“Good enough!” exclaimed Wunpost with a hint of his old smile. “I’ll come up and tell you myself. Have you heard the news from below? Well, every house in Blackwater is plumb full of boomers–and them pocket-miners are all selling out. The whole country’s staked, clean back to the peaks, and old Eells says he’s going to start a bank. There’s three new saloons, a couple more restaurants, and she sure looks like a good live camp–and me, the man that started it and made the whole country, I can’t even bum a drink!”
“I’m glad of it,” returned Billy, and regarded him so intently that he hastened to change the subject.
“But you wait!” he thundered. “I’ll show ’em who’s who! I ain’t down, by no manner of means. I’ve got a mine or two hid out that would make ’em fairly scream if I’d show ’em a piece of the rock. All I need is a little capital, just a few thousand dollars to get me a good outfit of mules, and I’ll come back into Blackwater with a pack-load of ore that’ll make ’em all sit up and take notice.”
He swung his fist into his hand with oratorical 69fervor and Mrs. Campbell appeared suddenly at the door. Her first favorable impression of the gallant young Southerner had been changed by the course of events and she was now morally certain that the envious Dusty Rhodes had come nearer the unvarnished truth. To be sure he had apologized, but Wunpost himself had said that it was only to gain a share in the mine–and how lamentably had Wunpost failed, after all his windy boasts, when it came to a conflict with Judson Eells. He had weakened like a schoolboy, all his arguments had been puerile; and even her husband, who was far from censorious, had stated that the whole affair was badly handled. And now here he was, after a secret conference with her daughter, suddenly bursting into vehement protestations and hinting at still other hidden mines. Well, his mines might be as rich as he declared them to be, but Mrs. Campbell herself was dubious.
“Wilhelmina,” she called, “don’t stand out in the sun! Why don’t you invite Mr. Calhoun to the house?”
The hint was sufficient, Mr. Calhoun excused himself hastily and went striding away down the canyon; and Wilhelmina, after a perfunctory return to the house, slipped out and ran up to her lookout. Not a word that he had said about the rush to Blackwater was in any way startling to her; she had seen every dust-cloud, marked each automobile as it rushed past, and even noted the stampede from the west. For the natural way to Blackwater was not 70across Death Valley from the distant Nevada camps, but from the railroad which lay only forty miles to the west and was reached by an automobile stage. The road came down through Sheep-herder Canyon, on the other side of the Sink, and every day as she looked across its vastness she saw the long trailers of dust. She knew that the autos were rushing in with men and the slow freighters were hauling in supplies–all the real news for her was the number of saloons and restaurants, and that Eells was starting a bank.
A bank! And in Blackwater! The only bank that Blackwater had ever had or needed was the safe in Old Whiskers’ saloon; and now this rich schemer, this iron-handed robber, was going to start a bank! Billy lay inside the portal of her gate of dreams and watched Wunpost as he plodded across the plain, and she resolved to join with him and do her level best to bring Eells’ plans to naught. If he was counting on the sale of his treasury stock to fill up the vaults of his bank he would find others in the market with stock in both hands, peddling it out to the highest bidder. And even if the mine was worth into the millions, she, for one, would sell every share. It was best, after all, since Eells owned the control, to sell out for what they could get; and if this was merely a deep-laid scheme to buy in their stock for almost nothing they would at least have a little ready cash.
The Campbells were poor; her father even lacked the money to buy powder to blast out his road, and 71so he struggled on, grading up the easy places and leaving Corkscrew Gorge untouched. That would call for heavy blasting and crews of hardy men to climb up and shoot down the walls, and even after that the jagged rock-bed must be covered and leveled to the semblance of a road. Now nothing but a trail led up through the dark passageway, where grinding boulders had polished the walls like glass; and until that gateway was opened Cole Campbell’s road was useless; it might as well be all trail. But with five thousand dollars, or even less–with whatever she received from her stock–the gateway could be conquered, her father’s dream would come true and all their life would be changed.
There would be a road, right past their house, where great trucks would lumber forth loaded down with ore from their mine, and return ladened with machinery from the railroad. There would be miners going by and stopping for a drink, and someone to talk to every day, and the loneliness which oppressed her like a physical pain would give place to gaiety and peace. Her father would be happy and stop working so hard, and her mother would not have to worry–all if she, Wilhelmina, could just sell her stock and salvage a pittance from the wreck.
She knew now what Wunpost had meant when he had described the outside world and the men they would meet at the rush, yet for all his hard-won knowledge he had gone down once more before Judson Eells and his gang. But he had spoken true when he said they would resort to murder to gain possession 72of their mine, and though he had yielded at last to the lure of strong drink, in her heart she could not blame him too much. It was not by wrongdoing that he had wrecked their high hopes, but by signing a contract long years before without reading what he called the fine print. He was just a boy, after all, in spite of his boasting and his vaunted knowledge of the world; and now in his trouble he had come back to her, to the one person he knew he could trust. She gazed a long time at the dwindling form till it was lost in the immensity of the plain; and then she gazed on, for dreams were all she had to comfort her lonely heart