The She Boss Part 28

CHAPTER XXIII

DRUMMOND WEAVES A DREAM

Shortly after Jerkline Jo left the beauty parlor of Lucy Dalles, mischievously bent on giving Ragtown a harmless little shock, Al Drummond sidled up to the old prospector at the bar in the Palace Dance Hall.

"h.e.l.lo, old-timer," he said with a cheerful smile. "How's prospecting these days?"

The old desert rat fixed a filmy eye on him. "Have a shot," he invited with the suggestion of a thickening tongue.

"Thanks, old hoss. Don't care if I do. That is, if you'll have one with me."

They drank, and Drummond promptly ordered another. A lowering of his left eyelid gave the bartender his instructions, and a sprinkling of powder found its way into the gla.s.s that was thumped before Basil Filer.

Not long after this he became agreeable to anything that Al Drummond might suggest. Al took him from place to place, always standing his share of the exorbitant prices demanded in Ragtown, and finally suggested that they try their marksmanship as a diversion.

"Good!" agreed Filer gutturally. "Little girl, eh? Pretty!" He winked knowingly at Drummond. "I wanta have talk with her. I know who she is. B'en trailin' her fer years. Le's go, pardner. You're goo'

scout. So'm I--hey?"

"You bet your sweet life you're a good scout! Come on--we'll have a time to-night."

Drummond had previously sent a boy to Lucy with a note informing her that the come-on was about ripe for plucking, and telling her to put some one else in charge of the gallery and be in readiness. Lucy had sent out and found the man who at times relieved her, and when Drummond and the old gold-seeker lurched up she was free to act as the circ.u.mstances might demand.

The two men fired at the targets for a little, Filer failing to display the same wonderful marksmanship which he had done earlier in the evening. Eventually Lucy invited the two to go back into the little cabin in the rear of the gallery where she carried on her trifling domestic activities. Filer readily agreed to this, and presently the three were seated around a table in Lucy's cabin, with a coal-oil lamp on it, a deck of cards suggestively in evidence, and a bottle of precious brandy and gla.s.ses. Lucy had brought from San Francisco her leopard-skin rug, the overstuffed chairs, and her other extravagances in house furnishings. Their contrast with the new pine walls of the cabin produced an effect quite startling and bizarre. Basil Filer saw none of it, however. He became very drowsy when he was seated. Al Drummond winked at Lucy.

The girl shook her head, and presently, seeing that the prospector was almost asleep, leaned toward her fellow conspirator and whispered:

"Don't hurry about getting his roll. Try to liven him up and get him to talking. I'm curious. He's got something on his mind that may make that buckskin bag look like thirty cents."

"Get the jack," ordered Al. "To-morrow he won't even remember he ever saw us. You're letting your story-telling instinct warp your judgment, Lucy. You're looking for mysteries. I'll get that roll right now."

"No, leave it, Al, please! You can get it later, if I'm wrong. But I just feel that this old fella's got something locked up in his breast.

Rouse him and leave him to me. I'll make him talk. I'm sorry you doped him. You may have spoiled everything."

At this instant she looked up to see the bleary old eyes fixed on her intently.

"Feeling better, Uncle?" she asked lightly. "I've got some bromo-seltzer. I'll give you a shot; it will liven you up. Don't want to go down and out so early in the evening, old sport!"

"Desert girl, huh?" thickly muttered Basil Filer. "Huh--I know somethin' 'bout you. You was found on the desert, wasn't ye--when you's li'l' girl--baby girl? I know. Can't fool o' Filer. B'en huntin' you f'r years." He closed his eyes again, and his head sank forward on his breast.

Lucy shook him awake and prepared a dose of bromo-seltzer, which he readily drank at her command.

"How did you know about me, Uncle?" she asked. "What you said is the truth. I was found on the desert here when I was a baby girl. But how did you know? Tell me all about it. Do you know my father's name?"

"Sure! Sure! Name was Len-Len-Len-Leonard Prince. You're Jean Prince. Len Prince was m' ol' pardner. I'm lookin'--lookin' for the claim Len Prince and me and The c.h.i.n.k found--and lost ag'in. Rich!

Yellow with gol'. You're Jean Prince--I know. I c'n prove it by your head. Tha's what I wanta see--yer head--down under the hair. That'll tell me you're Baby Jean Prince. Then I c'n find the gold."

Lucy clutched Al Drummond's arm. "Listen to him! Listen to him!" she breathed.

Hiram Hooker stood aghast in the entrance of the Palace Dance Hall.

All eyes within were focused on a couple waltzing in the center of the floor to low music. The man was a Mr. Dalworth, Ragtown's new banker, in charge of the branch of a Los Angeles banking inst.i.tution that had been opened in the frontier camp. The girl, smiling and radiant and glistening with pale-blue silk and gems, was his adventure girl, Jerkline Jo.

Never had Hiram seen Jo in anything but a flannel shirt, Stetson hat, and chaps or divided riding skirt. Despite the fact that she was making money fast and that he was working for her at ninety dollars a month, Hiram had not before looked upon her as entirely out of his reach. He was learning fast, and had lost much of his backwoods uncouthness. He loved Jerkline Jo as only a big-hearted, simple-souled man can love a woman. Some day, he had told himself, he would do something to make himself worthy of her, for he never would ask her to marry him while he was in her employ. He was too proud to ask an independent girl to marry him when he had nothing to offer.

That rare feminine creature gliding so gracefully over the floor with the dapper, well-dressed banker, however, plunged Hiram into the depths of despair. Financially, mentally, and now socially, he felt her altogether out of his world. He had forgotten until now her days at school and in polite society.

It did not make him think the worse of her to see her dancing in a saloon, with rough men from the cities standing about and looking on admirably. Ragtown was Ragtown, and people did things here which would have ostracized them from decent society elsewhere. It was not this that hurt; he knew that the girl was pure-minded and that her morals were flawless, despite what prudish persons--of which there were none in Ragtown--might have thought of her choice of the place which she chose to satisfy her whim of the evening. Jo was one of those rare souls who can pa.s.s among evil men and women and not only not be contaminated, but preserve an unsullied reputation, too. It was the dress and the glittering tones and the wonderful coiffure, and her gentlemanly, well-groomed partner of the dance, that caused him to turn away, bitter and broken in spirit.

"Well, how do you like her to-night?" came a taunting voice.

Lucy Dalles had stepped beside him and peering in at the revel.

"Some cla.s.s, eh? Some lady, I'll say! Oh, sure!"

Hiram could have choked her, but without a remark he sped away from her into the night.

It was then that Lucy Dallas clenched her teeth and hurled invective at the radiant girl within.

She left the scene and hurried back to her little cabin, where the crazy prospector, Basil Filer, lay in a heap on the floor, snoring loudly.

A moment after her entry Al Drummond came in again with another man following him.

"How much jack did you leave him?" he whispered to the girl.

"I left it all. It's safest. What I copied from the paper will be worth a thousand times what's in that money bag."

"Just the same, I want money now--to-night," Drummond said, and, stooping, pulled the poke from the shirt front of the unconscious miner.

"Take only half of it, then," Lucy pleaded. "Then he'll think he spent that much. Don't be a piker, Al. You've got something big to work for, and you try to spoil it by rolling a stiff for a few dollars."

Drummond grunted, slipped a wad of bills into his trousers pocket, and replaced the poke in the desert rat's shirt.

"All right, Stool," he said to the other man. "You take his head; I'll take his feet."

A little later a train of pack burros moved away from Ragtown into the desert night.

A mile from town the man Stool halted them and waited, and presently heard the chug of a motor. Soon Al Drummond drove up in the last of his five-ton trucks, in the bottom of which, tossed about, lay the still unconscious form of the old prospector.

The two men worked swiftly, and slanted two twelve-inch planks two inches thick from the rear end of the truck to the ground. With ropes about the necks of the desert rat's six burros, they hauled and hammered and coaxed them one by one aboard the truck. Then on into the night they drove, over the vast, black desert.

Seventy-five miles from Ragtown they stopped the car, and unloaded the burros and their snoring master. They rolled the man in his blankets, then set the burros' packs about in orderly array and loosed the little animals to crop the bunch gra.s.s that was green and succulent in winter.

From one pack bag they took cooking utensils and other articles, and ranged them about on the ground as the old man himself might have done upon making camp.

"He'll wake up to-morrow and think he dreamed about Ragtown," chuckled Drummond.

"He sure will know he's nutty then," said Stool.

They climbed once more into the truck, and before dawn were back in the city of tents and new pine shacks.