The Long Chance Part 26

"For several months something very mysterious has been going on in our part of the world. There has been a force of surveyors and engineers in the valley searching for a permanent water supply for some great purpose, though n.o.body can guess what it is. But it's a fact that a pile of money has been spent in Long Valley, above Owens Valley, and more is to be spent if it can buy water. The chief engineer of the outfit read in the paper at Independence the account of your filing at Cottonwood Lake and he has had men searching for you ever since. One of them called to interview you at San Pasqual, for, like T. Morgan Carey, they had traced you that far. He came into the eating-house and asked me if I knew anybody in town by the name of Robert McGraw. I told him I did not--which wasn't a fib because you weren't in town at the time. You were in bed at the Hat Ranch. An engineer was with him and while they were at luncheon I overheard them discussing your water-right. The engineer declared that the known feature alone made the location worth a million dollars. Do you like my wedding present, dear?"

He pressed her arm but did not answer. She continued.

"I talked over the matter of water and power rights with Harley P. and he says they will pay a big price for anything like you have. I didn't tell him you owned a power and water-right--just mentioned that I knew a man who owned one. Since then I've been reading up on the subject and I discovered that you have enough water to develop three times the acreage you plan to acquire. One miner's inch to the acre will be sufficient in that country. So you see, Bob, you're a rich man. That explains why Carey was so anxious to find you. He wanted to buy from you cheap and sell to those people dear. Why, you're the queerest kind of a rich man.

Bob. You're water poor. Don't you see, now, why you can take my money?

You have three times more water than you need; you can sell some of it--"

Bob paused, facing his bride. "And you knew all this a month ago and didn't write me!"

"I was saving it for to-day. I wanted this to be the happiest day of our lives."

"Ah, how happy you've made me!" he said. His voice trembled just a little and Donna, glancing quickly up at him, detected a suspicious moisture in his eyes.

Until that moment she had never fully realized the intensity of the man's nature--the extent of worry and suffering that could lie behind those smiling eyes and never show! She saw that a great burden had suddenly been lifted from him, and with the necessity for further dissembling removed, his strong face was for the moment glorified.

She realized now the torture to which she had subjected him by her own tenderness and repression; while their marriage had been a marvelous--a wonderful--event to her, to him it had been fraught with terror, despite his great love, and her thoughts harked back to the night she and Harley P. Hennage had carried him home to the Hat Ranch. Harley P. had told her that night that Bob would "stand the acid." How well he could stand it, only she, who had applied it, would ever know.

"Forgive me, dear" she faltered. "If I had only realized--"

"Isn't it great to be married?" he queried. "And to think I was afraid to face it without the price of a honeymoon!"

"You won't have to worry any more. You're rich. You can sell half the water and we will never go back to San Pasqual any more."

His face clouded. "I can't do that" he said doggedly.

"Why not?" she asked, frightened.

"Because I'll need every drop of it. I've started a fight and I'm going to finish it. You told me once that if I sold out my Pagans for money to marry you, you'd be disappointed in me--that if I should start something that was big and n.o.ble and worthy of me, I'd have to go through to the finish. Donna, I'm going through. I may lose on a foul, but I'm not fighting for a draw decision. I schemed for thirty-two thousand acres, and if I get that I have the land ring blocked. But there are hundreds--thousands--of acres further south that I can reach with my ca.n.a.ls, and I cannot rest content with a half-way job. The land ring cannot grab the desert south of Donnaville, because they haven't sufficient water, and if they had I wouldn't give them a right of way through my land for their ca.n.a.ls, and I wouldn't sell water to their dummy entrymen. I want that valley for the men who have never had a chance. I've got the water and it's mine in trust for posterity. It belongs to Inyo and I'm going to keep it there."

She did not reply. When they reached the hotel, instead of registering, as Donna expected he would, Bob went to the baggage-room and secured her suit-case which he had checked there two hours before. She watched him with br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes, but with never a word of complaint. He was right, and if the two weeks' honeymoon that she had planned was not to be, it was she who had prevented it. She had set her husband a mighty task and bade him finish it, and despite the pain and disappointment of a return to San Pasqual the same day she had left it, a secret joy mingled with her bitterness.

Poor Donna! She was proud and happy in the knowledge that her husband had proved himself equal to the task, but she found it hard, very hard, to be a Pagan on her wedding day.

Bob brought their baggage and set it by her side. "Watch it for a few minutes, Donna, please" he said. "I forgot something."

He found a seat for her and she waited until his return.

"Have you got that six hundred with you, Donna?" he asked gravely.

She opened her hand-bag and showed him a roll of twenty dollar pieces.

"Good," he replied, in the same grave, even tones. "Here is my promissory note, at seven per cent, for the amount, payable one day after date, and this other doc.u.ment is an a.s.signment of a one-half interest in my water-right, to secure the payment of my note."

He handed them to her. In silence she gave him the money.

"Are you quite ready, Donna? I think we had better start now" he said.

She nodded. She could not trust herself to speak for the sobs that crowded in her throat. He observed the tears and stooped over her tenderly.

"Why, what's the matter, little wife?"

"It's--it's--a little hard--to have to give up--our honeymoon" she quavered.

"Why, Mrs. Donna Corblay Robert McGraw! Is that the trouble? Well, you're a model Pagan and I'm proud of you, but you don't know the Big Chief Pagan after all! Why, we're not going back to San Pasqual for a week or ten days. I was so busy thinking of all I have to do that I must have forgotten to tell you that we're going up to the Yosemite Valley on our honeymoon. I want to show my wife some mountains with gra.s.s and trees on them--the meadows and the Merced river and the wonderful waterfalls, the birds and the bees and all the other wonderful sights she's been dreaming of all her life."

She carefully tore the promissory note and the a.s.signment of interest into little bits and let them flutter to the floor. The tears were still quivering on her beautiful lashes, but they were tears of joy, now, and her sense of humor had come to her rescue.

"Foolish man" she retorted, "don't you realize that one cannot mix sentiment and business? Be sensible, my tall husband. You're so impulsive. Please register and have that baggage sent up to our room, and then let me have a hundred dollars. I want to spend it on a dandy tailored suit and some other things that I shall require on our honeymoon. In all my life I have never been shopping, and I want to be happy to-day--all day."

"Tell you what we'll do" he suggested. "Let's not think of the future at all. I'm tired of this to-morrow bugaboo."

"I'm not. We're going honeymooning to-morrow."

Harley P. Hennage had at length fallen a victim to the most virulent disease in San Pasqual. For two days he had been consumed with curiosity; on the third day he realized that unless the mystery of Donna Corblay's absence from her job could be satisfactorily explained by the end of the week, he would furnish a description of Donna to a host of private detectives, with instructions to spare no expense in locating her, dead or alive.

Donna's absence from the eating-house the first day had aroused no suspicion in Mr. Hennage's mind. It was her day off, and he knew this.

But when Mr. Hennage appeared in the eating-house for his meals the day following, Donna's absence from the cashier's desk impelled him to mild speculation, and when on the third morning he came in to breakfast purposely late only to find Donna's subst.i.tute still on duty, he realized that the time for action had arrived.

"That settles it" he murmured into his second cup of coffee. "That poor girl is sick and n.o.body in town gives three whoops in a holler. I'll just run down to the Hat Ranch to-night an' see if I can't do somethin'

for her."

Which, safe under cover of darkness, he accordingly did. At the Hat Ranch Mr. Hennage was informed by Sam Singer that his young mistress had boarded the train for Bakersfield three days previous, after informing Sam and his squaw that she would not return for two weeks. Under Mr.

Hennage's critical cross-examination Soft Wind furnished the information that Donna had taken her white suit and all of her best clothes.

"Ah," murmured Mr. Hennage, "as the feller says, I apprehend."

He did, indeed. A great light had suddenly burst upon Mr. Hennage. Both by nature and training he was possessed of the ability to a.s.similate a hint without the accompaniment of a kick, and in the twinkling of an eye the situation was as plain to him as four aces and a king, with the entire company standing pat.

He smote his thigh, "Well I'll be ding-swizzled and everlastingly flabbergasted. Lit out to get married an' never said a word to n.o.body.

Pulls out o' town, dressed in her best suit o' clothes, like old man McGinty, an' heads north. Uh-huh! Bob McGraw's at the bottom o' this. He started south the day before, an' he ain't arrived in San Pasqual yet."

He sat down at Donna's kitchen table and drew a letter and a telegram from his pocket.

"Huh! Huh--hum--m--m! Writes me on Monday from Sacramento that he's busted, an' to send him a money order to San Francisco, General Delivery. Letter postmarked ten thirty A. M. Then he wires me from Stockton, the same day, to disregard letter an' telegraph him fifty at Stockton. Telegram received about one P. M. Well, sir, that tells the story. The young feller flopped by the wayside an' spent his last blue chip on this telegram. I wire him the fifty, he wires her to meet him in Bakersfield, most likely, an' they're goin' to get married on my fifty dollars. _On my fifty dollars!_"

Mr. Hennage looked up from the telegram and fastened upon Sam Singer an inquiring look, as if he expected the Indian to inform him what good reason, if any, existed, why Bob McGraw should not immediately be apprehended by the proper authorities and confined forthwith in a padded cell.

"I do wish that dog-gone boy'd took me into his confidence," mourned the gambler, "but that's always the way. n.o.body ever trusts me with nuthin'.

d.a.m.n it! _Fifty dollars!_ I'll give that Bob h.e.l.l for this--a-marryin'

that fine girl on a shoestring an' me a-hangin' around town with upward o' six thousand iron men in the kitty. It ain't fair. If they was married in San Pasqual I wouldn't b.u.t.t in nohow, but bein' married some place else, where none of us is known, I'd a took a chance an' b.u.t.ted in. I ain't one o' the presumin' kind, but if I'd a-been asked I'd a-b.u.t.ted in! You can bet your scalp, Sam, if I'd a-had the givin' away o' that blushin' bride, I'd 'a shoved across a stack o' blue chips with her that'd 'a set them young folks on their feet. Oh, h.e.l.l's bells! If that ain't plumb removin' the limit! Sam, you'd orter be right thankful you're only an Injun. If you was a human bein' you'd know what it is to have your feelin's hurt."

He smote the table with his fist. "Serves me right," he growled. "There ain't no fun in life for a man that lives off the weaknesses of other people," and with this self-accusing remark Mr. Hennage, feeling slighted and neglected, returned to his game in the Silver Dollar saloon. He was preoccupied and unhappy, and that night he lost five hundred dollars.

Bright and early next morning, however, the gambler went to the public telephone station and called up the princ.i.p.al hotel in Bakersfield. He requested speech with either Mr. or Mrs. Robert McGraw. After some delay he was informed that Mr. and Mrs. McGraw had left the day before, without leaving a forwarding address.

"Well, I won't say nothin' about it until they do" was the conclusion at which Mr. Hennage finally arrived. "Of course it's just possible I happened across the trail of another family o' McGraws, but I'm layin'

two to one I didn't."

And having thus ferreted out Donna's secret, Harley P., like a true sport, proceeded to forget it. He moused around the post-office a little and put forth a few discreet feelers here and there, in order to discover whether San Pasqual, generally speaking, was at all interested.