Books: The Long Chance
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Peter B. Kyne >> The Long Chance
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"Very well, Mr. Hennage" said Carey quietly, "I think I understand you.
See that you understand me, in order that we may both understand each
other. You've declared war, on behalf of your felon of a partner. Very
well, I accept. It's war."
In turn, T. Morgan Carey tapped Mr. Hennage on the knee with _his_
forefinger.
"I'll keep my hands off your business in the state land office. Your
applications can pass through for approval, for all I care, but I'll
enter a contest, alleging fraud, against you in the General Land Office
at Washington, and I'll hold you up for ten years in a mass of red
tape. Hennage, you and McGraw have brains, I'll admit, but you can't
play my game and beat me at it. If I'm not in on this melon-cutting,
I'll spend a million dollars to delay the banquet. Let me tell
_you_ something. The day will come when you'll come scraping your
feet at my office door, begging for a compromise. I'm a business man,
and I tell you before you're half through with this fight, you'll come
to the conclusion that half a loaf is better than none at all--
particularly in the matter of extra large loaves. You'll come to me and
compromise."
"Gosh, I'm dry with argument" taunted Mr. Hennage. "Now that we
understand each other, let's be friends. We _can_ be friends out
o' business hours, can't we, Carey? Come an' have a drink."
"With all my heart" Carey retorted, with genuine pleasure. "I must
confess to a liking for you, Mr. Hennage. I could kill you and then
weep at your funeral, for upon my word you are the most amusing and
philosophical opponent I have ever met. I really have hopes that
ultimately you will listen to reason."
"There is no hope" said Mr. Hennage, as he took T. Morgan Carey by the
arm--almost, as Mrs. Dan Pennycook would have expressed it, "friendly
like," and escorted him to the hotel bar. Here Mr. Hennage produced a
thousand-dollar bill from his vest pocket (he had carried that bill
for ten years and always used it as a flash during his peregrinations
outside San Pasqual) and calmly laid it on the bar.
"Wine" he said. Mr. Hennage's order, when doing the handsome thing, was
always "wine." The barkeeper set out a pint of champagne and filled
both glasses. The gambler raised his to the light, eyed it critically
and then flashed his three gold teeth at T. Morgan Carey.
"Here's damnation to you, Mr. Carey" he said. "May you live unhappily
and die in jail."
"The sentiment, my dear Hennage, is entirely reciprocal" Carey flashed
back at him. They drank, gazing at each other over the rims of their
glasses.
Despite the knock-out which Harley P. had given him, T. Morgan Carey
was enjoying the gambler's society. Mr. Hennage was a new note in life.
Carey had never met his kind before, and he was irresistibly attracted
toward the man from San Pasqual.
"Upon my word, Hennage" he said, as he set down his glass, "if your
liquor could only be metamorphosed into prussic acid, I'd gladly
shoulder your funeral expenses. You're a thorn in my side."
"We understand each other, Carey. Any time you're meditatin' suicide
drop around to San Pasqual an' I'll buy you a pistol."
Carey laughed long and loud. "Hennage" he said, "do you know I think I
should grow to like you? By George, I think I should. If you should
ever come to Los Angeles, look me up," and he presented the gambler
with his card.
Mr. Hennage smiled, tore the card into little bits and dropped them to
the floor.
"Do I look like a tin-horn?" he queried.
A momentary frown crossed Carey's face; then he, too, smiled. He was
finding it hard to take offense at the gambler's bluntness.
"I think you're a dead-game sport, Hennage" he said, and there was no
doubt that he meant it. "But I shall not despair. You have brains. Some
day, I feel assured, we shall sit down together like sensible men and
do business."
"And in the meantime" replied Mr. Hennage, raising an admonitory
forefinger, "our motto is 'Keep off the grass.'"
"Oh, I won't walk on your darned old grass" Carey retorted. "I'll just
step between it."
They shook hands in friendly fashion, and Carey hurried away. Mr.
Hennage stared after him.
"Sassy as a badger" he murmured. "I can't bluff that _hombre._
He'll go as far as he can, an' be ready to jump in the first chance he
sees. Bob, my boy, you're up against it."
Mr. Hennage's business in Bakersfield was now completed. He felt
certain that a battle between Bob McGraw and T. Morgan Carey was
inevitable, should Bob decide to remain in the background and send an
ally out to fight for him. However, despite his horror of Bob's crime,
the gambler unconsciously extended him his sympathy, and if there was
to be a battle, either its commencement had been delayed or its
duration prolonged by the little bluff which he had just worked on T.
Morgan Carey, and that was all Mr. Hennage was striving for.
"I must find Bob" mused the gambler, "an' I must have time to find him
before these people euchre him out o' that valuable water right o' his.
An' when I find that young man, I'll bet six-bits he sells that water
right to me; then I'll sell it to my friend Carey an' the proceeds o'
that sale 'll go to Donnie. A woman can get along without a man, if
she's got the price to get along on."
The gambler's line of reasoning was a wise one. In the chain of
powerful circumstantial evidence that linked Donna Corblay to Bob
McGraw, Mr. Hennage was the most powerful link, and if he was to remove
himself beyond the jurisdiction of a subpoena from the Superior Court
of Kern county, and thus evade answering embarrassing questions when
Bob should be brought to trial (as the gambler felt certain he would
be), it behooved Mr. Hennage to travel far and fast.
He went down to the station and purchased a ticket for Goldfield,
Nevada. Goldfield was in the zenith of her glory about that time and
Harley P. felt certain of a plethora of easy money in any booming
mining camp. Indeed, it behooved him to seek pastures where the grass
was long and green, for in the removal from Donna's heart of what he
termed "the big sting," Harley P. planned to play havoc with his bank-
roll.
He proceeded about this delicate task as befits one who has a horror of
appearing presumptuous. A week after his arrival in Goldfield he rented
a typewriter for a day, took it to his room in the Goldfield hotel and
battled manfully with it for several hours. After much toil he evolved
the following form letter:
_Dear Friend:_
A short time ago I robbed the San Pasqual stage at Garlock. I took
------ dollars of your money, which I return to you now; with many
thanks, for the reason that I don't need it no more and am sorry I took
it.
I notice by the papers that they found my hat with my name in it, which
serves me right. I did not have no business doing that job in the first
place. It was my first and it will be my last. I am going to start
fresh again and hope you won't bear me no grudge for what I done.
Trusting that the same has not caused you any inconvenience, and with
best wishes I am
Respectfully,
ROBERT MCGRAW.
In the blank space left for the purpose Mr. Hennage inserted in
lead-pencil the figures representing the exact amount of coin which he
had been informed by the express agent had been taken from each
passenger. Next he inserted the exact amount in paper money, together
with his letters, in envelopes which he also addressed on the
typewriter, stamped them and walked down to the post-office.
"Now, that fixes everything up lovely" he soliloquized, as he watched
the envelopes disappear down the main chute. "Wells Fargo & Co. get
theirs back, so they'll pull off their detective force an' withdraw the
reward; every passenger gets his back, an' if he's called to testify
it's a cinch he'll ask the judge to be merciful on the defendant,
because he made restitution an' showed sorrer for what he went an'
done. Everybody gets fixed up except T. Morgan Carey, an' I work too
dog-gone hard for my money to throw it away on _him._ When folks
find Bob has sent back the money he stole he won't be anything like the
evil cuss he is now an' the whole thing 'll simmer down to a big joke.
When that poor broken-hearted little wife o' his hears about it she'll
think it ain't so bad after all. She'll figure that they can go
somewhere else an' live it down an' that'll ease the ache a heap.
Suppose she does meet some o' them San Pasqual cattle in the years to
come? What's the odds? Nobody in San Pasqual knows him or ever seen
him, 'ceptin' Doc Taylor--an' what's in a name? Nothin'. There's
hundreds o' McGraws in California right now, an' more arrivin' on every
train."
Thus reasoned the artful Harley P. When his task was completed he stood
outside the door of the post-office whimsically surveying the ruin of
his fortune. Less than two thousand dollars was all he had to show for
a life-time of endeavor, and one thousand of that was contained in a
single bill and was Mr. Hennage's pocket-piece. He must never change
that bill. It was his little nest-egg against a rainy day, and
hereafter he would have to carry it where it could not readily be
reached when under the spell of sudden temptation.
He returned to his room, wrapped the bill into a compact little wad and
tucked it far into the toe of one of his congress gaiters.
"It's a blessin'" he muttered plaintively, as he replaced his shoe,
"that the lives us gamblers leads generally tends to choke off our wind
around the fifty-mark at the latest. I'm forty-five an' here in the
mere shank o' old age, after runnin' my own game for twenty years, I
got to go to work for somebody else."
CHAPTER XVII
It is one of the compensating laws of existence that the crisis of
human despair and grief is reached on the instant that the reason for
it becomes apparent; thereafter it occupies itself for a season in the
gradual process of wearing itself out. Time is the great healer of
human woe, and if in the darkness of despair one tiny ray of hope can
filter through, an automatic rebound to the normal conditions of life
quickly follows. The death of a loved one would not be endurable, were
it not that Hope dares to reach beyond the grave.
For three days following her discovery of Bob McGraw's name written
beneath the sweat-band of the outlaw's hat, Donna Corblay lay on her
bed at the Hat Ranch, battling with herself in an effort to refrain
from thinking the terrible thoughts that persisted in obtruding
themselves upon her tortured brain. For three days, and the greater
portion of two nights, she had cried aloud to the four dumb walls of
the Hat Ranch:
"He didn't do it. He couldn't do it. My Bob couldn't do such a thing.
It's some terrible mistake. Oh, my husband! My dear, thoughtless,
impulsive husband! Oh, Bob! Bob! Come back and face them and tell them
you didn't do it. Only tell me, and I'll believe you and stick by you
through everything."
And then the horrible thought that he was guilty; that even now he was
being hunted, hatless, hungry, weary and thirsty--a pariah with every
honest man's hand raised against him--reminded her that the limit of
her wretchedness lay, not in the fact that her faith in him had been
shattered, but in the more appalling consciousness that he would not
come back to her! Wild herald of woe and death, he had flitted into her
life--as carelessly as he came he had departed, and she knew he would
not come back.
Yes, Bob was too shrewd a man not to realize that in abandoning his hat
he had left behind him the evidence that must send him to the
penitentiary should he ever return to his old haunts in Inyo and Mono
counties. He loved his liberty too well to sacrifice it, and he knew
her code. It did not seem possible to Donna that he would have the
audacity to face her again; so, man-like, he would not try.
And then she would think of him as she had seen him that first night,
leaning on Friar Tuck's neck and gazing at her in the dim ghostly light
of a green switch-lantern--telling her with his eyes that he loved
her. She recalled his little mocking inscrutable smile, the manhood
that had won her to him when first they met, and against all this she
remembered that she had presented him with the hat which the express
messenger had showed her--she had seen him write his name in indelible
pencil under the leathern sweat-band!
She knew he had ridden north from San Pasqual the night before the
hold-up--and thirty-five miles was as much as one small tough horse
could do in the desert between the hour at which Bob had left her and
his presumable arrival at Garlock, where he lay in wait for the stage.
The automatic gun, the hat, the khaki clothing, the blue bandanna
handkerchief which the bandit had used for a mask, the fact that he was
mounted--all had pointed to her husband as the bandit. But the
description of the horse was at variance with the facts, and moreover--
Donna thought of this on the third day--where had Bob gotten that rifle
with which he killed the express messenger's horse?
He had no rifle when he entered San Pasqual that first night, and he
had had none when he left. The hardware store always closed at eight
o'clock, and it had been ten o'clock when Bob left the Hat Ranch--so he
could not have purchased a rifle in San Pasqual. He could not have
gotten it in the desert between San Pasqual and Garlock, for in the
desert men do not sell their guns, and if Bob had taken the gun by
force from some lone prospector, news of his act would have drifted
into San Pasqual next day.
It was then that Donna ceased sobbing and commenced to think, for even
if her head inclined her to weigh the evidence and render a verdict,
her heart was too loyal to accept it. The memory of Bob McGraw was
always with her--his humorous brown eyes, the swing to his big body as
he walked beside her, big gentleness, his unfailing courtesy, his
almost bombastic belief in himself--no, it was not possible that he
could be a hypocrite. That perverse streak in him, the heritage of his
Irish forebears, would not have permitted him to run from the
messenger. The man with courage enough to turn outlaw and rob a stage
had courage enough to kill his man, and Bob McGraw would have fought it
out in the open, He would never have taken to the shelter of a sand-
dune and fired from ambush. _Bob McGraw, having brains, would have
killed the messenger and gone back for his hat!_ He was too cunning
a frontiersman to leave a trail like that behind him and it was no part
of his nature to do a half-way job. Still, the man who had robbed that
stage had had no hobbles on his courage. Why, if he--he must have had a
reason for not caring to recover that hat--When the desert-bred
think, they think quickly; their conclusions are logical. They always
search for the reason. The man whose desperate courage had been equal
to that robbery--who had accomplished his task with the calm ease and
urbanity which proclaimed him a finished product of his profession,
should have argued the question with the messenger at greater length!
_He should have disputed with him possession of the hat,_ for in
the desert a hat is more than a hat. It is a matter of life and death,
and when the outlaw had abandoned his hat it must have been because he
knew where he could secure another before day should dawn and find him
bareheaded in the open. Had Bob been the robber he would have
remembered that his name was in the hat, and rescued it, even at the
price of the express messenger's life, for self-preservation is ever
the first law of nature. On the other hand, if the bandit had known
that the name was in the hat--
The mistress of the Hat Ranch rose from her bed, while a wild hope beat
in her breast and beamed in her tear-dimmed eyes. She went into the
room where she kept her stock of hats and began a careful examination
of each hat. Nearly all bore some insignia of ownership. Derby hats
invariably carried the owner's initials in fancy gilt letters pasted
inside the crown, while others had the initials neatly punched in the
sweat-band by a perforating machine. Half a dozen hats, apparently
unbranded, had initials or names in full written in indelible pencil
inside their sweat-bands.
Donna, considered an authority on male headgear, was for the first time
learning something of the habits of men--the too frequent necessity
for quickly identifying one's hat from a row of similar hats from the
hat-hooks in crowded restaurants. Outwardly the hats of all mankind
resemble each other, and for the first time Donna realized that it was
the habit of men to mark them. She pondered.
"Now, here is a hat bearing the name of James Purdy. Suppose I should
sell this hat to Dan Pennycook (unconsciously she mentioned Mr.
Pennycook, who dared not buy a hat from her) and he should hold up the
stage and have the hat shot off his head. The express messenger who
picked it up would go looking for a man named James Purdy. Perhaps--"
Donna sat down and commenced to laugh hysterically. She had just
remembered that Bob McGraw had lost a hat the night he came to San
Pasqual!
Donna ceased laughing presently and commenced to cry again--with
bitterness and shame at the thought of her disloyalty to her husband.
Why, she hadn't sold a hat like Bob's for a year. He had lost his hat
the night he saved her from the attack of the hoboes, and somebody had
picked it up. She remembered Bob's complaint at the loss of his hat,
because it was new and had cost him twenty dollars! Some one in San
Pasqual had found it, realized its value and decided to keep it. It
followed, then, that the man who had found that hat the night Bob lost
it had held up the stage at Garlock. And knowing of the name under the
sweat-band (for evidently it was Bob's habit to brand all of his hats
thus) and realizing that the finding of the hat would divert suspicion
from him, the outlaw had abandoned the hat without a fight!
As Harley P. Hennage would have put it, the entire situation was now as
clear as mud!
"And to think that I even suspected him for a moment!" Donna wailed.
"Oh, Bob, what will you think of me! I'm a bad, worthless, disloyal
wife. Oh, Bob, I'm so sorry and ashamed!"
She was, indeed. But sorrow and shame under such circumstances may
exist, at the outset, for about ten minutes. The resurgent wave of joy
which her discovery induced quickly routed the last vestige of her
distress, and womanlike her first impulse, as a wife, was to wreak
summary vengeance on the man who had asserted that her husband had
robbed the stage! The idea! She would ascertain the name of this
passenger who declared that he had recognized the bandit as Bob McGraw,
and force him to make a public apology--
No, she would not do that. To do so would be to presume that her Bob
was not, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion, and besides, it would
spoil Harley P.'s little joke on San Pasqual. And there was really no
danger of Bob's arrest. The sheriff's posse was trailing the other man
out across the San Bernardino desert, while Bob, serenely unconscious
of the furor created by the finding of his lost hat, was trudging
through the range, miles to the north, headed east from Coso Springs
with his two burros, circling across country to the Colorado desert and
prospecting as he went. Her defense of him when he needed none would
merely serve to invite the query: "Why are you so interested in him!"
and until the day of Bob's return, she did not wish to answer "Because
he is my husband."
No, it would be far better to sit calmly by and enjoy the industry of
the man-hunters; then, when Bob returned, he would defend himself in
his own vigorous fashion, much to the chagrin of his accusers and the
consequent delight of Harley P. Hennage.
Thinking of Mr. Hennage reminded her that he had sent a note by Sam
Singer. In her distress she had forgotten about it until now; so, after
bathing her eyes, she opened the envelope and acquainted herself with
its remarkable contents.
Poor old Harley P.! She read the distress between the lines of that
kindly lie that he was in trouble and had to get out of San Pasqual--
and as she fingered the little roll of bills she discovered no paradox
in Harley P.'s hard face and still harder reputation and the oft-
repeated biblical quotation that God makes man to His own image and
likeness.
A thousand dollars! How well she knew why he had sent it! He feared
that she, like him, would have to leave San Pasqual to avoid answering
questions, and fearing that she was but indifferently equipped to face
the world, he had refrained from asking questions. Instead he had
equipped her, and in his unassuming way had departed without waiting
for her thanks or leaving an address--infallible evidence that he
desired neither her gratitude nor the return of the money.
"Poor fellow!" she murmured. "How terrible he'll feel when he discovers
it's all a mistake. He'll be ashamed to speak to me. Still, why should
he feel chagrined at all? He hasn't said a word."
Foxy Mr. Hennage! It was quite true. He hadn't said a word! Ah, money
talks; despite his precautions, Harley P.'s thousand dollars were very
eloquent.
The next day Donna took up her life where it had left off. She had
scarcely cached Harley P.'s thousand dollars in her private compartment
in the eating-house safe when the irrepressible Miss Molly Pickett
dropped in to express her sympathy at Donna's three-day illness,
casually mentioned the stage robbery, the name in the hat and the
sudden exit from San Pasqual of Harley P. Hennage. Incidentally she
mentioned the fact that Mr. Hennage had once presented her with an
order for a registered letter for a man by the name of Robert McGraw,
and taking into consideration this fact and the further fact that birds
of a feather always flock together, Miss Pickett opined that the hold-
up man was doubtless a bosom friend of Mr. Hennage.
A hearty dinner the evening before, and twelve hours of uninterrupted
slumber, had driven from Donna's face every trace of her three days of
purgatory. She was alert, smiling and happy; and able to cross swords
with Miss Pickett with something more than a gossamer hope of foiling
her. She discussed the affair so calmly and with such apparent interest
that Miss Pickett was completely mystified, and in a last desperate
effort to satiate her curiosity she cast aside all pretense and came
boldly into the open.
"Folks do say, Donna, that the man who was shot saving you from those
tramps and was nursed at the Hat Ranch is the same man that held up the
stage."
"Indeed! Miss Pickett, folks don't know what they are talking about.
Have you asked Doctor Taylor?"
Miss Pickett commenced to spar. As a matter of fact she _had_
asked Doc Taylor, and been informed that his late patient responded to
the name of Roland McGuire. But there was a hang-dog look in the
doctor's eyes which had not escaped Miss Pickett, and intuitively she
knew that the worthy _medico_ had lied. Donna's question convinced
her that she was not mistaken. Her bright little eyes gleamed archly.
"Why, we never did learn who it was that saved you, Donna. Is it a
secret?"
"Why, no."
Miss Pickett waited in agony for ten seconds, but Donna, having replied
fully to her query, volunteered no further information. In desperation
the post-mistress demanded:
"Well, then, why do you keep it to yourself?"
"Is that any of your business, Miss Pickett?"
"No, of course not. But then--"
"Well?"
Miss Pickett was non-plussed, but only for an instant. Like all old
maids when bested in a battle of wits by an opponent of their own sex,
younger, more attractive and known to be popular with the males of
their acquaintance, Miss Pickett was quick to take the high ground of a
tactful consideration of circumstances which Donna apparently had
overlooked; circumstances which, while savoring slightly of girlish
indiscretion, might, nevertheless, be construed as a distinct slip from
virtue. An attack, whether by innuendo or direct assertion, on a
sister's virtue is ever the first weapon of a mean and disappointed
woman, and having no other charms to speak of, Miss Pickett chose to
assume that of superior virtue; so, with the subtle sting of her
species, she sunk her poison home.
"Well, Donna, if you won't protect your own good name, I'm sure you
shouldn't be surprised if your friends endeavor to protect it for you.
Everybody in town knows you kept that man at your home for a month--"
"I haven't denied it, or attempted to conceal the fact. In what manner
does that reflect on my good name, Miss Pickett?"
"Well, folks _will_ talk--you know that."
"Of course I know they will. That's their privilege, Miss Pickett, and
I'm not at all interested, I assure you." She smiled patronizingly at
the postmistress. "When I want somebody to protect my good name, Miss
Pickett, I'll send for a man. Until then you may consider yourself
relieved of the task."
"Well, when people know you've kept a desperate character--"
"Who knows it, Miss Pickett? Do you?"
Miss Pickett was forced to acknowledge that she did not, and under a
hot volley of questions from Donna admitted further that not a soul in
San Pasqual had even hinted to her of such a contingency. Too late the
spinster realized that she had, figuratively speaking, placed all of
her eggs in one bucket and scrambled them.
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