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 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. As Virginia sat on the gallery, listening subconsciously for the drumming of Wiley’s racing motor 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 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 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 “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 go now,” said Virginia discreetly, and continued her vigil alone. Death Valley was harmless, but when he began hearing things there was no telling where he would stop. The next minute he would be seeing things, and then getting messages, and then looking through mountains with radium. He was harmless, of course, but when there was a sandstorm–well, some people thought he was crazy. And there was a sandstorm coming up. It was blowing in from the north and rushing clouds of dirt down the street; and along in the night, when it had gained its full force, the sand and gravel would fly. She rose to go in, but just at that moment she heard a low drumming up the street. It increased to a bubbling, a drumming, a thunder, and like the spirit of the rough north wind Wiley Holman went racing through the town. His hat was off and as he drifted by his hair thrashed wildly in his eyes, yet he glanced up in passing and it seemed to Virginia that he gave her a roguish smile. Then in a series of explosions that brought the Widow running he dashed on and whirled out across the desert. “Oh, that devil!” she raged, brandishing her She stood on the gallery while the food scorched in the kitchen and watched the boring arrow of dust, but it swept on and on across the boundless desert until at last it was lost in the storm. “Oh, he’ll be back!” she screamed to the gathering neighbors. “I know him, he’s after my mine. But he’d better watch out! If he ever goes near it, I’ll shoot him, you mark my word!” “No, he won’t,” said Virginia, but when they were all gone she came back and gazed down the road. |