Valleydale had at one time been something about which a Chamber of Commerce could wax eloquent. The mountains, covered with digger pine, chaparral, manzanita, and, lower down, with big live oaks, broke into peaceful rolling hills, then into what had once been a fertile agricultural valley.
Now, it was a mass of rocks, piled in serrated ridges where the conveyor belts of the gold dredgers had dumped them. They were rounded rocks that had been worn by ancient glaciers and rivers. They were the bones of what had at one time been huge boulders, and now they glistened in the sunlight like bleached bones in the desert. Here and there an attempt had been made to level off the ground and plant orchards. On the rolling hillsides which the dredgers hadn’t touched, the massive oaks cast dark pools of inviting shadow. The slopes were broken here and there with bits of vineyard and, in places, with the green of orchards. They gave a clue to what the country must have been at one time.
A river, flowing down from the mountains, broke through a cut near the town of Valleydale, spread out into smooth placid waters, and then ran through the ugly piles of rock tailings.
I found an auto court and registered, giving the license of the agency car and the name of Donald Lam. Later on, when it would be necessary to account for every minute of my time to the police, I didn’t want to have it appear that I’d taken an alias, or resorted to flight.
I went right to work.
The people who were left in the town hated gold-dredging with a bitter hatred. The ones who had owned the land originally had made their clean-up, taken the cash, and gone to the bigger cities. The dredgers had pumped prosperity into the town through pay rolls, machine shops, and offices, then they had worked out the ground. The machine shops had been moved. The offices stood deserted. There was an air of funereal despair about the town. Those who were left went dejectedly about their business, moving with the listless lassitude of persons who have lost their chance at winning big stakes and are plugging away simply because they can’t figure out how to quit.
No one knew what had happened to the records of the dredging company. The head office had always been somewhere else. The books were gone, the machinery was gone, and the employees were gone.
I made inquiries to find whether some of the old employees were still in the country. A man who kept a dry-goods store told me he thought an old hermit bachelor named Pete Something-or-Other had worked on the original dredgers and on the drills when the ground was prospected. He didn’t know Pete’s last name, and didn’t know exactly where he lived, but he had a shack about a mile down the river. There was a little strip of land the dredgers hadn’t got. Pete lived on it. He came into town once in a while for supplies. He paid cash and wasn’t sociable. No one seemed to know exactly how he lived.
I learned that a new company was planning to use some sort of a new invention to put the rocks underneath and bring the soil back on top. Old-timers said that even if the soil were put back on top, it would be years before it could grow anything. Others were of the opinion that scientific fertilization would have it producing crops in no time. None of them tried to marshal facts and reach an intelligent, impartial opinion from those facts. They advanced an opinion first, then selected illustrations, gossip, and garbled rumor to support that opinion. Anything which didn’t support it was ignored entirely. I figured there wasn’t much chance of finding out anything from them.
It was getting dark when I found Pete’s shack. It had at one time been the operating house on a gold dredger, with windows all around it. About half of the windows were covered with tin which Pete had flattened out from old five gallon coal-oil cans and nailed over the openings.
Pete was somewhere in the late sixties. He was big-boned and didn’t carry much flesh. There was no sag to him anywhere. His last name was Digger.
“What do you want?” he asked, indicating a homemade bench by a dilapidated stove which had been salvaged from a junk pile. There was a fire going in the stove, and a pot of beans simmering.
“I’m trying to get some of the old history of the place,” I said.
“What you want it for?”
“I’m a writer.”
“What you writing?”
“A history of gold dredging.”
Pete took the pipestem from his mouth and jerked it over his shoulder in the general direction of Valleydale. “They can tell you all about it.”
“They seem rather prejudiced,” I said.
Pete chuckled. It was a dry chuckle that was packed with philosophic amusement. “Helluva bunch,” he admitted.
I looked around the cabin. “This is a mighty cosy little place.”
“Suits me all right.”
“How did it happen the dredgers didn’t chew it up?”
“They had to leave it to keep the river out of the ground they were working. They intended to swing around and build a levee with tailings so they could come back to it later on. It didn’t work out that way.”
“How big a strip is it?”
“Oh, maybe half a mile long by a couple of hundred yards wide.”
“It’s nice-looking country. Was it all like this before the dredgers came?”
“Nope. This was wasteland. It had been worked by hand. The old tailing piles left by the Chinks are still here. They weren’t big piles, just four or five feet — there was some pretty good land here before the dredgers started farther up the valley.”
“This strip looks nice to me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I saw some rabbits on it as I drove in.”
“Quite a few rabbits. I get a meal from ’em once in a while.” He jerked his head to indicate a rusted twenty-two calibre rifle which hung on the wall. “She doesn’t look like much outside, but she’s smooth as a mirror inside.”
“Who owns the land?”
His eyes glittered. “I do.”
“Makes it nice,” I said. “It’s better living this way than in town.”
“It is for a fact. The town’s dead. This place is all right. How’d you happen to find it?”
“Someone in town told me you were down here and could tell me something about the gold-dredging.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Oh, just general facts.”
Pete jerked his pipestem in the general direction of Valleydale again. “Those folks make me sick. I’ve seen the whole damned business from the start. The land around here was pretty good. In the old horse-and-buggy days it was just a jerkwater country town — then someone started promotin’ gold-dredgin’. Most of the inhabitants thought it wouldn’t work. They hung crape all over the idea, then when they found it would work, they went hog-wild. Real estate started goin’ up, an’ kept on goin’ up. No one would sell because they thought it was goin’ even higher. The Chamber of Commerce got busy. They kowtowed to the dredgin’ outfit, turned the whole town over to them. Everybody in town that wanted to work had a job, and then the company started importin’ men, lots of ’em. The town started boomin’. The merchants jacked prices up for all the traffic would bear. Every once in a while somebody would raise the question about what was goin’ to be left when the dredgin’ companies got done, and they’d all but tar an’ feather him an’ ride him out of town on a rail.
“Well, after a while things sort of levelled off. Then the birds that held the real estate thought it would be a good time to unload. The purchasers didn’t think so. Dredgers started cutting down on payrolls. There were homes for sale. Even then the Chamber of Commerce didn’t face the facts. They tried whistlin’ to keep their courage up. They thought a railroad was comin’ through. The town would be a big railroad centre. They were goin’ to put in rock crushers. There was a lot of hooey. Then things started goin’ downhill fast. Now, it’s like you see it today. Everybody’s cussin’ the dredgin’ company.”
“You worked for the dredging company?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When did you start working?”
“Just about the time they started dredging. I prospected this country.”
The fire blazed up a bit. The beans started bubbling until the steam raised the cover on the pot. Pete got up and shoved the beans a few inches to one side.
I said, “I’m very much interested in this.”
“A writer you say?”
“Yes. If you wanted to make a few dollars, I could spend an evening with you, picking up some local colour, and make it worth your while.”
“How much?”
“Five dollars.”
“Give me the dough.”
I gave him a five-dollar bill.
“Stay for supper?”
“I’d like to.”
“Nothin’ but beans, hot cakes, and syrup.”
“It sounds good to me.”
“You ain’t a game warden?”
“No.”
“Okay, I’ve got a couple of cold quail. Let’s get the eatin’ over with an’ we can talk later.”
“Can I help?”
“Nope. You sit still. Keep out of the way over in that corner.”
I watched him get supper and found myself envying him. The place was crude, but it was clean. Everything was shipshape, a place for everything, and nothing hanging around where it shouldn’t be. Cupboards had been made out of wooden cases which had originally held two five-gallon oil cans. These boxes had been placed one on top of the other and nailed in strips. Pete found two agate-ware plates, knives, and forks. The syrup, he explained, was homemade, half white sugar and half brown, with a little maple flavor. The hot cakes were big flapjacks cooked in a huge skillet and turned by the simple process of flop ping them over. There was no butter. The beans had lots of garlic. The gravy was thick. The quail had been broiled Pete explained, over wood coals. He said that he killed game, when it was out of season, away from the camp picked it, cleaned it, buried the skins, entrails, legs, and heads, built a little fire, broiled the game, and carried it in already cooked. He kept it in a place where “no damn snooping game warden would find it.”
“Bothered much with them?” I asked.
“There’s a guy in town that got himself appointed a deputy,” Pete said. “He comes out once in a while and looks the place over.” He gave his characteristic chuckle again, and said, “He don’t find nothin’.”
It was a nice dinner. I wanted Pete to let me help with the dishes, but he had them washed and dried while I was still arguing about it. Everything went back to its place in the boxes. Pete put the coal-oil lamp on the centre of the home-made table.
“Like cigarettes?” I asked.
“Nope. Stay with my pipe. It’s cheaper. I like it — more satisfaction in it.”
I lit a cigarette. Pete lit his pipe. It was a big hod, so thoroughly soaked with nicotine that it filled the place with a heavy odour I could all but taste. It smelled good.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“You did prospecting?”
“Yep.”
“How did you prospect? I shouldn’t think it would be possible, since the values were all under water.”
“In those days,” he said, “we had a Keystone Drill. It’s simple to prospect. You punch down a casing right through to bedrock. You lift the stuff out with a sand pump. Every thing that comes out of the sand pump goes into a tub, and you pan that out and save the colors of gold.”
“Colours?” I asked.
“Yep. It’s gold that’s been ground down by the action of rivers and glaciers until it’s in little fine flakes about as big around as a pin head and thin as a piece of paper. Sometimes it’ll take a lot of ’em to make even a cent’s worth of gold.”
“Then you must get pretty much out of each hole you drill.”
“Nope. You don’t. Those big dredgers could work ground at a profit when there was a value of only ten cents a cubic yard. That’s more than a man could have handled in a day by old methods.”
“But how could they get an accurate idea of values from that sort of prospecting?”
“Cinch,” he said. “The engineers know down to a cubic inch how much dirt had been inside the casing by the time it was punched down to bedrock. They got the gold from each hole. They weighed it out carefully, and punched down holes every so many feet.”
“And they didn’t get a great deal of gold from any one hole?”
“Nope, just colours.”
I waited a while, then said, as though thinking out loud, “It would seem easy to doctor the results on that kind of a prospect.”
He took the pipe from his mouth, looked at me a minute, clamped his lips together in a firm, straight line, and said nothing.
“This the only place you prospected?” I asked.
“Nope. After I got to know the game,” he said, “they took me all over the country. I prospected up in the Klondike where the ground was frozen so solid you had to thaw it out with steam pipes before you could get a hole down. I was down in South America prospectin’. I went all over the country — then I came back and worked on dredgers.”
“Saved your money?” I asked.
“Not a damn cent.”
“But you’re not working now?”
“Nope. I get by.”
I was silent for a while, and then Pete said, “Don’t cost me hardly anything to live. I get most of my stuff from rustling around the country. Get a sack of beans once in a while, and I got a little vegetable patch out here. Buy my smokin’ tobacco, a little sugar, an’ flour in town. Buy a little bacon an’ save the grease for cookin’. You’d be surprised how little it takes for a man to live.”
I did a little more thinking and said, “I didn’t realise I was going to have an evening in such a comfortable place. There’s only one thing lacking.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“A good shot of hooch. Suppose we take a run into town and pick up a bottle?”
He didn’t say anything for a long time, just kept looking at me. “What kinda hooch do you drink?” he asked.
“Anything, just so it’s good.”
“How much you generally pay for it?”
“Around three dollars a quart.”
He said, “Stick around here a minute. I’ll be back.”
He got up and walked outside. I could hear his steps as he walked out about twenty feet from the door. Then he stood perfectly still. After that, his steps moved again. It was moonlight outside. Through the windows which weren’t covered with tin, I could see the moon casting black shadows beneath the digger pines and oaks. In the background the white piles of tailings caught and reflected the moonlight in a cold glitter that reminded me of the desert.
After a while Pete came back in and sat down. I looked at him for a minute, then took out my wallet, and took out three one-dollar bills.
He handed me back one of the dollar bills. “I only brought a pint,” he explained.
He took a bottle from his hip pocket and put it on the table while he got glasses. He poured some into each glass, then put the bottle back in his pocket.
It had a deep amber colour. I tasted it. It wasn’t at all bad.
“Good stuff,” I said.
“Thanks,” Pete said, modestly.
We sat there and drank and smoked. Pete told me stories of old mining camps, of lost mines in the desert, of claim-jumping, of feuds, and interspersed his conversation with comments about the old gold-dredging days.
Over the second glass, with my head feeling a little woozy, I said, “There’s some talk about a new dredging company coming in.”
Pete chuckled.
“Didn’t they miss a lot of bedrock around here?” I asked.
Pete said, “The company I was working for was run by old man Darniell. Anything he missed you could put in your eye.”
“But there were some places where they couldn’t get down to bedrock?”
“Yep.”
“Quite a lot of them?”
“Yep.”
“Then why can’t they redredge this country?”
“They can.”
“And make money?”
Pete pursed his lips. “Maybe.”
“And they can turn it back into agricultural land?”
“That’s what they claim.”
“Why wouldn’t it be a good thing?”
“Maybe it would.”
“I suppose they’ve got the old records of the prospecting that you did, know just how deep the old dredgers could go, and know just where to go after the stuff they want?”
Pete leaned forward. “Damnedest crudest bunch of salting I ever saw in my life.”
“What do you mean?”
“The drilling they’re doing.”
“They’re doing drilling?” I asked.
“Sure. Down here about a mile and a half. My God, but they’re crude.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mean!” he said. “Hell, they just dump the gold in the drill pipe and then pan it back out. Every once in a while they come up with a bunch of suckers. The suckers stand gawking over the gold pan. What they don’t notice is that the drill man has to keep a hand on the rope in order to steady the bit when it’s going up and down. You watch that hand, and every so often you’ll see him dip into his pocket with one hand and take the other hand out of his pocket to steady the drill rope. Watch closer than that, and you can see little colours of gold dribbling down every time he does it — mind you, he’s pretty slick at it. He doesn’t do it so it shows up too big. He’s got it all figured out, and they don’t bring up any gold at all until they get below the place where the old dredger worked. But, brother, you take it from me, when they hit bedrock they put it in plenty rich. You can take the figures they’re getting from their holes and figure the acreage they’ve got lined up, and the mint would have to go out of business. They’d have to dig up the whole darn state of Kentucky to find a place to store the gold.”
“That must take quite a bit of gold.”
“What? To salt the hole?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “It don’t take much. They’re damn fools. They’re goin’ to get caught.”
“How many holes have they put down?”
“Three. They’re on the fourth. They’re just started.”
“Know who’s back of it?”
“Nope. Some crowd from the southern part of the state. They’re sellin’ most of their stock around there.”
“How does the town feel about it?”
“Oh, they’re divided. You’ll find croakers and boosters. The minute it begins to look as if they’re goin’ to start puttin’ up a dredger though, you’ll see the Chamber of Commerce standing on its head and wiggling its toes — only they ain’t goin’ to put in no dredger.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would show up their prospects too much. The minute a dredger works that country, it’d show that the ground had been salted. I don’t think they intend to spend no money to put up a dredger. They’re doin’ a lot of talkin’, pourin’ gold into the ground, and gettin’ it back so they can pour it into the next hole. How about fillin’ your glass again?”
I said, “No, thanks. That stuff has authority.”
“It packs a wallop. That’s what I made it for.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “I’ve got to drive the car back.”
“I don’t hit it very hard, but I like it when I’m sittin’ around talkin’ with a friend. You’re a good guy — a writer, eh?”
“Uh, huh.”
“What do you write?”
“Oh, articles about different things.”
“You don’t know much about mining, huh?”
“Not a damn thing.”
“How’d you happen to pick this to write about?”
“I thought it would go over swell — not in a mining journal, but in an agricultural journal.”
He looked at me for a while without saying anything, then he tamped the tobacco down into his pipe, and relaxed to the comfort of smoking.
After a while I told him I’d be on my way, that I’d come back later on perhaps and get some more information. I told him I’d pay him five dollars an evening. He said that was fair enough, and shook hands. “Any time you want to come back and visit,” he said, “it ain’t goin’ to cost you no five bucks. I like you. You fit in. It ain’t everybody I let sit down and visit. And it ain’t one person in a hundred that ever gets to sample any of this stuff.” He jerked his head in the direction of the glass on the table.
“I can understand that,” I said. “Well, so-long.”
“So-long.”
I drove back to the auto court. A big shiny sport coupé was parked in front of the cabin I’d rented. I took my key out of my pocket and opened the door. I heard the sound of motion in an adjoining cabin, and closed my door quickly. Then I heard feet on the graveled walk, light steps on the porch, and a knock on my door.
Well, this was it. I’d done the best I could.
I opened the door.
Alta Ashbury was standing on the threshold. “Hello,” she said.
I held the door open for her. “This,” I said, “isn’t a good place for you to be.”
“Why not?”
“Lots of reasons. For one thing, the detectives are looking for me.”
“Dad told me.”
“For another thing, if they should find us here, the newspapers could make a nice story of it.”
“You mean a love nest?”
“That’s right.”
“How thrilling!” she said, and then added after a moment, “It’ll be all right, in case you’re worried.”
“I am worried.”
“What about, your good name?”
“No, about yours.”
She said, “Dad’s coming up. He’ll reach here about midnight.”
“How’s he coming?”
“Plane.”
“How did you know I was in this camp?”
“I covered them all until I found you. There are only four, you know. I hit this second.”
“Why is your dad coming up?”
“Oh, things are getting hot.”
“What are the new developments?”
“Mr. Crumweather called me on the telephone and asked me to meet him at his office tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock.”
“Don’t go.”
“Why not?”
“I think he has the missing letters. I think he’s getting ready to twist the screws.”
“You mean that he had them all?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t believe this about the detectives selling out the district attorney?”
I shook my head and said, “Take a load off your feet. You’re here now, so you may as well enjoy yourself.”
“Donald, you’ve been drinking.”
“And how?”
“What’s the idea of the celebration?”
“I was having a session with a bootlegger.”
“I didn’t know they had them any more.”
“They’ve always had them. They always will.”
“Was he a nice bootlegger?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Was it good stuff?”
“Pretty fair.”
“Didn’t you bring any with you?”
“Just what I carried away inside of me.”
“It smells as though that had been a lot.” She came closer and sniffed. “Garlic, too.”
“Bother you?”
“Lord, no. I’m sore that you didn’t take me with you. I could have had a lot of fun calling on bootleggers and eating garlic. What was the garlic in?”
“Beans.”
She sat down on one of the creaking auto camp chairs. “Got a cigarette, Donald? I got excited when I heard you drive up, and dashed off without my purse.”
“Where is it?”
“Over in the other cabin.”
I handed her a cigarette. “Got any money in it?”
“Some.”
“How much?”
“Six or seven hundred. I don’t know exactly.”
“Better get it,” I said.
“Oh, it’s all right. Tell me, Donald, why did you come up here?”
“I’m trying to get some stuff on Crumweather.”
“Why?”
“So when he puts the screws on you, I can put the screws on him.”
“Think you can do it?”
“I don’t know. He’s pretty sharp.”
“This is where Bob’s company had its land, isn’t it?”
“Do you know anything about that?”
“Only a little that Bob’s told me.”
I looked at her. “I’m going to ask you a question and you may not want to answer.”
“Don’t do it, Donald. We’re getting along nicely. I hate to be questioned.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I like to be independent and live my own life. When people start asking me too many questions and make me answer, it makes me feel I have no privacy. I’ll answer them if I like the person who asks them, but I resent it afterwards. I’ve always been that way.”
“I’m going to ask it just the same.”
“What is it?”
“Have you given your stepbrother any money?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I suppose Dad wants to know.”
“I want to know.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Much?”
“No.”
“Money to put in his company?”
“No, not a cent. Just to keep him going and give him a chance to get started when Dad shut down on him.”
“How much?”
“Have I got to answer that?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I want you to.”
“I will if you make me, but I won’t like it afterwards.”
“How much?”
“About fifteen hundred dollars.”
“Over how long a time?”
“About two months.”
“When did you quit?”
“When he started working.”
“You haven’t given him any since?”
“No.”
“He wanted more after you shut down on him, didn’t he?”
“Yes. That made me mad. Understand, Donald, I don’t care too much for him. I think he’s an awful pill, but, after all, he’s been dragged into the family, and I have to make the most of him or else go out and live by myself.”
“Why don’t you do that?”
“Because of the awful mess of things Dad made.”
“You mean his second marriage?”
“Yes.”
“How did he get roped into that?”
“I’m darned if I know, Donald— Oh, it’s a hell of a thing to talk about.”
“Go ahead. You’ve started now.”
“Well, it was my fault.”
“How?”
“I went to the South Seas, and then down into Mexico, and then on a yachting trip.”
“Well?”
“Dad was alone. He’s a peculiar combination. He’s crusty and hard-boiled, and down underneath he’s a rank sentimentalist.
“He’d been very happy with Mother, and Dad and I always got along like nobody’s business. His home life had been very happy, and it meant a lot to him. After Mother’s death — she had an independent fortune you know — her will left it divided between Dad and me. I was — oh, I suppose I’ve got to tell you. I was mixed up in a love affair that had given me a lot of heartbreak. I’m over it now, but for a while I didn’t think I’d ever get over it, and Dad told me to go ahead. I packed up and skipped out. When I came back, he was married.”
“How did it happen?” I asked.
“How do those things always happen?” she said bitterly. “Look at her! I don’t want to talk about her, but I don’t have to. You’ve seen her. How could a ball and chain like that get anyone to fasten herself onto? There’s only one way.”
I stared at her. “You mean a sort of blackmail. Do you mean—”
“Of course not,” she said. “Figure it out for yourself. The woman is a consummate actress. Didn’t you ever wonder, Donald, why it is that so many women who have strong individual characters and are just dandy good fellows never get married, while some nagging, whining piece of feminine humanity usually gets a pretty good husband?”
“Are you going to let your back hair down and tell me secrets of sex?” I asked.
“Yes, if you have to be told,” she said with a half smile. “You’re old enough now to know the facts of life, Donald.”
“All right, tell me.”
“The people with individualities,” she said, “are just the same all the time. They won’t resort to all the little sneaky tricks of character-changing that the hypocrites will. Women of that type simply show themselves. They show themselves as they are. A man can either like them well enough to marry them or not.
“Then there’s the other type. They don’t have any personalities of their own except disagreeable personalities, and they know enough to keep those defects of character covered up. Well, Dad’s present wife found out that he was lonely, that he wanted a home, that his daughter was out traveling around the world and would probably get married. She invited him out to her home for dinners.
“Bob was swell, gave the picture of man-to-man good-fellowship, and she was nothing like the way you see her now. Dad never heard about her blood pressure until after he married her. She was just a sweet, home-loving thing who didn’t care about going out, who wanted to make a home for someone, who would stroke Dad’s forehead when he was tired and play chess with him — oh, she just adored chess—” Alta’s eyes glittered. “She hasn’t played a single game of chess with him since they were married.” She raised her voice so that it mimicked her stepmother. “ ‘Oh, I’d lo-o-ove to, Henry. I miss those games so-o-o-o much, but my poor head! It’s my blood pressure, you know. The doctor says I must have things very quiet and easy.’ ”
Suddenly she stopped and said, “There you go. You got me started. I suppose you’ve been waiting for this opportunity, figuring that some time you’d get me when I was mad enough to tell you the whole damn thing.”
“On the contrary,” I said, “I don’t care a great deal about it. I wanted to know about what financial arrangements you’d had with your brother.”
“That’s gratitude for you,” she said with a little laugh. “I bare my soul, and you say you didn’t want to hear it.”
I grinned at her. “Had anything to eat?”
“No, and I’m ravenous. I kept waiting around, thinking perhaps you’d come in.”
“I think they roll the sidewalks up in this town about eight-thirty, but we might find an all-night place on the highway somewhere.”
“Know something, Donald?”
“What?”
“That garlic breath of yours—”
“Offensive?” I asked.
She laughed and said, “You’re a nice boy, Donald, but you do drive the damnedest cars. Here, take the keys to my car and let’s go out in search of adventure.”
“When’ll your dad be here?”
“Not until midnight. You certainly have made a hit with him.”
She opened the car door and jumped inside.
I fitted the ignition key to the lock and switched on the motor. There was a smooth rush of purring power that ran as silently as a sewing machine and had as much power as a skyrocket. I put it in low and stepped on the throttle and nearly jerked our heads off. Alta laughed, and said, “This isn’t that old heap of yours, is it, Donald? You start this thing in second gear — unless you’re on a steep grade or stuck in the mud or something.”
“So I’ve found out,” I said.
We found a little Spanish place, and she ate her way down the menu. “Let’s drive around for a while in the moonlight,” she suggested when we got out.
I figured there’d be a road that would come out on the flat lands above the river. I finally found it, and we left the pavement when we were about a thousand feet above the valley, to drive out on the dirt road that led to a spur where we could look down over the country below. From that height, the tailing piles didn’t seem hard and glittering. The moonlight was soft, and the whole panorama of the valley was a part of the night, of the stars, and of those mysterious rustling noises that emanated from wild life.
I switched off the motor and the lights. She snuggled over to me. A cottontail hopped across a patch of moonlight directly in front of the car. An owl swooped down on a mouse. The shadows were dark blotches in the canyons. The ridges were splashed with vivid moonlight, and the valley below bathed in tranquil brilliance. I could feel her body close against mine, could hear the even sound of her regular breathing. I looked down at her once, thinking she was asleep, but her eyes were wide open, drinking in the scenery.
Her hand came over and took possession of mine. Her pointed fingernails traced little designs along the edges of my fingers. Once she sighed, a tremulous sigh of deep content, then suddenly she looked up and asked, “Donald, do you like this?”
By way of answer, I leaned over and brushed my lips gently against the side of her forehead.
For a moment I thought she was going to put up her lips to be kissed, but instead she snuggled closer and sat perfectly still.
After a while I said, “We’d better go, and be there in the camp when your father arrives.”
“I suppose so.”
We had driven down the curving ribbon of concrete to the outskirts of Valleydale before she said anything. Then she said simply, “Donald, I could love you forever for that.”
“What?”
“Just everything about it.”
I laughed. “I didn’t make the view,” I said.
“No,” she said, “and there’s a lot of other things you didn’t try to make. Gosh, Donald, you’re a nice kid.”
“What,” I asked, “is all this leading up to?”
“Nothing. I just wanted you to know. It wouldn’t have been the same with anyone else. Other men I know would have talked too much, or pawed too much, or made me fight. I just relaxed with you and felt that you were a part of the scenery, and it was all a part of me.”
“In other words, I’m something of a non-combatant. Is that it?”
“Donald, stop it! You know better than that.”
“I know that a man is supposed to consider it a dubious compliment when a girl says she feels perfectly safe with him.”
Her laugh was nervous. “If you knew how utterly unsafe I felt with you, it would surprise you. What I meant was that it just all fitted in — oh, why did I try to explain it? I’m no good at that stuff anyway. Can’t you drive with one hand, Donald?”
“Yes.”
She took my right hand off the steering wheel, slipped it around her shoulders, and cuddled over. I drove slowly through the deserted streets of the little city, a city of ghosts, of memories, with houses that needed paint, with shade trees catching the moonlight on polished green leaves and shimmering it back into the night, while the dark blotches of shadow below seemed to be pools of Indian ink which had been splotched on the ground with some big brush.
Henry Ashbury was waiting for us at the auto camp. He’d chartered a plane and then hired a car to take him the rest of the way.
“Beat your schedule, Dad, didn’t you?” Alta asked.
He nodded and looked us over with thoughtful eyes. He shook hands with me, kissed Alta, and then turned to look at me again. He didn’t say anything.
“Well, don’t be so serious about it,” Alta said. “I hope you’ve got some whisky in that bag of yours because this town is closed up tight. There are some saucepans in here, and I could make a nice little toddy as a nightcap.”
We all went into the double cabin where Alta had registered for herself and her father. We sat down, and Alta made some hot whisky drinks, poured them in cups, and came in and joined us.
“What have you found out?” Ashbury asked me.
“Not very much,” I said, “but enough.”
“What’s happening?”
“They’re prospecting. It seems they prospect dredging land with a drill. Because a dredge can operate at a profit in ground where there are low values per cubic yard, it doesn’t require a great deal of gold to make a good job of salting a claim— And they can use the same gold over and over.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know, just a few dollars, I should judge.”
“How heavy are they salting it?”
“Apparently pretty heavy.”
“Then what’s going to happen?”
“The promoters will milk the company dry and skip out. They’d never dare to put a dredge on it. If they did, there would be such a discrepancy in values that it would show conclusively that the ground had been salted.”
He bit the end off a cigar and smoked for a while in silence. Twice, I caught him looking over the tops of his glasses at Alta.
“Well?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The next move,” I said, “is up to you.”
“How do you figure that?”
“It all depends on what you want to do.”
“I’m going to leave things entirely in your hands. I’m satisfied you can take care of us.”
I said, “You forget that tomorrow at this time I’ll probably be in a cell somewhere charged with murder.”
Alta Ashbury gave a quick little involuntary gasp.
Her father swivelled his eyes around to look at her for a moment, then back to me.
“What do you suggest?” he asked.
“How important is it that you keep Bob out of trouble?”
“Damned important. I’m engaged in some promotional work myself with three associates. To have something come up now that would rock the boat would put me in a most embarrassing position — not financially, but — dammit, it would make people look down their noses at me. There’d be a wagging of heads every time I walked into the club. Whispered conferences would stop abruptly when I came walking into a room. The whole damn petty mechanics of character assassination carried on right under my nose where I’d have to pretend I didn’t know anything about it.”
I said, “There’s only one way you could handle the thing.”
“How’s that?”
I said thoughtfully, “We might kill two birds with one stone.”
“What’s the other bird?”
I said, “Oh, just an incidental development.”
Alta pushed her cup and saucer to one side, and leaned across the table. “Dad, look at me.”
He looked at her.
“You’re worried because you think I’ve fallen in love with Donald, aren’t you?”
He met her eyes squarely. “Yes.”
“I don’t think I have. I’m trying not to. He’s helping me, and he’s a gentleman.”
“I gathered,” Ashbury said acidly, “that you’d taken him into your confidence. You didn’t take me.”
“I know I didn’t, Dad. I should have. I’m going to tell you now.”
“Not now,” he said. “Later. Donald, what’s your idea?”
I said hotly, “I’m not trying to horn in on the Ashbury millions or thousands or hundreds or whatever the hell they are. I’ve tried to give you a square deal, a—”
His hand came over to rest on my arm. The fingers tightened until I could feel the full strength of the man’s grip. “I’m not kicking about you, Donald,” he said. “It’s Alta. Usually, men flock around her, and she makes them jump through hoops. It makes me sore the way she treats them, not sore at her, but sore at my sex for standing all that damn bossing around—” Abruptly, he turned to face Alta, and said, “And you may feel relieved to know that before I left, I told Mrs. Ashbury she could see her lawyer, arrange a settlement, go to Reno, and get a quiet divorce, and take her son with her. Now then, Donald, what’s the idea?”
I said, “The brains back of this whole business is a lawyer by the name of Crumweather. I thought I could head things off and put the screws on him. I can on one end of it. I can’t on the other. There’s been too much stock sold.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. Quite a smear. There’s going to be an awful squawk go up.”
“How about the Commissioner of Corporations?”
“Crumweather’s found a hole in the Blue Sky Act, or thinks he has.”
“Can’t we put him on the spot?”
“Not because of that. He’s too slick. He’s sitting back in the clear with a ten per cent rake-off. The officials of the company will get the jolt.”
“Well, what can we do?”
“The only thing to do,” I said, “is to find the stockholders and get them to sell their stock.”
He said, “Donald, that’s the first time I’ve known you to make an utterly asinine suggestion.”
Alta rushed to my defence. “Dad, it sounds perfectly feasible to me. Can’t you see it’s the only way?”
“Bunk,” he said, slouching down in his chair and chewing at his cigar. “The people who bought stock in that company bought it as a gamble, not as an investment, They’re looking forward to a hundred-to-one, or five-hundred-to-one, or five-thousand-to-one profit. Try to buy that stock at what they paid for it, and they’d laugh at you. Offer them ten times what they paid for it, and they’d think there’d been a strike, and you had inside information.”
I said, “I don’t think you understand what I’m driving at.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“There’s only one person who could buy it back, and that’s Crumweather.”
“How could he buy it back?”
“He could suddenly discover that all the sales had been illegal transactions, have the salesmen go around and tell the prospects that the idea wasn’t feasible, and that the Commissioner of Corporations had ordered them to return the money received from stock sales.”
“How much would it cost to do that?” he asked dryly. “I’d say about half a million dollars.”
“I think we could do it for five hundred dollars.”
“What was that figure?” he asked.
“Five hundred dollars.”
He said, “Either you’re crazy, or I am.”
“Is it worth five hundred to you?”
“It’d be worth a cool fifty thousand.”
I said, “Alta’s car’s outside. Let’s go for a ride.”
“Can I come?” Alta asked.
“I don’t think so. We’re going to call on a bachelor who’s already retired.”
“I like bachelors.”
“Come on,” I said.
We sat three in the front seat, and I drove over the rough road through the tailings until the headlights, dancing along ahead, showed the outlines of Pete Digger’s old shack.
“You sit here,” I said. “I’ll get out and see if he’s ready to receive visitors.”
I slid out of the car and started toward the house. A cracked voice from the shadows said, “Hoist ’em brother, and hoist ’em high!”
I swung around and shot my hands up in the air. The illumination of the headlights showed my features, and Pete Digger said savagely, “Might have known you was a god-darn stool pigeon— All right, go ahead and try to find it, you cheap, tin-star, two-faced hypocrite. A writer, huh? That car looks like you was a writer. If you ain’t got a warrant, get the hell out of here. If you have, serve it.”
I said, “You’ve got me wrong, Pete. I want some more information, only this time I’m going to pay more money for it.”
The answer was under his breath and reflected on my parentage.
Suddenly the door of the car swung open. Alta got out and walked straight toward the shadows. She said, “Honestly, it’s all right. Donald brought my dad and me down to talk a little business with you.”
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Alta.”
“Get over there in the light where I can get a look at you.”
She moved over beside me in the light.
Henry Ashbury said cheerfully, “I guess I’m next.” He got out and came shambling over to stand beside us.
“Who the hell are you?” Pete Digger asked.
I said, “You damn fool, he’s Santa Claus,” and put my hands down.