The Parowan Bonanza

by B. M. Bower

Bill did not answer. He was thinking of one other place that was swept and dusted regularly every Sunday. Not because he had any hope that Doris would live in it, nor because of any desire, even. It troubled him now and then to think how his heart was hardening toward Doris. Perhaps he did it for baby Mary; because he had built her a home. She wouldn't remember—but some day, when she was a woman, she could come back and see her little crib, up in the corner bedroom. A scuffed pair of shoes left in a drawer. A broken, rubber doll with the whistle torn out. And she would know that she had crept over these floors, had slept under this roof; that this had been her home.

Never once did it occur to Bill that he could sell the furnishings of the house for enough money to hire miners, run his machinery, expedite his work in a dozen different ways. He would have fought the man who suggested such a thing.

He would walk through the room—wearing rich-man's shoes so that the floors would not be marred—and dream of the baby, trying all the while to shut Doris out of his mind. She had not seemed like his Doris, this proud young woman who rustled her silken gowns through the house, flashed her jewels and spoke imperiously to her servants. No, that was not the Doris he had loved. His Doris had been tanned and frank of eye and of speech. She had been lithe and competent, and looked life honestly in the face. His heart was very empty, sometimes, very hungry for that Doris whom he had loved. He even caught himself dreaming about her, now and then,—almost forgetting the other Doris who had kissed him good-by because others were watching and would gossip if the parting seemed too cold. A Judas kiss, it had seemed to Bill. He tried to forget it, lest his hatred grow against her.

Every Sunday, Tommy would sweep and dust and polish,—and dream, perchance, some hidden little dream of his own. Bill would disappear for hours, coming in after sunset with tired eyes and with lines beside his mouth. And neither would speak of how the time had been spent.

But the rest of Parowan was given over to the winds of the desert spaces. Doors began to sag, windows rattled. When the wind blew strong, corrugated iron roof would hammer like anvil blows. Old papers swept through the streets to lodge ghostlike in the corners. It was a place of desolation, watched over proudly by the big house on the hill, with its sheeted furniture and its big, plate-glass windows that looked and looked, and framed no face but Bill's, staring out through them moodily upon the town and the desert beyond.

For a time there had been a certain somber activity about the camp, daytimes. Men hauled away salvage where ownership could be proved to Bill's satisfaction,—and Bill was hard to satisfy, these days. Precious time was lost from their mine while he and Tommy guarded against looting. For practically all of Parowan belonged to Bill Dale, and he was showing himself hard, grasping, suspicious, a man who carried a gun for the first time in years, and who would shoot, give him provocation.

A railroad gang appeared—with flat cars and their cookhouse—and took up the rails, leaving the ties on the roadbed. Twenty miles away, running past the Hunter ranch with a flag station at his largest spring, the railroad still continued to give service of a sort between Los Angeles and Tonopah. But Parowan was wiped disdainfully off its map. It became a speck, away out on the southern slope of the mountain,—too far away to tempt the idly curious, especially with Bill Dale, said to be "a little off," resenting prowlers in the town that was; too dead to bring the meanest man there for gain. In this fashion was Parowan set apart from other decadent mining camps. Loot—men prowling through the buildings looking for whatever might be carried off—Parowan was saved that indignity. The big house on the hill must have been a temptation; but no one quite wanted to risk it. The general opinion was that Bill lived in the house, and spent much of his time watching the town.

This opinion was strengthened by the fact that Bill did come down from the big house, one Sunday, and drive a looting party out of town with the silent ferocity of a jungle tiger. They did not come back. Bill had emptied his six-shooter after them, furrowing the dirt just behind their heels. It was close shooting. They took the hint.

For awhile, Bill and Tommy occupied themselves with packing the best railroad ties up to the mine, using Wise One and Angelface—and the two other burros which Bill had bought, and which had been called whatever came handiest—principally epithets coined for the occasion. The ties made splendid mine timbers. They were preparing for a long siege.

Fall chilled to winter. Sister Mitchell disappeared, and Bill began to hunt mittens for Tommy and himself. They had all the supplies they would need for a long, long time. The little store had catered to miners and carried a well-balanced stock of general supplies, ranging from needles and thread and candy and gum, to picks and overalls and shoes. And in the shed behind was a full ton of grain. The burros would not suffer in the work before them. For the burros, too, would have to help.