Part 5

“We’ll see about this later on,” answered Eastman. “You must accept it. And there’s another thing I want to offer. You know, Doctor Fowler’s been up from San Francisco to look over the Blue Top position. But he won’t suit. Do you think he’s been worrying about the finding of my boy? Not a bit of it. He’s been worrying for fear the bungalow wouldn’t be big enough to please his wife. There’s one thing I didn’t realise the other day, Doc. What we need is a physician that doesn’t put on so much style--the kind of a man that can meet any emergency, you understand--take a horse over a trail if it’s necessary.”

“Yas?” returned the doctor. The tray was still in his hands. And now it began to tremble so that there was a faint clink of glass. He stood looking down at it.

“In fact,” went on Eastman, “we need a doctor like you at the mine.”

The doctor raised his eyes to the girl standing at Mrs. Eastman’s side. And he saw that there was a look of great happiness on her face, like the happiness on the face of the young mother.

“Blue Top!” he said. Then: “Letty, do _you_ think the little shingled house is too small?”

THE BOOMERANG

When darkness settled a figure began to follow Patton--a tall, ungainly, heavy-shouldered figure. It shadowed him down the single street of the desert town to the depot, where he bought two tickets and checked two beribboned trunks; it lurked at his heels when he went back along the dirt sidewalk to Conley’s restaurant, the largest of the score of unpainted pine shacks that made up Searles. The restaurant faced the single track of the railroad line, and as Patton ate his supper, the figure stood on the ties, quiet and watchful. When Patton left the restaurant for the barber-shop farther along the street, it moved parallel with him, and took up its station outside a front window of the place.

Patton entered the shop hurriedly and dropped into the only chair. He was a man of, perhaps, forty, with black hair that was brushed away slickly from a narrow forehead, and black eyes set deep and near together. His nose was long and sharply pointed. His mouth was too full for his lean jaws, which gave his cheeks the appearance of being constantly sucked in. But he was far from ill-looking. And when he got out of the barber’s chair presently, fresh-shaven, there was a healthy glow to his dark skin under its trace of powder.

He arranged a spotless collar and a fresh tie, settled his soft hat on his carefully combed hair, adjusted his coat before a mirror, and went out. The figure moved with him, going toward the depot once more. A building beyond the station was brightly lighted. Patton made toward it, walking fast and whistling. The figure walked faster than he--until it was almost at his heels.

“Patton!”

Patton halted. “Hello,” he returned cheerily. “Who is it?”

The figure halted. “It’s Jeff Blandy,” was the answer.

“Oh.” The tone showed displeasure. Patton backed away a step. “Well, what can I do for you?”

Blandy did not reply at once. Then, “You can’t do nothin’ for _me_,” he said. “I just want to say a word or two about--Polly Baker.”

“Yes?” inquired Patton impatiently. “Well, hurry up. The ceremony’s at nine-thirty. The west-bound goes through at eleven.”

Again there was a short silence. When Blandy went on, his voice was lowered. “She ain’t got no paw nor maw, nor no brother. That’s why _I’m_ a-speakin’ to you.”

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

“I’d like to feel right shore of that. You see, she and me has been good friends for a long while. And I want to ask you, Patton, to play fair with her, and----”

“Say! look here!” broke in the other man. “You’re putting your lip into something that’s none of your business.”

“Do y’ _think_ so?” retorted Blandy with sudden spirit. “Wal, out here in the West, a man’s likely to find hull crowds that’ll make it their business if he can’t see his way to treatin’ a woman white.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Patton.

“Just this: I happen to know about that Galindo business at Paicines. There’s _one_ place you didn’t act on the square. Wal, the Galindo girl’s a greaser, and her men folks oughta took better care of her. We won’t say nothin’ more about it, Patton. But don’t forgit this: A feller owes his wife somethin’ more’n just the weddin’ ceremony.”

“Oh, I see,” sneered Patton. “You’re trying to kick up a rumpus. You wanted Polly yourself.”

Blandy gave a short laugh. “Me?” he said. “_Me?_ Why, you’re crazy! All I’ve got to keep a wife on is my prospectin’ outfit and a’ old mangy mule. Me! Huh! No girl’d look at me--no fine, pretty girl that’s had lots of chances. I ain’t nothin’ but a slob.”

To that, Patton made no comment.

“No, you’re the kind of a man that a girl likes,” Blandy went on. “And you git a couple of hunderd from the East every month. You can take her away from this hole and make her nice and comfortable in Los Angeles, and give her a hired girl to wait on her, and decent clothes. Wal, that’s fine. But a’ easy time and good clothes don’t amount to a hill of beans with a woman if she ain’t happy. So--_play fair with her_, Patton. In the long run, it pays to do what’s right. You know that. Nine times outen ten, when a man picks up a club to take a’ underhanded shy at another person, Mister Stick comes whizzin’ right back and gives him a crack in the head like one of them----”

“That’ll do, Blandy,” interrupted Patton. His voice was hoarse with anger. “I haven’t any more time for your damned gossip.” He turned abruptly and strode away.

Blandy stayed where he was, his heavy shoulders stooped, his arms hanging loosely at his sides, his weight shifted to one foot. He saw a door of the near-by house open wide to admit Patton; heard a chorus of gay voices greet the other man, and following a short wait, heard the tones of an organ, playing a march. He waited until the organ ceased; then, head lowered, and hat pulled down to his brows, he walked away slowly, going to the depot.

He halted in the shadow of the station and stayed there until the head-light of the west-bound train shone in the distance like a fallen star. The star grew. And through the night air came the thin shriek of the nearing engine. It was then that a laughing, chattering group left the brightly-lighted house and came hurrying toward the depot. Blandy turned from the approaching light.

The centre of the group was the bride, a slender girl in a white dress. As she stepped upon the platform, under the station lamps, Blandy leaned forward a little to catch a glimpse of her face. Her childish eyes, long-lashed and the blue of lapis lazuli, were bright with happiness, her cheeks an excited pink.

She saw the tall figure standing half in and half out of the shadow, and ran to him. “Jeff,” she began reprovingly, “you didn’t come to the wedding!”

He took her outstretched hand. “No,” he agreed; “no, I--I didn’t, but----” He paused awkwardly.

“I missed you, Jeff,” she declared. “Why, I wanted you there more than anybody else. And I wanted to wait till someone could go for you. But nobody’d seen you, and they didn’t know where you were--What was the matter, Jeff?”

“I--I had business to attend to,” he explained.

“Business! And you my best, best friend----”

The train was close. Voices began to summon her back to the wedding-party.

Blandy leaned down to her. “Dear little Polly,” he said huskily, “your old side-pardner wishes you all the luck that’s in the world.”

Then she was gone again. She smiled back at him from the steps of the car, and answered the chorus of farewells that was shouted up to her. The engine-bell clanged, the train moved. Patton sprang to the girl’s side amid a shower of rice. There was more shouting, which was answered from the car platform, and the west-bound pulled out, the green lights on the rear of the last coach glowing like the eyes of a serpent.

Blandy lifted a hand to his breast, then to his throat, then to his eyes. The group of wedding guests gone, and the depot platform dark, he crossed the railroad track, walking a little uncertainly. Out in the blackness, among the sage-brush, something was moving about--an animal. He went up to it, untied a rope, spoke a word of command, and started off northward--away from the town into the desert.

* * * * *

Jeff Blandy, staggering across the last mile of his journey, directed his way over the railroad track to Conley’s restaurant. The dust of many days and nights was upon him, powdering hair and clothes to the colour of his grey hat. The weariness of trudging over yielding and uneven ground was in his long legs and in the stoop of his shoulders. And the leathern sallow of his face wore a fresh gloss of vivid red that was like the reflection of a torch-flame. Yet in his eyes--as brown and big and appealingly honest as the eyes of a great, friendly dog--was a gleam that neither the sand-laden winds nor the scorching sun had dulled. And there was a smile lurking among the long bristles at the corners of his wide mouth.

Entering the restaurant, he found it unchanged, though a year had passed since he had left Searles. There were the two oilcloth-covered tables that reached from end to end of the room, and the counter, with its cash-register. But no one was on hand to take his order. Stiffly, he let himself down upon a chair at one end of the first table. Then, leaning back and dropping his hat to the floor at his side, he picked up a knife and rang a sharp summons on the rim of an empty glass.

The door into the kitchen swung open to admit a young man in shirt-sleeves and soiled apron,--a short, thick-set young man with the curly flaxen hair, full blue eyes and apple-red cheeks of a boy doll. He was carrying a pitcher of water.

Blandy drained his glass before he gave the other a nod. Then, “Gimme some ham and eggs and fried potatoes,” he began. “A steak, if you got it, too. And coffee. And some pie. And fruit----”

“Oranges is the only fruit,” interrupted the waiter.

“Orange’ll do. And could the cook mix me some flap-jacks?”

“I guess.”

“Then that’ll be all.”

The young man in shirt-sleeves went out, kicking the swinging door open before him and shouting his order. Left alone, Blandy helped himself to a second glass of water, after which he stretched his legs far under the table, folded his arms upon his breast, and took a deep breath. Then, as he waited, the smile at the corners of his mouth began slowly to spread, until his burned cheeks were wrinkled with it, and his moistened lips were parted to show a double line of strong white teeth. Thus he sat, all a-grin, dreaming.

Beyond the swinging doors, dishes were clattering, and there was a sound of sputtering and frying. The voice of the waiter rose and fell, too, amid the din of crockery and cooking; and mingled with his voice, now and then, was the voice of a woman. Presently, the tempting smell of ham was wafted out into the dining-room. It was then that Blandy drew in his feet and sat erect, turning his eyes kitchen-ward.

Soon the waiter appeared. Pyramided upon his towel-draped left arm were numerous plates and platters, topped by a huge cup of inky coffee that steamed as it washed gently from side to side with every sway of the arm. As the order was placed upon the table, together with some cutlery, which the waiter scattered with his right hand, Blandy picked up a knife and fork, pulled a platter into place before him, and began to eat, ravenously. Someone--a man--entered the front door and took a seat behind the cash-register. Blandy did not look up. One by one the platters and plates were emptied. At last, refreshed and satisfied, Blandy picked up an orange and began to peel it leisurely.

It was now that for the first time he chanced to look across at the man behind the counter. That glance brought him to his feet, the half-peeled orange in his hand. “Harvey Patton!” he exclaimed in amazement.

“How are you?” answered Patton, indifferently. The tip of his nose moved up and down a little as he spoke.

Blandy strode toward the counter. “What under the shinin’ sun are you doin’ back in _Searles_?” he demanded.

“Keeping restaurant.”

The other was silent for a moment, his astonished eyes still fixed upon Patton. Then, “Where’s--Polly?” he asked.

Patton jerked his head sidewise toward the kitchen. “She’s doing the cooking,” he explained, smiling.

Blandy’s staring eyes narrowed. He turned abruptly, crossed the room to the swinging door and struck it out of the way before him.

Just within the kitchen, he halted. It was a small room, reeking with smells, and suffocatingly hot. On the side farthest from Blandy was a sink. And bending over the sink, with her back to him, was a girl. As he looked at her, the red on his face slowly deepened, as if he were holding his breath. After a while, his glance travelled to the stove, upon which some pots were steaming; to the long kitchen table piled high with unwashed dishes; to the heaping oil can of scraps at the foot of the table; to the floor, spattered and unswept. When at last his look went back to the girl, the hairy skin at either side of his mouth was twitching with the effort of self-control.

“Polly!”

She turned. The perspiration was streaming from forehead and temples, so that her face and throat glistened, as her arms were glistening with the water that was streaming from elbows to finger-ends. Her face was more scarlet than his own. Out of that scarlet looked her eyes, which were shadowed by wide, dark circles.

“Why--why, Jeff!”

He shook his head, slowly and sadly. “And so you married to come to _this_,” he said in a low voice.

There was a bench beside the sink. She sank to it, as if too weary to keep her feet. As she sat there, leaning on a hand, he saw her, not as she was before him, tired and blowzy and wet with sweat, but as he had seen her last. He took a step toward her. “How does it come that you and Patton’re keepin’ a’ eatin’-house?” he asked.

“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.