Roy Norton

“ The lank prospector might have been surprised on the following morning had he known that within an hour after his departure David and Goliath were driving away over the hills in the opposite direction in a creaking old buckboard behind a pair of fat mules that philosophically and leisurely trotted as if they had knowledge of a long journey ahead.
It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon when the partners left their mules in a feed stable, brushed the dust from their clothes, and after a brief stop at a restaurant presented themselves at the county jail and asked for the sheriff. ”

“ Ray insisted. “I came West from Iowa and worked in two or three mines and watched and picked up all I could because I want to be a miner. Then I went to Wallula and was one of the first to stake a claim on Torren’s Gulch, and since then have been too busy trying to find gold on it to fool around the camp, or make enemies. I’ve kept my mouth shut, and women don’t come in my catalogue because”—he stopped, flushed, looked embarrassed and then boyishly added—“because the reason I came West was to try to make money enough to marry a girl I grew up with back there in Iowa. ”

“ Everything goes well until Shaughnessy tried to buy out this tenderfoot Ray, and because Ray’s inexperienced and wants money enough to marry his best girl, he won’t sell for a thousand dollars and Shaughnessy doesn’t want to pay any more than he has to. He’s got to have the ground to put the deal through. When he can’t get it decently he turns around and goes after it crookedly, which is the way he knows best, anyhow.
“He gets that seventy-five hundred that can be identified, then he and one of his pals, either Pinder or ‘Crook’ MacPharlane, drive down there into that side road with a buggy. ”

“ David asked, reading his mind. “Well, hope so too. We’ve got a man posted at the outer door who’ll welcome either or both of them—with a gun. We don’t allow for any chances in our game. We play to win, and you’re a fool if you don’t see that it’s so and come across. You take my advice and sit down until I tell you what we’re going to prove in the matter of that stage robbery if we have to hand you and our proof over to the county attorney.”
Shaughnessy leaned back helplessly in his chair and muttered hoarsely, “All right. Shoot! What have you got?” ”

“ Or, if the chap that turned that trick had wanted to find a place to have a good look at the stage before he held it up he could have stood here, seen her as she came around that stretch up above, and then have had time to get down to that point and throw his gun on Bill as she came round that bend.”
As if this thought proved interesting David began to scan the brush and ground near by and almost instantly stopped in an attitude of surprise and whistled a note of astonishment; for all unexpectedly he had blundered on to a place where a man evidently had rested for some time. ”

“ Not at all!” David said with considerable sarcasm and then, winking over Ray’s head at his partner, got to his feet and said, “Well, Goliath and I must be going now; but all I ask you to do is this, leave things to us and don’t under any circumstances sell that claim unless we tell you to. You’d better give me that letter Shaughnessy wrote—for safe-keeping. I’ll see him in a day or two and may want to talk the matter over with him. I reckon you can trust us, can’t you?” ”

“ The sheriff’s posse, taking Bill’s word that there was but one man, naturally picked up but one trail, followed it to where it came to the main road and was lost, and so entirely missed the trail left by the watcher a hundred yards away. Now which way did that buggy go and who was in it? It’s my guess that I know one of the men that was in it and that it went straight back to Wallula where it came from, and from where it started probably mighty early on that same morning. Ought I to get word to the sheriff right away, or ought I to wait a day or two and see what turns up? ”

“ But David sat apparently unmoved and with his eyes fixed absently on the window beyond.
“Come, come!” he said finally. “Pull yourself together and answer some more questions. Do you know a man named Shaughnessy, or one named Pinder, or one named MacPharlane?”
Ray looked up and appeared perplexed by this line of interrogation as he answered, “Why, yes. I know all three of them. They’re all of them good friends of mine. Mr. Shaughnessy wanted to buy my claim but I wouldn’t sell it at any price he would give. The best he would offer was a thousand dollars. ”

“ Shaughnessy’s got hold of some boobs back East who want to buy a mining property. The fact that there has been a little gold found on Torren’s Gulch makes that the ideal ground to sell to any but the old-timers at the mining game who know the one color of gold in a pan doesn’t make a paying mine, and that there are gulches which are as spotted as a fawn. ”

“ Well, the sheriff himself comes up, so the boys says, and goes out to this tenderfoot’s cabin, and Ray pretended he didn’t have nothin’ to hide, wouldn’t think of robbin’ anything or anybody, and swears he never done no woman any wrong because he’d never had nothin’ to do with a woman since he came to Californy, and that as far as he knows there’s never been a member of the female sex in his cabin since he built it. ”

“ Clear down to the county seat and to the county jail. If I’m not off that young feller Ray needs help about as badly as anybody ever did. It’s up to us to give it. Hank can stay here at the mine and keep things going till we get back and—maybe lie to anybody who comes along as to where we have gone. Get me?”
“Got you,” said Goliath, and then, “Good night.” ”

“ Mills, “to take care of the man from the livery stable down in Wallula, because he’s going to stay here the rest of the day and part of to-morrow with us. And after that—I got to talk to the others and think it over a little before I can say exactly what will happen.”
But what did happen was that on the following afternoon, timing themselves so that they would arrive in camp late at night, David and Hank drove away with the man from Wallula and Mrs. Mills knew that on the next day Goliath was to make the same journey with the partners’ mules and buckboard. ”

“ We know that the company has been organized on a false basis to sell its stock just because you don’t and never did own this property, and that you and MacPharlane got so desperate that in order to put the deal across and get Ray out of the way you even put up a fake stage robbery to land Ray in jail, where he’d fall for your game. ”

“ David had put himself into the same position and found that he could look through small openings in the brush which had been made larger by hands twisting off one or two of the branches, and that he had an exact bird’s-eye view of the spot in the road where the stage robbery had taken place. On making this discovery David once more uttered a tiny whistle and mused, “Uh-huh! That’s the way, eh? There were two of them in it instead of one, as Bill, the driver, and the deputy sheriffs think. ”

“ It may be that Hillyer still wonders whether the right course was pursued in the case of the last Big Divide stage robbery, but if so he has never said anything and merely smiles when asked why he released young Mr. Ray who, overcome by his great good fortune, pocketed the proceeds of his mining experience and is now said to be a prosperous farmer in the Middle West.
For a long time David never went near Wallula when he did not wear a watch charm which, if Mr. Shaughnessy happened to be in sight, he fondled and twirled with an exaggerated air of proud possession. Mr. ”

“ Reckon they ain’t worth as much as that seventy-five-hundred-dollar package the stick-up got and that had been shipped by Boss Shaughnessy! Haw! Haw! Haw!”
His laugh was drowned in the clattering of hoofs as the stage jumped forward, its wheels throwing up little clouds of dust and its momentum increasing as it reached the bend and disappeared around it. But David was left standing in the middle of the road with his mouth open and an expression of astonishment on his face. ”

“ Shaughnessy gets on the high point to signal when the stage is coming, and the other man sticks her up, and they go back and plant the money in Ray’s cabin, then write the anonymous letter. The watch charm I found is the only thing that was bad for them. ”

“ He was seated at his desk in his private office when the door opened almost noiselessly and he looked up to see two visitors. The first, a short, red-headed man, grinned sardonically as he said, “Hello, Tom. Glad to find you alone. ”