Gunsight Pass by William MacLeod Raine

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"If he'll let us." Joyce jumped up and ran round the table to him. They
were alone, Keith having departed with a top to join his playmates. She
sat on the arm of his chair, a straight, slim creature very much alive,
and pressed her face of flushed loveliness against his head. "It won't be
your fault, old duck, if things don't go well with him. You're good--the
best ever--a jim-dandy friend. But he's so--so--Oh, I don't know--stiff
as a poker. Acts as if he doesn't want to be friends, as if we're all
ready to turn against him. He makes me good and tired, Dad. Why can't he
be--human?"

"Now, Joy, you got to remember--"

"--that he was in prison and had an awful time of it. Oh, yes, I remember
all that. He won't let us forget it. It's just like he held us off all
the time and insisted on us not forgetting it. I'd just like to shake the
foolishness out of him." A rueful little laugh welled from her throat at
the thought.

"He cayn't be gay as Bob Hart all at onct. Give him time."

"You're so partial to him you don't see when he's doing wrong. But I see
it. Yesterday he hardly spoke when I met him. Ridiculous. It's all right
for him to hold back and be kinda reserved with outsiders. But with his
friends--you and Bob and old Buck Byington and me--he ought not to shut
himself up in an ice cave. And I'm going to tell him so."

The cattleman's arm slid round her warm young body and drew her close.
She was to him the dearest thing in the world, a never-failing, exquisite
wonder and mystery. Sometimes even now he was amazed that this rare
spirit had found the breath of life through him.

"You wanta remember you're a li'l lady," he reproved. "You wouldn't want
to do anything you'd be sorry for, honeybug."

"I'm not so sure about that," she flushed, amusement rippling her face.
"Someone's got to blow up that young man like a Dutch uncle, and I think
I'm elected. I'll try not to think about being a lady; then I can do my
full duty, Dad. It'll be fun to see how he takes it."

"Now--now," he remonstrated.

"It's all right to be proud," she went on. "I wouldn't want to see him
hold his head any lower. But there's no sense in being so offish that
even his friends have to give him up. And that's what it'll come to if he
acts the way he does. Folks will stand just so much. Then they give up
trying."

"I reckon you're right about that, Joy."

"Of course I'm right. You have to meet your friends halfway."

"Well, if you talk to him don't hurt his feelin's."

There was a glint of mirth in her eyes, almost of friendly malice. "I'm
going to worry him about _my_ feelings, Dad. He'll not have time to think
of his own."

Joyce found her chance next day. She met David Sanders in front of a
drug-store. He would have passed with a bow if she had let him.

"What does the oil expert Mr. Graham sent think about our property?" she
asked presently, greetings having been exchanged.

"He hasn't given out any official opinion yet, but he's impressed. The
report will be favorable, I think."

"Isn't that good?"

"Couldn't be better," he admitted.

It was a warm day. Joyce glanced in at the soda fountain and said
demurely, "My, but it's hot! Won't you come in and have an ice-cream soda
on me?"

Dave flushed. "If you'll go as my guest," he said stiffly.

"How good of you to invite me!" she accepted, laughing, but with a tint
of warmer color in her cheeks.

Rhythmically she moved beside him to a little table in the corner of the
drug-store. "I own stock in the Jackpot. You've got to give an accounting
to me. Have you found a market yet?"

"The whole Southwest will be our market as soon as we can reach it."

"And when will that be?" she asked.

"I'm having some hauled to relieve the glut. The railroad will be
operating inside of six weeks. We'll keep Number Three capped till then
and go on drilling in other locations. Burns is spudding in a new well
to-day."

The clerk took their order and departed. They were quite alone, not
within hearing of anybody. Joyce took her fear by the throat and plunged
in.

"You mad at me, Mr. Sanders?" she asked jauntily.

"You know I'm not."

"How do I know it?" she asked innocently. "You say as little to me as you
can, and get away from me as quick as you can. Yesterday, for instance,
you'd hardly say 'Good-morning.'"

"I didn't mean to be rude. I was busy." Dave felt acutely uncomfortable.
"I'm sorry if I didn't seem sociable."

"So was Mr. Hart busy, but he had time to stop and say a pleasant word."
The brown eyes challenged their vis-a-vis steadily.

The young man found nothing to say. He could not explain that he had not
lingered because he was giving Bob a chance to see her alone, nor could
he tell her that he felt it better for his peace of mind to keep away
from her as much as possible.

"I'm not in the habit of inviting young men to invite me to take a soda,
Mr. Sanders," she went on. "This is my first offense. I never did it
before, and I never expect to again.... I do hope the new well will come
in a good one." The last sentence was for the benefit of the clerk
returning with the ice-cream.

"Looks good," said Dave, playing up. "Smut's showing, and you know that's
a first-class sign."

"Bob said it was expected in to-day or to-morrow.... I asked you because
I've something to say to you, something I think one of your friends ought
to say, and--and I'm going to do it," she concluded in a voice modulated
just to reach him.

The clerk had left the glasses and the check. He was back at the fountain
polishing the counter.

Sanders waited in silence. He had learned to let the burden of
conversation rest on his opponent, and he knew that Joyce just now
was in that class.

She hesitated, uncertain of her opening. Then, "You're disappointing your
friends, Mr. Sanders," she said lightly.

He did not know what an effort it took to keep her voice from quavering,
her hand from trembling as it rested on the onyx top of the table.

"I'm sorry," he said a second time.

"Perhaps it's our fault. Perhaps we haven't been ... friendly enough."
The lifted eyes went straight into his.

He found an answer unexpectedly difficult. "No man ever had more generous
friends," he said at last brusquely, his face set hard.

The girl guessed at the tense feeling back of his words.

"Let's walk," she replied, and he noticed that the eyes and mouth had
softened to a tender smile. "I can't talk here, Dave."

They made a pretense of finishing their sodas, then walked out of the
town into the golden autumn sunlight of the foothills. Neither of them
spoke. She carried herself buoyantly, chin up, her face a flushed cameo
of loveliness. As she took the uphill trail a small breath of wind
wrapped the white skirt about her slender limbs. He found in her a new
note, one of unaccustomed shyness.

The silence grew at last too significant. She was driven to break it.

"I suppose I'm foolish," she began haltingly. "But I had been
expecting--all of us had--that when you came home from--from Denver--the
first time, I mean--you would be the old Dave Sanders we all knew and
liked. We wanted our friendship to--to help make up to you for what you
must have suffered. We didn't think you'd hold us off like this."

His eyes narrowed. He looked away at the cedars on the hills painted in
lustrous blues and greens and purples, and at the slopes below burnt to
exquisite color lights by the fires of fall. But what he saw was a gray
prison wall with armed men in the towers.

"If I could tell you!" He said it in a whisper, to himself, but she just
caught the words.

"Won't you try?" she said, ever so gently.

He could not sully her innocence by telling of the furtive whisperings
that had fouled the prison life, made of it an experience degrading and
corrosive. He told her, instead, of the externals of that existence, of
how he had risen, dressed, eaten, worked, exercised, and slept under
orders. He described to her the cells, four by seven by seven, barred,
built in tiers, faced by narrow iron balconies, each containing a stool,
a chair, a shelf, a bunk. In his effort to show her the chasm that
separated him from her he did not spare himself at all. Dryly and in
clean-cut strokes he showed her the sordidness of which he had been the
victim and left her to judge for herself of its evil effect on his
character.

When he had finished he knew that he had failed. She wept for pity and
murmured, "You poor boy.... You poor boy!"

He tried again, and this time he drew the moral. "Don't you see, I'm a
marked man--marked for life." He hesitated, then pushed on. "You're fine
and clean and generous--what a good father and mother, and all this have
made you." He swept his hand round in a wide gesture to include the sun
and the hills and all the brave life of the open. "If I come too near
you, don't you see I taint you? I'm a man who was shut up because--"

"Fiddlesticks! You're a man who has been done a wrong. You mustn't grow
morbid over it. After all, you've been found innocent."

"That isn't what counts. I've been in the penitentiary. Nothing can wipe
that out. The stain of it's on me and can't be washed away."

She turned on him with a little burst of feminine ferocity. "How dare you
talk that way, Dave Sanders! I want to be proud of you. We all do. But
how can we be if you give up like a quitter? Don't we all have to keep
beginning our lives over and over again? Aren't we all forever getting
into trouble and getting out of it? A man is as good as he makes himself.
It doesn't matter what outside thing has happened to him. Do you dare
tell me that my dad wouldn't be worth loving if he'd been in prison forty
times?"

The color crept into his face. "I'm not quitting. I'm going through. The
point is whether I'm to ask my friends to carry my load for me."

"What are your friends for?" she demanded, and her eyes were like stars
in a field of snow. "Don't you see it's an insult to assume they don't
want to stand with you in your trouble? You've been warped. You're
eaten up with vain pride." Joyce bit her lip to choke back a swelling in
her throat. "The Dave we used to know wasn't like that. He was friendly
and sweet. When folks were kind to him he was kind to them. He wasn't
like--like an old poker." She fell back helplessly on the simile she had
used with her father.

"I don't blame you for feeling that way," he said gently. "When I first
came out I did think I'd play a lone hand. I was hard and bitter and
defiant. But when I met you-all again--and found you were just like home
folks--all of you so kind and good, far beyond any claims I had on
you--why, Miss Joyce, my heart went out to my old friends with a rush.
It sure did. Maybe I had to be stiff to keep from being mushy."

"Oh, if that's it!" Her eager face, flushed and tender, nodded approval.

"But you've got to look at this my way too," he urged. "I can't repay
your father's kindness--yes, and yours too--by letting folks couple your
name, even in friendship, with a man who--"

She turned on him, glowing with color. "Now that's absurd, Dave Sanders.
I'm not a--a nice little china doll. I'm a flesh-and-blood girl. And I'm
not a statue on a pedestal. I've got to live just like other people.
The trouble with you is that you want to be generous, but you don't want
to give other folks a chance to be. Let's stop this foolishness and be
sure-enough friends--Dave."

He took her outstretched hand in his brown palm, smiling down at her.
"All right. I know when I'm beaten."

She beamed. "That's the first honest-to-goodness smile I've seen on your
face since you came back."

"I've got millions of 'em in my system," he promised. "I've been hoarding
them up for years."

"Don't hoard them any more. Spend them," she urged.

"I'll take that prescription, Doctor Joyce." And he spent one as evidence
of good faith.

The soft and shining oval of her face rippled with gladness as a mountain
lake sparkles with sunshine in a light summer breeze. "I've found again
that Dave boy I lost," she told him.

"You won't lose him again," he answered, pushing into the hinterland
of his mind the reflection that a man cannot change the color of his
thinking in an hour.

"We thought he'd gone away for good. I'm so glad he hasn't."

"No. He's been here all the time, but he's been obeying the orders of a
man who told him he had no business to be alive."

He looked at her with deep, inscrutable eyes. As a boy he had been
shy but impulsive. The fires of discipline had given him remarkable
self-restraint. She could not tell he was finding in her face the quality
to inspire in a painter a great picture, the expression of that brave
young faith which made her a touchstone to find the gold in his soul.

Yet in his gravity was something that disturbed her blood. Was she
fanning to flame banked fires better dormant?

She felt a compunction for what she had done. Maybe she had been
unwomanly. It is a penalty impulsive people have to pay that later they
must consider whether they have been bold and presumptuous. Her spirits
began to droop when she should logically have been celebrating her
success.

But Dave walked on mountain-tops tipped with mellow gold. He threw off
the weight that had oppressed his spirits for years and was for the hour
a boy again. She had exorcised the gloom in which he walked. He looked
down on a magnificent flaming desert, and it was good. To-day was his.
To-morrow was his. All the to-morrows of the world were in his hand. He
refused to analyze the causes of his joy. It was enough that beside him
moved with charming diffidence the woman of his dreams, that with her
soft hands she had torn down the barrier between them.

"And now I don't know whether I've done right," she said ruefully. "Dad
warned me I'd better be careful. But of course I always know best. I
'rush in.'"

"You've done me a million dollars' worth of good. I needed some good
friend to tell me just what you have. Please don't regret it."

"Well, I won't." She added, in a hesitant murmur, "You
won't--misunderstand?"

His look turned aside the long-lashed eyes and brought a faint flush of
pink to her cheeks.

"No, I'll not do that," he said.

CHAPTER XXXII

DAVE BECOMES AN OFFICE MAN

From Graham came a wire a week after the return of the oil expert to
Denver. It read:

Report satisfactory. Can you come at once and arrange with me plan of
organization?

Sanders was on the next train. He was still much needed at Malapi to look
after getting supplies and machinery and to arrange for a wagon train of
oil teams, but he dropped or delegated this work for the more important
call that had just come.

His contact with Graham uncovered a new side of the state builder, one
that was to impress him in all the big business men he met. They might be
pleasant socially and bear him a friendly good-will, but when they met to
arrange details of a financial plan they always wanted their pound of
flesh. Graham drove a hard bargain with him. He tied the company fast by
legal control of its affairs until his debt was satisfied. He exacted a
bonus in the form of stock that fairly took the breath of the young man
with whom he was negotiating. Dave fought him round by round and found
the great man smooth and impervious as polished agate.

Yet Dave liked him. When they met at lunch, as they did more than once,
the grizzled Westerner who had driven a line of steel across almost
impassable mountain passes was simple and frank in talk. He had taken
a fancy to this young fellow, and he let him know it. Perhaps he found
something of his own engaging, dogged youth in the strong-jawed
range-rider.

"Does a financier always hogtie a proposition before he backs it?" Dave
asked him once with a sardonic gleam in his eye.

"Always."

"No matter how much he trusts the people he's doing business with?"

"He binds them hard and fast just the same. It's the only way to do. Give
away as much money as you want to, but when you loan money look after
your security like a hawk."

"Even when you're dealing with friends?"

"Especially when you're dealing with friends," corrected the older man.
"Otherwise you're likely not to have your friends long."

"Don't believe I want to be a financier," decided Sanders.

"It takes the hot blood out of you," admitted Graham. "I'm not sure, if I
had my life to live over again, knowing what I know now, that I wouldn't
choose the outdoors like West and Crawford."

Sanders was very sure which choice he would like to make. He was at
present embarked on the business of making money through oil, but some
day he meant to go back to the serenity of a ranch. There were times
when he left the conferences with Graham or his lieutenants sick at heart
because of the uphill battle he must fight to protect his associates.

From Denver he went East to negotiate for some oil tanks and material
with which to construct reservoirs. His trip was a flying one. He
entrained for Malapi once more to look after the loose ends that had been
accumulating locally in his absence. A road had to be built across the
desert. Contracts must be let for hauling away the crude oil. A hundred
details waited his attention.

He worked day and night. Often he slept only a few hours. He grew lean in
body and curt of speech. Lines came into his face that had not been there
before. But at his work apparently he was tireless as steel springs.

Meanwhile Brad Steelman moled to undermine the company. Dave's men
finished building a bridge across a gulch late one day. It was blown
up into kindling wood by dynamite that night. Wagons broke down
unexpectedly. Shipments of supplies failed to arrive. Engines were
mysteriously smashed.

The sabotage was skillful. Steelman's agents left no evidence that could
be used against them. More than one of them, Hart and Sanders agreed,
were spies who had found employment with the Jackpot. One or two men were
discharged on suspicion, even though complete evidence against them was
lacking.

The responsibility that had been thrust on Dave brought out in him
unsuspected business capacity. During his prison days there had developed
in him a quality of leadership. He had been more than once in charge of a
road-building gang of convicts and had found that men naturally turned to
him for guidance. But not until Crawford shifted to his shoulders the
burdens of the Jackpot did he know that he had it in him to grapple with
organization on a fairly large scale.

He worked without nerves, day in, day out, concentrating in a way that
brought results. He never let himself get impatient with details.
Thoroughness had long since become the habit of his life. To this he
added a sane common sense.

Jackpot Number Four came in a good well, though not a phenomenal one
like its predecessor. Number Five was already halfway down to the sands.
Meanwhile the railroad crept nearer. Malapi was already talking of its
big celebration when the first engine should come to town. Its council
had voted to change the name of the place to Bonanza.

The tide was turning against Steelman. He was still a very rich man, but
he seemed no longer to be a lucky one. He brought in a dry well. On
another location the cable had pulled out of the socket and a forty-foot
auger stem and bit lay at the bottom of a hole fifteen hundred feet deep.
His best producer was beginning to cough a weak and intermittent flow
even under steady pumping. And, to add to his troubles, a quiet little
man had dropped into town to investigate one of his companies. He was a
Government agent, and the rumor was that he was gathering evidence.

Sanders met Thomas on the street. He had not seen him since the
prospector had made his wild ride for safety with the two outlaws hard
on his heels.

"Glad you made it, Mr. Thomas," said Dave. "Good bit of strategy. When
they reached the notch, Shorty and Doble never once looked to see if we
were around. They lit out after you on the jump. Did they come close to
getting you?"

"It looked like bullets would be flyin'. I won't say who would 'a' got
who if they had," he said modestly. "But I wasn't lookin' for no trouble.
I don't aim to be one of these here fire-eaters, but I'll fight like a
wildcat when I got to." The prospector looked defiantly at Sanders,
bristling like a bantam which has been challenged.

"We certainly owe you something for the way you drew the outlaws off our
trail," Dave said gravely.

"Say, have you heard how the Government is gettin' after Steelman?
He's a wily bird, old Brad is, but he slipped up when he sent out his
advertisin' for the Great Mogul. A photographer faked a gusher for him
and they sent it out on the circulars."

Sanders nodded, without comment.

"Steelman can make 'em flow, on paper anyhow," Thomas chortled. "But he's
sure in a kettle of hot water this time."

"Mr. Steelman is enterprising," Dave admitted dryly.

"Say, Mr. Sanders, have you heard what's become of Shorty and Doble?" the
prospector asked, lapsing to ill-concealed anxiety. "I see the sheriff
has got a handbill out offerin' a reward for their arrest and conviction.
You don't reckon those fellows would bear me any grudge, do you?"

"No. But I wouldn't travel in the hills alone if I were you. If you
happened to meet them they might make things unpleasant."

"They're both killers. I'm a peaceable citizen, as the fellow says. O'
course if they crowd me to the wall--"

"They won't," Dave assured him.

He knew that the outlaws, if the chance ever came for them, would strike
at higher game than Thomas. They would try to get either Crawford or
Sanders himself. The treasurer of the Jackpot did not fool himself with
any false promises of safety. The two men in the hills were desperate
characters, game as any in the country, gun-fighters, and they owed both
him and Crawford a debt they would spare no pains to settle in full. Some
day there would come an hour of accounting.

CHAPTER XXXIII

ON THE DODGE

Up in the hills back of Bear Canon two men were camping. They breakfasted
on slow elk, coffee, and flour-and-water biscuits. When they had
finished, they washed their tin dishes with sand in the running brook.

"Might's well be hittin' the trail," one growled.

The other nodded without speaking, rose lazily, and began to pack
the camp outfit. Presently, when he had arranged the load to his
satisfaction, he threw the diamond hitch and stood back to take a chew of
tobacco while he surveyed his work. He was a squat, heavy-set man with a
Chihuahua hat. Also he was a two-gun man. After a moment he circled an
arrowweed thicket and moved into the chaparral where his horse was
hobbled.

The man who had spoken rose with one lithe twist of his big body. His
eyes, hard and narrow, watched the shorter man disappear in the brush.
Then he turned swiftly and strode toward the shoulder of the ridge.

In the heavy undergrowth of dry weeds and grass he stopped and tested the
wind with a bandanna handkerchief. The breeze was steady and fairly
strong. It blew down the canon toward the foothills beyond.

The man stripped from a scrub oak a handful of leaves. They were very
brittle and crumbled in his hand. A match flared out. His palm cupped it
for a moment to steady the blaze before he touched it to the crisp
foliage. Into a nest of twigs he thrust the small flame. The twigs, dry
as powder from a four-months' drought, crackled like miniature fireworks.
The grass caught, and a small line of fire ran quickly out.

The man rose. On his brown face was an evil smile, in his hard eyes
something malevolent and sinister. The wind would do the rest.

He walked back toward the camp. At the shoulder crest he turned to look
back. From out of the chaparral a thin column of pale gray smoke was
rising.

His companion stamped out the remains of the breakfast fire and threw
dirt on the ashes to make sure no live ember could escape in the wind.
Then he swung to the saddle.

"Ready, Dug?" he asked.

The big man growled an assent and followed him over the summit into the
valley beyond.

"Country needs a rain bad," the man in the Chihuahua hat commented.
"Don't know as I recollect a dryer season."

The big hawk-nosed man by his side cackled in his throat with short,
splenetic mirth. "It'll be some dryer before the rains," he prophesied.

They climbed out of the valley to the rim. The short man was bringing up
the rear along the narrow trail-ribbon. He turned in the saddle to look
back, a hand on his horse's rump. Perhaps he did this because of the
power of suggestion. Several times Doble had already swung his head to
scan with a searching gaze the other side of the valley.

Mackerel clouds were floating near the horizon in a sky of blue. Was that
or was it not smoke just over the brow of the hill?

"Cayn't be our camp-fire," the squat man said aloud. "I smothered that
proper."

"Them's clouds," pronounced Doble quickly. "Clouds an' some mist risin'
from the gulch."

"I reckon," agreed the other, with no sure conviction. Doble must be
right, of course. No fire had been in evidence when they left the
camping-ground, and he was sure he had stamped out the one that had
cooked the biscuits. Yet that stringy gray film certainly looked like
smoke. He hung in the wind, half of a mind to go back and make sure. Fire
in the chaparral now might do untold damage.

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