Whispering Smith/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
AT THE THREE HORSES
CLEAN them out of the Rocky Mountains; that is a pretty good contract,” mused the man in McCloud’s office on Sunday morning. He sat opposite McCloud in Bucks’s old easy chair and held in his hand Bucks’s telegram. As he spoke he raised his eyebrows and settled back, but the unusual depth of the chair and the shortness of his legs left his chin helpless in his black tie, so that he was really no better off except that he had changed one position of discomfort for another. “I wonder, now,” he mused, sitting forward again as McCloud watched him, “I wonder—you know, George, the Andes are, strictly speaking, a part of the great North American chain—whether Bucks meant to include the South American ranges in that message?” and a look of mildly good-natured anticipation overspread his face.
“Suppose you wire him and find out,” suggested McCloud.
“No, George, no! Bucks never was accurate in geographical expressions. Besides, he is shifty and would probably cover his tracks by telling me to report progress when I got to Panama.”
A clerk opened the outer office door. “Mr. Dancing asks if he can see you, Mr. McCloud.”
“Tell him I am busy.”
Bill Dancing, close on the clerk’s heels, spoke for himself. “I know it, Mr. McCloud, I know it!” he interposed urgently, “but let me speak to you just a moment.” Hat in hand, Bill, because no one would knock him down to keep him out, pushed into the room. “I’ve got a plan,” he urged, “in regards to getting these hold-ups.”
“How are you, Bill?” exclaimed the man in the easy chair, jumping hastily to his feet and shaking Dancing’s hand. Then quite as hastily he sat down, crossed his knees violently, stared at the giant lineman, and exclaimed, “Let’s have it!”
Dancing looked at him in silence and with some contempt. The trainmaster had broken in on the superintendent for a moment and the two were conferring in an undertone. “What might your name be, mister?” growled Dancing, addressing with some condescension the man in the easy chair.
The man waved his hand as if it were immaterial and answered with a single word: “Forgotten!”
“How’s that?”
“Forgotten!”
“That’s a blamed queer name”
“On the contrary, it’s a very common name and that is just the trouble: it’s forgotten.”
“What do you want, Bill?” demanded McCloud, turning to the lineman.
“Is this man all right?” asked Dancing, jerking his thumb toward the easy chair.
“I can’t say; you’ll have to ask him.”
“I’ll save you that trouble, Bill, by saying that if it’s for the good of the division I am all right. Death to its enemies, damme, say I. Now go on, William, and give us your plan in regards to getting these hold-ups—yes.”
Dancing looked from one man to the other, but McCloud appeared preoccupied and his visitor seemed wholly serious. “I don’t want to take too much on myself—” Bill began, speaking to McCloud.
“You look as if you could carry a fair-sized load, William, provided it bore the right label,” suggested the visitor, entirely amiable.
“—But nobody has felt worse over this thing and recent things”
“Recent things,” echoed the easy chair.
“—happening to the division that I have. Now I know there’s been trouble on the division”
“I think you are putting it too strong there, Bill, but let it pass.”
“—there’s been differences; misunderstandings and differences. So I says to myself maybe something might be done to get everybody together and bury the differences, like this: Murray Sinclair is in town; he feels bad over this thing, like any railroad man would. He’s a mountain man, quick as the quickest with a gun, a good trailer, rides like a fiend, and can catch a streak of sunshine travelling on a pass. Why not put him at the head of a party to run ’em down?”
“Run ’em down,” nodded the stranger.
“Differences such as be or may be”
“May be”
“Being discussed when he brings ’em in dead or alive, and not before. That’s what I said to Murray Sinclair, and Murray Sinclair is ready for to take hold this minute and do what he can if he’s asked. I told him plain I could promise no promises; that, I says, lays with George McCloud. Was I right, was I wrong? If I was wrong, right me; if I was right, say so. All I want is harmony.”
The new man nodded approval. “Bully, Bill!” he exclaimed heartily.
“Mister,” protested the lineman, with simple dignity, “I’d just a little rather you wouldn’t bully me nor Bill me.”
“All in good part, Bill, as you shall see; all in good part. Now before Mr. McCloud gives you his decision I want to be allowed a word. Your idea looks good to me. At first I may say it didn’t. I am candid; I say it didn’t. It looked like setting a dog to catch his own tail. Mind you, I don’t say it can’t be done. A dog can catch his own tail; they do do it,” proclaimed the stranger in a low and emphatic undertone. “But,” he added, moderating his utterance, “when they succeed—who gets anything out of it but the dog?” Bill Dancing, somewhat clouded and not deeming it well to be drawn into any damaging admissions, looked around for a cigar, and not seeing one, looked solemnly at the new Solomon and stroked his beard. “That is how it looked to me at first,” concluded the orator; “but, I say now it looks good to me, and as a stranger I may say I favor it.”
Dancing tried to look unconcerned and seemed disposed to be friendly. “What might be your line of business?”
“Real estate. I am from Chicago. I sold everything that was for sale in Chicago and came out here to stake out the Spanish Sinks and the Great Salt Lake—yes. It’s drying up and there’s an immense opportunity for claims along the shore. I’ve been looking into it.”
“Into the claims or into the lake?” asked McCloud.
“Into both; and, Mr. McCloud, I want to say I favor Mr. Dancing’s idea, that’s all. Right wrongs no man. Let Bill see Sinclair and see what they can figure out.” And having spoken, the stranger sank back and tried to look comfortable.
“I’ll talk with you later about it, Bill,” said McCloud briefly.
“Meantime, Bill, see Sinclair and report,” suggested the stranger.
“It’s as good as done,” announced Dancing, taking up his hat, “and, Mr. McCloud, might I have a little advance for cigars and things?”
“Cigars and ammunition—of course. See Sykes, William, see Sykes; if the office is closed go to his house—and see what will happen to you—” added the visitor in an aside, “and tell him to telephone up to Mr. McCloud for instruction,” he concluded unceremoniously.
“Now why do you want to start Bill on a fool business like that?” asked McCloud, as Bill Dancing took long steps from the room toward the office of Sykes, the cashier.
“He didn’t know me to-day, but he will to-morrow,” said the stranger reflectively. “Gods, what I’ve seen that man go through in the days of the giants! Why, George, this will keep the boys talking, and they have to do something. Spend the money; the company is making it too fast anyway; they moved twenty-two thousand cars one day last week. Personally I’m glad to have a little fun out of it; it will be hell pure and undefiled long before we get through. This will be an easy way of letting Sinclair know I am here. Bill will report me confidentially to him as a suspicious personage.”
To the astonishment of Sykes, the superintendent confirmed over the telephone Dancing’s statement that he was to draw some expense money. Bill asked for twenty-five dollars. Sykes offered him two, and Bill with some indignation accepted five. He spent all of this in trying to find Sinclair, and on the strength of his story to the boys borrowed five dollars more to prosecute the search. At ten o’clock that night he ran into Sinclair playing cards in the big room above the Three Horses.
The Three Horses still rears its hospitable two-story front in Fort Street, the only one of the Medicine Bend gambling houses that goes back to the days of ’67; and it is the boast of its owners that since the key was thrown away, thirty-nine years ago, its doors have never been closed, night or day, except once for two hours during the funeral of Dave Hawk. Bill Dancing drew Sinclair from his game and told him of the talk with McCloud, touching it up with natural enthusiasm. The bridgeman took the news in high good humor and slapped Dancing on the back. “Did you see him alone, Bill?” asked Sinclair, with interest. “Come over here, come along. I want you to meet a good friend. Here, Harvey, shake hands with Bill Dancing. Bill, this is old Harvey Du Sang, meanest man in the mountains to his enemies and the whitest to his friends—eh, Harvey?”
Harvey seemed uncommunicative. Studying his hand, he asked in a sour way whether it was a jackpot, and upon being told that it was not, pushed forward some chips and looked stupidly up—though Harvey was by no means stupid. “Proud to know you, sir,” said Bill, bending frankly as he put out his hand. “Proud to know any friend of Murray Sinclair’s. What might be your business?”
Again Du Sang appeared abstracted. He looked up at the giant lineman, who, in spite of his own size and strength, could have crushed him between his fingers, and hitched his chair a little, but got no further toward an answer and paid no attention whatever to Bill’s extended hand.
“Cow business, Bill,” interposed Sinclair. “Where? Why, up near the park, Bill, up near the park. Bill is an old friend of mine, Harvey. Shake hands with George Seagrue, Bill, and you know Henry Karg—and old Stormy Gorman—well, I guess you know him too,” exclaimed Sinclair, introducing the other players. “Look here a minute, Harvey.”
Harvey, much against his inclination, was drawn from the table and retired with Sinclair and Dancing to an empty corner, where Dancing told his story again. At the conclusion of it Harvey rather snorted. Sinclair asked questions. “Was anybody else there when you saw McCloud, Bill?”
“One man,” answered Bill impressively.
“Who?”
“A stranger to me.”
“A stranger? What did he look like?”
“Slender man and kind of odd talking, with a sandy mustache.”
“Hear his name?”
“He told me his name, but it’s skipped me, I declare. He’s kind of dark-complected like.”
“Stranger, eh?” mused Du Sang; his eyes were wandering over the room.
“Slender man,” repeated Bill, “but I didn’t take much notice of him. Said he was in the real-estate business.”
“In the real-estate business? And did he sit there while you talked this over with the college guy?” muttered Du Sang.
“He is all right, boys, and he said you’d know his name if I could speak it,” declared Bill.
“Look anything like that man standing with his hands in his pockets over there by the wheel?” asked Du Sang, turning his back carefully on a new-comer as he made the suggestion.
“Where—there? No! Yes, hold on, that’s the man there now! Hold on, now!” urged Bill, struggling with the excitement of ten hours and ten dollars all in one day. “His name sounded like Fogarty.”
As Dancing spoke, Sinclair’s eyes riveted on the new face at the other side of the gambling-room. “Fogarty, hell!” he exclaimed, starting. “Stand right still, Du Sang; don’t look around. That man is Whispering Smith.”