After spending some time in a happy renewal of his old friendship with little Mrs. Liggs and a talk with Dot, Mr. Sangerly, accompanied by Hudson and Lex, held a conference with the owners of the placer claims in Jule Quintell’s offices. The certificates of assay showed the ground to be rich—thanks to Harrison’s precision in the old-time art of salting. As Lex had surmised, the price demanded by the Lucky Boy coterie for the privilege of laying the M. & S. tracks across their fabulous claims was correspondingly large. It was excessive, staggering in the circumstances—fifty thousand dollars.
The conference came to an end without an agreement being reached. The railroad men would take the proposition under advisement, they said. The coterie smiled pleasantly; they had the company in the hollow of their hand. It would have to buy. There was no other way to enter Geerusalem except through Geerusalem Gulch.
Briefly, when night settled on that waspish little desert gold camp, Quintell and his circle were apparently in command of the situation. First, they had the population thoroughly aroused against Lemuel Huntington—the man himself was in hiding for his life—and it would be only a question of time before he could be induced to dispose of his holdings in a community inimical to him. Again, they had the Mohave & Southwestern in a position where it must either meet their terms or build the terminal out on a rocky wash far beyond the confines of the camp. As for Sheriff Warburton, Quintell cursed him, laughed at his hick methods, boasted to his confederates that he was considering having the official ridden out of town on a rail.
However, with the success of his double plots all but realized, Jule Quintell worried. He wondered whether Tinnemaha Pete and Jerome Liggs had been dispatched. He couldn’t believe that the other five expert gunmen had suffered the fate of the one who had died without speaking.
As has been said, it was mysteriously quiet in Geerusalem on this night. Few were about, and save for the tramp of horses’ hoofs, announcing to listening ears the presence of Warburton’s cow-punchers patrolling the settlement, and the din of orchestras from the brilliantly lighted dance halls, one would have readily affirmed that the sheriff’s summary action had restored law and order to a hitherto unknown degree. The truth was, Geerusalem waited in the security of its home, restless and vengeful, thirsting to riot—waited on orders from Big George Rankin and watched the clock. The dynamite squad was abroad.
Shortly before eight, a little old man came stumping out of the darkness of a side street. He paused in the flood of light pouring out of a saloon. It was Tinnemaha Pete. He looked about him, confused. Though he knew the vast Mohave Desert as a child did its rudimentary A B C’s, he knew little or nothing about Geerusalem, particularly by night. Just now, he gazed timidly into the saloon, stroking his thin beard with a tremulous hand. A man came out of the place presently, and the desertarian stopped him to ask where Jule Quintell lived.
Having got his directions, he stumbled away through the dark and found the neat, rock bungalow built on the crest of a small hill that partially overlooked the camp. Light shone through the spacious windows, and the sound of an operatic selection being played on a phonograph came to his ears. He fixed the location of the house firmly in his capricious old brain and hobbled back the way he had come. Not remembering having ever seen the man Jule Quintell, he wondered curiously what this popular broker, the boss of Geerusalem, looked like.
At about the same time, Dot, in the parlor of the Miners’ Hotel, was reminding Lex Sangerly that he had an appointment with Billy Gee at the home of Jule Quintell. But Lex was wrought up over the uncompromising attitude of the broker in the matter of the right of way transaction and held out against giving him even the satisfaction of a visit.
“But I wanted to accompany you, Mr. Sangerly, and we’ll ask your father to go along, too,” she urged.
He looked at her in surprise. Then he laughed. “Why, you wouldn’t think of such a thing, Miss Huntington, and I know it! You just want me to meet Billy Gee, and——”