# The Girl Of Ghost Mountain/Chapter 14

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CHAPTER XIV
TREASURE
Sheridan fancied that the dwellers on Ghost Mountain would prefer to be left alone for a few days in which to rehabilitate themselves and their household affairs. But he had Stoney start on a new gate, not so much that he believed it a necessity as that it gave him opportunity to express the protective instinct he felt towards Mary Burrows. Nor did he overlook the pleasant reward of her thanks, when she should find the barrier in place. He intended to send it over by Jackson and a gang, leaving it as a surprise. This time he covered the face and edges of the gate and the frame with green hides, well studded, as some protection against fire. Later this might be shielded by thin metal.
His feelings for Mary Burrows had not yet crystallized into self-acknowledgment of love, a resolution to announce that love to her. Thora had given him a close-up view of the port towards which he had been pleasantly drifting ever since he had met the Girl of Ghost Mountain, when, on the meeting with Juanita, she had said, "You love her, you will ride and fight for her." But that had cropped out under stress and so he had taken it. Events moved too swiftly after that for thoughts of love making. He had forged across the desert with fear for her ​and murder for Holiister eating his heart. Then had come the relief, a look in her eyes, a word or two, a softening of her independence that he thought of in retrospect.
But the present and immediate future claimed him. His brain dominated his heart, even if the pair worked in partnership. He was the type to whom life holds two prizes, success and love. Hitherto he had seen only the first trophy. Even as he glimpsed the second and noted its bright glint of promise, his pride forbade love the right of way until success seemed assured. Manlike, he wanted to go to the woman of his choice with more than hopes and theories. Then—both heart and brain hinted that it might be a wonderful thing to work out the details of success with Mary Burrows. Yet, while he appreciated her intelligent enthusiasm in his project, her subscription to his views of life, the brave spirit that had brought her out to the West, he was human enough, conscious of an underlying fount of passion enough, to want his wooing unmixed with other affairs. To which, he fancied, the Girl of Ghost Mountain would respond in kind. But these thoughts he set aside, as one shuts the door on a bright, beckoning, luring day when there is work to be done inside.
He had a talk or two with Quong and his confidence in the buried treasure grew. It was not the gold, but what could be done with it. It seemed so much the magic touch needed for his project that his will ran to meet it. And he flung himself into the details of opening up the treasure house.
​He took counsel with Jackson. The latter would have to come into the scheme in any event. Sheridan could not handle the affair alone, any more than could Quong. With Quong, there was enough of the Hollister element left in Metzal to form a lawless rush to this unclaimed trove if any word crept out concerning it. The whole countryside would be apt to dispute a Chinaman's claim to treasure that had been lying hidden in their midst for seventy years. The Painted Rocks were out of the way, but the uncovering could not be done without men and a certain amount of paraphernalia. The slide of broken clay fragments would have been cemented by the rains.
Sheridan meant to give Jackson a substantial share in the gold—if they got it. Red was as much friend as foreman and there was an additional bond between the two in their visits to Ghost Mountain. The outfit of the Circle S would also have a stake in the find, those who helped as laborers as well as those who stayed behind at the ranch. The main thing was to. avoid all gossip, as with the Hollister affair.
"The Chink," said Red, "spins a mighty good yarn. Sounds fine an' fairly reasonable. On'y—"
"Only what?"
"I ain't aimin' to chuck no cold water on this expedition. On'y this. I've lived west all my life. I've heard a power of yarns of lost treasure—an' I never see one of them come true. Quong's got a level head an' I figger his blood ain't easy het up, but I've seen better men than him go loco over a ​gold prospect. The yeller stuff sure dazzles the eyesight an' fogs the understandin'. You goin' ahead?"
"I'm grub-staking the prospect to the extent of spending a little money, time and work on the prospect, Red. I'll survive the shock if it fails to pan out. I'm going to Pioche in the morning to buy some supplies. I imagine that what we really need is a steam-shovel, but that means an engineer and talk. We'll try and make dynamite take its place. Know anything about using it?"
"Some. You'll likely find that stuff too light to git much kick out of yore explosive. You'll be apt to need lights to work with as you tunnel in. We got picks an' shovels enough on the ranch. Goin' to take along some of the boys? An' me?"
"Yes. And Quong. We'll call it a picnic, with Quong as cook. I'd let the girls into it if it wasn't likely to take a day or two. But I don't want to buy any dynamite or other, unusual supplies in Metzal. And there are one or two other things I want to attend to in Pioche. After I go, you'll see Stoney started off with the gate. I'll be back by night. Have any of the boys heard talk in Metzal about Hollister? I heard two of them riding back late last night."
"Jim Lund an' Stoney. No. Metzal's forgot Hollister. An' our outfit's kep' mum as a stuffed toad. They're sure a good bunch of hombres. They'd go a long ways for you, Sheridan. Hollister, he warn't none too well liked. Too much of a bully, They figger him gone west, or south, Mexicali way, ​like he often spoke of doin'. Even if they knowed he was dead an' buried there wouldn't be any rash to subscribe for a wreath. Or even for a doublecross, which u'd be the right decoration."
"Fine, Red. I'll want the boys to keep on being mum. I'm going to give them all a slice of the melon if we cut it."
"They'll do it, 'thout the melon. The on'y one who's any ways dissatisfied is young Jim Lund. He got teased some about Pedro clippin' him over the head the night they came for Quong. Boys kidded him about not gittin' his gun into action. He's on'y a kid himself and he thinks he's got to git Pedro 'fore he can hold up his head an' tell 'em to go to hell about it. Sabe? He's got a tip that Pedro's in Pioche an' he's bin pesterin' me for a day off. It's comin' to him all right, but I figger that he'll use it to go to Pioche an' roundin' up Spigotty Town till he finds Pedro. Then ther'll be shootin,' an' no matter who gits hurt, there'll be talk an' mebbe an arrest. Newspaper stuff. They're gittin' mighty fussy about shootin' in Pioche these days. An' the newspaper likes to git somethin' on Metzal an' play it up. Better you talk to Jim. I'll send him in to you."
"All right. Red. Thanks. Anything you want me to bring back from Pioche? Doughnuts?"
Red grinned.
"I'd like some of Thora's. You aimin' to call up the mountain soon?"
"Day after I get back. I'll ask for their mail and bring back some magazines. Candy for you?"
​"Not exactly for me, though I'll dip into the box after Thora opens it."
He went out and presently Jim Lund came in. He was a slim, tall, handsome youth, well knit, a good rider, usually full of good spirits but now there was a sulky look in his eyes.
"Jim," said Sheridan, "I hear you want to go to Pioche. I can't stop you. I'm going there myself tomorrow. Want to go along?"
"Why—I did aim to go—but I dunno as my saddle's ready. I'm havin' me a saddle made there at Castillo's, Boss. I ain't got all the cash for it till next pay day."
"You can draw ahead whenever you like, Jim. You know that. Pedro's in Pioche. Jim, you've got a fixed idea you've got to wipe out the advantage Pedro ot of you that night. And you imagine it's got to be wiped out by spilling his blood. How about it? Man and man?"
Lund felt the scar at the back of his head.
"Man an' man," he said, "I reckon you'd feel the same way over it. Thet greaser's got the laff on me an' I aim to shoot that laff off'n his face first time I meet up with him."
"If you go gunning for him, Jim, there'll be murder one way or another. I don't want you killed. I don't want you to dodge Pedro. But I don't want you to pick a quarrel with him. I've got a score against Pedro myself. Yours came first, I'll admit that. I'm holding mine back on account of Miss Burrows. I want this Painted Rocks affair to die down. A woman's reputation is as safe in ​your hands Jim, as it is in mine. But perhaps you haven't thought of it just in that light. I wish you would. And there's something else on foot, that you'll be in on, that makes me want to keep attention from the Circle S outfit for a bit. It'll pay you to hold off, Jim, and it'll be a favor to me. How about it?"
Jim was fiddling with the rim of his sombrero. He put it on his head and looked Sheridan squarely in the eyes.
"I'd like my saddle," he said. "I don't wish to be kep' away from Pioche because that Greaser is pasearin' round. But if I meet him, which ain't over likely, I won't start nothin'. Is that good enough? If he draws I'll try to beat him to it. Otherwise I do nothin', until either you or the lady gives me the word. An' then," he added with boyish bravado, tapping his gun, 'watch my smoke.'"
Sheridan had a busy day in Pioche, the County Seat. He got his dynamite, with caps and fuses, and had it boxed to take back with him in a package that would not invite comment. Dynamite was used for well-digging, as well as the sporadic mining still carried on in the county. But he preferred over-caution. Jackson was to meet him with the buck-board in the evening.
He found in Pioche's only second-hand store some kerosene lamps that had been sold by a one-horse circus that had come to an end at Pioche. They consisted of cone containers from which the kerosene ran down to open burners, giving out a good flare. Six of these he purchased at a low price. He bought six electric torches with extra batteries, ​and half a dozen steel crowbars, with a set of drills, at another store.
He dropped into the office of the newspaper and chatted with the editor. The newspaperman was a progressive and Sheridan had talked with him before concerning irrigation and alfalfa possibilities, without mentioning Lake of the Wood or the details of his project.
There was talk of a new tourist hotel, he told Sheridan, and waxed eloquent over Pioche's climate and attractions. Some such lead Sheridan had hoped for.
"Isn't there a show-place somewhere round here called the Painted Rocks, or, in Mexican, the City of Silence?" he asked. "Something like the Garden of the Gods at Manitou, in Colorado? Rocks that look like castles and churches? Seems to me I heard about such a place, or read of it, but I've been pretty busy against picnics." Sheridan watched the editor closely under cover of his cigar smoke. If there had been any whisper of the affair with Hollister it should leak out now. But that fear dissolved.
"Garden of the Gods? Huh!" grunted the newspaperman disdainfully. "The City of Silence is a shout to a whisper besides that. I wrote it up one time, five years ago. You want to see it, Sheridan, to believe it. I had a photographer along and I got an article in a magazine about it. The World at Large. Ever read it?"
"No. I'd like to." The editor began to fish among some shelves.
"Some show place to boast about. All sorts of ​legends and superstitions about it. Man found a six-hundred dollar nugget in it once. Must have been brought down in a wash-out. Prospecting never developed anything else. Bandits there in the old days. But it's away to hell and gone. Trail runs over desert, and it's your side of the range. Metzal attraction. Ah, here it is. Take it along and send it back some time."
Sheridan pocketed the copy of The World at Large gratefully, and handed the editor another cigar He chatted for a little while and left.
In the Cactus Restaurant, where he got his lunch, he eagerly read the somewhat flamboyant article and scanned the pictures. The flat, gray reproductions did scant justice to the originals but they showed him what he wanted in confirmation of Quong's story from Juan Mendoza, and they identified the White Chapel.
Some of the captions had been manufactured by the editor, titles and all, he fancied; such as The Pillars of Hercules, The Castle in Spain, The Acropolis, but others had their original Spanish names—El Templo Cerrada (The Closed Cathedral) and La Capilla Blanca (The White Chapel.) The faint image stamped on his mental retina from the trip revived and he studied the halftone closely. It did not take in the filled-up rift to the west, but it showed debris that had landslid and halted on the tower and roof of the water-carven edifice. In the latter appeared the dark mouth of an entrance. Sheridan put the magazine back in his pocket well satisfied.
​He ran across the Sheriff of the County on the street and the official hailed and stopped him.
"Hear they're makin' rotgut booze over Metzal way, Sheridan," he said. "Federal man's here, stirring me up about it. Though I 'low it's his bizness. But, if they do bootleg, it ought to be decent stuff, not corked lightnin'. Know enny thing of it? You aim to run a sober ranch, I reckon."
Things were breaking well, thought Sheridan. The idea of Vasquez going on unpunished had worried him.
"If you can catch him with the goods," he said, "the man you want to get after is Vasquez. He has a shack just west of Metzal, and they tell me he brews poison. I never sampled it. But—"
"I've heard of the gent," replied the sheriff. "Thanks for the tip. A rattlesnake buzzes afore he pizens you, but this Vasquez charges you for killin' you, I reckon. There'll be action his way afore long."
Sheridan's last errand was with the County Commissioner of Deeds. He had done business with him before but his present mission was not on his own account. He did not imagine that Mary Burrows' grandfather had troubled to file on the Hidden Homestead. Probably no one suspected the existence of such a charming bowl of the mountains, but some one might discover it sooner or later, and covet it. The girls might be dispossessed, at the best, put to the cost and vexation of a suit.
He liked the Commissioner, as he liked many men in Pioche. It was a go-ahead town, with its ​locale on the main line, and it stood for law and order and improvement. He hoped to make Metzal a better place than Pioche some day, but he approved of Pioche and its general public spirit. This official was a square man, Sheridan had found out in previous dealings. He went beyond his duties in kindly, uncharged-for advice. Through him Sheridan had gained control of Lake of the Woods.
"Pioche's booming, sir," said the man genially. "Big tourist hotel coming. Palatial. Up to date. Two hundred rooms and three hundred baths, or something like that. You want to get busy at your lake and build something of the sort there, on a smaller scale, to catch the overflow."
"I'm a rancher," smiled Sheridan. "I've come here in the interests of a friend of mine. I want to help them, or rather get you to help them prove up on their property. Two women. It may go in both their names or in one. Miss Burrows has a good moral title. I want to see it legal," and he gave the Commissioner a short account of the Ghost Mountain venture.
"I've heard of the ladies. Seen them, in point of fact," the other answered. "Glad to serve them. Tell them to come right in and see me, Sheridan. And here's the papers for them to fill in. Glad to see you at any time. Goodby." If he raised eyebrows at Sheridan's interest in Mary Burrows, he did not do so until the rancher had gone.
Pioche, like many another city, had spent more time over the selection of its town site than that of its depot. The station and freight yards were ​fringed by the shacks of Spigotty Town, where the strings of red peppers, the rebosos of the Mexican women and the bright serapes of the men, could not offset the squalidness of the adobe huts, lack of sanitation, dirty, naked children tumbling in the sun, flea-harassed curs and smells almost to be seen, like unhealthy fogs.
Sheridan gathered his packages together, which had been sent down to the parcel room, and placed them on the platform ready for the almost-due train. Three Mexicans, in tight trousers belted with bright soiled sashes over gay shirts sadly in need of cleansing, wearing sombreros heavy with tarnished lace that gave them the appearance of constantly performing a balancing trick, raced along the opposite side of the tracks on sorry-looking but fast ponies. The men were yelling, evidently half drunk with pulque, or meseale.
They caught sight of Sheridan looking at them from the platform. The foremost reined in his mount viciously with the cruel curb and tinned in his saddle. The others ploughed along beside him, coming to a halt. The man who turned was Pedro, his dark face twitching with a hate his drunkenness both urged him to express and at the same time checked. He spat in Sheridan's direction, he sputtered and he clutched at the holster attached to the belt beneath his sash. One of his companions, more sober or more cautious, clapped his hand above Pedro's, jabbering at him excitedly.
The whistle of the train sounded and it appeared, entering the freight yards. Pedro drew himself up ​in his saddle and, charging the saying with venom, shouted three words at Sheridan:
"Hasta luego, senor," (Before long!)
Sheridan took no notice of the implied threat, surveying Pedro, to his exasperation, as if he had been part of the view.
Engine and cars shut off the group and Sheridan got aboard. By the time he had settled himself at the window the three had spurred off.
"It is lucky for you that I wasn't Jim Lund," thought Sheridan. "Jim would have been apt to construe that as 'starting something.' But I don't think you have, much enterprise except in your cups." He was glad, however, to know that the gate was being fixed in the tunnel that afternoon. Jackson, driving him home with his packages, told him that the job was completed.
"Didn't forgit the candy?" asked Red anxiously.
"No. Nor some magazines. Got one you'll like to read, Red. Tomorrow we'll go calling."
Sheridan had no hesitation about telling Mary Burrows and Thora the story of Juan Mendoza. Quong had given him full discretionary powers and he knew that here, if any place, confidence would not be abused but taken as a manifest of friendship.
He told the story much as Quong had done and the audience listened with fascinated, flattering interest in both the tale and its teller.
"I am so glad," said Mary Burrows. "I can't tell you how glad I am. I am sure it will turn out true, it must turn out true. It means everything to you."
​"Not quite everything," said Sheridan. The words slipped out. He had not meant to express himself. Mary Burrows had greeted him cordially enough but there was a certain air of constraint about her that Thora shared. Red had sensed it and looked at Sheridan in puzzled fashion more than once.
It had first shown itself after the thanks about the gate, which the girls had only noticed that morning.
"As long as we are going to stay here, it will make us—me at least—feel more secure," said Mary. "When the steed is stolen—and recovered—it is as well to put a lock on the door, I suppose." Sheridan had not noticed any especial emphasis in her wording. He had been too full of his news, anxious to see how she would respond to the promise it held for his project. Now the speech recurred to him with a new meaning.
"You said, 'as long as we are going to stay here,'" he said. "Are you getting tired of the Hidden Homestead and the West?"
"It is not that," she answered eagerly. "I am not tired. I feel at home here now. Just at first the mountains seemed to shrug their shoulders at me but now they are friendly."
He thought her still jarred from her experience with Hollister. He could not judge of the effect that might have upon her sensitiveness. It had been a horrible experience, borne by her so bravely that he had treated it too lightly, as one that would pass like the shadow of a cloud. And he did not want to ​broach the subject. Instead he went on to tell what he had planned with the Commissioner.
"You have only to sign these papers and take them to him the next time you go to Pioche," he said. "There are some small fees and then you will have your deed recorded and feel you own the place. I imagine records in your grandfather's day were few and far between. A man held his own by the force of his good right hand." He was conscious of her looking at him, curiously, anxiously. Thora had gone out on the verandah with Jackson. The girl gazed lovingly about the room.
"Dear grandad," she said. "I shall feel like a deserter, if I go."
"If you go?" Sheridan realized, with swift enlightenment, the stress he put into his exclamation. With her words the glamor of Quong's gold had departed, the glory of his project faded, the desire to aid his fellow man and reclaim the land died utterly. He knew that, without this slimsy lady, this Girl of Ghost Mountain, sitting opposite to him, her face a cameo in the light of the lamp, everything else was as dust and ashes. She looked swiftly at his face and averted hers.
"You brought me up a letter this afternoon," she said. "I told you we had no correspondents. I did not expect this one. It brings another fairy tale, like yours of the buried gold. I read it while you shot the birds for supper. Will you read it now?"
She took it from the bosom of her gown and handed it to him. He took it with a wondering dislike. It ​was a typewritten communication from a firm of lawyers in Boston. He had casually noted the forwarding addresses on the envelope when they had given it to him at the postoffice in Pioche. At first he did not fully comprehend the words, so keen was his sense of the girl sitting with her hands clasped in her lap, her face a little pale, her eyes downcast. He reread it and handed it back.
"I congratulate you," he said. "A hundred thousand dollars is not to be despised." Despite himself, he could neither control his tone to firmness nor keep from it a certain harshness. Man fashion, he was eminently sorry for himself and he could not avoid the bitterness. For the air castles he had been building—oh, he had been building them—had shifted on their unstable foundations, dissolved like the mocking mirages of the desert, before he knew their full design. He had been a conceited fool—sure of her all along—thinking he had only to reach out and pluck the flower of her—when he was ready, when, in his pride, he could do so with gifts to offer.
And now he was too late. She was beyond his reach. Even if the gold was found and, in sudden revulsion, he lost all hope in it, she would go back, taking with her the furnishings that, after all, did not belong in this log house, back to where she belonged, to smile later at the little burst of pioneer spirit that had possessed her.
Her voice broke in on his sour musing.
"I really never knew her. I doubt if she saw me more than once or twice. She was a distant relative, ​and very eccentric and quite wealthy. I was named after her. She was my godmother. She gave me that cup for the christening gift, the one on the highboy. And then we quite lost sight of her. I never dreamed of such a thing."
"And now, you will go back?" Sheridan rose, tall above her, the little slimsy lady whom his heart desired.
"I may have to, I suppose. I—I don't know." She got up from her chair as her face flushed and she gave Sheridan one glance that puzzled him for many an hour. It almost seemed appealing. Then she called to Thora to come in and give them some music.
Thora entered with a swift, comprehensive look towards Mary that the other avoided. Thora seemed puzzled, heavy with the news that she had most evidently imparted to Red, for he entered the room with an appearance that was hangdog, that irresistibly suggested a great dog bidden to stay home while his mistress went on a journey. Thora's mood affected her music. It was all minors. For the last, she gave them something, new to them, playing it with her eyes boring at Mary's shaded face, screened by her hand. It was the lullaby with which she played her to sleep.
They left soon after that. Red was glum and mounted first after a perfunctory "Buenos noches." Thora went inside. Mary gave her hand to Sheridan.
"I am not going until after I know how you come out with your treasure trove," she said. And Sheridan groped for the meaning he thought ​underlay her words. "And, in any case," she went on, with an assumption of the lightness that had been missing from her voice all evening, "I shall record the Hidden Homestead."
"That helps," Sheridan answered. "Goodnight." But he rode off with the feeling that a riddle had been propounded to him that he could not answer because he did not understand its terms.
Jackson did not sing on the way they passed in silence until they reached Pioche Pass.
"Thora told you, I suppose," Sheridan then said.
"Yep, she told me. She aims to trail along. Don't it beat hell? Don't it just plumb beat hell to a cinder? Here we go ridin' up all lit up like two church winders with good news. She comes back with the same stuff, an' the evenin's sp'iled. If you'd had enny luck, Pete Sheridan, you'd have lost that letter. They was both happy here as steers in clover, might have bin happier. What in Sam Hill does she want to go back East for?"
"For what she can't get here, Red. Society of her kind, men who are of a different world than ours, gowns, jewels, life!"
"Life! If it wasn't for you, her life wouldn't amount to much just now. She don't want truck with the East. She belongs West. Same as Thora. They both fit. An' I'm tellin' you somethin' else, Pete, a woman belongs where her man is, unless she's tied up to another woman, like Thora is, an' that other woman don't know her own mind. Easterners, gowns, jewels! Shucks."
Sheridan's thoughts echoed Red's to some measure. ​But he had his riddles to figure out. Why would she stay until she knew how the gold hunt came out? Just for friendly interest, and suiting her own convenience or feminine curiosity? If—and his heart leaped—they found the gold, her fortune would set no barrier between them. Would she accept him on equal terms and leave him if he was still a plodding rancher, with a dream he could not turn to reality? If so, he had misjudged her. He did misjudge her. And he mentally apologized. If she went, it was because she did not love him, did not want to share his life.
But he made up his mind to find the gold, if it was in the canyon, if he had to blast down all the cliff and sift the dust with his hands. Almost at the ranch Jackson piped up, with a reckless note,
Sam Bass was born in Indiana, it was his native home, And—at the age of seventeen, young Sam began to roam; Sam first come out to Texas, a cowboy for to be, And a kinder hearted feller you seldom ever see.
"There's times, once in a while," he said as he and Sheridan off-saddled in the home corral, "when I have grave an' genuine doubts about the real valley of prohibition."