CHAPTER XVIII
WHEREIN MATTERS THICKEN
The stranger who had witnessed the trouble at Culver's office had come there at the instance of McCoppet. It was, therefore, to McCoppet that he carried the intelligence of what had taken place, so far as he had seen.
The gambler was exceedingly pleased. That Culver would now be ready, as never before, to receive a proposition whereby the owners of the "Laughing Water" claim could be deprived of their ground, he was well convinced.
For reasons best known to himself and skillfully concealed from all acquaintances, McCoppet had remained practically in hiding since the moment in which he had beheld that half-breed Piute Indian in the saloon. He remained out of sight even now, dispatching a messenger to Culver, in the afternoon, requesting his presence for a conference for the total undoing of Van Buren.
Culver, who in ordinary circumstances might have refused this request with haughty insolence, responded to the summons rather sooner than McCoppet had expected. He was still red with anger, and meditating personal violence to Van at the earliest possible meeting.
McCoppet, with his smokeless cigar in his mouth, and his great opal sentient with fire, received his visitor in the little private den to which Bostwick had been taken.
"How are you, Culver?" he said off-handedly.
"I wanted to have a little talk. I sent a man up to your shop a while ago, and he told me you fired Van Buren out of the place on the run."
"That's nobody's business but mine," said Culver aggressively. "If that is all you care to talk about——"
"Don't roil up," interrupted the gambler. "I don't even know what the fight was about, and I don't care a tinker's whoop either. I got you here to give you a chance to put Van Buren out of commission and make a lifetime winning."
Culver looked at him sharply.
"It must be something crooked."
"Nothing's crooked that works out straight," said McCoppet. "What's life anyhow but a sure-thing game? It's stacked for us all to lose out in the end. What's the use of being finniky while we live—as long as even the Almighty's dealing brace?"
Culver was impatient. "Well?"
"I won't beat around the chapparal," said McCoppet. "It ain't my way." Nevertheless, with much finesse and art he contrived to put his proposition in a manner to rob it of many of its ugly features. However, he made the business plain.
"You see," he concluded, "the old reservation line might actually be wrong—and all you'd have to do would be to put it right. That's what we want—we want the line put right."
Culver was more angered than before. He understood the conspiracy thoroughly. No detail of its cleverness escaped him.
"If you thought you could trade on my personal unpleasantness with an owner of the 'Laughing Water' claim," he said hotly, "you have made the mistake of your life. I wish you good-day."
He rose to go. McCoppet rose and stopped him.
"Don't get feverish," said he. "It don't pay. I ain't requesting this service from you for just your feelings against a man. There's plenty in this for us all."
"You mean bribe money, I suppose," said Culver no less aggressively than before. "Is that what you mean?"
"Don't call it hard names," begged the gambler. "It's just a retainer—say twenty thousand dollars."
Culver burned to the top of his ears. He looked at McCoppet intently with an expression the gambler could not interpret.
"Just to change that line a thousand feet," urged the man of gambling propensities. "I'll make it twenty-five."
Still Culver made no response. With all his other hateful attributes of character he was tempered steel on incorruptibility. He was not even momentarily tempted to avenge himself thus on Van Buren.
McCoppet thought he had him wavering. He attempted to push him over the brink.
"Say," said he persuasively, lowering his voice to a tone of the confidential, "I can strain a little more out of one of my partners and make it thirty thousand dollars." He had no intention of employing a cent of his own. Bostwick was to pay all these expenses. "Thirty thousand dollars, cash," he repeated, "the minute you finish your work—and make it look like a Government correction of the line."
Culver broke forth on him with accumulated wrath.
"You damnable puppy!" he said in a futile effort to be adequate to the situation. "You sneak! Of all the accursed intrigues—insults—robberies that ever were hatched—— By God, sir, if you offered me a million of money you shouldn't alter that Government line by a hair! If you speak to me again—I'll knock you down!"
He flung the door wide open, went out like a rocket, and bowled a man half over in his blind haste to be quit the place.
McCoppet was left there staring where he had gone—staring and afraid of what the results would probably be to all the game. He had no eyes to behold a man who had suddenly discerned him from the crowds. A moment later he started violently as a huge form stood in the door.
"Trimmer!" he said, "I'm busy!"
"You're goin' to be busier in about a minute, if I don't see you right now," said the man addressed as Trimmer, a raw, bull-like lumberman from the mountains. "Been waitin' to see you some time."
"Come in," said the gambler instantly regaining his composure. "Come in and shut the door. How are you, anyway?" He held out his hand to shake.
Trimmer closed the door. "Ain't ready to shake, jest yet," he said. "I come here to see you on business."
"That's all right, Larry," answered McCoppet. "That's all right. Sit down."
"I'm goin' to," announced his visitor. He took a chair, pulled out a giant cigar, and lighting it up smoked like a pile of burning leaves. "You seem to be pretty well fixed," he added, taking a huge black pistol from his pocket and laying it before him on the table. "Looks like money was easy."
"I ain't busted," admitted the gambler. "Have a drink?"
"Not till we finish." The lumberman settled in his chair. "That was the way you got me before—and you ain't goin' to come it again."
McCoppet waited for his visitor to open. Trimmer was not in a hurry. He eyed the man across the table calmly, his small, shifting optics dully gleaming.
Presently he said; "Cayuse is here in camp."
Cayuse was the half-breed Piute Indian whose company McCoppet had avoided. Partially educated, wholly reverted to his Indian ways and tribal brethren, Cayuse was a singular mixture of the savage, plus civilized outlooks and ethical standards that made him a dangerous man—not only a law unto himself, as many Indians are, but also a strange interpreter of the law, both civilized and aboriginal.
McCoppet had surmised what was coming.
"Yes—I noticed he was here."
"Know what he come fer?" asked the lumberman. "Onto his game?"
"You came here to tell me. Deal the cards."
Trimmer puffed great lungfuls of the reek from his weed and took his revolver in hand.
"Opal," said he, enjoying his moment of vantage, "you done me up for a clean one thousand bucks, a year ago—while I was drunk—and I've been laying to git you ever since."
McCoppet was unmoved.
"Well, here I am."
"You bet! here you are—and here you're goin' to hang out till we fix things right!" The lumberman banged his gun barrel on the table hard enough to make a dent. "That's why Cayuse is here, too. Mrs. Cayuse is dead."
The gambler nodded coldly, and Trimmer went on.
"She kicked the bucket havin' a kid which wasn't Cayuse's—too darn white fer even him—and Cayuse is on the war trail fer that father."
McCoppet threw away his chewed cigar and replaced it with a fresh one. He nodded as before.
"Cayuse is on that I know who the father was," resumed the visitor. "I told him to come here to Goldite and I'd give up the name."
He began to consume his cigar once more by inches and watched the effect of his words. There was no visible effect. McCoppet had never been calmer in his life—outwardly. Inwardly he had never felt Dearer to death, and his own kind of fright was upon him.
"Well," he said, "your aces look good to me. What do you want—how much?"
"I ought to hand you over to Cayuse—good riddance to the whole country," answered Trimmer, with rare perspicacity of judgment. "You bet you're goin' to pay."
"If you want your thousand back, why don't you say so?" inquired the gambler quietly. "I'll make it fifteen hundred. That's pretty good interest, I reckon."
"Your reckoner's run down," Trimmer assured him. "I want ten thousand dollars to steer Cayuse away."
McCoppet slowly shook his head. "You ain't a hog, Larry, you're a Rockyfeller. Five thousand, cash on the nail, if you show me you can steer Cayuse so far off the trail he'll never get on it again."
Five thousand dollars was a great deal of money to Trimmer. Ten thousand was far in excess of his real expectations. But he saw that his power was large. He was brutally frank.
"Nope, can't do it, Opal, not even fer a friend," and he grinned. "I've got you in the door and I'm goin' to jamb you hard. Five thousand ain't enough."
Things had been going against the gambler for nearly an hour. He had been acutely alarmed by the presence of Cayuse in the camp. His mind, like a ferret in a trap, was seeking wildly for a loophole of advantage. Light came in upon him suddenly, with a thought of Culver, by whom, subconsciously, he was worried.
"How do you mean to handle the half-breed?" he inquired by way of preparing his ground. "You've promised to cough up a name."
Trimmer scratched his head with the end of his pistol.
"I guess I could tell him I was off—don't know the father after all."
"Sounds like a kid's excuse," commented McCoppet. "Like as not he'd take it out of you."
The likelihood was so strong that Trimmer visibly paled.
"I've got to give him somebody's name," he agreed with alacrity. "Has anyone died around here recent?"
"Yes," answered McCoppet with ready mendacity.
"Culver, who used to do surveying."
"Who?" asked Trimmer. "Don't know him."
McCoppet leaned across the table.
"Yes you do. He stopped you once from stealing—from picking up a lot of timber land. Remember?"
Trimmer was interested. His vindictive attributes were aroused.
"Was that the cuss? I never seen him. Do you think Cayuse would know who he was?—and believe it—the yarn?"
"Cayuse was once his chain-man." McCoppet was tremendously excited, though apparently as cold as ice, as he swiftly thought out the niceties of his own and fate's arrangements. "Cayuse's wife once worked for Mrs. Culver, cooking and washing."
"Say, anybody'd swaller that," reflected the lumberman aloud. "But five thousand dollars ain't enough."
"I'll make it seven thousand five hundred—that's an even split," agreed the gambler. He thought he foresaw a means whereby he could save this amount from the funds that Bostwick would furnish. He rose from his seat. "A thousand down, right now—the balance when Cayuse is gone, leaving me safe forever. You to give him the name right now."
Trimmer stood up, quenched the light on the stub of his cigar, and chewed up the butt with evident enjoyment.
"All right," he answered. "Shake."
Ten minutes later he had found Cayuse, delivered up the name agreed upon, and was busy spending his money acquiring a load of fiery drink.