Dead Man's Gold/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
Mexicali
STONE'S lawyer friend, whose name was Redfern, lunched him at the Jonathan Club.
"You know your own business, Jim, of course," he said. "But that's a precious pair of rascals you're tied up with. Of the two I prefer the Britisher. That chap Healy is a snake-man, sleek and suck and silent and always dangerous. If this stuff you're going after is really worth while, though it seems like a wild-goose chase to me, look out. As I gather it, you are the goose—the one who lays the golden eggs—up to the time you cry 'Sesame' to this treasure cave. Just follow out that simile. You remember what the robbers did to trespassers in that Arabian Nights' cave?"
"Quartered them and wrapped the quarters up in sacks, wasn't it?" smiled Stone. "You also forget what the dancing-girl did to the robbers. I'm taking chances, I grant you that, but I've been a damned fool most of my life and I've run all over the face of the earth and spilled a pot of money. I've got the habit of money, Redfern. I've been educated up to it. Sooner than grub along without travel, books, music, plays, good food, good furnishings, the company of the refined, if not the cultured—which includes good-looking women who know how to wear good clothes—without the ability to entertain my friends and, if needs be, assist them, life is not worth the living. Sybaritic, I grant you. I've just been grinding a pit through a porphyry dike in the Grape Vine Mountains, just over the line in Nevada, hoping to find gold underneath it. I was going to stick with that game. I was beginning to knit up the ravels of my constitution and then this thing came along and I realized how utterly sick I was of Skyfields. There's nothing romantic about pounding a drill or holding one. Labourer's work, under much less exciting conditions than the Dago has who is tearing up a New York street. Never a smell of gold to cheer you on, only a belief, that grows hopeless at times, that you'll find it after you get through the porphyry.
"When I gamble I like to gamble with the stakes in sight. I've smelled gold on this trip, seen it and heard of it; a wall of white quartz, studded as thick with gold as the sky is with stars along the Milky Way, points of gold on milky quartz, reaching far up into the darkness. And I've seen bits of the wall. Brought a gleam into your eyes, didn't it? I'll show you the specimens and the quills full of raw gold from the sandbars. It's all there, Redfern, mystery and riches, a dying man's secret; the desert, peril from savages and, according to you, from my own companions."
"One of whom," said Redfern, "looks as if he would cheerfully garrote you for ten dollars, while the other, Healy, would probably hire him to do it."
"All of which is part of the fun of it," replied Stone. "I want to get money for the things I've just recited, but the adventure of it appeals also. It's a chance. A chance to get back my own self-respect, and I'm going to take it in the hope of a glorious resurrection. I've been a good deal of a rotter and I'm going to put on the brakes. If I skid, it's in a worthy cause, if a selfish one. I'm mentally and physically decadent at thirty. I'm going to attempt the impossible—a come-back. And here's my opportunity."
"The renaissance of Jim Stone," suggested Redfern. "You don't look very decadent, Jim. A darned sight fitter than I am. I'm developing a slight pod and an indisposition to walk anywhere."
"You're married," said Stone, brutally. "Too well fed, too contented. Regular stalled-ox. Come out into the desert with us. Win or lose."
"Can't be done. Though I'll confess that Milky-Way, Mother-of-Gold wall is going to keep me awake nights. But seriously. Stone, you are taking chances you should eliminate. Do you know how many men return from the desert? Less than fifty per cent., unless they are Desert Rats. You've maybe had some little roughneck experiences, Jim, but, on his own showing, Larkin knows little of the West; Healy has seldom risked his precious hide outside the gambling room. Even with you he stayed in your shack as cook. He's soft. Three infants, you are, when it comes to bucking the desert. It's full of traps. The man who tries to cross the sea without knowledge of navigation or sailorcraft has a cinch compared with the tenderfoot who tackles the desert. It has a hundred traps. What do any of you know about Apaches? You had better take a desert-salted prospector along with you. Even then? This Wat Lyman himself didn't go after it because he reckoned it too dangerous a proposition and, just because there are three of you, you think you can blunder through with it—because you want that gold."
"I fancy Lyman exaggerated dangers," said Stone. "I mean present-day dangers. His partners, Dave and Lem, did not go in alone and they did not come out. But the country has become more settled. Geronimo is dead. Lyman couldn't visualize colonists where he once trailed over sand. He lived in his past. The loss of his wife took his mental nerve, though he was physically brave enough. It was hard for him to imagine change. But you've made a good point. To take along a Desert Rat, as you call them. It should not be hard to get hold of one. How about those papers?"
"They're ready. They'll hold, though it was not easy to describe such visionary emoluments. But tying it up with the partnership agreement, by using the same terms regarding the possible profits accruing during partnership, will handle it all right. Get hold of your men and we'll sign up this afternoon. By the way, do you want any money? Glad to grubstake you if you won't take it any other way."
Stone shook his head and laughed.
"Wild-goose or wildcat, I'm not going to take in my friends, whichever way it turns out. I'll have enough."
He had a telegram in his pocket that answered satisfactorily his appeal for an advance on his slender income. Redfern's bill made quite a hole in it but, providing Healy raised his loan, Stone had enough for his own share of the expenses, and some over to help with Lefty's. Though, without definite announcement from Healy as to their destination, he could not figure exactly.
Healy made the most of his brief authority, preserving a mysterious air of leadership that did not especially annoy Stone, but galled Lefty.
"'Oo in 'ell does 'e think 'e is?" the Englishman would protest. "Watch me git heven later on, that's all. Crimy, 'e gits me so I'd like to bash 'is bloomin' mug for 'im!"
Stone saw the dangers of this growing friction and argued Lefty at least into moderation. Until the trove was found and plans made for fair division, their mutual interests called for peace, and Stone said so.
"Just so long as 'e travels square," agreed Lefty. "But 'e's too bloody cocky, and if I hever get a chance to trim 'is comb for 'im, 'e'll never know 'e 'ad one."
Not until they got to the depot did Healy break his reticence on the subject of their route. They toted only personal baggage, waiting to get what outfit was necessary at the other end. Instead of buying to some point in Arizona or New Mexico, as Stone had confidently expected, Healy grinned round at him from the ticket-seller's window as he said:
"First stop's Calexico."
Calexico was on the southern swing of a loop of the Southern Pacific between Imperial Junction and Yuma. This southern swing passed over the California-Mexico line at the border town, which was called Calexico and Mexicali respectively, on the California and Mexican sides, coming back into the United States again at Yuma. To leave the train at Calexico seemed to premise a trip into Mexico proper. And that did not tie up with Stone's logic. There were no Apaches in Mexico.
But Healy's grin was not to be fed and Stone said nothing until they were aboard the train.
"If the Madre d'Oro is on the opposite side of the border," he remarked, "this is hardly an auspicious time to go after it."
"I said Calexico was the first stop, not the last," answered Healy. "Matter of fact, we are going across the border, but not far. Just into Mexicali, Stone. I didn't raise the money I expected to in Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, I got just twenty dollars. How much have we in the pot, all told?"
Healy's assumption that, being partners, any money that any one of the three might secure was general capital, was sound enough. Stone realized. Lefty, quite justly, felt no chagrin at being broke. It was only Stone's personal objection to travelling on any of Healy's money, and he felt that he had no right to display his private feelings. He produced the roll.
"With your twenty, Healy," he announced, "we've got just one hundred and ninety-three dollars among us. You know best if that will take us through to wherever we're going."
"It might get us there," admitted Healy, "but we wouldn't have enough left to bid for a burro, let alone get an outfit."
"Then why didn't you bring the matter up in Los Angeles where we might have had some chance of raising the wind?" asked Stone. Lefty sucked at a short, charred briar and said nothing but looked his disgust at Healy.
"Because there's just as good a chance at Mexicali," said Healy. "A better chance. Listen to me. Mexicali is the only live town left within easy touch of the United States. It's just across the line from Calexico. Calexico's dry and tame as a Methodist prayer-meeting, but Mexicali is wet and wild and wide-open. It's the only frontier town still in existence. Everything goes. One man owns it and he's a friend of mine, Joe Castro.
"He's trying to make the place popular and he's got three main attractions. The liquor is first rate, he won't employ a dance-hall rustler who isn't pretty or who's more than twenty, and the games are straight. I don't say how long it'll last that way but right now Mexicali is a hummer.
"I can borrow a stake from Joe Castro at a pinch. But I don't want to. Joe 'll look on it as a grubstake and want his fifty per cent. But if there's one thing in which I'm a specialist, it's gambling. I know the games and I've got the temperament. And I know when to quit. I don't always do it but, with a bigger stake in sight, like we have, I'll cash in pronto when the time comes.
"Give me a hundred and fifty of that roll. That leaves forty-three to split three ways for ex's. Five hundred 'll see us through. And I'll have that for us inside of two hours. I'll play faro, case cards only."
"And we look on like the kids houtside the circus?" interjected Lefty, speaking for the first time since they had boarded the train. "Not for mine. Long as that's hall we got. Split the pile in three. Call it sixty apiece and spend the hodd thirteen for drinks. My throat's forgot the taste of booze. Thirteen's unlucky, hanyway. I've bucked the tiger a bit myself. Win or lose, I like to do it first-hand."
Stone felt himself subscribing to these sentiments. Healy had deliberately misled them as to his success in getting a loan. Stone had naturally not asked further particulars when Healy had announced, after the signing of the papers, that he had "seen his friend." He had forced them to go to Mexicali but from there on Stone resolved they should have a show-down. He did not intend to be led around by Healy's whims like a pig with a ring in his nose. Neither, he was sure, did Lefty. This once it did not matter. He had gambled himself and learned a little very costly wisdom concerning the vagaries of the green cloth.
Anyway, the whole trip was a gamble. All was on the knees of the gods. A challenge to Fate. A fortune at one end and a shoestring to start with. Their luck might as well be tested first as last. There is no adventurer who is not a gambler, who does not believe in his star. An atheist may not believe in a God but, if he plays cards, he has his pet superstitions.
They got into Calexico at midnight and found the town asleep. But there were certain night-hawks with jitneys ready to cross the line to where clocks were superfluous and day and night served only to mark the watches of the purveyors to the appetites of the throng that fluttered round Joe Castro's Casa Grande until their wings got singed; or until some rare flier, weighted down with gold, fled north as self-appointed publicity agent of this Mexican Monaco.
It took ten dollars out of the unlucky thirteen to take them to Casa Grande, a collection of adobe buildings bulking purple black in the violet night. Lighted windows showed orange like so many eyes, and a strange, intoxicating murmur came from the pueblo of chance; a medley of human passions, laughter, exuding, music, a vibrant hum that set the blood to pulsing with primal emotions.
Two rounds of drinks—and the liquor was good—reduced them to their working capital. If they lost, they were beggars, unless they sold out half their rights to José Castro for a grubstake. A couple of hours, or less, would see them with sufficient to go on—or bankrupt.
They passed out of the saloon into the gambling rooms. The adobe houses were arranged Mexican fashion about an inner patio. There was a wooden platform in the centre of this and little tables all about it. Healy hurried off to find Castro, and Stone stood looking out into the courtyard. It was well lighted with electricity and, under the bluish glare, the scene held a theatrical impression, the gaiety seemed unreal, even on the part of the drinking men.
These were mostly American. There were ranchers from the Imperial Valley, letting immense profits in grapes and cotton and cantaloupes melt, in one way and another, into the astute Castro's coffers. Men from the oilfields of Kern County, a few cowboys, tourists from Los Angeles, all sorts and conditions of men "seeing life." There were some Mexicans, swarthy, picturesque, cigarette smoking, seeming somehow as if they belonged behind the scenes, waiting, ready to come on at their cue.
Among the tables flitted the girls, cajoling, pocketing their liberal percentage of the price of the drinks, sitting at tables for payment, or dancing with bearish partners to the string band of guitars and violins; exchanging badinage, more or less coarse, flattering a wine-buyer, evading a close-fisted customer or one too insistent on amorous return. They were all dressed as Carmens, blonde and brunette alike, and Stone noticed that the music was good and the girls undeniably pretty.
If the games were square? Lefty touched him on the arm. Lefty himself had been gazing at the girls, his ugly face, with its upthrust brows, more like a pug's than ever.
Stone turned to meet Healy and Castro, a fat, jovial, heavy-paunched man with an olive complexion.
"Buenos noches, senores," he said to Stone and Lefty. "Frens of Señor Healy are frens of mine. We shall have a leetle touch together? Si? To cleenk the glass an' weesh you buena ventura. For some mus' win, an' I like it should be the frens of my fren. Porque no?"
He sat them at a table and a girl brought to his nod and sign of three fat fingers three long glasses filled with an aromatic liquid.
"For myself you mus' excuse," he said. "The night is jus' begin an' I mus' dreenk often. So, I take now a cigar. But you, you weel like the Pisco punches. From mescal, señors. In one there is courage, inspiration, but dreenk no more. After one, sweetch to wheesky. For, to dreenk three Piscos is, they say, to go home and keel the mother-in-law. Wheech may be also a good theeng. Quien sabe?" And his stomach quivered as he laughed at the crude jest.
Stone noticed the girl as she set the glasses down with long, tapering fingers tipped with nails that were beautifully kept. Her arms, bare from the elbow, were exquisitely rounded and the skin seemed soft and smooth as the petal of a white flower. Her face was oval, daintily but haughtily poised upon a slender neck that sprang from shoulders which showed a certain girlishness. Her dark hair was piled in a great mass held by a Spanish comb, her small, full-lipped mouth was the only touch of vivid colour, for her cheeks were but slightly dashed with rouge. It seemed to Stone as if it had been assumed as a mask, above which the dark eyes showed somber, looking at him and all the motley gathering with a fixed disdain. Her lithe movements appeared almost automatic until a half-drunken man lurched by and clutched heavily at her arm to steady himself.
In a flash she had torn herself away, her eyes flashing.
"You drunken fool," she cried. "How dare you? How dare you?"
The man stood blinking foolishly. It was her left arm he had blindly grasped. The fingers of her right caressed the bruise for a second then flew upward, groping for a weapon. Her face was still a mask but it was a mask of furious tragedy. Swiftly as she had moved, José Castro, for all his fat, moved as swiftly. His pudgy fingers pressed her right arm at the elbow, nipped it as a crab might have done, touching some tender spring of nerve and muscle, paralyzing her endeavour.
"Vamos," he hissed at the drunkard. "Git out."
Stone took him by the arm and led him away, still stupid, uncomprehending his offence, or that he had just stood vis-à-vis with Death. His companions, hurrying up, with a quick word of thanks to Stone, bore him off.
Castro was chiding the girl when Stone returned to the table, chiding in a voice huskily caressing but with an undertone of emphasis, like a steel wire inside a silken cord. She stood sullen, stroking her arm.
"You geev me too much trouble, Lola," said Castro. "You mus' not ac' so like the snob. Yes'r'-day eet is complain to me you are too cold, you take the teep, you pocket your commission, but you sulk at the kind word. Eet is not right. You are here to make money for yourself an' for me. To-night, Carramba, you flare up at what is not meant as the insult! I hear you hav' quarrel with Padilla. You upset my business. Padilla is too good a leader of my orchestra for me to lose. An' you geev me that knife. Sabe? Eh, do you sabe, leetle one?"
She did not wince but a light leaped in her eyes like the fire in a black opal. As Castro released her she took a bone-handled stiletto from her bosom, laid it down, and moved away without a word. Castro laughed, a softly husky laugh, like a muffled rasp, and Stone felt an itching to slap his fat chops for him. He knew such an action would boomerang upon, not only himself, but the girl, and sipped his liquor to cover his mood.
"She is not yet broken, that leetle filly," commented Castro. "But she mus' not spoil my business."
The mescale was pungent, its native fieriness cunningly subdued in the mixing of the punch. Stone felt its insidious warmth running through his veins and saw a flush come to Lefty's cheeks and a gleam to the sleepy eyes of Healy.
"B'li'my!" cried Lefty. "Some booze!"
Castro laughed and got up, puffing at his cigar.
"Adios, frens of my fren'," he said. "Luck be weeth you."
He went out toward the dancing floor, following the girl Lola. Healy started for a faro table and Lefty, glancing around, selected a crap-game.
"Action for me," he said. "I can talk to the bones in any langwidge. Dago to Dutch." Stone watched him join the triple rank of players and turned to where the marble was spinning in the groove while fifty players hung over the varying fortunes of red and black and zero, at roulette.
He divided his sixty dollars up into five-dollar bets, meaning to double when he won, and then double again, playing the winnings on the dozen combinations. Four times the red lost in succession before he shifted to the black and then the ball selected unerringly the scarlet numbers seven times running. Luck seemed determined to mock at him. He flung his last stake, a yellow chip, carelessly, and saw it settle between four numbers. He touched it with his fingers for exact placement. The wheel went in one direction, the whirring marble in another, slowing gradually against the friction until it skipped, hesitated, flirted at the openings and flopped at last to zero.
Less than fifteen minutes and he was out of the running.
Stone shrugged his shoulders and backed out. No one had noticed his trivial bets. At the crap table Lefty was staking with silver dollars, his left hand stacked with them, his right throwing the dice for himself and those who bet with or against him on every conceivable combination.
"Seven!" cried Lefty, triumphantly, as the cubes rebounded from the back of the board and fell to a four and a three. He dropped the coins in his left hand into a side pocket that already clinked with his winnings, took over the stack the croupier pushed to him, and threw again. ""Four straight passes," he called, "now for the fifth. Hell! I'm hoodoo'd. Craps!"
He looked ruefully at the two and the one that marked his throw and his neighbour took up the dice. Stone moved silently off as Lefty made a bet, wondering whether his own ill fortune might not affect the Cockney's success. Healy sat silent and motionless at the faro-table, waiting for his plays, watching the case-keeper until a card had won or lost twice before he slid out his chips. He looked, Stone thought, like a hawk watching a covert. Apparently he was neither winning nor losing.
The gambling rooms were hot, the air stifling, and Stone made for the patio, in no humour to watch others play where he could not. A dance was just ending, the girls leading their partners quickly off the floor, most of them on the outlook for a new prospect, eager to get rid of the old. Only a few of them acted as waitresses. Mexicans in white with red sashes and ties to match, served the drinks, gliding deftly and noiselessly between the tables, answering the summons of their patrons or the shrill calls of the girls, giving the latter rubber discs for their percentage accounts.
The music ended and the musicians gathered about a table of their own for refreshment. Stone looked idly for the girl Lola but did not see her as he leisurely made the circuit of the courtyard. A lithe, tall man, unusually broad-shouldered for a Mexican, got up from the musicians' table and walked off with a swagger toward an opening between the buildings. His fellows shouted some jibe after him in Spanish, which Stone could not catch, and which the man answered with a cock of his head, setting one hand to his pliant hip as he strutted off, gracefully enough, and disappeared in the alley. Stone passed the place a moment later and, glancing down it, saw two figures at the far end, dark against a patch of starlit sky.
The two were apart. Then the taller made a quick movement and snatched the other toward him. There was a slight scream and Stone hesitated. He had no wish to interfere in any love affair but there had been a quality to the cry that was appealing. It was not the provocative protest of a girl who has expected the amorous attack, and it had been shut off sharply. It came again—rage and terror in it—and Stone leaped into the alley. He had swiftly remembered the talk of Castro about Padilla, the leader of the orchestra, and Castro's suggestive comment that the girl Lola should not resent that favourite's advances. It was none of his business. The girl had looked at him as scornfully as the rest, but there had been his sense that there was someone behind her mask who did not belong in that company and now, as he ran swiftly, sure that the woman was Lola, it mastered him and summoned up his chivalry.
Before Stone reached him the tall musician stooped and kissed her full on the lips. Then he drew back with a volley of foul oaths. She had made her teeth meet in his lips. He flung her away against the adobe wall and struck at her fiercely as she shrank with a wild cry of fear.
Stone caught the descending arm on his own and Padilla whirled.
"Que quieres?" he shouted. "A Gringo lover?" His blow came with his words. Stone ducked it. As he countered he heard a commotion back of them in the alley. The girl had fled. A fist grazed his cheek and then his own got home. The Mexican dropped like a pole-axed ox.