I've called him a coward a thousand times for tolerating such an outrage for an instant, and now that he's gone I'm going to show Honest John that he can't put it over _me_!"

She shook her head until her heavy black hair flew out like Medusa's locks and then Wiley laughed provokingly.

"All right," he said, "but you can't rope me in on your feuds. If you want to give me an option on your stock in the company for five or ten cents a share I may take a look at your mine. But I'll tell you one thing--you'll sign an agreement first to leave the country and never come back. I'm a business man, working for business people, and these shotgun methods don't go."

"Well, I'll do it!" exclaimed the Widow, pa.s.sing by his numerous insults in a sudden mad grab at release. "Just draw up your paper and I'll sign it in a minute--but I want ten cents a share!"

"Ten cents or ten dollars--it makes no difference to me. You can put it as high as you like--but if it's too high, my princ.i.p.als won't take it.

I can't stop to inspect it now, because I'm due up north, but I'll tell you what I'll do. You give me an option on all your stock, with a written permission to take possession, and if the other two big owners will do as much I'll come back and consider the mine. But get this straight--the first time you b.u.t.t in, this option and agreement is off!"

"What do you mean--b.u.t.t in?" demanded the Widow truculently, and then she bit her lip. "Well, never mind," she said, "just draw up your papers. I'll show you I'm business myself."

"Huh!" he grunted and, whipping out a fountain pen, he sat down and wrote rapidly at a table. "There," he said tearing the leaf from his notebook and putting it into her hands, "just read that over and if you want to sign it we'll close the deal, right here."

The Widow took the paper and, turning it to the light, began a labored perusal.

"Memorandum of agreement," she muttered, squinting her eyes at his handwriting, "hmm, I'll have to go and get my gla.s.ses. 'For and in consideration of the sum of ten dollars--to me in hand paid by M. R.

Wiley,' and so forth--oh well, I guess it's all right, just show me where to sign."

"No," he said, "let me read it to you--you ought to know what you're signing."

"No, just show me where to sign," protested the Widow petulantly, "and where it says ten cents a share."

"Well, it says that here," answered Wiley, putting his finger on the place, "but I'm going to read it to you--it wouldn't be legal otherwise."

He wiped the beaded sweat from his brow and glanced towards the kitchen door. In this desperate game which he was framing on the Widow the luck had all come his way, but as he cleared his throat and commenced to read Virginia came bounding in. She was carrying a kitten, but when she saw the paper between them she dropped it on the floor.

"Virginia!" cried her mother, "go and hunt my gla.s.ses. They're somewhere in my bedroom."

"All right," she responded, but when she came back she glanced inquiringly at the paper.

"You can go now," announced the Widow, adjusting her gla.s.ses, but Virginia threw up her head.

"Do you know who that is?" she demanded brusquely, pointing an accusing finger at Wiley.

"Why--er--no," returned the Widow, now absorbed in the agreement.

"Well, all right," she said after a hasty perusal, "but where's that sum of ten dollars? Now you hush, Virginia, and go--into--the--_kitchen_!

Now, it says right here--oh, where is that place? Oh yes, 'the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged'! _Virginia!_"

She stamped her foot, but Virginia's blood was up and she made a grab at the paper.

"Now, _listen!_" she screamed, stopping her mother in her rush.

"That man there is Wiley Holman! Yes--Holman! Old Honest John's son!

What's this you're going to sign?"

She backed away, her eyes fixed on the agreement, while the Widow stood astounded.

"Wiley _Holman_!" she shrieked, "why, you limb of Satan, you said your name was Wiley!"

"It is," returned Wiley with one eye on the door, "the rest of my name is Holman."

"But you signed it on this paper--you wrote it right there! Oh, I'll have the law on you for this!"

She clutched at the paper and as Virginia gave it to her mother she turned an accusing glance upon Wiley.

"Yes, that's just like you, Mr. M. R. Wiley," she observed with scathing sarcasm. "You were just that way when you were a kid here in Keno--always trying to get the advantage of somebody. But if I'd thought you had the nerve----" She glanced at the paper and gasped and Wiley showed his teeth in a grin.

"Well, she crowded me to it," he answered with a swagger. "I'm strictly business--I'll sign up anybody. You can just keep that paper," he nodded to the Widow, "and send it to me by mail."

He winked at Virginia and slipped swiftly out the door as the Widow made a rush for her gun. She came out after him, brandishing a double-barreled shotgun, just as he cranked up his machine to start.

"I'll show you!" she yelled, jerking her gun to her shoulder. "I'll learn you to get funny with _me_!"

She pulled the trigger, but Wiley was watching her and he ducked down behind the radiator.

_Clank_, went the hammer and with a wail of rage the Widow snapped the other barrel.

"You, Virginia!" she cried in a terrible voice, "have you been monkeying with my shotgun?"

The answer was lost in a series of explosions that awoke every echo in Keno, and Wiley Holman leapt into his machine. He jerked off his brake and stepped on the foot throttle but as he roared off up the street he waved a grimy hand at Virginia.

CHAPTER III

THE SHADOW

The old, settled quiet returned to sleepy Keno--the quiet of the desert and of empty, noiseless houses stretching in long, sunburned rows down the canyon. The black lava patch, laid across the gray rhyolite flank of Shadow Mountain like the shade of an angry cloud, still frowned down upon the town like a portent of storms to come. But the sky was hot and gleaming and no storms came; nor did Wiley Holman return, though the Widow waited for him patiently. After all his boldness, his unbelievable effrontery in trying to steal her Paymaster stock, he had gone on laughing to seek other adventures and left her with the mine on her hands. But he would come back, she knew it; and with her gun loaded with buckshot she watched from the shelter of the gallery.

Yet the days went by and then the weeks and at last the Widow, with a sigh of vexation, put up her gun and retired within. Now that the episode was over she felt vaguely regretful that he had failed, after all, in his purpose. If he had procured his option, under cover of her blindness, and obtained her quit-claim to the mine, she would at least have had the satisfaction of obtaining her own terms--and she would have the twenty thousand to spend. It was maddening, disgusting, when she thought it over, that he had turned out to be Holman's son, and she never quite forgave Virginia for dinning the fact into her ears. For what you don't know will never hurt you, and she had lost her last chance to sell. When she went back into the house she went back into the kitchen, and there she would have to stay. Either that or take Honest John's money.

But he wanted the property--the Widow knew it--else why had he sent his son? All the wise-acres in Keno agreed with the Widow that Honest John had designs on her property and Death Valley Charley, who had jumped half the claims in the district, began once more to carry his gun. It was by virtue of that, more than of a.s.sessment work done or of any other legal right, that Charley held t.i.tle to his claims; and until Wiley had come through town and attempted to bond the Paymaster he had feared no one but Stiff Neck George. Stiff Neck George had been Blount's gunman on the momentous occasion when they had tried to jump the Paymaster--and the Widow Huff had put him to flight with one blast from her trusty shotgun. But now that big interests were sending in their experts and mining was picking up everywhere Stiff Neck George might forget that humiliating defeat, so Death Valley Charley put on his six-shooter.

He was a little, stooping man, burned chocolate brown by the sun and with eyes half blinded by the glare, and as the Widow gave up her fruitless vigil, Death Valley Charley took her place. But he was not alone, for through all the weary weeks Virginia had been watching her mother. She had slipped in and out, now lingering on the gallery, now listening through the doorway, expectant but at the same time afraid.

She knew Wiley Holman much better than her mother, and she knew that he would come back. He was patient, that was all, more patient than an Indian, and he had his eye on their mine. For ten years and more Colonel Huff, and now the Widow, had held physical possession of the Paymaster.

Every great iron-bound door was locked and padlocked and the Huff family held the keys, but in all those ten years Holman had never come near it and Blount had merely seized it on a labor lien. The very t.i.tle to the mine was shrouded in mystery, for no one could locate the shares, and to openly lay claim to it and produce a majority of the stock would be equivalent to a confession of treachery. All that anyone knew surely was that some one of the three original owners--or some unsuspected party outside--had bought in and sequestered the almost valueless stock and was patiently biding his time. Since the Huffs did not own the stock themselves they knew for a certainty that it was held by either Holman or Blount.

As Virginia sat on the gallery, listening subconsciously for the drumming of Wiley's racing motor up the road, she ran over in her mind the circ.u.mstances of his visit; and she could explain them all but one.

Why, after failing of his mission, and narrowly escaping her mother's gun, had he waved his hand and smiled so gayly as he thundered away up the street? Had he other schemes more subtle; or was he simply reckless, regarding even this adventure as a joke? As a boy he had been both--a crafty schemer and reckless doer--but now he was grown to a man. And if the lines about his mouth were any criterion he would soon be coming back to carry out by stealth what he failed to accomplish by a.s.sault. So she, too, waited patiently, to foil his machinations and uphold the honor of the Huffs.

In the good old days it had never been forgotten that the Huffs belonged to the Virginia quality, while the Holmans came from Maine; hence the Colonel's relations with Honest John Holman had at first been strictly business. John Holman was a Northerner, with no social graces and abstemious to a fault, but when his commercial honor upon a certain occasion had saved the Colonel from bankruptcy he had cast the traditions of the South to the winds and taken Honest John as his friend. "My friend," he called him and neither his wife nor his enemies could shake the Colonel's faith in his partner. Then, after years of mutual trust, the panic had come on, and the crash in Paymaster stock; and as their fortunes went tumbling and ugly rumors filled the air they had broken their friendship completely. Yet so great was his love for his old-time friend that he had never openly accused him; and Honest John Holman, after months of somber silence, had moved away and started a cow ranch. But it was a question of honesty between the two men and their children had never forgotten. Ten years had pa.s.sed since they had been boy and girl together, but the moment they met the old quarrel flashed up again and now the feud was on.

A boisterous blast of wind, whirling dust and papers down the street, announced the beginning of another sandstorm; and Death Valley Charley, who had been sitting outside the gate, came muttering up the steps.

Behind him trotted Heine, his worshipful little dog, and as Virginia's pet cat suddenly arched its back, Death Valley took Heine in his arms.

"Can't you hear 'em?" he asked tiptoeing rapidly up to Virginia. "It's them big guns, over in Europe. It's them forty-two centimeter howitzers and the French seventy-fives in the trenches along the Somme."