bluff the day before
the catastrophe, and had left the canteen there, expecting to use it
for drilling. With a fresh canteen filled that morning at the creek,
he had something over three gallons to begin with. Wherefore the
tortures of thirst had not yet assailed him, though he had from the
first hour held himself rigidly to the smallest ration he thought he
could endure and keep his reason.

Through all the dragging hours, fighting indomitably against despair
when hope seemed but a form of madness, he had never once yielded to
temptation and taken more during any one day than he had fixed as
the amount that must suffice.

He had almost resigned himself to death. And then Faith, unwittingly
playing providence, had roused a fighting demon within him. The wild
dove had won back a little of his failing strength just when a
matter of hours would have pushed him over the edge into lassitude,
that lethargy which is nature’s anesthetic when the end approaches,
and the final coma which eases a soul across the border.

While Patricia slept exhaustedly in the cabin below, Gary babbled of
many things in the crosscut. He awoke, believing he had dreamed that
an automobile drove into the cañon the evening before. Nevertheless
he decided that, since there was no hope of cutting away the granite
wall with his knife, or of lifting the bowlder, Atlas-like, on his
shoulders and heaving it out of the incline shaft, he might as well
use what strength and breath he had in shouting.

“About one chance in ten thousand that anybody would hear me,” he
told himself. “But getting out alone is a darned sight longer shot.
Trick camera work--and the best to be had--it would take, to make me
even _look_ like getting out. My best bet is a correct imitation of
the Johnnywater Voice. But I wouldn’t advise anybody to bet any
money on me.”

He was shouting all the while Monty was explaining to Patricia how
the Voice had come to give Johnnywater Cañon so sinister a
reputation. But his voice came muffled to the outer surface of the
bowlder-strewn bluff, and diminished rapidly down the slope. Joe
might have heard it had he been awake, since his ears were
sufficiently keen to hear Gary when he shouted the night before. But
Joe was asleep with his head under the tarp. And Patricia and Monty
were talking inside the cabin. So Gary shouted until he could shout
no more, and gave up and rested awhile.

After that he stood leaning heavily against the wall and scraped
doggedly at the seams in the granite with his knife-blade.

“----and I love you, Pat. I wouldn’t have you different if I could.
Gary.”

Patricia was obliged to wipe the tears away from her eyes before she
could read the last two lines of Gary’s last letter. As it was she
splotched the penciled words with a great drop or two, before she
hid her face in her arms folded upon a high shoulder of the rock on
which she sat, and cried until no more tears would come.

After a while she heard Monty calling her name, but at first she did
not care. The contents of that last letter proved that it had been
written three weeks ago, evidently a day or so before Gary had
ridden over to Monty’s camp. She was afraid to think what might have
befallen since.

It was the Voice of the rim rock that roused her finally. She stood
up and listened, sure that it was Gary. To-day the beseeching note
was in the Voice, and all Monty’s talk of its elusiveness went for
naught. It was Gary up there, she was sure of that. And she knew
that he was in trouble. So she rolled his letters to her for easier
carrying, cupped her palms around her mouth, shouted that she was
coming, and started up the bluff.

At the cabin Monty heard her and came running down to the creek.

“That ain’t Gary!” he shouted to her. “That’s the Voice I was
tellin’ about. Yuh-all better keep down off that bluff, Miss
Connolly!”

Patricia poised on a rock and looked back.

“Oh, come and help find him! That’s Gary--I _know_ it’s Gary!” Then
she turned and went on climbing recklessly over the treacherous,
piled rocks.

“Come on back!” Monty shouted again peremptorily. “It’s the Voice!
It ain’t human!”

But Patricia would not listen, would not stop. She went on climbing,
bareheaded, her breath coming in gasps from the altitude and the
pace she was trying to keep.

Monty looked after her, shouted again. And when he saw that nothing
would stop her, he turned back, running to the cabin. There he
searched frantically for a canteen, found none and filled an empty
beer bottle with water, sliding it into his pocket. Then, with
Patricia’s sailor hat in one hand, he started after her.

When Patricia was forced to stop and get her breath, the spotted cat
appeared suddenly from somewhere among the rocks. She looked up into
Patricia’s face and meowed wistfully.

“Oh, cat, you led me once to-day--and Gary likes you. He called you
Faith. Oh, Faith, where’s Gary? He _is_ up on the bluff, isn’t he? I
believe you know! Come on, Faith--help me find Gary!”

“Meow-w?” Faith inquired in her own way and hopped upon the bowlder
a few feet above Patricia. Patricia, with a hysterical little laugh,
followed her.

From farther down the bluff Monty shouted, climbing with long steps.
Patricia looked back, climbed another rock and stopped to call down
to him.

“I’m following the cat!” she cried. “Faith is leading me to Gary!”
Then she went on.

Fifty yards below her Monty swore to himself. Insanity was leading
her, in Monty’s opinion; he wished fervently that he had left her in
town. But since she was here, and crazily climbing the bluff at the
mocking behest of that phantom Voice, Monty would have to follow and
look after her.




                        CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

                “HE’S NEARLY STARVED,” SAID PATRICIA


“Damn you, Faith, where’s my breakfast?” Gary stopped scraping the
granite and peered balefully out at the cat, that had just hopped
down mewing upon the bowlder in front of him. “I hate to crab--but I
saved nearly a whole candle just on the strength of my belief in
you. You might have brought me another bird, anyway. As it is, I’ve
a darned good mind to eat _you_! You’re nice and fat--I sure as heck
ought to know, the way I fed you and pampered you. Come here, darn
you--I could eat you raw!”

He reached out a long arm, his hand spread like a claw and made a
grab at Faith. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, in a grin
that may or may not have been as malevolent as it looked.

“_Gary!_ Oh, _Gary!_” Patricia’s voice had a sobbing gasp in it, and
it sounded faint and far away.

The hand and arm hung motionless in the crevice. Gary’s nostrils
quivered, his eyebrows drew together. Then he reached again for the
cat.

“I’m hearing things again--and this time I can’t kid myself I’m
asleep and dreaming. Faith, it’s up to you. Either you go rustle me
some grub like you did yesterday--only, for heck’s sake, make it a
rabbit this time--or I’ll just have to eat you! A man’s got to live
as long as he can make one breath pull the next one after it. That’s
the game, Faith----”

“_Gary!_ Oh, _Gary_!” Patricia’s voice was closer now; at least it
sounded so.

“Hello, Pat!” Gary called hoarsely, before caution warned him that
it must be his fancy and no human voice.

“Gary! Where are you? Oh, _Gary!_” She was gasping for breath. Gary
could hear her plainly now.

“Literally and figuratively, I’m in a hole!” he cried recklessly,
mocking the intensity of his desire that the voice should be real.

“_What_ hole?” Patricia’s voice panted. “I lost--the cat! Where are
you, Gary?”

Gary found himself clutching the rock with both hands. His knife had
slid to the floor of the crosscut. His knees were weak, so weak that
they kept buckling under him, letting him down so that he must pull
himself up again to the opening with his hands. It was cruel, he
thought, to keep thinking he heard Patricia coming to him.

“_Gary!_--Oh, Monty Girard! Gary _is_ up here somewhere! I heard him!
He say’s he’s in a hole! Oh, hurry up, why can’t you?”

Gary swallowed hard. That must be Pat, he thought dizzily. Bossing
Monty Girard around--it _must_ be Pat!

“This way, Pat! Be careful of the slide--I’m down underground--in a
hole. If Monty’s coming, better wait for him. I’m afraid you’ll
fall. That slide’s darn treacherous.” Gary’s eyes were blazing, his
whole body was shaking as if he had a chill. But he was trying his
best to hold himself steady, to be sensible and to play the game.
The thought flashed into his mind of men lost on the desert, who
rushed crazily toward demon-painted mirages, babbling rapturously at
the false vision. If this were a trick of his tortured
imagination--well, let it be so. He would meet realization when it
came. But now----

He could hear Patricia panting and slipping in the loose rocks no
more than a few yards away. He shouted to her, imploring her to be
careful--to wait for Monty--to come to him--he did not know what it was
he was saying. He caught himself babbling and stopped abruptly.

After all, it was Monty who first peered down past the bowlder and
into the opening, where Gary’s face showed white and staring-eyed,
but with the unquenchable grin. Monty gasped the name of his Maker
and turned as white as a living man may become. Then he turned; Gary
saw him put up his arms. Saw two summer-shod feet with silk-clad
ankles above the low shoes; saw the flicker of a skirt--and then
Patricia was sitting on the bowlder where Faith had so often kept
him company. Patricia cried out at sight of him and looked as if she
were going to faint.

“Count of Monte Cristo--in his dungeon in the Bastille--before he did
the high dive and made his get-away,” Gary cackled flippantly. “Say,
folks, how about a few eats?” Then his white, smiling face with the
terrible, brilliant eyes, slid down and down. They heard a
slithering kind of fall.

Patricia screamed and screamed again. Monty himself gave a great,
man sob before he pulled himself together. He put his arm around
Patricia’s shoulder, patting her as he would soothe a child.

“He’s just fainted,” he said, his voice breaking uncertainly. “It’s
the shock of seeing us. Can yuh-all stay here while I beat it down
to the shack and get some grub? Have yuh-all got the nerve?”

Patricia held her palms tightly to her face and fought down her
panic and the horror that chilled her heart. When she looked up at
Monty she was Patricia-on-the-job again; efficient, thinking clearly
just what must be done.

“He’s evidently nearly starved,” she said, and if her voice was not
calm, it was at least as steady as Monty’s. “Bring a can of milk and
plenty of water and a cup. And bread and a couple of eggs and a
spoon,” she said. “Some soft-boiled eggs, after awhile, should be
all right for him. But the milk is what he should have first. Oh, if
you look in my grip, you’ll find a bottle of malted milk. I brought
it in case the food was too bad at country hotels. That’s just what
I want. And hurry!”

“Yuh-all needn’t be afraid I’ll loaf on the job,” Monty told her
reproachfully; and gave her the bottle of water, and was gone before
she could apologize.

Patricia crawled down to where she could look in through the
opening. She could not see much of anything; just the rough wall of
the crosscut where the light struck, and beyond that gloom that
deepened to the darkness of night. Gary, lying directly beneath her,
she could not see at all. Yet she called him again and again.
Wistfully, endearingly, as women call frantically after the new-fled
souls of their dearest.

She was still calling heart-brokenly upon Gary when Monty returned,
puffing up the slope under a capacity load of what he thought might
be needed. Slung upon his back, like a fantastic cross, was an old,
rusted pick, the handle cracked and weather-checked and well-nigh
useless.

“Joe’s coming along behind with a shovel,” Monty informed her, when
he could summon sufficient breath for speaking. “Don’t yuh-all take
on thataway, Miss Connolly. Gary, he’s plumb fainted for joy and
weakness, I reckon. But he’s in the shade where it’s cool, and he’ll
come to himself in a little bit. I reckon we better have the malted
milk beat up and ready to hand in. I don’t reckon Gary’ll feel much
like waitin’ for meals--when he wakes up.”

Once more Patricia steadied herself by sheer will power, so that she
might do calmly and efficiently the things that must be done. For an
hour longer she did full penance for all her sins; sitting there on
the bowlder with a cup of malted milk in her hands, waiting for Gary
to regain consciousness, and fighting a terrible fear that he was
dead--that they had come too late.

Joe arrived with an old shovel that was absolutely useless for their
purpose. Such rocks as they could lift were quicker thrown out of
the half-filled shaft with their hands, using the pick now and then
to pry loose rocks that were wedged together. As for the bowlder
that blocked the opening to the crosscut, they needed dynamite for
that and would not have dared to use it if they had it; not with
Gary prisoned in the small space behind it.

Monty worked the small rocks away from the bowlder first and studied
the problem worriedly. A malapi bowlder, nearly the height of a man,
fitted into the bottom of a ten-foot incline shaft with granite
walls, is a matter difficult to handle without giant powder.

“Joe, yuh-all will have to beat it and get help. Three or four men
with strong backs we’ve got to have, and block and tackle and
chain--and some pinch bars. Yuh-all may have to go clear in to Vegas,
I reckon--but git the help!”

Joe goggled wide-eyed at the narrow opening, stared curiously at
Patricia, wiping tears from her cheeks with one hand and holding
carefully the cup of malted milk in the other.

“Gosh! Kin he last that long in there?” he blurted, and was
propelled several feet down the bluff by Monty’s hand fixed viselike
on the back of his neck.

“Uh course he’ll last--a heap sight longer than yuh-all will, if
yuh-all don’t get a move on,” Monty gritted savagely. “Fill up with
water and take a lunch, and don’t light this side of Vegas. Not much
use stopping at the ranches this side, they ain’t liable to have
what we need.”

He stood with his legs spread apart on two rocks and watched Joe
down the bluff. Whenever Joe looked back and saw Monty standing
there, his speed was accelerated appreciably. Whereat Monty grinned.
When Joe disappeared into the grove, Monty turned back to the shaft,
the weight of Gary’s misfortune heavy upon his soul.

The first thing he saw was Patricia caressing a grimy hand and thin,
bared forearm. She had just kissed it twice when she looked up and
saw Monty. Patricia did not even blush.

“He drank every drop of the milk, and now he’s called me a wretch
and a harpy because I won’t give him more,” she announced
triumphantly. “Do you think I’d better?”

“I reckon I better talk to him by hand,” Monty grinned relievedly.
“He knows mighty well he kain’t bully _me_, Miss Connolly.”

“I merely asked for fried chicken and gravy and mashed potatoes and
asparagus with drawn butter, and ripe olives and a fruit salad with
a cherry on top, and strawberry shortcake with oodles of butter
under the berries and double cream poured all over,” Gary explained,
grinning like a cheerful death’s-head through the opening. “That
isn’t much to ask--when a fellow’s been dieting the way I have for
God knows how long.”

Monty blinked very fast, and his laugh was shaky. “Well, now, if
yuh-all can compromise on boiled hen,” he drawled, “I’ll beat it
back down the bluff and shoot the head off the first one I see.”

“Oh, all right--all right, if it’ll be any accommodation,” Gary
yielded, “only for heck’s sake, make it snappy!”

Whereupon he forgot Monty and pulled Patricia’s hand in through the
opening and began to kiss it passionately.




                        CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

                       LET’S LEAVE THEM THERE


Love adapts itself to strange conditions when it must, and men and
maids never find it less alluring. Eight days Gary had been
imprisoned in the crosscut, and thought it a lifetime of misery. Yet
the four days which he remained still a prisoner, but with Patricia
perched upon the bowlder practically all of the time, the entombment
became an adventure, something to tell about afterward as a bit of
red-blooded pioneering that seldom falls to the lot of men nowadays.

It is true that Monty was there, pecking away at the bowlder with
single-jack and gadget much of the time; but Patricia during those
hours moved just far enough away to escape the swing of Monty’s
hammer, and the dialogue went on--mostly of things altogether strange
to Monty Girard. Gossip of the city, plans for “The Pat Connolly”
mine--in which Monty was of course included.

“I shall put three names on that location,” Patricia announced, in
the tone that went with the squared chin. “Whatever possessed you,
Gary Marshall, to leave your name out of it--or Monty’s? Do you think
I’m a--a pig?”

Monty dissented to the plan, and so did Gary--but precious little
good that did them. Patricia left the bowlder then, while the matter
was fresh in her mind, and made the trip down to the cabin after her
fountain pen so that she could have the mine as she wanted it.

“There! If the thing is worth anything--half as much as you think,
Gary--two thirds of it is as much as we could ever spend and keep
decently sane on the subject. And I’m sure, Gary Marshall, you’d
think Monty was earning a share, if you knew how hot it is out here
in the sun. The perspiration is just _rolling_ off him!”

“Let up a while, old son,” Gary generously implored. “I’m doing all
right in here--it’s a cinch, with the eats passed in to me regularly,
and not a thing in the world to do. You can send out for a preacher,
Monty, and I can offer my good right hand to Pat any time. Great
scene, that would make! Handsome Gary entombed----”

“For pity’s sake, Gary, don’t j-_joke_ about it!” wailed Patricia.
When Monty sent a warning frown and a “sh-sh” through to the
irrepressible, Gary subsided.

“Car’s coming,” Monty announced, glad to have the distraction for
Patricia, who was crying silently with her face hidden. “If that’s
Joe, he’s had better luck than is possible, or he’s laid down on the
job. I better go down and make shore. I’ll bring up whatever yuh-all
want to eat, when I come. If it’s in the cañon,” he added
cautiously, remembering some of the things Gary had perversely
insisted upon.

“I’m sorry, Pat,” Gary murmured, when Monty’s steps could no longer
be heard on the rocks. “Can’t you put your face right up to the
opening now? Monty knocked quite a chunk of rock off a few minutes
ago. And, Pat, if you knew how I wanted to kiss my girl on the
lips!”

So Patricia wiped her eyes and put her face to the opening.

                 *       *       *       *       *

It happened to be the sheriff’s car from Tonopah, with three other
men deputized to come along and see what was taking place away over
here in Johnnywater. In a little while they came puffing up the
bluff to look in upon the man who had been trapped underground for
considerably more than a week. They were mighty sympathetic and they
were deeply concerned and anxious to do something, poor men. But
they were not welcome, and it was difficult for the leading man and
his lady to register gratitude for their presence.

Gary finally thought of a way out. He told the sheriff that, since
there was nothing to be done at present to release him, he would
suggest that they investigate the grave under the juniper. He said
he thought they might be able to identify the remains of a man which
he had buried there.

They took the bait and went trooping down the bluff again to do
their full duty. And the last hat-crown had no more than disappeared
when Patricia again leaned forward and put her face to the opening,
this time without being asked.

There is nothing in the world like love, is there? When it can
brighten a situation such as this and turn tragedy into romance--why,
then, there’s mighty little more to be said.

                              THE END