CHAPTER VIII—LAVENDER AND OLD LACE
Alexander Sangerly—“Lex” Sangerly, his friends called him—was a democratic type of Californian, who did not believe that the fact of his father being Western manager of the Mohave & Southwestern Railroad system should of necessity mean that that father’s son must take any exalted credit unto himself. So, notwithstanding the fact that Lex held the important post of division superintendent of the road, he was not above meeting the rank and file of his departments on their own plane, mixing with them, addressing them by their given names, and conducting himself generally in business as well as social affairs very much like any red-blooded human.
Incidentally, it might be well to mention that, although only twenty-seven years old, he was already blossoming out into a prominent railroad figure, with the likelihood of making good future presidential timber for some transcontinental road.
The gold camp of Geerusalem was Lex’s first acquaintance with a desert bonanza settlement, that is, one in the high noon of its prosperity, its mines giving up great fortunes, its people drunk with success scattering their wealth prodigally, its night life unlicensed, violent with rashness and lust; yet Geerusalem with all its lawlessness gripped him with a compelling fascination, the fascination one feels who looks for the first time on something horribly real, incredible of human toleration, though tolerated and upheld by a civilized population that drops back to the primitive when the law is weak.
However, apart from his curiosity and interest in this wild, waspish desert camp, Lex had by chance discovered, on the very day of his arrival, a far more important reason why he was glad he had come to Geerusalem. As he was driving his high-powered roadster up the main street his eye alighted on a modest little signboard nailed above a tiny store, crowded between two large adobe buildings. It read: “Mrs. Agatha Liggs, Dry Goods.”
He had read that modest little sign, with a thrill of joy. There could be but one Agatha Liggs in the whole wide world, he told himself, and that was the dear little woman whom he had known far back in his boyhood days—the mother of his chum and pal, Jerome Liggs.
His earliest memory of Mrs. Liggs and her son dated back to when he was five years old, living in the archaic town of San José, with his parents, during the dark period of his father’s striving to rise out of the rut of clerkship. The two families had been next-door neighbors for a number of years, and he remembered Jerome’s father as a big jovial man, who used to drive a truck by day and play cards with the elder Sangerly by night.
Jerome and Lex attended the same school. Mrs. Liggs’ son was a sturdy, fearless youngster, the dunce of his class. Lex, on the other hand, was timid and delicate, studious and a star scholar. Singularly enough, they had formed a great friendship, perhaps because of their very contrariness of character one to the other and their natural tendency to lean on each other, as it were. Lex never really knew how many times doughty Jerome had stepped in and thrashed a boy bully for him, but he did know that these services more than amply repaid him for the innumerable times that he had helped his champion with problems in arithmetic, grammar, spelling, and the rest of the educational mysteries. Nor could he ever remember the number of occasions he had shared Jerome’s bed overnight; nor had he ever forgotten the countless fat slices of Mrs. Liggs’ pumpkin pie he had devoured.
Up to the age of twelve, this Damon-Pythias comradeship had continued uninterruptedly. Then came the day when Sangerly, senior, had invented a cold-storage system that had promptly found marked favor with the Mohave & Southwestern Railroad, with the result that, besides purchasing his patents, it employed him to oversee the installation of the apparatus in its refrigerator cars.
In the years following the departure of the Sangerlys from San José, the Liggs’ family had dropped out of sight. Lex had once heard from a mutual friend that Jerome’s father had been killed in an accident, and that the widow had moved to the southern part of the State. But though he had never found out what had become of him, he always retained a tender memory of his boy chum, and there seemed nothing that could ever blot out his respect for the lowly pumpkin pie. Now here at last, he had suddenly discovered, in this uproarious frontier settlement of Geerusalem, of all places, the motherly little Mrs. Liggs.
It is scarcely to be wondered at then, that after his talk with Lemuel Huntington in the U. & I. saloon, and before he began his search for the vanished twenty thousand dollars, he must first pay a visit to that diminutive dry-goods store on the main street. At the very moment that Dot’s father was speeding out of town in the automobile that was to take him and his daughter on the first leg of their journey to San Francisco, Lex brought his roadster to a stop before Mrs. Liggs’ establishment.
He found to his surprise that the place was to all appearances closed for the day, the blind drawn down over the display window. Nevertheless, he knocked sharply and peered into the dark interior through the small glass panel in the upper half of the door. Presently the door in the rear of the store opened, and, after a short hesitation, the proprietress herself came walking slowly forward, wiping her eyes on her apron, arranging her white hair and smoothing out her immaculate, stiffly-starched dress. The next moment she was standing in the doorway, looking inquiringly at him through her spectacles.
“Mother Liggs! Bless your dear old heart!” he cried out in a voice vibrant with feeling. “Don’t you know me? Lex Sangerly!” He beamed on her, while she, squinting up at him, searched his face with infinite gravity, a trace of suspicion in her look.
She was a tiny, tired-out mite of a woman, around sixty-five, her hair like snowy silk, her eyes a faded blue, large, and just now showing indications of recent tears. Her dress, muslin and rather old-fashionedly made, was the most correct thing in feminine attire worn in the camp; at least, so declared the godless population of Geerusalem.
She studied her visitor for a few seconds, then her eyes lighted up like twin stars. “Lex—Lex Sangerly! You dearest, dearest boy. Of all things—Lex Sangerly! Oh, I’m so—so glad to see you, Lex. So awful glad to see you——” She choked suddenly.
Clutching his hand, she led him inside, locked the door and, chattering her joy, escorted him to the little living room back of the store. She insisted on his occupying her best chair, fixed a footstool for him under his feet, and sat close beside him, feasting her gaze on him, listening hungrily while he talked. And this he did, regaling her with a summary of what he and his family had been doing since she last saw them. It was a dazzling recital of achievement, with happiness and success through every portion of it, one of those inspiring narratives that makes one’s failures seem more prodigious than they really are.
“And now,” he concluded, “the old man has ordered me to camp out here on this desert until I find out what Billy Gee—the notorious outlaw who was captured last night—did with the twenty thousand dollars he stole from our company. I guess you’ve heard all about it.”
She had taken up her knitting while he talked, her fingers manipulating the needles mechanically, though her eyes never left his face. She stopped now to disentangle a snarl and bent her head over it, plucking nervously at the yarn.
“Yes, I’ve heard,” she said, at last. “Have you any idea, Lex——”
“Not the slightest. I’m making a search of Mr. Huntington’s ranch. That’s where he was caught, you know. By the way, you must know Huntington—a rancher, south of here?”
She nodded as she resumed her knitting. “He made ten thousand dollars mighty easy. The easiest money Lem Huntington ever made—bringing in a dying man.” There was a strain of bitterness in her tones.
“He has rendered the community a great service, Mother Liggs; we can’t overlook that fact,” said Lex. “This wretched scoundrel, Billy Gee, has held up M. & S. trains for the past three years, robbed passengers, and laughed at every posse that ever took up his trail. He’s always been invincible, I hear, managing to slip his pursuers whenever he wanted to. He’s been a menace.”
“That might all be, Lex, but there’s some good in the worst of us. You’ll admit that, won’t you?”
He smiled. “You’re not very familiar with this crook’s exploits, I can see that, Mother Liggs. Why, trainmen who have brushed up against him say he’d as soon kill a man as look at him.”
An audible gasp broke from her. Her thin face paled and set ever so little, while into her faded eyes rose a flickering fire.
“It ain’t true. It’s—it’s sinful for any one to say such a thing. Lex, I want to tell you something about Billy Gee that you can believe, because I never lie, and that is—he’s given away every cent he ever stole. Don’t ask me how I know. Ask any man on the street, and he’ll tell you that there’ll be more broken hearts and empty cupboards now that Billy Gee is—is gone, than if the Geerusalem mines shut down to-morrow.” She paused, then added: “I know it don’t sound just right, Lex, but I wish—I wish he’d never been caught.”
Sangerly regarded her curiously for a moment. Some appealing, subtle sadness he saw in her face caused him to burst out with a merry laugh and lean over and take her in his arms.
“I wouldn’t try to disillusion you for the world, you darling,” he cried, as he kissed her. “You nor any other woman could condemn a man of Billy Gee’s type. You all feel for the wayward man. You pity him. You want to help him, for that is the blessed mission of this wonderful mother love of yours.” He digressed, with a broad smile: “Before I forget, I want to take you out for some real joy rides in a new roadster I have; which means, of course, that you must introduce me around among the first families of Geerusalem. I want to be initiated into the mysteries of bacon and beans and sour dough bread.”
She returned his smile and looked at him, admiration in her eyes. “Did you meet Dot—Lem Huntington’s daughter?” she asked presently.
“No. She’s one of the belles of the camp, I suppose?”
“Dot Huntington is one of the finest girls in the West, Lex.”
“Whew! You’re some little booster. Pretty?”
“Pretty as a picture, and sensible. That’s a combination you don’t often find, Lex, and you know it. She’s a girl any man would kneel to,” she said solemnly.
“Mother Liggs, you interest me. You must tell me more about this charming young lady. I want to meet her. You see, I’ve always believed my San Francisco girl was the prize winner, but it just may be that this fair daughter of Geerusalem is—well, I’ll tell you after I see her.” He paused, then resumed seriously: “Right now, I want to hear about your own affairs. How have you been getting along all these years? And you haven’t even mentioned Jerome. Where is he?”
It was very quiet in Mrs. Liggs’ living quarters, quite like a sanctuary; the three rooms flanked on either side by drab adobe walls and overlooking a back yard of some size, cut up into little plots—the only flower garden in Geerusalem, with a patch of vegetables growing in one corner. A gate opened into a narrow alleyway that led to the rear street.
“Jerome?” echoed Mrs. Liggs, after a short silence. She was gazing intently at her knitting. “Jerome is dead, Lex.” She spoke slowly, haltingly.
“Dead!”
He looked hard at the snowy bowed head a moment. Then he drew her gently to him again and laid his cheek against hers.
“I am so sorry to hear that,” he said in a voice that was tenderly sympathetic. “How long ago——”
“Lex, deary!” she broke in sobbingly. “Don’t let’s talk about it—please! The wound is too fresh, the pain in my heart is too—I can’t explain. Some of these days maybe, I’ll tell you the story. There ain’t many that would understand—that would believe. I know you could, ’cos—’cos you and Jerome were such good friends. When I saw you, you looking so—so happy and prosperous, I just—I just couldn’t help thinking that my boy——” She couldn’t finish. Burying her face in her apron, she wept disconsolately as if her heart would break.
Some time afterward, she told him about herself from the day fifteen years ago, that the Sangerlys moved from San José, and he remarked that it was much the same tale of striving that any of thousands of American mothers might relate—the indomitable, ceaseless struggle to get ahead.
“Then, after Mr. Liggs’ death, we drifted north to Marysville,” she concluded wearily. “I went into the delicatessen business and did well. One day, Jerome—it was a hard battle alone, Lex, but I managed to save money, and afterward I came to Geerusalem and opened this store. I’m the only woman in business here, and every one patronizes me. The boys won’t allow anybody to run opposition to me,” she added, with a faint smile.
Two hours passed quickly, considering that Mrs. Liggs insisted that Lex have lunch with her, disregarding his attempts to explain that he had an appointment with his two detectives at one o’clock.
So it was early afternoon when he finally picked up his hat and prepared to leave. At that juncture, a sharp knock sounded on the kitchen door, and the following moment, Mrs. Liggs was ushering forward an outlandish, shriveled-up, old fellow of seventy, who halted suddenly in the center of the room and fastened a pair of watery blue eyes suspiciously on Lex.
“This is Tinnemaha Pete, Lex,” said Mrs. Liggs. “He’s my prospector, and some day we’re going to strike it rich. Ain’t we, Pete? This is Mr. Sangerly. I knew him when he wore long curls, Pete, and he used to cuddle up in my lap and go to sleep. Didn’t you, Lex?”
“I see that ornery skunk, Lem Huntington, sashayin’ round in a ottermobile—too cussed lazy to drive hisself,” cackled the funny, little old man. “Hell burn his rotten hide! I’d like to—— Hoo, hoo! I’ll fix the stink-cat. See ef I don’t! What’s yore business, Mr. Spangaree? You’re sorter high-toned, ain’t you? City duck, what?” He tossed a bulging canvas sack he carried on his shoulder into a corner of the room. “There’s some rock, Agatha—tol’rable good, tol’rable good.”
Tinnemaha Pete was a horrible example of what the Southwestern desert does to men who sneer at its death-dealing forces and flirt with its snares too long. His body was warped, twisted, broken, his skin dry and tough as weathered leather, his eyes rheumy, burned out by sun glare. A pathetically few thin long hairs of beard still remained to him, and a scanty rim of gray circling the back of his bony, bald head, were the only evidences of a once shaggy brown thatch with which nature had endowed him.
Tinnemaha Pete, however, knew the Mohave Desert from center to circumference better than any man of those times, it was freely conceded. Whatever that gaunt, fiery, dead land had done to him, however hard it had striven to lay him a paralyzed heap to roast alive on its molten bosom, it had not killed the questing spirit of the prospector in him. Winter and summer, for a quarter of a century and more, he had searched and searched and searched that vast solitude for the undiscovered treasures which his experience told him must be somewhere embedded in those countless, chromatic ranges that crisscrossed that untrodden principality.
Through his years of wandering he had come to know the face of the Mohave as intimately as he knew the vile, black, short-stemmed pipe he smoked. What was equally, if not more, important, he had taught Billy Gee what he knew of that desert, thereby making the bandit invincible when fleeing over this no man’s land, with posses yelping at his heels.
A few minutes after the arrival of Tinnemaha Pete, Lex took his departure. Mrs. Liggs saw him to the street door and stood watching him wistfully as he drove away up the street. Then she shuffled tiredly back to the living room, dropped into a chair, and buried her face in her hands. Tinnemaha Pete peered hard at her, his lips moving, guttural sounds issuing from his throat.
“What ails ye?” he cried out. “What ails ye, Agatha?”
And because he surmised and was powerless to help her, he started a wild falsettoed string of abuse leveled at Lemuel Huntington, Sheriff Warburton, and that destiny to whose exactions all men must yield themselves.
“Jerome, son!” sobbed Mrs. Liggs forlornly. “Why couldn’t you have been like him? Dear God, what have I done that I should suffer like this? My burden is so heavy. Lord, so awful heavy. Pete—Pete, that was Jerome’s chum, his boyhood chum. And I—I had to tell him Jerome was—was dead. I—I just couldn’t tell him the—the truth.”
The queer old desert rat broke into a gale of insane laughter. “Mark me! Cuss-durn me, you mark me, Agatha!” he squeaked excitedly, his watery eyes afire. He trotted up to her side and shook a dried claw of a finger into her face. “Mark ye! Let Jerome boy git clear of that scalawag politician sheriff, an’ he’ll be off like a jackrabbit! Hain’t I learned him how to hide an’ go seek in that sand pile? Eh, hain’t I? Glory be, she’s a grand sand pile, Agatha! An’ he knows her, Jerome does—every hide-out, every water hole, the ol’ Injun trails, the ornery tricks of her an’—an’ there’s scores on scores of box cañons, that he knows, that he kin crawl out of an’ give Mr. Sheriff the hoss laugh. Yes, he kin. An’ nobody knows ’em, but me an’ him. Wommin! He’ll be off like a jackrabbit, I tell ye, wunst he’s in the clear.” He paused, glaring about the room. The canvas sack he had thrown in the corner caught his eye. “There’s the rock he asked you to have me git him, Agatha. It’s lousy—plumb lousy with gold, d’ye mark? An’ the ledge’ll go down to hell, she’s that true. I’ve called her the ‘Billy Geerusalem,’” he added in a furious whisper.