JIM BANKER HITS THE TRAIL
When Jim Banker, the prospector, hurried from the hotel, he was singularly agitated for a man merely suffering from the shyness of the desert wanderer in the presence of a pretty woman. His furtive looks and the uneasy glances he cast behind him, no less than the panicky character of his flight, might have aroused further question on the part of those he left, had they been in a position to observe the man.
He made no pause until he had gained the comparative seclusion of Johnny the Greek’s place, which he found almost deserted after the riot of which De Launay had been the center. Johnny had succeeded in getting rid of the officers without the discovery of his illicit operations, and Snake Murphy was once more in his place ready to dispense hospitality. Few remained to accept it, however, the imminent memory of the police having frightened all others away. A liberal dispensation of money and the discovery that De Launay’s coat and shoes were of excellent make and more valuable than those he had lost, had secured the silence of the man whom De Launay had robbed, and he had departed some time since. 154
Banker sidled into the upstairs room and made his way to the end of the bar, where he called huskily for whisky. Having gulped a couple of fiery drinks, he shivered and straightened up, his evil eyes losing their look of fright.
“Say, Murph,” he whispered, hoarsely. “They’s the devil to pay!”
“How come?” asked Murphy, yawning.
“You remember French Pete, who was killed back in nineteen hundred?”
“The Basco? Sure I do. I got a reminder, hain’t I? Louisiana done shot me up before he went out an’ beefed Pete—if he did beef him.”
“If he did? Whatever makes you say that? If he didn’t—who did?” Jim blurted out the question in a gasp, as though fairly forcing utterance of the words. Murphy flicked a sidelong look at him and then bent his absent gaze across the room.
“Oh—I dunno. Never knew Louisiana to use a rifle, though. The dare-devil! I can hear him now, ridin’ off a-laughin’ and a-chortlin’
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“Back to Whisky Chitto; to Beau Regarde bayou; To my Louisiana—Louisiana Lou. |
“Remember the feller’s singin’, Jim?”
The few men in the place had turned startled eyes as Murphy whined the doggerel ballad nasally. It was strange to them, but Banker shivered and shrank from the grinning bartender. 155
“Stop it, yuh darn fool! yuh gi’ me the creeps! W’at’s the matter with everything to-day? Everywhere I go some one starts gabblin’ about mines and French Pete an’ this all-fired—Louisiana! It’s a damn good thing there ain’t any more like him around here.”
“W’at’s that about mines—an’ French Pete? Yuh was the one that mentioned him.”
Banker leaned confidentially nearer. “Snake, d’yuh think old Ike Brandon didn’t know where the mine was?”
Snake regarded him contemptuously. “Yuh reckon Ike would have lived and died pore as a heifer after a hard winter if he’d a knowed? You’re loco, Jim: plumb, starin’, ravin’ loco!”
But Jim only leaned closer and dropped his voice until it was almost inaudible.
“Maybe so. But did you or any one else ever know what language them Bascos talks?”
“French, I reckon,” said Snake, indifferently.
“French, no, sir! Charlie Grandjean, that used to ride fer Perkins & Company was French and he told me once that they didn’t talk no French nor nothin’ like it. They talks their own lingo and there ain’t nobody but a Basco that knows this Basco talk.”
“Well,” said Snake, easily. “What’s the answer? I’ll bite.”
“French Pete’s gal has lit in here all spraddled out 156 an’ lookin’ fer French Pete’s mine,” croaked Banker, impressively. Snake was owlishly dense.
“His gal? Never knew he had a gal.”
“He had one, a plenty: sort of a gashly critter like a witch, with teeth all same like a lobo. Kind ’at’d stick a knife in yuh quick as look at yuh.”
“I reckon I won’t go sparkin’ her none, then. Well, how’s this here Basco lady with the enchantin’ ways allow she’s goin’ to find Pete’s mine?”
“That’s what I’m askin’ yuh? How’s she goin’ to find it? Yuh reckon she comes pirootin’ out here all the way from Basco regions just on the hunch that she can shut her eyes an’ walk to it?”
“Maybe—if she’s full o’ witchcraft. I reckon she stands as good a chance that a way as any one does. Drink up and ferget it, Jim.”
“I been a-thinkin’, Snake. Brandon didn’t know where it was. But maybe Pete leaves a writin’, say, which he tells Ike to send to his folks. It’s in Basco, see, and Ike can’t read it nor nobody else, so they sends it to this Basco place and the gal gits it. If that ain’t right why ever does this Basco lady come a-runnin’ out here?”
“If it is right, why does she delay all these years?” asked Snake, pertinently.
“Which yuh ain’t seen her, Snake. I makes a guess this gal ain’t more’n risin’ two or three years when she gets that Basco note. She has to grow up, and when she gets big enough the war done come 157 along and keeps her holed up until now. Yuh can gamble she knows where that mine was.”
Snake pondered this theory thoughtfully. “Yuh may be right at that,” he admitted, an expression of wonder passing over his features. “But yuh been to see her? What she say about it?”
“Huh! She was askin’ me if I knowed where it was. But that was just a blind to put me off’n the track—an’ she probably wanted to make sure no one else had found it. She was quizzin’ that Pettis girl, too, makin’ sure Ike hadn’t told her nothin’.”
“Yuh may be right,” admitted Snake again. “God-dlemighty! Yuh reckon she’ll find it?”
Jim leered evilly at him. “No, I don’t reckon she will. But she might help me find it.”
“Howzzat?” Snake was startled.
“I gotta have a grubstake, Snake. How about it?”
“Jest outline this here project, Jim. Let me git the slant on it.”
The two heads, one slick and black, though with streaks of gray, the other shaggy, colorless, and unkempt, came together and a growl of hoarse and carefully guarded whispers murmured at that end of the bar. After ten minutes’ talk, Snake went to the safe and returned with a roll of bills and a piece of paper, pen, and ink. He laboriously made out a document, which Banker as laboriously signed. Then 158 Snake surrendered the money and the two rascals shook hands.
Banker at once became all furtive activity. For a few hours he slunk from store to store, buying necessaries for his trip. By nighttime he was ready, and before the moon had risen in the cold November sky he was hazing his burros southward toward the Nevada line.
Although he was mounted on a fairly good horse, his progress was necessarily slow, as he had to accommodate his pace to that of the sedate burros. He was in no hurry, however. With true, desert-born patience, he plodded along, making camp that night about ten miles from Sulphur Falls. The following day he resumed his snaillike pace, crawling out of the fertile valley to the grasslands beyond, and so on and on until the night found him in the salt pan and the alkali. He passed the Brandon ranch at Three Creek, long since sold and now occupied by a couple of Basques who had built up from sheep-herding for wages until they now owned and ran a fair flock of sheep. Here he did not stop, hazing his burros past as though he had suddenly acquired a reason for haste. When Twin Forks was a couple of miles to the rear he reverted to his former sluggish pace.
The next day was a repetition. He plodded on stolidly, making without hesitation for some spot which was ahead of him. Finally, that evening, he 159 made camp about three miles north of Wallace’s Lazy Y Ranch, near Willow Spring, and not very far from the gap in the wall of the Esmeraldas which marked the entrance to Shoestring Creek and Cañon.
The next morning he did not break camp, but lolled around all day until about three o’clock in the afternoon. At that time his acute ears caught the murmur of a motor long before the car came in sight in the rolling ground.
When it passed he was sitting stolidly by his camp fire, apparently oblivious to his surroundings. He did not seem to look up or notice the car, but, in reality, not a detail of it escaped him. He saw the occupants turn and look at him and heard their comments, though the words escaped him.
He muttered an imprecation, strangely full of hate and, in the manner of lonely desert rats, grumbled in conversation with himself.
“I gotta do it. She never come all this way without he told her somethin’. Fer all I know he might ha’ seen more’n I thought. An’ she’d do what she said, quicker’n look at yuh. She ain’t right, nohow. Why don’t she show her face? An’ Charlie Grandjean says them Basques is uncanny, that a way. She knows! There ain’t no gettin’ around it. Even if he never told her, she knows!”
The car had passed and he now openly looked after it, mouthing and muttering. He had observed the driver, a hired chauffeur from the town, and he 160 deduced that the car was going back. Indeed, there was no road by which it could have gone into the mountains at this point. He saw that young Wallace, nicknamed Sucatash from the color of his hair, and Dave MacKay, another of the Lazy Y riders, were in the car with their saddles, and that the veiled Basque girl was seated with them, while her luggage was piled high between the seats.
“Goin’ to git hosses and outfit at Wallace’s and go in from there. Course, they’ll have to go into Shoestring. It’s the only way. They’ll stop at Wallace’s and it’ll take a day to git the cavvy up and ready. They’ll be movin’ day after to-morrow ’nless they want to git caught in the snow. Proves she knows right where to go or she wouldn’t head in there this time o’ year.”
He gloomed some more.
“That girl ain’t right. She’s one o’ these here hypnotis’, er a medium, er some kind o’ witch. But she ain’t goin’ to git away with it. She ain’t goin’ to git the best of old Jim Banker after nineteen years. She ain’t goin’ to git her knife into Jim. No more’n old Panamint did. I fixed him—an’ I’ll fix her, too. Old Betsy’s still good fer a couple a’ hunderd yards, I reckon. I’ll let her lead me to it—er maybe I’ll git a chance to ketch her alone.”
This thought gave him pleasure for a while and he mumbled over it for an hour or two. Then he ate his evening meal and went to sleep. In his sleep 161 he moaned a good deal and tossed about, dreaming of mysterious, ghostlike, veiled figures which threatened him and mocked him.
The next day he remained where he was. About noon he was puzzled at the sight of another motor car northward bound. He recognized in the driver the lawyer who had been present when he had been interviewed by the French girl, but he did not know what brought him there. Manifestly, he was on the way back to Sulphur Falls, and Banker finally concluded that he had been to Maryville, the county seat south of the Esmeraldas, on some legal business. In this he was right, though he could not guess what the business was nor how it favored his own designs.
On the following day he resumed his march. Now he followed the trail of the motor car which had brought Solange until he came opposite Wallace’s ranch. From here he took up another trail, that of a considerable train of pack horses and three saddle animals. It led straight to the steep gully in the rim of the Esmeraldas, where Shoestring Creek cut its way to the plain.
He noted, but hardly considered, an older trail that underlay this one. It was of a rider and two pack animals who had passed a day or two before. 162