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H.Bedford-Jones

The Mesa Trail

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Title: The Mesa Trail

Author: H. Bedford-Jones

Release Date: January 25, 2011 [EBook #35078]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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“His blazing black eyes stared into the gaze of Ross”

THE MESA TRAIL

BY

H. BEDFORD-JONES

GARDEN CITY — NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF

TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,

INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1919,

BY STREET & SMITH CORPORATION

CONTENTS

• CHAPTER I—THE MAN WHO HAD BEEN
• CHAPTER II—THADY SHEA ENCOUNTERS PURPOSE
• CHAPTER III—CORAVEL TIO ENJOYS A BUSY MORNING
• CHAPTER IV—MRS. CRUMP HEADS SOUTHWEST
• CHAPTER V—THE AMBITION OF MACKINTAVERS
• CHAPTER VI—THADY SHEA SMELLS WHISKEY
• CHAPTER VII—THADY SHEA HAS A VISITOR
• CHAPTER VIII—DORALES GOES TO TOWN
• CHAPTER IX—THE WICKER DEMIJOHN
• CHAPTER X—MRS. CRUMP SAYS SOMETHING
• CHAPTER XI—THADY SHEA DISCOVERS A PURPOSE
• CHAPTER XII—THE STONE GODS VANISH
• CHAPTER XIII—THADY SHEA STARTS HOME
• CHAPTER XIV—DORALES KILLS
• CHAPTER XV—MACKINTAVERS MAKES FRIENDS
• CHAPTER XVI—DORALES POSTS NOTICES
• CHAPTER XVII—DORALES RUNS AWAY

CHAPTER I—THE MAN WHO HAD BEEN

A ribbon of winding road leads northeast from the pueblo of Domingo and the snaky Bajada hill where gray rocks lie thickly; it is a yellowish ribbon of road, sweeping over the gigantic mesa toward Santa Fé and the sweetly glowing Blood of Christ peaks—great peaks of green spearing into the sky, white-crested, and tipped with blood at sunset.

Along this ribbon of dusty yellow road was crawling a flivver. It was crawling slowly, in a jerky series of advances and pauses; as it crept along its intermittent course, the woman who sat behind the wheel was cursing her iron steed in a thorough and heartfelt manner.

Both in flivver and woman was that which fired curious interest. The rear of the car was piled high with boxes and luggage; certain of the boxes were marked “Explosives—Handle With Care!” Prominent among this freight was a burlap sack tied about the neck and firmly roped to one of the top supports of the car.

The woman was garbed in ragged but neat khaki. From beneath the edges of an old-fashioned bonnet, tied beneath the chin, protruded wisps of grayish hair, like an aureole of silver. The woman herself was of strikingly large frame and great in girth; her arms, bare to the elbows, were huge in size. Yet this giantess was not unhealthily fat. Hardened by toil, her hands were gripped carefully upon the steering wheel as though she were in some fear of wrenching it asunder in an unguarded moment.

Her features were large, sun-darkened, creased and seamed with crow’s-feet that betokened long exposure to wind and weather. Ever and anon she drew, with manifest enjoyment, at an old brown corncob pipe. Above her firm lips and beak-like nose a pair of blue eyes struck out gaily and keenly at the world; eyes of a piercing, intense blue, whose brilliancy, as of living jewels, gave the lie to their surrounding tokens of toil and age.

“Drat it!” she burst forth, after a new bucking endeavour on the part of the car. “If I was to shoot this damned thing through the innards, maybe she’d quit sunfishin’ on me! I’m goin’ to sell her to Santy Fé sure’s shooting; I’ll get me a pair o’ mules and a wagon, then I’ll know what I’m doing. Dunno how come I ever was roped into buying this here contraption——”

She suddenly halted her observations. Laying aside her pipe and peering out from the side of the dusty windshield, her keen eyes narrowed upon the road ahead.

Against that yellowish ribbon, with its bordering emptiness of mesquite, greasewood, and sage, there was nothing moving; but squarely in the centre of the road showed up a dark, motionless blotch. It was the figure of a man lying as though asleep. No man would or could lie asleep in the middle of this road, however, under the withering blaze of the downpouring New Mexico sun.

Suddenly the fitful flivver coughed under more gas; it roared, bucked, darted ahead, bucked again, and a dozen yards from the prostrate man it went leaping forward as though impelled by vindictive spite to run over the motionless figure. The woman swore savagely. She seemed inexperienced as a chauffeuse; only by a hair’s breadth did she manage to avoid the man, and then she stopped the car.

Her great size became more apparent as she alighted. Standing, she gazed down at the man, then leaned forward and turned the unfortunate vagrant upon his back. The body was listless to her hand, the head lolled idly.

“Hm!” said the woman, reflectively. “Ain’t drunk. Ain’t hurt. Hm!”

She reached into the car and produced a whiskey flask, then sat down in the dust and took upon her ample lap the head of the senseless man. A sudden deftness became manifest in her motions, an unguessed tenderness relieved the harshness of her features.

“This here is breakin’ the law,” she ruminated, pouring liquor between the lips of the vagrant, “but it ain’t the first time Mehitabel Crump has broke laws to help some poor devil! Hm! Looks to me like he ain’t et for quite a spell.”

With increasing interest she surveyed the slowly reviving stranger.

He was fully as lank as she was stout, and must have stood a good six foot two in height. His clothes were tattered remnants of once sober black. Long locks of iron-gray hair hung about his ears. His features were careworn and haggard, yet in them lingered some indefinable suggestion of fine lines and deeply carven strength. Had Mehitabel Crump ever viewed Sir Henry Irving—which she had not—she might have guessed a few things about her “find.”

Suddenly the eyes, the intensely black eyes, of the man opened. So did his lips.

“Angels and ministers of grace!” His voice, although faint, was touched with a deep intonation, a roundness of the vowels, a clarity of accent. “As I do live and breathe, it is the kiss of lordly Bacchus which doth welcome me!”

“Take it calm,” advised Mehitabel Crump, pityingly. “You’ll have your right sense pretty soon. Many’s the time I’ve seen Crump keeled over, and come to with his mind awandering. Jest take it calm, pilgrim. I’ll have a bite o’ cornbread——”

She lowered his head to the dust, rose, and went to the flivver. Presently she returned with a slab of cold cornbread divided by bacon, and a desert water bottle.

“Heaps o’ lunch in the car.” She aided the gaunt one to sit up, and he clutched at the food feverishly. “My land! Ain’t et real frequent lately, have ye?”

The man, his mouth full, shook his head dumbly. About his eyes was a brilliancy which told of sheer starvation. To the full as worldly wise as any person in broad New Mexico, the woman asked no questions as yet; she procured from the car a basket which contained the remainder of her luncheon, and set forth the contents.

“Figgered I might get held up ’fore reaching Santy Fé. If it warn’t that dratted car, it sure would be something else, which same it is. Damned good luck it ain’t worse, as Crump used to say when Providence went agin’ him.”

She observed that the stranger ate ravenously, but drank sparingly. Not thirst had downed him, but starvation.

He seemed startled at her disconcertingly frank manner of speech. She put him down as something better than an ordinary hobo; an out-of-luck Easterner, possibly a lunger. He was fifty or so; with decent clothes, a shave, and a haircut, he might be a striking-looking fellow, she decided. Although he had a hard mouth, what Mehitabel Crump had learned to know as a whiskey mouth, it was steady lipped.

“You sure played in tough luck comin’ this road,” she said, musingly. “So did I. Ain’t nothing between here and Santy Fé ’cept Injuns, greasers, and rattlers, any one of which is worse’n the other two. These rocks is playin’ hell with my tires and the old Henry is coughin’ fit to bust her innards. If I find the feller who sold her to me, I’d sure lay him one over the ear!”

Her simple meal finished, she began to stuff her corncob pipe. The man, still eating wolfishly, watched her with fascinated eyes. She gazed out at the snowy, sun-flooded Sangre de Cristo peaks and continued her soliloquy. When it suited her, Mehitabel Crump could be very garrulous; and when it suited her, she could be as taciturn as the mountains themselves.

“I ain’t surprised at nothing no more, not these days. No, sir! When I first come to this country you knowed just what ye had to reckon agin’. They was Injuns to fight, greasers to work devilment, claim jumpers to rob ye, and such. But now the Injuns is all towerist peddlers, the greasers is called ‘natives’ and runs the courts an’ legislature, and gun toting ain’t popular. A lone woman gets skinned plumb legal, when in the old days it would ha’ been suicide to rob a female. Yes pilgrim, set right in at what’s left, and don’t bother to talk yet a spell.”

She touched a match to her pipe, broke the match, tossed it away.

“If Crump hadn’t blowed up with a dry fuse in a shaft we was sinking over in the Mogollons, where we was prospecting at the time, he’d be plumb astonished at the changes. Yes, and I bet he’d swear to see me driving one of them contraptions yonder! Poor Crump, I never had the heart to dig him up, though it was a right smart prospect we was workin’. But somehow I couldn’t never work that claim, with him still in it that-a-way. I won’t need the money, neither, if I’ve got hold of——”

She paused. Her gaze went to the devouring stranger. Abruptly she changed the subject.

“You don’t look like you was much more’n a poor, innercent pilgrim without any brains to mention. Yet, stranger, I’d gamble that we’d stack up high in morals agin’ such old-timers as Abel Dorales, him what’s half greaser and half Mormon, or old Sandy Mackintavers, what come straight from Scotland to Arizony and made a forchin in thirty years of thieving! Yes, I reckon ye’ve got a streak of real pay dirt in ye, stranger. And if I can’t tell what breed o’ cattle a man is by jest looking at him, it’s a queer thing! I’ve knowed ’em all.”

The complimented pilgrim bolted the last scrap of food in sight, raised the canvas bag to his lips, and drank. Sighing, he wiped his lips with the frayed cuff of his sleeve. Then he disentangled his long legs and rose. One hand upon his heart, the other flourished magnificently, he made a bow that was the piteous ghost of a perished grandeur.

“Madam!” His voice rang out firmly now, a deep and sonorous bass. “Madam, I thank you! In me you behold one who has received the plaudits of thousands, one who has bowed to the thunderous acclaim of——”

“What d’ye say your name was?” snapped Mehitabel Crump. Her voice was suddenly acid, her blue eyes ice. The other was manifestly disconcerted by her change of front.

“Madam, I am familiarly known as Thaddeus Roscius Shea. Under the more imposing title of Montalembert I have made known to thousands the aspiring genius of the immortal Avonian bard. I avow it, madam—I am a Thespian! I suit the action to the word, the word to the action——”

“Huh!” cut in his audience with a ruthless lack of awe. “Huh! Never heard of them Thespians, but likely it’s a new Mormon sect. I knowed a man of your name down to Silver City twelve year back; this Thady Shea was a good fightin’ man, with one eye and a harelip. Glad to meet ye, pilgrim! I’m Mehitabel Crump, with Mrs. for a handle.”

Something in her manner seemed mightily to embarrass Mr. Shea, but he took a fresh start and set forth to conquer the difficulty.

“Madam, a Thespian is of no religious persuasion, but one who treads the boards and who wears the buskin of Thespis. You behold in me the first tragedian of the age. My Hamlet, madam, has been praised by discerning critics from Medicine Hat to Jersey City. The accursed moving pictures have ruined my art.”

“Oh! It’s usually whiskey or woman,” said Mrs. Crump, her eyes ominous. “So you’re a stage actor, eh? Then that explains it.”

“Explains, madam? Explains what?” faltered Shea, sensing a gathering storm.

“Your damn foolishness. Shake it off, ye poor hobo! I no sooner hands ye a bit o’ kindness than it swells ye up like a balloon. Now, don’t you get gay with me, savvy? Don’t come none o’ that high-falutin’ talk with me, or by hell I’ll paralyze ye! I did think for a minute that ye had the makin’s of a man, but I apologize.”

The blue eyes turned away. Had Shea been able to see them, he might have read in them a look that did not correspond to Mrs. Crump’s spoken word. But he did not see them.

He turned away from the woman. The carven lines of his face deepened, aged, as from him was rent the veil of his posturing. A weary and hopeless sadness welled in his eyes; the sadness of one who beholds around him the wreckage of all his little world, brought down to ruin by his own faults. When he spoke, it was with the same sonorous voice, yet lacking the fine rolling accent.

“You are right, Mrs. Crump, you are right. God help me! I, who was once a man, am now less than the very dust. Your harshness is justified. At this time yesterday, madam, I was a wretched drunken fool, spouting lines of rhetoric in Albuquerque.”

“I’m surprised at that,” said Mrs. Crump. “How’d ye get the liquor, since this here state an’ nation ain’t particularly wet no more? And how ye got here from Albuquerque I don’t figger.”

“It is simply told.” From the miserable Shea was stripped the last vestige of his punctured pose. “Twenty years ago my young wife died, and I started upon the whiskey trail; it has led me—here. Yesterday I came into Albuquerque, starving. At the railroad station, amid some—er—confusion, I encountered a company of those motion picture men who dare to call themselves actors. So far was my pride broken that I begged of them help in the name and memory of The Profession.”

Shea emphatically capitalized these last two words.

“They took me aboard their train,” he pursued, “and I was given drink. Some controversy arose, I know not how; I found myself ignominiously ejected from the train. I walked, not knowing nor caring whither. Nor is that all, madam. I am a fugitive from justice!”

“Broke jail?” queried Mrs. Crump, betraying signs of interest.

“No, madam. In Albuquerque I was starving and desperate. I—I stole fruit and—sandwiches—from a railroad stand.”

His voice failed. He turned away, staring at the snowy peaks as though awaiting a verdict.

“Pretty low-down and worthless, ain’t ye?” Mrs. Crump checked herself suddenly, glancing at the yellow ribbon of road over which she had so recently come. A flying cloud of dust gave notice of the approach of a large automobile.

Suddenly rising, Mrs. Crump knocked out her pipe, then caught Shea by the shoulder. Her hand swung him about as though he were a child. His eyes widened in surprise upon meeting the warm regard in her face, the steady and sympathetic smile upon her lips.

“Thady,” she said, bluntly, “how old are ye?”

“Fifty-eight,” he mumbled in astonishment.

“Huh! Two year older’n me. Made a mess of your life, ain’t ye? Don’t know as I blame ye none, Thady. When Crump passed out, I come near throwin’ up the sponge; but I got to fightin’ and I been fightin’ ever since, and here I am! Now, Thady, you got strength and you got guts; I can see it in your eye. All ye need is backbone. Why don’t ye buck up?”

“I’ve tried,” he faltered, controlled by her personality. “It’s no use——”

“You go get in that car.” Mrs. Crump glanced again at the approaching automobile, then half flung the gaunt Shea toward her dust-white flivver. “Get in and don’t say a word, savvy? One thing about you, ye can be trusted—which is more’n can be said for some skunks in this here country! Get in, now, and leave me palaver with Sheriff Tracy.”

Shea, shivering at mention of the sheriff, jack-knifed his length upon the car’s front seat.

From some mysterious recess of her ample person Mrs. Crump produced an immense old-fashioned revolver, which she began to burnish with seeming absorption. The big automobile slowed up. It halted a few feet behind the flivver, and a hearty hail came forth.

“By jingoes, if it ain’t Mis’ Crump! Hello, old-timer—ain’t seen you in ages!”

From the car sprang a hale and vigorous man who advanced with hand extended.

“I kind o’ thought it was you, Sam Tracy,” said Mrs. Crump. “Thought I recognized that there car o’ yours. How’s the folks?”

“All fine. And you? But I needn’t ask—why, you grow younger every month——”

“See here! What ye doin’ over in this county, Sam? Why don’t ye get back to Bernalillo where ye belong?”

The sheriff waved his hand.

“Going to Santy Fé. I’m looking up a fellow who came this way from Albuquerque—a hobo and sneak thief name o’ Shea. Where ye been keepin’ yourself, ma’am? It don’t seem like the same old state not to see ye from time to time.”

“Sam Tracy,” observed Mrs. Crump with a look of severity, “I’ve knowed you more years than I care to reckon up. And you know me, I guess! Now, Sam, I sure hate to do it—but I got to. Stick up your hands, Sam, and do it damn sudden!”

The muzzle of her revolver poked the astounded sheriff in the stomach. For a moment he gazed into her shrewd blue eyes, then slowly elevated his hands.

“Are you crazy, ma’am?” he demanded.

She removed his holstered weapon, then lowered her own and shook her head.

“Nope. I’m heap sane right here and now. Set down and smoke whilst I explain.”

CHAPTER II—THADY SHEA ENCOUNTERS PURPOSE

“Your man Shea is settin’ in my car yonder,” said Mrs. Crump.

Heedless of the glaring sun, she picked up her pipe and disposed her giant frame for converse. From narrowed lids the sheriff eyed the lanky, up-drawn figure of Shea, which he now noticed for the first time. Then he produced the “makings” and proceeded to roll a cigarette.

“Glad you picked him up,” said he. “I’ll take him back with me.”

“No, ye won’t,” retorted Mrs. Crump, calmly. “You’ll not touch him, Sam Tracy.”

“He’s a thief and a drunkard and a hobo,” said the sheriff.

“If they wasn’t no drinks to be had in heaven, I reckon hell would be majority choice,” quoth the lady. “When it comes to that, I’ve seen you and Crump so paralyzed you couldn’t talk. There was that night down to Magdalena when the railroad spur was finished and they held a celebration——”

The sheriff grinned. “No need to argue further along them lines, ma’am. You win!”

“I reckon I do, Sam. Besides, you ain’t got no authority over in this county. You can run a bluff on ignorant hoboes an’ greasers, but not on Mehitabel Crump! Your authority quit quite a ways back. Thady Shea only stole because he was starving, which I’d do the same in his place. I picked him up here and I’m goin’ to keep him.”

“You always was soft-hearted,” reflected Tracy. “Now you got him, what’s your programme?”

Mrs. Crump refilled and lighted her corncob with deliberation, then made response:

“Sam, I’m sure in a thunderin’ bad pinch. Damned good luck it ain’t worse, as Crump used to say at times. You know I ain’t no legal shark, huh? Well, three weeks ago I had a blamed good hole in the hills, until Abel Dorales come along and located just below me. Then in rides old Sandy Mackintavers and offers a thousand even for my hole, saying that Abel had located the thrown apex of my claim——”

“The apex law don’t obtain here,” put in Tracy.

“I know it; but who’s goin’ to argue with Mackintavers? If it wasn’t that, it’d be somethin’ worse. Anyhow, he offered to compromise and so on.”

The sheriff nodded. “I see how you come to have the flivver,” he observed, drily.

“Yas, ye do!” Mrs. Crump’s response was raw-edged. “If you was the kind o’ man you used to be, ye’d up and give them jumpers a hemp necktie! But now ye play politics, Sam Tracy, and ye lick the boots o’ Sandy Mackintavers——”

“That’s enough, Mis’ Crump!” broke in the sheriff, icily. “I don’t blame ye for feelin’ sore, but the likes of us can’t fight Mackintavers in the courts. We ain’t slick enough! And Dorales is a Mormon-bred greaser, than which the devil ain’t never fathered a worse combination. Now, Mis’ Crump, you show me the least excuse for doin’ it legally, and I’ll pump them two men full o’ lead any day! I’m only surprised that you didn’t do it.”

“I did.” A smile of grim satisfaction wreathed the lady’s firm lips. “First I took Sandy’s money, then I lets fly. They was several hired greasers with Dorales, and I reckon I got two-three; ain’t right sure. I only got Abel glancingly, and when I threw down on Sandy his arms was both elevated for safety. All I could decently do was to nick his ear so’s he’d remember me.”

“You didn’t kill Dorales?”

“Afraid not.” Mrs. Crump sadly shook her head. “I didn’t wait to inquire none, but it looked like I’d only blooded his shoulder and he was layin’ low to plug me in the back, so I belted him over the head with the butt, and slid for home.”

The sheriff, astounded, emitted a long whistle. “Whew-w!” he said, slowly. “Say, whereabouts did all this happen?”

“Down the Mogollons. Over Arizony way.”

“Why didn’t ye go west into Arizony, then? After that doin’s this state will be too hot to hold ye——”

“Oh, Sandy won’t go to law over the shootin’. It’d make him look too ridic’lous.”

The sheriff threw back his head and laughed with all the uproarious abandon of a man who laughs seldom but well.

“Best look out for yourself,” he cautioned. “That there Dorales will be on your trail till hell freezes over, ma’am! I sure would admire to see you in action on that crowd!”

“You’ll see me in action when that there car gets movin’ again,” she retorted. “She bucks like a range hoss and kicks to beat hell—why, I couldn’t hardly keep the saddle!”

The sheriff arose and went to the dust-white flivver. He adjusted the spark, cranked, and for a moment listened to the engine before killing it. Then he threw back the hood, and, under the sombre eyes of Thady Shea, worked in silence. At length he finished his task, started the engine again, and with a nod of satisfaction shut it off.

“Thought mebbe so,” he stated, rejoining the lady. “Your spark plugs was fouled. Well, ma’am, what can I be doin’ for you?”

“Ye might send me a wire in care of Coravel Tio whenever ye get a line on Dorales or Mackintavers. I’m fixing to meet them again.”

“How come?” demanded the sheriff in surprise.

Mrs. Crump gestured with her pipe toward the flivver.

“I got a sack of ore in there that I found in the lava beds or thereabouts. I suspicions it’s one o’ these new-fangled things nobody give a whoop for in the old days, but that draws down the money now. If it is, then you can lay that Sandy will hear I’ve found it, and he’ll be after me to jump the claim.”

“He sure does keep a line on prospectors,” reflected the sheriff. “And skins ’em, too, mostly. But he does it legal.”

“Yep. If this here stuff is any good, Sam, they’s going to be some smoke ’fore he gets his paws on it! Where you goin’ from here? Back to Albuquerque?”

“Nope. I got some business up at the capital.”

“Will ye tote that ore sack and a letter up to Coravel Tio for me—and do it strictly under your hat?”

“You bet I will, ma’am!”

Mrs. Crump unstrapped the burlap sack. With the sheriff’s pencil and paper she settled down to write a letter. The process was obviously painful and laborious, but at length it was finished. The sheriff shook hands, picked up the sack, and turned to his car. Mrs Crump had already restored him his revolver.

“Take good care of yourself, ma’am—and your hobo! Adios.”

Mrs. Crump watched the trail of dust disappear in the direction of Santa Fé, then she turned to the flivver and looked up at Thady Shea.

“They’s a new corncob laying in back somewheres. You can have it, Thady. Get out here and settle down for a spell o’ talk. If ye act real good I’ll give ye a drink.”

“I don’t want any,” came Shea’s muffled voice as he leaned back in search of the pipe.

“That’s a lie. You’re fair shaking for liquor and a drop will brace ye up.”

Shea procured the pipe, filled and lighted, and promptly assumed, as a garment, his usual histrionic pose. The gulp of liquor which Mrs. Crump carefully measured out sent a thin thread of colour into his gaunt, unshaven cheeks.

“Madam, I owe you all,” he announced sonorously. “I have not missed the heart of things set forth in this your discourse to the sheriff’s ear, and I have gathered that your need is great for the strong arms of friends, the counsel wise——”

“You got it,” cut in Mrs. Crump, curtly. “The p’int is, Thady, where do you come in? Listen here, now! I got a good eye for men; ye ain’t much account as ye stand, but ye got the makin’s. Now cut out the booze and I’ll take ye for partner, savvy? What’s more, I’ll spend a couple o’ weeks attending to it that ye do cut out the booze! I sure need a partner who ain’t liable to sell me out to them heathen. Can ye down the booze, or not?”

Something in her tone cut through the man’s posturing like a knife. As a matter of fact, he was miserable in spirit; his soul quivered nakedly before him, and he was ashamed. For a space he did not answer, but stared at the far mountains. The strong tragedy of his face was accentuated and deepened into utter bitterness.

What Mrs. Crump had only vaguely and darkly seen Thady Shea observed clearly and with wonder; yet, just as she missed the more mystical side of it, he missed the more practical side. More diverse creatures wearing human semblance could scarce have been found than these twain, here met upon a desert upland of New Mexico—the woman, a self-reliant mountaineer and prospector who knew only her own little world, the man a drunkard, a broken-down “hamfatter,” who knew all the outside world which had rejected him. They had come together from different spheres.

As he sat there staring, he mentally and for the last time reviewed the life that lay behind him; before him uprose all the contemptuous years, the sad wreckage of high hopes and tinsel glories, the hard and wretched fact of liquor. He would shut it out of his mind forever, after to-day, he thought. He would live in the present only, from day to day. He would try a new life—and let the dead bury their dead!

He turned to Mrs. Crump, his sad and earnest eyes looking oddly cynical.

“I do not think it humanly possible that I can resist liquor,” he said, gravely. “I am frank with you. It were easy to swear that I would pluck out drowned honour by the roots—but, madam, I think that this morning I am weary of swearing. I have tried to abstain, and I cannot. Always it is the first week or two of torture that downs me——

“You’re showin’ sense, now,” said the lady. “Want to try it or not?”

He rose in the car and attempted a bow in his showy and pitiful manner. In this bow, however, was an element of grace, the more pronounced by its sharp contrast to his gaunt, sombre aspect.

“Madam, I am deeply sensible of the compliment you pay me. Yet, in picking from the gutter a drunken failure, are you wise? I am entirely ignorant of prospecting and——”

“Don’t worry none. Ye’ll learn that quick enough.”

Again Thaddeus bowed. “But, madam, I understand that prospectors go off into the desert places and live. In justice to yourself, do you not think that your enemies might seize viciously upon the least excuse for misinterpretation of character——”

For the first time Shea saw Mehitabel Crump gripped in anger. He paused, aghast.

Her gigantic form quivered with rage then stiffened into towering wrath. Her tanned, age-touched features suddenly hardened into sentient bronze from which her blue eyes blazed forth terribly, jewelled indices of an indomitable and quick-flaming spirit within.

“Thady Shea, it’s well for you them words come from an honest heart,” said she, with a slow and grim emphasis. “They ain’t no one goin’ to say a word agin’ me, except them for what I don’t give a tinker’s dam; and if one o’ them dasts to say it in my hearin’, chain lightnin’ is goin’ to strike quick and sudden! This here territory—state, I mean—knows Mehitabel Crump and has knowed her for some years back. Paste that in your hat, Thady Shea!”

As some dread lioness hears in dreams the horns and shouts of hunters, and starting erect with bristling front mutters her low and terrible growl of challenge, so Mehitabel Crump defiantly faced Thaddeus.

He, poor soul, inwardly cursed his too-nimble tongue, and shrank visibly from the spectacle of wrath. Before the hurt and amazed eyes of him Mrs. Crump suddenly abandoned her righteous attitude. Having palpably overawed him, she now felt ashamed of herself.

“There, buck up,” she brusquely ordered.

“Tell me, now! If I answer for it that ye stay sober a couple o’ weeks or so, will ye make the fight?”

“Yes.” Hope fought against despair in Shea’s voice; he knew his own weakness well.

“All right. Let’s go, then!”

“We’re going to Santa Fé?”

Mrs. Crump advanced to the front of the flivver, and seized the crank. Then she paused, her blue eyes striking up over the radiator at Shea.

“No, I ain’t goin’ to Santy Fé; neither are you! We’re goin’ to the most man-forsaken spot they is in all the world, I reckon. We got grub, and everything else can wait a couple o’ weeks or so. Accordin’ to the Good Book, Providence was mighty rushed about creation, but I ain’t in no special hurry about makin’ a man of you——”

Her words were drowned in the engine’s roar. Thaddeus Roscius Shea made himself as small as possible; Mrs. Crump crowded in under the wheel, the car swaying to her weight, and they leaped forward.

In silence she drove, pushing the flivver with a speed and abandon which left Shea clinging desperately to his seat. Twenty minutes later an intersecting road made its appearance; Mrs. Crump left the highway and followed this road due north for a couple of miles. There, coming to an east-and-west road which was decidedly rough, she headed west.

“This here’s the trail to Cochiti pueblo,” she announced, enigmatically.

Four miles of this, and she struck an even worse road that headed northwest. Shea’s eyes opened as they progressed. Never in all his life had he encountered such grotesque country as this which now lay on every hand as though evoked by magic—utter desolation of huge rock masses, blistered and calcined by ancient fires, eroded into strange spires and pinnacles of weird formation. To the north towered Dome Rock with its adjacent crater. No sign of life was anywhere in evidence.

Shea was helplessly gripped by the personality of the woman beside him. Mentally he was overborne and awed; physically he was sick—not ill, but downright sick, possibly due to the sparse gulps of liquor which he had downed, possibly to the glaring sun. He cared not whether he lived or died. He felt that this day had brought him to the end of his rope, and that nothing more could matter.

“Getting into the lava beds,” observed Mrs. Crump, cheerfully. Shea understood her words only dimly. “This here Henry sure does go pokin’ where you’d think nothin’ short of a mule could live! The trail peters out a bit farther, then we got to hoof it over to the Rio Grande and make camp.”

Poor Shea shivered. The frightful desolation of the scene horrified him. He had never been an outdoor man. His had ever been the weakness, the dependency of the sheltered and civilized being. Contact with this strangely primitive woman frightened him. He felt like babbling in his terror, begging to be taken back and allowed to resume his place among the swine. Here was something new, awful, incredible! But he held his peace.

Had he been able to look a few miles ahead; had he foreseen what lay before him in that camp in White Rock Cañon, a place which in grandeur and inaccessibility rivalled the great cañon of the Colorado; had he known that he was about to tread a trail which few white men had ever followed—in short, had he understood what Mehitabel Crump’s plan held in store for him, he would at that moment have yielded up the ghost, cheerfully!

At last, reaching a sheer incline where boulders larger than the car itself filled all the trail and rendered further progress impossible, Mrs. Crump killed her engine and set her brakes hard.

“I guess Henry can lay here all his life and never be stole,” she said, with a sigh of relaxation. “Well, Thady, here we are! D’you know what? It ain’t lack of ambition that makes folks mis’able and unsatisfied; it’s lack o’ purpose. Now, I aim to teach ye some purpose, Thady. Look at me! I been prospectin’ all my life, and still goin’ strong, just because I got a definite object ahead—to strike it rich somewheres!

“Well, climb down. We got to rig up some grub into packs, hoof it to the nearest canoncito, and reach the Rio Grande. It’s less’n two mile in a straight line to water, but twenty ’fore we gets there, if we gets there a-tall. Come on, limber up!”

Thaddeus Roscius Shea groaned inaudibly—but limbered up.

CHAPTER III—CORAVEL TIO ENJOYS A BUSY MORNING

Coravel Tio sold curios in the old town of Santa Fé. He also sold antiques, real and fraudulent; he had a wholesale business in Indian wares that extended over the whole land.

Coravel Tio was one of the few Americans who could trace their ancestry in an unbroken line for three hundred years. It was almost exactly three hundred years since the ancestor of Coravel Tio had come to Santa Fé as a conquistador. Coravel Tio was wont to boast of this, an easily proven fact; and, boasting, he had sold the conquistador’s battered old armour at least fifty times.

When the boasts of Coravel Tio were questioned, he would admit with a chuckle that he was a philosopher; and do not all philosophers live by lying, señor? There was great truth in him when he was not selling his ancestor’s armour to tourists—and even then, if he happened to like the looks of the tourist, he would gently insinuate that as a business man he sold fraudulent wares and lied nobly about them, but that in private he was a philosopher. And the tourists, liking this quaintly naïve speech, bought the more.

It was a big, dark, quiet shop, full of Indian goods and weapons, antique furniture that would have made Chippendale’s eyes water, ivories, old paintings, manuscripts from ancient missions. A good half of Coravel Tio’s shop was not for sale at any price. Neither, said men, was Coravel Tio.

He was a soft-spoken little man, quiet, of strange smiles and strange silences. His was the art of making silence into a reproof, an assent, a curse. The world of Santa Fé moved about Uncle Coravel and heeded him not, shouldered him aside; and Coravel Tio, knowing his fathers to have been conquistadores, smiled gently at the world. His name was usually dismissed with a shrug—in effect, a huge tribute to him. Talleyrand would have given his soul to have been accorded such treatment from the diplomats of Europe; it would have rendered him invincible.

One of those rare men was Coravel Tio whose faculties, masked by childish gentleness, grow more terribly keen with every passing year. His brain was like a seething volcano—a volcano which seems to be extinct and cold and impotent, yet which holds unguessed fires somewhere deep within itself.

Upon a day, some time following the meeting of Mehitabel Crump with Thady Shea, this Coravel Tio was standing in talk with one Cota, a native member of the legislature then in session.

“But, señor!” was volubly protesting the legislator, with excitement. “They say the majority is assured, that the bill already drawn, that the capital is to be moved to Albuquerque at this very session!”

“I know,” said Coravel, passively, his dark eyes gently mournful.

“You know? But what—what is to be done? Shall those down-state people take away our capital? We must prevent it! We must do something! It’s this man Mackintavers who is at the bottom of it, I suppose——”

Coravel Tio fingered a blanket which topped a pile beside him—a gaudy red blanket. He regarded it with curious eyes.

“I fear this is not genuine—it does not have the old Spanish uniform red,” he murmured, as though inwardly he were thinking only of his wares. Then suddenly his eyes lifted to the other man, and he smiled. In his smile was a piercing hint of mockery like a half-sheathed sword; before that smile Cota stammered and fell silent.

“Oh, señor, this matter of the capital!” answered Coravel Tio, softly. “Why, for many, many years men have said that the capital is to be moved to Albuquerque; yet it has not been moved! Nor will it be moved. And, Señor Cota, let me whisper something to you! I hear that you have bought a new automobile. That is very nice, very nice! But, señor, if by any chance you are misled into voting for that bill, it would be a very sad event in your life; a most unhappy event, I assure you! Señor, customers await me. Adios.”

As the legislator left the shop, he furtively crossed himself, wonder and fear struggling in his pallid features.

The merchant now turned to his waiting customers. Of these, one was a Pueblo, a Cochiti man as the fashion of his high white moccasins and barbaric apparel testified to a knowing eye. The others were two white men who together approached the curio dealer. Coravel Tio stepped to a show case filled with onyx and other old carvings, and across this faced the two men with an uplift of his brows, a silent questioning.

“You’re Mr. Coravel—Coravel Tio?” queried one of the two. The dealer merely smiled and nodded, in his birdlike fashion. “Can we see you in private?”

“I have no privacy,” said Coravel Tio. “This is my shop. You may speak freely.”

“Huh!” grunted the other, surveying him in obvious hesitation. “Well, I dunno. Me and my partner here have been workin’ down to Magdalena, and we had a scrap with some fellers and laid ’em out. Right after that, a native by the name of Baca tipped us off that they was Mackintavers’ men, and we’d better light out in a hurry. He give us a loan and said to tell you about it, so we lit out here.”

Coravel Tio seemed greatly puzzled by this tale.

“My dear sir,” he returned, slowly, “I am a curio dealer. I do not know why you were sent to me. Do you?”

“Hell, no!” The miner stared at him disgustedly. “Must ha’ been some mistake.”

“Undoubtedly. I am most sorry. However, if you are looking for work, I might be able to help you—it seems to me that someone wrote me for a couple of men. Excuse me one moment while I look up the letter. What are your names, my friends?”

“Me? I’m Joe Gilbert. My partner here is Alf Lewis.”

Coravel Tio left them, and crossed to a glassed-in box of an office. He opened a locked safe, swiftly inspected a telegraph form, and nodded to himself in a satisfied manner. He returned to the two men, tapped for a moment upon the glass counter, meditatively, then addressed them.

“Señors, I regret the mistake exceedingly. Still, if you want work, I suggest that you drive over to Domingo this afternoon with my cousin, who lives there. You may stay a day or two with him, then this friend of mine will pick you up and take you to work.”

The second man, Lewis, spoke up hesitantly.

“Minin’ is our work, mister. We ain’t no ranchers.”

“Certainly.” Coravel Tio smiled, gazing at him. “You will not work for a native, my friends. Ah, no! Be here at two this afternoon, please.”

The two men left the shop. Outside, in the Street, they paused and looked at each other. The second man, Lewis, swore under his breath.

“Joe, how in hell did he know we was worried over workin’ for a greaser boss?”

Gilbert merely shrugged his shoulders and strode away.

Within the shop, Coravel Tio turned to the waiting Indian and spoke—this time neither in Spanish nor English, but in the Indian tongue itself. As he spoke, however, he saw the stolid redskin make a slight gesture. Catlike, Coravel Tio turned about and went to meet a man who had just entered the shop; catlike, too, he purred suave greeting.

A large man, this new arrival—square of head and jaw and shoulder, with small gray eyes closely set, a moustache bristling over a square mouth, ruthless hardness stamped in every line of figure, face, and manner. He was dressed carelessly but well.

“Morning,” he said, curtly. His eyes bit sharply about the place, then rested with intent scrutiny upon the proprietor. “Morning, Coravel Tio. I been looking for someone who can talk Injun. I’ve got a proposition that won’t handle well in Spanish; it’s got to be put to ’em in their own tongue. I hear that you can find me someone.”

Regretfully, Coravel Tio shook his head.

“No—o,” he said, in reflective accents. “I am sorry, Mr. Mackintavers. My clerk, Juan Estrada, spoke their language, but he joined the army and is still in service. Myself, I know of it only a word or two. But wait! Here is a Cochiti man who sells me turquoise; he might serve you as interpreter, if he is willing.”

He called the loitering Indian, and in the bastard Spanish patois of the country put the query. Mackintavers, who also spoke the tongue well, intervened and tried to employ the Indian as interpreter. To both interrogators the Pueblo shook his head in stolid negation. He would not serve in the desired capacity, and knew of no one else who would.

“It is a great pity he is so stubborn!” Coravel Tio gestured in despair as he turned to his visitor. “I owe you thanks, Mr. Mackintavers, for getting my wholesale department that order from the St. Louis dealer. I am in your debt, and I shall be grateful if I can repay the obligation. In this case, alas, I am powerless!”

“Well, let it go.” Mackintavers waved a large, square hand. He produced cigars, set one between his square white teeth, and handed the other to Coravel Tio. “You can repay me here and now. A man at Albuquerque sent a telegram to that Crump woman in your care. Where is she?”

“What is all this?” Coravel Tio was obviously astonished. “Señor, I am a curio dealer, no more! You surely do not refer to the kind-hearted Mrs. Crump?”

Mackintavers eyed him, chewing on his cigar. Then he nodded grimly.

“I do! Is she a particular friend of yours?”

“Certainly! Have I not known her these twenty years? I buy much from her—bits of turquoise, queer Indian things, odd relics. Her mail often comes here, remaining until she calls for it. I am a curio dealer, señor, and in other matters I take no interest.”

“Hm!” grunted Mackintavers. “Has she been here lately?”

“No, señor, not for three months—no, more than that! Mail comes, also telegrams.”

“D’you know where she is?” demanded the other, savagely.

Dreamily reflective, Coravel Tio fastened his eyes upon the right ear of Mackintavers. That ear bore a half-healed scar, like a bullet-nick. Beneath that silent scrutiny the other man reddened uneasily.

“Let me see! My wife’s second cousin, Estevan Baca, wrote me last week that he had met her in Las Vegas. Everyone knows her, señor. If I can send any message for you——”

“No. Much obliged, all the same,” grunted the other. “I’ll probably be at the Aztec House for a few days. Let me know in case she comes to town, will you? I want to see her.”

With exactly the proper degree of bland eagerness, Coravel Tio assented to this, and Mackintavers departed heavily. The merchant accompanied him to the door and watched him stride up the narrow street, cursing the burros laden with mountain wood that blocked his way. Then, smiling a trifle oddly, the descendant of conquistadores returned to the waiting man from Cochiti pueblo.

“Do you know why that man wanted an interpreter?” he asked the Indian, in the latter’s native tongue. The redskin grinned wisely and shook the black hair from his eyes.

“Yes. But it is not a matter to discuss with Christians, my father.”

Coravel Tio nodded carelessly. The question was closed. The Pueblo folk are, of course, very devoted converts to the Christian faith; yet those who know them intimately can testify that they sometimes have affairs, perhaps touching upon the queer stone idols of their fathers, which do not bear discussion with other Christians. They do not pray to the old gods—perhaps—but they hold them in tremendous respect.

“You came to tell me something,” prompted the curio dealer, gently.

The Indian assented with a nod. He leaned against one of the wooden pillars that supported the roof, and began to roll a cigarette while he talked.

“Yesterday, my father, I was near the painted caves of the Colorado, and I stood above White Rock Cañon looking down at the river. There on the other side of the water I saw the strangest thing in the world. I went home and told the governor of the pueblo what I had seen, and it was his command that I come here and tell you also, for this is some queer affair of the white people.”

Coravel Tio said nothing at all. The Pueblo lighted his cigarette and continued:

“Upon the east side of the river and cañon, not so well hidden that I could not see it, was a camp, and in that camp were a white man and a white woman. I have never before seen white folk able to reach that place, unless it were the Trail Runner who takes pictures of us and sells them to tourists. These were strangers to me. One was a very large woman. The man was tall, but he acted very strangely. He acted as though God had touched his brain. So did they both.”

“In what way?” asked Coravel Tio, sharply.

“In every way, my father. The man wore no shoes, and the hot rocks hurt his feet so that he limped. I saw him spring on the woman, and they fought. She beat him off and pointed a gun at him. Then he seemed to be weeping like a woman, and he grovelled before her. She threw something far off on the stones, and I think it was glass that broke—a bottle, perhaps.”

“Oh!” said Coravel Tio. “Oh! Perhaps it was.”

“There were other strange actions,” pursued the stolid red man. “I could not understand them——”

“No matter.” Coravel Tio made a gesture as though dismissing the subject. “Could you get to that camp from your pueblo?”

“Of course, by crossing the river, by swimming the water there. But that may be a hard thing to do, my father.”

“Undoubtedly, but you will do it, and I will pay you well. There is a package to give that woman. Wait.”

Coravel Tio went to his little box of an office, seated himself at the desk, and began to write in a fair, round hand. The epistle required neither superscription nor signature:

The burlap sack proved to contain some interesting contents. The two small sacks in the centre were even more interesting. The samples have been assayed with the following results:

Numbers one to five, quartzitic with bare traces of brittle silver ore; no good. Numbers six to fifteen, barytes, perhaps five dollars a ton; no good. Number sixteen is strontianite. This is converted into certain nitrates used in manufacture of fireworks and in beet sugar refining. Tremendously valuable and rare. This, señora, is enough.

I think that M. has scented those assays. He is asking for you, but I have made him look toward Las Vegas. To-morrow you will find two men at Domingo who wish work—they will be there until you arrive: Joe Gilbert and Alf Lewis. Meet me there also, please. I will take one-third interest in Number Sixteen as you suggest, and will furnish whatever money you desire on account. I enclose an advance sum.

I shall have articles of partnership ready. Suppose you meet me day after to-morrow, at Domingo. You must give me location, etc., in order to arrange details of filing, land and mineral right lease, etc. Be careful about the new explosives law, unless you already have a permit.

“Being a woman,” reflected Coravel Tio, “she should know that the most important thing in this letter is the very end of it.”

He sealed the letter, placed it upon a thick sheaf of bank notes, wrapped the parcel in oiled silk and again in a small waterproof Navaho saddle blanket. This package he gave to the waiting redskin.

“It must go into the hands of that large woman, and no other,” he said, gravely. “If you fail, there is trouble for all of us—and perhaps for the gods of the San Marcos also!”

At these last words a flash of keen surprise sprang athwart the Indian’s face; then he took the package and turned to the doorway without response. Coravel Tio looked after him, and smiled gently.

CHAPTER IV—MRS. CRUMP HEADS SOUTHWEST

There was in Domingo a man named Baca. Domingo is a tiny village of adobes nestling along the curve of Santa Fé creek under the gray sharpness of Bajada hill; there is also an Indian pueblo of the same name.

In every ancient native settlement there is at least one man named Baca, which signifies “cow” and may be spelled, in the old fashion, either Baca or Vaca. If these folk came all of one stock, they have increased and multiplied exceedingly.

Under the big cottonwood tree that grew in front of the Baca home sat smoking Joe Gilbert and his partner Lewis. Up to them, and halting abruptly before the house, crept a dust-white flivver in which sat two people: one a woman, great of girth and frame, the other a man, gaunt and haggard, whose black eyes blazed like twin stars of desolation.

The woman alighted and faced the two smokers. They rose and doffed their hats.

“Gents, know where I can find Alf Lewis and Joe Gilbert?” she inquired, bluntly.

“That’s us, ma’am.”

“Thought so. My name’s Mehitabel Crump, with Mrs. for a handle. I’m goin’ to open up an ore outcrop. This here is Thady Shea, my partner. Want work, or not?”

“I’ve heard of you, ma’am,” said Gilbert.

“So’ve I!” exclaimed Lewis. “You bet we want work! Only, ma’am, we’d ought to tell ye square that they’s apt to be warrants out for us.”

“Warrants never made me lose sleep,” said Mrs. Crump, eying them with a nod of satisfaction. “Howsomever, I’ll return the favour by saying that if ye take up with me it ain’t goin’ to be no pleasure trip, gents. ’Cause why, I’ve got something good, something that’ll bring Mackintavers on the trail soon’s he smells it—him or his friends. I don’t aim to be bluffed out, I don’t aim to be bought out, and I don’t aim to be lawed out; I got something big, and I aim to hang on to it spite of hell and high water until I sell out big. Them’s my openers.”

“They’re plenty, ma’am,” said Gilbert. “We sure would admire to work for you!”

A brief discussion followed as to wages. Thaddeus Roscius Shea sat jack-knifed in the car’s front seat, saying not a word. His face was sun-blistered and graven with gnawing desire, his black eyes were feverish, he looked anything but a mining man. Yet the two miners, who must have felt more than a slight curiosity touching him, evinced none. At length Mrs. Crump turned to the car.

“Well, pile in here! Make room in the back, but handle them boxes gentle. Three or four holds blasting powder and dynamite. I had quite a stock left over, and brung it along.”

“Do we travel far?” asked Lewis, nervously.

“You bet we do! But don’t worry none. I ain’t much farther from them boxes than you boys are, and I’m pickin’ the soft spots in the road. Besides, I’ve driv’ several hundred mile a’ready with this here outfit, and she ain’t gone up on me yet. Barring bad luck, we’d ought to get where we’re goin’ by the night of day after to-morrow.”

“I’ve heard tell that you had cold iron for nerves,” commented Gilbert. “But you ain’t backing me down, none whatever, ma’am!”

He sprang in, began to shift the load, and Lewis promptly joined him. Mrs. Crump turned and strode away through the dust. Thady Shea watched her out of sight, then twisted about, and for the first time broke the silence that had enveloped him.

“Gentlemen! May I inquire whether either of you delvers in the deeps of earth are possessed of spirits?”

At the sonorously booming voice Gilbert’s jaw dropped in amazement.

“Good gosh! Is that Scripture talk? What d’ye mean—spirits?”

Shea made an impatient gesture. “The fiery fluids that do mingle soul with vaster inspiration! I pray you, give me to drink as you do value drink!”

“Oh, he means a drink!” ejaculated Lewis, staring. “We ain’t got a drop, Shea.”

The lanky figure jack-knifed together again in disconsolate despair. The two men in the rear of the car glanced at each other. Gilbert tapped his head; Lewis grimaced.

Meantime, Mrs. Crump had passed along the winding row of adobes and finally turned into a corral of high boards. There, concealed from exterior view, she found an automobile at rest; she went on to the adjoining rear door of the adobe house. The door was opened to her by Coravel Tio, who greeted her with a quick smile and a bow.

“My land, it’s hot!” said Mrs. Crump. “Howdy!”

“This place is hot indeed,” responded the merchant. “Let us take the front room and we may talk in private. I have the papers all made out.”

They understood each other very well, these two. Presently, however, Coravel Tio discovered that a third interest in Number Sixteen was to be assigned to Thaddeus Shea, in whose name, also, the entire mining property was to stand. He leaned back and surveyed Mrs. Crump with interest.

“I do not know this man Shea, señora. Why do you make him wealthy?”

There was no hint of offence in his tone. He spoke as one having the right to ask, and Mrs. Crump promptly acquiesced.

“He’s an old stage actor, Coravel. I picks him up on the road and takes him along. I’m breakin’ him of drink, and I got a hunch that he’s goin’ to turn out a real man. As for makin’ him wealthy, none of us ain’t going to thrive on Number Sixteen for quite a spell yet! I’m gambling that Thady Shea will earn all he gets. He’s absolutely honest, and good-hearted. He won’t know the mine’s in his name, and won’t care; bein’ that way, it’ll throw Mackintavers off the track. Besides, I feel downright sorry for Thady; he’s had a heap o’ misery in his life, looks to me.”

The other smiled gently and waved his hand.

“Señora, you are the one woman whose great heart has no equal! It is in my mind that this man will be the cause of misfortune; but what matter? If not from one cause, then from another. Misfortunes are sent by the gods to make us great!

“I shall attend to everything in his name; a good idea, since he will be unknown to Mackintavers or Dorales. You will uncover the vein, and send me more samples immediately. These other two men must become small shareholders, so that adjacent claims and mining rights may be secured for the company. Once we are secure, we may talk of eastern capital.”

“Once we’re secure,” said Mrs. Crump grimly, “look out for Mackintavers, then and before; likewise, after!”

“Exactly.” Coravel Tio bowed and finished his writing.

A little later Mrs. Crump shook hands with him and departed. Coravel Tio watched her off, and heard the roar of her car’s engine. The roar became a thrum that lessened and died into the distance like a droning fly. Only then, it seemed, a sudden thought shook the man.

“Dios—I forgot!” he ejaculated. “I forgot to ask her about the permit for the explosives! Well, I warned her in the note. What matter? These incidents of destiny are intended to work out their own effects, and good somehow comes from everything. I am a philosopher!”

Blissfully unconscious whether philosophy might be of aid in running a flivver, Mrs. Crump headed southward over the river road to Albuquerque.

A rough road is that, and well travelled. Mrs. Crump was in some haste to get over this section unobserved, and it was entirely evident that her haste was greater than her caution regarding the jiggling boxes in the rear of the car.

More than once the two men in the tonneau stared quickly at each other’s white faces; more than once the boxes and bundles crashed and banged fearsomely, in view of their partial contents; but Mrs. Crump only threw in more gas and plunged ahead. As for Thaddeus Roscius Shea, he stared out upon the passing scenery with glazed and lack-lustre eyes, and held his peace.

When at last they arrived in the outskirts of Albuquerque, Mrs. Crump paused at a wayside station to fill up with oil and gasoline, also to refill several emptied water bags which formed part of the equipment.

“We ain’t goin’ into town,” she vouchsafed, curtly, to her charges. “And when we gets reaching out over the mesa, you two boys act tender with them boxes! They’s two-three places we got to ford cattle runs, and we got to do it sudden to keep out of the quicksands. But don’t worry no more, there ain’t no special danger.”

The advice was entirely superfluous. Gilbert and Lewis could by no means have worried more. They had reached the limit.

Barely skimming the outlying streets of Albuquerque, Mrs. Crump avoided the better-known highway beside the railroad and took the shorter but deserted road that leads south over the mesa to Becker. Most of this was covered before darkness descended upon them.

Then a brief and barren camp was made; it was also a fireless camp, and the “grub” was cold. Stiff and weary though the three passengers were, it was clearly impossible that they should prove less tough than a mere woman. So, when after an hour’s halt Mrs. Crump grimly cranked up, they piled into the car without protest.

On they went through the darkness. It was well after midnight when the iron nature of Mehitabel Crump acknowledged signs of approaching dissolution in the hand that rocked the steering wheel. Admitting her weakness with a sigh, she turned out of the interminable road and halted. Blanket rolls were unlashed, and sleep descended swiftly upon three members of that quartet.

It must be told that this camp was a milepost in the life of Thaddeus Roscius Shea. He could not sleep. A hundred yards away from the camp he strode up and down under the cold stars, his gaunt body shivering with the chill of the night, his haggard features contorted with the desperate anguish of shattered nerves. All the old impertinences of his soul were risen strong within him; he wanted to run away and end this intolerable situation. He wanted to run away, here and now!

Yet, when at length he clumsily wrapped himself in his blanket and fell asleep, tears beaded his hollow cheeks and reflected the pale starlight above; and like the stars, those tears were cleansing, and serenely sad. The first tears he had shed in years—the tears of a man, wrung from deep within him; tears of brief conquest over himself. He would stick!

Sunrise found the dust-white flivver once more far afield.

The remaining details of that odyssey have no place here. The dust-white flivver came safely to its destination, and work duly began upon Number Sixteen. Days of hard, back-breaking labour ensued—days in which living quarters had to be erected before the claim could be touched. In those days Thaddeus Roscius Shea became, for good and all, Thady Shea.

Number Sixteen lay among the most desolate of desolate hills, just over the ridge of a long hogback. In the cañon below there was a trickle of water from the mountains; beside this rito were erected two rough shacks, and here the dust-white flivver rested peacefully. To the north towered the higher forested ranges whence came the cañon—the continental divide, rugged crests leaping at the sky. Below, a few miles distant, stretched the bad lands and the lava beds; a scoriated, blasphemous strip such as is often found in the southwest. Behind this lay scattered ranches and the road into Zacaton City.

Up on that hogback, leaning upon his pick, stood Thady Shea. Gone was the threadbare black raiment, gone and replaced by overalls, high boots, flannel shirt. Shea was less conscious of his changed exterior than were those about him. Lewis and Gilbert, preparing a blasting charge a hundred feet distant, glanced at the great, gaunt figure.

“Bloomed out most amazing, ain’t he?” said Lewis. “No tinhorn, neither. Dead game.”

Gilbert, cutting the fuse with deft fingers, wagged his head. “Sure looks that-a-way, partner. Reckon Mis’ Crump knew her business, after all, when she tied up with him. Gosh! Ain’t she one a-gile critter, though?”

Shea stood rocklike, watching the blast. Even in this short space of time the swing of axe and pick had hardened him amazingly; his towering figure seemed to move with a more lissome flow of muscles; for the first time in his life, most wonderful of all, his deeply lined features had become centred about one fixed and determined purpose—to keep himself clean of liquor. He had conquered, and with the victory had come a new serenity.

The muffled report of the blast echoed dully. From nowhere appeared Mrs. Crump, hastily coming to the scene. Shea dropped his pick and joined the others. Mrs. Crump, examining the results of the blast, flung out an exultant cry.

“Got it!”

“Ain’t much of a vein,” observed Gilbert, skeptically. “Veins, rather—looks like a lot of ’em, and they go deep. This here limestone runs clear to Chiny, I reckon.”

Mrs. Crump chuckled in a satisfied manner.

“These here veins don’t never come big, Gilbert. Who’d think this here greenish-white stuff was better’n a gold seam? But she is. Well, never mind any more work a while, boys. I got a letter already writ, and when I fill in the size o’ these here openings, she’s ready to mail—and she’s got to be sent sudden. These samples likewise.

“Let’s see; I ain’t goin’ to town myself. Mackintavers’ men are sure to be watchin’ everywhere, and this here location has got to be kept secret if possible. I s’pose the devils will get it from the land office, though. Joe, can you and Al show up in Zacaton City without occasioning no rumpus?”

Gilbert shook his head doubtfully.

“I reckon not, ma’am. We’re pretty well known there, and we ain’t right sure how things is fixed for us. Still, it won’t bother us none; if you say so, we’ll go——”

“Nope; can’t take no chances with the letter and samples, boys. It’s up to Thady. He’s learned how to run the car, anyhow. Thady, you got to send them samples and a letter. No one’s goin’ to suspect you of bein’ partners with me, and be sure to send the samples in your own name, savvy?

“They’s enough gas to take you into Zacaton, and ye can bring a fresh supply when ye come back. Then we need more flour an’ grub, for which same I got a list made out already. A new axe helve, too. Don’t forget that there axe helve, whatever ye do! It ain’t on the list—I guess ye can remember it all right. Sure, now! Don’t come without it. How soon can ye get going?”

“Now,” said Shea, a slight smile curving his wide lips.

CHAPTER V—THE AMBITION OF MACKINTAVERS

It is an established but peculiar trait of human nature, by which most of us desire to be that which we are not, or to do that for which we have no talent. I, who write, may aspire to be a great engineer; you, who read, may aspire to the study of the stars. We reach out toward that which we may never grasp.

Sandy Mackintavers was a wealthy and a powerful man; his hands were gripped hard in both the politics and the mining properties of the state. Self-made and self-educated, he had accomplished a good job of it. He had, of necessity, seen a good deal of those men who were ever radiating out from Santa Fé; those men who, on behalf of many universities and great museums, were ever delving amid the thousands of pre-historic ruins which lay in and between the valleys of the Pecos and the Rio Grande.

Slowly, Sandy had discovered that these men were digging in the earth for science, and that science and the world of letters honoured them. He had learned something of their “patter” and of the things they were seeking; he had studied their work and methods and ideals, and he had found within himself the makings of a scientist. In short, he had formed the stupendous ambition of becoming, at one fell stroke, a renowned ethnologist!

Do not smile. In the course of thirty years a man can pick up a great many divers things, and it was the way of Mackintavers to pick up everything in sight. Sandy knew a great deal more than he appeared to know. He had mining properties all over, and he was a silent partner in a chain of Mormon trading stores that ran north from the Mexican border through three states. His sources of information were varied.

Being unmarried and loving his ease when he was in the city, Mackintavers maintained a suite at the Aztec House. He had entertained many men in that place, some to their eternal sorrow. Never had he entertained a more distinguished visitor, however, than the Smithsonian professor with whom he was speaking on this Sunday morning—a scientist known around the world, and a man of supreme authority in ethnologic circles.

“Now, professor,” said Mackintavers, bluntly, “I ain’t a college-educated man, but I’ve knocked around this country for thirty year, and I know a few things. When I die, I aim to be remembered as something more than a mining man, see?”

The other, in puzzled suspense, nodded tacit understanding.

“Now,” pursued Sandy, chewing hard on a cigar, “if I had something to give the Smithsonian or some other museum, something that would be a tenstrike for science, something that ’ud make every scientific shark in the country water at the eyes for envy, what ’ud the Smithsonian do for me?”

The professor cleared his throat and registered hesitation.

“I—ah—I do not exactly apprehend your meaning, Mr. Mackintavers. You do not speak in a financial sense, I presume?”

“Of course not. I tell you, I want to be known as a scientist! Man, I’ve got the biggest thing up my sleeve that you ever struck! Can your museum, or any other, make me famous as a scientist? That is, if I turn over a regular tenstrike?”

“Ah—that is exceedingly difficult to answer. A scientific reputation, Mr. Mackintavers, is founded upon solid bases, upon research or discoveries. If your—ah—contribution were a thing of such merit as you say, it would undoubtedly be published far and wide. Your name, naturally, would be attached to it, according as your work justified.”

“In other words,” amended Sandy, “if I turn over a complete job, I’d get full credit and publicity?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I want. I’m interested in this ethnology stuff, and I can do you sharks a whopping good turn. I want to get the credit, that’s all. Folks call me a hard-fisted old mining crab, and I want to show ’em that I’m something more.”

“A highly laudable ambition, sir. You understand, however, that what to a lay mind might appear to be a most interesting ethnological fact, to a scientist might prove well known or insufficiently supported——”

Mackintavers waved his square hand.

“This thing is all assayed and fire tested, professor, and I’m no fool. May I give you an outline of it?”

“If you care to, by all means do so!”

“You know where the San Marcos pueblo is—away down south of Bonanza?” Mackintavers struck into his subject without further parley. “It was abandoned about 1680 because of attacks from the Comanches, who destroyed several pueblos down in that country. There’s a tradition that the Injuns migrated west of the Rio Grande and settled the Cochiti and Domingo pueblos. Has that tradition ever been proved up?”

The professor evinced an awakening interest.

“No, sir. We know that the survivors of the Pecos pueblo went to Jimez, but the older migrations are hidden in the mists of time, unfortunately. Where the present Pueblos came from we do not know. The migrations——”

“They won’t be hid very long,” said Mackintavers, complacently. “Aiblins, now, we’ll clear ’em up a bit, eh?”

The only Scottish evidences which remained from Sandy’s youth were an uncanny acquisitiveness and a habit of interjecting the word “aiblins” into the conversation at random. When Sandy used that word, it betrayed mental effort.

“Some time ago,” he resumed, “a man found seven stone idols in a bit of the adobe ruins at San Marcos. They had been walled up and buried alive, ye might say. The heavy rains last year, which took out some pieces of the adobe walls, washed ’em out. I’ve got ’em now, down to my ranch near Magdalena.”

At this announcement the professor displayed mild disappointment. He had been more than interested in Sandy’s preamble, but this supposed climax caused him to shake his gray head regretfully.

“My dear sir, these idols are of course very rare things, but not exceptionally so. I fail to see how they would give any proof of migration——”

“Hold on; I ain’t done yet! A drunken Injun from Cochiti seen those idols and spilled a good deal of information, calling them by name and so on. That is not evidence which would stand on a scientific basis, I reckon. But if a Cochiti man could be made to talk, and if he was to recognize those idols first crack as his ancestral gods——”

“And not be drunk at the time,” interjected the other, smiling.

“Sure. If he was to name ’em like old friends, and they corresponded with the same idols from Cochiti which are in various museums—then wouldn’t all this go to show mighty plain that the migration theory was true?”

Mackintavers leaned back, breathless and triumphant. The scientist nodded quickly.

“Sir, this is an unusual and surprising proposal, but I cannot deny your premises. I do believe that such evidence would go a long way, could it be secured. That, of course, is the doubtful point, for these red men can very seldom be made to talk. However, you have an astounding perception of ethnologic values in merely conceiving the scheme!”

“Taken by and large, that’s nothing but human nature. Well?”

“If this proof could really be adduced, it would be epochal! The possibilities, sir, would be tremendous in their application!”

“It ain’t proved up yet,” returned Sandy, drily, “but it will be. It may take a bit of time gettin’ things in shape—a week or so, maybe. Ye know, professor, these Injuns are touchy about questions o’ deity, and they have to be handled wi’ gloves. But I’ll do it! A bag of silver dollars will loom mighty big to them. If ye care to be on hand when the time comes, I’d be glad to have ye as a guest at my ranch——”

In many ways the professor had an extended knowledge of New Mexico. It is quite possible that he knew all about the playful habits of Sandy Mackintavers in regard to testimony along mining and mineral lines. So, while he did not restrain his enthusiasm over the ambition of his host, he made it plain that he certainly did wish to be on hand when the testimony in this case was obtained.

Mackintavers agreed readily, for in this instance he was more or less resolved to play fair; and the interview ended.

Scarcely had the scientist departed, than the door opened to admit an individual of striking appearance. This gentleman was the satellite, the adherent, and field marshal, the âme damnée, of Mackintavers.

Mormon progenitors had given him a stocky, massive front and splendid build, a steely eye and projecting lower jaw. A touch of Mexican blood had given him coarse black hair, a swart complexion, and sinister mental attributes. He had much the appearance of a west-coast Irishman, with his black hair and gray eyes, but there the resemblance ended. Such was Abel Dorales, a man of reputation and education.

“Well?” greeted Mackintavers, abruptly. “What’s up now?”

“Trouble,” was the response. “Rodrigo Cota wants to see you. Also, I got a telegram from Ben Aimes, at Zacaton City, but haven’t decoded it yet. I think it’s about the Crump woman.”

“Then hurry it along,” snapped Mackintavers. “Send Cota in here pronto.”

A moment later entered the room a nervous native, the same legislator who had briefly interviewed Coravel Tio regarding the moving of the capital. Mr. Cota stood mopping his brow and glancing around.

“Well, Cota?” exploded Sandy, transfixing him with frowning gaze. “What’s the matter now? Need more money to swing it?”

“Señor,” blurted the legislator in desperation, “it cannot be swung!”

“Oh! And why not, Mr. Cota?”

“I do not know. Three weeks ago we had a clear majority. The measure was to be presented to-morrow—but our men have gone to pieces!”

“Do they want more money?” snapped Sandy, savagely.

The native shrugged. “I have done my best! It is a question of the people. In some way, I know not how, word has been spread abroad that the capital is to be changed. Our people are furious. Our natives, sir, have sentiment about this——”

“Sentiment, hell!” snarled Mackintavers, as his fist crashed down. “I tell ye, it’s goin’ to be done! Ain’t there plenty in it for all, ye fool? Ain’t new state buildings got to be built at Albuquerque? Ain’t——”

“Señor, it is no question of money; it cannot be done! I myself dare not propose this bill without voting for it; and I cannot vote for it.”

“Why not?” The face of Mackintavers was purpled, seething with furious passions. Livid, the native glared back at him.

“Because I am afraid for my life.”

Mackintavers leaped to his feet in a whirlwind of rage at what he considered a palpable lie. The native shrank back, but doggedly, as though a greater fear were beside him than any fear of this political master of his.

At this instant the door opened and Abel Dorales appeared. He made a slight gesture, a gesture of command, of authority. The empurpled countenance of Mackintavers composed itself by a mighty effort.

“Very well, Mr. Cota,” he said, thickly. “Let the bill pass over for this time, since I got more important business on hand than chasing down you native senators. But let me tell you this: When it comes up again, there’ll be no more talk like you’ve just handed out—or I’ll know the reason why. Get out!”

Cota took his hat and left, thankfully. Dorales closed the door, while a flood of oaths burst from the lips of Mackintavers. With extended hand, Dorales checked the flood.

“Never mind that, Sandy,” he said, calmly. “We’ll probably find later that the railroad is double-crossing us. There’s no rush—we can get to the bottom of it in time. The more important affair is this of the Crump woman, so far as money goes. There’s a bigger fortune in this mine than in any political game!”

Uncouth bear that he was, Mackintavers could be swayed by this more polished tongue; he knew this tongue was devoted absolutely to his own interests, and he forced himself to accept the dictum of Dorales at the moment.

“Well?” he growled. “Ye don’t mean to say she’s down at Zacaton?”

“The wire was from your store manager there, Aimes. He said merely that he had smashed the Crump outfit flat, and that I had better get there in a hurry to take charge of things.”

“Aiblins, yes!” The thin lips of Sandy curled back. “We hadn’t looked for such quick action, Abel. That Aimes is a good man! I s’pose this news don’t grieve ye none, after what the lady done to you. How’s your head?”

A fleeting contraction passed across the face of Dorales. His eyes narrowed to thin slits. His nose quivered like the nose of a dog sniffing game.

“Thank you, it’s quite well,” his voice was low and cruel. “If you think best, I shall go down there immediately.”

Mackintavers crammed a cigar between his teeth and chewed at it for a moment.

“Aiblins, yes,” he mused aloud. “Somebody has blocked us on this moving-the-capital bill. I won’t get hold of the skunk right away, neither; we might’s well call it off until the next session.

“Tell ye what, Abel! I’m fixing to spend a while at my ranch, so I’ll go south with ye. I’ll need ye mighty bad to get that business of the Injun gods moving along, because I got my heart set on doin’ that up brown. But as ye say, this mine means millions—the biggest strike in the state in a long time. The assayer was positive it was strontianite and not merely barytes?”

“Dead certain,” assented Dorales.

“Well, it won’t be such a long job; I’ll be at the ranch where ye can reach me quick. We’ll have to find out what Aimes has done, then make plans and go ahead. If there’s one thing that the Lord gave me ability to do, it was to handle mining deals!”

“With a cold deck,” added Dorales. “Very well. If we go by auto, we can save a good deal of time.”

Mackintavers grimaced. “I ain’t built for long trips, but go ahead. Get the big car, Abel. Want to run her yourself? All right. Land me at the ranch, then go on to Zacaton City with the ranch flivver, unless ye want the big car.”

“The flivver is the thing down there.”

“Aiblins, yes. And mind! What we got to do is to get that Crump female clear off’n her location; that’s all. Aimes has evidently found some means of gettin’ her arrested. We can take that for granted. By the time you get there, she’ll be in the calaboose.

“You telephone me at the ranch with a full account of what’s happened, and I’ll have a scheme ready for ye. The main thing is to get possession of the property; maybe we can frame a deal on this fellow Shea—it’s all held in his name, ain’t it? That was a foxy move, but not foxy enough to fool us long! Get possession, Abel, and the law will do the rest for us.”

“It ought to!” Dorales showed white and even teeth as he smiled.

Mackintavers met those steely eyes beneath their strangely black brows, and his square mouth unfolded in a grin.

“Get possession, that’s all!” he uttered.

“Consider it done, Sandy. If you’ll be ready in an hour, I’ll be around with the car.”

CHAPTER VI—THADY SHEA SMELLS WHISKEY

The little town of Zacaton City, within easy trucking distance of the railroad, formed the nucleus of a goodly mining centre. Its residential section was extensive, and consisted of adobes occupied by “native” miners or workmen. Its business section was made up chiefly of a bank, the Central Mercantile Store, hardware, drug, and harness shops, and a soda-water parlour that adjoined the Central Mercantile. This last was a blind pig, maintained with circumspection and profit by Ben Aimes, manager of the store. Aimes also ran the combination hotel-garage across the street.

Thady Shea came into town about sunset. He had broken bread on the way, and disdained to seek further dinner. Having been much cautioned, he was wary of danger. Leaving the dust-white flivver at the garage, he went to the express office and sent off his ore samples and letter, then he sought the emporium of Ben Aimes.

The two native clerks being busy, Aimes, a brisk fellow of thirty, espied the tall figure of Shea, and in person took charge of the customer.

“Well, partner, what can I do for you?” he inquired, cheerfully. “Can’t say as I’ve seen you before. Stranger in town?”

Shea fumbled in his pocket for the list of supplies, and transfixed the merchant with his cavernous black eyes. He had been particularly warned against Aimes.

“Friend,” he trumpeted, “you say sooth. Truth sits upon thy lips, marry it does!”

Aimes blinked rapidly. “Stranger, I don’t get you! You’re a prospector?”

“That, sir, is somewhat of my present business,” boomed Shea. “Yet have I seen the day when every room hath blazed with lights and brayed with minstrelsy, when thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy fled from before me like twin evil spirits! Make ready, friend, thy pencil for its task.”

Those sonorous tones drew grinning attention from others. Aimes, quite overcome by the rounded periods and the imposing gestures, asked no more questions, but devoted himself to making ready packages as Shea read off from his list the supplies required.

Two or three loafers sauntered along and listened to Shea’s enunciation with awed delight. When the end of the list was reached, the amounts totalled, and the money handed over, Thady Shea carelessly crumpled up the list and tossed it behind the counter.

His arms filled with the bundles, he left the store and crossed the street to his car. He had laid up the flivver for the night, and now attended to having it filled with gas and oil. He stated to the mechanic that he might be here for several days; at this juncture, it occurred to him that he had forgotten that axe helve which Mrs. Crump had demanded especially.

Meantime, Ben Aimes had retrieved the list of supplies, and had stared at the uncrumpled paper with amazed recognition. He swiftly summoned one of the idling loafers.

“If this ain’t the writing of Mrs. Crump, I’m a liar! You chase over to the garage and get the number o’ that feller’s car—hump, now!”

Thady Shea reëntered the store, in blissful ignorance that he was done for, and demanded his axe helve. Ben Aimes, in blissful ignorance of what that axe helve was destined to mean to him and to others, filled the order. Then, handling Shea his change, Aimes gave him a meaning wink.

“Step into the sody parlour a minute, stranger! Have a cigar on the store.”

The offer was entirely innocuous. Shea greatly desired to avoid any argument or trouble, so he followed Aimes into the adjoining room, which at this hour was deserted. Aimes procured cigars, then went to the soda fountain.

“Want you to try somethin’ new we got here,” he said, and paused. “What did you say your name was?”

“My cognomen, sir, is Shea. Thaddeus Shea.”

“Well, Shea, just hold this under your nose and see if it smells like sody.”

Unsuspicious as any innocent, Shea took the proffered glass and held it to his nose. A tremor ran through him—an uncontrollable shiver that sent fever into his eyes. He lowered the glass slightly and forced a ghastly smile. Already defeat had engulfed him.

“Friend, I am sorry thus to disappoint you, but I have sworn that never——”

“Shucks!” Aimes grinned and held up his own glass. To meet it, that of Shea again came within sniffing distance. “Just one between business acquaintances, Mr. Shea. It’s the finest licker ever got to this city! Absolutely twenty year old, partner. One little snifter now—don’t it smell good? The real thing, the real thing!”

Thady Shea’s entire system was impregnated by that whiff. His big fingers closed upon the little glass with a convulsive contraction.

“One, sir, and one only!” he declaimed. “To the dead god Bacchus, all hail!”

He tossed down the drink and smacked his lips.

It was upon a Saturday evening that these things happened. That smell had done the business for Thady Shea; that raw odour of whiskey, which in a flash had permeated to the very deeps of his being with its awful lure. No guile, no argument could have forced him to drink, but that sniff had ruined him utterly.

Twenty minutes later, in maudlin confidence, he was relating to Ben Aimes how two miners of his acquaintance had driven several hundred miles in deadly fear of being hoisted by dynamite at every jolt.

Shea mentioned no names. Drunk or not, he knew subconsciously that he must mention no names. Also subconsciously, he knew that he must hang on to his axe helve or Mrs. Crump would be much disappointed in him. So he was still hanging on to it when, after a parting drink, he was thrust forth into the cold night air. That parting drink had been soggy with opiates.

Ben Aimes went to the telephone and called up the sheriff at Silver City.

“This is Aimes at Zacaton, Bill,” he said. “A queer guy just blew in here to-night with a grand souse and is sleeping it off now. You know old lady Crump, don’t you? Heard of her at any rate. Well, he says that she’s out in the hills a piece with two other fellers. These two were run out o’ Magdalena last month for talking agin’ the gov’ment and they’re said to be dangerous characters. The place is north o’ the bad lands, over in Socorro County.

“The p’int is, Bill, this here guy says they’ve got heap o’ dynamite and such stuff out there. Them two anarchists ought to be prevented usin’ it; according to this guy, they got no licenses and never heard o’ the new license law. This here is plumb illegal and you’d ought to stop it. Both these fellers are I. W. W. organizers, he says, and prob’ly are German spies; this guy talked with a queer kind of accent.

“No, I wouldn’t think it o’ Mrs. Crump, neither, but you never can tell these days. What’s that? Well, I got the location pretty straight from this guy. Yep, a car can make it; he come into town that way. Get up on the night train and you can take my car out there. Sure, I’ll meet the train. You’re welcome.”

This pleasant duty finished, Aimes dispatched a lengthy telegram to Abel Dorales at Santa Fé. He then summoned the constable in search of Thady Shea. But Shea had vanished from human ken, although the dust-white flivver remained in the garage.

Bright and early next morning Aimes departed in his automobile, went to the railroad and met the sheriff, and brought that official back to town. The hardware merchant was pressed into service as a deputy, and the sheriff took over Aimes’ car.

“I’d like to go along myself,” said Aimes, regretfully, “but I got to ’tend the garridge myself to-day account of my mechanic hurting himself last night and being laid up. Tell ye what, Bill! Why not take the whole crowd right down to Silver City? It’ll save ye comin’ back here, and your new deppity yonder can fetch the car back here. Sure, you’re dead welcome! I ain’t got no use for the car anyhow.”

To this arrangement the sheriff consented gladly, and Aimes watched them depart with a twinkle in his eye. Before Mrs. Crump could possibly return from Silver City, to say nothing of her two men, Abel Dorales would be on the spot to take charge of things. Aimes considered that he had managed things very neatly indeed, and he mentally patted himself on the back that morning.

Ben Aimes, however, did not take local politics into account. It is such little unconsidered trifles which very often go to make up the warp of affairs of larger moment.

Only a few months previously an ancient and honourable gentleman by the name of Ferris had been ousted from the job of justice of the peace, mainly on account of certain hostility to Ben Aimes and the Mackintavers forces. It is quite possible that old man Ferris was no good as a justice, yet he had an inconspicuous but important part to play in the tangled affairs of Thady Shea and Sandy Mackintavers, to say nothing of the seven stone gods.

In broad daylight, therefore, Thady Shea came to his senses. While slow remembrance dawned upon him, he found himself reposing in the back yard of an adobe house; how he got there was never explained. A furred tongue and an aching head gradually brought home some errant sense of shame. This feeling was intensified by a goat-like visage above him.

“Well, pilgrim!” sounded a raucous voice. “Slep’ it off, have ye?”

Shea groaned and sat up. “Where—where am I?”

“Town of Zacaton City, county o’ Grant, State o’ New Mexico.” The other chuckled. He was a disreputable old fellow, distinguished by shiftless garb and dirty gray hair. “I reckon Ben Aimes must have give ye quite a jag, eh? If I was you, I’d spill out o’ town right smart. He’s got the constable lookin’ for ye.”

Shea clasped his head and groaned again, not understanding the words clearly.

“I’ve fallen!” he moaned.

“With a thud,” agreed the other. “But worse’n that, pilgrim. Ye’ve gone and got ol’ Mis’ Crump in real bad. If ye wasn’t so mis’able I’d boot ye out o’ here for it.”

Thady Shea stared up dully. “What—what’s that you say?”

Old man Ferris surveyed him in pitying contempt, and carefully sank his remaining fangs into a plug of tobacco.

“D’ye mean as ye don’t know what ye been an’ done? Well, I can’t say as I can see why Mis’ Crump ever’s taken up with the likes of you, but it’s plumb certain that ye’ve gone an’ done for her this trip, ye no-account swine!”

Shea’s brow broke into cold perspiration. His quickening faculties began to grasp the sense of these words.

“Expound!” he said. “What have I done?”

“A plenty. The sheriff come over this mornin’. Him and a deppity has gone to arrest Mis’ Crump—and all along o’ you, ye mis’able coyote!”

“Arrest her? Why?” Shea stared, his heart sinking. So piteous was his gaze that old man Ferris turned aside, spat, and resumed his discourse in kindlier tones.

“Don’t ye know that they’s a new law about explosives? Well, they is. Everybody what handles powder or dynamite has got to have a license. From what I gather, Mis’ Crump ain’t wise to it and ain’t got none.

“Last night you done blabbed out your soul to Aimes. Danged fool! Why did Aimes git the sheriff after Mis’ Crump? Ain’t but one answer to that—so’s that devil Mackintavers could profit! And sheriff’s goin’ to take ’em to Silver City, too. If Mis’ Crump has located an ore prop’ty, as looks likely, Mackintavers is after it.

“Once she gits out’n the way and they ain’t nobody to hold down the location, some o’ Mackintavers’ crowd is going to jump it sure’s shooting! Huh! Git out’n my back yard ’fore I come back, ye swine!”

Snorting angrily, old man Ferris turned and stamped away, and so out of the story. He had fulfilled his share in destiny, with greater measure than he knew.

Thady Shea sat staring, his eyes terrible with comprehension. With every moment that final exposition sank more deeply into his brain. The ghastly consequences of his own weakness left him stunned and paralyzed.

He could dimly remember what had happened, up to that final drink. He was certain that he had not mentioned the name of Mehitabel Crump. Yet he could remember telling about those explosives; as he connected things, he groaned again. Aimes had been pumping him, of course; had somehow suspected something.

The pitiless deduction of old man Ferris struck upon Shea’s brain like a trip-hammer. The mine was left unprotected, or soon would be, and Mackintavers’ men would grab it. Of course!

Frightful remorse crumpled Thady Shea, mentally and bodily. He owed all that he was, all that he might be, to Mrs. Crump; yet his action had literally ruined her. That cursed sniff of whiskey had done it! Shea wasted no recrimination upon himself for his lapse from rectitude. He had gone through all that before. It was the consequence of this lapse that horrified him, that lashed down upon his soul.

“What have I done!” he mumbled, groping for coherency. “What have I done!”

All the old memories of Mrs. Crump flooded into his mind. He recalled all her actions and words, he pictured mentally all the deep waters of human kindness that lay hidden below her mask of harshness, he visioned anew how she had picked him out of the very gutter and had set him upon his feet, a man. How had he repaid her?

In this hour Thady Shea was cast absolutely upon himself. There was none to whom he might go for advice or aid. He was alone with his consciousness of guilt, alone with the remorse that ate into his heart like acid. A month previously he would have mouthed a curse at the world and have gone shambling away in search of the nearest saloon, where he would have recited “The Face on the Barroom Floor” as the sure and certain price of liquor.

This thought recurred to him. He pictured himself as he was a month ago. From his lips was wrenched an inarticulate cry, the voice of a soul in anguish. Heedless of the burning ache in his head, he brought his long body erect and looked up at the sky.

“Oh, God!” he said, a dry sob in his throat. “Oh, God! I have scoffed and blasphemed because You let me stumble down into hell. It was my own fault, God. Now, for the sake of that woman who helped me to find myself, it’s up to You to give me a hand! I don’t know what to do. But I’ve got to make up for this thing that I’ve done, and there is no one to help me except You—and it’s for her sake——”

The words failed, for as he spoke out his heart the deepness of feeling that had laid hold upon him ebbed; just as the bitterness of grief ebbs with tears. A tremor shook him, and for a moment he stood motionless.

Close at hand was an acequia, an open ditch with running water. He went to it, kneeled, and plunged his head into the water; it cooled his brain and steadied him. He rose and saw his axe helve lying where he had lain that night. He picked it up and stood there, indecision eating into him.

What was to be done? He must do something. The constable was seeking him—why? No matter. The name of Ben Aimes explained everything. The morning was wearing along, and by this time all hope of warning Mrs. Crump was gone. Of course, there was the dust-white flivver. He could take that and sneak back to the mine. It would be deserted.

Deserted? But that was what Mackintavers wanted, according to this disreputable ancient! That was why Mrs. Crump was under arrest! That was the aim and purpose of the whole affair—to have the mine left deserted, so that the man Dorales could step in and seize upon it.

The gaunt, grim face of Shea tightened and hardened. “One thing I can do—go there,” he reflected. “What the hell have I to worry about—can they do any worse to me than I have done to myself? No. They’ll try to arrest me, they’ll try to keep me here. They can’t do it! I’m going.”

As he left the place and sought the road, there was a sublime unconsciousness of self in him. He was in no condition of mind to do the usual, the conventional thing, the thing that any sane man would have done, the thing that any one would be expected to do.

No! From that hour, Shea was a different man. He had entered upon this new and primitive existence, and now it took hold upon him. His course of life had been abruptly shifted, and he was climbing new paths; as he climbed, the exhilaration of the heights sang in his blood. He had flung away the lessons of his old dreary years. Now his actions were to be the simple, terrible, and impulsive actions of a child who fears no consequences.

Finding that he was only a couple of blocks from the main street of the town, Shea walked toward it, the axe helve still in his hand. He meant to take out his flivver and go.

There was no church in Zacaton City, and it was not yet time for the Mormon chapel to open. The garage doors were wide. In front, standing in the warm sunlight, Ben Aimes was chatting with the constable about the mysterious disappearance of the man Shea. Half-a-dozen idlers were lined up to one side, smoking and discussing the coming and going of the sheriff. Around the corner of the store, across the street, swung the gaunt figure of Shea.

“By gosh!” exclaimed Aimes, staring. He clutched the arm of the constable. “There’s the cuss now! Lay him up until Dorales gets here to-morrow, anyhow. Whew! I’m glad he’s showed up at last. Must ha’ been laying in a ditch.”

The loafers galvanized into sudden interest. The constable started across the street and met Shea midway. He held out one hand, with the other showing his badge of office.

“Get out of my way,” said Shea, lifelessly, looking through him.

“None o’ that, now,” snorted the constable. “You come along with me.”

With a smack that was heard for half a block, the axe helve swung a vicious half-circle and landed over the officer’s ear. The constable threw out his hands and fell on his face, lying motionless. Shea strode forward.

“Lay on to him, boys, he’s locoed!” cried Aimes, turning to the men behind. He whirled again to face Shea, and his right hand crept to his hip. “Hello, Shea! lay down that——”

“You gave me a drink last night, didn’t you?” said Shea, halting before him.

Aimes laughed, thinking that he perceived what was in the other’s mind.

“Oh, want another, do ye?” he returned. “Well, lay down that——”

“You’re the man that gave me a drink,” said Shea. His deep bass voice boomed upon the morning air like a bell. “If any man dares to give me a drink again, he’ll get worse than this.”

Aimes suddenly perceived danger, and whipped out his weapon. Swifter than his hand was the axe helve. It struck his wrist and knocked the revolver away. As he staggered to the blow, the axe helve swung again and smote him over the head. Aimes made a queer noise in his throat and limply sank down.

There was something frightful in the deliberate way those two men had been felled. For a moment Shea stood gazing at the loafers, who shrank back before his blazing eyes. Then:

“I’ll do worse than this to any man who dares give me a drink again,” he said.

Without further heed, he passed into the garage. Up and down the street men were calling, running. The group outside the place looked at each other, their faces blanched.

“My Lord!” gasped someone. “He’s done killed ’em both! In after him, boys.”

Thady Shea laid down his bludgeon in front of the dust-white flivver, and began to crank. For almost the first time in his life he had struck a man in cold anger; more terrible than this thought, however, was the acid-like bitterness in his soul.

Just as the engine caught and roared, Shea, rising, saw over his shoulder the string of men pouring in upon him. He had no time to get into his car. With a quick motion he caught up the axe helve; swiftly the foremost men flung themselves upon him, and found him facing them.

There in the obscurity of the little garage ensued a scene that is still told of from Silver City to Magdalena. All noise was drowned in the roar of the engine that throbbed behind Shea. Outside, other men paused to ask what was going on, to group about the figures of Aimes and the constable. Inside, Shea fought for more than his life.

There were six men against him; yet, in the felling of those two outside, the battle had been half won, for the cold terror of Shea’s blows had made itself felt. The first man at him shrieked out and fell, crawling away with a broken arm. The others came in before Shea could recover from the blow, and fastened upon him like dogs upon a mountain lion.

Silent, deadly, Shea swung up his weapon and waited. He took their blows without return. He braced himself against the throbbing car behind him, and awaited his time. Then he began to strike. There was nothing blind and frantic in his blows; rather there was something fearful and inhuman, for inside him was that which rendered him insensible to the smiting fists, and when he brought down his weapon it was with simple and deadly intent.

Three times he struck, each time lifting on his toes, and twice lifting one man who had fastened about his waist. To his three blows, a man reeled away into the darkness; a second plunged forward beneath an adjacent car; a third ran screaming into the open air, across his face a bloody blotch. A fourth man, unhurt, turned and ran.

Shea looked down, curiously, at the last assailant, who was still gripping him around the waist, trying to bend him backward. Then he deliberately heaved up his axe helve and brought down the rounded oval of the halt against the man’s head twice. At the second crunching blow the man’s grip relaxed. Shea threw him, staggering and clutching, clear across the garage floor, then turned and leaped into his car.

With a grinding roar and a honk of the horn, the dust-white flivver went out of the wide-open doorway into the street.

Men jumped aside, yelled, pursued. Somebody fired a revolver, and the bullet smashed the windshield in front of Shea’s face. Other shots sounded, but flew wild. The car went around the nearest corner on two wheels, and shot away toward the west at thirty miles an hour.

Thady Shea had come and gone.

CHAPTER VII—THADY SHEA HAS A VISITOR

Thady Shea was on his way to Number Sixteen. The sheriff was on his way to Silver City with Mrs. Crump, Gilbert, and Lewis. In the ordinary course of events, Thady Shea would have encountered them in the cañon north of No Agua. The ordinary course of events did not obtain, however, because of Ben Aimes.

Having sustained nothing worse than a broken wrist and a sore head, Ben Aimes upon being revived at once telephoned the store and post office at No Agua to stop Thady Shea. No Agua was the jumping-off place at the edge of the bad lands, and it was nothing but a long frame building from which radiated all the cañon trails to north and west.

When Shea arrived, he found a reception committee awaiting him in the shape of a dozen men, most of whom were mounted upon horses or mules as if they had convened for a Sunday holiday. Shea needed no information upon the subject of his reception. He had previously observed the telephone wires and had drawn his own conclusions. As he drew near to No Agua he was the recipient of a bullet that finished off the windshield and sent a sliver of glass slithering across his forehead.

What next happened was wild and incoherent in all subsequent reports. Shea cared absolutely nothing for results, so long as he got through. When he found his path barred by mounted men, he opened up the throttle wide, shut his eyes, and gripped hard to the wheel. General opinion was that the first bullet had killed him and that the car was running wild; for blood was trickling over his face from his slashed brow, and he was a fearsome sight.

The dust-white flivver smashed head-on into the mass of men and horses. It paused as though for breath, then went ahead. The radiator was boiling over; and when that red-hot projectile began to bore its way, things happened. The steam seared into a big mule, and the mule instantly began to plunge and kick. Two horses went down and the flivver climbed over them and their riders. A vaquero was pitched across the hood and with screams of anguish managed to leap away to earth. A horse sat on the right-hand fender and toppled over upon his rider as the car went ahead.

After a moment Thady Shea opened his eyes and looked back upon a scene of wonderful confusion. Men and horses strewed the ground or were plunging in all directions. With a sigh of relief Thady Shea found that he was still going forward; so, in order to avoid the bullets that came swarming and buzzing after him, he aimed for the nearest cañon, which was not his proper road at all, and followed the trail blindly.

An hour later this trail petered out at an abandoned mine in the bad lands. With a vague general idea of his directions, Shea went plunging off through the sand, winding his way past huge, eroded masses and amid weird pinnacles of wind-blown rock. Somewhere past noon he was in the lava beds, and was apprised of the fact by his tires blowing out one by one.

Lack of pneumatic cushions did not trouble Shea in the least. He punished the poor flivver unmercifully, and by the eternal miracle of flivvers the car kept going. Shea climbed rocky masses, shoved through sand, rolled over jutty fields of volcanic rock, and when the afternoon was half gone, came upon automobile tracks. He had found his road at last. From the tracks, he could tell that the sheriff’s automobile had lately gone that way—but in the direction of Silver City.

When, late in the afternoon, Shea came to Number Sixteen, it was deserted. Upon the door of the shack which Mrs. Crump had occupied was pinned a brief note. It read:

Thady: Set rite here till I get back. We are pinched but not for long. My gun is over my bunk. Set tite. Yours,

—— M. CRUMP.

Methodically, Shea went to the other shack and began to wash the dried blood from his face, plastering the cut on his brow.

In front of him he propped the note and studied it, tried to read between the lines. It had been written, he thought grimly, as a forlorn hope, a desperate chance that Thady Shea might yet save the day. Mrs. Crump had not been aware of his culpability; or, if she had been aware of it, she had mercifully indulged in no recriminations.

“Well, I’m here,” said Shea, then glanced quickly around. The sound of his voice in that solitude was startling.

He felt in no mood for theatricalisms, and that morning he had given vent to none; but now, when he tried to express himself otherwise, homely words failed him. So long had he mantled himself in the braggadocio rhetoric and rounded phrases of The Profession, that he could not rid himself of the bluff which had bolstered up his years of miserable failure. Therefore, he held his peace and tried to face facts squarely. The lesson of primitive silence was another thing that he learned in this strange land.

Now, for the first time, he became aware that he had not come off undamaged that morning. His body was bruised, his face and head were much cut about by hard knuckles. Also, he had not eaten since the previous night, and hunger was beginning to ride him. So he took temporary possession of Mrs. Crump’s shack and began to prepare a meal.

The single room of the shack was fairly large, since it had to serve not only as living quarters for Mrs. Crump, but as a dining room for all hands. The walls were rough and bare; like the bunk in the corner, they were formed from hewn timbers, unchinked. Gilbert had knocked together a big mess table; the seats were puncheon stools; in the lean-to adjoining was the kitchen, consisting of a small sheet-iron stove, frying pan, and a kettle. And yet, about this primitive bareness Mrs. Crump had contrived to throw a fragrance of femininity—a rag of curtain to the unglazed window, a faded photograph of the late departed Crump, a battered clock decorated by a scarlet cactus flower, an ancient, white, mended lace counterpane that covered her bunk. And upon the table, a red cloth that was always spick and span. Only a Mrs. Crump would have bothered to bring such tag ends of womanly presence into this bare and rugged spot in the wilderness.

Contemplating these things, Thady Shea sighed; he sighed at thought of Mehitabel Crump, doomed to live in such a place, destitute of all things her woman’s heart must have craved. He ceased his sighing, suddenly aware that his bacon was burned.

Thady Shea knew more about prospecting for tungsten than he did about cooking. His coffee was miserable and wretched in spirit. His bacon was brown and hard as wood. Trying to get the beans warmed throughout, he forgot to stir them until unpleasantly reminded of his remissness. However, by the time he had to light the oil lamp in order to see his food, he had managed to make a fair meal, in quantity if not in quality.

Afterward, he filled his pipe and sat in the doorway, staring upon the empurpled masses of the mountains that were piled into the evening sky, and trying to conclude what he must do next.

Mrs. Crump’s scribbled mention of her revolver drew a whimsical smile to his lips. He could not remember having fired a revolver in all his life, except with stage blanks; and he had not the slightest intention of learning the art at this time.

He was slightly surprised at his own lack of feeling in regard to the men whom he had hurt. His one uneasiness was lest he be arrested—or, rather, lest someone try to arrest him. He did not intend to leave Number Sixteen until it was safe to do so; until he was certain the place was secure. Therefore, if any officers appeared, a fight must ensue. Consequences did not matter. Thady Shea was quite willing to face any ultimate dispensation of justice so long as he kept Number Sixteen intact for Mrs. Crump.

“I must make up for what I’ve done,” he reflected. “Then I can go. I am a failure, a sodden wreck upon the shoals of self. Once let my reparation be established, and I shall go forth into the world again to seek the dregs of fortune with the bent diviner’s rod of Thespian mimicry.”

He broke short off, smiling at his own language.

Shea knew inwardly that the old life was gone from him forever. He looked up at the looming mountains and felt a sudden savage joy in himself; a joy that frightened him, so primitive and sweeping was it. He had fought with men—had conquered them! In a measure he was done with all self-recrimination for his weakness and failure. Those were things of the past. He would not be weak again! Remorse fell away from him, and peace came.

The more he thought about arrest, however, the less probable it seemed. Ben Aimes had given him liquor, which was in defiance of law. Shea already knew that Mackintavers et. al. were not desirous of getting into court unless they had an ironclad hold upon the other fellow; this was proven by Mrs. Crump’s having “shot up” Dorales with impunity. If the proceedings of the past twenty-four hours were given a public airing, sundry matters might require explanations which would be uncomfortable for Mackintavers.

No, upon that count he was perhaps safe enough; but there would be other counts. They would try to get him—how? No matter. Here was another reason why he must leave Number Sixteen. He must lose himself from those enemies, and he must not involve Mrs. Crump in the mix-up.

Thus deciding, it must be admitted rather vaguely, Thady Shea knocked out his pipe and sought his bunk. He was not so ill pleased with himself, after all; he would yet save Number Sixteen for Mrs. Crump!

The following morning, for the first time in the weeks since Mrs. Crump had picked him up, Thady Shea relaxed in blissful indolence. He had no idea of how the vein or veins of strontianite should be worked. There was little to do about the cabin. So he climbed the long hogback and settled down to smoke and watch the road that wound down from the cañon toward the lava beds, the road that led into the world.

The day passed idly and uneventful. With its passing, Shea felt more assured that his theory was correct; that he was not to be arrested. So convinced of this was he, that when, toward sunset, he discerned a dusty streak betokening the approach of an automobile, he made certain that Mrs. Crump was returning.

Thady Shea sat where he was, resolved to tell her frankly the whole story of his disgrace, then to pause for no argument, but to go. He did not so misjudge her as to think that she would kick him out; still, he felt that he had been false to her trust, and as a part of his penance he must go away, until he might be able to come back a man renewed. A most indistinct idea, this, but strongly persistent. Besides, he would now be a marked man and he must not involve her in his possible danger.

Somewhat to his surprise and uneasiness, as the approaching flivver drew up the cañon Shea could not recognize the gigantic figure of Mehitabel Crump aboard. He saw only three men in the car, and he knew none of them. Two in the rear seat were evidently natives; from the dirty and heavily laden appearance of the car, Shea deduced that these men had come upon no errand of the law. They seemed, rather, to be prospectors or campers.

Near the dust-white flivver the car came to a halt. The driver alighted, and having previously made out the motionless figure of Thady Shea on the hillside above, waved a hand and started upward. The two natives climbed out and began to unstrap bundles.

As the visitor came near to him, Shea saw that the man was powerfully built, roughly dressed, and possessed striking gray eyes beneath black brows and hair.

“Howdy, old-timer!” greeted the new arrival, pausing with outstretched hand and a frank smile. “My name’s Logan, Tom Logan. We got lost over in the lava beds and struck your auto tracks. We’re prospecting. You don’t mind if we camp out here for the night?”

Shea rose and gravely shook hands.

“Not a bit, my friends,” he said, then pointed a hundred yards beyond the halted car. “You see that big rock down the valley? Instruct your comrades to make camp at that point or below it.”

Logan gave him a puzzled look. That word “valley” was strange in these parts.

“Eh, partner? You’re not joking?”

“Sir, the habiliments of jest do not become me,” returned Shea, his cavernous eyes piercingly steady.

“But this is all free country, isn’t it?”

“It is not. No person may intrude upon this property, sir. You are welcome to water and food if your needs be such, and I am fain of your company. Kindly instruct your knaves to move as I have said.”

For a moment Logan met the gravely firm gaze of Shea, then turned and lifted his hands to his mouth. He shouted something in the patois, to which the two natives waved assent. They turned their car and took it to the rock that marked the limit of Mrs. Crump’s location in the cañon. Logan began to roll a cigarette with deft fingers.

“Prospecting hereabouts, I presume?” he inquired. “I didn’t get your name.”

Shea found himself warming to the cultivated accents.

“My name, sir, is Shea.”

“W-whew!” A long whistle broke from Logan, whose thin lips parted in a smile. “So you’re the man! I heard about you at Zacaton City last night. They say you cleaned up Aimes and his crowd for giving you a drink, and that you threatened to do worse to any man who offered you one again! Good thing I didn’t do it, eh? Glad to meet you, Shea. I’m set against liquor myself. You’ve sure become famous in this part of the country!”

Thady Shea did not altogether like the swarthy features and the odd contrast between steely eyes and coarse black hair, but he did like applause. He took the stranger down to the shacks and when Logan set about cooking an excellent dinner, Shea was delighted.

Over their meal the two men conversed at length, chiefly on the subject of mining. Tom Logan asked no questions about Number Sixteen, but he formed the private opinion that Thady Shea was earnest, upright, and a simpleton. Two thirds of this diagnosis was correct. The other third was destined to make trouble for Tom Logan.

At last, over their third pipe, Logan yawned.

“This here is a queer country,” he observed. “You’re prospecting for gold hereabouts, of course. But d’you know, Shea, the old prospecting business is changed? Yes, it is. Nowadays two thirds of the prospectors turn up their noses at gold. There are new things in the field, things that pay better than gold.

“Platinum, for instance; or tungsten or manganese. Take my own case—I’m one of a dozen men sent out by a big New York chemical house. I’m after strontium. It comes in two forms, celestite and strontianite. Celestite brings about twenty dollars a ton at seaboard; but strontianite, when converted into nitrates, brings five hundred. The average old-time prospector hasn’t the chemical knowledge to find such things as those.”

“Maybe,” said Shea, reflectively. “But yonder hillock, black against the stars, holds in its deep heart veins of mineral; and in those veins, my friend, there runs an ichor bearing the self-same name as that you seek.”

Logan stared over this for a moment. Then:

“By jasper! D’you mean that you’ve got strontianite here?”

“So they do tell me,” averred Shea, modestly. He added with frankness, that while he held a third interest in the claim, he knew little of minerals.

Logan displayed a cordial and friendly interest, and asked to see samples. Shea found one or two and set them forth, telling what he knew of the veins. The interest of the visitor grew and waxed enthusiastic. Logan examined the samples closely, and then his gray eyes suddenly struck up at Shea.

“Look here!” he exclaimed, eagerly. “Would you, provided the veins and so forth run as you describe them, accept ten thousand dollars cash for your interest in this location?”

To Thady Shea this offer came like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.

“You see,” pursued Logan, “a deposit like this would answer my company’s purposes admirably. We might never find another like it. Ten thousand is not a large offer, but it would be a year or more before you’d begin to pull money out of the property. Say yes, and I’ll examine the location to-morrow; if it’s what you say, I’ll buy your right and interest in the property, sign the papers, and before to-morrow night you’ll cash my check.”

Shea rose to his feet. He wanted to get away from the influence of this man’s personality. He wanted to ask counsel from the friendly stars.

“I’ll think it over,” he said, unsteadily. “By myself——”

“Sure,” Logan agreed, heartily. “I’ll make out the papers, eh? We’re not the kind of men to haggle and fight each other for price.”

Thady Shea stalked forth into the darkness, his soul a riot of emotions. “Ten thousand dollars!” he murmured, staring up at the blazing stars. What a sum to turn over to Mrs. Crump upon leaving! With that sum, Mrs. Crump could at once begin development work, independently of Logan’s company. With that sum, she could set trucks at work hauling ore to the railroad. With that sum, she could do—anything!

It never occurred to him that he might keep the money for himself; it never occurred to him that he was actually one third owner of the mine, and could sell out any time. Never had he thought about money in connection with Number Sixteen; he had not mentally placed his partnership with Mrs. Crump upon any financial basis. It was because of this very simplicity of thought that Mrs. Crump had felt drawn to him. It was because of this, too, that she had instructed Coravel Tio to record the entire property in the name of Thady Shea, in order to camouflage her ownership from the many eyes of Sandy Mackintavers. But this Shea did not know.

Thady Shea came to the big gray bowlder that marked the limit of the cañon location. He stood against it, gazing upward at the stars, lost in his dream. The rocky mass shut off from him the flickering fire, built by Logan’s native companions. Behind, the light in the shack was as another star. He was alone. He was alone, and in the valley of decision.

Ten thousand dollars—for Mrs. Crump! Never had Thady Shea visioned so much money all in one lump. Nor did he now vision it as his own.

Shea did not know that he was technically and legally the owner of Number Sixteen. But the fact was on record, and Tom Logan knew it perfectly well. Back in the shack, under the oil lamp, Logan was already chuckling over the cleverly drawn papers which would make him the sole owner of Number Sixteen—for the comparatively unimportant sum of ten thousand dollars! He had persuaded Sandy Mackintavers to gamble that sum, to play it as a table stake.