Desert Conquest by A. M. Chisholm (famous ebook reader .TXT) đź“•
"Yours truly," responded the other. "When you land in the calaboose for this racket I'll keep you in tobacco. What name shall I ask for?"
"If I land there you can ask for a damfool--and I'll answer the first time," laughed the holdup over his shoulder. "Next gent! Here's the little bag. Lady, keep your weddin' ring. You fat sport, stand up till I see what you're sittin' on. Why, was you tryin' to hatch out that bunch of money? I'll surely do that incubatin' myself."
He levied tribute swiftly, in spite of his badinage, and the gunny sack sagged heavier and heavier. As he reached the end, his companion, who had dominated the passengers with his gun, abandoned his position and came down the aisle. At the rear door he turned.
"Keep your seats till the train moves," he ordered harshly. "I'm layin' for the first man that sticks his head out of this car."
Behind him the coach buzzed like a disturbed hive. Its occupants bewailed their losses, vowed vengeance on both h
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"Certainly not," she said indignantly. "You don't give me much of your confidence, but I know you better than to think such a thing. I wish you would tell me more of what is going on. Let me be your friend, and not merely your guest. Talk to me as you would to—Miss McCrae."
It was the first time she had spoken to him of Sheila. It was her challenge. She would be on the same footing.
"Sheila's different," he replied. "Sheila's one of us. I've known her for years. She's a good deal like a sister."
"Oh," she said, "a sister?"
To have saved her immortal soul she could not have kept the note of sceptical interrogation from the word. He laughed.
"Yes, a sister. Why, great Scott! you didn't think I was in love with her, did you, just because I call her by her first name? I think everything of her, but not in that way. She's a thousand times too good for me. Besides, she knows me too well. That's usually fatal to sentiment. That's why no man is a hero to his wife."
"How do you know he isn't? Kitty Wade simply worships her husband."
"Maybe. But I'll bet his pedestal isn't nearly so high as it was before they were married. When you marry, Miss Burnaby"—he smiled at her frankly—"you will occupy the pedestal yourself."
"Doesn't your rule work both ways?" she laughed.
"I won't admit it—to you, anyway."
"Why not—to me?"
"Because Wade tells me no man can be forced to incriminate himself," he replied.
Clyde glanced at him swiftly, flushing in the dusk. But she did not press for an explanation. She was satisfied. She was no longer jealous of Sheila McCrae.
When they arrived at the ranch Dunne took the horses to the stables. Clyde, entering the house, found Wade alone, deep in newspapers, the accumulation of a week which he had just received. There was a package of letters for Clyde.
"Look here, Clyde," said the lawyer. "Here's a funny thing." He held a newspaper open at the market page. "This Western Airline stock is as jumpy as a fever chart. For a while it went down and down and down, away below what I should think to be its intrinsic value. There was a rumour of a passed dividend. Nothing definite—merely a rumour. Then came another rumour of an application for a charter for a competing line. Both these stories seem to have brought out considerable stock. There was heavy selling. Likely the traders went short. I'll bet some of them were nipped, too, for the market went up without warning—yes, by George! bounced like a rubber ball."
Clyde looked up from a letter which enclosed a formal-looking statement. "What would send it up?"
"Buyers in excess of sellers—in other words, demand in excess of supply," Wade responded. "That's on the face of it. Probably not half a dozen men know the inside. Orders may have been issued to support the stock—that is, to buy all offered in order to keep the price from declining farther. It's hard to say, at this distance. It's possible that the depressing rumours may have originated with the very men who are now supporting the stock."
"Why should they do that?"
"To buy more cheaply shares which would be offered in consequence. It's funny, though," he continued, opening another paper. "Now, here's a later date—let's see—yes, here we are. The market opened five points higher than it closed on the preceding day, and it closed ten points above that opening. Holy Moses! do you know what that means?"
"Demand in excess of supply."
"Demand! Supply!" Wade echoed contemptuously. "Economics be hanged! It means a fight for Western Air. It means that somebody is willing to pay a fancy price for shares. Why? Because a few shares one way or the other mean the ownership of the road, the dictation of its policy. There's no other explanation. I wonder who——"
"Look at this," said Clyde. She handed him a telegram. He read:
Sell nothing whatever until you hear from me. Instruct Bradley & Gauss.
Jim.
Wade's lips puckered in a noiseless whistle. He did not need to be told that "Jim" was Clyde's uncle, wily old Jim Hess, of the Hess System. It was he who was out gunning for York and Western Air, and he had the reputation of getting what he went after. What his tactics had been Wade could only surmise. But the antics of the stock were proof that he was in earnest.
"Well," he queried, "what do you know about this, young lady? Have you been holding out on me?"
"I haven't much information," she replied. "Bradley & Gauss are my brokers. They have been buying Western Air for me as it was offered. There's their statement. Uncle Jim told me to buy it—said that it ought to be worth as much as Hess System some day."
"Heavens! What a tip!" Wade exclaimed. "This will be good news for Casey."
"I don't want him to know."
"Why not?"
"Well, he—he—that is, he might be disappointed. Uncle Jim may not get control. If he does he'll treat everybody fairly, of course. I don't want to raise false hopes."
"Considerate of you," said Wade, "not to say ingenious."
She flushed angrily for a moment, and then laughed.
"It's all the reason you'll get. Be a good friend, do. Promise! Also you are to say nothing to Kitty."
"Afraid of being jollied?"
"Mr. Wade, you are impertinent!" But her eyes laughed at him.
"I'll keep your dark secret," said Wade. "It will be a joke on Kitty!"
And so Casey Dunne was left in ignorance.
CHAPTER XXII
Tom McHale ambled into Coldstream one afternoon, and dropped his pony's reins behind the station. Thence he clanked his spurs into Mr. Quilty's sanctum. That gentleman, nodding somnolently above a blackened clay pipe, rolled an appraising eye at him.
"Fwhere in Hiven's name is the maskyrade at?" he queried sourly. "An' do yez riprisint Wild Bill Hickox—rest his sowl—or th' 'Pache Kid—th' divil burn him!"
Tom glanced down at his ancient regalia of worn leather chaps, spurs, and the old forty-one that sagged from his right hip, and grinned.
"Guns is coming into style again out our way," he replied. "All the best families wears 'em. There's so many of these here durn hobos and railway men and Irish and other low characters——"
"Th' nerve of yez!" snorted Mr. Quilty. "And the name iv yez 'McHale!'—as Irish, be hivins, as Con iv th' Hundred Battles!"
McHale chuckled to himself, having succeeded in his purpose of getting Mr. Quilty going.
"Irish? Not on your life!" he denied gravely. "What put that notion in your head? The McHales is high-grade Scotch. Always was. They come from Loch Lomond or Commarashindhu or them parts. Annie Laurie married a McHale. Of course we're Scotch. You can tell by the Mac. The only McHale that ever was in Ireland went there to civilize it."
"To civ'lize Ireland!" Mr. Quilty cried in derision. "Hear till him! And Ireland the owldest civ'lization in the wurruld, barrin' none, and the best! Faix, we was givin' lessons in it to all mankind whin th' dom raggety-britched tattherdemalions iv Scotchmen hadn't th' dacincy to wear kilts, even, but wint about bare to th' four winds iv hivin, a barbarious race lower nor a Digger Injun, a scandal to God, man, and faymales black and white."
"Well, maybe you're right about them old times, Corney," admitted McHale, with an innocent face. "I meant a little later than that. This here McHale was with William the Conqueror at the Battle of the Boyne——"
Mr. Quilty spat at the mention of this historic event.
"Bad scran till him, then!" he exclaimed. "Yez do be a high-grade liar, and ign'rant as well. Willyum th' Conq'ror was Irish on his mother's side, an' he bate th' heads off iv th' bloody Sassenach, an' soaked their king wan in th' eye wid a bow 'n' arry at a fight I disremimber th' name of, back a thousand years before Willyum th' Dutchman—may his sowl get its needin's!—come out iv his swamps. I tell yez th' McHales come from Galway. In th' good owld days they hanged thim be th' dozen to th' glor iv God an' th' greater safety iv all live stock. An th' pity is they didn't make a cleaner job iv ut."
McHale, who was enjoying himself hugely, sifted tobacco into paper.
"I won't say you ain't right, Corney," he observed mildly. "I always understood we was Scotch, but I ain't noways bigoted about it. That hangin' business seems to point to us bein' Irish. Did you ever notice how many Irishmen is hanged? Of course, there's lots ain't that ought to be, but the general average is sure high."
"I hope to glory ye boost it wan higher yerself," Quilty retorted. "Small loss 'tw'u'd be to anny wan. A divil iv a desp'rado yez are, wid yer gun an' all! I'm a good mind to swipe yez over th' nut wid me lanthern an' take ut away from yez!"
McHale drew the weapon gently, and spun it on his finger, checking the revolutions six times with startling suddenness. Mr. Quilty watched him sourly.
"Play thricks!" he commented. "Spin a gun! Huh! Why don't yez get a job wid a dhrama that shows the West as it used to wasn't? I knowed wan iv thim gun twirlers wanst. He was a burrd pluggin' tomatty cans an' such—a fair wonder he was. But wan day he starts to make a pinwheel iv his finger forninst a stranger he mistakes fer a tindherfut, an' he gets th' face iv him blowed in be a derringer from that same stranger's coat pocket."
"Sure," McHale agreed. "It was comin' to him. He should have stuck to tomatter cans. Them plays is plumb safe."
"They's no safe play wid a gun," Mr. Quilty declared oracularly. "I'm an owlder man nor ye, an' I worked me way West wid railway construction. I knowed th' owld-time gunmen—the wans they tell stories of. Where are they now? Dead, ivery mother's son iv thim, an' most iv thim got it from a gun. No matther how quick a man is, if he kapes at ut long enough he meets up wid some felly that bates him till it—wanst. And wanst is enough.
"Plenty," McHale agreed. "Sure. The system is not to meet that sport. I don't figure he lives in these parts."
Mr. Quilty blinked at him for a moment, and lowered his voice. "See, now, b'y," said he, "I'm strong for mindin' me own business, but a wink's as good as a nod to a blind horse. Nobody's been hurted hereabouts yet, but keep at ut and some wan will be. I don't want ut to be you or Casey. Go aisy, like a good la-ad."
"I'm easy as a fox-trot," said McHale. "So's Casey. We ain't crowdin' nothin'. Only we're some tired of havin' a hot iron held to our hides. We sorter hate to smell our own hair singein'. We ain't on the prod, but we don't aim to be run off our own range, and that goes as it lies."
He rose, flipping his cigarette through the open window, and inquired for freight. They were expecting a binder and a mower. These had not arrived. McHale looked at the date of his bill of lading, and stated his opinion of the railway.
"Be ashamed, bawlin' out me employers in me prisince," said Mr. Quilty. "G'wan out o' here, before I take a shotgun to yez."
"Come up and have a drink," McHale invited.
"Agin' the rules whin on duty," Quilty refused. "An' I do be on duty whiniver I'm awake. 'Tis prohibition the comp'ny has on me, no less."
McHale rode up the straggling street to Shiller's hotel, and dismounted. Bob Shiller in shirt sleeves sat on the veranda.
"They's a right smart o' dust to-day, Bob," said McHale. "S'pose we sorter sprinkle it some."
"We'll
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