CHAPTER VII—STARTLING PREDICAMENTS
That talk with the son of the Western manager of the Mohave & Southwestern Railroad did not set well on Lemuel’s mind. Even the fact that the Geerusalem Searchlight’s bulletin board, with chalky eloquence, fairly bristling with superlatives, made bold to proclaim him “California’s Bat Masterson,” carried little if any thrill for him. Sangerly’s words sounded like trouble in disguise. Sangerly’s keen deduction of what had happened to the paymaster’s money seemed alarmingly correct. It seemed more, for on the heels of its apparent certitude, came the distressing suspicion that Dot, having assisted Billy Gee during his whole period at the ranch, must know something about the disappearance of his saddlebags. Sangerly was right. No man in the bandit’s condition would have lost precious moments trying to hide his stealings, particularly in a trackless, changeable sand waste such as lay to the south. It would have been the height of folly, a useless piece of work, for he never could have found his cache again. There was not the slightest doubt but that that twenty thousand dollars was on the Huntington Ranch.
So thought Lemuel, and then he recalled that Sangerly had mentioned the presence of two railroad detectives who were to aid him in the search. What if they should dig up evidence involving Dot? Sheriff Warburton had not so much as hinted about her having harbored the bandit, from what Sangerly had said; yet Warburton must surely have suspected it. Bob Warburton certainly was a good friend.
The longer Lemuel reviewed the situation, the more he became convinced that he must get Dot out of the country before these detectives began their investigations. He shuddered at the fearful disgrace were her name mentioned, even in the remotest way, with the whole ugly affair. He would pack her out of Soapweed Plains immediately. Later on he would question her. He was fully convinced that she would give him all the details on the subject without hesitation when he asked her.
He had still a few minutes left before the time he must report back to the stage office. These he devoted to hiring a man who would look after the ranch during their absence. Afterward, he sought the quiet and seclusion of a back street and wandered aimlessly about, his mind busy with this new disturbing angle that threatened to sully the clean name of Huntington. So preoccupied was he, that he entirely overlooked his intention of paying Mrs. Liggs a visit to inquire the reason for her cold treatment of him shortly before.
He found the rented machine ready and waiting for him. Clambering in beside the driver, he was soon whirling out of camp toward home. A strange sense of security came to him. Sangerly and his sleuths were left behind, and it would be only a matter of a few short hours ere he and Dot would be lost in the confusion and bustle of traveling thousands. The proverbial needle in the haystack would be as easy to find as they, he told himself.
When within a mile of the ranch he chanced to glance in the direction of the low line of chromatic hills across which his acreage extended. A man was trudging along through the greasewood brush, steering diagonally for the road. He was less than a quarter of a mile off, and Lemuel squinted at him curiously.
“Who’s that sun lizard? Kin you make him out?” he asked the driver.
The latter looked. “Sure. That’s old Tinnemaha Pete, a prospector. You must know him. Hangs around Mrs. Liggs’ store a lot. She’s bin grubstaking him for years, I hear. Some one was telling me he used to be her husband’s partner.”
Lemuel nodded. “Come to think of it now, I did meet him there wunst.”
“Poor old devil! If it weren’t for her he’d have starved to death long ago,” said the driver. “The gold fever sure gets ’em, don’t it? He’s been going it all his life and never found anything. Never will, I reckon. One of these days, he’ll go out and the old desert’ll pick his bones clean. That’s how most of these granddads end up.”
The machine sped on, its dust cloud trailing across the flat, enveloping the bent, shriveled form of Tinnemaha Pete, rocking pathetically along on his unsteady legs, a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, bound for Geerusalem. Like some misshapen wraith, born of the grotesqueness and deformity of that wild, mystic desolation, he fled on, his long gray beard whisking about in the hot breeze, his baggy clothes bulging and shrinking in the wrench and flip of its frolicking.
A few minutes later the automobile stopped before the Huntington gate, and Lemuel sprang out and hurried up the walk toward the house. Dot, attracted by the approach of the car, had come to the front door. She greeted her father with an expression of blank amazement.
“What in the world, daddy——” she began.
“Git ready to travel, hon!” he cried out excitedly, as he put an arm around her and drew her into the house. “Looket! Looket! We got money. What d’you think o’ that?” He fished out a handful of bills and waved them before her face. He broke into a gleeful laugh, so well assumed that it deceived her. “What’d I tell you, eh? Bob Warburton come through like a leetle major. Loaned me two thousand dollars on my note. Think o’ that! Ain’t that jest dandy? Come on, now! Chuck some duds in a valise. We’re startin’ right out on a big blow-out. We’re goin’ to see the world—me an’ you.” He romped around the room with her, like an overjoyed schoolboy.
“But, daddy,” she protested in bewilderment, “how can I? Why, you don’t give me time to——”
“You don’t need nothin’. I’m goin’ to tog you out complete with a hull bran’-new outfit, soon’s we hit the city. Hurry up! We ain’t got all day to talk about it, Dot. We’re strikin’ south to Mirage. I’m on’y takin’ a shirt an’ a pair o’ socks, myself.” He headed for his room.
“But who’s to look out after the place, the chickens and stock and——”
“I got it all fixed for a man to come this afternoon—Billy Higgins,” he called out. “He’ll ride over from camp every day an’ look around. Come on, hon! Do’s I say, can’t you? That driver is chargin’ fifteen dollars an hour.”
Dot capitulated. She hurried into her room and closed the door after her. Hesitating an instant, she locked it cautiously; then she dragged a suit case out of the closet and spread it open on the bed. For some seconds, she stood motionless, undecided, in troubled thought. In the middle drawer of her bureau lay a fortune in stolen money. During her father’s absence in camp she had carefully counted it over to satisfy her suspicions that it was stolen money, and she had found that it reckoned up to the amount Lemuel had told her was stolen by Billy Gee from the paymaster’s car of the Mohave & Southwestern Railroad Company—twenty thousand dollars.
What must she do with it? Here she was the custodian of a great sum, ill gotten, placed in her hands without her knowledge or consent, without a word or hint as to what was expected of her. She had been made an innocent accomplice. She knew that, in the circumstances, were the house to be searched for this missing booty of Billy Gee, she would have a desperate time, if the officers should discover that drawerful of bills, to account for the presence of an amount of money the same as that lost by the railroad company.
Until her father had burst in upon her, urging this uncalled-for hurried departure that for some unexplained reason he had given her not the slightest hint about, she had quite decided that the best course for her to pursue was to go to Geerusalem and turn the booty over to the constable or the postmaster, stating simply that she had found it and wished it returned to its rightful owners. This she had determined to do in person; for if there was one thing on which she had firmly settled her mind, it was that Lemuel should be kept in ignorance about the money. After his display of desperation last night and the fearful threats he had made, she shrank from telling him of her discovery, lest in a moment of recklessness he might be tempted to force her to surrender the treasure to him, and appropriate it to his own uses. She had grown sick at the terrifying thought.
Another thing—one that had impressed her more deeply than she really knew at the time—was the realization that Billy Gee had left her this fortune out of appreciation for the little she had done for him. The act bespoke the character of man he was at the core—plunder though this fortune represented. It was about as big a gift as he could have made to her. He had risked his life to get it—been shot and bled white in the bargain. While she and her father had been quarreling over him he had lain in the darkness of her room, listening. He had learned that they were very poor, that the dream of the Huntingtons had been to give their daughter an education, that, notwithstanding their financial straits, that daughter was not in favor of surrendering him—outlaw, though he was—to gain the comforts that ten thousand dollars’ reward would bring. She also knew that later, in the hayloft, he had purposely misled her as to the contents of his saddlebags, in order to make his secret gift certain of acceptance.
Just now she stood in her room and pondered over what she should do with this unwelcome gift, since her father’s impetuousness had upset her plans. She reasoned that it would be nothing short of folly to leave the money hidden until their return, thus risking its loss by fire or theft. There seemed no other way except to take it along with her. They wouldn’t be gone but a few days, perhaps two weeks at the longest. Once back home she could carry out her original intention of putting it in the hands of the Geerusalem authorities for transmission to the general offices of the Mohave & Southwestern Railroad.
So thinking, she opened the bureau drawer and hurriedly wrapped up the stacks of bills in her mother’s old silk shawl, tied the bundle securely with string, and packed it into the suit case along with some articles of clothing. Then she began dressing, in a growing fury of joyful anticipation and excitement, for her long-wished-for trip to a big city was at hand, her longing of years to be gratified at last.
Half an hour after Lemuel arrived from camp he was locking the front door of his home and placing the key under the mat for Sangerly. He walked slowly down the gravel path to the gate and crossed the garden toward the trim little grave under the drooping pepper tree. Wistfully he gazed down at it, and the moisture crept into his eyes when he saw Dot kneel and kiss the tips of her fingers and press them gently on the mound.
“Little angel mother,” she breathed. “How I wish you were going with us. How I wish you were here, darling.”
The chauffeur, sitting in the machine outside the gate, averted his head and looked away into the gaunt desolation of the plain.
Shortly afterward, father and daughter were comfortably settled in the rear seat and, like two children embarking on some glorious adventure, began their journey down the hot sandy floor of Soapweed Plains, bound for the dreary railroad station of Mirage. They reached there around four o’clock, ate dinner in the combination saloon-store-restaurant, and boarded the northbound train at dark.
It so happened that, owing to the joyous anticipation and breathless conjecture with which the trip itself engrossed her, not until the conductor came down the aisle to collect the tickets was Dot suddenly reminded that she had not asked her father how long he contemplated being gone. The uniformed person had passed on when she broached the subject.
“Are we going to be away very long, daddy?” she asked.
“We sure are,” said Lemuel cheerfully. “We’re out for a big time. What I mean—big. An’ we’re goin’ to see everything worth seein’, you kin gamble on that, Dot. If there’s anything your little heart desires, jest say so.”
“But how long—about a week or so?” she persisted. “There was something I wanted to attend to when I get back.”
“Get back?” laughed Lemuel. “Now listen here, hon! Furst, me an’ you’s goin’ to have the fling of our young lives. Then——” He broke off and, looking fixedly at her, grinned oddly. “You’ve seen the last of Soapweed Plains, Dot, for anyway three years. I’m toggin’ you up like a queen, an’ you’re sailin’ into Longwell’s Seminary for to be edjucated. That’s the main reason why I borried the money.”
Dot stared at him incredulously. Then, marking the strange set to his jaws, the triumphant glint in his habitually mild eyes, cold fear gripped her heart suddenly.
“Three years!” she choked. “Daddy, you’ve—you’ve deceived me. You’ve lied to me——”
“I’ve done it for your own good, Dot. ’Tain’t wrong to lie when it’s to help some one you love.” He paused. “You say you got somepn to ’tend to. Is that why you want to git back home?” he asked, his mind on the missing paymaster’s money.
“Not altogether. But—but it’s one of the reasons.”
“An’ it’s important, ain’t it, honey?” As he spoke he bent his head and gazed up into her face, his expression crafty, knowing.
“Not so important as caring for you, daddy,” she returned brokenly. “Nothing in this world matters so much as that.”
He did not press the subject. He sat back in his seat and studied his horny hands wistfully.
Shortly afterward, Dot began arguing against this decision of his to send her to school. They talked for two straight hours, she objecting on every ground she could think of, he countering stubbornly, now besting her, again being himself bested. Spiritedly she protested. She was too old to go to school; they needed the money for other purposes; she wouldn’t leave him to live alone on the ranch; she didn’t want an education. But all her vehemence and tears and supplications were of no avail. There was no shaking the determination of Lemuel Huntington.
So, in sheer exhaustion, she finally gave up and, lapsing into silence, devoted herself to the solution of the momentous problem of what she should do with the stolen treasure she was bringing along with her, wrapped in her mother’s old silk shawl.
After long reflection she concluded she would turn it over to the San Francisco authorities on her arrival, reasoning that it really did not matter which civil authorities received it, since it would be forwarded to the railroad company anyway. Having relieved her mind thus, her thoughts drifted to Billy Gee, and she found herself wondering lingeringly about him and if the wound in his head were giving him much trouble, where he might be in that great, lonely void of desert far to the south, if he were thinking of her. Foolish, vagrant little thoughts, they were; but somehow, they seemed to her to be very serious indeed, and so pleasing as to bring a warmth to her cheeks, and so tragic as to cause the tears to form in her eyes.
Lemuel sat and also reflected, but his thoughts were of another sort, a legion of sleep-dispelling meditations that crowded his brain, clamoring for review. He was so jubilant with himself and the fulfillment of the big dream of his life. His mind in a riot of joyous anticipation, he sat planning to make his brief stay in San Francisco an epochal event.
He threw back his head against the high back of his plush seat and chuckled silently at the clever manner in which he had enticed Dot into leaving the ranch, how splendidly his lie about borrowing two thousand dollars from Sheriff Warburton had worked out, how successfully he had manipulated affairs so that Dot would possibly never know that her father had played the sneak to effect the capture of Billy Gee. Yes, and there was also considerable satisfaction for him in the knowledge that he, Lemuel, had spirited his Dot out of the country before Sangerly and his bloodhounds could even see her, not to mention interview her.
He told himself that if for no other reason than to insure her against annoyance he would likewise keep her whereabouts secret. No one would know that she was attending the Longwell Seminary until the search for the missing twenty thousand dollars had come to an end. Meanwhile, he would contrive to question her and find out what she knew about those saddlebags and their contents. Dot would tell him, of that he felt quite sure; and some day perhaps, when the whole thing was ancient history, and she had graduated with high honors, he would tell her how her father had captured, single-handed, the far-famed daring desperado, Billy Gee, and why he had done it.
Morning found him still wide-eyed, staring unseeingly out of the car window at the multiplying miles of rich San Joaquin Valley acreage flashing by. Around seven o’clock the train stopped for a few minutes at Tracy, a junction town, and passengers from the north began piling in.
A newsboy came hurrying down the aisle, clamoring his wares excitedly. Lemuel hailed the youngster and bought a paper. Dot still slept and, seeing this, he settled himself comfortably in the seat to read. The following instant he caught his breath in sudden alarm, and sat bolt upright. His face paling through its tan, he glared with bulging eyes at the three words printed in large display type across the top of the first page.
DESPERATE BANDIT ESCAPES!
Billy Gee Attacks Sheriff, Plunges From Fast-moving Train Near Burbank.
For a long moment, Lemuel continued to glare fearfully at those headlines, then he sank limply back in his seat.
He felt Dot stir and, looking guiltily at her, saw that she was waking. Whereupon, he stuffed the paper into his pocket and presently rose and walked unsteadily out of the coach, heading for the smoking car. From that instant forward, he carried day and night in his mind a picture of Billy Gee standing in Sheriff Warburton’s room in Geerusalem and he heard again the bandit’s ominous threat:
“Huntington, I’m goin’ to be free one of these days. When I am, I’m huntin’ you up. An’ you’re goin’ to pay, Huntington. Remember that! Damn you, you’ll pay like you never paid in yore life!”