B. M. Bower

“ LUELLA ENTERTAINS
Bill stood on the south veranda and looked down upon the town, where smoke was rising lazily from bent stovepipe and brick chimney—the supper fires of Parowan's inhabitants—and away across the desert beyond, where the Funeral Mountains stood shoulder deep in purple shadows, the peaks smiling yet in rosetinted afterglow.
"Home!" he said between his teeth. "I made a mistake. I've only built a house. I'm a damned fool. It takes two to make a home." ”

“ They love the desert nights when the stars come down in friendly fashion to gaze tranquilly upon them as they sit beside their camp fires and smoke and dream, and see rapturous visions of great wealth born of that mental mirage which is but another bit of desert enchantment.
Bill Dale was such a man. Hopeful Bill, men called him, with the corners of their mouths tipped down. Bill loved the desert, loved to wander over it with his two burros waddling under full packs of grub and mining tools and dynamite. ”

“ Three half-grown boys were crowding close, trying to reach the string of Sister Mitchell, who had crawled under the store steps. The string was fastened to the crotch of Wise One's pack saddle, and Wise One was circling slowly, keeping his heels toward the enemy. Luella's tail was spread fanwise, showing the red which even Nature seems to recognize as a danger signal. Her eyes were yellow flames, her neck feathers were ruffled. By all these signs Luella was not to be trifled with.
"Cut that out! Hez! Here, Hez! Where the hell is that dog? Hezekiah! Bill! Come alive, come alive!" ”

“ He will lose his head and spend money recklessly, feeling that he has all nature behind him; or he will grow wary, eyeing his fellow men with suspicion, haunted by the fear of being robbed. The higher the mentality, the more subtle the effect; but it is there, nevertheless.
Don Hunter felt it when he stood beside Bill and stared at the vein which Bill had just uncovered. He stooped and laid a forefinger upon one great splotch of gold in the rock. His finger could not quite cover it from sight. He rubbed the gold almost caressingly. He feasted his eyes upon the many specks and splotches. ”

“ Then, as the earth quivered under a deafening crash of thunder, Al hurriedly tied the burros to a couple of stunted junipers, wadded the tent hastily into an ungainly bundle and thrust it between two rocks.
Heads down against the wind, holding their hats on with both hands, they came running. Bill opened the tent flaps and held it against the wind until the strangers and Tommy were inside. Then he double-tied the flaps and turned, grinning hospitably. ”

“ I don't aspire to be any lady's man, Doris, nor any society bird. Men like Baker Cole don't grin behind their hands if you go first into the dining room and let your wife follow. I know—I saw you blush for shame last night, honey. But your old Bill wants to break trail for you all his life. It's second nature for me to go first and see what's ahead of us, and put it out of your way if it's dangerous."
Doris laughed at him, showing the dimple in her left cheek,—with a faint film of powder distinguishable there nowadays. ”

“ Doris had seen the poor, withered wives of miners who were forever just on the eve of striking something rich.
Walking beside Bill, she thought of the wistful eyes and the draggled, cheap clothes of certain women she had met. Some of them even wore overalls and helped dig. Bill had been prospecting ever since she first met him at a dance in Goldfield. He had talked optimistically of his [88] prospects then. He would always talk in the same vein. Always just going to strike rich ore,—never actually getting more than a bare living; if one could call grub and a tent a living. ”

“ He dreamed of some day going down to the Hunter ranch, with some perfectly convincing excuse for a visit. He would have the saxophone tied on Wise One, who was more dependable in his habits than Angelface, who was a devil. He would wait until after supper, when Doris would finally settle down on the piano stool. Then he would remember his saxophone and suggest nonchalantly that they try a few little things together. Doris would round her eyes at him, and the dimple would show in her left cheek when she begged him to bring it in. ”

“ She stepped solemnly upon the slim, brown wrist and so was lifted to a perch on the foot of the bunk where she gravely accepted a slice of fried potato. The advantages of a corporation over an individual miner got no further attention from any one, for a parrot is very much like a baby in its unfailing ability to monopolize attention. Luella would not talk, save now and then a curt ejaculation that was hailed with laughter. She was a temperamental bird and her manners were inhospitable; for which Bill was vaguely thankful. ”

“ And can't we take Luella along?"
Bill said that they could, but he would not ride Rambler. On the desert a horse seldom travels faster than a walk on a long journey, especially with a pack animal along. Bill was accustomed to depending on his own legs, and a twenty-mile hike was his regular day's travel when on the trail. He therefore packed an emergency camp outfit on Wise One and set out quite happily, walking beside Doris, sometimes touching her hand caressingly, his soul still hushed and trembling lest all this would prove itself a dream. ”

“ Bill lifted Luella and Sister Mitchell off Wise One, and began to unlash the heavy pack, Tommy helping him. The two studied each other with covert interest; Tommy seeking to discover [51] whether Bill Dale would make a good boss, one easy to work for, which, next to the security of his pay, is a laborer's chief consideration. Bill measured Tommy shrewdly as a man who would work—and gossip. A man who could be loyal to the last gasp, but a man who might easily choose to be disloyal. He was a garrulous little Irishman, was Tommy; a man of indeterminate age and of problematic usefulness. ”

“ Luella, crawling up to forgive and be forgiven, made her clicking, kissing sounds in vain against his cheek.
"Hell of a note!" she complained at last, when Bill gave no sign of response. "I can't believe it. Seems like a dream. You don't say!" Then, spying the butter unguarded, she stepped down upon the table and pigeon-toed in that direction. "Help yourself," she invited gravely. "Plenty more where that came from. Help yourself." ”

“ If I ain't wealthy enough to take mine with a spoon, I'll get out and rake in more money. Funny, isn't it, Doris? In the desert I felt myself a Beau Brummel—as I understand that term—amongst the miners and prospectors I came in contact with. I was as good as anybody—better than some. Out here, they make me feel like a cave man with his first clothes on."
"I'm sure your manners are very good, Bill-dear," Doris comforted him absently. "Just a few little points to remember—things one never encounters in the desert. ”

“ The burros would not suffer in the work before them. For the burros, too, would have to help.
Bill rigged a sweep arrangement which miners call a whim. It was the duty of the burros to walk round and round in a circle, and hoist the muck, when the two men settled down to their mining. They didn't like it, but they did like their pint of rolled barley at the end of the shift, so that even the burros became resigned to their labor; so resigned that they would walk of their own accord into their places, ready to be harnessed to the whim. ”

“ And the man who does not know rock is the man who goes about praying for a mule to kick the dirt off a gold outcropping for him.
Bill Dale knew rock. He had spent two years, more or less, prospecting on the southern slope of Parowan, because there was a "break" running across, and because, in the lower end of a wash that had many feeders wrinkled into the mountainside, he had picked up a few pieces of "float" carrying free gold in such quantity that it would mean a real bonanza if he found it "in place," which means in a continuous vein leading to the main body that produced it. ”

“ Sometimes the desert is like that in certain places and at certain seasons of the year, but the men who know it best forgive the desert its trespasses, and love it for its magnificent distances, always beautiful, always changing their panorama of lights and shadows on uptilted mesas [4] and deep, gray-green valleys. Such men yield to the thrall of desert sorcery that paints wonderful, translucent tints of blue, violet and purple on all the mountains there against the sky. ”

“ She returned with the party to Los Angeles and the beaches there, and was gone for a month or more. But she returned, quite unexpectedly to Bill and to the town, and made some pretense at being glad to be at home.
And all the while gossip was flowing, a turgid underground stream fed by some unknown source. All the while it was taking to itself a bitter flavor which had not been there when it had been merely a thin trickle of feminine resentment. Men were talking,—in confidential undertones at first, later with an uneasy hope that certain rumors would be proven false ”

“ She tilted the sack again, spilling the contents out on the ground. She had no fear that Al would return. With her lifelong knowledge of the desert had come the understanding of desert types of men, and she needed no explanation of Al Freeman. She knew him for what he was: a coward at heart, mean and treacherous and capable of crime that might be hidden. She [101] did not know that he had carried off a piece of the ore, but she knew that he suspected its richness. Only a tenderfoot will cumber his tent with valueless samples of mineral,—and Bill Dale was no tenderfoot. ”

“ Prospectors were usually men who, having failed, through age or other cause, to make good at anything else, took to burrowing in the hills [8] and pecking at rocks and dreaming. If the habit fixed itself upon them they became plain desert rats, crack-brained and useless for any other vocation. Hopeful Bill Dale was too young, too vigorous to have the name "desert rat" laid upon him,—yet. But it was tacitly agreed that he was in a fair way to become a desert rat, if he did not pull up short and turn his mind to something else. ”

“ People were buying town lots at boom prices and selling them at double what they paid. He was not the only man who was growing rich. Even Tommy was talking about starting a saloon and calling it "Tommy's Place" with naïve triteness.
As Parowan Consolidated was selling in the open market, Bill was a millionaire. As Parowan lots were selling, Bill's income was better than a thousand dollars a day—real money, that, with a certain increase as men flocked to the new camp. Already that camp was noisy—garish, unwholesome, no place at all for Doris to live. ”

“ There's nothing," he sneered, "like the friendship game to skin a man with. It beats a knife in the dark, any time. John, let's see the cash balance—if there is any; or did you two dig out the corners?"
Rayfield sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Emmett lifted his lip at Bill like a wolf and did not move.
"No use trying to put up any bluff," he snarled. "You're the president of this Company—you sign all the checks, don't you? If you don't know where the Company stands, who would?" ”

“ She sorted the pieces of ore, choosing those that showed the largest specks and splotches of gold. She fondled them, turned them to the light, feasted her eyes upon them.
"Rich! Bill's rich, this minute. A millionaire, for all we know," she mused. ”

“ When he made brief visits to Doris and the baby, Parowan was uneasy until he returned.
The passing of the dividend created scarcely a ripple of comment, since Bill Dale was there, spending money on a home, and since Bill said that Parowan Consolidated was merely getting ready to shovel out the gold in chunks.
"Can't pay dividends, boys, when we're spending money on new machinery," he said easily, believing it all in the bottom of his heart.
Those who had begun to sell a little of their Parowan stock wished they had kept it. And those who could, bought more. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I really came to say I've been a beast. I don't see why," she cried indignantly, "a man can get rich and make a darned fool of himself, and it's all right. But if a woman goes on a perfectly respectable society spree, it—it's something awful!" Her voice broke. "If it had been you—if you'd got drunk and gambled and—raised Cain generally, don't—don't you suppose I'd have overlooked it when you—so-sobered up and—wanted to get a fresh start?"
Bill stared at her. ”

“ Come over to my camp for breakfast. I'll sling together some pancakes that'll melt in your mouths. And I've got a gallon of alleged maple syrup to swim 'em in. Life will look a thousand per cent. better, to-morrow morning."
"Oh, life looks all right to us now," Mr. Rayfield protested. "This is nothing—nothing at all. Don't apologize, Mr. Dale. Of course the young lady needed the tent; wouldn't think of such a thing as—but we'll just call you on that breakfast bluff—pancakes, maple syrup and all!"
"You're on," said Bill, and went back to help Tommy find his bedding and tent. ”

“ His check fluttering faintly in her white fingers, he watched her scrawl her name under the agreement of sale. "Doris Mary Dale," she wrote, and he saw how her right hand shook, and that there was no breeze to flutter his check in her left hand. She stood up, breathing quickly.
"There's that much you can't throw away on strangers," she said triumphantly. "And you can't possibly have much more. But what possessed you to buy stock you know is worthless? These people have made their money out of Parowan. Let them go! They'll get it back in the next boom. ”