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  He paused and the men about the table murmured threateningly among themselves.

  “And now!” went on Blount with heavy irony, “you come here and ask for your deed!”

  “Yes, you bet I do!” snapped back Wiley, “and I’m going to get it, too. If Virginia came here and offered you that money, that’s enough, in the eyes of the law. It was a legal payment under a legal contract, entered into by this Board of Directors; and I call you gentlemen to witness that she came here and offered the money.”

  “She came to me!” corrected Blount, “and in no wise as the President of this Board!”

  “Well, you’re the man that I told her to go to–and if she offered you the money, that’s enough!”

  “Oh, it’s enough, is it? Well, it may be enough for you, but it is not enough for the citizens of this town. We have organized a committee, of which Mr. Jepson is a member, to escort you out of Vegas; and I would say further that your bond and lease has lapsed and the Company will take over the mine.”

  “We’ll discuss that later,” returned Wiley grimly, “but I’ll tell you right now that there aren’t men enough in Vegas to run me out of town–not if you call in the whole town and the Janitors’ Union–so don’t try to start anything rough. I’m a law-abiding citizen, and I know my rights, and I’m going to see this through.” He put his back to the wall and the burly Jepson took the hint to move further away. “Now,” said Wiley, “if we understand each other let’s get right down to brass tacks. It’s all very well to organize Vigilance Committees for the protection of trusting young ladies, but you know and I know that this is a matter of business, involving the title to a mine. And I’d like to say further that, when a Board of Directors talks a messenger out of her purpose and persuades her to disregard her instructions─”

  “Instructions!” bellowed Blount.

  “Yes–instructions!” repeated Wiley, “–instructions as my agent. I sent Miss Huff down here to make this payment and I gave her instructions regarding it.”

  “Do you realize,” blustered Blount, “that if she had followed those instructions she would have defrauded her own mother out of millions; that she would have ruined her own life and conferred her father’s fortune upon the very man who was deceiving her?”

  “No, I do not,” replied Wiley, “but even if I did, that has nothing to do with the case. As to my relations with Miss Huff, I am fully satisfied that she has nothing of which to complain; and since it was you, and the rest of the gang, who stood to lose by the deal, your indignation seems rather far-fetched. If you were sorry for Miss Huff and wished to help her you have abundant private means for doing so; but when you dissuade her from her purpose in order to save your own skin you go up against the law. I’m going to take this to court and when the evidence is heard I’m going to prove you a bunch of crooks. I don’t believe for a minute that Virginia turned against me. I know that she offered you the money.”

  “Oh, you know, do you?” sneered Blount as his Directors rallied about him. “Well, how are you going to prove it?”

  “By her own word!” said Wiley. “I know her too well. You just talked her out of it, afterward.”

  “So you think,” taunted Blount, “that she offered the money in payment, and demanded the delivery of the deed? And will you stand or fall on her testimony?”

  “Absolutely!” smiled Wiley, “and if she tells me she didn’t do it I’ll never take the matter into court.”

  “Very well,” replied Blount and turned towards the door, but the Directors rushed in and caught him. They thrust their heads together in a whispered, angry conference, now differing among themselves and now flying back to catch Blount, but in the end he shook them all off. “No, gentlemen,” he said, “I have absolute confidence in the justice of my case. If you stand to lose a little I stand to lose a great deal–and I know she never asked for that deed!”

  “Well, bring her in, then,” they conceded reluctantly, and turned venomous eyes upon Wiley. They knew him, and they feared him, and especially with this girl; for he was smiling and waiting confidently. But Blount was their czar, with his great block of stock pitted against their tiny holdings, and they sat down to await the issue.

  She came at last, ushered in through the back door by Blount, who smiled benevolently; and her eyes leapt on the instant to meet Wiley’s.

  “Here is Miss Huff,” announced Blount deliberately and the light died in Wiley’s shining eyes. He had waited for her confidently, but that one defiant flash told him that Virginia had turned against him. She had thrown in her lot with Blount, and against her lover, and by her word he must stand or fall. She had been his agent, but if she had not carried out her trust─

  “Any questions you would like to ask,” went on Blount with ponderous calm, “I am sure Virginia will answer.”

  He turned reassuringly and she nodded her head nervously, then stepped out and stood facing Wiley.

  “It is a question,” began Wiley, speaking like one in a dream, “of the way you paid Mr. Blount that money. When you took it to him first, before they had talked to you, did you tell him it was my payment on the option?”

  Virginia glanced at Blount, then she took a deep breath and drew herself up very straight.

  “No,” she said, “I spoke to him first about buying back father’s stock.”

  “But after that,” he said, “didn’t you hand him over the money and say it was sent by me?”

  “No, I didn’t,” she answered. “After the way you had treated me I didn’t think it was right.”

  “Not right!” he repeated with a slow, dazed smile. “Why–why wasn’t it right, Virginia?”

  “Because,” she went on, “you were trying to deceive me and beat me and mother out of our rights. You knew all the time that father’s stock was still ours–and that Mr. Blount never even claimed it!”

  “Never claimed it!” cried Wiley, suddenly roused to resentment. “Well, Virginia, he most certainly did! He offered to sell it to me for five cents a share when I took out that option on the Paymaster!”

  “Now, now, Wiley!” began Blount, but Virginia cut him short with a scornful wave of the hand.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll attend to this myself. I just want to tell him what I think!”

  “What you think!” raved Wiley, suddenly coming up fighting. “You’ve been fooled by a bunch of crooks. Never mind what you think–did you give him the money and tell him it came from me?”

  “I did not!” answered Virginia, her eyes flashing with hot anger, “and while I may not be able to think, I certainly wasn’t fooled by you. No, I took your money and put it in the bank, and I let your option expire!”

  “My–God!” moaned Wiley, and groped for the door, but in the hall he stopped and turned back. There was some mistake–she had not understood. He slipped back and looked in once more. She was shaking hands with Blount–and smiling.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  The Way Out

  When a woman treads the ways of deceit she smiles–like Mona Lisa. But was the great Leonardo deceived by the smile of his wife when she posed for him so sweetly? No, he read her thoughts–how she was thinking of another–and his master hand wove them in. There she smiles to-day, smooth and pretty and cryptic; but Leonardo, the man, worked with heavy heart as he laid bare the tragedy of his love. The message was for her, if she cared to read it, or for him, that rival for her love; or, if their hearts were pure and free from guilt, then there was no message at all. She was just a pretty woman, soft and gentle and smiling–as Virginia Huff had smiled.

  She had not smiled often, Wiley Holman remembered it now, as he went flying across the desert, and always there was something behind; but when she had looked up at Blount and taken his fat hand, then he had read her heart at a glance. If he had taken his punishment and not turned back he would have been spared this great ache in his breast; but no, he was not satisfied, he could not believe it, and so he had received a worse w
ound. She had been playing with him all the time and, when the supreme moment arrived, she had landed him like a trout; and then, when she had left him belly-up from his disaster, she had turned to Blount and smiled. There was no restraint now; she smiled to the teeth; and Blount and the Directors smiled.

  Wiley cursed to himself as he bored into the wind and burned up the road to Keno. The mine was nothing; he could find him another one, but Virginia had played him false. He did not mind losing her–he could find a better woman–but how could he save his lost pride? He had played his hand to win and, when it came to the showdown, she had slipped in the joker and cleaned him. The Widow would laugh when she heard the news, but she would not laugh at him. The road lay before him and his gas tanks were full. He would gather up his belongings and drift. He stepped on the throttle and went roaring through the town, but at the bottom of the hill he stopped. The mine was shut down, not a soul was in sight, and yet he had left but a few hours before.

  He toiled wearily up the trail, where he had caught Virginia running and held her fighting in his arms, and the world turned black at the thought. What madness had this been that had kept him from suspecting her when she had opposed his every move from the start. Had she not wrecked his engine and ruined his mill? Then why had he trusted her with his money? And that last innocent visit, when she had asked for her stock, and thanked him so demurely at the end! She would not be dismissed, all his rough words were wasted, until in the end she had leaned over and kissed him. A Judas-kiss? Yes, if ever there was one; or the kiss of Judith of Bethulia. But Judith had sold her kisses to save her people–Virginia had sold hers for gold.

  Yes, she had sold him out for money; after rebuking him from the beginning she had stabbed him to the heart for a price. It was always he, Wiley, who thought of nothing but money; who was the liar, the miser, the thief. Everything that he did, no matter how unselfish, was imputed to his love of money; and yet it had remained for Virginia, the censorious and virtuous, to violate her trust for gain. It was not for revenge that she had withheld the payment and snatched a million dollars from his hand; she had told him herself that it was because Blount had returned their stock and she would not throw it away. How quick Blount had been to see that way out and to bribe her by returning the stock–how damnably quick to read her envious heart and know that she would fall for the offer. Well, now let them keep it and smile their smug smiles and laugh at Honest Wiley; for if there ever was a curse on stolen money then Virginia’s would buy her no happiness.

  He raised his bloodshot eyes to look for the last time at the Paymaster, which he had fought for and lost. What had they done to save it, to bring it to what it was, to merit it for their own? For years it had lain idle, and when he had opened it up they had fought him at every step. They had shot him down with buckshot, and beaten him down with rocks and threatened his life with Stiff Neck George. His eyes cleared suddenly and he looked about the dump–he had forgotten his feud with George. Yet if his men were gone, who then had driven them out but that crooked-necked, fighting fool? And if George had driven them out, then where was he now with his ancient, filed-down six-shooter? Wiley drew his gun forward and walked softly towards the house, but as he passed a metal ore-car a pistol was thrust into his face. He started back, and there was George.

  “Put ’em up!” he snarled, rising swiftly from behind the car, and the hot fury left Wiley’s brain. His anger turned cold and he looked down the barrel at the grinning, spiteful eyes behind.

  “You go to hell!” he growled, and George jabbed the gun into his stomach.

  “Put ’em up!” he ordered, but some devil of resistance seized Wiley as his hands went up. It was close, too close, and George had the drop on him, but one hand struck out and the other clutched the gun while he twisted his lithe body aside. At the roar of the shot he went for his own gun, leaping back and stooping low. Another bullet clipped his shirt and then his own gun spat back, shooting blindly through the smoke. He emptied it, dodging swiftly and crouching close to the ground, and then he sprang behind the car. There was a silence, but as he listened he heard a gurgling noise, like the water flowing out of a canteen, and a sudden, sodden thump. He looked out, and George was down. His blood was gushing fast but the narrow, snaky eyes sought him out before they were filmed by death. It was over, like a rush of wind.

  Wiley flicked out his cylinder and filled it with fresh cartridges, then looked around for the rest. He was calm now, and calculating and infinitely brave; but no one stepped forth to face his gun. A boy, down in town, started running towards the mine, only to turn back at some imperative command. The whole valley was lifeless, yet the people were there, and soon they would venture forth. And then they would come up, and look at the body, and ask him to give up his gun; and if he did they would take him to Vegas and shut him up in jail, where the populace could come and stare at him. Blount and Jepson would come, and the Board of Directors; and, in order to put him away, they would tell how he had threatened George. They would make it appear that he had come to jump the mine, and that George was defending the property; and then, with the jury nicely packed, they would send him to the penitentiary, where he wouldn’t interfere with their plans.

  In a moment of clairvoyance he saw Virginia before him, looking in through the prison bars and smiling, and suddenly he put up his gun. She had started this job and made him a murderer but he would rob her of that last chance to smile. There was a road that he knew that had been traveled before by men who were hard-pressed and desperate. It turned west across the desert and mounted by Daylight Springs to dip down the long slope to the Sink; and across the Valley of Death, if he could once pass over it, there was no one he need fear to meet. No one, that is, except stray men like himself, who had fled from the officers of the law. Great mountain ranges, so they said, stretched unpeopled and silent, beneath the glare of the desert sun; and though Death might linger near it was under the blue sky and away from the cold malice of men.

  From his safe in the office Wiley took out a roll of bills, all that was left of his vanished wealth; and he took down his rifle and belt; and then, walking softly past the body of Stiff Neck George, he cranked up his machine and started off. Every doorway in town was crowded with heads, craning out to see him pass, and as he turned down the main street he saw Death Valley Charley rushing out with a flask in his hand.

  “We seen ye!” he grinned as Wiley slowed down, and dropped the flask of whiskey on the seat.

  “You killed him fair!” he shouted after him, but Wiley had opened up the throttle and the answer to his praise was a roar.

  The sun was at high noon when Wiley topped the divide and glided down the canyon towards Death Valley. He could sense it in the distance by the veil of gray haze that hung like a pall across his way. Beyond it were high mountains, a solid wall of blue that seemed to rise from the depths and float, detached, against the sky; and up the winding wash which led slowly down and down, there came pulsing waves of heat. The canyon opened out into a broad, rocky sand-flat, shut in on both sides by knife-edged ridges dotted evenly with brittle white bushes; and each jagged rock and out-thrust point was burned black by the suns of centuries.

  He passed an ancient tractor, abandoned by the wayside, and a deserted, double-roofed house; and then, just below it where a ravine came down, he saw a sign-board, pointing. Up the gulch was another sign, still pointing on and up, and stamped through the metal of the disk was the single word: Water. It was Hole-in-the-Rock Springs that old Charley had spoken about and, somewhere up the canyon, there was a hole in the limestone cap, and beneath it a tank of sweet water. On many a scorching day some prospector, half dead from thirst, had toiled up that well-worn trail; but now the way was empty, the freighter’s house given over to rats, and the road led on and on.

  A jagged, saw-tooth range rose up to block his way and the sand-flat narrowed down to a deep wash; and, then, still thundering on, he struggled out through its throat and the Valley seemed to rise up and smite him
. He stopped his throbbing motor and sat appalled at its immensity. Funereal mountains, black and banded and water-channeled, rose up in solid walls on both sides and, down through the middle as far as the eye could see, there stretched a white ribbon, set in green. It swung back and forth across a wide, level expanse, narrow and gleaming with water at the north and blending in the south with gray sands. The writhing white band was Death Valley Sink, where the waters from countless desert ranges drained down and were sucked up by the sun. Far from the north it came, when the season was right and the cloudbursts swept the Grape-Vines and the White mountains; the Panamints to the west gave down water from winter snows that gathered on Telescope Peak; and every ravine of the somber Funeral Range was gutted by the rush of forgotten waters.

  The Valley was dry, bone-dry and desiccated, and yet every hill, every gulch and wash and canyon, showed the action of torrential waters. The chocolate-brown flanks of the towering mountain walls were creased, and ripped out and worn; and from the mouth of every canyon a great spit of sand and boulders had been spewed out and washed down towards the Sink. On the surface of this wash, rising up through thousands of feet, the tips of buried mountains peeped out like tiny hill-tops, yet black, and sharp and grim. The great ranges themselves, sweeping up from the profundity till they seemed to cut off the world, looked like molded cakes of chocolate which had been rained on and half melted down. They were washed-down, melted, stripped of earth and vegetation; and down from their flanks in a steep, even slope, lay the débris and scourings of centuries.

  The westering sun caught the glint of water in the poisonous, salt-marshes of the Sink; but, far to the south, the great ultimate Sink of Sinks was a-gleam with borax and salt. It was there where the white band widened out to a lake-bed, that men came in winter to do their assessment work and scrape up the cotton-ball borax. But if any were there now they would know him for a fugitive and he took the road to the west. It ran over boulders, ground smooth by rolling floods and burned deep brown by the sun, and as he twisted and turned, throwing his weight against the wheels, Wiley felt the growing heat. His shirt clung to his back, the sweat ran down his face and into his stinging eyes and as he stopped for a drink he noticed that the water no longer quenched his thirst. It was warm and flat and after each fresh drink the perspiration burst from every pore, as if his very skin cried out for moisture. Yet his canteen was getting light and, until he could find water, he put it resolutely away.