The Benevolent Liar/Chapter 3

Shingle, as the prospector saw it from above, looked like a poet's dream. The moonlight streamed through the big trees that bordered each side of the main street, now transformed into a band of dull, frosted silver, and made shadows like marvelous lace. The lights shone yellow and soft through big shop doors, old shop windows with narrow panes, and pretentious new ones of plate glass. Men lounged and argued in the gloom beneath the wooden awnings, and the spire of the church caught and threw back yellow rays, as if its tawdry gilt had been transmuted to purest gold. On a lawn in front of a cottage was a little party of youths and girls. They sang the current popular song of the day, “A Spanish Cavalier,” accompanying themselves with a guitar and a mandolin. In the moonlight the dresses of the girls became white spots, and the lawn a swarthy green, pricked out here and there with dimmed colors of flower beds. The picket fence in front of the cottage, merely a line of white stakes in the daylight, had taken on a beauty of its own, with a fanciful border of shadows. A mocking bird in a neighboring tree tried to assist the song with its melody.

Josh stopped, leaned against the trunk of a tree, listened until the Cavalier was properly dead, and remarked. to himself: “Gosh all hemlocks! I wisht I was young again and they'd let me come in there and sing with 'em. I wonder if they'd kick if I come in and sang 'em the 'Cowboy's Lament?' It's a good old tune. And I can just naturally make a guitar curl up and cry when I pester its strings.”

It was no knowledge of etiquette or manners that decided him to forego the pleasures of introducing himself, his accomplishment on the guitar, and the “Cowboy's Lament,” but a recollection of the repentant, harassed son of his old partner that caused him to refrain from opening the gate and walking bravely forward.

“That boy, Tom, I like!” he mumbled to himself in the subconversational mumble that so many prospectors who live in the solitudes adopt when hungering for sound. “And Tommy,” he added, as he resumed his progress, “is sure in one whale of a fix.”

He progressed steadily and safely past all temptation by keeping to the exact center of the road until he reached the City Hotel, on whose porch were the prevalent loungers, with feet cocked up on the porch rail, and each distinguished by a single spot of brilliant, glowing, intermittent red, as cigar or cigarette answered to a deliberate draft. He avoided these by tramping straight up the steps and through the open door, pulling his hat over his eyes to shade them from the outflaring light.

He tramped heavily up the stairs, peered at the painted numbers on the doors to make certain of his destination, and battered with bony knuckles on No. 27. Still blinking his eyes to adjust them to the light, he entered and closed the door behind him. He threw off his hat and said: “Sit down, Tommy. Sit down. I always did hate a man that was too cussed polite.”

“What did you learn?” asked Tom, with tragic eagerness.

“Not much of anything. Give me one of my boots.”

Tom obeyed, and the prospector drew the slate tablet from his pocket and gravely measured it and consulted his records.

“This boot,” he said, as he handed it back, “is a heap too big for your foot. Tommy, was the pair you had on when you ran loco too big for you, or just your size?”

“They fitted,” was the response. “Why? I wear eights.”

“And these are tens. And so the track I found there must have been made by either an eleven and a half or a twelve.”

He laid the slate tablet on the little stand and scowled meditatively at the floor.

“But what's this on the other side?” asked Tom, picking the slate up and turning it over curiously.

“That's what I cain't quite make out,” replied the prospector. “It was a woman made that track, and, by gee whiz, I got an idea from her trail that—yes, I'm 'most sure of it! There must have been a woman helped whoever wore the big boot to get away with the boodle. Now, what we've got to find is, who it was. And that ain't all.”

He fumbled in his pocket and produced the trousers button, and took it to the light. He drew a prospector's folding magnifying glass from another pocket, opened a leaf, and inspected the button.

“Um-m-mh!” he said. “The pants you had on were brown. This was torn off a pair that was gray. Torn off, too, because here's a few threads of the goods hangin' on. Let's see. That means that the fellow who wore the boot was a tall man who wore a dark-gray pair of pants, and had to do considerable stoopin' to get down to pull that thirty-odd pounds out of the place where you hid it. He wore suspenders, which mighty few men do in this neck of the woods, and he wasn't a regular workin'man, because no regular workin'man wears anything but a belt. The woman that was with him has a small foot, so most likely she's not such a mighty big woman. Of course that single boot track proves that the posse missed the spot when they went up there, because otherwise there'd be a lot of tracks. Also the button proves it; for some of the posse would sure have found the button. Most likely the boot belongs to the man that shed the button while strainin' at the sack and draggin' it from the hole.”

“Also, whoever found the gold and took it away was not an officer and had no intention of returning it to its owner,” added Tom. “Because, if that had been the case, there would have been a constant watch over that spot with the purpose of apprehending the thief—me—when I returned to get the bullion.”

“You're right about that,” agreed Josh. “I know there was no one watching, because I had to light little fires to look at the tracks and make those measurements.”

He glanced up at. the face of his protégé, and saw the slow despondency and hopelessness that spread over it. Rogers seemed to shrink into his chair, bend forward, and droop.

“It means—it means,” he said hoarsely, “that I can't undo what I've done. That I'm to keep on feeling that I'm a thief, and that there is a reward out for my capture. That, no matter how I behave myself after this, I'm to live in fear. I must have been insane!”

He ended with a groan, and haggard lines marked themselves slowly around his clean-cut face. The prospector watched him with shrewd, appraising eyes, marking the signs of despair and remorse. Tom got to his feet and walked to the open window and stared out into the night, blind to its beauty. Josh whistled softly between his teeth, as if thinking over the situation.

“Mr. Price, I see that” The young man turned abruptly and faced the watcher.

“My friends, and particularly the sons of my old pardners, call me Josh,” interrupted the prospector quietly.

“I—I can't thank you enough,” Tom continued impulsively; “but you see it's no use. I've learned a hard lesson. If a man makes one blunder, he is damned.”

Josh leaned back in his chair and thrust his hands inside his belt. Rogers came closer until he stood looking down at him, wild-eyed and white with nervous tension.

“I can see more,” he added. “That for me to stay here—anywhere in this part of the country—might get you into trouble. I made another blunder by letting you try to help me. If ever they proved the robbery against me, you would be under suspicion as my accomplice.”

The prospector grinned, liberated his hands, and proceeded to roll a cigarette.

“Mr. Price”

“Josh?

“Well, then, Josh! You've been so decent to me, and so kind, that I can't risk involving you in this mess. I've made my bed, and must lie on it. I'm going to do the only thing I can do, and that is to get out of Shingle to-morrow and go to some foreign country—Mexico seems best—and never come back.”

“Nope!” was the prospector's unexpected and decisive answer. “You're goin' to stay right here in Shingle.”

“Then there is but one other thing for me to do—give myself up, confess, and take my medicine.”

Josh looked at him admiringly, drew another big puff at his cigarette that consumed half its flimsy length, and got slowly to his feet. He walked across the room, and, with a frontiersman's fear of fire, threw the stump into the slop jar, lifted the pitcher, and poured water over it, then strolled to the window and stuck his head out and glanced all around to make certain that no one was within hearing. He closed the window, pulled down the shade, and came across the intervening space until he stood beside the harassed bandit.

He laid a big hand on Tom's shoulder and said quietly: “You're still doin' the wrong thing, son. You're just ready to pile another blunder on 'top of all the others. The man that runs, or even turns his back on trouble, my boy, is always lost. If ever trouble starts out for your scalp, the only possible thing to do is to load your gun, grit your teeth, and go after it like a wasp after a dog's hind quarters. Get him first. Shoot on sight. Shoot fast, hard, and steady. Shoot to kill. Trouble never licks any one but quitters. Trouble is a coward that hops on the weak and stomps 'em when they're down. It's a coyote pretendin' to be a wolf that runs and whines when a brave man kicks it in the ribs. Nobody but a coward runs from it, and, unless old Bill Rogers, your daddy, was a livin' lie, which he wasn't, it ain't like a son of his to show a yaller streak. You've done it once, just because you're still a boy and didn't stop to think, or didn't have no real friend to step in and check you. Well, you've got a friend now. I'm it. And there ain't goin' to be no runnin' nor whimperin' nor wincin' under the pack straps, because, as sure as there's a God, I ain't goin' to let you! Me and you are goin' to fight this thing to a finish, and sooner or later we're goin' to win—goin' to prove that we're men! Regular, grown men, with hard hands, steady heads, and out to fight! Not babies, squallin' for help and afraid of the dark!”

He stopped abruptly as he observed the effect his words were having on his companion, and clumsily affected not to see the latter's distress; for Tom Rogers, hitherto without powerful friends or allies, threatened to break down entirely, now that brave and sympathetic support had been freely volunteered. He slouched into a chair, his fingers twisted themselves together hardly, as if he were fighting for restraint. He tried to voice his gratitude, but could not.

“Great Jehosophat,” exclaimed Josh, “but it's hot and smoky in this here room! Gets to my eyes, too!” He walked quickly across to the window, lifted the shade, then the sash, and looked out meditatively until certain that Tom had been granted ample time to fight his battle.

Presently he turned from his contemplation of the night, pulled the window shut again, drew the shade, and removed his shirt, exposing his big, hairy chest and muscular arms.

“Now, about your daddy,” he said casually, “I forgot to tell you that when he died he left about a thousand dollars in cash I was to give to you when I found you. I gave you a hundred to-day, and I'm goin' to give you nine hundred more out of this belt to square that part of it up, and so you won't feel like a busted man in case you get tired of bein' around with me.”

“I don't need it,” impatiently asserted Tom. “And maybe you can't spare it now, anyhow.”

“Spare it? Good heavens, boy, look here!”

He pulled compartment after compartment of his belt open, dumping on the table the contents of each in wads of flat, folded bills.

“Tommy,” he drawled, “there's a little more than ten thousand dollars of Uncle Sam's greenbacks there.”

In this he told the truth.

“And I reckon I must have that much more at least down in Frisco bank,” wherein, having no bank account at all, he benevolently lied.

“So, you see, you don't need to have any hesitancy about takin' what's really yours.” And this latter lie, knowing it as he did to be a lie, because Bill Rogers had died with scarcely a dollar in his, possession, did not hurt.

“What I want you to know is that if worst comes to worst, we've got money to fight. And, besides that, I'll feel a heap better, and you will, too, if you know you've got something of your own. Nothin' like money on hand to make a man confident. Without it, he's as lost and lonesome and unprotected as a man without a gun. You'll be twice the man you are, knowin' that you've got a shot or two of your own, a friend that'll stick, and the stuff to make a fight with.”

He slipped his shirt over his head, picked up his piece of slate, jammed his hat on his head after fingering the four dents to sit his idea of dress, and started for the door.

“Say, Josh, you've forgotten something,” said Tom, aroused to his intended departure. “Your belt and money.”

“So I did! So I did!” exclaimed the prospector, opening the door into the hallway. “But I'm too tired and sleepy to bother about that to-night. You just keep it for me till to-morrer, son.”

And he banged the door shut and trudged toward his own room.

“It's a shame to do it,” he thought to himself, as he jerked off his clothing and tumbled into bed, “but I've got to make that Tommy feller know that I trust him clean through and through. He may not sleep a whole lot comfortable, thinkin' over his responsibility; but even lyin' awake and just thinkin' it all over will go a long way toward makin' a man out of him, and, anyhow, if Bill Rogers is hangin' around watchin' us, although we cain't see him, Bill will be right happy and will agree with me that I'm just naturally doin' the best I can to make good. Besides, if the boy's a sure-enough crook, he'll never have a better chance than this to get away with somethin', and if he is I want to know it now, before I dip in any farther.”

And within five minutes, any one passing through the hallway might have wondered if a rhinoceros was installed in a certain room, for Josh had gone to sleep as placidly as if every cent he had in the world was in a steel-armored bank instead of lying on the table in front of a self-confessed thief of the mountain highway.