The Benevolent Liar/Chapter 4

When Tom Rogers arose after a disturbed night in which he awoke at least a dozen times, alarmed by the fear that he had heard some one stealthily trying to enter the room and rob him of more money than had ever before been in his possession, it was late. His head felt “stuffy,” due to having slept with his window closed and bolted. He threw up the shade, and, when the sun struck him full in the face, berated himself angrily for having overslept. He made a hasty toilet and went out into the hallway to discover that the prospector's door stood open and the room vacant.

“Mr. Price had his breakfast and left nearly an hour ago,” the clerk informed him. “He said to tell you that he didn't know when he would be back, but for you to amuse yourself seeing the sights and to be here for dinner.”

“He didn't say where he was going, did he?” asked Tom.

The clerk grinned and said: “Yes. Told me he was going out to buy sticks of barber-pole candy because he had always had a fondness for it and proposed to eat a bellyful now that he had a chance.”

Somewhat disgruntled because he was still possessed of the prospector's money belt, Tom went to the dining room for his breakfast; but in the meantime Mr. Joshua Price was merely walking backward and forward the length of the street, sometimes peregrinating absently into a side street, and earning the reputation, as Miss Elfrida Violet Jones, the village dressmaker, said, of being “a nasty old woman chaser;” for, wherever he saw a woman near at hand or in the far distance, he promptly pursued her, and stared at her feet. Sometimes, as if not thoroughly satisfied, he almost ran in front of them, and stared fixedly for a second time. Occasionally he followed his victims doggedly until they became annoyed and cut across the road to escape him. On these occasions he stopped in front of the first plain imprint in the dust and made mental measurements. Once he went to the trouble of pulling from his pocket a new carpenter's rule, purchased that morning, and making measurements.

“You think you're funny, don't you?” expostulated one certain young lady distinguished by an inordinate mass of peroxide hair and flashy clothing; but Josh continued to ply his rule and did not even look up to grin, thus convincing her that he was not trying to be humorous, but was merely insane.

By eleven o'clock the sun shone so hotly that none but the most hardy women ventured out. Josh was still persevering and as patient as a burro hanging around a camp trying to steal food. For the moment he was resting indolently against a tree trunk, but with an observant eye that roved up and down all streets visible in the hope of sighting some other person appareled in a skirt. He had been there now for a full fifteen minutes, as some of those who lived in the near-by cottages could attest; but he was placidly blind to all inspection from the corners of the blinds, through lace curtains, or more openly.

“The female population of a big city like this,” he ruminated, “is certainly goin' to take a long time to run down. Never knew there was so many women on earth with different-sized hoofs. That blond dame was the closest, but she had a bunion, or somethin' like that, so she's out of the runnin'.”

And then he suddenly straightened and scowled. The blond lady was coming down the street again, attired in another outfit of flashy clothing, consisting of a plaid walking skirt and a pair of mountain shoes. She carried a stick and swung away from the camp with a good stride, as if bent on taking a stroll to reduce weight. Mindful of her previous excoriation, and being quite in awe of a woman with a sharp tongue, Josh ducked hastily behind the corner of the nearest cabin and  remained in seclusion until she had passed. He stretched his neck around the corner to note the direction she took, and the woman who lived in the nearest house remarked crabbedly: “Ah, ha! That's the kind he is! Just an old ruffian! And I'll bet anything on earth that he follows that dreadful woman down the street! Humph! Claire de Montague, she calls herself! He needn't have taken the pains to hide hisself, because she likes to have men walk right up and wink at her.”

And, sure enough, the prediction was fulfilled when Josh, still scowling, decided it safe to satisfy his suspicions by taking a new measurement of the new shoes. He lounged off up the street with hangdog air, after a sufficient time had elapsed, and followed the road that the blond one had taken, but took the utmost precautions to assure himself that she was not aware of his espionage. He could see her far ahead, walking sturdily up the road, and glanced to either hand to see where it would be possible to stalk her.

“That's it. The curve up ahead, there. I remember that when comin' to the camp,” he thought to himself. “Now I must beat her to that point around the bend, and—we'll see!”

He dove into the brush beside the road with a frontiersman's disregard for the footing, leaped like a goat across a low, rocky divide, stooped and ran from cover to cover, scaled a rocky wall that the road had avoided, and was lying full length behind a manzanita bush when she passed. He fixed his eyes on one spot where her foot had stirred a cloud of dust, and never moved them from the spot. He waited with the utmost care for more than ten minutes; then, with eyes still fixed on the spot, stumbled downward toward it, finding every obstacle on the side of the hill in his progress.

“Goin' to be no mistake!” he muttered to himself. “I got my eye on the track she made, and no other, sure.”

He grinned with satisfaction when he found a clean, deep imprint in the road and bent above it with his pocket rule and a piece of slate. A minute later, he straightened up, and the grin broadened and he chuckled.

“By the piper that played before Moses, I got her!” he declared. “That's the woman that was with the man that got the clean-up! And she knows all about the house that Jack built! Next thing is to find out who she is, and where Jack is.”

He was decidedly absent-minded when he met Tom at the City Hotel in time for luncheon and took his belt and clasped it around himself without comment. He had already forgotten his desire to test the young man, and accepted its return as something that might happen between two partners at any time and place. He aroused himself after the meal was finished and they were standing on the veranda in front of the hotel.

“S'pose you go up to that corral and take care of the burros,” he said. “Poke your nose into Specimen Jones' cabin, and if he's there, tell him I want to see him and will be up at his cabin at about nine o'clock to-night.”

“I'll see to it at once,” assented Tom, eager to do something, and walked rapidly away; while Josh, after casting a sidelong glance at those at the far end of the veranda, walked slowly up the street, keeping to the shaded side.

“It's in the rum joints that I can pick up most of what I want to know about that blond 'dame,” he thought, and put his plan into action. He went from one to another, ingratiating himself, and now and then asking a discreet question, until at last he met Williams, and he tactfully led the conversation by degrees to his object.

“Say, Hank,” he said, “I saw a woman this mornin' that I'd like to know who she is. About thirteen hands high, free stride, except for one hoof that's a little out of kilter, wears sure-enough clothes, got sort of green-gray eyes, a tongue sharp as a razor, and more yaller-white hair than would make a saddle blanket and one gross of don't-forget-me-love watch chains. Now, who might she be?”

Williams vented a roar of ridicule. “Want to know who she is? Say, Josh, you've either changed your ways since I first knew you, or you're plumb crazy! Thought you never mixed up with women? That's Clara Montague. And she's bad medicine.”

“Has she got any favorites among the men?” demanded Josh.

“Not a chance for you,” was the miner's reply. “She likes those that have money—all except one, of course, a worthless, lazy, trifling tinhorn sport that runs a chuck-a-luck game down at the Sport. No one else around this camp envies him. When a man gets that low”

“What's this party's name?” demanded Josh.

“He's known here as Cotton-tail Burke. What his real, honest-Injun name is I don't know. They do say that he did time in San Quentin once for sandbaggin' a man; but I don't believe it. He ain't got the nerve.”

He stopped for a minute and reverted to questions concerning Tucson, but found the prospector singularly absent-minded. A messenger from his mine called him on a business matter, and Josh took the opportunity to make his departure. He had barely gained the street when he nearly collided with a man who was swinging along with his hat pulled over his eyes, and who snarled angrily at interference. Josh started an apology, and then abruptly stopped and changed his tone of voice.

“S'pose you look where you're goin'!” he rumbled belligerently. “For two cents I'd boot you the length of this street, you lop-eared old crook!”

The man, who had pursued his way, turned at this, exposing a lantern jaw, craggy brows, and small eyes set too closely together, and too cold and light to be reassuring. His high shoulders, above a singularly tall frame, and his extraordinarily long arms, jerked angrily.

“Don't get too fresh, or I'll” he began, and then suddenly stopped and stared in surprise.

“You'll what, Vance?” demanded Josh. “Didn't expect to see a live one, did you? Thought it was one of these Shingle camp fellers that'd stand for your rough work. Well, it ain't. I see as how you remember me. Yes, it's me, old Josh Price, still on earth, and, believe me, Vance, I'm still hungry for just one thing. That's an excuse to fill you so full of lead that a derrick couldn't lift you. You know,” he continued, with a particularly long drawl and a particularly significant grin, “all I'm waitin' for is an alibi. Soon's I can arrange that, you're goin' to be snuffed out, Vance. Graveyard for yours! Why don't you fight like a man, you dirty old thief? Ain't you got no guts? Let's see, it's nigh on to twenty year ago since you was the rampagin' bad man of Tombstone, Arizony, and I pulled your nose in the street, took your gun away from you, and spurred you with it for a full half mile. And they's another score since then that ain't settled, Vance; but I ain't goin' to tell you what that is until settlement day, and when it comes, what I did to you in Tombstone is goin' to seem like a friendly caress of love. Adios, Mister Bad-man Vance, who's become so respectable. Adios! You can find me any time you want me by raisin' your voice.”

The wicker doors swung wide and a number of heads and shoulders were thrust out, as if gleefully anticipating a street duel; but Vance merely glared wolfishly, shrugged his shoulders, snapped his fingers, and walked deliberately away.

“That's the way I stand with him!” declared the prospector to the men in the doorway, and then promptly turned in the opposite direction, went to his room in the hotel, shut the door, and doubled up with joy.

Almost immediately the door opened and Tom entered, looking troubled.

“See here, Josh,” he said, “I just heard that you had threatened old Vance in the street. I don't wish you to get into any trouble on my account.”

“Trouble!” Josh grinned and then laughed boisterously. “Trouble! There ain't goin' to be no trouble,” he asserted. “You don't sabe, that's all. I wasn't the least bit sore at the old curmudgeon.”

“Then why”

“Son, I had an object in that. I was doin' some advertisin'. I want folks around Shingle to talk about my havin' it in for Vance and bein' his enemy. I want every one here to think that I'm just ready to skin and eat Vance alive. A man like that has enemies, don't you see? And a man's enemies talk to a feller who is supposed to be hankerin' to get him. In other words, I'm goin' to learn more about Vance from now on than I could ever learn if folks didn't know that I was gunnin' for him. You just wait and see.”

Tom shook his head doubtfully and looked worried.

“Now, see here, Tommy,” the prospector said, “you got to get your mind off your troubles. I'm goin' to give you somethin' to do. I want you to circulate around this afternoon, without lettin' any one suspect you're lookin' for information, and find out anything you can about a feller named Cotton-tail Burke, that's the white-haired boy with a blonde called Clary Montague. But don't let it seem as if you was carin' much about him, or too all-fired anxious to learn. Just gumshoe for your information. And, Tommy, quit broodin' over your trouble. Why, we're goin' to clean this mess up before you're many months older. Sure!”

He shoved Tom from the room, opened a crumpled old leather valise that was fastened with a huge padlock, took out some papers, swept everything from the washstand, including his hat, to the floor, spread his papers out, and began to scan them carefully. Now and then he referred to a crude map and whistled between his teeth. He was making notes when, an hour or so later, Rogers returned.

“Say, Josh,” he said. “Cotton-tail Burke isn't here. He took the stage this morning.”

The prospector was on his feet at a bound.

“Did he have any baggage that you heard of?”

“Yes. A suit case and a big bag. And said he would be back here at the end of the week.”

“Which means that he ain't comin' back at all,” Josh declared. “Tommy, as sure as we're alive, the gold from the pay wagon went out of here in his baggage! And we can't chase him, because we ain't got proof enough. We're done, sure as you're a foot high and weaned, unless we can keep track of him through that yaller-haired woman.”

His companion could not follow his reasoning, and Josh painstakingly explained his theory, ending with: “She'll go to him as soon as she thinks it's safe. They always do. That is, unless he gives her the slip and gets away with all the swag. We just naturally got to keep our eye on her from now on and make sure that she can't get out of this town without our knowin' it. And when she goes, we've got to know where she goes, and get the detectives to work to find out if he's cashed in gold anywhere. It's most likely that he'll not be in any hurry about it, waitin' for things to blow over. Yes, that's most likely. It, may take a year, but, boy, we're goin' to have that clean-up back. Meantime, I'm goin' to give you a job that'll take all your time. See them papers?”

Tom looked at them absently, but at the prospector's next words sat up more eagerly.

“There may be a mighty big fortune in 'em. Maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I'm goin' to let you in on it with me.”

He drew his chair over by the wash-stand and pointed out spots with his stub of a pencil as he talked.

“In 1854 there was a camp in a flat up above here called Bonanza City. She was great placer ground, and I reckon there must have been pretty well over a hundred cabins scattered along the flat. There were three hard-rock miners blew in there—Mexicans they was—and they didn't have no luck with the placers, and so they went to snoopin' for ore. And the funny part of, it was they struck a ledge right square in the street of the camp. They set up an and went to takin' out some rock and workin' it. First everybody laughed at 'em. Then, when other ground worked out, other men went lookin' for ore; but nobody found much—at least, anything worth wastin' much time on. Also they found pay ore over here on the other side of Shingle—that's the Washoe, there, that spot—and the greasers finally owned all there was of Bonanza City, and used old cabins for firewood to save the trouble of cuttin' it. They kept pluggin' along, doin' not very well, as times went in them days, until they got down so deep in their shaft that the water run 'em out. Then one of the fellers up and croaked, and another had to go back to Sonora, and the third man, bein' left alone, had to give up. His name was Juan Carvallo.”

He straightened back and tilted his chair against the wall, indicating that the maps were of no further use to demonstrate, and made a cigarette.

“Now, this Carvallo was a ploddin', secretive, wise old coot. He knows that mine is no good without pumpin' machinery and a hoist and all that, which he can't buy; but he's got an eye to the future, Carvallo has, so he just goes to work and puts about four layers of logs crosswise over the shaft, leavin' about six or eight feet space on top of 'em, and that six or eight feet he fills with dirt off the old dump and says: 'Adios! Maybe some time I'll come back.' But he never does. He goes back to Sonora, with quite a little home stake he made out of placer ground over near Placerville, and about fifteen years ago I was superintendent of a mine down in Sonora and gets to know him.

“I liked the old feller first rate, and, besides, I was sparkin' his youngest gal. Then Diaz comes along, accuses Juan of harborin' insurrectos, and fines him. Diaz's Generalissimos comes again, about a year later, and they won't believe the old man when he tells 'em he's broke. They take the poor old cuss down to the nearest jail and tell him if he don't dig up they'll just naturally stick him up against a wall and make a lot of holes through him. Well, I couldn't stand for that. I goes to the Justicia and makes a talk. No good. He's scared plumb stiff of this Generalissimo, who is hangin' around. I goes to the Generalissimo and gives him a thousand dollars,out of my own pocket for himself, to let Juan escape. I waits a week, with everything ready, horses and so forth—so's Juan can get across the line—and the old man don't show up. So back I goes to the Generalissimo one night to ask why for. He gives me a nasty grin and says he wants a thousand more. I roared. He starts for the door to yell for a soldier to have me arrested.

“I was on top of him in one hop and banged him over the head with my Colt's just to keep him from yellin'. So help me Moses, I didn't intend to hurt him much, but his skull was made of paper. No good at all. He-was deader than a canned salmon when he hit the floor.

“'By Jiminy, that's too bad!' says I, lookin' at him. 'I didn't mean to hurt him so much. I wouldn't have killed that man for ten cents!' I collared the order for Juan's release, turned off the lights, and went out. And when I got Juan out, him and me had to go some to beat the rurales to the border line. Juan's girl, the one I was sparkin', promised to meet us across the line, but, on account of seein' a Spanish bull-fighter shortly after we left, she didn't come, and old Juan never forgave her.

“His other daughter come and told us about it, and I sort of took care of both 'em for a while. Then she croaked. I had that poor old cuss on my hands for about three years, and I was sure enough sorry for him because he was a real old Cavallero. He always pretended that he was borrowin' my money—never think of accepting a gift—and he used to dog it up and down the street and tell about what he was goin' to fall heir to some day. Then he was taken sick and the doctor said it was the finish, and the old feller said he couldn't think of no way to pay me back except to give me a map and tell me about this mine. Now, maybe he was lyin'. I don't know, because the first time he told me about it he said there was a lot of ore in sight that would run about twenty dollars to the ton, but that ore kept gettin' richer and richer until just before he cashed in his checks it was worth a hundred and twenty.”

He stopped and stared at the ceiling, while Tom Rogers, highly interested, thought he had been overcome by his memories. He looked at the breathless Tom from the corner of his eye, and was pleased to note that the latter had forgotten his own trouble.

“Now, son,” he continued, in a fatherly voice, “of course old Carvallo may have been mistaken. Maybe there's nothin' in it at all, and maybe there's a big fortune in it. Anyhow, I'm goin' to let you in on it for one-half. And if there's a lot of gold there, when we find it, we'll pay back that five hundred ounces so's you can feel like a free man again and hold your head up with the best of 'em.”

Tom could not speak. He was stricken dumb by this new evidence of friendship.

“But—but what can I do to help?” he finally asked.

“Why, it's this way: We can find out where Bonanza City was easy enough, but it's goin' to take some maneuverin' to find out who owns the land, to buy it, and then to dig holes until we find that old shaft. Then we'll see what has to be done next. Maybe a whim will hoist out enough water so we can come to the ore and see whether we want to go ahead. Maybe it won't, and we'll need a pumpin' plant; but, anyhow, Tommy, I've got enough here in my belt to do either, and it takes at least two men to open her up and find out what to do next. That's why I'm takin' you in with me—just because it's a two-man job.”

And this was his latest benevolent lie, because if ever a man was fully qualified to travel alone it was this same benevolent liar.