"All right," he said, "you don't have to holler for it. You're getting to be just like your mother."

"I'm not!" she denied, but after looking at him a minute she burst into tears and fled.

CHAPTER VI

ALL CRAZY

The wind was still blowing when Wiley was awakened by the cold of the October morning. In the house all was dark, on account of the blankets which Death Valley had nailed over the windows, but outside he could hear the thump of an axe and the whining yelp of a dog. Then Charley came in, his arms full of wood, and lit a roaring fire in the stove.

Wiley dozed off again, for his leg had pained him and kept him awake half the night, and when he woke up it was to the strains of music and the mournful howls of Heine.

"Ah, you are so confectionate!" exclaimed Charley in honeyed tones and laughed and patted him on the back. "Don't you like the fiddle, Heine?

Well, listen to this now; the sweetest song of all."

He stopped the rasping phonograph to put on another record and when Heine heard "Listen to the Mocking-bird" he barked and leapt with joy.

Wiley listened for awhile, then he stirred in bed and at last he tried to get up; but his leg was very stiff and old Charley was oblivious, so he sank back and waited impatiently. Heine sat upon the floor before the largest of three phonographs, which ground out the Mocking-bird with variations; and each time he heard the whistled notes of the bird he rolled his eyes on Charley with a soulful, beseeching glance. The evening before, when his master had cuffed him, Wiley had considered Heine badly abused; but now as the concert promised to drag on indefinitely he was forced to amend his opinion.

"Say," he spoke up at last, in a pause between records, "what's the chance of getting something to eat?"

"Yes, there's plenty," answered Charley, and went on with his frolic until Wiley rose up in disgust. He had heated some water, besides tearing down a blanket and letting the daylight in, when there came a hurried knock at the door and the Widow appeared with his breakfast. She avoided his eyes, but her manner was ingratiating and she supplied the conversation herself.

"Good morning!" she smiled,--"Charley, stop that awful racket and let Heine go out for his sc.r.a.ps. Well, I brought you your breakfast--Virginia isn't feeling very well--and I hope you're going to be all right. No, get right back into bed and I'll prop you up with pillows; Charley's got a hundred or so. I declare, it's a question which can grab the most; old Charley or Stiff Neck George. Every time anyone moves out--and sometimes when they don't--you'll see those two ghouls hanging around; and the minute they're gone, well, you never saw anything like it, the way they will fight for the loot. Charley's got a whole room filled up with bedding, and stoves and tables and chairs; and George--he's vicious--he takes nearly everything and piles it up down in his warehouse. It isn't his, of course, but----"

"He hauls it off in a wheelbarrow," broke in Charley, virtuously. "He don't care what he does. They was a widow woman here whose daughter got sick and she had to go out for a week, and when she came back----"

"Yes, her whole house was looted--he carried off even her sewing-machine!"

"And a deep line of wheelbarrow tracks," added Charley, unctuously, "leading from her house right down to his. She nailed up all her windows before she went, but he----"

"Yes, he broke in," supplied the Widow. "He's a desperate character and everybody is afraid of him, so he can do whatever he pleases; but you bet your life he can't run it over me--I filled him up with buckshot twice. Oh--that is--er--did you ever hear how he got his head twisted? Well, go right ahead now and eat up your toast. I asked him one time--that was before we'd had our trouble--what was the cause of his head being to one side. He looks, you know, for all the world like he was watching for a good kick from behind; but he tried to appear pathetic and told me a long story about saving a mother and her child in a flood. And when it was all over, according to him, he fell down in a faint in the mud; but the best accounts I get say he was dead drunk in the gutter and woke up with his head on one side."

She ended with a sniff and Wiley glanced at Charley, but he was staring blankly away.

"I don't like that man," spoke up Charley at last, "he kicked my dog, one time."

"And he bootlegs something awful," added the Widow, desperately, for fear that the chatter would lag. "There doesn't a day go by but some drunken Piute comes whooping up the road, and that bunch of Shooshonnies----"

"Yes, he sells to the bucks," observed Death Valley, slyly. "They're no good--they get drunk and tell. But you can trust the squaws--I had one here yesterday----"

"You what?" shrieked the Widow, and Charley looked up startled, then rose and whistled to his dog.

"Go lay down!" he commanded and slapped him till he yelped, after which he slipped fearfully away.

"The very idea!" exclaimed the Widow frigidly and then she glanced at Wiley.

"Mr. Holman," she began, "I came out here to talk business--there's nothing round-the-corner about me. Now what about this tax sale, and what does Blount mean by allowing you to buy it in for nothing?"

"Well, I don't know," answered Wiley. "He refused to pay the taxes, so I bought in the property myself."

"Yes, but what does he _mean_?"

The Widow's voice rose to the old quarrelsome, nagging pitch, and Wiley winced as if he had been stabbed.

"You'll have to ask _him_, Mrs. Huff, to find out for sure; but to a man with one leg it looks like this. Whatever you can say about him, Samuel J. is a business man, and I think he decided that, as a business investment, the Paymaster wasn't worth eighty-three, forty-one.

Otherwise he would have bought it himself."

"Unless, of course," added the Widow scornfully, "there was some understanding between you."

"Oh, yes, sure," returned Wiley, and went on with his eating with a wearied, enduring sigh.

"Well, I declare," exclaimed the Widow, after thinking it over, "sometimes I get so discouraged with the whole darned business you could buy me out for a cent!"

She waited for a response, but Wiley showed no interest, so she went on with her general complaint.

"First, it was the Colonel, with his gambling and drinking and inviting the whole town to his house; and then your father, or whoever it was, started all this stock market fuss; and from that time it's gone from bad to worse until I haven't a dollar to my name. I was brought up to be a lady--and so was Virginia--and now we're keeping a restaurant!"

Wiley pulled down his lip in masterful silence and set the breakfast tray aside. It was nothing to him what the Widow Huff suffered--she had brought it all on herself. And whenever she was ready to write to his father she could receive her ten cents a share. That would keep her as a lady for several years to come, if she had as many shares as she claimed; but there was nothing to his mind so flat, stale and unprofitable as a further discussion of the Paymaster. Indeed, with one leg wound up in a bandage, it might easily prove disastrous. So he looked away and, after a minute, the Widow again took up her plaint.

"Of course," she said, "I'm not a business woman, and I may have made some mistakes; but it doesn't seem right that Virginia's future should be ruined, just because of this foolish family quarrel. The Colonel is dead now and doesn't have to be considered; so--well, after thinking it over, and all the rest of it, I think I'll accept your offer."

"Which offer?" demanded Wiley, suddenly startled from his ennui, and the Widow regarded him sternly.

"Why, your offer to buy my stock--that paper you drew up for me. Here it is, and I'm willing to sign it."

She drew out the paper and Wiley read it silently, then rolled it into a ball and chucked it into the corner.

"No," he said, "that offer doesn't hold. I didn't know you then."

"Well, you know me now!" she flashed back resentfully, "and you'd better come through with that money. I've taken enough off of you and your father without standing for any more of your gall. Now you write me out a check for twenty thousand dollars and here's my two hundred thousand shares. I know you're robbing me but I simply can't endure it--I can't stay here a single day longer!"

She burst into angry tears as he shook his head and regarded her with steady eyes.

"No," he said, "you can't do business that way. I haven't got twenty thousand dollars."

"But--you offered it to me! You wrote out this paper and put it right under my eyes----"

"No," he said, "I never offered you twenty thousand--I offered to take an option at that price. I wanted to see that mine, and I wanted to see it peaceably, and I thought I could do it that way; but that piece of paper simply gave me the option of buying the stock if I wanted to."

"Well, you wanted to buy the stock--you were crazy to get hold of it--and now, when I'm willing, you won't take it!"

"No, that's right," agreed Wiley, leaning back against his pillow. "And now, what are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to kill you!" shrieked the Widow in a frenzy. "I'm going to _make_ you take it! I declare, it seems like every single soul is against me--and me a poor helpless woman!"

She sank back in a chair and began to sob hysterically and Wiley looked about for the old shotgun. It was far too short, but it had served once as a crutch, and in a pinch it must serve him again. Keno was no place for him, he saw that very plainly, and it was better to risk the long drive across the desert than to stay with this weeping virago. If she didn't kill him then she would kill him later, and he was powerless to strike back in defense. She would take advantage of every immunity of her s.e.x to obtain her own way in the end. He located the gun--it was down behind his bed where he had dropped it when they helped him in--but as he was fishing it up the door burst open and Virginia stood looking at her mother. Behind her appeared Death Valley Charley, his eyes blinking fearfully; but at sight of the Widow he ducked around the corner while Virginia came resolutely in.