The Long Chance Part 23

The janitor's face became normal at once. He accepted the cigar and the five-dollar piece, seated himself on an upturned bucket and set himself patiently to await the moment of his liberation. He sat there grinning and blowing smoke at Bob McGraw.

At nine-thirty, Bob, judging that the deputy had had ample time in which to place his affairs in shape, decided to raise the siege. He put up his gun, unlatched the door and backed out, motioning to the janitor to accompany him. The latter obeyed with alacrity.

"Come on into the land office with me, old man" Bob invited him. "When my business is finished there I'll give you back your keys and ask you to unwrap the gentleman we just left."

They entered the land office together.

"Did that friend o' mine leave something with you for me?" Bob queried of the deputy, and flashed him a lightning wink.

"Waiting for you" responded the deputy, and handed Bob McGraw a large manila envelope. "All O. K." he added, and returned the wink.

"Sure you recorded those abandonments?" he queried. The deputy nodded.

"Then we're all O. K. on the matter of designating the basis, are we?"

Again the deputy nodded. Bob turned and handed the keys to the janitor.

"That being the case" he announced cheerfully but in a low tone of voice, "our friend, the janitor, will immediately proceed to release Mr.

T. Morgan Carey and bring him into court. Permit me to introduce myself.

I am Mr. Robert McGraw, and I have you by the short hair, you crooked little sneak. You should have looked up and down the corridor and noticed all the witnesses I had posted to observe you letting me into your office before it was officially opened. Oh, I'm not worried about what you can do now. It's only nine-thirty and I can easily prove that it is a physical impossibility for one man to do the work you've done this morning, and do it in one short half hour. You have entered fifty instruments of abandonment, so there are that number of bases open to permit of the exchange of fifty sections of lieu land, the filing receipts for which I hold in my hand. Old-timer, I dare you to attempt the job of falsifying a public record, even at the command of our esteemed old friend, T. Morgan Carey. By the way, here he is. Gracious, what a hurry we're in! Howdy, T. Morgan?"

T. Morgan Carey had fairly leaped into the room.

"You--you scoundrel!" he cried, and shook his fist at Bob McGraw. "I'll get you for this" he said in low trembling tones, "if it takes my last dollar."

"No, you won't" retorted the smiling Bob, "at least, not after you've had a heart-to-heart talk with your obliging friend here. I've waited here to square him with you, Carey. He isn't to blame. I just bluffed him out of his boots. You mustn't be hard on him, T. Morgan. You know how easily I bluffed you. Be reasonable. Charity covers a mult.i.tude of sins, and there's a lot of land still left in the lower part of Owens Valley, although my friends have had their pick of it. There's your little old bag with your applications still untouched, although I will admit that I was mean enough to help you file some of those instruments of abandonment from your dummy entrymen. I must hurry along now. Thank you so much--"

The janitor entered. In his hand he held Mr. McGraw's suspenders.

"You might need these" he interrupted, "more particular if you're goin'

to do any runnin', an' I'll bet you are."

"Thank you" murmured Mr. McGraw. "You're very thoughtful," and quite calmly he proceeded to remove his coat and vest and replace the suspenders. When he was once more arrayed for the street he thrust his sun-tanned hand through the grilled window to the trembling deputy; he smiled his gay lazy whimsical inscrutable smile.

"_Buenos dias,_ amigo" he said; and so astounded was the unhappy deputy that he actually accepted the proffered hand and shook it limply.

"You scoundrel!" hissed T. Morgan Carey, "you--" and then he applied to Bob the unpardonable epithet.

The devil leaped to life in Bob McGraw. His right arm shot out, his open palm landed with a resounding thwack on the side of Carey's head. As the land-grabber lurched from the impact of that terrific slap, McGraw's left palm straightened him up on the other ear, and he subsided incontinently into a corner.

But his natural l.u.s.t for a fight had now reached high-water mark in Bob McGraw's soul. He whirled, reached that terrible right arm through the window and grasped the deputy by the collar. Right over the counter, through the window, he snaked him, landing him in a heap on the floor outside. He jerked the frightened official to his feet, cuffed him across the room and back again to the window.

"That," he said, "for your broken oath of office, and that! for your cheap office rule that has no foundation in law but serves to frighten away the weaklings that want to file on lieu land. I must designate the basis, must I? All right, you little crook. Watch me designate it."

He landed a remarkably accurate kick under the official coat-tails, picked the deputy up bodily and hurled him in a heap in the same corner where T. Morgan Carey sprawled, blinking (for his gla.s.ses had been shaken off in the melee) and weeping with fear and impotent rage.

For a moment Bob towered above them like a great avenging red angel.

Then his anger left him as suddenly as it had come. Carey and the deputy presented such a pitiable sight, although ludicrous withal, that he was moved to shame to think that he had pitted his strength against such puny adversaries. He picked T. Morgan Carey out of the corner, set him on his feet, dusted him off, gave him his hat and restored to him his gold pince-nez. The deputy needed no aid from Bob McGraw, but hastened to the protection of his sanctuary back of the counter. Bob stood looking at Carey, smiling his old bantering debonair smile. He waited until Carey had recovered his composure.

"Carey," he said, "you will remember hereafter, I trust, that it is the early bird that gets the worm, that promptness is a virtue and lying in bed mornings a heinous crime. Now, the next time you run up against a Reuben like me you want to remember the old saying that a stump-tailed yellow dog is always the best for c.o.o.ns. An easy conscience is to be preferred to great riches, Carey. Be honest and you will stay out of jail. Before I go, permit me to introduce myself. I'm Bob McGraw, of No Place In Particular, and a lunatic by nature, breed and inclination. Mr.

Man-who-flies-through-the-window, here are duplicate copies of my power of attorney from my fifty clients, authorizing and instructing the surveyor-general to transact all of his official business with them through me. Before I go I want to say that as a usual thing I try to be a gentleman; which, fact induces the utmost regret that I was forced to gag you and truss you up in that filthy little room. If I hurt you physically then I am sorry. I tried to do the unpleasant job gently.

However, this is no parlor game that you and I are playing, and desperate circ.u.mstances sometimes necessitate desperate measures. As for the blows I struck you--that is too bad, because you're old enough to be my father, but you displayed excessively bad taste in your choice of expletive. Even then I merely slapped you. But I'm sorry it had to come to that."

He paused and gazed calmly about him for a moment.

"I guess that's all" he added innocently. "Good morning."

With a chuckle that mingled triumph, deviltry and the sheer joy of living, Mr. McGraw picked up his suit-case, backed to the door, opened it and fled along the corridor. On the driveway in front of the capitol he saw an automobile standing, throbbing. He ran to it and leaped into the tonneau.

"This is Carey's car, isn't it?" he demanded.

The chauffeur nodded. He would have saluted any one not so distinctly rural as Bob McGraw.

"You're to take me over to Stockton right away. Turn her wide open and fly. Great Scott, we're all in a hurry this morning. Git! _Vamoose,_ and scorch the gravel."

Now, it is a curious psychological fact that when a robust authoritative-looking man gives an order with the air of one used to commanding, ninety-nine per cent of the people to whom he gives his orders will hasten to obey without pausing to question his authority.

The chauffeur threw in his clutch and the car glided away, while Bob McGraw, glancing back, saw T. Morgan Carey and a uniformed, watchman das.h.i.+ng down the capitol steps.

They were too late. T. Morgan Carey shouted to his chauffeur, but it was not a day of silent motors, and legislation affecting m.u.f.fler cut-outs was still in the dim and distant Not-Yet.

The car sped out of the capitol grounds and away into the heart of the city. Presently the houses grew more scattered, the traffic dwindled and the car leaped forward at a forty-mile-an-hour clip. They swung down a wide road that stretched south into the sunny San Joaquin, and the mellow piping of meadow larks and linnets came pleasantly in Mr.

McGraw's ears; the pungent aroma of tar-weed, the thousand and one little smells of the wide free s.p.a.ces that he loved floated across to him from the fields on each side of the road, as he sat erect in the tonneau and sniffed the air of freedom.

He had had his fill of cities and he was glad to leave them behind.

CHAPTER XIII

The second event in Donna Corblay's life was about to be consummated.

For the first time since her arrival in San Pasqual, a babe in arms, she was about to leave it!

All of her uneventful colorless mediocre life Donna had felt a pa.s.sionate longing to go up into the country on the other side of the range. To her, the long strings of pa.s.senger coaches came to San Pasqual as the heralds of another world--poignant pulsations of the greater life beyond the sky-line, and not as the tools of a whimsical circ.u.mstance, bringing to Donna a daily consignment of hats. From earliest childhood she had watched the trains disappearing into Tehachapi Pa.s.s, tracing their progress northward long after they had disappeared by the smoke wafted over the crest of the bare volcanic range; until with the pa.s.sage of many trains and many years the desire to see what lay beyond that grim barrier had developed into an obsession. Because of the purple distances that mocked her, the land of suns.h.i.+ne, fruit and flowers was doubly alluring; her desire was as that of a soul that dwells in limbo and longs for the smile of G.o.d.

And to-day she was going out into the world, for this was her wedding day. She had received Bob's telegram, asking her to meet him in Bakersfield, and she was going to meet him; alternately she laughed and wept, for the transcendent joy of two Events in one short day had filled her heart to overflowing, leaving no room for vague forebodings of the future.

Donna dressed herself that morning with painstaking detail. Too late she had discovered that she didn't possess a dress fit to wear at any one's wedding, not to mention her own. From time to time she had dreamed of a swagger tailored suit, but the paradox of a swagger tailored suit in San Pasqual had been so apparent always that Donna could not bring herself to the point of submitting to a measurement in the local dry-goods emporium, having the suit made in Chicago and sent out by express.

Instead she had resolutely stuck to wash-dresses, which were more suited to the climate and environs of San Pasqual, and added the tailored suit money to her sinking fund in the strong box of the eating-house safe.

No, Donna was not prepared to obey Bob McGraw's summons. She wept a little as she reflected how provincial and plebeian she must appear, stepping down from the train at Bakersfield, clad in a white duck walking suit, white shoes and stockings and a white sailor hat. She wanted Bob to be proud of her, and her heart swelled to bursting at the thought that she must deny him such a simple pleasure. Poor Donna! Once she had thought that suit so beautiful. It was a drummer's sample which she had purchased from a commercial traveler who, claiming to own his own samples, had been prevailed upon to accept a price for the suit when at length he became convinced that under no circ.u.mstances would Donna permit him to make her a present of it. He had informed her at the time that it was the very latest Parisian creation and she had believed him.

If Donna had only known how ravis.h.i.+ng that simple costume made her appear and what a vision she would be to the hungry eyes of Bob McGraw!

Yet, she was ashamed to let even the San Pasqualians see her leaving town in such a dowdy costume, and as she walked up the tracks from the Hat Ranch that momentous morning, bearing aloft a parasol that but the day before had been the joy of her girlish existence, she was fully convinced that a more commonplace addendum to a feminine wardrobe had never been devised.

She was certain that all San Pasqual must know her secret--that this was her wedding day. She shuddered lest the telegraph operator had suspected something, despite Bob's commendable caution, and had incited the townspeople to line up at the depot, there to shower her with rice and hurl antiquated footgear after the train that bore her north. Such horrible rites were preserved and enacted with religious exact.i.tude in San Pasqual.

Until that morning Donna never had really known how ardently she longed to escape from the sordid commonplace lonely little town. With its inhabitants she had nothing in common, although she noted a mental exception to this condition as, from afar, she observed Harley P.