The Parowan Bonanza

by B. M. Bower

This last command was to Al, who overturned the box in his haste to get off it. Tommy herded him out with the ivory-handled gun, looking a bit crestfallen and a good deal puzzled. Tommy's thought processes were too simple to follow Bill's logic, or to understand his attitude. It seemed to him that Bill was almost criminally indifferent to his own interests, and that his leniency with Al Freeman fell but little short of approval. It had been labor wasted, bringing Al there to tell Bill his story, and he regretted now that he had not been content to kick Al out of the saloon and let it go at that.

But after he was gone, Bill sat dejectedly beside the stove, his arms folded across his lifted knees, feet in the oven, and brooded over the amazing story. It seemed incredible that Al could be telling the truth,—and yet, there were some things that Al could not possibly have imagined. If there were thin spots in his story, there were also details that carried conviction.

Luella, having retired under the bunk during the interview, came stalking out and climbed, beak and claws, up Bill's back and perched upon his shoulder, leaning forward and making kissing sounds against his cheek, which was her way of coaxing his attention. Bill reached up a hand and stroked her back absently.

"Speak up now," Luella admonished, having liked the sound of that phrase. "That's a hell of a note, ain't it?"

Bill pulled her down and held her on her back between his hands, rolling her gently from side to side.

"It is," he answered gravely. "You've stated the case exactly." He set the parrot on his knee, where she immediately began to preen her ruffled feathers.

That was the convincing part of Al's story,—repeating the things Luella had said before the courthouse. Al claimed to have been there, and to have heard her talk. He had chanced to pass by the steps just as Jim Lambert, Rayfield and Emmett were coming up to the courthouse from town. He claimed to have been in the offices of Jim Lambert later, when the plot was hatched. If that were a lie, how could Al repeat what the parrot must have said? How could he know that the burros, and the parrot with them, had waited before the courthouse steps alone or otherwise? Al had named the very day and the very hour of Bill's visit to the recorder's office. The date and hour were written upon his location filing, together with book and page of the record. Had Bill chanced to forget, that record would serve to remind him; but Bill did not forget. Al had never seen those papers. He could not possibly have told about Luella unless he had both seen and heard her there.

The incredible feature of the yarn was the fact that Rayfield and Emmett—John and Walter, he had come to call them in his mind—had been the chief instigators of the plot. And there again Bill floundered in vain speculation. What was the plot? Not the mere creation of jobs for themselves, surely? Al had professed ignorance of their governmental position. They may have been research men, as they claimed. He didn't know, and he had never heard that talked about, except as a plausible reason for their showing up at Bill's claims. He was sure that they had lied about working out from Las Vegas west, however; having been in Goldfield, they could not have been prospecting Forty Mile Canyon at that particular time.

What had they gained? A block of stock for each of them, to be sure. Bill had been generous; had given them each fifty thousand shares of the promotion stock. He could scarcely credit any plot to get it, however. Still, that meant fifty thousand dollars immediately after the company was organized. Bill had known of many a murder committed for a fraction of that amount.

One discrepancy in the story eluded him for some time, though he groped for it vaguely. Then Al's retort came to him with force—"Not if they was gittin' five dollars where you was gittin' one"—and set him scowling, vacant-eyed, at the tent wall.