Dead Warrior (15 page)

Potter let his head fall forward again, but the Governor’s personal representative had lost points he didn’t feel able to win back. “What’s this all about?” he asked plaintively.

“If you’ll tell us why you’re here, we’ll be in a better position to answer,” Terry suggested.

“Well, look at this,” Balcom said. He did sit down, and started to fish in his briefcase, so the others also found seats for themselves. In the meantime their chief had brought forth a telegram. “We saw the accounts of your — er — new country in the Prescott papers, but the Governor wasn’t too concerned until Washington jumped on him. It seems that
journals back East ran stories to the effect that you favor alliances with countries other than the United States.”

“We might reconsider,” Dick said, when Balcom looked up inquiringly. “You see, our main object was to give our community a formal organization, which it had never had before.”

There was a loophole for conciliation here, and the Governor’s representative saw it. “Wouldn’t it be possible to organize along more usual lines?”

A great weariness was coming over me. “Mr. Balcom,” I said, “if we consent to annexation by the United States, do you think we could arrange to have Dead Warrior chartered as a city of that country?”

Trained in politics, Balcom was not going to make a difficulty where his goal was being peaceably gained. “I am positive of that,” he said, as he rose. “Do I have your assurance that you are annexed, gentlemen?”

In Terry’s eyes and in Dick’s I read the same relief I knew to be in my own. “You do,” I said, making the last official pronouncement on behalf of the duchy. “This thing of being an independent nation is just too hard on the system.”

It was another two days before I had more or less recovered, making a week in all since I had seen Faith Foster. She had not been short of company, for all sorts of young Wash-swillers had not participated in the nationalist movement. Nevertheless, I foresaw that she might have resented my defection.

Faith had not come to Dead Warrior until the rectory built by her father had been completed. During the few weeks since her arrival she had established the custom of holding Thursday-night gatherings, attended by the spiritually elect. Previously I had dodged these, but on this occasion I felt that meeting Miss Foster in a crowd would be the most comfortable
way of breaking any ice that might have formed. In due course, accordingly, I made my presence known and waited for an opportunity to cut her out of the herd of young fellows with which she was surrounded.

“How did you manage to tear yourself away from that disgraceful orgy?” she asked, when she finally consented to give me any notice.

“You don’t leave an orgy,” I explained. “It throws you off, like a mustang, when you can’t hold on any longer.” Not willing to be lectured, I thought the best counterirritant would be jocularity. “But anyhow what makes you think I had anything to do with the business to which I assume you are referring?”

She looked as coldly contemptuous as a pretty girl can while in the act of forking a morsel of layer cake into her mouth. “The newspapers did, among other things,” she declared, when she could speak with decorum. “But I would have known you were mixed up in it, because of the kind of places you frequent.”

The rich, sweet cake made me feel sick, but I ate some in order to show her that I was at home in a gentler milieu than that offered by Apache Street’s saloons. “Like the Foster home?” I asked.

“I don’t know whether you’ll be welcome in the Foster home much longer,” she snapped. “Nobody else that we associate with had a hand in that outrageous business.”

When I looked at her fresh, clean-cut features, I momentarily felt abashed about the rowdiness in which I had recently rejoiced. My mood altered, however, when my eyes searched out the other occupants of the minister’s living room. There was one other girl and two or three married women, but most were young men. They worked in the Dead Warrior Bank and Trust Company, or in the offices of the
various mining companies, and in their way of life they still belonged to the placid respectabilities whence Bedlington or some other corporation executive had dredged them.

“You should bemoan the fall of the duchy,” I told the girl. “If we hadn’t been overwhelmed by the superior forces and the imperialistic ambitions of the United States, you might have been elevated from serfdom to the nobility, and in the capacity of a minister of state at that.”

Like most strained efforts to draw a smile, that one failed. She moved as far away from me as was possible on the love seat we shared. From that still intimate distance she glared.

“This is the first I have heard of any such marital intentions.”

I hadn’t mentioned intentions, merely a contingent possibility; but it was still bad. Her position was that she didn’t like such a subject introduced in fun, and my dilemma was that I couldn’t drop it except at the cost of saying nothing was further from my mind. “Of course, my expectations aren’t what they were,” I said, lamely trying to do a balancing act before an unappreciative audience, “so I am no longer a real catch.”

“Not for anybody with any sense,” she agreed. “Excuse me now, Mosby.”

My luck continued to be poor. Moving aimlessly about, I was caught by the Reverend Foster. That night I wasn’t up to handling his baffling mixture of religious and financial views; and before I could get free from him, he passed me on to Mrs. Robert Weatherby.

Wife of the superintendent of the Manhattan Mining Company, she was personable but not impersonal enough for my taste. She wasted no time in crowding her shapely bust close to me and butting into my private affairs.

“I’ve seen you out driving,” she said, meaning that she had
seen me out driving with Miss Foster, “but I haven’t seen you in church, Mr. Carruthers.”

“Have you been at all of them?” I temporized.

“In the morning I only go to our Presbyterian church, naturally, but I usually attend the Unitarian services in the evening out of respect to Mr. Foster.” She sipped a weak syrup of the sort usually served at such gatherings and looked up at me from under fluttering lashes. “I think some of the young men attend the same service out of respect for Faith Foster, or do you think that’s possible?”

“Possible but regrettable,” I said, determined to slash her with her own knife. “A man of principle should be above such a frivolous motive for attending devotions.”

“You’re right about that.” Her setback was only temporary, though, and in another moment her voice was more confidential than ever. “As a friend of yours, I’ll give you some advice.”

Not knowing what else to do, I drank from the glass in my hand. The saccharine concoction which they falsely called punch gagged me, and while I was gloomily noting its bilious effects Mrs. Weatherby went on.

“If you want to stay in a certain young lady’s good graces, you’d better disassociate yourself from that awful variety hall.” Half smiling, she shook her finger at me. “I know the things that go on there.”

If she did, she had a fuller knowledge of the entertainment world than I took to be the case. “We don’t get any complaints from most of the camp,” I told her.

She was quick to catch this reminder that she and her friends represented only a small portion of the town. Doffing the role of my fond but disapproving aunt, she set her lips.

“In the very near future this place is not going to be just a Western mining camp; it’s going to be an American city, and
one that respectable people can be proud to live in.” The ostrich plumes on her hat fluttered when she bobbed her head for emphasis. “That’s why I said what I did, Mr. Carruthers. In the coming struggle for the soul of Dead Warrior, the lines will be drawn between the forces of good and evil; and people had better begin making up their minds right now as to which side they’re going to be on.”

She left me then, and I went to look for Faith, so that I could get out of there. On the way to bid her farewell, I met Duncan, who had been away for some months.

“I’ve been making mineralogical surveys of several areas,” he said, when I quizzed him about his absence, “and then I had to go to California to place certain recommendations before the company’s directors.” He hesitated, seemingly undecided as to whether he should enlarge on that statement. “If Pan-Western pays any attention to my report, its local holdings will be expanded considerably.”

Taking that as a word to the wise from a friend, I tipped him an appreciative salute. “Let’s ride out to my claim some time when you have nothing better to do,” I suggested. “I’m about at the point where I could finance operations in a modest way; but I’m more interested in town development than mining just now, and I’ll sell at any price you tell me is fair.”

Duncan was one of those men who could stand at a bar or mingle with people drinking fruit slop with the same air of indifference toward either what he was imbibing or his surroundings. “Why don’t you get capital to go in with you?” he asked, when he had gulped down half a glass of pinkish liquid.

“Not everybody has the knack of interesting big business, and still fewer can hold their own when they’ve done it.” Recalling Seth Potter’s narrow escape, I added a sentence. “Getting in capital is like inviting a grizzly bear to dinner.”

“There’s less of a gamble in selling,” he conceded, “but I’m not the man to advise you on price. I’m leaving the first thing in the morning on another field trip, but I’ll send you a professional appraiser when I return, if you can wait that long.”

After accepting that offer, I insinuated myself into the group of men chatting with Faith. She stopped laughing when she saw me; and I myself achieved no more than a conventional smile when I told her what a pleasant time I had had. While I regretted the fact, it appeared to me that the situation between us had grown too difficult to make continuance worth while.

I was through the front door and down the steps when I heard her voice. “Mosby, wait!”

“You didn’t say anything about calling again.” Reproach was still in her tone, as she caught up with me, but this time there was no coldness.

“I didn’t know you’d want me to,” I said. Suddenly irritation over all that had happened during the evening welled up in me. “See here, Faith; I don’t visit people just to be grouched at.”

“You weren’t coming back. I thought so when you left.” She moved close, big-eyed in the darkness. “You shouldn’t mind my scolding you a little, when you do wrong. I wouldn’t, if I didn’t like you. Don’t you know that?”

One thing I did know was that if I had stayed to win forgiveness I would have been brushed into a corner, whereas by walking off I had made myself worth keeping. “And I wouldn’t do
this
, if I didn’t like
you
,” I said, getting a tight grip around her waist.

Her mouth was warm, but she was coolly self-possessed when I released her. “All right; we’ve both overstepped, and now we’re even. Laura Slater wants to go on a picnic to Antelope
Tank Sunday, if she and Ralph Powell can recruit another couple.”

“They’re in luck,” I said. “Now that the weather’s turned warm, it should be a pleasant trip.”

It was an accurate prophecy. Loaded in a buckboard, we drove east across Sometimes Creek to the tree-shaded water hole in a notch between the hills. Nothing much happened; it was simply a fine day, with the entertainment furnished by high spirits.

Everybody felt gaited for enjoyment, especially the Slater girl, who shared the front seat with me on the drive home. A friendly but very plain lass, she had a good thing in the West and knew it. “I just love it here,” she remarked in the course of her incessant chatter. “Back East I was just hoping somebody would marry me, but out here I have so many beaux I don’t care whether I have a hope chest or not. Oh, look, Mosby, there’s one of your stages.”

We were by then on the Dead Warrior side of the creek once more. Pat Scanlan was guiding the vehicle at which she pointed, but I hardly noticed him. A feminine passenger had lifted one of the curtains, dropped to shield the inmates from the glare of the setting sun, with a view to appraising progress. Notwithstanding the dust which covered it, her face was one of forceful beauty. After a moment her eyes came around to where I was waiting for them, hat in hand.

“How are you, Miss Dolly?” I asked.

She had once said that we were willy-nilly a part of each other’s lives. As we gazed at each other, I — and I think she, too — relived the death ride out of Midas Touch, the fierce action which had earned our escape and our moment of lonely nearness while Roy Sparks lay stunned on the other side of the campfire.

She smiled but showed no surprise, and her words made it
plain that she had none. “Hello, Baltimore; I had heard that you were here.” She withdrew her head and let the curtain fall, and after waiting for the dust to settle, I turned the buckboard into the road behind the coach.

Although part of my mind was busy guessing Droop-eye as the source of Dolly’s information about me, the rest of it was on the alert for any sign that Faith had noticed the exchange of greetings. Busy talking with Laura’s escort, she had apparently not observed Dolly, but Miss Slater had.

“Baltimore,” she echoed, as though Dolly had used a term of endearment. “Is that her special name for you?”

Faith never used my nickname, as she thought it vaguely suggestive of outlaw connections, so I wasn’t astonished that Laura had never heard it. “It’s just a thing that old friends call me,” I said, in an effort to kill the subject.

“She’s very pretty, and she didn’t look old to me,” Laura announced. “But if she’s such a good friend of yours, you must bring her around to call on all of us.”

“By all means,” I mumbled, trying to picture Faith’s face if she were asked to entertain a woman who was a professional gambler. “Do you like the novels of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Laura?”

But if my immediate problem was to silence Miss Slater without choking her, I saw a second difficulty facing me. Now that Dolly Tandy was in town, I had no idea of what our footing might be. Blackfoot Terry had once hinted a more than casual interest in her, so there was his friendship to consider as well as her own possible disinclination to associate with any but colleagues of the fleecing craft.