THE YARN AL FREEMAN TOLD

Al Freeman, slouched forward on a box, dangled a cold cigarette from his loose lips and gave Bill the slinking, slant-eyed regard of a trapped coyote. Behind him, Tommy stood grim, with his underjaw lifted and thrust forward in a comical attempt to look as deadly as he felt. Thrust within the waistband of his sagging gray trousers was an ivory-handled revolver which had lately done its share toward intimidating the man before him. Bill held his underlip between his teeth, lest he smile and so spoil a dramatic situation evidently quite precious to the little Irishman, whom Nature had never meant for a swashbuckling hero.

"Spake up, now!" Thus Tommy cracked the whip of authority over Al. "Tell t' Mr. Dale phwat I heard yuh tellin' t' Jack Bole in my s'loon—an' tell it the same er I'll let the daylight t'rough yuh! I will, that." He rolled the words out with unction, with an eye canted up through his glasses to observe the effect of his harshness upon Bill. A small boy patting a tame bear could never have felt himself more dare-devilishly courageous.

"'Tis a foine tale I heard him tellin', Mr. Dale, an' one that concerns you an' yoors. I'll have it outa him, never fear."

"Shall I heat the poker Tommy?" Bill's tone was innocent, if his eyes were not. "Or have you put the fear of the Lord in him already?"

"Aw, he ain't able t' scare a rabbit," Al protested with an ingratiating smile that managed to make itself mighty unpleasant, in spite of him. "What I tolt Jack Bole I'm willin' t' tell you, Mr. Dale—only I wisht to say that I never meant yuh no harm, an' fur as I kin see I ain't done yuh no harm neither. You made yer pile, an' I was only tryin' t' make a livin' best way I could. An' seein' yo're rich an' I'm broke, I cain't see as I done ye no harm. Which I wouldn't of wanted t' do yuh nohow."

"Clear as the Colorado River in flood time," Bill made cheerful comment. "Let's have the story, and never mind the footnotes. Go ahead. I'll keep Tommy off your back—if I can. He's a hard man to stop, once he gets started, but I'll protect you if possible."

Whereat Tommy scowled and clamped his jaws together anew, not perceiving the joke. And his captive, actuated by motives of his own, proceeded to tell his story, which startled Bill more than he would like to own.

Since Al's illiterate speech is not particularly attractive and his manner of telling the tale wearisome with a frequent sez-e and sez-I, here is the gist of the matter which Tommy had thought fit for Bill's ears and best attention:

In coming to Parowan as packer for the government research men, Al had come with instructions to do exactly what he had done. He declared that the sole object of Rayfield and Emmett had been to discover what value there was in Bill's claims. They had been first attracted by the parrot, talking unguardedly in Goldfield—Al here repeated almost verbatim what the parrot had said, since Jim Lambert had jotted down the sentences and had seen fit to study them seriously—and had laid their plans carefully before ever they left the town.

Al said that he was taken up to Jim Lambert's office, and there he first heard of the scheme, agreed to play his part in it and was promised an interest in all that was gained. The three had followed Bill, keeping well out of sight. They had done this because they did not know just where he was going,—Parowan being a large mountain with wide shoulders and many gulches and canyons. They had timed their arrival so as to take advantage of the storm and share Bill's shelter, whatever it was. This, Al said, was intended to induce intimacy and the exchange of confidences.

They were to secure samples, and what details they could, whereupon Al was to carry off the camp equipment and leave Rayfield and Emmett stranded there, so that Bill must take them in. This, he said, was to induce further intimacy and to make it more permanent.

There Al's duty ended. After he had reported to Jim Lambert, he was to have the burro and the outfit, and could go where he pleased, so long as he kept his mouth shut and remained away from Goldfield. He was to be paid top packer's wages and a share in whatever was made out of Bill's claims.

"Then what are you breaking your word with them for?" was Bill's first surprising question. "Why aren't you keeping your mouth shut?"

"Wal, they hain't played square with me, Mr. Dale. They hain't give me the share they agreed to." Al lifted his dingy hat to scratch a head that looked as if it needed scratching.

"Haven't you got a written agreement?"

"No, I hain't. They wouldn't have any writin' on it. They said it wouldn't be best."

"Well, that's good sense. It wouldn't." Bill got up and put more wood in the stove, for a raw wind was blowing up from the desert. "Well, what do you expect me to do about it?" He turned on Al so abruptly that Al dodged, expecting a blow perhaps.

"Wal, I dunno—onless it might mebby be worth somethin' to yuh, t' know about the frame-up." Cupidity flared for a moment in Al's eyes. "Yo're a rich man, Mr. Dale," he whined. "I ain't got a dime to my name."

Bill replaced the lid on the stove, scraped pieces of bark from the surface with the poker and sat down again, eyeing Al contemptuously.

"Yes, I'm a rich man—according to your standard. Did you ever hear of crooks making a man rich, Al? Doesn't that strike you as kind of funny—a crook doing that?"

"Wal, I dunno's it does, Mr. Dale—not if they was gittin' five dollars, say, whilst you was gittin' one."

Bill laughed contemptuously.

"If they were all that generous, they'd be pretty apt to pay you enough to keep your mouth shut, anyway. Or give some one a few dollars to bump you off. There are thin spots in your yarn, Al. I'm afraid it isn't worth much."

"Wall, they paid me some," Al retorted with a craven kind of acrimony. "An' they don't b'lieve in killin'. They say that's crewd an' danger'us."

"They'll pay you more," Bill snapped, "if they're afraid of your tongue. You're a cheap skate, Al—an awful cheap skate. If you'll take my advice, you'll get out of town—to-night. The world's full of places besides Parowan. Take him out, Tommy; and dump him somewhere outside the city limits. And if you want to bring any more like him into camp, give them a good scrubbing first. I'll have to clean house after him. Get!"

This last command was to Al, who overturned the box in his haste to get off it. Tommy herded him out with the ivory-handled gun, looking a bit crestfallen and a good deal puzzled. Tommy's thought processes were too simple to follow Bill's logic, or to understand his attitude. It seemed to him that Bill was almost criminally indifferent to his own interests, and that his leniency with Al Freeman fell but little short of approval. It had been labor wasted, bringing Al there to tell Bill his story, and he regretted now that he had not been content to kick Al out of the saloon and let it go at that.

But after he was gone, Bill sat dejectedly beside the stove, his arms folded across his lifted knees, feet in the oven, and brooded over the amazing story. It seemed incredible that Al could be telling the truth,—and yet, there were some things that Al could not possibly have imagined. If there were thin spots in his story, there were also details that carried conviction.

Luella, having retired under the bunk during the interview, came stalking out and climbed, beak and claws, up Bill's back and perched upon his shoulder, leaning forward and making kissing sounds against his cheek, which was her way of coaxing his attention. Bill reached up a hand and stroked her back absently.

"Speak up now," Luella admonished, having liked the sound of that phrase. "That's a hell of a note, ain't it?"

Bill pulled her down and held her on her back between his hands, rolling her gently from side to side.

"It is," he answered gravely. "You've stated the case exactly." He set the parrot on his knee, where she immediately began to preen her ruffled feathers.

That was the convincing part of Al's story,—repeating the things Luella had said before the courthouse. Al claimed to have been there, and to have heard her talk. He had chanced to pass by the steps just as Jim Lambert, Rayfield and Emmett were coming up to the courthouse from town. He claimed to have been in the offices of Jim Lambert later, when the plot was hatched. If that were a lie, how could Al repeat what the parrot must have said? How could he know that the burros, and the parrot with them, had waited before the courthouse steps alone or otherwise? Al had named the very day and the very hour of Bill's visit to the recorder's office. The date and hour were written upon his location filing, together with book and page of the record. Had Bill chanced to forget, that record would serve to remind him; but Bill did not forget. Al had never seen those papers. He could not possibly have told about Luella unless he had both seen and heard her there.

The incredible feature of the yarn was the fact that Rayfield and Emmett—John and Walter, he had come to call them in his mind—had been the chief instigators of the plot. And there again Bill floundered in vain speculation. What was the plot? Not the mere creation of jobs for themselves, surely? Al had professed ignorance of their governmental position. They may have been research men, as they claimed. He didn't know, and he had never heard that talked about, except as a plausible reason for their showing up at Bill's claims. He was sure that they had lied about working out from Las Vegas west, however; having been in Goldfield, they could not have been prospecting Forty Mile Canyon at that particular time.

What had they gained? A block of stock for each of them, to be sure. Bill had been generous; had given them each fifty thousand shares of the promotion stock. He could scarcely credit any plot to get it, however. Still, that meant fifty thousand dollars immediately after the company was organized. Bill had known of many a murder committed for a fraction of that amount.

One discrepancy in the story eluded him for some time, though he groped for it vaguely. Then Al's retort came to him with force—"Not if they was gittin' five dollars where you was gittin' one"—and set him scowling, vacant-eyed, at the tent wall.

Were they getting five dollars to his one? How? They had full control, to be sure. But their control seemed to be of the conservative, constructive kind that favored dividends. And there was the thing that seemed incredible. Would crooks, of the bold type that would follow a prospector and lay cunning plans to grab what he had found, play a straight game afterwards? It did not seem to Bill that it could be possible. A crook is a crook. Once in control, they could have raided and wrecked the company a dozen times in his absence. Instead, they had worried over one passed dividend.

Bill lay that night staring up at the whitish blur of his tent roof with a cloudy moon above it, and thought circles around the thing. Walter and John couldn't be the thieves Al Freeman had called them. A thief cannot keep his fingers off other men's money. Walter and John had made money for many a man. But that painfully exact report of seeing and hearing Luella in Goldfield was true. It had to be true. That was something which no man could build convincingly out of his imagination; not to Bill, where Luella was concerned. She had a certain fixed idea in her talk, always. She seemed able to discriminate between subjects, and to stick to one for minutes at a time before drifting into other sentences that conveyed an entirely different impression of what might be going on back of those observant, yellow eyes. To one who did not know Luella, it would be impossible to simulate her uncanny imitation of intelligence,—which Bill more than half believed to be genuine reasoning power. Perhaps the bird was especially quick to read faces and to connect certain expressions on the countenance with certain groups of words. It could not be accident, in Bill's opinion. Accidents do not happen with consistent regularity, and Luella's remarks were usually pithy and to the point. It was therefore a fixed basis of reasoning, in Bill's mind, to grant the authenticity of Al Freeman's contention that Luella was at the bottom of the plot.

Beyond that point, however, Bill continued to flounder in doubts. He hated himself for even speculating upon the dishonesty of Walter and John, although he had found them a bit touchy, a shade jealous of their authority and their judgment. Walter had assumed executive control; John, as treasurer, had the responsibility of keeping the accounts impeccable. Bill had attended the annual stockholders' meeting, on the last afternoon of the year, and he had been almost awed by the meticulousness of John Emmett's financial report. It had sounded like some carefully compiled government statistics, and Bill had been compelled to sit and listen to a careful reading.

The reËlection of the Board of Directors had been a mere form. Bill, Walter and John were the directors,—Nevada demanding only three. They were as inevitably reËlected to the same offices. There had not been many stockholders present, the day being almost a holiday. Those who were present voted perfunctorily and with complete unanimity; indeed, so harmonious had been the meeting that every one may as well have stayed at home, save the secretary, Bill thought.

Therefore, in their pardonable desire to be left alone to run the machinery, since they had started it in the first place, Bill saw the full approval of the resident stockholders. And if the stockholders whose very business life depended upon the success of Parowan Consolidated and the integrity of her officers were satisfied, surely there was no reason why the president should meddle. The business men of Parowan would be the first to know if anything went wrong, Bill told himself over and over.

Yet the story Al Freeman had told would not erase itself from his mind, nor could he call it a venomous bit of spite and so discount it. There had been bothersome details which a lawyer would call corroborative evidence. There was the ineffectual campsetting, the night of their arrival; rather, the late afternoon. Tommy had declared then that Al Freeman had been bluffing, that he had not tried to get their tent up and pegged down securely before the storm broke. Al confirmed Tommy's assertion. The plan, he declared, had been to manage to pass the night with Bill. They had decided that when they first glimpsed his tent.

Then the invasion of the tent while Doris was there alone he had explained. Emmett had seen the sample sack half full of ore, but had not dared to investigate the contents at the time. He had ordered Al to go back and see what was in that sack. It it were the rich ore they suspected, he was to abstract what he could, load the burros and hurry back to Goldfield, leaving Rayfield and Emmett nothing but their blankets. He said they knew that Bill had plenty of grub.

These details fitted in with what had occurred within Bill's knowledge. If Al were lying, he was assuredly making a fine, artistic job of it all. The inconceivable part was the personality of the two men he accused, and the part they had played and were still playing in Parowan Consolidated and in the town. They had promoted their campaign cleverly and efficiently, mostly by the power of suggestion.

"If it's true," said Bill harassedly at breakfast next morning, "they're the tamest bandits I ever saw in my life. I can't believe it."

"Seems like a dream," Luella assented promptly, pausing in her nibbling of coffee-soaked crust. "Ain't that a hell of a note! I can't believe it." Then, blinking rapidly as memory revived another speech, she added softly, "Kiss me, Doris. Say you love me."

Bill's face paled. He looked at the bird, swept out an impulsive arm and pushed her off the table, soaked crust and all. He bit his lip, fighting the spasm of loneliness, or heartsick longing for the life he had dreamed of living with Doris.

Of a sudden his head went down upon a curved arm, his shoulders twitching a bit as he still fought. Luella, crawling up to forgive and be forgiven, made her clicking, kissing sounds in vain against his cheek.

"Hell of a note!" she complained at last, when Bill gave no sign of response. "I can't believe it. Seems like a dream. You don't say!" Then, spying the butter unguarded, she stepped down upon the table and pigeon-toed in that direction. "Help yourself," she invited gravely. "Plenty more where that came from. Help yourself."

And Bill, his soul flayed with bitter memories, with dreams slowly strangled and returning wraithlike to mock his loneliness, did not even hear.