“Well, I don’t care,” returned Billy, “my father is honest and nobody ever robbed him of his claim!”
“Hooh! Who wants it?” jeered Wunpost arrogantly. “I’m talking about a real mine. Your old man’s claims are stuck up in a canyon where a flying machine couldn’t hardly go and about the time he gets his road built another cloudburst will come along and wash it away. Oh, don’t talk to me, I know– I’ve been all along those peaks and right down past his mine–and I tell you it isn’t worth stealing!”
“And I’ve been up there, too, and helped pack out the ore, and I tell you you don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Billy’s eyes flashed dangerously as she sprang up to face him and for a minute they matched their wills; then Wunpost laughed shortly and stepped out into the open where the sun was just topping the mountains.
“Well all right, kid,” he said, “have your own way about it. It makes no difference to me.”
“No, I guess not,” retorted Billy, “or you’d find out what you were talking about before you said that my father was a fool. His mine is just as good as it ever was–all it needs is another road.”
“Yes, and then another road,” chimed in Wunpost mockingly, “as soon as the first cloudburst comes by. And the price of silver is just half what it was when Old Panamint was on the boom. But that makes no difference, of course?”
“Yes, it does,” acknowledged Billy whose eyes were gray with rage, “but the flotation process is so much cheaper than milling that it more than evens things up. And there hasn’t been a cloudburst in thirteen years–but that makes no difference, of course!”
She spat it out spitefully and Wunpost curbed his wit for he saw where his jesting was leading to. When it came to her father this unsophisticated child would stand up and fight like a wildcat. And he began to perceive too that she was not such a child–she was a woman, with the experience of a child. In the ways of the world she was a mere babe in the woods but in intellect and character she was far from being dwarfed and her honesty was positively embarrassing. It crowded him into corners that were hard to get out of and forced him to make excuses for himself, whereas at the moment he was all lit up with joy over the miracle of his second big strike. He had discovered the Wunpost, and lost it on a fluke; but the Willie Meena was different–if he kept the peace with her they would both come out with a fortune.
“Never mind now, kid,” he said at last, “your father is all right–I like him. And if he thinks he can get rich by building roads up the canyon, that’s his privilege; it’s nothing to me. But you string along with me on our mine down below and there’ll be money and to spare for us both; and then you can take your share and build the old man a road that’ll make ’em all take notice! About twenty thousand dollars ought to fix the matter up, but if we get to gee-hawing and Dusty Rhodes mixes in there won’t be a dollar for any of us. We’ve got to stand together, see–you and me against old Dusty–and that will give us control.”
“Well, I didn’t start the quarrel,” said Billy, beginning to blink, “but it makes me mad, just because father won’t give up to have everybody saying he’s crazy. But he isn’t–he knows just exactly what he’s doing–and some day he’ll be a rich man when these Blackwater pocket-miners are destitute. The Homestake mine produced half a million dollars, the second time they opened it up, and if the road hadn’t washed out it would be producing yet and my father would be rated a millionaire. If he would sell out his claims, or just organize a company and give outside capitalists control─”
“Don’t you do it!” warned Wunpost, who made a very poor listener, “they’ll skin you, every time. The party that has control can take over the property and exclude the minority stockholders from the ground, and all they can do is to sue for an accounting and demand a look at the books. But the books are nothing, it’s what’s underground that counts, and if you try to go down they can kill you. I learned that from Judson Eells when he put me out of Wunpost–and say, we can work that on Dusty! We’ll treat him white at first, but the minute he gets gay, it’s the gate–we’ll give him the gate!”
He pranced about joyously, vainly trying to make her smile, but Wilhelmina had lost her gaiety.
“No,” she said, “let’s not do that–because I made him apologize, you know. But don’t you think it’s possible that Judson Eells will follow after you and claim this mine too, under his contract?”
“He can’t!” chuckled Wunpost starting to do a double-shuffle, “I fooled him–this isn’t Nevada. And when I found the Wunpost I was eating his grub, but this time I was strictly on my own. I came to a country where I’d never been before, so he couldn’t say I’d covered it up; and that contract was made out in the state of Nevada, but this is clear over in California. Not a chance, kid, we’re rich, cheer up!”
He tried to grab her hand but she drew it away from him and an anxious look crept into her eyes.
“No,” she said, “let’s not be foolish.” Already the great dream had sped.
CHAPTER V
THE WILLIE MEENA
The morning had scarcely dawned when Wilhelmina dashed up the trail and looked down on the Sink below; and Wunpost had been right, where before all was empty, now the Death Valley Trail was alive. From Blackwater to Wild Rose Wash the dust rose up in clouds, each streamer boring on towards the north; and already the first stampeders had passed out of sight in their rush for the Black Point strike. It lay beyond North Pass, cut off from view by the shoulder of a long, low ridge; but there it was, and her claim and Wunpost’s was already swarming with men. The whole town of Blackwater had risen up in the night and gone streaking across the Sink, and what was to keep those envious pocket-miners from claiming the find for their own? And Dusty Rhodes–he must have led the stampede–had he respected his partners’ rights? She gazed a long moment, then darted back through the tunnel and bore the news to her father and Wunpost.
He had slept in the hay, this hardy desert animal, this shabby, penniless man with the loud voice of a demagogue and the profile of a bronze Greek god; and he came forth boldly, like Odysseus of old when, cast ashore on a strange land, he roused from his sleep and beheld Nausicaa and her maidens at play. But as Nausicaa, the princess, withstood his advance when all her maidens had fled, so Wilhelmina faced him, for she knew full well now that he was not a god. He was a water-hole prospector who for two idle years had eaten the bread of Judson Eells; and then, when chance led him to a rich vein of ore, had covered up the hole and said nothing. Yet for all his human weaknesses he had one godlike quality, a regal disregard for wealth; for he had kept his plighted word and divided, half and half, this mine towards which all Blackwater now rushed. She looked at him again and her rosy lips parted–he had earned the meed of a smile.
The day had dawned auspiciously, as far as Billy was concerned, for she was back in her overalls and her father had consented to take her along to the mine. The claim was part hers and Wunpost had insisted that she accompany them back to the strike. Dusty Rhodes would be there, with his noisy demands and his hints at greater rights in the claim; and in the first wild rush complications might arise that would call for a speedy settlement. But with Billy at his side and Cole Campbell as a witness, every detail of their agreement could be proved on the instant and the Willie Meena started off right. So Wunpost smiled back when he beheld the make-believe boy who had come to his aid on her mule; and as they rode off down the canyon, driving four burros, two packed with water, he looked her over approvingly.
In skirts she had something of the conventional reserve which had always made him scared of women; but as a boy, as Billy, she was one partner in a thousand, and as carefree as the wind. Upon the back of her saddle, neatly tied up in a bag, she carried the dress that she would wear at the mine; but riding across the mesa on the lonely Indian trail she clung to the garb of utility. In overalls she had ridden up and down the corkscrew canyon that led to her father’s mine; she had gone out to hunt for burros, dragged in wood and carried