CHAPTER XIX
THE next morning Webster waited until Dolores appeared and then accompanied her into the dining room for breakfast.
“Well, how did you pass your first night in Buenaventura?” she inquired, in the manufacture of breakfast conversation.
“Not very well. Jiggers bit me and woke me up, and finally I fell into a trance and had a vision—about you. After that I couldn't get to sleep again. I was fairly bursting to see you at breakfast and read your palm. I've just discovered a wonderful system.”
“Show me,” she flashed back at him, and she extended her little hand. He picked it up gravely and with the dull tine of a fork made a great show of tracing the lines on her palm.
“You are about twenty-four years old, and your ancestors were pure-bred Castilians who came from Madrid, crossing the Atlantic in caravels. Ever since the first Ruey landed on this coast the family has been identified with the government of the country in one way or another. Also, Scotch, French, and Irish blood has been infused into the tribe; your mother was an Irish woman. When you were quite a little girl, your father, Don Ricardo Ruey, at that time president of Sobrante, failed to suppress a revolution and was cornered in the government palace, which was set afire.
“Through the bravery and devotion of a cockney gentleman, Colonel Henry Jenks, an artillery officer in your father's army, you were saved from perishing in the burning palace. Colonel Jenks turned you over to his spouse, now known as Mother Jenks, with instructions to raise you a lydy, and Mother Jenks has carried out those instructions. Colonel Jenks and your father were executed, and Mother Jenks sent you to the United States to be educated. You had a brother, Ricardo Luis Ruey, older than yourself by seven or eight years, I should judge. In some mysterious manner you and your brother lost track of each other, and at the present moment he believes you perished in the flames that gutted the government palace.
“You are of a proud, independent nature; you work at something for a living, and inasmuch as you haven't been able to set aside a great deal of money from your earnings, you are planning to terminate your visit to your native land at an early date and return to the United States for the purpose of getting back to work. These plans, however, will never be consummated.
“Why? Because you are to be married to a nice man and live happily ever afterward; and about sixty days from now, if all goes well, I, John S. Webster, am going to introduce you to your long-lost brother Ricarda You will first see Ricardo riding at the head of his victorious rebel troops as he enters Buenaventura. He will be the next president of this wretched country, if, fortunately, he is not killed in the revolution he is now fomenting against his father's ancient enemy. Your brother does not know you are living, and it will be a proud and happy day for me when I bring him to you. In the interim, what do you purpose having for breakfast? Ham and eggs sunny side up, an omelette or a cereal?”
He released her hand and favoured her with the boyish grin that always had the effect of stripping the years from him as one strips the husk from a ripe ear of com. She was gazing at him in wide-eyed amazement.
“Oh, don't doubt me,” he pleaded. “It will all come out just as I have told you. Of course, I don't go in for telling fortunes very often; I'm a slow old horse to start, but once I sneak into the collar, something has to give.”
“Is my brother really alive?”
“He was as late as midnight last night. Do you recall the chap I saved from being assassinated in New Orleans?”
“Yes.”
“Your worthy brother. And do you recall the chauffeur whose passage to this port I was forced to pay?”
“Yes.”
“The same individual. I sent him ashore in the launch with Billy, and he has been housed at El Buen Amigo, but left early this morning for the back-country to open a recruiting office.”
“And you have known this all along and wouldn't tell me?” she reproved him.
“Didn't discover it until after I had left him last night; then I put two and two together and made four.”
“Oh, I can hardly believe it.”
“I never lie.”
“Never?”
“I mean on serious matters. And you needn't cry about it, Miss Ruey. I do not purpose being the bearer of welcome news and having my breakfast ruined for my reward.”
She reached across the little table and squeezed his big brown hand impulsively. “You're the most wonderful man I ever knew. And does my poor brother know I am living, Mr. Webster?”
“No—and I'm not going to tell him. I think it will be much nicer to restore you to each other on the steps of the government palace on the day when the Ruey faction comes into its own again. That will make his victory all the sweeter. I am the innocent bystander who started this little drama, and by jingo, I want to finish it. Why, it has been years and years since I've had any real sport.”
“You're so kind!”
“Not at all. My discovery of your brother was as accidental as falling downstairs.” And he related to her his interview with Ricardo, whose statements, when compared with the information gleaned from Mother Jenks, had proved so illuminating. “By the way,” he continued, “where was Ricardo when your father's ship of state went on the rocks?”
“At school in a military academy in Kentucky. At least, so I was informed by my cousins here shortly after my arrival, and prior to losing caste with them because of my association, unchaperoned, with Billy.”
“It is a marvellous mix-up, which Ricardo can doubtless explain, Miss Ruey. I know he believes his sister perished with her father; Mother Jenks didn't know where he was and couldn't communicate with him—and there you are. However, little old Jack Fix-it will bring you together again in due course. In the interim, how about those eggs? Straight up—or flip 'em?”
She beamed across at him. “We are going to be such good, true friends, aren't we?” she urged. He almost shivered, but managed a hypocritical nod. “While we have only known each other twenty-four hours, it seems a great deal longer than that—probably because Billy has told me so much about you, and you're—so comfortable and easy to get acquainted with, and I—I can't very well express my gratitude for what you've done—for what you're going to do.” Her voice faltered; she smiled roguishly through the tears of her emotion. “If I were only Billy, now, I could put my arm across your shoulders and settle the matter by saying: 'Johnny, you old horsethief, you're all right.'”
“The best thing to do would be to cease puffing me up with importance. And now, before we climb out of the realm of romance and the improbable to the more substantial plane of things for breakfast, just one brief word of caution. Now that I have told you your brother lives and is in Buenaventura, forget it until I mention it again, because his presence here is his secret, not ours.”
“All right, Caliph,” she agreed. “I think I shall call you that hereafter. Like the late Caliph Haroun A! Raschid, it appears you have a habit of prowling around o' nights in queer places, doing good deeds for your subjects. But tell me about my brother. Describe him to me.”
“Not now. Here comes the head waiter with a cablegram for me, I think.”
That functionary came to their table and handed one of the familiar yellow envelopes to each of them.
“We'll excuse each other,” Dolores suggested. She read:
Go you if I lose. I like you fine.
You are a good, game little scout, and Jerome.
She glanced across at Webster, whose face was a conflicting study of emotions in which disappointment and amazement appeared to predominate. “You ancient scoundrel,” she heard him murmur.
“What ho, Caliph! Unpleasant news?” she ventured.
“Yes—and no. I had one of the finest jobs in the world all staked out—and now the boss cables me it's filled—by a better man.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Well—as soon as I've had my breakfast, I'm going to cable Neddy Jerome and tell him I'm satisfied—satisfied to stay here and satisfied he's a liar. You see, Miss Ruey, he objected vigorously to my coming here in the first place—wanted me to take a thirty-day vacation and then manage the Colorado Consolidated Mines Company, Limited, for him. I like Neddy and would have been glad to go to work for his company, but of course Billy comes first, and so I declined the offer. Later I changed my mind, and last night I cabled him I'd accept if he'd wait sixty days—possibly ninety; and now he replies that he's sorry, but the job is filled by a better man. That's why I know he's a liar.”
“I see. You figure there isn't a better mining engineer than you—eh, Caliph?”
He looked at her reproachfully. “No, but Neddy Jerome does, and I know he does because he has taken the trouble to tell me so more than once. And as a rule Neddy inclines toward the truth. However, it's just as well——” He paused, staring hard at her. “By the way, you foretold this! Why, this is amazing.”
She could now have wept with laughter. “Well”—soberly—“I told you some other things equally amazing, did I not?”
“Yes, you told me other things more or less interesting, but you foretold this. How do you account for that?”
“The witness declines to answer, on the ground that she may incriminate herself and be burned for a witch.”
“Remarkable woman!”
“You were about to remark that it is just as well——”
“That Neddy's reconciled to losing me, because since cabling him yesterday evening I've changed my mind again. I'm going to stay here now.”
“Indeed! Why?”
“Just to be obstinate. Apparently I'm not wanted here by the powers that be; so just to rile them I'm going to hang around Sobrante the way Grant hung around Richmond and argue the question with them. By the way, I see you received a cablegram also. Better news than mine, I hope.”
She nodded. “I have a little business deal on back home. Haven't got a great deal invested, but it looks as if I might make ten thousand dollars.”
He arched his eyebrows and favoured her with a little disapproving grunt. Sounded like the prospectus of a fake mining promoter—yes, by thunder, that was it. Dolores was a school teacher, and school teachers and doctors are ever the mainstay of a swindler's sucker list.
“You won ten dollars from me yesterday,” he challenged. “Bet you another ten I can tell you the nature of your investment.”
“Go you, if I lose!” Unconsciously she was learning the argot of the male of the species, as exemplified in Neddy Jerome's cablegram.
“It's a mining property.”
“You win. It is,” she answered truthfully, starting to open her purse.
“Quartz or placer?”
“I don't know. Explain.” *
He chuckled at her ignorance. “Quartz is goldbearing rock, and placer is gold-bearing gravel.”
“Then my mining property is placer, because it has lots of sand.”
“I knew it, I knew it,” he warned her solemnly, and he shook an admonitory finger at her. “Black sand, eh? Is the gold very fine?”
“I think it is.”
“Then you're stung good and deep—so don't delude yourself into thinking you have ten thousand dollars coming. I never knew a proposition for saving the fine gold in black sand that didn't turn out to be a fizzle. It's the hardest thing in the world to save. Now, listen: You tell me the name of the flim-flam artist that got you into this deal, and when I get back to the United States I'll investigate the company; if it's an out-and-out swindle, I'll take that promoter by the throat and choke your money out of him, the scoundrel! It is just these fly-by-night fellows that ruin the finest gambling game in the world and scare off investors in legitimate mining propositions.”
“Oh, you mustn't—really, Caliph. He's an old man, and I only did it to help him out.”
“There should be no sentiment in business, Miss Ruey.”
“Oh, well, let's be cheerful and hopeful, Caliph, and discuss a more important subject.” She was very serious now, for by her meddling she had, she realized, so arranged matters that at a time when John Stuart Webster's very life depended upon his immediate departure from Buenaventura, he was planning to stay and face the music, just to be obstinate. “You must reconsider your latest decision to remain in this country,” she insisted. “Your life may be the price of liberty of action, you know.”
“'Give me liberty or give me death,'” quoted Webster.
“But isn't Billy capable of developing the mine after you advance the cash?”
“I wouldn't advance him a cent for his mine until I had investigated it myself.”
“Then you should make some arrangements to safeguard yourself while making the investigation, and leave Sobrante immediately thereafter. Isn't that a sensible proposition?”
“Very—if I felt like leaving Sobrante. But I do not. If that mining concession is a potential winner, I'll have to stick around and make a winner out of it before I go away and leave Bill in charge. Besides, I'm worried about Bill. He's full of malarial fever, and last night I got thinking about him and decided to send him back to the Colorado mountains for a few months. This country is going to be in the throes of a revolution; the chances are we will not be able to do much with our property until the war is over, and I will be able to do that little. I want some regular doctors to work on Bill so he'll be fit when he gets back on the job.”
As a matter of fact, this idea of sending Billy to the United States had but that moment occurred to Jack Webster; he reflected now that this plan was little short of an inspiration. It would give Billy and Dolores an opportunity to marry and have a honeymoon; it would leave him free of her disturbing presence, and enable him to leave Sobrante when the Gearys should return. He resolved to speak to Billy about it.
Dolores's voice broke in upon his cunning reflections. “But Billy tells me you already have a fortune sufficient for the needs of a caliph without a court. Why risk your precious life to acquire more? Money isn't everything in life.”
“No, but the game is.”
“What game? Mining?”
“The game of life.”
“But this is the game of death.”
“Which makes life all the sweeter if I can beat the game. Perhaps I can better illustrate my point of view with a story. Some years ago I was sent to Arizona to examine a mining property and report upon it; if I advised its purchase, my principals were prepared to buy at my valuation. Well, when I arrived, I found a miserable shanty close to a shaft and dump, and in the shanty I found a weatherbeaten couple. The woman was probably forty but looked fifty. The man had never been anything but a hard-rock miner—four dollars a day had been the limit of his earnings in any one day until he stumbled on some float, traced it up, and located the claims I was there to examine and try to buy.
“His wife had been a miner's daughter, knowing nothing but drudgery and poverty and continuing that existence after marriage. For twenty years she had been darning her husband's socks, washing his clothes, and cooking his meals. Even after they uncovered the ledge, it wasn't worth any more than the country rock to them unless they could sell it, because the man had neither the money nor the ability to develop it himself. He even lacked the ability to sell it, because it requires real ability to unload any kind of a mine for a million dollars, and real nerve on the part of the man who buys. I examined the mine, decided it was cheap at a million dollars, and so reported to my principals. They wired me to close, and so I took a sixty-day option in order to verify the title.
“Well, time passed, and one bright day I rode up to that shanty with a deed and a certified check for a million dollars in my pocket; whereupon I discovered the woman had had a change of heart and bucked over the traces. No, siree! She would not sign that there deed—and inasmuch as the claim was community property, her signature was vitally necessary. She asked me so many questions, however, as to the size of the stamp mill we would install and how many miners would be employed on the job, that finally I saw the light and tried a shot in the dark. 'My dear Mrs. Skaggs,' I said, 'if you'll sign this deed and save us all a lot of litigation over this option you and your husband have given me, I'll do something handsome. I will—on my word of honour—I'll give you the exclusive boarding-house privilege at this mine.'”
“And what did she say, Caliph?”
“She said: 'Give me the pen, Mr. Webster, and please excuse my handwriting; I'm that nervous in business matters.'”
Dolores's silvery laughter rippled through the room. “But I don't see the point,” she protested.
“We will come to it presently. I was merely explaining one person's point of view. You would not, of course, expect me to have the same point of view as Mrs. Skaggs, of Arizona.”
“Certainly not.”
“All right! Listen to this! In 1907, at the height of the boom times in Goldfield, Nevada, I was worth a million dollars. On the first day of October I could have cashed in my mining stocks for a million—and I had a lot of cash in bank, too. But I'd always worked so hard and been poor so long that my wealth didn't mean anything to me. I wanted the exclusive privilege of more slavery, and so I staked a copper prospect, which later I discovered to consist of uncounted acres of country rock and about twenty-five dollars' worth of copper stain. In order to save a hundred dollars I did my own assessment work, drove a pick into my foot, developed blood-poison, went to the hospital, and was nice and helpless when the panic came along the middle of the month. The bank went bust, and my ready cash went with it; I couldn't give my mining stocks away. Everybody knew I was a pauper—everybody but the doctor. He persisted in regarding me as a millionaire and sent me a bill for five thousand dollars.”
“How perfectly outrageous! Why, Caliph, I would have let him sue me.”
“I would have, too—but I didn't. I induced him to settle for one hundred thousand shares of stock in my copper prospect. The par value was a dollar a share, and I was going to sell a block at ten cents, but in view of his high professional standing I let him have it for a nickel a share. I imagine he still has it. I bought back later all the other stock I sold, because the property was worthless, and in order to be a sport I offered him five hundred dollars for his block, but he thought I was trying to swindle him and asked five thousand.”
“Oh, Caliph!”
“Wonderful game, isn't it—this game of life. So sweet when a fellow's taking chances! Now that I am fairly prosperous again, the only thing in life that really matters is the uncertainty as to whether, when finally I do leave Sobrante, I shall ride to the steamship landing in a hack or a hearse.”
“But you could go in a hack this morning and avoid that uncertainty.”
“The millionaire drudge I told you of could have gone to five in a pretty villa on the Riviera, but she chose a miner's boarding-house.”
“Then why,” she persisted, “did you leave the United States with the firm intention of remaining in Sobrante indefinitely, change your mind before you were here eight hours, and cable this Neddy Jerome person you would return in sixty or ninety days—and the following morning decide to remain, after all!”
“My dear young lady, if I changed my clothes as often as I change my mind, the what-you-may-call-'em chaps that manufacture Society Brand clothes couldn't keep me dressed.”
“But why?”
“That,” he answered gravely, “is a secret.”
“Women delight to pry into men's secrets.”
“I know it. Had a friend once—married. Every night after dinner he used to sit and stare into the fire and his wife used to ask him what he was thinking about. He would look up at her owlishly and tell her it was something he couldn't explain to her, because she'd never understand it—and that was all he would tell her, although right frequently, I dare say, he felt like telling her something she could understand! She brooded over his secret until she couldn^t stand it any more, and one day she packed her duds and flew home to mother. He let her stay there three months, and finally one day he sent her a blueprint of what he'd been thinking about.”
“What was it?”
“An internal-combustion engine. You see, until she left him, he'd never been able to get set to figure out something in connection with the inlet valves——”
“Stop right there, Caliph. I'm rebuked. I'll let you get set to think——”
“I didn't mean that. You let me get set yesterday—and I figured it all out then—and last night—and a minute ago. I don't care to do any more thinking to-day. Please talk to me.”
“And you refuse to tell me why you cabled your friend Jerome?”
“You will never know. I told you it's a secret.”
“Bet you I find out.”
“How much? That ten thousand dollars you expect to make from the flour-gold in your black-sand claim? And by the way, ten dollars, please. I won it for guessing you were interested in a mining proposition.”
She returned to him the bill she had won from him the day before. “Ten thousand dollars suits me. Of course I haven't got the money just now, and this is what Billy calls a finger-bet, but if I lose, I guarantee to pay. Are we betting even money? I think that is scarcely fair. Under the circumstances I should be entitled to odds.”
“Nothing doing! No odds on a bet of this nature to a seeress who has already jarred me from soul to vermiform appendix by making good! You know too blamed much already, and how you discovered, it is a problem that may drive me crazy yet.”
After breakfast they repaired to the veranda to await the result of Webster's experiment with Don Juan Cafetéro. Sure enough, the wreck had again returned; he was seated on the edge of the veranda waiting for them; as they approached, he held up a grimy, quivering hand, in the palm of which lay—a five-dollar gold-piece.
“What?” Mr. Webster said, amazed. “Still unchanged!”
“I thried to change it at half a dozen cantinas,” Don Juan wheezed, “but divil a bit av systim did any av thim have. Wan offered this in spiggoty money an' the other offered that, an' sure if I'd taken the best that was offered me in exchange, ye might have t'ought I'd tuk more nor wan dhrink.”
“Bravo! Three long, loud, raucous cheers for Don Juan Cafetéro!” Dolores cried. “That's just exactly what he expected you to do, Don Juan.”
“Give a dog a bad name, an' 'twill shtick to him,” the derelict replied resignedly.
“Was it a terrible task to come back without a drink, Don Juan?”
He shivered. “A shky-blue kangaroo wit' a pink tail an' green ears chased me into this patio, ma'am.”
“You're very brave, Cafferty. How does it feel to win back your self-respect?” Webster asked him.
“Beggin' the young leddy's pardon—it feels like hell, sor.”
“Caliph, don't be cruel,” Dolores pleaded. “Call a waiter and give Don Juan what you promised him.”
So Webster went into the hotel bar and returned presently with a bottle of brandy and a glass, which he filled and held out toward Don Juan. “One of the paradoxes of existence, Don Juan,” he observed, “lies in the fact that so many of the things in life that are good for us are bad for us. This jolt will disperse the menagerie and quiet your nerves, but nevertheless it is a nail in your coffin.”
Don Juan proved himself a true Hibernian soldier of misfortune by jesting under fire. “Whilst ye have the hammer in yer hand, sor, dhrive in another,” he pleaded. Webster declined, however, and returned the bottle to the bar, where he had it marked for Don Juan and set aside, for it was his opinion, evolved from a vast experience with hard-drinking miners, that the only cure for poor, diseased Don Juan lay in a judicious application of hair from the dog that had bitten him.
“And this is another reason why I must stay here longer than I intended,” he said softly to Dolores, indicating Don Juan with his thumb. “He's just about ready to be poured back into the bottle, and I'm going to see if I cannot restore him to his original solid state. Experiments in chemistry always did fascinate me.”
He bade her adieu, and accompanied by his protégé, strolled uptown on a shopping tour. Here he outfitted Don Juan neatly but not gaudily and added to his own personal effects two high-power sporting rifles, three large-calibre automatic pistols, and a plentiful supply of ammunition—after which he returned to the hotel, first having conducted Don Juan to a barber shop and given him instructions to report for orders and his midday drink the instant he should have acquired the outward evidences of respectability.
At the hotel Webster found two messages awaiting him. One was from Billy Geary, up at San Miguel de Padua, advising him that everything was in readiness for a trip to the mine; the other was a note from Ricardo Ruey, but signed with his alias of Andrew Bowers. Webster read:
My Dear Friend:
Permit me to congratulate you on your marksmanship last night and to commend your forbearance in winging a gent where killing was not only justified but to be encouraged. You have, so I am authoritatively informed, completely buffaloed your two gentlemen. They cannot, in our own classical English, “quite make you.”
However, this letter is not all gossip. A certain higher-up has at length been convinced that it would be extremely inadvisable to eliminate you now. It has been pointed out to this person that you are a prom. cit. up in your neck of the woods and dangerous to monkey with—personally and because such monkeying may lead to unpleasant complications with your paternal government. A far more artistic and effective way of raising hell with you has been suggested to this higher-up individual, and he has accepted it. Indeed, the plan pleased him so much that he laughed quite heartily. Really, it is quite diabolical, but remember, he who laughs last laughs best—and I'm the villain in this sketch.
Barring accidents, my dear Webster, you are good for at least six weeks of existence. Beyond that I dare not guarantee you.
Thine,
Andrew Bowers.
“That makes it nice,” the recipient of this comforting communication soliloquized. He went up to his room, packed a duffle-bag with such belongings as he would find necessary during a prolonged stay in the mountains, and at luncheon was fortunate enough to find Dolores in the dining room when he entered. Again she motioned him to the vacant chair opposite to her.
“I'm going up to San Miguel de Padua this afternoon,” he announced as he took his seat. A look of extreme anxiety clouded her lovely face, and he noticed it. “Oh, there's no risk,” he hastened to assure her. “That scamp of a brother of yours, through his friends in high places, has managed to get me a reprieve.” He handed her Ricardo's letter.
She looked up, much relieved, from her perusal. “And how long do you expect to be gone, Caliph?”
“Quite a while. I'll be busy around that dratted concession for a couple of weeks, surveying and assaying and what-all; then, while waiting for our machinery and supplies to arrive from the United States, I shall devote my spare time to hunting and fishing and reforming Don Juan Cafetéro. The cool hills for mine.”
“What a selfish, unsociable programme!” she reflected. “I wonder if it will occur to him to come down here once in a while and take me for a drive on the Malecon and talk to me to keep me from dying of ennui before I meet Ricardo. I'll wait and see if he suggests it.”
However, for reasons best known to himself and the reader, Mr. Webster made no such interesting suggestion; so she decided that while he was tremendously nice, he was, nevertheless, a very queer man and thoroughly exasperating.
Before leaving that day Webster turned over to her a steamer-trunk filled with books, and with something of the feeling of a burglar about to rob a bank, asked her if she would care to ride down to the station with him. “Sort of speeding the parting guest, you know,” he explained comfortably, for somehow, at that moment, he felt a trifle untrue to Billy Geary. Of course, Dolores, having nothing more pleasurable or exciting to do, would—and did. At the station they found Don Juan waiting in charge of the baggage.
Just before the train pulled out John Stuart Webster took Dolores's hand. “Good-bye, Seeress,” he said very soberly. “The trail forks here for the first time—possibly the last, although I'll try to be on hand to make good on my promise to present you to your brother the day he occupies the palace. However, if I shouldn't be in town that day, just go up and introduce yourself to him. It's been wonderful to have met you and known you, even for such a brief period. I shall never forget you and the remarkable twenty-four hours just passed.”
“I shall not soon forget them myself, Caliph—nor you,” she added. “Haven't you been a busy little cup of tea, Caliph! Within twenty-four hours after landing, you have changed your mind three times, lost the best job in the world, had your fortune told, been marked for slaughter, acquired a new-found friend and commenced actively and with extraordinarily good results the work of reforming him, soused a gentleman in the fountain, spurned another with the tip of your boot, rode with me around the Malecon and listened to the band concert, bundled poor Billy off to San Miguel de Padua, received a challenge to fight a duel, accepted it, had it rejected, engaged in a street fight and shot a man through the hand, discovered my brother presumed to be dead, and received a reprieve from your enemies, while they perfect new plans for destroying you. Really, you are quite a caliph.”
“Oh, there's a dash of speed in the old horse yet, Miss Ruey,” he assured her laughingly. “Now listen: don't tell anybody about your brother, and don't tell Billy about my adventures since he left for San Miguel de Padua.”
“But I'm not liable to see Billy——”
“Yes, you are—extremely liable. I'm going to send him back to you as soon as I can spare him, because I know you'll be lonesome and bored to death in this lonesome town, and Bill is bully good company. And I don't want you to tell him about the mess I'm in, because it would only worry him; he can't aid me, and the knowledge that I was in any danger, real or fancied, would be sufficient to cause him to rebel against my plans for his honeym—for his vacation. He'd insist on sticking around to protect me.” He looked down at her little hand where it rested in his, so big and brown and hard; with his free hand be patted her hand paternally. “Good-bye, Seeress,” he said again; and turning to the steps, he leaped aboard just as the train started to move out of the station.
“Go—good-bye—Caliph,” she called mournfully. Then to herself: “Bless his heart, he did remember I'd be terribly lonely, after all. He isn't a bit queer, but oh, dear, he is so exasperating. I could bump his kind old head against a wall!” She turned her back on the train, fearful that from where he clung on the steps he could, even at that distance, see the sudden rush of tears that blinded her. However, Don Juan Cafe-téro, with his rubicund nose to the window of the last coach, did see them—saw her grope toward the carriage waiting to take her back to the hotel.
“Why, shure, the poor darlint's cryin',” he reflected. “Be the Great Gun an Athlone! Shure I t'ought all along 'twas Billy Geary she had her eye on—God love him! An' be the same token, didn't she tell me I was to shtay sober an' take care av Masther Webster? Hah-hah-a-a-a! Well! I'll say nothin' an' I'll be neuthral, but—but—but——”
From which it may be inferred that romance was not yet burned out of Don Juan's Gaelic soul. He would be “neuthral,” but—but—but—he reserved the right to butt in!
CHAPTER XX
THROUGHOUT the slow, tortuous journey, while the train crept up and ever upward into the hills, Don Juan entertained his patron with alternate snatches of the song closest to his heart (or rather his stomach)—“The Cruiskeen Lawn,” which, liberally translated for the benefit of those not familiar with the Gaelic, means “the morning's morning.” Between verses the outcast suggested the advisability of a drink to ward off approaching faintness or discoursed most learnedly on the roadbed, which was a tribute to his efficiency as a section-boss in his other incarnation.
Arrived at San Miguel de Padua about midnight, Webster found the climate temperate, in fact, decidedly cool. Billy was waiting for them and was properly amazed, but not scandalized when Don Juan Cafetéro, abusing the station hands in a horrible hodgepodge of English and Spanish, superintended the landing of the baggage on the platform.
“I had to bring him with me,” Webster explained. “I'm going to wean him, and after that baby quits crying for his bottle, believe me, Bill, we'll have the prince of a foreman for our Mine. Quite a character, is Don Juan, when you dig down into him.”
“Dig far enough into that ruin and you'll find firecrackers,” Billy admitted. “However, John, I'm afraid he won't explode. The powder's damp. How did you leave Dolores?”
“Fit as a fiddle, Bill.”
“How does she stack up on better acquaintance, Johnny?”
“She's a skookum lass. She sent her love and I promised to send you back to her P. D. Q. So don't bother me with talk about her. If you think you're going to sit by my bed half the night and talk about your heart's desire, you've another guess coming. You'll see her again in a week or ten days, I hope.”
“No? Is that so, Johnny? Bully for you, you old wampus cat. Tell Don Juan to steer you over to the Globo de Oro. He knows the place. I've got to go and hire a mule or some other quadruped for, Don Juan if we're to avoid a late start in the morning. Good-night, old fellow.”
They were up at daybreak, and with three heavily laden pack-mules in charge of two semi-naked mozos, while the cook jogged comfortably along on his big splay feet in the rear, they set out for Billy's concession. From San Miguel de Padua they turned west on a splendid highway paved with limestone blocks and vending up into the hills on an easy gradient.
“Government built, this, I dare say,” Webster suggested as they trotted along side by side.
Billy nodded. “It is the only evidence I have observed of an inclination on the part of President Sarros to give the lowly peon a run for his taxes. This highway stretches from San Miguel de Padua to the western national boundary; I imagine Sarros built it with some idea of enabling him to get there first with the most guns in the event of war with his neighbours on the Pacific side. Quite a rare plucked 'un, is Sarros—to quote Mother Jenks.”
“Are you acquainted with him, Bill? What kind of a bird is he?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, I know him. We're great amigos. I'm the man that taught him the folly of betting too heavily on two pair after the draw. He has Indian blood in him—quite a little of it, in fact; but he is well educated. Speaks French, Spanish, and English very fluently. He's a short man and wears high-heeled boots to make himself look taller than he really is. He is crafty, suspicious, sensitive, and possessed of a sense of humour—only his humour is tinged with cruelty. He'd steal a cross off a grave and kill his best friend as quickly, should political expediency demand it, as you or I would kill a rattlesnake. He has a rattling good intelligence-department, pays liberally for information, and keeps down rebellion by the simple process of locating the ringleaders and shooting them. He bumped off old General Morelos some six weeks ago—did it on mere suspicion, too.”
“You must have come to Sobrante mighty well recommended to get into the good graces of the scoundrel.”
“Not at all! Sarros is a peculiar man. It pleases him to pose as a democrat and mingle freely with the proletariat—accompanied, however, by a strong bodyguard. Frequently he visits the cafés in Buenaventura and fraternizes with all and sundry. I met him first in a joint known as The Frenchman's, where he used to come to watch the drawing for the lottery. I was there matching another American for half-dollars, and Sarros edged up, all interest, and homed in on the game. Before the session was over we'd swapped cards, and the instant he learned I was a mining man and down here to give Sobrante the onceover, he invited me up to the palace for dinner. Our acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship—on his part. It seems he likes to have enterprising Americans come to Sobrante and exploit the country, because experience has demonstrated that if the visitors develop a good thing, there is always a rake-off in it for Sarros.”
Webster nodded. “Same old game anywhere you go south of the Rio Grande,” he replied.
“I had a couple of thousand dollars I'd saved on a job I had down in Rhodesia, so I was enabled to put up a big front. I received government permission to prospect government lands, and—”
“Do you pay a royalty to the government, Bill?”
“Five per cent.”
“How about the president's rake-off?”
“Oh, that's unofficial, of course, but it's understood we pay him 5 per cent, of our output.”
“Anybody else to take care of?”
“No, that cleans up the gang. Loaiza, the Minister of the Interior, wanted in, but I kicked like a bay steer and Sarros shooed him off.”
“A fine lot of bandits to do business with!” Webster declared disgustedly. “Still, it's their way of doing business, and much as we dislike that kind of business, we'll have to do it that way or not at all. The government ought to get 10 per cent, of our gross output, and Sarros ought to be shot. However, I dare say we can stand for the blackmail if, as you say, you have twelve-dollar ore.”
“Wait and assay it yourself,” Billy assured him. For thirty miles they followed the government highway, and then debouched to the southwest along a neglected road just wide enough to accommodate the clumsy oxcarts of the peons. The country was sparsely settled and evidently given over to stockraising. By degrees the road lost itself in the tall, dry grass, and became a faint trail which led into a forest of fir and other woods, with a good deal of mahogany and with very little underbrush. Billy rode in front, following through the timber a trail of his own blazing; and on the afternoon of the third day they dropped swiftly into a bare brown valley lying between timbered hills, displaying here and there the red stain of oxide of iron, from which evidence Webster knew he was in a mineral country. Billy pointed to a yellow mound at the base of one of the toes of the range flanking the valley on the south.
“There's the claim,” he announced. “You can see the dump from here.”
A ribbon of green ran down a canon from the south and out into the brown, parched valley, where it suddenly disappeared.
“Sink,” Billy elucidated, following the direction of his friend's gaze and divining his thoughts. “That creek lies entirely on our concession—about thirty miner's inches of water, I should judge. It disappears in the sands out there at the end of the green streak, but the irrigation along its banks has been sufficient to insure plenty of good feed for our stock.”
Darkness had descended on the valley by the time they had pitched camp and eaten supper. They were up at dawn the following morning, however, and immediately after breakfast Jack Webster went to his duffle-bag and brought forth a dozen little canvas sacks and a prospector's hammer. “Now then, William, my son,” he announced, “light the lantern and we'll see if you've forgotten all I taught you about mining.”
They clambered up the dump to a point where two v light steel rails projected over the edge. On top of the dump, lying beside the rails, were two small, rusty, steel ore cars; the rails led from the edge of the dump to the mouth of a tunnel in the hillside and disappeared therein.
Webster stood a moment, looking round him. “How did you happen to locate this ledge?” he demanded. “Was it grass-root stuff, with an out-cropping here at the foot of the hill? No, of course it wasn't. You haven't enough ore on the dump. What the devil were you driving at?”
“Only a small portion of that dump is mine, Jack, and I didn't locate the ground originally. I came into this valley from the south, and as I worked up the range, I found a bald spot close to the top of the hill, and a gallows-frame over an abandoned shaft. Naturally, I went down the shaft to see why it had been abandoned. To my surprise, I found a twelve-foot vein of free-milling ore, on a contact between andesite and Silurian limestone. The ledge stood straight up and down, which seemed to argue great depth.”
“Somebody had found an outcropping on top of that hill,” Webster declared with conviction, “and sunk a shaft on the vein to open it up and determine its width and direction. How deep was this old shaft? Thirty or forty feet?”
“Thirty-two feet. I figured it out just that way, too. After determining approximately which way the ledge was pitching, I made up my mind I'd have a tunnel driven to cut the ledge at right angles at the foot of the hill, since no practical man would mine from the top of a hill and hoist his ore through a shaft, when he could mine from the bottom and haul his ore out on cars through a tunnel. So I came prowling down into the valley and found this tunnel. The work had been abandoned for a couple of years, and after examining the tunnel I thought I knew why. They had failed to cut the ledge as they expected.”
“Hum-m! And what did you do, Bill?”
“I got my transit and ran a line from the shaft on the hill, following the direction in which the ledge was running, and marked out the exact point toward the base of the hill where I would start my tunnel to cut the ledge. To my surprise, I discovered my predecessor had selected that identical spot. So I verified my calculations and then sat down to think it over.”
“You should have suspected a fault immediately.” Webster chided the younger man. “This is a volcanic country——-”
“Well,” Billy interrupted, “I suspected a fault, but not immediately. Remember I'm fifteen years your junior, professor. I remembered that frequent and violent earthquakes occur in this country, and it seemed to me a reasonable hypothesis to blame some ancient and particularly violent seismic disturbance, which had faulted the vein and set it over a considerable distance. According to my calculation, that other man should have cut the vein at eighty-three feet—yet he had gone on one hundred and two before quitting. So I got half a dozen peons and drove ahead nineteen feet on the other fellow's tunnel; and by Heck, Johnny, I cut the vein!”
“Bully boy! And then?”
“I drifted ten feet on the vein, and the ore suddenly gave out. It stopped just like that, proving I'd come to the upper end of the vein where it had faulted; so I just worked up and around, stoping and sinking a winze here and there, until just about the time my cash reserve was getting pretty low I picked up the true vein and opened it up for the full width. Come in, and I'll show you.”
They entered the tunnel, to the signal dismay of dozens of large bats. When they reached the vein, Webster broke off samples of the ore every three or four feet, crawled after Billy up through the stope and back to the true vein, from the face of which he also took numerous samples; then he crawled out into the sunshine again, hot, dirty, and perspiring.
“Billy, you'll be a real miner yet; see if you won't,” was all the praise he tendered his youthful partner, standing beside him in anticipation of a compliment, as Webster got out his portable assay outfit.
For three days Webster worked, determining the values of each sample, only to find that his assays confirmed Billy's. Then he visited the old shaft on top of the hill, assayed samples procured there, roamed the range in the immediate vicinity, marking with expert eye the timber he would find so useful and close at hand when stulls and lagging for the tunnel should be needed; then he selected a site where the waters of the stream could be impounded in a little draw far up the hillside, and returned to camp to render his final report.
“You were right, son,” he announced. “This mine is a humdinger and no mistake; if you and I live ten years we'll be worth ten millions between us—maybe more.”
Billy's jaundiced eyes glowed hungrily. “We'll put in a hundred stamps——”
“Well, we'll try ten for a starter,” Webster interrupted dryly, “and add more as the mine pays its way. Our first consideration is the building of about ten miles of road through that timber, and repairs to that old dirt road connecting with the Grand Highway. I noticed there isn't much hard rock work to do, however, and we'll shoot the trees out of our way with dynamite. After we have a passable trail broken into this valley it won't take long to haul in our freight from the railroad at San Miguel de Padua. We'll cut all our frame- and foundation-timbers for the stamp-mill right here on the ground, and our other buildings will all be adobe. We'll have to put in a concrete dam up there on the hill and build a flume to the stamps. Oh, yes, my son, we'll run the stamps by water power. We'll have a five-hundred-foot drop at an ample angle, with the last hundred feet almost perpendicular; believe me, when the water comes through the penstock, anything in front will have to get out of the way. The same power will operate a little electric-light plant to light the grounds and buildings and workings, run the drills, and so on. Yes, it's the sweetest mining proposition on earth—only, like all high-class goods, it has one flaw when you examine it closely.”
“You're crazy,” Billy challenged. “Name the flaw!”
“Sarros!” Webster replied smilingly. “That scoundrel makes a gamble out of an otherwise sure thing. However,” he added, recalling the note received from Ricardo Ruey just before his departure from Buenaventura and reflecting that to be forewarned is to be forearmed, “we'll accept the gamble. That rascal can't live forever, and he may be eliminated before he causes us any trouble.”
“What will it cost us to get this mine on a paying basis, Johnny*”
“Well, back home, I'd figure on spending at least hundred thousand dollars; but I dare say, taking consideration the low cost of labour in Sobrante and the raw, natural resources of power and timber right on the ground, we ought to put this deal over for fifty thousand at the outside. Praise be, I have cash enough to do the trick without calling in any help, and such being the case, we'll not waste any time but hop to the job in a hurry and make the fur fly.”
“All right, Jack. What's the programme?”
“Well, first off, son, I'm not going to stay in this country and lose myself managing this mine. That's your job, because you're young and unimportant in your profession and have the ability to get away with the job. You can afford to spend the next fifteen years here, but I cannot. I can only afford to come down here every couple of years and relieve you for a vacation.”
“That's the way I figured it, Jack.”
“All right then, Bill, let us start in by giving you your first vacation. If you're going to dig in here and make the fur fly, you've got to be in tip-top physical condition—and you are thin and gaunted and full of chills and fever. Just before I left Buenaventura I cashed a draft for five thousand dollars on my letter of credit at the Banco Nacional, and placed it to the credit of your account there.
“To-morrow morning you will take your horse, one pack-mule, and one mozo and ride for San Miguel de Padua, where you will take the train for Buenaventura. In Buenaventura you may do what you blame please, but if I were you, boy, I'd try to get married and go back to the U. S. A. for my honeymoon. And when I finally hit a town that contained some regular doctors I'd let them paw me over and rehabbit me and overhaul my bearings and put me in such nice running order I'd be firing on all twelve cylinders at once.
“And when I was feeling tip-top once more I'd wire old John Stuart Webster and tell him so, after which I'd stand by for a cable from the said sourdough inviting me to return and take up my labours.” Billy's wan yellow face lighted up like a sunrise on the desert. “I guess that plan's kind of poor,” he announced feelingly. “You're right, Jack. I'm in rotten condition and I ought to be right before I start. Still, if I should arrange to get married before I leave, I'd like mighty well to have a good man and true see me safely over the hurdles.”
“That's nice, son, but I haven't time to be your best man. Arranging the honeymoon lets me out, Bill. I'm in a hurry to finish here and get back, so the sooner we both start our prospective jobs the sooner we'll finish. Have a quiet little marriage, Bill, without any fuss or feathers or voices breathing o'er Eden. What are the odds, provided you get hitched properly? Besides, I'm in mortal dread of that town of Buenaventura, The sewer system is bad; it's rotten with fever; and you'd better get that girl out of it P. D. Q., and the quicker the better. Myself, I prefer to stay up here in these mountains in a temperate climate where there are no mosquitoes.”
Billy saw that Webster was serious and would resent any interference in his plans. “All right, Jack,” he assented. “You're the boss.”
“Fine. Now, Bill, you listen to father and be guided accordingly. When you get to Buenaventura, wire the Bingham Engineering Company, of Denver, using my name, and tell them to add to my order given them last month and held for shipping directions, twelve dozen picks, twelve dozen shovels, twelve dozen mattocks, say, six dozen axes, brush knives, a big road plow, and whatever other things you happen to think of and which would come in handy when building our road. Also, when you get to New Orleans, buy a ton of dynamite and an adequate supply of fuse and fulminating caps, pay for it and ship it to me at Buenaventura. Further, look around in New Orleans and buy a stanch three ton motor truck. We'll need it for getting in supplies from San Miguel de Padua. Pay for the truck also, and if you go broke and cannot reach me by cable, wire Neddy Jerome at the Engineers' Club in Denver and kick his eye out in my honoured name.
“I guess that's about all of your job, Bill. As for me, I'll camp right here. I'll have a deal of surveying to do and I plan to sweat the booze out of that Cafferty person. I'll make Don Juan my chain man and run the tail off him. Then I'll be busy with preliminary plans, arranging for labour and so on, and when I'm idle I'll go hunting.”
In conformity with this plan, therefore, Billy said good-bye to his friend and packed out for San Miguel de Padua bright and early next morning. During the following ten days Webster managed to keep himself fairly busy around the camp at the mine; then for a week he hunted and fished, and finally, when that began to pall on him, his agile mind returned to business and the consideration of the possibility of a flaw in Billy's title to the claim; whereupon he suddenly decided to return to Buenaventura and investigate that title fully before proceeding to throw dollars right and left. While socially he was wildly prodigal with his dollars, in business matters no Scotchman was more canny or more careful of his baubees.
At the head of his little cavalcade, therefore, he rode out one morning for the railroad, whereat Providence, in its inscrutable wisdom, ordained that en route he should fall in with no less a personage than Don Ricardo Luiz Ruey, ne Andrew Bowers. Ricardo was mounted, armed, and alone, and at sight of Webster he shouted with delight and spurred toward him.
“What the devil! You, Rick, the government cut-up. What are you doing in these parts?” Webster rode up and shook hands.
“Oh, I'm Robin Hooding it around this part of the country. It is so secluded, you know, and Sarros hasn't any friends or any telegraph lines or any garrisons up this way. I heard in San Miguel de Padua that you were camped yonder, and I was on my way over to confer with you on matters of state.”
“You'll have to confer as we ride along. How does your business progress, Rick?”
“Beyond my wildest expectations. By the way, I need your help, friend Webster.”
“I'll do anything within reason, Rick.”
“I figured you would, so I have already imposed on your good nature to a slight extent. Met your friend Geary at El Buen Amigo a couple of weeks ago, just before he sailed for the United States. He was telling me you had to have a lot of tools for road building, so I cabled in a secret cipher to the So-brantean revolutionary junta in New Orleans to ship these tools to you immediately. They arrived on the last trip of the Atlanta and now repose in Leber's warehouse waiting for you to call and remove them.”
“You scoundrel! What have you sent me?”
“A couple of hundred rifles and three machine-guns, branded axes, picks, shovels, plows, and so on. I also ran in three cases of ammunition, labelled grindstones, two more cases disguised as bolts, and quite several thousand labelled nails in kegs. I should feel rather sorry for you if my friend Sarros should get suspicious and investigate, but I haven't any fear that he will. You see, he knows you're here on legitimate business. He has investigated and learned that you are a bona fide mining engineer of considerable reputation—and then, you know, your friend Geary dickered with him for the concession. The mining property you are about to develop belongs to the people, not to Sarros; yet he has bartered it away and will divert the royalty to his own pocket instead of the public treasury.”
“Hum-m-m! What do you want me to do with all those munitions consigned to me?”
“Arrange with Leber to keep them there until you get ready to build your road into the mine. I want them there when my American mercenaries arrive in Buenaventura. By the way, you are going to import these mercenaries for me. They are American miners and road-builders in the employ of the Honda Mining & Development Company, which is to be the name of your enterprise. I hope you'll like the name, Webster. I picked it out myself.”
“You cool scoundrel! You're making a cat's paw out of me.”
“That is because you happen to be so handy for my purpose. You see my plan, do you not? I'm going to attack Buenaventura from within and without. I'm going to come down on Sarros like a wolf on the fold, and the job is scheduled for next Saturday night a week.”
“Look here, Rick, my boy, I have no desire to mix in the politics of this country.”
“You have some desire, however, to mix in its wealth,” Ricardo reminded him.
“Well?”
“I'm the only man that can help you. By the way, do not order your machinery shipped until after I am seated firmly on the throne of my fathers.”
“Why?”
“It's been framed with Sarros to let you spend your money on that concession and get the mine in running order; then a fake suit, alleging an error in the government survey, will be filed. It will be claimed that the concession given your friend Geary is, by virtue of erroneous government surveys, the property of a citizen of Sobrante. The courts here do as Sarros tells them. You are to be kicked out, busted, and despairing, and your nicely equipped little mine will be taken over as a government monopoly and run for the benefit of the government, to wit, Sarros and his satellites. We had to cook up a dirty deal like that to save your life. Of course, now that I have warned you in time, you are safe. We schemed a proposition, however, that worked both ways. It enabled us to save you and to save us, by permitting the shipment, free of suspicion, of arms for the rebels that are to attack the city from within. Naturally I had to cache their arms within the city—and that was a hard problem until you happened along. Thank you, fairy godfather.”
“My thanks are due you, Ricardo. I'm for you, first, last, and all the time, and against this Sarros outfit. By the way, how do you purpose moving your machine-guns?”
“We'll have to carry them, I guess.”
“Well, I'll have a small auto-truck delivered in Buenaventura by that time. You might arrange to armour it with sheet steel; and with a couple of machine-guns mounted in it, and a crew of resolute Americans behind the machine-guns, you could caper from one end of the city to the other and clear a path for your infantry.”
“Thank you, my friend. I'll borrow the motor truck and arrange to armour it. That's a bully idea. Are you bound for Buenaventura now?” Webster nodded. “Then,” Ricardo suggested, “I'll meet you in my room at El Buen Amigo next Wednesday night at eleven and explain the details of my plans to you if you care to hear them. I think they're air-tight myself, but somehow I think I'd feel more certain of them if you approve them.”
“I'll be there, Rick, and the day you run that outlaw Sarros off the grass you'll know why I am for you.”
“Good-bye, old man. You will never know how grateful you have made me.”
Ruey shook hands with Webster and rode off through the timber, leaving John Stuart Webster to pursue the even tenor of his way, until at length he arrived once more in Buenaventura and sought accommodations at the Hotel Mateo. And there, as he entered the lobby and gazed through a glass door across the patio and into the veranda, he saw that which disturbed him greatly. In a big wicker rocker Dolores Ruey sat, rocking gently and busily stitching on a piece of fancy work!
Billy Geary gone back to the United States, and Dolores was still in Buenaventura! Amazing! Why, what the devil did Billy mean by letting her have her own way like that? Of course they hadn't been married, or she would not now be out there on the veranda, and of course they hadn't quarrelled, because that was an impossibility, and of course Billy had departed alone for the U. S. A., else he would have returned to their camp in the hills back of San Miguel de Padua.
“Well, I know what I'm going to do,” Webster decided. “I'm not going to be led into temptation while Billy's not on the job—so I'll not put up at the Hotel Mateo after all. I'll just sneak around to El Buen Amigo and fix it with that old Mother Jenks not to tip off my presence in town to Dolores Ruey until I can get the lay of the land and see what the devil has happened to all my well-laid plans.”
He retreated out the front door and called a carriage, into which he was about to step, bag and baggage, when Don Juan Cafetéro came rushing up in great excitement. “Sure, where are ye goin' now, sor. Is there no room for ye in the Hotel Mateo?”
“Their beds have jiggers in them, and I just remembered that,” Webster fibbed. “Hop in, John, and we'll drive around to Mr. Geary's lodgings in El Buen Amigo.”
“But I come t'rough the patio just now,” Don Juan explained, “an' who should I meet but the young leddy.”
“You infernal scoundrel! Did you tell her I was in town?”
“Sure I did, sor. An' why not?”
“None of your infernal business. You've spoiled everything. You're a muddle-headed monkey and I've a great notion to let you get drunk again. Take the baggage back into the hotel.”
Don Juan Cafetéro, greatly humbled and rebuffed, stepped aside and watched Webster stride back into the hotel. “God love ye, sor,” he mumbled, “know-in' what I know, is it likely I'd let ye make a monkey out av her or yerself? Ye made yer plans wit' Misther Geary wit'out consultin' her. Now go, ye grrand big divil, an' find out why she kicked yer schame to smithereens.” And with a solemn and knowing wink at the duffle-bag, Don Juan picked that article up and followed after his master.