Part 6

“We--we got short of money,” she answered falteringly. “Harvey wouldn’t work in Los Angeles where he’s acquainted. He’s so proud. So we came back here. And--and this was all we could see to do.”

“_We_,” repeated Blandy.

“Well,” she answered. “Well----”

“How about that two hunderd he used to git every month from the East?” He watched her keenly.

“Never comes any more,” she declared.

“That’s too bad. Makin’ any money with the rest’rant?”

“I--I don’t know. Mr. Conley didn’t when _he_ had it. But then he had to pay his cook.”

“Huh!” commented Blandy, between his teeth, and fell silent again. “This work’s too hard for you,” he said finally, when he could trust himself to speak. “You’ll drop in your tracks. Why, I could pick you up in my two hands like a rag and wring you.”

Her lips trembled. But she kept her face raised to his. “Oh, I don’t mind a little work,” she declared.

The flaxen-haired waiter entered the kitchen by the rear door. Blandy turned and went out through the other one. There was a gleam in the dog-like eyes once more, but it was not a gleam that was good to see.

Patton was still seated behind the cash-register. He smiled at Blandy again, and gave another sidewise jerk of his smooth head toward the kitchen. “It’s a pretty complete plant, isn’t it?” he questioned boastfully.

Blandy made no reply, only reached a big, freckled hand into a pocket, brought forth two silver dollars, and tossed them ringing upon the counter. Then he picked up his hat and went out.

But just in front of the entrance, he halted. Before him, across the wide, dusty street and the shining rails of the track, lay the level desert. It was mid-afternoon. And the grey wastes were swept by waves of heat that sank and rose unceasingly, now almost as plain to the eye as flames would have been, now shadowy. Blandy measured every blistering mile, from the rough, unroofed porch on which he stood to the distant horizon, where a mountain range traced an uneven line upon the misty blue of the sky. And as he stood, his arms hanging loose at his sides, his shoulders lowered, his head sunk between them, he was the very figure of indecision.

Finally, he straightened, turned about, opened the restaurant door and re-entered. Patton was smoking, a long cigar in one corner of his mouth, and tilted upward; one knee crossed upon the other.

Blandy walked to the counter. “Patton,” he began, “_this_ ain’t no kind of a business for _you_. You won’t make your _salt_ here in Searles. Now, I’ve got a proposition to make you--you _and_ Polly. But it mustn’t go no further.” He gave a quick glance about him.

“I’m not dying to stay in Searles,” observed Patton, blowing smoke.

“Wal,”--Blandy dropped his voice--“you go into pardnership with me, Patton, and you don’t _have_ to stay.”

The other took out his cigar and eyed Blandy half-suspiciously. “You’ve changed some,” he commented. “You didn’t used to care much about me. But--what’s your proposition?”

The gleam of triumph came back into Blandy’s eyes. “I’ve made a strike,” he said.

“A _mine_?”

Now, Blandy straightened, shoulders back, head up, face all a-grin once more. “That’s what,” he declared proudly.

Patton slipped down from his stool. “Where?” he asked excitedly.

Blandy lifted a long arm to point out through the front window toward the north. “Four days from here,” he answered.

“When’ll we go?” questioned the other. He reached across to lay a hand on Blandy’s sleeve. “We’ve got to locate, you know. That’s the law. We mustn’t miss a trick, old man.”

“Oh, I located, all right,” declared Blandy. He drew back a step.

“But you didn’t locate for _me_,” went on Patton. “So _I_’ve got to go out, haven’t I? And there’s another reason, too. You’re the only person that knows just where the lead is. Well, suppose anything were to happen to you--a railroad accident, or a bad sickness. Where would _I_ be? That’s the way all the lost mines’ve come about, Blandy.”

“We’ll talk it over to-night. Then Polly can hear about it, too. There’s enough for the three of us out there,--and some over. So she can have a claim separate.”

“Oh, I’ll look after her,” said Patton carelessly.

“No.” There was determination in Blandy’s tone. “I’m lettin’ you in on this with the understandin’ that she has _her_ holdin’. She can lease it, or she can work it, just whichever she likes. You know, it’s kinda stylish for a lady to have her own bank-book.”

“All right,” agreed Patton impatiently.

It was close upon four then. Patton was for calling his wife in and breaking the news at once. “And we’ll close up and cut out supper,” he declared, “and have a little celebration.”

But Blandy flatly objected. “Don’t shut down just a’ hour or two before a meal,” he advised. “Put a sign on the front door to-night. Say on it that the rest’rant is closed ’cause your wife is plumb wored out. We can’t afford to give ourselves away, Patton. There’s plenty of men in Searles that can smell a strike forty mile. Look out or some of ’em ’ll be follerin’ us.”

“You’re right,” declared Patton.

Thus it came about that Polly cooked supper in ignorance of the sudden good fortune that was to make such further toiling unnecessary. Blandy went out into the hot kitchen a second time. But he had little to say, and devoted his efforts to the washing and drying of the dishes, which he received in pyramids from the swinging left arm of the flaxen-haired waiter; and when, shortly after seven o’clock, the last guest was gone, and the last dish clean, Blandy swept and mopped the kitchen floor.

At eight, by the light of a single candle, there was a conference of three at one of the oilcloth-covered tables in the front room. The waiter had taken himself off in the direction of the main saloon down the street, out of which were floating the strains of a violin and the voices of singing women. Nevertheless, Blandy told his story in a half-whisper, and without pointing.

“The ledge is in a spur of the range back of Salt Basin,” he confided. “And clost to--what do you think?”

“What?” questioned Patton.

“The bowl in the rock!”

Patton turned to his wife. “That’s the spring I told you about,” he explained. “I went out there four years ago with a prospector. You wouldn’t believe, Polly, that water could be found in a place like that--a regular ash-pile, you might say. But there it is. The bowl is hollowed out as pretty as can be. And the water comes in drop by drop--just at night, though. It leaks in through a split that’s so fine you couldn’t get a knife-blade into it. But what comes in doesn’t run out, because the bowl’s good-sized, and if the buzzards don’t drink the water up, the sun does.”

Polly made no comment. She sat very still, watching Blandy steadily. Her face was as pale as it had been scarlet at mid-afternoon.

“The lead ain’t more’n a stone’s throw from the bowl,” went on Blandy; “--to the right up the slope. Say! think of the feller’s that’ve missed it!--’cause they was so all-fired glad to find water that they forgot all about gold. But _I_ found it. I was comin’ down the slope, headin’ for a drink, when my darned feet got all tangled up and I took a double-ender. Wal, sir, when I sit up to feel if any bones was broke, here was the blossom rock, lookin’ me straight in the eye!--yeller chunks, Patton, as big as pine-nuts!”

Patton’s black eyes were glistening. “How high’ll that rock run?” he asked.

“_Turrible_ high--even where it don’t show colour. There was a fortune right in sight--without thinkin’ of what’s laying _behind_. There’s all we’ll ever want out there--a chance to do a few things for our friends, and our relations--them that we like; and grand houses, and outomobiles, and fine clothes, and horses, and folks to wait on us, and travellin’, and edication, and--and what’ll make Polly a queen!”

“Did you put up a written notice?”

“Shore.”

“Have you got some specimens?”

“About a mile from here--buried.”

“A few samples aren’t enough,” asserted Patton. “Anybody can get hold of a dozen pieces of rich rock. Why, there are men who make a good living by selling ore that’s used to draw suckers on.”

“A-course, that’s so,” agreed Blandy.

“What we ought to have is about four barley-sackfuls. There’s nothing like making a great, big hit at the very start.”

“Yas, I know,” said Blandy. “But when one of them millionaire fellers is considerin’ a lease, he sends out a’ expert.”

“If you have a hundred pounds of quartz and an assay, there won’t be any need of an expert,” argued Patton. “We’ll lease without a bit of trouble. Of course, we might make more by taking some rich man in as a partner, and working the mine on shares----”

“Why, there’s half a million apiece in it for us without doin’ _that_.”

“Half a million,” repeated Patton. “Huh! I mean to ask one million flat for _my_ share.”

Blandy laughed. “Oh, leave a little for the gent that’s a-going to put up the cash,” he advised.

Patton went on arguing. “As a matter of fact,” he declared, “it wouldn’t take us any time at all to land three hundred pounds of ore at the track if we used an auto.”

“No.” Blandy was decisive. “No, I don’t trust none of them flyshuffers.”

“But _I_’ll drive.”

“Take a machine and leave tracks, eh?” demanded Blandy. “Not on your life! Burros is what we need. A burro can travel on a washout and never turn a stone.”

“All right, burros then,” assented Patton eagerly. “Let’s start to-morrow night.”

“Oh, what’s your sweat?” asked Blandy.

“Just this: The quicker we leave, the quicker we get out of Searles.”

“But--but maybe Jeff’s tired,” suggested Polly timidly.

Patton gave her a warning glance. “_I_ know he’s tired,” he answered. “But we won’t have to rush. We can take it easy, and only travel at night. If we wait around here, people’re sure to begin trying to find out where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing. The whole town knows you’ve been on a long prospecting trip--I heard it when I came. So (just as you said yourself a while ago) first thing you know, we’ll have a regular gang on our trail.”

Blandy nodded, more than half-convinced.

“And when we’ve got our ore,” went on Patton, “I’ll go to Los Angeles with you. I’m the man that can advise you when it comes to a lease.”

In the end Blandy agreed to an immediate trip to the mine.

But next morning it was he who set to work preparing for the journey. Patton made off down the street almost immediately after breakfast, and disappeared into one of the half-dozen drinking-places of the town. When he did not return at noontime, Blandy consulted Polly.

“Don’t you think I’d better go find him?” he asked. “You see he might take a glass or two and git to blabbin’.”

Patton was found at Rourke’s. Outside the resort, Blandy turned upon him. “Say! You’re up to your old game, ain’t you, Patton?” he demanded curtly.

Patton tried to laugh the matter off. “Oh, you don’t understand,” he declared confidentially. He started homeward beside the other man.

The leather of Blandy’s face was pale. Out of the paleness burned his wrathful eyes. “Don’t try to soft-soap me,” he went on. “I know now where that remittance of your’n goes. But you got to cut it _out_! I ain’t a-helpin’ you to a fortune so’s you can hurt Polly by slatherin’ money on some other woman.”

Patton gave a loud laugh. “Don’t think I’m a fool,” he answered. As they entered the front room of the restaurant, he gave Blandy a look of hate. “You aren’t giving me a claim because you like _me_. You’re doing it on Polly’s account.”

“That’s right,” declared Blandy. “What in thunderation is there about _you_ that’d make any man hand you over half a million?”

“So! You admit it! Oh, I’m on to your game! This is some more of your tattle. You want to make trouble between me and my wife!”

Blandy took a long step forward. “That’s a lie,” he said. “It’s just what I _don’t_ aim to do. You and me had a talk on this question the night you got married. Have you forgot that? Wal, when you cash in on the claim, I’m a-goin’ to see that you cut that friend----”

The swinging door opened, and Polly came in from the kitchen. “Harv!” she faltered. “Jeff!” Then, she fell silent, watching them with troubled eyes.

Blandy’s face broke into a reassuring grin. “Say! we’re excited over nothin’,” he declared. “Don’t you worry, Polly. Patton, I hired the only two burros in town this mornin’, and bought some grub and feed.”

There were no further words between the two men, only a coldness that was barely noticeable. After the midday meal, Patton even helped with the packing. Polly, entering their bedroom hastily, found him standing on a bench looking at the labels of some bottles on the medicine-shelf.

“Be careful what you take,” she cautioned. “That bottle of mercury tablets is up there, and it’s the same size as the one that’s got stuff in it for rattlesnake bites.”

“It’s the rattlesnake medicine that I’m hunting,” answered Patton tartly.

Polly went back into the kitchen, where Blandy was busy packing the raisins, crackers and canned beef. She looked frightened. “Oh, I’m so sorry you and Harvey quarrelled,” she half-whispered. “Please, _please_ don’t have any more trouble with him.”

From the standpoint of beauty there was little to recommend Jeff Blandy save his eyes. Now, as he smiled down at her, his eyes made up for all the deficiencies of his rugged face. “We was hungry,” he declared. “That was all.”

“Jeff,” she said, “I never knew how good you were. Oh, if girls only realised that the men that keep dressed up aren’t always the best men.”

“And on the other hand,” he observed, “I’ve saw some pretty bad men in bum clothes.”

Late that night, the burros were packed, one with provisions and feed, and enough heavy sacking for a small sun shelter; the other with the large, flat-sided water canteens. When the start was made, Polly told the two men a whispered good-bye from the front porch. And as the burros were headed northward, Blandy leading one and Patton the other, she watched the little pack-train leave the town. The light of the stars, reflected on the grey of the sage and the yellow-grey of the desert floor, made the departure plain for a long distance, though only as so many moving black specks. She waited until the specks dropped from sight into a far-off swale.

Then she ran through the dining-room to her bedroom, struck a match, dragged a bench under the medicine-shelf, climbed upon it and let her light shine in turn upon each of the bottles standing in a row.

The match went out. With a murmured exclamation she got down, searched for her hat in the dark room, found it and put it on, caught up a yellow sun umbrella, and locked both entrances to the house. A moment later, she was hurrying across the street, over the track and into the desert.

She soon came up to the men and the burros, travelling silently forward. But at first she kept a little way behind, like a scared child, for she shrank from letting Patton know that she was there. Presently, however, summoning courage, she went forward to his side. “H-Harvey,” she stammered. Her face was white in the dimness.

He came short; Blandy, too. Both stared at her in wonderment.

“What do you want?” Patton demanded, resentment in his tone. “It’s too late for you to be gadding around alone.”

“Harv, I’m going with you. Walking isn’t hard work--not any harder than the work in the kitchen was. Jeff, you don’t care if I come along, do you?”

“You bet I don’t,” Blandy answered heartily. “You’ll be fine comp’ny.”

“Nonsense!” scolded Patton.

“Wal, she’s the third pardner,” reminded Blandy. “When you come to think of it, she’s got a right to look over her claim. If she gits tired, she can ride a donk. But a-course”--his tone became more serious--“there’s one thing _agin_ your goin’: We three is the only people that know where that strike is; if anything was to happen to the bunch of us, there’d be a lost mine for shore.” He clucked to his burro and walked on.

His words produced a curious effect upon Patton, who stayed where he was, silently looking after Blandy until the latter was well beyond earshot.

“Harvey!” Polly’s voice was tremulous with appeal, “I don’t want to be left behind alone.”

Patton gave her a quick, sidewise glance. “All right,” he said brusquely. “You can come.”

To show that she was equal to the journey, Polly kept in the lead all the remainder of that night, flitting light-footed, like the spirit of some good guiding angel.

Shortly after dawn, Blandy called a halt and prepared for a rest of several hours. He fixed the square of sacking to the ground by two of its corners. The other two corners he fastened to mesquite stakes. The result was an improvised tent which faced the north. This shelter was for Patton and Polly. When it was ready, Blandy took the yellow umbrella, raised it, went aside to where were the canteens, and lay down.

By noon, it was impossible to sleep because of the heat, which was so intense that the grey, incrusted ground burned the hand that touched it. The travellers did not set forth at once. Seated under their shelters, they looked out upon a round lake that glimmered in a near-by hollow of the desert--a lake encircled with a beach of amethyst.

With that sheet of water glistening before him, Patton drank often and deep. And when, at four, he rose with the others to continue on, he slung one of the large canteens over a shoulder. The glimmering lake moved as the pack-train moved, occupying one hollow, then dissolving to appear in another, and still another. Patton lifted his canteen to his lips every half mile.

Blandy noted it. “Say! You’ll have to learn to be careful about your drinkin’ if you go out much on the desert,” he warned. “More’n one tenderfoot has gone luny for water and took to follerin’ them spook lakes. Chaw on a raisin for a change.”

No halt was made for supper. The three ate as they travelled. The sun declined. The last shining sheet of water disappeared. Twilight came, and with twilight, the stars, which burned large and white in the cloudless expanse of the heavens. Through the starlight, through the late moonlight, and through the dawn of a second day, they trudged on.

It was shortly after sunrise that a giant yucca came into sight ahead. It was branched on either side; and from a distance looked like some huge figure that had been caught in action and suddenly trans-fixed.

“Hello!” cried Blandy. “My friend John Jenkins! We’re half-way.”

“Half-way?” repeated Patton. “Why, that spur doesn’t look twenty miles off.”

“It just happens that you’re a-rubberin’ in the wrong direction,” said Blandy. “The spur we’re a-goin’ to ain’t over that way: It’s off where them little, puffy clouds is. Say, you’d better never try to navigate this desert alone.”

Arrived at the yucca, Polly was glad enough to pause, and before the two men had finished erecting the shelter of sacking, she had crawled under it.

“Tuckered, ain’t you?” questioned Blandy kindly. “Wal, we been makin’ fine time, that’s why. We’ll be drinkin’ outen that bowl in the rock at sun-up day after to-morrow.”

He made a cache of feed and provisions, and buried two of the large canteens; then stretched himself with his head in the shade of the yellow umbrella, and was soon snoring.

Patton did not lie down, but sat, brooding, a canteen in his hand. And, presently, after making certain that Polly’s breathing was deep and regular, he rose cautiously. Some distance away were the burros, standing with lowered heads and long ears flopped to either side. Patton stole in their direction. And when he reached the animals, set to packing one. He was soon done. With a last glance toward shelter and umbrella, he set off northward at a good gait.

The atmosphere was unusually clear. It was this that had made the mountains seem such a short distance away. Patton had carefully marked the position of the right spur. He tramped forward determinedly, though by noon the ground under his feet fairly scorched his shoes. The afternoon dragged its length in moments that seemed, each more unendurably hot than the last, and with lakes glimmering from near-by hollows, he drank at every rod. Sunset came at last, bringing a welcome coolness. Now half of his journey alone was done. He stopped to feed the burro and satisfy his own hunger, after which he hurried on.

The sun was standing high over the mountains the next day when, fagged, but triumphant, Patton began the ascent of the gentle, beach-like slope that stretched between him and the base of the spur he sought. The range that rose ahead of him showed not even a growth of stunted sage upon its ruffled side. For here the massive barrier was like a burned-out kiln, brick-red, cinder-black and ashen-grey. He skirted it for an hour or more, the donkey at a trot. Suddenly, ahead of him, a great, black bird rose from the ground with a harsh cry and an awkward flapping of its wings. Patton ran forward.

There was the bowl, as round as if it had been fashioned by deft hands, and nearly full of water. Patton had swallowed the last mouthful of his canteen supply early that morning. Now, he sank to his knees, bent his head and almost buried his face in the pool.

His thirst satisfied, he climbed the slope beyond. Ten minutes of hot toiling, and he came upon Blandy’s location-notice, scrawled on a soiled scrap of paper, and tacked to a crooked mesquite stake. He tore up the notice, and jerked the stake loose. Then, white, for all the effort of climbing, he stooped and pressed both palms against the outcropping of quartz at his feet, his fingers into its crevices. It was as if he were clutching prey.

“It’s all here!--all here!” he said aloud, huskily.

Back at the bowl once more, he filled a canteen and hung it to the pack-saddle, took another long drink himself, and let the donkey have all that remained. Then, reaching into an inside pocket of his shirt, he brought out something that was wrapped in a piece of newspaper. He unwound the paper, disclosing a small bottle, which he uncorked. And having measured the size of the bowl with his eye, he dropped three round, white tablets into it. This done, he dampened a handkerchief from the canteen and laid it, folded, upon his hair. For the long miles in the sun had told on him, and there was a feeling of heat and pressure at the top of his skull.

A few minutes later, he set off once more, due west, completely avoiding the Searles route to the southward.

* * * * *