The Voice at Johnnywater

By B. M. Bower

Good Indian

Lonesome Land

The Ranch at the Wolverine

The Flying U’s Last Stand

The Phantom Herd

The Heritage of the Sioux

Starr, of the Desert

Cabin Fever

Skyrider

Rim o’ the World

The Quirt

Cow-Country

Casey Ryan

The Trail of the White Mule

The Voice at Johnnywater

“Oh, Monty Girard! Gary is up here somewhere! I heard him!”

THE VOICE AT JOHNNYWATER

BY

B. M. BOWER

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY REMINGTON SCHUYLER

TORONTO

McCLELLAND AND STEWART

1923

Copyright, 1923,

By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Published February, 1923

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE
PATRICIA ENTERTAINS

The telephone bell was shrilling insistent summons in his apartment when Gary pushed open the hall door thirty feet away. Even though he took long steps, he hoped the nagging jingle would cease before he could reach the ’phone. But the bell kept ringing, being an automatic telephone, dependent upon no perfunctory Central for the persistency of its call. Gary was tired, and from his neck to his waist his skin was painted a coppery bronze which, having been applied at six-thirty that morning, was now itching horribly as the grease paint dried. He did not feel like talking to any one; but he unlocked his door, jerked down the receiver and barked a surly greeting into the mouthpiece of the ’phone. Almost immediately the wrinkles on his forehead slid down into smoothness.

“Oh, how-do, Gary! I was just wondering if you had changed your apartments or something,” called the girl whom he hoped some day to marry. “Did you just get in?”

“No-o—certainly not! I’ve been having a fit on the floor! Say, I heard you ringing the ’phone a block away. Every tenant in the joint is lined up on the sidewalk, watching for the Black Maria or the ambulance; they don’t know which. But I recognized your ring. What’s on your mind, Girlie?”

“Not a thing in the world but a new shell comb. If I’d known you were so terrifically cross this evening, I wouldn’t have a lovely dinner all waiting and a great big surprise for you afterwards. Now I won’t tell you what it is. And, furthermore, I shall not give you even a hint of what you’re going to eat when you get here. But I should think a man who could recognize a certain telephone ring a block away might smell fried chicken and strawberry shortcake clear across the city—with oodles of butter under the strawberries, and double cream——”

“Oh-h, boy!” Gary brightened and smacked his lips into the mouthpiece, just as any normal young man would do. Then, recalling his physical discomfort, he hedged a little.

“Will it keep? I’m in a starving condition as usual—but listen, Pat; I’m a savage under my shirt. Just got in from location away up in Topanga Cañon, and I never stopped to get off anything but the rainbow on my cheeks and my feathered war bonnet. Had a heck of a day—I’ll tell the world! You know, honey; painted warriors hurtling down the cliff shooting poisoned arrows at the hapless emigrants—that kind of hokum. Big Chief Eagle Eye has been hurtling and whooping war whoops since ten o’clock this morning. Dinner’ll have to wait while I take a bath and clean up a little. I look like a bum and that’s a fact. Say, listen, honey——”

“Aw, take that mush off the line. Ha-ang up!” Some impatient neighboring tenant with a bad temper was evidently cutting in.

“Aw, go lead yourself out by the ear!” Gary retorted sharply. “Say, Pat!” His voice softened to the wooing note of the young male human. “Best I can do, honey, it’ll be forty minutes. That’s giving me ten minutes to look like a white man again. You know it’ll take me thirty minutes to ride out there——”

“You could walk, you bum, whilst you’re tellin’ her about it. Get off the line! There ought to be a law against billy-cooin’ over the ’phone——”

“Seddown! You’re rockin’ the boat!” Gary flung back spiritedly. “Better make it forty-five, Girlie. It may take me five minutes to lick this cheap heavy on the third floor that’s tryin’ to put on a comedy act.”

“Say, one more crack like that an’ I’ll be down to your place an’ save yuh some valuable time. It’ll take me about two seconds to knock yuh cold!” The harsh male voice interrupted eagerly.

“Are you there, Pat?”

“Right here, Gary. How did that get into a respectable house, dear? You ought to call the janitor.” The girl he hoped to marry had spirit and could assuredly hold her own in a wicked city. “Take your time, Gary boy. But remember, I’ve the biggest surprise in your life waiting for you out here. Something wonderful!”

It is astonishing how a woman can pronounce a few simple words so that they sound like a hallelujah chorus of angels. Gary thrilled to her voice, in spite of an intensely practical nature. Patricia went on, after an impressive pause.

“Never mind that noise in the ’phone, Gary. It’s just some mechanical deficiency caused by using cheap material. Never mind the grease paint, either. You—you won’t always have to smear around in it—partner!”

While he hurried to make himself presentable, Gary’s thoughts dwelt upon that word “partner” and the lingering sweetness of Patricia’s tone. Patricia Connolly was not a feather-brained creature who would repeat parrotlike whatever phrase she happened to have heard and fancied. She did not run to second-hand superlatives. When she told Gary that she had a wonderful surprise for him, she would not, for instance, mean that she had done her hair in a new fashion or had bought a new record for the phonograph. And she had never before called him partner in any tone whatever. Gary would have remembered it if she had.

“What the heck is she going to spring on me now?” he kept wondering during the hour that intervened between the ’phone call and his entrance into the scrap of bungalow in a bepalmed court where Patricia had her milk and her mail delivered to the tiny front porch.

The extra fifteen minutes had not been spent in whipping the harsh-voiced tenant on the third floor; indeed, Gary had forgotten all about him the moment he hung up the receiver. One simply cannot annihilate all the men one abuses in the course of a day’s strained living in Los Angeles or any other over-full city. Gary had been delayed first by the tenacity of the grease paint on his person, and after that by the heavy traffic on the street cars. Two cars had gone whanging past him packed solidly with peevish human beings and with men and boys clinging to every protuberance on the outside. When the third car stopped to let a clinging passenger drop off—shaking down his cuffs and flexing his cramped fingers—Gary had darted in like a hornet, seized toe-hold and finger-hold and hung on.

And so, fifteen minutes late, he arrived at Patricia’s door and was let into Paradise and delectable odors and the presence of Patricia, who looked as though Christmas had come unexpectedly and she was waiting until the candles were lighted on the tree so she could present Gary with a million dollars. Her honest sweetness and her adorable little way of mothering Gary—though she was fours years younger—tingled with an air of holding back with difficulty the news of some amazing good fortune.

Patricia shared the bungalow with a trained nurse who was usually absent on a “case”, so that Patricia was practically independent and alone. Most girls of twenty couldn’t have done it and kept their mental balance; but Patricia was herself under any and all conditions, and it did not seem strange for her to be living alone the greater part of the time. Freedom, to her, spelled neither license nor loneliness; she lived as though her mother were always in the next room. Patricia felt sometimes that her mother was closer, very close beside her. It made her happier to feel so, but never had it made her feel ashamed.

She had evolved the dinner in this manner: while her boss was keeping her waiting until he had refreshed his memory of a certain special price on alfalfa molasses and oil cakes, etc., etc., in carload and half-carload lots, Patricia had jotted down in good shorthand, “chicken, about two pounds with yellow legs and a limber wishbone or nothing doing; cost a dollar, I expect—is Gary worth it? I’ll say he is. God love ums. Strawberries, two boxes—Hood Rivers, if possible—try the City Market. Celery—if there’s any that looks decent; if not, then artichokes or asparagus—Gary likes asparagus best—says he eats artichokes because it’s fun—Dear Sir:—In response to your favor of the 17th inst.,—” and so on.

Some girls would have quoted asparagus in carload lots, transcribing from such notes, and would have put alfalfa molasses on the dinner menu; but not Patricia.

On her way home from the office in the dusty, humming barn of a building that housed the grain milling company which supported her in return for faithful service rendered, Patricia shopped at the big City Market where the sales people all had tired eyes and mechanical smiles, and a general air of hopelessly endeavoring to please every one so that no harassed marketers would complain to the manager. Patricia made her purchases as painless to the sales girl as possible, knowing too well what that strained smile meant. The great market buzzed like a bee-tree when you strike its trunk with a club.

She bought a manila paper shopping bag, but her packages overflowed the bag, so that she carried the two boxes of strawberries in her hand, and worried all the way home for fear the string would break; and held the warm tea biscuits under her arm, protecting them as anxiously as a hen protects her covered chicks. By prodding with her elbows and bracing her feet against the swaying crush, and giving now and then a haughty stare, Patricia achieved the miracle of arriving at Rose Court with her full menu and only one yellow leg of the chicken protruding stiffly from its wrappings.

She dumped her armload on the table in the kitchenette and rushed out again to buy flowers from the vendor who was chanting his wares half a block away. She was tingling all over with nerve weariness, yet she could smile brightly at the Greek so that he went on with a little glow of friendliness toward the world. At the rose-arched entrance to the Court she tilted her wrist, looked at her watch and said, “Good Lord! That late?” and dashed up to her door like a maiden pursued.

Yet here she was at seven, in a cool little pansy-tinted voile, dainty and serene as any young hostess in Westmoreland Place half a mile away. Even the strawberry stain on her finger tips could easily be mistaken for the new fad in manicuring. Can you wonder that Gary forgot every disagreeable thing he ever knew—including frowsy, unhomelike bachelor quarters, crowded street cars, all the petty aches and ills of movie work—when he unfolded his napkin and looked across the table at Patricia?

“Coffee now, or with dessert? Gary, don’t you dare look question marks at me! I can’t have your mind distracted with food while I’m telling you the most wonderful thing in the world. Moreover, this dinner deserves a little appreciation.” Patricia’s lips trembled, but only because she was tired and excited and happy. Her happiness would have been quite apparent to a blind man.

I do not mean to hint that Patricia deliberately fed Gary to repletion with the things he liked best, before imparting her won-derful surprise. She had frequently cooked nice little dinners for him when there was nothing surprising to follow. But it is a fact that when she had stacked the dishes neatly away for a later washing, and returned the dining table to its ordinary library-table guise, Gary looked as if nothing on earth could disturb him. Mental, emotional and physical content permeated the atmosphere of his immediate neighborhood. Patricia sat down and laid her arms upon the table, and studied Gary, biting her lips to hide their quiver.

CHAPTER TWO
PATRICIA EXPLAINS

Womanlike, Patricia began in a somewhat roundabout fashion and in a tone not far from cajolery.

“Gary! You do know all about ranch life and raising cattle and hay and horses and so on, don’t you?”

Gary was lighting a cigarette. If he had learned the “picture value” of holding a pose, he was at least unconscious of his deliberation in waving out the match flame before he replied. His was a profile very effective in close-ups against the firelight. Holding a pose comes to be second nature to an actor who has to do those things for a living.

“Dad would rather feature the so-on stuff. Subtitle, father saying, ‘You ain’t much on raisin’ cattle but you’re shore an expert at raisin’ hell!’ Cut back to son on horse at gate, gazing wistfully toward house. Sighs. Turns away. Iris out, son riding away into dusk. Why?”

“Fathers are like that. Of course you know all about those things. You were raised on a ranch. Have you landed that contract with Mills yet, to play Western leads?”

“Not yet—Mills is waiting for his chief to come on from New York. He’s due here about the First. I was talking with Mills to-day, and he says he’s morally certain they’ll give me a company of my own and put on Western Features. You know what that would mean, Pat—a year’s contract for me. And we could get married——”

“Yes, never mind that, since you haven’t landed it.” Patricia drew in her breath. “Well, you know what I think of the movie game; we’ve thrashed that all out, times enough. I simply can’t see my husband making movie love to various and sundry females who sob and smile and smirk at him for so many dollars per. We’ll skip that. Also my conviction that the movies are lowering—cheapening to any full-sized man. Smirking and frowning before a camera, and making mushy love for kids on the front seats to stamp and whistle at—well, never mind; we won’t go into that at this time.

“You know, Gary. I just love you to be Western; but I want you to be real Western—my own range hero. Not cheap, movie make-believe. I want you to get out and live the West. I can close my eyes and see you on a cattle ranch, riding out at dawn after your own cattle—doing your part in increasing the world’s production of food—being something big and really worth while!”

“Can you? You’re a good little seer, Pat. Golly, grandma! I wish I’d saved half of that shortcake to eat after a while. Now I’m so full I can’t swallow a mouthful of smoke. What’s the surprise, kid? Don’t hold the suspense till the interest flags—that’s bad business. Makes the story drag.”

“Why, I’m telling you, Gary!” Patricia opened her eyes at him in a way that would have brought any movie queen a raise in salary. “It’s just that you’re going to have a chance to live up to what’s really in you. You’re going to manage a cattle ranch, dear. Not a real big one—yet. But you’ll have the fun of seeing it grow.”

“Oh-ah-h—I’ll have the fun—er-r—all right, Pat, I give it up.” Gary settled back again with his head against the cushion “Tell us the joke. My brain’s leather to-night; had a heck of a day.”

“The joke? Why, the joke is—well, just that you don’t get it! I knew you wouldn’t, just at first. Think, Gary! Just close your eyes and think of miles and miles of open range and no fences, and herds of cattle roaming free. Picture a home ranch against the mountains, in a cañon called—let’s play it’s called Johnnywater. Are you doing it?”

“Uh-huh. I’m thinking——” But he sounded drowsy, as if he would be asleep presently if he continued holding his eyes shut. “Open range and cattle roaming free—there ain’t no such animal.”

“That’s where the big surprise comes in, Gary. Listen. This is the most important thing that ever happened to either of us. I—I can hardly talk about it, it’s so perfectly wonderful. You’d never guess in a million years. But I—well, read these papers, Gary boy—I’ll explain them afterwards.”

Gary opened his eyes somewhat reluctantly, smiled endearingly at the flushed Patricia and accepted two legal-looking documents which she proffered with what might almost have been termed a flourish. He glanced at them somewhat indifferently, glanced again, gave Patricia a startled look, and sat up as if some one had prodded him unexpectedly in the back. He read both papers through frowningly, unconsciously registering consternation. When he had finished, he stared blankly at Patricia for a full minute.

“Pat Connolly, what the heck is this trick deed? I can’t feature it. I don’t get it! What’s the big idea?”

“That’s just a deed, Gary. The cattle and the brand and the water right to Johnnywater Spring, and the squatter’s right to the pasturage and improvements are all included—as you would have seen if you had read it carefully. The other paper is the water right, that he got from the State. Besides that, I have the affidavits of two men who swear that William Waddell legally owned one hundred head of cattle and the funny X brand, and that everything is all straight to the best of their knowledge and belief.

“I insisted upon the affidavits being furnished, since I couldn’t afford to make a trip away up there myself. It’s all right, Gary. I could send them all to jail for perjury and things of that sort if they have lied about it.”

Patricia pressed her palms hard upon the table and gave a subdued little squeal of sheer ecstasy.

“Just think of it, Gary! After almost despairing of ever being able to have a ranch of our own, so that you could ride around and really manage things, instead of pretending it in pictures, Fate gave me this wonderful chance!

“I was working up our mailing list, and ran across an ad in the Tonopah paper, of this place for sale. The ‘Free grazing and water rights in open range country’ caught my eye first. And the price was cheap—scandalously cheap for a stock ranch. I answered the ad right away—that was over a month ago, Gary. I’ve kept it a secret, because I hate arguments so, and I knew you’d argue against it. Any, anyway,” she added naïvely, “you’ve been away on location so I couldn’t tell you.

“That country is all unsurveyed for miles and miles and miles. Mr. Waddell writes that there are absolutely no grazing restrictions whatever, and that even their saddle and work horses run loose the year around. He says the winters are open——”

That last bit of information was delivered somewhat doubtfully. Patricia had lived in Southern California since she was a tiny tot and did not know exactly what an “open” winter meant.

“It’s scarcely settled at all, and there are no sheep in the country. I knew that would be important, so I asked, particularly. It’s in a part of the country that has been overlooked, Mr. Waddell says, just because it’s quite a long way from the railroad. I never dreamed there was any unsurveyed country left in America. Did you, Gary?”

Gary had slumped down in the big chair and was smoking his cigarette with thoughtful deliberation. His eyes veiled themselves before Patricia’s glowing enthusiasm.

“Death Valley is unsurveyed,” he observed grimly.

“I’m not talking about Death Valley,” Patricia retorted impatiently. “I mean cattle range. I’ve been corresponding with Mr. Waddell for a month, so I have all the facts.”

“All the facts, kid?” Gary was no fool. He was serious enough now, and the muscles along his jaw were hardening a little. His director would have been tickled with that expression for a close-up of slow-growing anger.

“The only country left unsurveyed to-day is desert that would starve a horn toad to death in a week. Some one has put one over on you, Pat. Where does he live? If you’ve paid him any money yet, I’ll have to go and get it back for you. You’ve bought a gold brick, Pat.”

“I have not! I investigated, I tell you. I have really bought the Waddell outfit—cattle, horses, brand, ranch, water rights and everything. It took all the insurance money dad left me, except just a few hundred dollars. That Power of Attorney—I pinned it on the back of the deed to surprise you, and you haven’t looked at it yet—cost me ten dollars, Gary Marshall! It gives you the right to go over there and run the outfit and transact business just as if you were the owner. I—I thought you might need it, and it would be just as well to have it.”

Gary leaned forward, his jaw squared, his right hand shut to a fighting fist on the table.

“Do you think for a minute I’m crazy enough to go over there? To quit a good job that’s just opening up into something big, and go off in the sand somewhere to watch cattle starve to death? It just happens that I do know a little about the cow business. Cattle have to eat, my dear girl. They don’t just walk around in front of a camera to give dolled-up cowboys a chance to ride. They require food occasionally.

“Why, Pat, take a look at that deed! That in itself ought to have been enough to warn you. It’s recorded in Tonopah. Tonopah! I was there on location once when we made The Gold Boom. It’s a mining town—not a cow town, Pat.”

Patricia smiled patiently.

“I know it, Gary. I didn’t say that Johnnywater lies inside the city limits of Tonopah. Mines and cattle are not like sheep and cattle; they don’t clash. There are cattle all around in that country.” Patricia swept out an arm to indicate vast areas. “We have inquiries from cattle men all over Nevada about stock food. I’ve billed out alfalfa molasses and oil cakes to several Nevada towns. And remember, I was making up a mailing list for our literature when I ran across the ad. We don’t mail our price lists to milliners, either. They raise cattle all through that country.”

“Well, I don’t raise ’em there—that’s flat.” Gary settled back in his chair with absolute finality in tone, words and manner.

“Then I’m a ruined woman.” But Patricia said it calmly, even with a little secret satisfaction. “I shall have to go myself, then, and run the ranch, and get killed by bronks and bitten to death by Gila monsters and carried off by the Indians——”

“Piffle!” from the big chair. “You couldn’t get on a bronk that was dangerous, and Gila monsters live farther south, and the Injuns are too lazy to carry anybody off. Besides, I wouldn’t let you go.”

“Then I’m still a ruined woman, except that I’m ruined quicker. My cows will die and my calves will be rustled and my horses ridden off—my cows and my calves and my horses!”

“Sell!” shouted Gary, forgetting other Bungalow Courters in his sudden fury. “You’re stung, I tell you. Sell the damned thing!”

Patricia looked at him. She had a pretty little round chin, but there were times when it squared itself surprisingly. And whenever it did square itself, you could souse Patricia and hold her head under water until air bubbles ceased to rise; and if you brought her up and got her gasping again, Patricia would gasp, “Scissors!” like the old woman in the story.

“No. I shall not sell. I shall not do anything more than I have done already. If you refuse to go to Nevada and take charge of Johnnywater, I shall go myself or I shall let my cattle starve.”

She would, too. Gary knew that. He looked steadily at her until he was sure of the square chin and all, and then he threw out both hands as if in complete surrender.

“Oh, very well,” he said tolerantly. “We won’t quarrel about it, Pat.”

CHAPTER THREE
PATRICIA TAKES HER STAND

A young man of intelligence may absorb a great many psychological truths while helping to build in pictures mock dramas more or less similar to real, human problems. Gary wore a brain under his mop of brown hair, and he had that quality of stubbornness which will adopt strategy—guile, even—for the sake of winning a fight. To-night, he chose to assume the air of defeat that he might win ultimate victory.

Gary had not the slightest intention of ruining his own future as well as Patricia’s by yielding with an easy, “Oh, very well” surrender, and going away into the wilds of Nevada to attempt the raising of cattle in a district so worthless that it had never so much as seen a surveyor’s transit. Desert it must be; a howling waste of sand and lizards and snakes. The very fact that Patricia had been able, with a few thousands of dollars, to buy out a completely equipped cattle ranch, damned the venture at once as the mad freak of a romantic girl’s ignorance. He set himself now to the task of patiently convincing Patricia of her madness.

Patricia, however, was not to be convinced. For every argument of Gary’s she found another to combat it. She repeated more than once the old range slogan that you simply can’t lose money in cattle. She told Gary that here was an opportunity, sent by a watchful Providence, for him to make good in a really worth-while business; and urged upon him the theory that pioneering brings out the best qualities in a man.

She attacked furiously Gary’s ambition to become a screen star, reminding him how cheap and paltry is that success which is based only upon a man’s good looks; and how easily screen stars fall meteorically into the hopeless void of forgotten favorites.

“It isn’t just that I’ve dreamed all my life of owning cattle and living away out in the wilderness,” she finished, with reddened cheeks and eyes terribly in earnest. “I know the fine mettle you’re made of, Gary, and I couldn’t see it spoiled while they fed your vanity at the studios.

“I had the money to buy this cattle ranch at Johnnywater—but of course I knew that I should be perfectly helpless with it alone. I don’t know the business of raising cattle, except that I know the most popular kinds of stock food and the prices and freight rates to various points. But you were born on a cattle ranch, Gary, and I knew that you could make a success of it. I knew that you could go and take charge of the ranch, and put the investment on a paying basis; which is a lot better than just leaving that money in the bank, drawing four and a half per cent. And I’ll go on with the milling company until the ranch is on its feet. My salary can go into what improvements are necessary. It’s an ideal combination, I think.”

She must have felt another argument coming to speech behind Gary’s compressed lips; for she added, with a squared chin to give the statement force,

“This isn’t threatening—a threat is always a sign of conscious weakness. I merely wish to make the statement that unless you go over and take charge of the Johnnywater ranch, I shall go myself. I absolutely refuse to sell. I don’t know anything about running a ranch, and I was never on a horse in my life, so I’d undoubtedly make a beautiful mess of it. But I should have to tackle it, just the same; because I really can’t afford to positively throw away five thousand dollars, you know. I should have to make some attempt to save it, at least. When I failed—as I probably should—I’d have to go away somewhere and get a job I hated, and develop into a sour old maid. Because, Gary, if you flatly refused to take charge over there, as you threaten to do, we certainly couldn’t marry and expect to live together happily with Johnnywater ranch as a skeleton in our closet.

“So that’s where I stand, Gary. Naturally, the prospect doesn’t appeal to you at this moment. You’re sitting here in a big, overstuffed chair, fed on good things, with a comfy cushion behind your shoulders and a shaded light over your head. You look very handsome indeed—and you know it just as well as I do. You are perfectly aware of the fact that this would make a stunning close-up of you—with the camera set to show your profile and that heart-disturbing wave over your right temple.

“Just at this minute you don’t particularly care about sitting on a wooden chair in a cabin away out in the wilderness, hearing coyotes howl on a hill and your saddle horses champing hay in a sod-roofed stable, and you thinking how it’s miles to the nearest neighbor—and an audience! You’ve reached the point, Gary, where a little mental surgery is absolutely necessary to your future mental health. I can see that your soul is beginning to show symptoms of going a tiny bit flabby. And I simply loathe flabby-souled men with handsome faces and shoulders as broad as yours!”

That was like jabbing Gary in the back with a hatpin. He sat up with a jerk.

“Flabby-souled! Good Lord, Pat! Why pile up the insults? This is getting good, I must say!” He leaned back in the chair again, the first effect of the jab having passed. “I can stand all this knocking the movie game—I’m used to it, heck knows. I might just point out, however, that making a living by expressing the emotions of men in stories is no worse than pounding a typewriter for a living. What’s the difference whether you sell your profile or your fingers? And what do you think——”

“I think it’s ten o’clock, Gary Marshall, and I’ve said what I have to say and there’s no argument, because I simply won’t argue. I suppose you’ll need sleep if you still have to be at the studio at seven o’clock in the morning so that you can get into your painted eyebrows and painted eyelashes and painted lips for the day’s smirk.”

Gary heaved himself out of his chair and reached for his hat, forgetting to observe subconsciously how effectively he did it. Patricia’s mental surgery had driven the lance deep into his pride and self-esteem, which in a handsome young man of twenty-four is quite as sensitive to pain as an eyeball. Patricia had omitted the mental anesthetic of a little flattery, and she had twisted the knife sickeningly. Painted eyelashes and painted lips nauseated Gary quite suddenly; but scarcely more than did the thought of that ranch of a hundred cattle in a Nevada desert, which Patricia had beggared herself to buy.

“Well, good night, Pat. I must be going. Awfully pleasant evening—great little dinner and all that. I wish you all kinds of luck with your cattle ranch. ’Bye.”

Patricia did not believe that he would go like that. She thought he was merely bluffing. She did not so much as move a finger until he had shut the door rather decisively behind him and she heard his feet striking firmly on the cement walk that led to the street.

A slight chill of foreboding quivered along her spine as the footsteps sounded fainter and fainter down the pavement. She had known Gary Marshall for three years and had worn a half-carat diamond for six months. She had argued with him for hours; they had quarreled furiously at times, and he had registered anger, indignation, arrogance and hurt pride in several effective forms. But she had never before seen him behave in just this manner.

Of course he would hate that little slam of hers about the paint and the profile, she told herself hearteningly. She had struck deliberately at his pride and his vanity, though in justice she was compelled to confess to herself that Gary had very little vanity for a man so good-looking as he was. She had wanted him to hate what she said, so that he would be forced to give up the movie life which she hated. Still, his sudden going startled her considerably.

It occurred to her later that he had absent-mindedly carried off her papers. She remembered how he had stuffed them into his coat pocket—just as if they were his and didn’t amount to much anyway—while the argument was going on. Well, since he had taken them away with him he would have to return them, no matter how mad he was; and in the meantime it might do him good to read them over again. He couldn’t help seeing how she had burned her financial bridges behind her—for his sake.

Patricia brushed her eyes impatiently with her fingers and sighed. In a moment she pinned on an apron and attacked the dinner dishes savagely, wondering why women are such fools as to fall in love with a man, and then worry themselves into wrinkles over his shortcomings. Six months ago, Gary Marshall had not owned a fault to his name. Now, her whole heart was set upon eradicating faults which she had discovered.

“He shall not be spoiled—if I have to quarrel with him every day! There’s something more to him than that mop of wavy brown hair that won’t behave, and those straight eyebrows that won’t behave either, but actually talk at you—and those eyes—— That darned leading girl can’t make me believe it’s all acting, when she rolls her eyes up at him and snuggles against his shoulder. That’s my shoulder! And Gary says selling your profile is like selling your fingers! It might be—if the boss bought my fingers to kiss! And I don’t care! It was positively indecent, the way Gary kissed that girl in his last picture. If he wasn’t such a dear——”

Patricia snuffled a bit while she scraped chicken gravy off a plate. Gary’s plate. “Let him sulk. He’ll come back when he cools off. And he’ll have to give in and go to Nevada. He’ll never see me lose five thousand dollars. And those nasty little movie queens can find somebody else to roll up their eyes at. Oh, darn!”

CHAPTER FOUR
GARY GOES ON THE WARPATH

One thing which a motion-picture actor may not do and retain the tolerance of any one who knows him is to stop work in the middle of a picture. If there is an unforgivable sin in the movie world, that is it. Nevertheless, even sins called unforgivable may be condoned in certain circumstances; even the most stringent rules may be broken now and then, or bent to meet an individual need.

Gary spent a sleepless night wondering how he might with impunity commit the unforgivable sin. In spite of his anger at Patricia and his sense of her injustice, certain words of hers rankled in a way that would have pleased Patricia immensely, had she known it.

He rode out to the studio one car earlier than usual, and went straight to the little cubbyhole of a dressing room to put on his make-up as Chief Eagle Eye. Such was the force of Patricia’s speech that Gary swore vaguely, at nothing in particular, while he painted his eyebrows, lashes and lips, and streaked the vermilion war paint down his cheeks. He scrubbed the copper-colored powder into the grease paint on his arms and chest, still swearing softly and steadily in a monotonous undertone that sounded, ten feet away, like a monk mumbling over his beads.

With the help of a fellow actor he became a noble red man from the scalp lock to his waist, got into fringed buckskin leggings, lavishly feathered war bonnet, some imitation elk-tooth necklaces and beaded moccasins. Then, with his quiver full of arrows (poisoned in the sub-titles) slung over his painted shoulders, and the mighty bow of Chief Eagle Eye in his hand, Gary stalked out into the lot in search of the director, Mills.

When one knows his director personally as a friend, one may, if he is a coming young star and not too insufferably aware of his starlike qualities, accomplish much in the way of emergency revisions of story and stringent rules.

Wherefore, to the future amazement of the author, Chief Eagle Eye that day died three different deaths, close up in front of two grinding cameras; though Chief Eagle Eye had not been expected to die at all in the picture. The director stood just behind the camera, his megaphone under his arm, his hands on his hips, his hat on the back of his head and a grin on his perspiring face.

“Thattaboy, Gary! Just sag at the knees and go down slowly, as you try to draw the bow. That’s it—try to get up—well, that’s good business, trying to shoot from the ground! Now try to heave yourself up again—just lift your body, like your legs is paralyzed—shot in the back, maybe. All right—that’s great stuff. Now rouse yourself with one last effort—lift your head and chant the death song! Gulp, man!

“Run in there, Bill—you’re horrified. Try to lift him up and drag him back out of danger. Say! Wince, man, like you’re shot through the lungs—no, I meant Gary!—well, damn it, let it go—but how-the-hell-do-you-expect-to-drag-a-man-off-when-you’ve-got-a-slug-in-your-lungs? You acted like some one had stuck you with a pin! Git outa the scene—Gary’s doing the dying, you ain’t!—— Cut—we’ll have to do that over. A kid four years old would never stand for that damfool play.

“Now, Gary, try that again. Keep that business with the bow. And try and get that same vindictive look—you know, with your lips drawn back while you’re trying to bend the bow and let fly one last arrow. This time you die alone. Can’t have a death scene like that gummed up by a boob like Bill lopin’ in and actin’ like he’d sat on a bee—all right—come in—camera——

“That’s fine—now take your time, take your time—now, as the bow sags—you’re growing weaker—rouse yourself and chant your death song! That’s the stuff! Lift your head—turn it so your profile shows” (Gary swore without moving his lips “—hold that, while you raise your hand palm out—peace greeting to your ancestors you see in the clouds! Great! H-o-o-l-d it—one—two—three—now-go-slack-all-at-once——Cut!”

Gary picked himself up, took off his war bonnet and laid it on a rock, reached into his wampum belt and produced a sack of Bull Durham and a book of papers. The director came over and sat down beside him, accepting the cigarette Gary had just rolled.

“Great scene, Gary. By gosh, that ought to get over big. When you get back, call me up right away, will you? I ought to know something definite next week, at the latest. Try and be here when Cohen gets here; I want you to meet him. By gosh, it’s a crime not to give you a feature company. Well, have Mack drive you back in my car. You haven’t any too much time.”

That’s what it means to have the director for your friend. He can draw out your scenes and keep you working many an extra week if you are hard up, or he can kill you off on short notice and let you go, if you happen to have urgent business elsewhere; and must travel from Toponga Cañon to the studio, take off your make-up—an ungodly, messy make-up in this case—pack a suit case, buy a ticket and catch the eight o’clock train that evening.

Gary, having died with much dignity and a magnificent profile in full view of future weeping audiences, was free from further responsibility toward the company and could go where he did not please. Which, of course, was Tonopah.

He was just boyish enough in his anger, hurt enough in his man’s pride, to go without another word to Patricia. Flabby-souled, hunh? Painted eyebrows, painted lashes, painted lips—golly grandma! Pat surely could take the hide off a man, and smile while she did it!

He meant to take that Power of Attorney she had so naïvely placed in his hands, and work it for all there was in it. He meant to sell that gold brick of a “stock ranch” Waddell had worked off on her, and lick Waddell and the two men who had signed affidavits for him. He meant to go back, then, and give Pat her money, and tell her for the Lord’s sake to have a little sense, and put her five thousand dollars in a trust fund, where she couldn’t get hold of it for the first faker that came along and held out his hand. After that—Gary was not sure what he would do. He was still very angry with Patricia; but after he had asserted his masculine authority and proved to her that the female of our species is less intelligent than the male, it is barely possible that he might forgive the girl.

CHAPTER FIVE
GARY DOES A LITTLE SLEUTHING

Tonopah as a mining town appealed strongly to Gary’s love of the picturesque. Tonopah is a hilly little town, with a mine in its very middle, and with narrow, crooked streets that slope steeply and take sharp turnings. Houses perched on knobs of barren, red earth, or clung precariously to steep hillsides. The courthouse, a modern, cement building with broad steps flanked by pillars, stood with aloof dignity upon a hill that made Gary puff a little in the climbing.

On the courthouse steps he finished his cigarette before going inside, and stood gazing at the town below him and at the barren buttes beyond. As far as he could see, the world was a forbidding, sterile world; unfriendly, inhospitable—a miserly world guarding jealously the riches deep-hidden within its hills. When he tried to visualize range cattle roaming over those hills, Gary’s lips twisted contemptuously.

He turned and went in, his footsteps clumping down the empty, echoing corridor to the office of the County Recorder. A wholesome-looking girl with hair almost the color of Patricia’s rose from before a typewriter and came forward to the counter. Her eyes widened a bit when she looked at Gary, and the color deepened a little in her cheeks. Perhaps she had seen Gary’s face on the screen and remembered it pleasantly; certainly a man like Gary Marshall walks but seldom into the Recorder’s office of any desert county seat. Gary told her very briefly what he wanted, and the County Recorder herself came forward to serve him.

Very obligingly she looked up all the records pertaining to Johnnywater. Gary himself went in with her to lift the heavy record books down from their places in the vault behind the office. The County Recorder was thorough as well as obliging. Gary lifted approximately a quarter of a ton of books, and came out of the vault wiping perspiration from inside his collar and smoothing his plumage generally after the exercise. It was a warm day in Tonopah.

Gary had not a doubt left to pin his hopes upon. The County Recorder had looked up water rights to Johnnywater and adjacent springs, and had made sure that Waddell had made no previous transfers to other parties, a piece of treachery which Gary had vaguely hoped to uncover. Patricia’s title appeared to be dishearteningly unassailable. Gary would have been willing to spend his last dollar in prosecuting Waddell for fraud; but apparently no such villainy had brought Waddell within his clutches.

From the County Recorder, who had a warm, motherly personality and was chronically homesick for Pasadena and eager to help any one who knew the place as intimately as did Gary, he learned how great a stranger Tonopah is to her county corners. Pat was right, he discovered. Miles and miles of country lay all unsurveyed; a vast area to be approached in the spirit of the pioneer who sets out to explore a land unknown.

Roughly scaling the district on the county map which the Recorder borrowed from the Clerk (and which Gary promptly bought when he found that it was for sale) he decided that the water holes in the Johnnywater district were approximately twenty to forty miles apart.

“Pat’s cows will have to pack canteens where village bossies wear bells on their lavallieres,” Gary grinned to the County Recorder. “Calves are probably taboo in the best bovine circles of Nevada—unless they learn to ride to water on their mammas’ backs, like baby toads.”

The Recorder smiled at him somewhat wistfully. “You remind me of my son in Pasadena,” she said. “He always joked over the drawbacks. I wish you were going to be within riding distance of here; I’ve an extra room that I’d love to have you use sometimes. But—” she sighed, “—you’ll probably never make the trip over here unless you come the roundabout way on the train, to record something. And the mail is much more convenient, of course. What few prospectors record mining claims in that district nearly always send them by mail, I’ve noticed. In all the time I’ve been in office, this Mr. Waddell is the only man from that part of the county who came here personally. He said he had other business here, I remember, and intended going on East.”

“So Waddell went East, did he?” Gary looked up from the map. “He’s already gone, I suppose.”

“I suppose so. I remember he said he was going to England to visit his old home. His health was bad, I imagine; I noticed he looked thin and worried, and his manner was very nervous.”

“It ought to be,” Gary mumbled over the map. “Isn’t there any road at all, tapping that country from here?”

The Recorder didn’t know, but she thought the County Clerk might be able to tell him. The County Clerk had been much longer in the country and was in close touch with the work of the commissioners. So Gary thanked her with his nicest manner, sent a vague smile toward the girl with hair like Patricia’s, and went away to interview the County Clerk.

When he left the court house Gary had a few facts firmly fixed in his mind. He knew that Patricia’s fake cattle ranch was more accessible to Las Vegas than to Tonopah. Furthermore, the men who had signed the affidavits vouching for Waddell did not belong in Tonopah, but could probably be traced from Las Vegas more easily. And there seemed no question at all of the legality of the transaction.

Gary next day retraced the miles halfway back to Los Angeles, waited for long, lonesome hours in a tiny desert station for the train from Barstow, boarded it and made a fresh start, on another railroad, toward Patricia’s cattle ranch. So far he had no reason whatever for optimism concerning the investment. The best he could muster was a faint hope that some other trustful soul might be found with five thousand dollars, no business sense whatever and a hunger for story-book wilderness. Should such an improbable combination stray into Gary’s presence before Patricia’s Walking X cattle all starved to death, Gary promised himself grimly that he would stop at nothing short of a blackjack in his efforts to sell Johnnywater. He felt that Providence had prevailed upon Patricia to place that Power of Attorney in his hands, and he meant to use it to the limit.

In Las Vegas, where Gary continued his inquiries, he tramped here and there before he discovered any one who had ever heard of Johnnywater. One man knew Waddell slightly, and another was of the opinion that the two who had made affidavit for Waddell must live somewhere in the desert. This man suggested that Gary should stick around town until they came in for supplies or something. Gary snorted at that advice and continued wandering here and there, asking questions of garage men and street loiterers who had what he called the earmarks of the desert. One of these interrupted himself in the middle of a sentence, spat into the gutter and pointed.

“There’s one of ’em, now. That’s Monty Girard just turned the corner by the hotel. When he lights som’eres, you can talk to ’im. Like as not you can ride out with ’im to camp, if you got the nerve. Ain’t many that has. I tried ridin’ with ’im once for a mile, down here to the dairy, and I sure as hell feel the effects of it yet. Give me a crick in the back I never will git over. I’d ruther board a raw bronk any day than get in that Ford uh his’n. You go speak to Monty, mister. He can tell yuh more about what you want to know than any man in Vegas, I reckon.”

Gary watched the man in the Ford go rattling past, pull up to the sidewalk in the next block and stop. He sauntered toward the spot. It was a day for sauntering and for seeking the shady side of the street; Monty Girard was leaving the post-office with a canvas bag in his hand when Gary met him. Gary was not in the mood for much ceremony. He stopped Girard in the middle of the sidewalk.

“I believe you signed an affidavit for a man named Waddell, in regard to the Johnnywater outfit. I’d like to have a few minutes’ talk with you.”

“Why, shore!” Monty Girard glanced down at the mail bag, stepped past Gary and tossed the bag into the back of his car. “Your name’s Connolly, I guess. Going out to Johnnywater?”

Gary had not thought of friendliness toward any man connected with the Johnnywater transaction; yet friendliness was the keynote of Monty Girard’s personality. The squinty wrinkles around his young blue eyes were not all caused by facing wind and sun; laughter lines were there, plenty of them. His voice, that suggested years spent in the southwest where men speak in easy, drawling tones, caressing in their softness, was friendliness itself; as was his quick smile, disclosing teeth as white and even as Gary himself could boast. In spite of himself, Gary’s hostility lost its edge.

“If you haven’t got your own car, you’re welcome to ride out with me, Mr. Connolly. I’m going within fifteen miles of Johnnywater, and I can take yuh-all over as well as not.”

Gary grinned relentingly.

“I came over to see how much of that outfit was faked,” he said. “I’m not the buyer, but I have full authority to act for Pat Connolly. The deal was made rather—er—impulsively, and it is unfortunate that the buyer was unable to get over and see the place before closing the deal. Waddell has gone East, I hear. But you swore that things were as represented in the deal.”

Monty Girard gave him one searching look from under the brim of his dusty, gray Stetson range hat. He looked down, absently reaching out a booted foot to shake a front wheel of his Ford.

“What I swore to was straight goods, all right. I figured that if Mr. Connolly was satisfied with the deal as it stood, it was no put-in of mine. I don’t know of a thing that was misrepresented. Not if a man knows this country and knows what to expect.”

“Now we’re coming to the point, I think.” Gary felt oddly that here was a man who would understand his position and perhaps sympathize with the task he had set himself to accomplish.

Monty Girard hesitated, looking at him inquiringly before he glanced up and down the street.

“Say, mister——”

“Marshall. Pardon me. Gary Marshall’s my name.”

“Well, Mr. Marshall, it’s like this. I’m just in off a hundred-and-forty-mile drive—and it shore is hot from here to Indian. If you don’t mind helpin’ me hunt a cool spot, we’ll have a near beer or something and talk this thing over.”

Over their near beer Gary found the man he had intended to lick even more disarming. Monty Girard kept looking at him with covert intentness.

“Gary Marshall, you said your name was? I reckon yuh-all must be the fellow that done that whirlwind riding in a picture I saw, last time I was in town. I forget the name of it—but I shore don’t forget the way yuh-all handled your hawse. A range rider gets mighty particular about the riding he sees in the movies. I’ll bet yuh-all never learned in no riding school, Mr. Marshall; I’ll bet another glass uh near beer you’ve rode the range some yourself.”

“I was born on the Pecos,” grinned Gary. “My old man had horses mostly; some cattle, of course. I left when I was eighteen.”

“And that shore ain’t been so many years it’d take all day to count ’em. Well, I shore didn’t expect to meet that fellow I saw in the picture, on my next trip in to town.”

Gary drank his beer slowly, studying Monty Girard. Somehow he got the impression that Girard did not welcome the subject of Johnnywater. Yet he had seemed sincere enough in declaring that he had told the truth in the affidavit. Gary pushed the glass out of his way and folded his arms on the table, leaning a little forward.

“Just where’s the joker in this Johnnywater deal?” he asked abruptly. “There is one, isn’t there?”

“Wel-l—you’re going out there, ain’t yuh?” Monty Girard hesitated oddly. “I don’t know as there’s any joker at all; not in the way yuh-all mean. It’s a long ways off from the railroad, but Waddy wrote that in his letter to Mr. Connolly. I know that for a fact, because I read the letter. And uh course, cattle is down now—a man’s scarcely got a livin’ chance runnin’ cattle, the way the market is now. But Mr. Connolly must uh known all that. The price Waddy put on the outfit could uh told ’im that, if nothin’ else. I dunno as Waddy overcharged Connolly for the place. All depends on whether a man wanted to buy. Connolly did—I reckon. Leastways, he bought.”

“Yes, I see your point. The deal was all right if a man wanted the place. But you’re wondering what kind of a man would want the place. It’s a lemon of some kind. That’s about it—stop me if I’m wrong.”

Monty Girard laughed dryly. “I’m mounted on a tired hawse, Mr. Marshall. I couldn’t stop a run-down clock, and that’s a fact.”

“Well, I think I’ll go out with you if you don’t mind. I suppose I’ll need blankets and a few supplies.”

“Well, I reckon Waddy left pretty much everything he had out there. Soon as he got his money at the bank he fanned it for Merrie England. He just barely had a suit case when I saw him last. I reckon maybe yuh-all better take out a few things you’d hate to get along without. Flour, bacon an’ beans you can pretty well count on. And, unless yuh-all want to take blankets of your own, you needn’t be afraid to use Waddy’s. Frank Waddell was shore a nice, clean housekeeper, and a nice man all around, only—kinda nervous.”

Gary listened, taking it all in. His eyes, trained to the profession of putting emotions, thoughts, even things meant to be hidden, into the human face, so that all might see and read the meaning, watched Monty’s face as he talked.

“Just what is it that made Waddell sell the Johnnywater ranch and clear out of the country?” he asked. “Just what makes you hate the place?”

Monty sent him a startled look.

“I never said I hated it,” he parried. “It ain’t anything to me, one way or the other.”

“You do hate it. Why?”

“Wel-l—I dunno as I can hardly say. A man’s got feelin’s sometimes he can’t hardly put into words. Lots of places in this country has got histories, Mr. Marshall. I guess—Johnnywater’s all right. Waddy was a kind of nervous cuss.”

CHAPTER SIX
JOHNNYWATER

Please do not picture a level waste of sand and scant sagebrush when you think of the Nevada desert. Barren it is, where water is not to be had; but level it is not, except where the beds of ancient lakes lie bare and yellow, hard as cement except when the rains soften the surface to sticky, red mud. Long mesas, with scattering clumps of greasewood and sage, lie gently tilted between sporadic mountain ranges streaked and scalloped with the varying rock formations that tell how long the world was in the making. Here and there larger mountains lift desolate barriers against the sky. Seen close, any part of the scene is somber at best. But distance softens the forbidding bleakness of the uplifted hummocks and crags, and paints them with magic lights and shadows.

In the higher altitudes the mountains are less bare; more friendly in a grim, uncompromising way and grown over scantily sometimes with piñons and juniper and the flat-leafed cedar whose wood is never too wet to burn with a great snapping, and is as likely to char temperamentally and go black. In these great buttes secret stores of water send little searching streams out through crevices among the rocks. Each cañon has its spring hidden away somewhere, and the water is clear and cold, stealing away from the melting snows on top.

A rough, little-used trail barely passable to a car, led into Johnnywater Cañon. To Gary the place was a distinct relief from the barren land that stretched between this butte and Las Vegas. The green of the piñon trees was refreshing as cool water on a hot day. The tiny stream that trickled over water-worn rocks in the little gully beside the cabin astonished him. For hours he had ridden through the parched waste land. For hours Monty had talked of scanty grazing and little water. In spite of himself, Gary’s eyes brightened with pleasure when he first looked upon Johnnywater.

The sun still shone into the cañon, though presently it would drop behind the high shoulder of the butte. The little cabin squatting secretively between two tall piñons looked an ideal “set” for some border romance.

“It’s not a bad-looking place,” he commented with some reluctance. “Maybe Pat didn’t pull such a boner after all.” He climbed out of the car and walked toward the tiny stream. “Golly grandma, what’s that! Chickens?”

“It shore enough is—but I kinda thought the coyotes and link-cats would of got all Waddy’s chickens. He’s been gone a week away.”

“Good heck! I thought chickens liked to partake of a little nourishment occasionally. All the kinds I’ve met do.”

Monty laughed lazily.

“Oh, Waddell he fixed a kind of feed box for ’em that lets down a few grains at a time. I reckon he filled it up before he went.” Monty sent seeking glances into the undergrowth along the creek. “There ought to be a couple of shoats around here, too. And a cat.”

Gary went into the cabin and stood looking around him curiously. Some attempt had been made to furnish the place with a few comforts, but the attempt had evidently perished of inanition. Flowered calico would have hidden the cubboard decently, had the curtains been clean. A box tacked against the wall held magazines and a book or two. The bunk was draped around the edge with the same flowered calico, with an old shoe protruding from beneath. One square window with a single sash looked down upon the little creek. Its twin looked down the cañon. Cast-off garments hung against the wall at the foot of the bunk.

“Great interior set for a poverty scene,” Gary decided, rolling himself a smoke. “I don’t intend to stay out on this location, you know. I’m here to sell the damned place. What’s the quickest way to do that—quietly? I mean, without advertising it.”

Monty Girard turned slowly and stared.

“There ain’t no quick way,” he said finally. “Waddy, he’s been tryin’ for three months to sell it—advertisin’ in all the papers. He was in about as much of a hurry as a man could get in—and he was just about at the point where he was goin’ to walk off and leave it, when this Mr. Connolly bit.”

“Bit?”

“Bought. Yuh-all must have misunderstood.”

“Either way, I don’t feature it.” Gary lighted the cigarette thoughtfully. “It looks a pretty fair place—for a hermit, or a man that’s hiding out. What did this man Waddell buy it for? And how long ago?”

“I reckon he thought he wanted it. A couple of years ago, I reckon he aimed to settle down here.”

“Well, why the heck didn’t he do it then?” Gary sat down on the edge of the table and folded his arms. “Spread ’em out on the table, Monty. I won’t shoot.”

“You say yuh-all don’t aim to stay here?” Monty leveled a glance at him.

“Not any longer than it takes to sell out. You look like a live wire. I’m going to appoint you my agent and see if you can’t rustle a buyer—quick. I’ll go back with you, when you go. That will be in a couple of days, you said. So tell me the joke, Monty. I asked you in town, yesterday, and you didn’t do it.”

“I can’t say as I rightly know. I reckon maybe it was Waddy himself that was wrong, and nothin’ the matter with Johnnywater. He got along all right here for awhile—but I guess he got kind of edgey, livin’ alone here so much. He got to kinda imaginin’ he was seein’ things. And along last spring he got to hearin’ ’em. So then he wanted to sell out right away quick.”

“Oh.” Gary sounded rather crestfallen. “A nut, hunh? I thought there was something faked about the place itself.”

“Yuh-all read what I swore to,” Monty reminded him with a touch of dignity. “I wouldn’t help nobody fake a deal; not even a fellow in the shape Waddy was in. He had his money in here, and he had to git it out before he could leave. At that, he sold out at a loss. This is a right nice little place, Mr. Marshall, for anybody that wants a place like this.”

“But you don’t, hunh? Couldn’t you buy the cattle?”

Monty shook his head regretfully.

“No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t buy out the Walkin’ X brand now at a dime a head, and that’s a fact. Cattle’s away down. I’m just hangin’ on, Mr. Marshall, and that’s the case with every cattle owner in the country. It ain’t my put-in, maybe, but if Johnnywater was mine, I know what I’d do.”

“Well, let’s hear it.”

“Well, I’d fix things up best I could around here, and hang on to it awhile till times git better. Waddell asked seven thousand at first—and it’d be worth that if there was any market at all for cattle. Up the cañon here a piece, Waddy’s got as pretty a patch of alfalfa as you’d want to look at. And a patch of potatoes that was doing fine, the last I see of ’em. He was aimin’ to put the whole cañon bottom into alfalfa; and that’s worth money in this country, now I’m tellin’ yuh.

“Yuh see, Johnnywater’s different from most of these cañons. It’s wider and bigger every way, and it’s got more water. A man could hang on to his cattle, and by kinda pettin’ ’em along through the winter, and herdin’ ’em away from the loco patches in the spring, he could make this a good payin’ investment. That’s what I reckoned this Mr. Connolly aimed to do.”

“Pat Connolly bought this place,” said Gary shortly, “because it sounded nice in the ad. It was a nut idea from the start. I’m here to try and fish the five thousand up out of the hole.”

“Well, I reckon maybe that same ad would sound good to somebody else,” Monty ventured.

But Gary shook his head. Since Patricia made up her mailing lists from the newspapers, Gary emphatically did not want to advertise.

They ended by cooking late dinner together, frying six fresh eggs which Gary discovered in the little dugout chicken house. After which Monty Girard unloaded what supplies Gary had brought, smoked a farewell cigarette and drove away to his own camp twenty miles farther on.

“It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” Gary observed tritely. “I might get a kick out of this, if Pat hadn’t been so darned fresh about the movies, and so gol-darned stubborn about me camping here and doing the long-haired hick act for the rest of my life.”

He went away then to hunt for the chicken feed; found it in another dugout cellar, and fed the chickens that came running hysterically out of the bushes when Gary rattled the pan and called them as he had seen gingham-gowned ingénues do in rural scenes.

“Golly grandma! If I could catch a young duck now, and cuddle it up under my dimpled chin, I’d make a swell Mary Pickford close-up,” he chuckled to himself. “Down on the farm, by gum! ‘Left the town to have some fun, and I’m a goin’ to have some, yes, by gum!’ Pat Connolly’s going to do some plain and fancy knuckling under, to pay for this stunt. Gosh, and there’s the cat!”

CHAPTER SEVEN
THE VOICE

Gary got up from his chair three separate times to remove the lamp chimney (using a white cambric handkerchief to protect his manicured fingers from blisters). In the beginning, the flame had flourished two sharp points that smoked the chimney. After the third clipping it had three, and one of them was like a signal smoke in miniature.

Gary eyed it disgustedly while he filled his pipe. Smoking a pipe while he dreamed in the fire glow had made so popular a close-up of Gary Marshall that he had used the pose in his professional photographs and had, to date, autographed and mailed sixty-seven of the firelight profiles to sixty-seven eager fans. Nevertheless, he forgot that he had a profile now.

“Hunh! Pat ought to get a real kick out of this scene,” he snorted. “Interior cabin—sitting alone—lifts head, listens. Sub-title: THE MOURNFUL HOWL OF THE COYOTE COMES TO HIM MINGLED WITH THE SOUND OF HORSES CHAMPING HAY. Only there ain’t no horses, and if there were they wouldn’t champ. Only steeds do that—in hifalutin’, gol-darned poetry. Pat ought to take a whirl at this Johnnywater stuff, herself. About twenty-four hours of it. It might make a different girl of her. Give her some sense, maybe.”

Slowly his pessimistic glance went around the meager rectangle of the cabin. Think of a man holding up here for two years! “No wonder he went out of here a nut,” was Gary’s brief summary. “And it’s my opinion the man’s judgment had begun to skid when he bought the place. Good Lord! Why, he’d probably seen it before he paid down the money! He was a tough bird, if you ask me, to hang on for two years.”

Gary’s pipe, on its way to his lips that had just blown out a small, billowy cloud of smoke, stopped halfway and was held there motionless. His whole face stilled as his mind concentrated upon a sound.

“That’s no coyote,” he muttered, and listened again.

He got up and opened the door, leaning out into the starlight, one hand pressed against the rough-hewn logs of cedar. He listened again, turning his head slightly to determine the location of the sound.

A wind from the west, flowing over the towering butte, shivered the tops of the piñons. A gust it was, that died as it had been born, suddenly. As it lessened Gary heard distinctly a far-off, faint halloo.

“Hello!” he called back, stepping down upon the flat rock that formed the doorstep. “What’s wanted? Hello!”

“’ll-oo-ooh!” cried the voice, from somewhere beyond the creek.

“Hello!” shouted Gary, megaphoning with his cupped palms. Some one was lost, probably, and had seen the light in the cabin.

Again the voice replied. It seemed to Gary that the man was shouting some message; but distance blurred the words so that only the cadence of the voice reached his ears.

Gary cupped his hands again and replied. He went down to the little creek and stood there listening, shouting now and then encouragement to the man on the bluff. He must be on the bluff, or at least far up its precipitous slope; for beyond the stream the trees gave way to bowlders, and above the bowlders rough outcroppings in ledge formation made steep scrambling. The top of the bluff was guarded by a huge rampart of solid rock; a “rim-rock” formation common throughout the desert States.

Gary tried to visualize that sheer wall of rock as he had seen it before dark. Without giving it much thought at the time, he somehow took it for granted that the cañon wall on that side was absolutely impassable. Still, there might be a trail to the top through some crevice invisible from below.

“Gosh, if a fellow’s hurt up there, I’ll have a merry heck of a time getting him down in the dark!” Gary told the mottled cat with one blue eye, that rubbed against his ankle. “There ought to be a lantern hanging somewhere. Never saw an interior cabin set in my life where a tin lantern didn’t register.”

He found the lantern, but it had no wick. Gary spent a profane fifteen minutes holding the smoky lamp in one hand and searching a high, littered shelf with the other, looking for lantern wicks. That he actually found one at last, tucked into a tomato can among some bolts and nails, seemed little short of a miracle. He had to rob the lamp of oil, because he did not know where Waddell kept his supply. Then the wick was a shade too wide, and Gary was obliged to force it through the burner with the point of his knife. When he finally got the lantern burning it was more distressingly horned than the lamp, and the globe immediately began an eclipse on one side. But Gary only swore and wiped his smeared fingers down his trousers, man-fashion.

Almost constantly the voice had called to him from the bluff. Gary went out and shouted that he was coming, and crossed the creek, the mottled cat at his heels. Gary had never been friendly toward cats, by the way; but isolation makes strange companions sometimes between animals and men, and Gary had already made friends with this one. He even waited, holding the lantern while the cat jumped the creek, forgetting it could see in the dark.

He made his way through the bushy growth beyond the stream, and scrambled upon a huge bowlder, from where he could see the face of the bluff. He stood there listening, straining his eyes into the dark.

The voice called to him twice. A wailing, anxious tone that carried a weight of trouble.

Gary once more megaphoned that he was coming, and began to climb the bluff, the smoking lantern swinging in his hands (a mere pin-prick of light in the surrounding darkness), the mottled cat following him in a series of leaps and quick rushes.

The lamp had gone out when Gary returned to the cabin. The lantern was still smoking vilely, with fumes of gas. Gary put the lantern on the table and sat down, wiping his face and neck with his handkerchief. The mottled cat crouched and sprang to his knee, where it dug claws to hang on and began purring immediately.

For an hour Gary had not heard the voice, and he was worried. Some one must be hurt, up there in the rocks. But until daylight came to his assistance Gary was absolutely helpless. He looked at his watch and saw that he had been stumbling over rocks and climbing between bowlders until nearly midnight. He had shouted, too, until his throat ached.

The man had answered, but Gary had never been able to distinguish any words. Always there had been that wailing note of pain, with now and then a muffled shriek at the end of the call. High up somewhere on the bluff he was, but Gary had never seemed able to come very close. There were too many ledges intervening. And at last the voice had grown fainter, until finally it ceased altogether.

“We’ll have to get out at daylight and hunt him up,” he said to the cat. “I can’t feature this mountain goat stuff in the dark. But nobody could sit still and listen to that guy hollering for help. It’ll be a heck of a note if he’s broken a leg or something. That’s about what happened—simplest thing in the world to break legs in that rock pile.”

He stroked the cat absent-mindedly, holding himself motionless now and then while he listened. After awhile he put the cat down and went to bed, his thoughts clinging to the man who had called down from the bluff.

CHAPTER EIGHT
“THE CAT’S GOT ’EM TOO!”

Monty Girard did not return on the second day. A full week dragged itself minute by minute across Johnnywater; days began suddenly with a spurt of color over the eastern rim of the cañon, snailed it across the blue space above and after an interminable period ended in a red riot beyond the western rim, letting night flow into the cañon.

The first day went quickly enough. At sunrise Gary and the spotted cat searched the bluff where the voice had called beseechingly in the night. Gary carried a two-quart canteen filled with water, knowing that a man who has lain injured all night will have a maddening thirst by morning.

At noon he sat on a bowlder just under the rim rock, helped himself to a long drink from the canteen and stared disheartened down into the cañon. He was hoarse from shouting, but not so much as a whisper had he got in reply. The spotted cat had given up in disgust long ago and gone off on business of her own. He was willing to swear that he had covered every foot of that hillside, and probably he had, very nearly. And he had found no trace of any man, living or dead.

He slid off the bowlder and went picking his way down the steep bluff to the cabin. A humane impulse had sent him out as soon as he opened his eyes that morning. He was half-starved and more nearly exhausted than he had ever been after a hard day’s work doing “stunts” for the movies.

Now and then he looked up the cañon to where Pat’s alfalfa field lay, a sumptuous patch of deep green, like an emerald set deep in some dull metal. Nearer the cabin were the rows of potato plants which Monty had mentioned. There was a corral, too, just beyond a clump of trees behind the cabin. And from the head of the cañon to the mouth he could glimpse here and there the twisted thread of Johnnywater Creek.

By the time he had cooked and eaten breakfast and lunch together, and had fed the chickens, and located the whereabouts of two pigs whose grunting came to him from the bushes, the afternoon was well gone. And, on the whole, it had not gone so badly; except that he rather resented his fruitless search for a man who had shouted in the night and then disappeared.

“Drunk, maybe,” Gary finally dismissed the subject from his mind. “He sure as heck couldn’t be hurt so bad, if he was able to get out of the cañon in the dark. It’ll be something to tell about when I get back. I’ll ask Monty what he thinks about it, to-morrow.”

But he didn’t ask Monty. He rather expected that Monty would be along rather early in the forenoon, and he was ready by nine o’clock. He had filled the feed box for the chickens, had given the cat a farewell talk, and locked his pyjamas into his suit case. The rest of the day he spent in waiting.

One bit of movie training helped him now. By the time an actor has reached stardom, he knows how to sit and wait; doing nothing, thinking nothing in particular, gossiping a little, perhaps, but waiting always. Gary had many a time sat around killing time for hours at a stretch, that he might work for fifteen minutes on a scene. Waiting for Monty, then, was not such a hardship that second day.

But when the third day and the fourth and the fifth had gone, Gary began to register impatience and concern. He walked down the cañon and out upon the trail as far as was practical, half hoping that he might see some chance traveler. But the whole world seemed to be empty and waiting, with a still patience that placed no limit upon its quiescent expectancy.

Steeped in that desert magic which makes beautiful all distances, the big land shamed him somehow and sent him back into the cañon in a better frame of mind. Any trivial thing could have delayed Monty Girard. It was slightly comforting to know that the big world out there was smiling under the sky.

He was sitting at supper just after sundown that evening when a strange thing happened. The spotted cat—Gary by this time was calling her Faith because of her trustful disposition—was squatted on all fours beside the table, industriously lapping a saucer of condensed milk. For the want of more human companionship, Gary was joking with the cat, which responded now and then with a slight wave of her tail.

“You’re the only thing I like about the whole darn outfit,” Gary was saying. “I don’t remember your being mentioned in the deed, so I think I’ll just swipe you when I go. As a souvenir. Only I don’t know what the heck I’ll do with you—give you to Pat, I reckon.”

Faith looked up with an amiable mew, but she did not look at Gary. Had a person been standing near the foot of the bunk six feet or so away, she would have been looking up into his face. She went back to lapping her milk, but Gary eyed her curiously. There was something odd about that look and that friendly little remark of hers, but for the life of him he could not explain just what was wrong.

Once again, while Gary watched her, the cat looked up at that invisible point the height of a man from the floor. She finished her milk, licked her lips satisfiedly and got up. She glanced at Gary, glanced again toward the bunk, arched her back, walked deliberately over and curved her body against nothing at all, purring her contented best.

Gary watched her with a contraction of the scalp on the back of his head. Faith stood there for a moment rubbing her side against empty air, looked up inquiringly, came over and jumped upon Gary’s knee. There she tucked her feet under her, folded her tail close to her curiously mottled fur and settled herself for a good, purry little nap. Now and then she opened her eyes to look toward the bunk, her manner indifferent.

“The cat’s got ’em, too,” Gary told himself—but it is significant that he did not speak the words aloud as he had been doing those five days, just to combat the awful stillness of the cañon.

He stared intently toward the place where the cat had stood arching her body and purring. There was nothing there, so far as Gary could see. But slowly, as he stared toward the place, a mental picture formed in his mind.

He pictured to himself a man whom he had never seen; a tall, lean man with shoulders slightly stooped and a face seamed by rough weather and hard living more than with the years he had lived. The man was, Gary guessed, in his late forties. His eyes were a keen blue, his mouth thin-lipped and firm. Gary felt that if he removed the stained gray hat he wore, he would reveal a small bald spot on the crown of his head. Over one eye was a jagged scar. Another puckered the skin on his left cheek bone. He was dressed in gray flannel shirt and khaki overalls tucked into high, laced boots.

Gary visualized him as being the man who had built this cabin. He thought that he was picturing Waddell, and it occurred to him that Waddell might have been mining a little in Johnnywater Cañon. The man he was mentally visualizing seemed to be of the type of miner who goes prospecting through the desert. And Johnnywater Cañon certainly held mineral possibilities, if one were to judge by the rock formation and the general look of the cañon walls.

Gary himself had once known something about minerals, his dad having sent him to take a course in mineralogy at Denver with a view to making of his son a respectable mining engineer. Gary had spent two years in the school and almost two years doing field work for practice, and had shown a certain aptitude for the profession. But Mills, the motion-picture director, had taken a company into Arizona where Gary was making a report on the minerals of a certain district, and Gary had been weaned away from mines. Now, he was so saturated in studio ideals and atmosphere that he had almost forgotten he had ever owned another ambition than to become a star with a company of his own.

Well, this man then—the man about whom he found himself thinking so intently—must have found something here in the cañon. He did not know why he believed it, but he began to think that Waddell had found gold; though it was not, properly speaking, a gold country. But Gary remembered to have noticed a few pieces of porphyry float on the bluff the morning that he had spent in looking for the man who shouted in the night. The float might easily be gold-bearing. Gary had not examined it, since he had been absorbed in another matter. It is only the novice who becomes excited and builds air castles over a piece of float.

Gary turned his head abruptly and looked back, exactly as he would have done had a man approached and stood at his shoulder. He was conscious of a slight feeling of surprise that the man of whom he was thinking did not stand there beside him.

“I’ll be getting ’em too, if I don’t look out,” he snorted, and dumped the mottled cat unceremoniously on the floor.

It has been said by many that thoughts are things. Certainly Gary’s thoughts that evening seemed live things. While he was washing the dishes and sweeping the cabin floor, he more than once glanced up, expecting to see the man who looked like a miner. The picture he had conjured seemed a living personality, unseen, unheard, but nevertheless present there in the cabin.

Gary was an essentially practical young man, not much given to fanciful imaginings. He did not believe in anything to which one may permissibly attach the word psychic. Imagination of a sort he had possessed since he was a youngster, and stories he could weave with more or less originality. He did not, therefore, run amuck in a maze of futile conjecturing. He believed in hunches, and there his belief stopped short, satisfied to omit explanations.

That night fell pitch black, with inky clouds pushing out over the rim rock and a wind from the west that bellowed across the cañon and whipped the branches of the pines near the cabin. Above the clouds played the lightning, the glare of it seeping through between the folds and darting across small open spaces.

Gary sat in the doorway watching the clouds with the lightning darting through. True to his type and later training, he was thinking what a wonderful storm scene it would make in a picture. And then, without warning, he heard a voice shouting a loud halloo from the bluff. Again it called, and ended with a wail of pain.

Gary started. He turned his face to the cañon side and listened, deep lines between his eyebrows. It was almost a week since he had heard the call, and it did not seem natural that the man should be shouting again from the same point on the bluff. He had been so sure that the fellow, whoever he was, had left the cañon that first night. It was absolutely illogical that he should return without coming near the cabin.

Gary got up and stood irresolute in the doorway. The voice was insistent, calling again and again a summons difficult to resist.

“Hello-oo-ooh! Hello-oo-ooh!” called the voice.

Gary cupped his hands around his mouth to reply, then hesitated and dropped them to his side. He turned to go in for the lantern and abandoned that idea also. On that first night he had answered repeatedly the call and had searched gropingly amongst the bowlders and ledges. His trouble had gone for nothing, and Gary could think of but one reason why he had failed to find the man: he believed the man had not wanted to be found, although there was no sense in that either. The stubborn streak in Gary dominated his actions now. He meant to find the fellow and have it out with him. He remembered Monty’s remark about Waddell imagining he heard things, and selling out in a hurry, his nerves gone to pieces. Probably the man up on the bluff could explain why Waddell left Johnnywater!

Gary crossed the creek during spurts of lightning, and made his way cautiously up the bluff. After spending a long forenoon there he knew his way fairly well and could negotiate ledges that had stopped him that first night. He went carefully, making himself as inconspicuous as possible. The voice kept shouting, with now and then a high note that almost amounted to a shriek.

The storm broke, and Gary was drenched to the skin within five minutes. Flashes of lightning blinded him. He stumbled back down the bluff and reached the cabin, the storm beating upon him furiously. As he closed the door, the voice on the bluff shrieked at him, and Gary thought there was a mocking note in the call.

CHAPTER NINE
GARY WRITES A LETTER

“Johnnywater Cañon.

“Dear Pat:

“I take it all back. There’s a new model of cow called Walking X, that don’t need grass. It has a special food-saving device somewhere in its anatomy, which enables it to subsist on mountain scenery, sagebrush and hopes. I haven’t discovered yet whether the late model of Walking X chews a cud or merely rolls a rock under its tongue to prevent thirst. I’m guessing it’s the rock. There’s darned little material for cuds in the country. If I were going to stay here and make you a cattle queen, I should ask you to get prices on gum in carload lots.

“Yesterday I was hiking out on the desert—for exercise, my dear girl. Can’t afford to grow flabby muscled as well as flabby souled. Souls don’t register on the screen anyway—but it takes muscle to throw the big heavy around in the blood-curdling scrap which occurs usually in the fourth reel. Besides, I’m going to throw a fellow down the bluff—when I get him located. Don’t know how big he is, as I haven’t met the gentleman yet. It’s a cinch he hasn’t got lung trouble though; he’s the longest-winded cuss I ever heard holler.

“He’s been trying to get fresh with me ever since I came. Picks wild, stormy nights when a man wants to stay indoors and then gets up on the bluff and hollers for help. First couple of nights I heard him, I bit. But I don’t fall for that hokum any more. A man that can holler the way he does and come back strong the next night don’t need any assistance from me.