Chapter 16

And desperate was the word when Symes contemplated going into his own pocket for money to make up the deficit--money which he had told himself he would salt away against that rainy day with which he had become all too familiar.

Symes's private bank account had grown to quite a respectable sum since that memorable morning when he had received word that his balance was in the red. If he was given a confidential discount upon machinery for which he charged the company full price, was he not entitled to the difference? If he received a modest revenue from his manipulation of the commissary, and the hospital contract contributed its mite, was it not all in the game? Wasn't it done every day by men in similar positions and as honest as himself? It was legitimate enough, certainly, and, if he did not mention it, it was because it was his own affair.

The longer and harder Symes walked the floor the more he realized that payday must be met. Labor was not an account which could wait. Nothing would so arouse suspicion and hurt his credit as a dilatory payday. Local merchants would come down upon him like a thousand of brick for the settlement of the large accounts which at the present moment they were rather proud of his owing.

The impression was general that the affairs of the Symes Irrigation Company were entirely satisfactory, and Symes's credit had only been limited by the local merchants' own credit.

Heretofore the treasury had been replenished through the activities of Mudge, but it was now disturbingly low and payday was close, while instead of the expected check from the promoter came his disquieting letter.

"Mudge is losin' his grip; he's gettin' timid," Symes thought irritably. "I may have to go back myself and raise the wind." His success with J. Collins Prescott had given him added confidence in his abilities along this line.

The estate which Prescott represented were now the largest bondholders and at the time of the purchase Symes had chortled--

"If we can just get this crowd in deep enough they won't dare lay down if we get in a hole. They've got to see the proposition through to save themselves."

"Yes," Mudge had agreed doubtfully, "but you gotta be careful." And added in the tone of a specialist in the delicate art of handling capital: "You can't force or crowd 'em, for once they get their necks bowed they'd sooner drop their pile than give an inch."

The question which Symes was now trying to decide was whether it was better to meet payday with his own money and trust Mudge to raise sufficient to reimburse him and meet the next payday or to bare the situation to the stock and bondholders and make an imperative demand for funds.

In the end Symes's own money met the payroll, and the sensation of checking it out was much like parting with his heart's blood. Though it was a relief to feel that his credit was still good and that he could continue to shine in the community for another month as its one large, luminous star, it also brought the cold perspiration out on him when he woke up in the night and remembered where this noble act had placed him. He was worse than penniless if Mudge could not raise more money, but this he refused to believe a possibility.

In the days which followed, the circles deepened beneath his eyes, his high color faded and Mudge's laconic messages "Nothing doing" were not calculated to restore it. As the time shortened toward another payday there were moments when Symes felt that his overtaxed nerves nearly had reached their limit. There was no rest or solace for him in his home, for when Augusta was not away with Dr. Harpe the latter was there to remind him of the skeleton jangling in his closet. He came and went beneath the cold eyes of the one and the half-contemptuous glances of the other, like, as he told himself, a necessary but objectionable boarder.

He no longer found diversion in his nightly game of "slough" in the card room of the Terriberry House, for they became only occasions to remind him that he owed his fellow-players more than he could ever hope to pay if Mudge did not dispose of more bonds quickly or the stockholders did not "come through," as he phrased it. He knew fairly well the financial resources of those whom he had favored with his liberal patronage and realized that they were doomed to go down with him to that limbo provided for the over-sanguine and the over-trusting.

At last the black day came when the treasury could not meet the smallest bills. Delay was no longer possible. He must play his last card. An imperative call must be made upon the stockholders and Symes telegraphed Mudge to this effect.

Symes dreaded the reply, yet he tried to bolster his courage with the argument which had seemed so potent at the time he used it, namely, that they were all in too deep to refuse aid at this crisis. Symes imagined that he could almost see himself growing old in the hours of suspense which followed the sending of the telegram.

Symes's hand shook noticeably when he took the yellow sheet from the operator who delivered it in person. The message read:

Turned down cold. Something wrong. Letter follows.

MUDGE

Symes's towering figure seemed to crumple in the office chair.

Abe Tutts to whom he owed $2500 for hay and grain waved a genial hand as he passed the door.

"How goes it?" he called.

"Great!" and the boastful reply sickened him.

_Great_--when he was ruined!

It was the sentence "Something wrong" which gave Symes that weak feeling in his knees. To what did Mudge refer, to the stock and bondholders or to the project and himself? Must he go about for the four days which must intervene before a letter could reach him with that sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, that curious limpness of his spine?

He lived through it somehow without betraying himself and when Mudge's letter came it read in part:

"Your theory regarding the extraction of funds from stockholders is all right only it don't work. When I called a meeting and suggested that they raise more money among themselves to relieve the present situation and protect their interests, they cut me off at the pockets.

"That Fly-trap King of yours said, 'If that's all you got us together for, Mudge, we might as well get to hell out of here because I, for one, don't propose to put another cent into the proposition--"My Wife Won't Let Me."'

"The air was so chilly I could see my own breath and my last winter's chilblains began to hurt.

"'Gentlemen,' I said, 'I don't understand your attitude in this matter. We've got to raise this money to save ourselves. The proposition is as good as it ever was.'

"'We don't doubt that,' says Prescott in that infernally quiet way of his that makes your ears tingle, and a grin like a slice of watermelon went round.

"I tell you, Symes, something or somebody has queered us here and if you can find out who or what it is you can do more than I've been able to do. Haven't you got some powerful enemy? Is there any weak spot in the proposition? Rack your brains and let me know the result.

"These fellows don't seem worried and that's the strange part of it, for I know that some of them have got in a whole lot more than they can afford to lose.

"Whatever's at the bottom of it, it's mighty effective, for I'm up against a blank wall. I've exhausted every resource and I can't raise a dollar. If only we dared advertise the land and get some purchasers to make part payments down it would keep things moving for a while, but I suppose this is out of the question."

Was it? Symes laid the letter down. It was against the law to sell land before the water was actually upon it, but was it out of the question?

In his desperation Symes decided that it was not.

Casually imparting the information to the Crowheart _Courier_ that he was going out to meet a party of millionaires who were anxious to invest, Symes packed his suitcase and arrived in the State Capital as soon as an express train could get him there.

When he appeared before the State Land Board the arguments he used to that body never were made public, but they were sufficiently convincing to enable him to send a guarded telegram to Mudge that night telling him to prepare additional literature and commence a campaign of advertisement. Also to arrange with the railroad for a Homeseekers' Excursion at as early a date as possible.

The telegram restored Mudge's faith in Symes, revived his waning enthusiasm and courage. He composed a pamphlet for distribution among Eastern and Middle West farmers, from which he quoted extracts to his wife in the middle of the night, awakening her for that purpose.

"Extend a hand to Nature and she meets you with outstretched arms! Tickle the soil and it laughs gold!"

"Wouldn't that start a man-milliner to raising alfalfa?" demanded Mudge upon such occasions.

"Where the clouds never lower and the sun shines always. Where the perfumed zephyrs fan the cheeks of men and brothers. The Perfect Climate found at last! Crowheart the Gem of the Rockies! within easy reach. Buy a ticket for $29.50 and breathe the Elixir of Life while you look over our unequalled proposition."

"That ought to catch all the lungers in the world," averred Mudge.

That the promoter's confidence in the merits of his pamphlet was justified was soon evidenced by the flood of inquiries and requests for additional information which came by mail while his office became a mecca for the restless and the "land hungry" who read his vivid description of the great Symes irrigation project which was making the desert bloom like the rose.

They came in droves to ask questions and to stare at the twenty-pound beet which sat conspicuously upon Mudge's desk and their jaws dropped when he explained carelessly--

"A runt from under the Mormon ditch; we raise bigger on _our_ land."

They studied the map of the neatly plotted townsite of Symes with its substantial bank building, its park, its boulevards, its public school building and band-stand.

"That's goin' to be some town," Mudge told each with a confidential air, "and you've got a chance to make something if you gobble up a corner lot or two before prices soar. Quick turns while the boom is on is the way to do it in the West."

Mudge believed all that he said, because he believed in Symes; that is, he was convinced that all would be as he represented as soon as Symes could be provided with money to complete the project, and if he permitted his imagination to take liberties with the truth, it was solely because he felt that the end justified the means. He assured himself that all would be forgotten and forgiven in the ultimate success of the enterprise and so great was his faith in it and its efficient management that his own money paid for the pamphlets and the half-page newspaper advertisements which told the world of the Homeseekers' Excursion to the great Symes Irrigation Project where the desert was blooming like the rose. If at times there came to him, as there did to Symes, chilling thoughts of the exact meaning of failure should their plans miscarry, he did not allow them to long dampen his ardor.

"We'll put it through _somehow_!" he declared vehemently. "There'll be a trainload of these Homeseekers, and, out of a bunch like that, surely _some_ of 'em will stick even if it isn't--well--not quite exactly in the shape they expect to find it. They'll see the merits of the proposition and make allowances for my enthusiasm; and if we can work this once we can work it again." Mudge insisted to himself resolutely, "I'm not the man to be stumped by a few obstacles, I can't afford to be identified with failures and we'll put this thing through if S. B. Mudge goes broke trying."

The stock and bondholders had something of the attitude of blasé spectators at a circus, regarding Mudge's sensational efforts calmly, without applause or protest. A curious attitude, Mudge thought, for persons so vitally concerned, and there were times, after a chance meeting with Prescott, for instance, when Mudge wondered if they really were as indifferent as they seemed. That Prescott had an amazing knowledge of the situation for one in a position to know so little was evidenced by an occasional pertinent comment. But Mudge was too busy getting his Homeseekers in line to attempt the solution of any mysteries on the side.

In Crowheart the coming excursion of Homeseekers was the chief theme. Its citizens were elated at the wide publicity which the Company's advertising campaign was giving to the town, and increased deference to Symes was the result, for the merchants of Crowheart made no secret of the fact among themselves that without the payroll of the Symes Irrigation Project real money would be uncommonly scarce, and should the project fail--the remote possibility made them shudder. Gradually it had dawned upon these venturesome pioneers from "way back East in Nebraska" that the surrounding country had few if any resources and without the opening of fresh territory Crowheart's future was one they preferred not to contemplate.

If they wondered somewhat at the elasticity of the law, Symes's ability to stretch it only demonstrated still further his power, his ability to bend men and things to his iron will, and their awe of him increased proportionately. To the isolated community of obscure persons Symes seemed very nearly omnipotent. They had no criticism to make of the law's adaptability to Symes's needs; it was enough for them that Crowheart was in the limelight and the influx of settlers meant their individual prosperity.

It soon became obvious from the sale of excursion tickets that the Terriberry House would not be able to accommodate the Homeseekers.

"Not a carload but a trainload!" said Symes jubilantly to the editor of the Crowheart _Courier_, and Sylvester dashed off a double leaded plea to the first families of Crowheart to "throw open their homes" and do their utmost to make the strangers feel that they would be received upon terms of equality and find a welcome in their midst.

Crowheart's citizens responded magnificently to the appeal. The Percy Parrotts threw open their three-roomed residence and made arrangements to sleep in the hay, while their self-sacrificing example was quickly followed by others. Neither the Cowboy Band nor the neighbors knew either rest or sleep until they had mastered a Sousa March, while Mrs. Tutts showed her public spirit by rehearsing Crowheart's talented amateurs in an emergency performance of the "Lady of Lyons" for the strangers' evening entertainment.

Every available vehicle was engaged by Symes to convey the excursionists to the project and a committee chosen to meet them on the cinders at the station, himself to greet them in a few neat words.

With so much upon his mind, so many responsibilities upon his shoulders, it is small wonder that the little formality of payday should slip by without being properly observed. When it was called to his attention his explanation sounded reasonable enough.

"I'm just so busy now, boys, that I haven't the time to attend to your checks. But your money's as safe as though it was in the Bank of England, and if you'll oblige me by waiting until this excursion is over I'll greatly appreciate it."

"Sure!" they replied heartily, and indeed it was a pleasure to do Andy P. Symes a favor when he asked it in his big, genial voice. "Take your time, Mr. Symes, we are in no rush." In his magnetic presence they had quite forgotten that they were in a rush; besides, it was plain that he had more than one man should be expected to attend to, and no one dreamed that a dollar dropped in the treasury would have echoed like a rock falling in a well.

Like Mudge, Symes was convinced that out of a trainload of Homeseekers some of them would "stick." The inducement to do so was the privilege of the first choice of the 160-acre tracts--for a substantial deposit.

But those who did not stick?--those who were strongly under the impression that the water was already flowing through the ditch or that it was so near completion that it would do so shortly--would they be--irritated? As the day of the excursion approached the disquieting thought came with increasing frequency to Symes that they _would_ be--irritated.

XXII

CROWHEART'S FIRST MURDER MYSTERY

The postmaster's curt "nothing" was like a judge's sentence to Essie Tisdale, for it meant to her the end of things. And now the marriage ceremony was over. She looked at the gold band upon her finger with a heavy, sinking heart. She must wear it always, she was thinking, to remind her that she had sold herself for a place to lay her head and thirty thousand sheep.

The jocose congratulations of the burly Justice of the Peace went unanswered and her eyes swept the smirking, curious faces of the bystanders without recognition. She heard Dubois's guttural voice saying--

"Go there to ze hotel, my dear, and get your clothes. Ze wagon is at ze shop for repairs and there you meet me. I've got to get back to ze sheep for awhile. You will haf good rest in ze hills."

The lonely hills with Dubois for company! A shiver like a chill passed over her. Returning to the hotel she found that the news had preceded her, for Mrs. Terriberry rushed down upon her with outstretched arms.

"Why didn't you tell me last night, Essie?"

The girl withdrew herself from the plump embrace.

"I didn't know it last night."

"I declare, if this isn't romantic!" Mrs. Terriberry fanned herself vigorously with her apron. "You'll be the richest woman around here when Dubois dies." She added irrelevantly, "And I've been like a mother to you, Ess."

"Why don't you and Dubois stay in town a few days and make us a visit?" Mr. Terriberry's voice rang with cordial hospitality.

The girl looked at him with embarrassing steadiness. The thirty thousand sheep were doing their work well.

"We are going to the camp to-day," she answered and turned upstairs.

When her few belongings were folded in a canvas "telescope" she looked about her with the panic-stricken feeling of one about to take a desperate, final plunge. The tiny, cheaply furnished room had been her home, her refuge, and she was leaving it, for she knew not what.

Every scratch upon the rickety washstand was familiar to her and she knew exactly how to dodge the waves in the mirror which distorted her reflection ludicrously. She was leaving behind her the shabby kid slippers in which she had danced so happily--was it centuries ago? And the pink frock hung limp and abandoned on its nail.

She walked to the window where she had sat so often planning new pleasures, happy because she was young and merry, and her heart brimmed with warmth and affection for all whom she knew, and she looked at the purple hills which shut out that wonderful East of which she had dreamed of seeing some time with somebody that she loved. She turned from the window with a lump in her aching throat and looked at the flat pillow which had been so often damp of late with her tears.

"It's over," she whispered brokenly as she picked up the awkward telescope, "everything is ended that I planned and hoped for. There's no happiness or love or laughter in the long, hot alkali road ahead of me. Just endurance--only duty."

She closed the door behind her, the door that always had to be slammed to make it fasten, and, drooping beneath the weight of the heavy bag trudged down the street toward the blacksmith shop.

It was less than an hour after the sheep-wagon had rumbled out of town with Dubois slapping the reins loosely upon the backs of the shambling grays that the telegraph operator, hatless, in his shirt-sleeves, bumped into Dr. Harpe as she was leaving the hotel.

"Have they gone?"

"Who?"--but her eyes looked frightened.

"Essie and old Dubois."

"Ages ago."

"I'm sorry, I hoped I'd catch her; perhaps I've something she ought to have."

Dr. Harpe looked at the telegram. Perhaps it was something she ought to have also.

"Look here, I've got a call to make over in the direction of Dubois's sheep camp and I'll take the message."

"Will you, Doc?" he said in relief. "That's good of you." He looked at the telegram and hesitated. "I didn't stop for an envelope."

"Oh, I won't read it."

"I know that, Doc," he assured her. "But----"

She was already hastening away for the purpose.

"Whew!" Dr. Harpe threw open her coat in sudden warmth. "I'm glad she didn't get _that_!"

She re-read the message--

Have heard nothing from you. Am anxious. Is all well with you? Telegraph answer to address given in letter.

Dr. Harpe tore the telegram in bits and watched the pieces flutter into the waste-basket.

"The Old Boy certainly looks after his own, Harpe," she murmured, but her fingertips were cold with nervousness.

Dr. Harpe had paid her professional visit and her horses were dragging the buggy through the deep sand in the direction of Dubois's sheep-ranch, where she contemplated staying for supper and driving home in the cooler evening. The small matter of being unwelcome never deterred Dr. Harpe when she was hungry and could save expense.

There was no one in sight nor human habitation within her range of vision; the slow drag was monotonous; the flies were bad and the heat was great; she was both drowsy and irritable.

"Lord! how I hate the smell of sheep!" she said fretfully as the odor rose strong from a bedding-ground, "and their everlastin' bleat would set me crazy. Gosh! it's hot! Wonder how she'll enjoy spending her honeymoon about forty feet from Dubois's shearing-pens," she sniggered. "Well, no matter what comes up in the future, I've settled _her_; she's out of the way for good and all, and I've kept my word--she'll never marry Ogden Van Lennop!"

Yet she was aware that there was hollowness in her triumph--that it was marred by a nameless fear which she refused to admit. Van Lennop was still to be reckoned with. His telegram had reminded her forcibly of that.

The muffled sound of galloping hoofs in the sand caused her to raise her chin from her chest and her mind became instantly alert. It would be a relief to exchange a word with some one, she thought, and wondered vaguely at the swiftness of the gait upon so hot a day. She could hear the labored breathing of the horses now and suddenly two riders flashed into sight around the curve of the hill. Instantly they pulled their horses on their haunches and swung them with rein and spur into the deep washout in the gulch where the giant sagebrush hid them.

It was so quickly done that Dr. Harpe had only a glimpse of flashing eyes, swarthy skins, and close-cropped, coal-black hair, but the glimpse was sufficient to cause her to say to herself--

"Breeds--and a long way from the home range," she added musingly. "Looks like a getaway--what honest men would be smokin' up their horses in heat like this?"

A barking sheep-dog ran up the road to greet her when, after another hour of plodding, she finally reached the ridge where she could look down upon the alkali flat where Dubois had built his shearing-pens, his log store house and his cabin of one room.

"No smoke. Darned inhospitable, I say, when it's near supper time and company comin'."

There was no sign of life anywhere save the sheep-dog leaping at her buggy wheels.

"Can it be the turtle-doves don't know it's time to eat?" she sneered. "Get ep!"

The grating of the wheels against the brake as she drove down the steep pitch brought no one around the corner of the house, which faced the trickling stream that made the ranch a valuable one.