CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“THERE’S MYSTERY HERE——”
“Dear Pat:—
“In God’s name, what were you thinking of when you sent this fellow Hawkins over here with a five years’ contract? Couldn’t you see the man’s a crook? Are the lawyers in Los Angeles all dead, that you couldn’t call one up on the ’phone and ask a question or two about letting places on shares? Of course you’d want to write the contract yourself. Perfect Patricia is the little lady that invented brains! If she doesn’t know all there is to know in the world, she’ll go as far as she does know and fake the rest.
“Permit me to congratulate you, Miss Connolly, upon the artistic manner in which you handed over to James Blaine Hawkins the best imitation of a legacy that I ever saw! Of course you’d have to invent a new way of having your pocket picked. Two thirds and found! My word!
“Any ordinary, peanut-headed man would have given the usual one half of increase in stock, and the old stock made good at the end of the term of contract. And not found, Pat! No one but you would ever dream of doing a thing like that. And he says you agreed to buy his gas and oil. Pat, if ever a girl needed some one to look after her, you’re that small person. And he bragged about it—the dirty whelp. Laughed at the way you met his terms and thought they were all right!
“He never came nearer a licking in his life and missed it, Pat. But I had another scheme, and I didn’t want to gum it up by letting on I knew you. I had to sit pretty and let him brag, and register admiration for the rotter. He’s gone now—it worked. But he’ll come back—to-morrow, when the sun is shining and his blood thaws out again. I may have to lick him yet. If he were a white man, with the intelligence of a hen turkey, I could play the joker and make him lay down his hand. But I’ll probably have to take a few falls out of him before I can convince him he’s whipped from the start.
“You know, Pat, you’ve made an ungodly mess of things. In the whole sorry assortment of blunders you did just one thing that gives me a chance to save you. Before I left the city I made it a point to find out what kind of power runs a Power of Attorney, anyway. I happen to know a darned good lawyer, and I had a talk with him.
“Pat, you did something when you gave me that Power of Attorney. You gave me more right over the disposal of this place than if I were your husband. I came over here to use this right and sell Johnnywater. I think even James Blaine Hawkins will stop, look and listen when I tell him how come to-morrow.
“He’ll come back. A good, strong dose of sunlight will bring him back—on the rampage, I’m guessing—mad to think how scared he was when he left. I played a dirty trick on him, Pat. I made him think the psychic cat was a spook.
“He thought it all right! But you see, I didn’t know.
“I wonder if he really did see something. I think he did—or at any rate he kidded himself into thinking he did. I never dreamed he’d see.
“Pat, you called me flabby souled. That hurt—and it wasn’t my vanity you hit. I’ve wanted you to respect me, Pat, in spite of my profession. And when you flung that at me, I saw you didn’t understand. Lord knows I hate a whiner, and I won’t try to explain just why I called you unjust.
“But after I got over here, Pat, I began to see the way I must have looked to you. You took at face value all the slams you’ve heard about the movies. You lumped us all together and called us cheap and weak and vain. Just puppets strutting around before the camera like damned peacocks. You couldn’t see that maybe it takes quite as much character for a man to make good in the movies and live clean and honest, as it does to drive cows to water.
“But after all these hills and the desert out here beyond the cañon are mighty big and clean—my God, Pat, they’d shame the biggest man that ever lived! When you get out here and measure yourself alongside them you feel like a buffalo gnat on an elephant. And there’s things in this cañon it takes a man to meet.
“There’s mystery here; the kind you can’t put your finger on. The kind the movies can’t feature on the screen. Until James Blaine Hawkins drove into the scene, I’d have sworn a man could live here for forty years in the wilderness like the children of Israel—or maybe it was Noah and the ark—and never meet a villain who’s out to make you either the goat or a corpse—both, maybe, if the story runs that way.
“But I’ve learned something I never knew before. I’ve learned there are things a man can fight that’s worse than crooks. Dad was kind of religious, and he used to quote Bible at me. One of his favorite lines was about ‘He that is master of himself is greater than he that taketh a city.’ It sounded like the bunk to me when I was a kid. Now I kind of see what the old man was driving at. This country puts it right up to you, Pat.
“So, I’m going to find out something before I leave here, Pat. I want to know who’s going to lick: Gary Marshall, or Johnnywater Cañon. It sort of dawned on me gradually that if I leave here now, I’ll leave here licked. Licked by something that’s never laid a finger on me! Scared out—like Waddell. Pat, my dear, I never could go back and face you if I had that to remember. Every time you looked at me I’d feel that you were calling me flabby souled in your heart—and I’d know I had it coming.
“Of course, I don’t need to be hit with an axe in order to take a hint. I got the slap you sent me, Pat—along with James Blaine Hawkins. You know I’m over here. You know it as well as you know anything. Even if I didn’t say I was coming—even though I did say I wasn’t coming—you knew I came. You’d call up the studio, and Mills would tell you I was out of town on business. So you’d know; there’s nothing else could take me out.
“So I got the slam you handed me, when you let the place to Hawkins for five years. You couldn’t go into court, Pat, and swear that you didn’t offer me the management of Johnnywater. The very fact that I have all the documents pertaining to the deal, plus the Power of Attorney, will prove that anywhere. Then Monty Girard knows it—a valuable witness, Monty. So I can save you from your own foolishness, and I’ll do it, young lady, if I have to fight you in court. Hawkins is not going to get his two thirds and found! The two hundred he grafted off you I may not be able to save. But I’ll keep the rest out of his clutches, make no mistake.
“I’ve got the glooms to-night, Pat. Feel sort of blue and sick at heart. It hit me pretty hard, reading that contract you drew up for Hawkins to brag about. It hurt to see him take that paper out of his pocket—paper that you had handled, Pat, words that you had typed. He’s not fit to touch it. He left it here—lying on the table when he beat it, scared silly. You were stubborn when you signed your name—you did that to spite Gary. Own up now, Pat; didn’t you do it just for spite—because I left without saying good-by? I wonder if it hurt you like it hurt me. I reckon not. Girls are so damned self-righteous—but then, they have the right. God knows, the best of men don’t amount to much.
“There’s something I want to do for you; if I don’t do it before I leave here, it won’t be for want of trying. You’ll never make one dollar off this investment, just hanging on to it as it stands. This country’s full of loco, for one thing. The percentage of loss is higher than my dad would ever have stood for. Practically every horse you own has got a touch of loco. And Monty says the calf crop is never up to normal. It’s a losing game, in dollars and cents. A man could stay with it and make a bare living, I suppose. He could raise his own vegetables, put up enough hay to keep a horse or two, and manage to exist. But that would be the extent of it. And I don’t want to see you lose—you won’t, if I can help it. Having Hawkins in the deal may complicate matters—unless he quits. And, honey, I’ll make the quitting as good as possible for him.
“I was sore when I started to write. But now I’m just sorry—and I love you, Pat. I wouldn’t have you different if I could.
“Gary.”