The revelation was made to Lindholm behind closed doors when Joe had sworn the banker to the strictest confidence, that he was most likely the richest man in the territory. Maybe in the whole of the West. Possibly in the whole world.
‘Is that so?’ Lindholm enquired politely but in complete and utter disbelief. He should not be blamed for this doubt. Nobody seeing this disreputable figure standing in front of him would have considered that any wealth belonged to this apparent beggar, dressed in his broken boots and ragged clothes, teeth missing, his look hangdog, his eyes red-rimmed and rheumy, his nose that of a dedicated drinker.
The man could have been any age ranging from forty to eighty. His face was rather like that of a pickled nut. A fair wind should have been enough to carry him off his feet. A light cough should have floored him and a mild slap on the back should have knocked him unconscious. His hair consisted of a few grey wisps above each ear. His massive hog-leg of a gun weighed him down disastrously on his left side. Anybody viewing him could rest assured that he had no more courage than a prairie dog and as much tenacity as a mouse.
In much of this, of course, the world misjudged him. Whiskey Joe was a resourceful, iron-nerved, resilient and tough old hill-nutty. He had braved all weathers, Indian threats, claim jumpers, thieves and even the law in his unrelenting search for gold. He claimed that he had found, and lost, at least two fortunes before this, but nobody believed him. This third fortune, he informed the banker, was not going to be so easily parted with.
‘I’ve made my pile, Lindholm,’ he said, ‘and the Devil himself ain’t going to part me from it. That’s where you come in. Act smart and you’ll earn yourself a handsome fee. I have with me at this very minute something in the region of one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gold.’
Lindholm chuckled in a kindly and understanding way. ‘My dear Joe,’ he said, ‘I am willing to believe you have gold. But one hundred thousand dollars’ worth is a considerable amount. I see no sign of it.’
Joe looked at him pityingly. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘don’t you go getting sassy with me, young feller. You buckle to and do like I say or I’ll take my business someplace else. The money’s on my burros out on the street, ain’t it?’
Ham Stoppard was recruited to carry the gold into the office, gunnysack by gunnysack. Lindholm took the opportunity to whisper to his teller: ‘The old fool has finally taken leave of his senses. These sacks are full of sand. They have to be. Humor him and we’ll get rid of him as soon as we can.’
When the sacks were piled on the office floor, Joe dismissed Ham Stoppard and opened a sack for Lindholm. I do not have to tell you, of course, that the sacks held gold. Each and every one of them. Some gold dust, some nuggets which Lindholm could see would assay a high percentage of the precious metal. It was then that J. Howard Lindholm began to shake.
‘My God,’ he said, gazing at the prospector in awe, ‘my God, it’s true.’ He sat down because his legs failed him. He mopped his sweating brow. ‘My God, can it really be true?’ He had handled money and gold all his life, but he had never experienced anything like this.
His first thought was that Stoppard should never have witnessed the sacks being brought into the office.
He said to Joe: ‘This is terrible. I mean wonderfully terrible, Joe. This must be guarded night and day.’
Joe said: ‘Like I said, nobody must know about this but the two of us.’
‘Stoppard already knows.’
‘Can you trust him?’
‘He’s too simple to be anything but honest.’ Even as he spoke Lindholm knew that he should not have said that. Whiskey Joe shot him an uneasy glance. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘if you say so. But he got to be sworn. Like a deputy, on the Good Book. Hear?’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ said Lindholm and opened the door to call Ham in. Ham came in and his Adam’s apple went wild when he heard that he had toted real, genuine, actual gold, when all he thought he had toted was sand. Emulating his boss, he seemed to want to repeat himself a good deal. He said over and over: ‘Oh, my stars. Oh, my stars, Mr Lindholm, sir.’ He swore his oath with a gravity usually reserved for the marriage ceremony or the swearing of allegiance to the president. That done, he informed both his boss and old Whiskey Joe that he would guard the gold with his very life. And, when they took a good look at him, they knew that he meant it. He was a man who liked to devote himself to a cause.
The upshot of all this was that Mr Lindholm put as much of the gold as he could squeeze into his safe. The rest was stacked in a corner under papers and ledgers. He gave old Joe an advance of a few hundred dollars, and the prospector wandered off into town to prepare himself for affluence and life in civilization — twin shocks which had seen the end of better men than he. However, he seemed happily unaware of this possible fate, bought himself a suit a size or two too large for him at Levy’s store, then carried it down the street to Cyril Heliopolous, the Greek barber, where he placed a mammoth order for a shave, a haircut and a bath. Seeing himself occupied for the remainder of the day, Cyril put up his CLOSED sign and got to work.
The result of Cyril’s skill with clippers and scissors and razor, Joe’s prolonged immersion in the hot tub, and the donning of the new clothes, worked a transformation in the old gold-hunter which was truly miraculous. At the tail-end of the day, there emerged from the Greek’s a neatly dressed, distinguished-looking man of rather frail appearance, who looked out upon the world with a kind of mild wonder. His too-large clothes added somehow to the appearance of frailty. He might have been a retiring senator or a visiting professor.
He bought himself a ten cent cigar, lit up and parked himself on a bench outside Tully’s which was the meeting place of the male section of the town. It took some time for the inmates of Tully’s to recognize him. When they did so, they expressed untold wonder, they exclaimed, they bade others to come and look – seeing was almost believing.
‘Joe,’ said one, ‘you must of struck it rich.’
The old man cackled a little. ‘No such luck,’ he declared. ‘Brother of mine in Chicago passed away, God rest his soul. Made his money in sausages. Left his sausages to his eldest son. Bequeathed me a tidy sum to give me warmth and comfort in my last days.’
The crowd seemed to accept this story. One or two even bought Joe a drink on it. Joe, with the new-born caution of a rich man, did not shout for drinks all round. Not anymore. Little wealth may be spent wildly; great wealth only with caution.
At last, Joe took himself along to the bank again, to find young Ham sitting over his gold with a loaded revolver on the table beside him. Lindholm was sitting behind his desk, dreaming of all the wonderful things which gold could buy.
Joe had made up his mind what he wanted to do with his gold. With his new confidence, he gave orders which, as a rich man, he expected to be carried out. Lindholm would obtain a strong box, and it should go out under strict security to Caspar and thence to Chicago to one of the main banks. Lindholm did a rough and rapid estimate of how much gold they could get into a strong box, and gladly assented.
‘You’re wise, Joe,’ he said. ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Or in one strong box – ha! ha! ha! One of my strongboxes will take about one third of it. The rest, I feel sure, we could invest wisely here ourselves. What do you say to that?’
‘I say “maybe”,’ said Joe, cocking a rheumy eye at him. ‘I want the gold in the strong box to go out on the next stage, hear? Under suitable guard.’
‘Of course, of course. Anything you say, Joe.’
‘I’ll want a house here in town,’ said Joe. ‘I am expecting my niece in the next few days and I want a suitable home for her. She will look out for me from here on in.’ That was the first they had heard of a niece, and they wondered if the old fool was making her up.
‘What’s your limit on the cost of a house?’ the banker asked.
‘Limit?’ said Joe, in surprise and disgust, ‘there ain’t no limits on anything I want from this
minute. You don’t think this piddling little amount of gold is all I have, do you?’
They gazed at him in awe as he tramped from the bank.
‘My stars,’ said Ham Stoppard.
‘I do declare,’ Lindholm declared, ‘that my mind is in a whirl.’ In a whirl or not, it was most likely from that very moment that his mind began to scheme. This was a chance, after all, which did not come to a man usually in one lifetime.
Chapter Five
There was a man sitting in McAllister’s office when he walked in, The sheriff’s mind was still on the man he had followed, or thought he had followed, across the valley.
When the man in the brown suit sitting in front of his desk turned and said: ‘Morning, Sheriff,’ McAllister only knew that the voice was vaguely familiar and that the man was not. Which was perhaps a minor circumstance, but nonetheless a puzzling one.
‘Morning,’ said McAllister. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Find my gold.’
McAllister sat behind his desk and took a long hard look at his visitor. ‘Good God,’ he said finally, ‘it’s Whiskey Joe.’
‘Josiah Ramage now.’
‘So you’re Josiah Ramage!’
‘You bet, and it was my gold that was taken off the Caspar stage. I’m offering a re-ward. One thousand dollars.’
‘Ah,’ said McAllister with some satisfaction, ‘that’s what I like to hear.’
‘Everybody likes to hear money.’
‘And that was your niece who came in on the stage.’
‘The same. And you keep your horny eyes off her, young feller. She’s here to keep house for her old uncle, not fool around with the local rams.’
‘I’ve been out looking for sign, Joe.’
‘Any luck?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe the thousand dollars will encourage you to further efforts.’
‘Joe, don’t put up the money as a reward. Let me have it to draw on when I need it for work on this case. I’m more or less alone on the job and I could do with some help.’
That wary eye was cocked again.
But Joe knew McAllister and he knew his reputation. He thought about it, then said: ‘Leave the reward as it stands. I’ve enough left to back you for expenses.’
‘You won’t regret it.’
‘I’d best not.’
Then McAllister questioned him and ended up with the following information. Nobody, so far as Joe knew, had any idea where the source of the gold was. The strike was nowhere nearly played out and there was plenty more where the gold in the bank came from. Who knew that? Joe did, and nobody else. Hadn’t he mentioned it to a soul? Yes, he had. He’d told Lindholm and Stoppard.
‘From here on, Joe, you don’t tell anybody anything. Just keep your mouth shut tight. And don’t go around without a gun.’
Joe looked a little alarmed. McAllister explained: ‘Maybe they plan to take all the gold from you, Joe. When that’s done, they’ll be greedy and they’ll want the rest. You’ll see. The only way to get information about your claim is to squeeze it out of you.’
Joe said: ‘I didn’t think of that. Hell, I can see the fun of being rich can go kind of sour.’
McAllister said: ‘Most everything goes sour when men get greedy.’ Where could he find Joe if he wanted him? Joe proudly told him that he had bought a nice house on the north end of Morrow, right on the edge of town, looking out over the valley.
‘Come around and have dinner with me one night, Rem,’ said the old man. ‘You might find it amusing. I keep a good cellar.’
‘A good what?’ said McAllister.
‘Oh,’ Joe said airily, ‘a rich man has to be fussy about his wines.’
He could not better that line, so he made his exit onto the street and left McAllister to gaze after him.
McAllister got up and walked to the bank. Ham Stoppard was not at his usual place behind the counter. Another clerk told McAllister that the teller was not available.
‘Where is he?’
‘In Mr Lindholm’s office.’
McAllister stepped to the inner office door, knocked and turned the handle. The door was locked. From inside a voice demanded to know who he was. He replied and, after some mumbled conversation inside, the door opened. He stepped inside and the door was immediately locked behind him. Ham Stoppard sat, gun in hand. He was trying to look grim and dangerous, but failed. Instead, he looked like a young bank teller with the bellyache.
‘McAllister,’ said the banker, ‘I’m sure I do not have to tell you that the robbery of this gold is intolerable.’
‘Gold,’ said McAllister, ‘what gold?’
‘The gold on the stage, of course.’
‘I wasn’t told there was gold on the stage,’ said McAllister. He rounded slowly on Stoppard, incredulity in his eyes. ‘You don’t mean to tell me, Ham, that you knew there was gold in that strong box all the time?’
‘I was under orders to keep the information to myself,’ said Ham manfully, his Adam’s apple dancing frantically.
‘Whose orders?’
‘Mr Lindholm’s, of course.’
McAllister said softly: ‘You mean that Mr Lindholm is above the law, Ham?’ And the sheriff slowly turned his gaze to the banker, who bristled a little and said: ‘I have to protect my clients.’
McAllister said: ‘This one didn’t get protected too well. In future, Mr Lindholm, we shall know about gold shipments and we shall make sure that they are adequately guarded.’
‘There has never been a robbery of this kind around here before.’
McAllister jerked his head in the direction of the safe and said: ‘But there’ll be another, I shouldn’t wonder, with that safe stuffed tight as it is. We’ll ship that on the next stage, Mr Lindholm.’
The banker showed his panic for just a small fraction of a second. ‘Would that be wise?’
‘A damn sight wiser than leaving it here.’
McAllister let himself out of the room. He walked along Main and turned right at the intersection into Morrow. At the bottom of Morrow, sure enough, there stood Whiskey Joe’s newly-purchased house: a handsome frame building with a neat white picket fence around it and a stout shed for a buggy to the rear. His knock on the street door was answered by the girl from the stage, as McAllister hoped and expected.
Her eyes were as blue as ever and they quite bowled him over. He thought that a man of his age being bowled over by a girl young enough to be his daughter (well, nearly young enough) was slightly ridiculous. But he was bowled over just the same.
She remembered him from the stage and said nicely: ‘Come in, Sheriff.’ He took off his hat and followed her into the house. She sat him on the gallery at the rear of the building, overlooking the valley, and there she served him cold lemonade.
‘I really came to see Joe,’ he said. ‘But I’d rather talk to you.’
She dimpled, and he liked that. He wondered if she was as well-mannered and gentle as she looked, all through and through, that is. Nobody, surely, could be all that well-mannered and gentle.
‘I’d like to talk to you about Joe. We can talk about the weather, and you, and the latest fashions in Chicago, but we have to settle for old Joe. You know he’s a rich man, now?’
‘Yes, I know.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper.
‘Somebody held the stage up and took his gold. Did he tell you that?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s more gold, and somebody could be after that, too. I’m not trying to scare you, but I have to think of the old man. You see that?’
‘Clearly.’
‘Good. Now, I think it would be a good idea for you to talk Uncle Joe into taking you to Chicago for a few months. Time enough for me to clear this business up. How does that sound to you? Just I don’t want him hurt. He’s made his pile after wasting a life looking for it.’
‘I understand you perfectly, Mr McAllister. I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise anything. Old men can be very obstinate
.’
‘So can young women.’
She laughed, and he had never heard a laugh quite like it. She became completely the young girl, untouched by life. He could not believe the evidence of his eyes.
‘May a man ask what you did for a living in Chicago, ma’am, or don’t you have to work?’
She looked at him directly, those blue eyes large and wide. His experience told him that this kind of a woman gave you that kind of a look when she was about to tell you the lie of the year.
‘I took in washing with my mother,’ she said. When his eyes showed their disbelief, she held out her hands and proved her statement.
‘So having a rich uncle,’ said McAllister, ‘is like a dream coming true.’
‘However unpleasant the uncle,’ she said, ‘it would be better than washing other people’s dirty linen. But, thank God, this one is a nice old man.’
He stood up and said: ‘Ma’am, I misjudged you.’
‘Catch the thieves, Mr McAllister,’ she said, ‘for my sake as well as Uncle Joe’s.’
McAllister smiled and said: ‘Ma’am, I intend to do that.’ As he walked away from the house, he was modest enough to wonder how the hell he would do it.
Chapter Six
A man is dealt a hand of cards with which to play out and gamble on the game of his life. Some are strong, some weak, but the kind of hand you hold does not necessarily indicate how a man may make out in life.
J. Howard Lindholm had been dealt a pretty good hand, one way and another. One good card was his luck. He had the luck of the devil. And, when I come to think of it, that’s not a bad way of putting it. There was something of the Devil about him.
His strongest card, of course, was his appearance. This was rather suggestive of a cuddly bear. No man looking like that, you would have thought, could possess guile, let alone cunning. To look so slightly ridiculous somehow did not also permit him to be dangerous. He looked a gentle and rather ineffectual man, which was probably his best disguise of all. It was his sheer inconsequence which was his hole card. Nobody could take him really seriously.
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