The old, settled quiet returned to sleepy Keno–the quiet of the desert and of empty, noiseless houses stretching in long, sunburned rows down the canyon. The black lava patch, laid across the gray rhyolite flank of Shadow Mountain like the shade of an angry cloud, still frowned down upon the town like a portent of storms to come. But the sky was hot and gleaming and no storms came; nor did Wiley Holman return, though the Widow waited for him patiently. After all his boldness, his unbelievable effrontery in trying to steal her Paymaster stock, he had gone on laughing to seek other adventures and left her with the mine on her hands. But he would come back, she knew it; and with her gun loaded with buckshot she watched from the shelter of the gallery.
Yet the days went by and then the weeks and at last the Widow, with a sigh of vexation, put up her gun and retired within. Now that the episode was over she felt vaguely regretful that he had failed, after all, in his purpose. If he had procured his option, under cover of her blindness, and obtained her quit-claim to the mine, she would at least have had the satisfaction of obtaining her own terms–and she would have the twenty thousand to spend. It was maddening, disgusting, when she thought it over, that he had turned out to be Holman’s son, and she never quite forgave Virginia for dinning the fact into her ears. For what you don’t know will never hurt you, and she had lost her last chance to sell. When she went back into the house she went back into the kitchen, and there she would have to stay. Either that or take Honest John’s money.
But he wanted the property–the Widow knew it–else why had he sent his son? All the wise-acres in Keno agreed with the Widow that Honest John had designs on her property and Death Valley Charley, who had jumped half the claims in the district, began once more to carry his gun. It was by virtue of that, more than of assessment work done or of any other legal right, that Charley held title to his claims; and until Wiley had come through town and attempted to bond the Paymaster he had feared no one but Stiff Neck George. Stiff Neck George had been Blount’s gunman on the momentous occasion when they had tried to jump the Paymaster–and the Widow Huff had put him to flight with one blast from her trusty shotgun. But now that big interests were sending in their experts and mining was picking up everywhere Stiff Neck George might forget that humiliating defeat, so Death Valley Charley put on his six-shooter.
He was a little, stooping man, burned chocolate brown by the sun and with eyes half blinded by the glare, and as the Widow gave up her fruitless vigil, Death Valley Charley took her place. But he was not alone, for through all the weary weeks Virginia had been watching her mother. She had slipped in and out, now lingering on the gallery, now listening through the doorway, expectant but at the same time afraid. She knew Wiley Holman much better than her mother, and she knew that he would come back. He was patient, that was all, more patient than an Indian, and he had his eye on their mine. For ten years and more Colonel Huff, and now the Widow, had held physical possession of the Paymaster. Every great iron-bound door was locked and padlocked and the Huff family held the keys, but in all those ten years Holman had never come near it and Blount had merely seized it on a labor lien. The very title to the mine was shrouded in mystery, for no one could locate the shares, and to openly lay claim to it and produce a majority of the stock would be equivalent to a confession of treachery. All that anyone knew surely was that some one of the three original owners–or some unsuspected party outside–had bought in and sequestered the almost valueless stock and was patiently biding his time. Since the Huffs did not own the stock themselves they knew for a certainty that it was held by either Holman or Blount.
As Virginia sat on the gallery, listening subconsciously for the drumming of Wiley’s racing motor up the road, she ran over in her mind the circumstances of his visit; and she could explain them all but one. Why, after failing of his mission, and narrowly escaping her mother’s gun, had he waved his hand and smiled so gayly as he thundered away up the street? Had he other schemes more subtle; or was he simply reckless, regarding even this adventure as a joke? As a boy he had been both–a crafty schemer and reckless doer–but now he was grown to a man. And if the lines about his mouth were any criterion he would soon be coming back to carry out by stealth what he failed to accomplish by assault. So she, too, waited patiently, to foil his machinations and uphold the honor of the Huffs.
In the good old days it had never been forgotten that the Huffs belonged to the Virginia quality, while the Holmans came from Maine; hence the Colonel’s relations with Honest John Holman had at first been strictly business. John Holman was a Northerner, with no social graces and abstemious to a fault, but when his commercial honor upon a certain occasion had saved the Colonel from bankruptcy he had cast the traditions of the South to the winds and taken Honest John as his friend. “My friend,” he called him and neither his wife nor his enemies could shake the Colonel’s faith in his partner. Then, after years of mutual trust, the panic had come on, and the crash in Paymaster stock; and as their fortunes went tumbling and ugly rumors filled the air they had broken their friendship completely. Yet so great was his love for his old-time friend that he had never openly accused him; and Honest John Holman, after months of somber silence, had moved away and started a cow ranch. But it was a question of honesty between the two men and their children had never forgotten. Ten years had passed since they had been boy and girl together, but the moment they met the old quarrel flashed up again and now the feud was on.
A boisterous blast of wind, whirling dust and papers down the street, announced the beginning of another sandstorm; and Death Valley Charley, who had been sitting outside the gate, came muttering up the steps. Behind him trotted Heine, his worshipful little dog, and as Virginia’s pet cat suddenly arched its back, Death Valley took Heine in his arms.
“Can’t you hear ’em?” he asked tiptoeing rapidly up to Virginia. “It’s them big guns, over in Europe. It’s them forty-two centimeter howitzers and the French seventy-fives in the trenches along the Somme.”
“Do you think so?” murmured Virginia, smoothing down her cat’s back, “it sounds like blasting to me.”
“No–big guns!” repeated Charley, regarding her intently through his wavering, sun-blinded eyes, and then he burst into a laugh. “You can hear ’em, can’t you, Heine?” he cried to his dog, and Heine squirmed ecstatically and sneezed. “Hah, that’s my little dog–you’re so confectionate! Now get down on the floor, and don’t you go near that cat.”
He put down the dog and advanced closer to Virginia.
“He’s coming!” he whispered. “I can hear him, plain–jurrr, jurrr; hud, hud, hud, hud, hud!”
“Who’s coming?” demanded Virginia, looking swiftly up the road.
“Why–him! The man you’re waiting for. Can’t you hear him! Hrrrr–rud! He’s coming to grab you and take you away in his auto!”
“Oh, Charley!” exclaimed Virginia, not entirely displeased, “and where will you go then?”
“I’ll go to Death Valley,” he answered mysteriously. “There’s lots of gold over there. I came back one time and they says to me: ‘Charley, where’ve you been for such a long time?’ ‘In Death Valley,’ I says, ‘in the Funeral Range. Working in the Coffin mine, on the graveyard shift.’ Hah, hah; they can’t get nothing out of me. I know where there’s gold–in the Ube-Hebes; it’s a place where nobody goes. I saw your father there, the last time I went through, and he sent word to you not to worry. ‘But for Christ’s sake,’ he says, ‘don’t tell my wife I’m here–I’m tired of her devilish chatter!’”
“Charley!” reproved Virginia, and as he subsided into mutterings, she looked about with shocked eyes. “You talk too much,” she said at last. “Didn’t I tell you not to say that again? Because if mother hears it she’ll drive you out of the house, and then what will Heine do?”
“Heine! Come here, sir!” commanded Charley abruptly, and slapped him until he yelped. “Well, now,” he warned as Heine slunk away, “you look out or you lose your house.”
“I guess you’d better