LUCY PLANS A COUNTER-ATTACK
One who has never lived in a frontier camp such as Ragtown may find it difficult to analyze the characters of Lucy Dalles and Albert Drummond.
Less than a year before Ragtown had sprung up overnight, both had been ordinarily respectable American citizens. Lucy's crowning fault had been the lust for wealth. Added to this now was the fierce determination to realize her ambition, coupled with the complete breakdown of the moral fabric of her soul. She had been flirtatious and pleasure-loving in San Francisco, but perhaps not really bad at heart.
Drummond had been as decent as millions of other young men who pass for that in good society. A bit wild, but a man who dealt squarely with others sportsmanlike, and perhaps considered perfectly honest by himself and all who knew him.
But all this the frontier town had changed. That little semidormant spark of wickedness and criminality which is perhaps in every mother's son and daughter of us had been fanned to a flame by the lawlessness of Ragtown. The feverish night life, the chink of gold on gambling tables that were seldom unoccupied, the continual drinking of intoxicants, the doping and robbing of stiffs, which was practiced with studied, businesslike regularity, the brawls and shooting scrapes—all these had worked their insidious spell upon mentalities not forfeited by careful early training and bed-rock character.
Drummond and Lucy Dalles were dangerous conspirators now, and took a certain pride in the knowledge of it. They not only schemed for great rewards, but for the love of it. Lust for wealth and for revenge, the thrill of the dangerous and underhanded game they played, contempt for those whose moral fabric was too strongly woven to break under the strain of Ragtown, a certain vague satisfaction in their newly discovered rascality—all these spurred them on to make the most of their opportunities. One step in the direction they had taken leads so easily to another, that now they had reached a point in their moral lapse where they would stop at nothing—not even the taking of life—to win that on which they had set their hearts.
From a night spent at poker, Al Drummond, weary and half dead for sleep, reeled from the Dugout early on the morning when Hiram Hooker set out to find the crazy prospector, Basil Filer. As he slouched along the street in the cold he heard the jingling of bells and the rumbling of heavy wagons; and presently the freight outfit of Jerkline Jo rolled past, the girl and her skinners, bundled to the ears and slapping their hands against their ribs for warmth.
Drummond gave them a contemptuous glance for their honest and difficult endeavor, then took note that his old enemy, the man from Wild-cat Hill, was missing. He wondered about this, but gave it little thought until it dawned upon him that Jo's beautiful black saddle mare, which usually followed behind the wagon train with doglike loyalty, was absent too. He stopped short then and found that he was thinking of the old prospector, whom he had seen for the second time the day before.
He was worried. Could it be possible that Jo and Hiram had got wind of the mystery? For all he knew, they might have met the old man somewhere on the desert and learned his secret. It was such a usual thing to see Hiram behind his ten black freighters on every trip in or out that the conspirator could not down suspicion.
All that day he worried over it, but did not mention it to Lucy. Coming from another night of poker the following morning, having seen nothing of Hiram Hooker in the meantime, he decided to look into the matter as best he could.