The She Boss Part 37

CHAPTER x.x.xII

LUCY PLANS A COUNTER-ATTACK

One who has never lived in a frontier camp such as Ragtown may find it difficult to a.n.a.lyze the characters of Lucy Dalles and Albert Drummond.

Less than a year before Ragtown had sprung up overnight, both had been ordinarily respectable American citizens. Lucy's crowning fault had been the l.u.s.t for wealth. Added to this now was the fierce determination to realize her ambition, coupled with the complete breakdown of the moral fabric of her soul. She had been flirtatious and pleasure-loving in San Francisco, but perhaps not really bad at heart.

Drummond had been as decent as millions of other young men who pa.s.s for that in good society. A bit wild, but a man who dealt squarely with others sportsmanlike, and perhaps considered perfectly honest by himself and all who knew him.

But all this the frontier town had changed. That little semidormant spark of wickedness and criminality which is perhaps in every mother's son and daughter of us had been fanned to a flame by the lawlessness of Ragtown. The feverish night life, the c.h.i.n.k of gold on gambling tables that were seldom unoccupied, the continual drinking of intoxicants, the doping and robbing of stiffs, which was practiced with studied, businesslike regularity, the brawls and shooting sc.r.a.pes--all these had worked their insidious spell upon mentalities not forfeited by careful early training and bed-rock character.

Drummond and Lucy Dalles were dangerous conspirators now, and took a certain pride in the knowledge of it. They not only schemed for great rewards, but for the love of it. l.u.s.t for wealth and for revenge, the thrill of the dangerous and underhanded game they played, contempt for those whose moral fabric was too strongly woven to break under the strain of Ragtown, a certain vague satisfaction in their newly discovered rascality--all these spurred them on to make the most of their opportunities. One step in the direction they had taken leads so easily to another, that now they had reached a point in their moral lapse where they would stop at nothing--not even the taking of life--to win that on which they had set their hearts.

From a night spent at poker, Al Drummond, weary and half dead for sleep, reeled from the Dugout early on the morning when Hiram Hooker set out to find the crazy prospector, Basil Filer. As he slouched along the street in the cold he heard the jingling of bells and the rumbling of heavy wagons; and presently the freight outfit of Jerkline Jo rolled past, the girl and her skinners, bundled to the ears and slapping their hands against their ribs for warmth.

Drummond gave them a contemptuous glance for their honest and difficult endeavor, then took note that his old enemy, the man from Wild-cat Hill, was missing. He wondered about this, but gave it little thought until it dawned upon him that Jo's beautiful black saddle mare, which usually followed behind the wagon train with doglike loyalty, was absent too. He stopped short then and found that he was thinking of the old prospector, whom he had seen for the second time the day before.

He was worried. Could it be possible that Jo and Hiram had got wind of the mystery? For all he knew, they might have met the old man somewhere on the desert and learned his secret. It was such a usual thing to see Hiram behind his ten black freighters on every trip in or out that the conspirator could not down suspicion.

All that day he worried over it, but did not mention it to Lucy.

Coming from another night of poker the following morning, having seen nothing of Hiram Hooker in the meantime, he decided to look into the matter as best he could.

He would get his car and drive up the line a way, toward the camp where he had seen Filer two days before. He could readily learn at intervening camps whether or not Hiram had ridden that way on Jo's black mare.

He had no appet.i.te for breakfast, so he got out his touring car and drove away toward the north while Ragtown slept.

Men were at work in the third camp that he reached, and here a little inquiry brought forth the information that Hooker had gone the way Drummond had feared. Now he drove fast along the road that followed the right of way, pa.s.sing rapidly through camp after camp, until he was far from Ragtown.

It was not yet eight o'clock when, far ahead, he saw a black horse galloping toward him. He had just run the car out upon the smooth, dark surface of one of the desert's famous dry lakes, where almost nothing grew. The ground was level and hard as a dance floor, so he turned from the road and drove at right angles to it across the crusted soil. He drove fast, and by the time the rider reached the point in the road where Drummond first had seen him Drummond was so far away that Hiram could not recognize him or his car.

Drummond circled now and regained the road, continuing on into the north in search of what he dreaded to discover. But not many miles had been covered before he was gritting his teeth and swearing over the knowledge of his scheme's defeat. He saw rolling toward him, swinging their packs from side to side as gently as a mother rocks a cradle, six s.h.a.ggy, long-eared "desert canaries" with an old desert-colored man behind them who limped along with the aid of a cane.

Drummond drove no farther in that direction. There was no need for it.

The sight of the old man drifting toward Ragtown and Hiram galloping on ahead of him showed him plainly that the cat was out of the bag, that the two had held a conference on the desert during the night just past.

Bitter with rage, Drummond turned about and drove fiercely back in Hiram's wake. He slowed down when he began to draw near to the horse and rider, and for an hour kept his distance while he waited for Hiram to reach another dry lake that was nearer to Ragtown than the first.

When the rider ahead had reached it and was galloping across if, Drummond speeded up, reached the lake in turn, and at last was able to make a wide half circle over land where no greasewood grew to impede the course of the car.

The lake was a large one, and by driving at close to sixty miles an hour and skirting its edge, he reached the road again a mile ahead of Hiram, and sped on toward home to break the news of defeat to Lucy Dalles.

At ten o'clock he reached Ragtown, having driven recklessly.

"Somebody's spilled the beans!" was his stormy beginning. "We're gypped. Got any jacka.s.s? Gi'me the bottle. I'm a wreck!"

He dropped wearily into a chair and told of what he had discovered.

"How on earth did they get wind of it?" she asked.

Drummond threw out his hands in a gesture proclaiming ignorance and despair.

"There's one thing sure," she said thoughtfully. "He saw the paper only yesterday or last night for the first time. Else why did he ride way up there to see Filer? Jerkline Jo, then, has not yet seen it.

They've heard about it, though, and Hooker was sent out to hunt for Filer. So the first thing the big rube will do when he reaches Ragtown will be to travel over toward Julia to overtake Jo and report. He'll get another horse, maybe, or hire a machine. Tweet would be in on it, no doubt, and would take him in his car. So what we've got to do, my dear boy, is to see that Hooker doesn't get to Jo with what he's learned."

"What can we do? He probably made a copy of what's written on Filer's paper, so, even if we were to hold him up and get it away from him, old Filer still would have the dope."

"Of course. That means that we've got to fix that old dub, too."

"What d'ye mean fix him?"

The girl shrugged. "Stop the leak some way," she replied. "If we can destroy Filer's paper and the copy Hooker's got, then we'll be the only ones who know the dope. We'll have the only copy in existence, in other words; and even if we fail to get at Jerkline Jo and learn the rest of it, we can hold her to our terms. She won't be able to do a thing without knowing what her father wrote on the paper that Filer has."

"Lucy, it's a crazy business," said Drummond. "Sometimes I think it's all a pipedream of that nutty old prospector. They're all bughouse--these old desert rats."

"It's not a pipedream," Lucy stoutly maintained. "I tell you I saw the blue tattoo marks on that woman's scalp when I was beautifying her up for the ball that night. I wondered what they were. Of course, with her heavy hair covering them--growing right out of them, in fact--I couldn't make out anything but blue dots."

"And you didn't ask her about 'em?"

"Why, of course not, Al! Do you suppose a hair dresser would last very long in the business if she showed curiosity about a thing like that?

You don't know much about women. If I'd found a k.n.o.b on her nut as big as a baseball she'd never have been told that I'd seen it."

"But how in thunder has she reached her present age without knowing it's there?"

"She inadvertantly explained that; and so, when later in the day, old Filer spilled what he knew I was sure Jo had never dreamed of what she is carrying about under her hair.

"You see, she was raised like an Indian. She told me that, even when she was a little kid, she'd always been made to wash her own hair. She navely confided to me that when she came into my place it was her first time in any sort of a beauty parlor. A woman can't very well see the back of her head, can she? And she'd never be able to see the tattoo marks, even with two mirrors, with all that beautiful hair she's got. Do you know what your scalp looks like, at the back of your head, just above your ears? I guess not! You bet it's straight! And here you sit arguing about a trifle, when a rich gold claim is slipping from our fingers. Can't you--put your brain to work?"

"Well, what's to be done?"

"If that big boog starts to overtake Jerkline Jo, he's got to be stopped, and the copy taken away from him. While this is going on, Filer must be held up and the original taken from him and destroyed.

"Then when we get the copy away from Hooker and destroy Filer's original, we can throw our cards on the table and laugh at 'em. Come right out and say, 'Yes, we schemed to beat you, and we've done it.

What're you going to do about it? You've got the tattooed part, we've got the only copy of the other part. Make us an offer! Otherwise, throw us in jail, if you think you've got it on us; but before we go the paper will go up in smoke!' That'll hold 'em; and we'll demand that we are not to be prosecuted, and we'll shake down half of the haul.

"But listen, Al--we'll do that only if they beat us out up to a point where negotiations become necessary. If only we can destroy the original and Hooker's copy, we can hold Hooker a prisoner till we get at Jerkline Jo and find out what's on her head. Then we can hog it all and beat it."

"Well--well, how'll we begin? You got me beat, Lucy. You're a better schemer than I am. What's to be done first?"

"Beat it in your car to the mountains and get Tehachapi and the other roughnecks. Send Tehachapi Hank up the line to waylay Filer between camps somewhere, with instructions to get the original from him by hook or crook. Leave it to Hank.

"Meantime, Hooker gets in here and starts after Jerkline Jo. It's doubtful if the thickhead will think to memorize what's on his copy, as I have done. Even if he does think to, he won't have time to do it before you nab him. He's dense--he wouldn't learn it in a week, I'll say!"

"You and Hank's friend will waylay him, then, and get his copy, destroy it, and take Hooker into the mountains as a prisoner, with Hank's friend to guard him. Then it will be up to you and me to get Jerkline Jo as she's coming back through the mountains. Yes, I'll go along! It seems the rest of you can do nothing. Leave that Jane to me! I'll get her by a method unknown to you men!

"We'll dope her, cut off her hair, shave her scalp, and get the part of the directions for finding the gold that we lack. Then, Al, why can't you and I get the stuff, beat it, and give Hank and the other jasper the ha-ha?"