The Parowan Bonanza

by B. M. Bower

Were they getting five dollars to his one? How? They had full control, to be sure. But their control seemed to be of the conservative, constructive kind that favored dividends. And there was the thing that seemed incredible. Would crooks, of the bold type that would follow a prospector and lay cunning plans to grab what he had found, play a straight game afterwards? It did not seem to Bill that it could be possible. A crook is a crook. Once in control, they could have raided and wrecked the company a dozen times in his absence. Instead, they had worried over one passed dividend.

Bill lay that night staring up at the whitish blur of his tent roof with a cloudy moon above it, and thought circles around the thing. Walter and John couldn't be the thieves Al Freeman had called them. A thief cannot keep his fingers off other men's money. Walter and John had made money for many a man. But that painfully exact report of seeing and hearing Luella in Goldfield was true. It had to be true. That was something which no man could build convincingly out of his imagination; not to Bill, where Luella was concerned. She had a certain fixed idea in her talk, always. She seemed able to discriminate between subjects, and to stick to one for minutes at a time before drifting into other sentences that conveyed an entirely different impression of what might be going on back of those observant, yellow eyes. To one who did not know Luella, it would be impossible to simulate her uncanny imitation of intelligence,—which Bill more than half believed to be genuine reasoning power. Perhaps the bird was especially quick to read faces and to connect certain expressions on the countenance with certain groups of words. It could not be accident, in Bill's opinion. Accidents do not happen with consistent regularity, and Luella's remarks were usually pithy and to the point. It was therefore a fixed basis of reasoning, in Bill's mind, to grant the authenticity of Al Freeman's contention that Luella was at the bottom of the plot.

Beyond that point, however, Bill continued to flounder in doubts. He hated himself for even speculating upon the dishonesty of Walter and John, although he had found them a bit touchy, a shade jealous of their authority and their judgment. Walter had assumed executive control; John, as treasurer, had the responsibility of keeping the accounts impeccable. Bill had attended the annual stockholders' meeting, on the last afternoon of the year, and he had been almost awed by the meticulousness of John Emmett's financial report. It had sounded like some carefully compiled government statistics, and Bill had been compelled to sit and listen to a careful reading.

The reëlection of the Board of Directors had been a mere form. Bill, Walter and John were the directors,—Nevada demanding only three. They were as inevitably reëlected to the same offices. There had not been many stockholders present, the day being almost a holiday. Those who were present voted perfunctorily and with complete unanimity; indeed, so harmonious had been the meeting that every one may as well have stayed at home, save the secretary, Bill thought.

Therefore, in their pardonable desire to be left alone to run the machinery, since they had started it in the first place, Bill saw the full approval of the resident stockholders. And if the stockholders whose very business life depended upon the success of Parowan Consolidated and the integrity of her officers were satisfied, surely there was no reason why the president should meddle. The business men of Parowan would be the first to know if anything went wrong, Bill told himself over and over.

Yet the story Al Freeman had told would not erase itself from his mind, nor could he call it a venomous bit of spite and so discount it. There had been bothersome details which a lawyer would call corroborative evidence. There was the ineffectual campsetting, the night of their arrival; rather, the late afternoon. Tommy had declared then that Al Freeman had been bluffing, that he had not tried to get their tent up and pegged down securely before the storm broke. Al confirmed Tommy's assertion. The plan, he declared, had been to manage to pass the night with Bill. They had decided that when they first glimpsed his tent.

Then the invasion of the tent while Doris was there alone he had explained. Emmett had seen the sample sack half full of ore, but had not dared to investigate the contents at the time. He had ordered Al to go back and see what was in that sack. It it were the rich ore they suspected, he was to abstract what he could, load the burros and hurry back to Goldfield, leaving Rayfield and Emmett nothing but their blankets. He said they knew that Bill had plenty of grub.

These details fitted in with what had occurred within Bill's knowledge. If Al were lying, he was assuredly making a fine, artistic job of it all. The inconceivable part was the personality of the two men he accused, and the part they had played and were still playing in Parowan Consolidated and in the town. They had promoted their campaign cleverly and efficiently, mostly by the power of suggestion.

"If it's true," said Bill harassedly at breakfast next morning, "they're the tamest bandits I ever saw in my life. I can't believe it."

"Seems like a dream," Luella assented promptly, pausing in her nibbling of coffee-soaked crust. "Ain't that a hell of a note! I can't believe it." Then, blinking rapidly as memory revived another speech, she added softly, "Kiss me, Doris. Say you love me."