“I can’t help the size of his feet. What’s that got to do with it? No, sir—I can’t see why we don’t give Madden the pearls, get his receipt, and then send for the sheriff and tell him the whole story. After that, he can worry about who was killed at Madden’s ranch.”
“He would solve the problem,” scoffed Chan. “Great mind, no doubt, like Captain Bliss. Your thought has, from me, nothing but hot opposition.”
“Well, but I’m considering Madame Jordan. I’ve got her interests at heart.”
Chan patted him on the back. “Who can question that? You fine young fellow, loyal and kind. But listen now to older heads. Mr Holley, you have inclination to intrude your oar?”
“I certainly have,” smiled Holley. “I’m all on the side of Chan, Eden. It would be a pity to drop this thing now. The sheriff’s a good sort, but all this would be too deep for him. No, wait just a little while—”
“All right,” sighed Eden. “I’ll wait. Provided you tell me one thing. What are we waiting for?”
“Madden goes to Pasadena to-morrow,” Chan suggested. “No doubt Thorn will accompany, and we quench this Gamble somehow. Great time for us. All our search at ranch up to now hasty and breathless, like man pursuing trolley-car. To-morrow we dig deep.”
“You can do it,” replied Eden. “I’m not eager to dig for the sort of prize you want.” He paused. “At that, I must admit I’m pretty curious myself. Charlie, you’re an old friend of the Jordans, and you can take the responsibility for this delay.”
“Right here on shoulders.” Chan agreed, “responsibility reclines. Same way necklace reposes on stomach. Seem to coddle there now, those Phillimore pearls, happy and content. Humbly suggest you take this aimless journey to Barstow.”
Eden looked at his watch. “I suppose I might as well. Bit of city life never did anybody any harm. But I warn you that when I come back I want a little light. If any more dark, mysterious things happen at that ranch I certainly will run right out into the middle of the desert and scream.”
Taking the train proved an excellent plan, for on the station platform he met Paula Wendell, who evidently had the same idea. She was trim and charming in riding habit, and her eyes sparkled with life.
“Hello,” she said. “Where are you bound?”
“Going to Barstow, on business,” Eden explained.
“Is it important?”
“Naturally. Wouldn’t squander my vast talents on any other kind.”
A train wandered in, and they found a seat together in one of its two cars.
“Sorry to hear you’re needed in Barstow,” remarked the girl. “I’m getting off a few stations down. Going to rent a horse and take a long ride up into Lonely Cañon. It wouldn’t have been so lonely if you could have come along.”
Eden smiled happily. Certainly one had few opportunities to look into eyes like hers. “What station do we get off at?” he inquired.
“We? I thought you said—”
“The truth isn’t in me these days. Barstow doesn’t need my presence any more than you need a beauty doctor. Lonely Cañon, after to-day, will have to change its name.”
“Good,” she answered. “We get off at Seven Palms. The old rancher who rents me a horse will find one for you, I’m sure.”
“I’m not precisely dressed for the rôle” admitted Eden. “But I trust it will be all the same to the horse.”
The horse didn’t appear to mind. His rather dejected manner suggested that he had expected something like this. They left the tiny settlement known as Seven Palms and cantered off across the desert.
“For to admire an’ for to see, for to be’old this world so wide,” said Eden. “Never realized how very wide it was until I came down here.”
“Beginning to like the desert?” the girl inquired.
“Well, there’s something about it,” he admitted. “It grows on you, that’s a fact. I don’t know that I could put the feeling into words.”
“I’m sure I can’t,” she answered. “Oh, I envy you, coming here for the first time. If only I could look at this country again with a fresh, disinterested eye. But it’s just location to me. I see all about me the cowboys, the cavalcades, the caballeros of Hollywood. Tragedies and feats of daring, rescues and escapes. I tell you, these dunes and canons have seen more movies than Will Hays.”
“Hunting locations to-day?” Eden asked.
“Always hunting,” she sighed. “They’ve just sent me a new script—as new as those mountains over there. All about the rough cowpuncher and the millionaire’s dainty daughter from the East—you know.”
“I certainly do. Girl’s fed up on those Society orgies, isn’t she?”
“Who wouldn’t be? However, the orgies are given in full, with the swimming-pool working overtime, as always. But that part doesn’t concern me. It’s after she comes out here, sort of hungering to meet a real man, that I must start worrying. Need I add, she meets him? Her horse runs away over the desert, and tosses her off amid the sage-brush. In the nick of time the cowpuncher finds her. Despite their different stations, love blossoms here in the wastelands. Sometimes I’m almost glad that mine is beginning to be an obsolete profession.”
“Is it? How come?”
“Oh, the movies move. A few years back the location-finder was a rather important person. To-day most of this country has been explored and charted, and every studio is equipped with big albums full of pictures. So every time a new efficiency expert comes along—which is about once a week— and starts lopping off heads, it’s the people in my line who are the first to go. In a little while we’ll be as extinct as the dodo.”
“You may be extinct,” Eden answered. “But there the similarity between you and the dodo will stop abruptly.”
The girl halted her horse. “Just a minute. I want to take a few pictures here. It looks to me like a bit of desert we haven’t used yet. Just the sort of thing to thrill the shop-girls and the bookkeepers back there where the East hangs out.” When she had swung again into the saddle she added: “It isn’t strange they love it, those tired people in the cities. Each one thinks, ‘Oh, if only I could go there.’”
“Yes, and if they got here once they’d die of loneliness the first night,” Bob Eden said. “Just pass out in agony moaning for the subway and the con is in the evening paper.”
“I know they would,” the girl replied. “But fortunately they’ll never come.”
They rode on, and the girl began to point out the various unfriendly-looking plants of the desert, naming them one by one. Arrow-weed, bitter-brush, mesquite, desert plantain, Catclaw, thistle-sage.
“That’s a cholla,” she announced. “Another variety of cactus. There are seventeen thousand in all.”
“All right,” Eden replied. “I’ll take your word for it. You needn’t name them.” His head was beginning to ache with all this learning.
Presently sumac and Canterbury bell proclaimed their nearness to the canon, and they cantered out of the desert heat into the cathedral-like coolness of the hills. In and out over almost hidden trails the horses went. Wild plum glowed on the slopes, and far below under native palms a narrow stream tinkled invitingly.
Life seemed very simple and pleasant there in Lonely Canon, and Bob Eden felt suddenly close indeed to this lively girl with the eager eyes. All a lie that there were crowded cities. The world was new, unsullied and unspoiled, and they were alone in it.
They descended by way of a rather treacherous path, and in the shelter of the palms that fringed the tiny stream dismounted for a lunch which Paula Wendell claimed to have concealed in her knapsack.
“Wonderfully restful here,” Bob Eden said.
“But you said the other day you weren’t tired,” the girl reminded him.
“Well, I’m not. But somehow I like this, anyhow. However, I guess it isn’t all a matter of geography. It’s not so much the place you’re in—it’s who you’re with. After which highly original remark, I hasten to add that I really can’
t eat a thing.”
“You were right,” she laughed. “The truth isn’t in you. I know what you’re thinking—I didn’t bring enough for two. But these Oasis sandwiches are meant for ranchers, and one is my limit. There are four of them—I must have had a premonition. We’ll divide the milk equally.”
“But look here—it’s your lunch. I should have thought to get something at Seven Palms.”
“There’s a roast-beef sandwich. Try that, and maybe you won’t feel so talkative.”
“Well, I—um—gumph—”
“What did I tell you? Oh, the Oasis aims to fill. Milk?”
“Ashamed of myself,” mumbled Eden. But he was easily persuaded.
“You haven’t eaten a thing,” he said finally.
“Oh, yes, I have. More than I usually do. I’m one of those dainty eaters.”
“Good news for Wilbur,” replied Eden. “The upkeep won’t be high. Though if he has any sense he’ll know that, whatever the upkeep on a girl like you, it will be worth it.”
“I sent him your love,” said the girl.
“Is that so? Well, I’m sorry you did, in a way. I’m no hypocrite, and, try as I may, I can’t discover any lurking fondness for Wilbur. Oddly enough, the boy begins to annoy me.”
“But you said—”
“I know. But isn’t it just possible that I’ve overrated this freedom stuff? I’m young, and the young are often mistaken. Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but the more I see of you—”
“Stop. I’ve heard it.”
“I’ll bet you have. Many times.”
“And my suggestion is that we get back to business. If we don’t that horse of yours is going to eat too much Bermuda grass.”
Through the long afternoon, amid the hot yellow dunes, the wind-blown foothills of that sandy waste, they rode back to Seven Palms by a roundabout route. The sun was sinking, the rose-and-gold wonder of the skies reflected on snow and glistening sand, when finally they headed for the village.
“If only I could find a novel setting for the final love scene,” sighed the girl.
“Whose final love scene?”
“The cowpuncher’s and the poor little rich girl’s. So many times they’ve just wandered off into the sunset, hand in hand. Really need a little more kick in it than that.”
Eden heard a clank as of a horse’s hoofs on steel. His mount stumbled, and he reined it in sharply.
“What in Sam Hill’s that?” he asked.
“Oh—that! It’s one of the half-buried rails of the old branch road—a memento of a dream that never came true. Years ago they started to build a town over there under those cottonwoods, and the railroad laid down fifteen miles of track from the main line. A busy metropolis of the desert—that’s what they meant it to be—and there’s just one little old ruined house standing to-day. But that was the time of great expectations. They brought out crowds of people, and sold six hundred lots one hectic afternoon.”
“And the railroad?”
“Ran just one train—and stopped. All they had was an engine and two old street-cars brought down from San Francisco. One of the cars has been demolished and the timber carried away, but the wreck of the other is still standing not far from here.”
Presently they mounted a ridge, and Bob Eden cried: “What do you know about that?”
There before them on the lonely desert, partly buried in the drifting sand, stood the remnant of a tram-car. It was tilted rakishly to one side, its windows were yellow with dust, but on the front, faintly decipherable still, was the legend “Market Street.”
At that familiar sight, Bob Eden felt a keen pang of nostalgia. He reined in his horse and sat staring at this symbol of the desert’s triumph over the proud schemes of man. Man had thought he could conquer, he had come with his engines and his dreams, and now an old battered tramcar stood alone as a warning and a threat.
“There’s your setting,” he said. “They drive out together and sit there on the steps, your lovers. What a background—a car that once trundled from Twin Peaks to the Ferry, standing lonely and forlorn amid the cactus-plants!”
“Fine,” the girl answered. “I’m going to hire you to help me after this.”
They rode close to the car and dismounted. The girl unlimbered her camera and held it steady. “Don’t you want me in the picture?” Eden asked. “Just as a sample lover, you know.”
“No samples needed,” she laughed. The camera clicked. As it did so the two young people stood rooted to the desert in amazement. An old man had stepped suddenly from the interior of the car—a bent old man with a coal-black beard.
Eden’s eyes sought those of the girl. “Last Wednesday night at Madden’s?” he inquired in a low voice.
She nodded. “The old prospector,” she replied.
The black-bearded one did not speak, but stood with a startled air on the front platform of the lost car, under the legend “Market Street”.
Chapter XIII
What Mr Cherry saw
Bob Eden Stepped forward. “Good evening,” he said. “I hope we haven’t disturbed you.”
Moving with some difficulty, the old man descended from the platform to the sandy floor of the desert. “How do?” he said gravely, shaking hands. He also shook hands with Paula Wendell. “How do, miss? No, you didn’t disturb me none. Just takin’ my forty winks—I ain’t so spry as I used to be.”
“We happened to be passing—” Eden began.
“Ain’t many pass this way,” returned the old man. “Cherry’s my name—William I. Cherry. Make yourselves at home. Parlour chairs is kind o’ scarce, miss.”
“Of course,” said the girl.
“We’ll stop a minute, if we may,” suggested Eden.
“It’s comin’ on supper-time,” the old man replied hospitably. “How about grub? There’s a can o’ beans, an’ a mite o’ bacon—”
“Couldn’t think of it,” Eden told him. “You’re mighty kind, but we’ll be back in Seven Palms shortly.” Paula Wendell sat down on the car-steps, and Eden took a seat on the warm sand. The old man went to the rear of the tram and returned with an empty soap-box. After an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Eden to accept it as a chair he put it to that use himself.
“Pretty nice home you’ve picked out for yourself,” Eden remarked.
“Home?” The old man surveyed the tram-car critically. “Home, boy? I ain’t had no home these thirty years. Temporary quarters, you might say.”
“Been here long?” asked Eden.
“Three—four days. Rheumatism’s been actin’ up. But I’m movin’ on to-morrey.”
“Moving on? Where?”
“Why—over yonder.”
“Just where is that?” Eden smiled.
“Where it’s allus been. Over yonder. Somewhere else.”
“Just looking, eh?”
“Jest lookin’. You’ve hit it. Goin’ on over yonder an’ jest lookin’.” His tired old eyes were on the mountain-tops.
“What do you expect to find?” inquired Paula Wendell.
“Struck a vein o’ copper once, miss,” Mr Cherry said. “But they got her away from me. Howsomever, I’m lookin’ still.”
“Been on the desert a long time?” Eden asked.
“Twenty—twenty-five years. One desert or another.”
“And before that?”
“Prospected in West Australia from Hannans to Hall’s Creek—through the Territory into Queensland. Drove Cattle from the gulf country into New South Wales. Then I worked in the stokehole on ocean liners.”
“Born in Australia, eh?” Eden suggested.
“Who—me?” Mr Cherry shook his head. “Born in South Africa—English descent. Been all up and down the Congo an’ Zambesi—all through British Central Africa.”
“How in the world did you get to Australia?” Eden wondered.
“Oh, I don’t know, boy. I was filibusterin’ down along the South American continent for a while, an’ then I drifted into a Mexican campaign. Se
ems like there was somethin’ I wanted in Australia—anyhow, I got there. Jest the way I got here. It was over yonder, an’ I went.”
Eden shook his head. “Ye gods, I’ll bet you’ve seen a lot!”
“I guess I have, boy. Doctor over in Redlands was tellin’ me t’other day—you need spectacles, he says. ‘Hell, doc,’ I says, ‘what fer? I’ve seen everything,’ I says, and I come away.”
Silence fell. Bob Eden wasn’t exactly sure how to go about this business; he wished he had Chan at his elbow. But his duty was clear.
“You—er—you’ve been here for three or four days, you say?”
“‘Bout that, I reckon.”
“Do you happen to recall where you were last Wednesday night?”
The old man’s eyes were keen enough as he glanced sharply at the boy. “What if I do?”
“I was only going to say that if you don’t I can refresh your memory. You were at Madden’s ranch-house, over near Eldorado.”
Slowly Mr Cherry removed his slouch hat. With gnarled, bent fingers he extracted a toothpick from the band. He stuck it defiantly in his mouth. “Maybe I was. What then?”
“Well—I’d like to have a little talk with you about that night.”
Cherry surveyed him closely. “You’re a new one on me,” he said. “An’ I thought I knew every sheriff an’ deputy west o’ the Rockies.”
“Then you’ll admit something happened at Madden’s that might interest a sheriff?” returned Eden quickly.
“I ain’t admittin’ nothin’,” answered the old prospector.
“You have information regarding last Wednesday night at Madden’s,” Eden persisted. “Vital information. I must have it.”
“Nothin’ to say,” replied Cherry stubbornly.
Eden took another tack. “Just what was your business at Madden’s ranch?”
Mr Cherry rolled the aged toothpick in his mouth. “No business at all. I jest dropped in. Been wanderin’ the desert a long time, like I said, an’ now an’ agin I drifted in at Madden’s. Me an’ the old caretaker, Louie Wong, was friends. When I’d come along he’d stake me to a bit o’ grub an’ a bed in the barn. Sort o’ company fer him, I was. He was lonesome-like at the ranch—only a Chink, but lonesome-like, same as if he’d been white.”
The Chinese Parrot Page 16
