Copper Streak Trail Part 12

Leave your teams there and you go down to Yuma on the train. I'll get a bit of money for you in Tucson, and it'll be waitin' for you in Old Man Brownell's store, in Yuma. You get a minin' outfit, complete, and a good layout of grub, enough to last six or seven men till it's all gone, and some beddin', two or three thirty-thirty rifles, any large quant.i.ty of cartridges, and 'most anything else you see.

"Here's the particular part: Buy two more wagons, three-and-a-half-inch axles; about twenty barrels; two pack-saddles and kegs for same, for packing water from some tanks when your water wagons don't do the trick.

s.h.i.+p all this plunder up to Mohawk.

"Here's the idea: I'm goin' back East for capital, and I'm comin' back soon. Me and my friends--not a big bunch, but every man-jack of 'em to be a regular person--are goin' to start from Tucson, or Douglas, and hug the Mexican border west across the desert, ridin' light and fast; you're to go south with water; and Cobre is to be none the wiser. Here, I'll make you a map."

He traced the map in the sand.

"Here's the railroad, and Mohawk; here's your camp on the Gila. Just as soon as you get back, load up one of your new wagons with water and go south. There's no road, but there's two ranges that makes a lane, twenty miles wide, leadin' to the southeast: Lomas Negras, the black mountain due south of Mohawk, and Cabeza Prieta, a brown-colored range, farther west. Keep right down the middle, but miss all the sand you can; you'll be layin' out a road you'll have to travel a heap. Only, of course, you can straighten it out and better it after you learn the country. It might be a pious idea for you to s.h.i.+p up a mowing machine and a hayrake from Yuma, like you was fixin' to cut wild hay. It's a good plan always to leave something to satisfy curiosity. Or, play you was aimin' to dry-farm. You shape up your rig to suit yourself--but play up to it."

"I'll hay it," said Carr.

"All right--hay it, by all means. Take your first load of water out about twenty-five miles and leave it--using as little as you can to camp on.

You'll have to have three full sets of chains and whiffletrees for your six-horse team, of course. You can't bother with dragging a buckboard along behind to take 'em back with. Go back to the railroad, take a second load of water, camp the first night out at your first wagon, and leave the second load of water farther south, twenty-five miles or so.

"Then go back to the Gila and pack the rest of your plunder in this wagon of yours, all ready to start the minute you get a telegram from me. Wire back to me so I'll know when to start. You will have water for your horses at twenty-five miles and fifty, and enough left to use when you go back for your next trip. After that we'll have other men to help you.

"When you leave the last wagon, put on all the water your horses can draw. You'll strike little or no sand after that and we'll need all the water we can get. With no bad luck, you come out opposite the south end of your black mountain the third day. Wait there for us. It's three long days, horseback, from Tucson; we ought to get to your camp that night.

"If we don't come, wait till noon the next day. Then saddle up, take your pack-saddles and kegs, and drag it for the extreme south end of the mountains on your west, about twenty miles. That ought to leave enough water at the wagon for us to camp on if we come later. If you wait for us, your horses will use it all up.

"When you come to the south end of your Cabeza Prieta Mountain, right spang on the border, you'll find a canon there, coming down from the north, splitting the range. Turn up that canon, and when it gets so rough you can't go any farther, keep right on; you'll find some rock tanks full of water, in a box where the sun can't get 'em. That's all. Got that?"

"I've got it," said Carr. "But Pete, aren't you taking too long a chance?

Why can't I--or both of us--just slip down there quietly and do enough work on your mine to hold it? They're liable to beat you to it."

"I've been tryin' to make myself believe that a long time," said Pete earnestly; "but I am far too intelligent. These people are capable of any rudeness. And they are strictly on the lookout. I do not count myself timid, but I don't want to tackle it. That mine ain't worth over six or eight millions at best."

"But they won't be watching me," said Carr.

"Maybe not. I hope not. For one thing, you'll have a good excuse to pull out from Cobre. You won't get any freighting here. Old Zurich has got it all grabbed and contracted for. All you could get would be a subcontract, giving you a chance to do the work and let Zurich take the profit.

"Now, to come back to this mine: No one knows where it is. It's pretty safe till I go after it; and I'm pretty safe till I go after it. Once we get to it, it's going to be a case of armed pickets and Who goes there?--night and day, till we get legal t.i.tle. And it's going to take slews of money and men and horses to get water and supplies to those miners and warriors. Listen: One or the other of two things--two--is going to happen. Count 'em off on your fingers. Either no one will find that mine before me and my friends meet up with you and your water, or else some one will find it before then. If no one finds it first, we've lost nothing. That's plain. But if my Cobre friends--the push that railroaded Stan to jail--if they should find that place while I'm back in New York, and little Jackson Carr working on it--Good-bye, Jackson Carr!

They'd kill you without a word. That's another thing I'm going back to New York for besides getting money. There's something behind Stanley's jail trip besides the copper proposition; and that something is back in New York. I'm going to see what about it.

"Just one thing more: If we don't come, and you have to strike out for the tanks in Cabeza Mountain, you'll notice a mess of low, little, insignificant, roan-colored, squatty hills spraddled along to the south of you. You shun them hills, bearing off to your right. There's where our mine is. And some one might be watching you or following your tracks.

That's all. Now I'm going to sleep. Wake me about an hour by sun."

Mr. Peter Johnson sat in the office of the Tucson Jail and smiled kindly upon Mr. Stanley Mitch.e.l.l.

"Well, you got here at last," said Stan. "Gee, but I'm glad to see you!

What kept you so long?"

"Stanley, I am surprised at you. I am so. You keep on like this and you're going to have people down on you. Too bad! But I suppose boys will be boys," said Pete tolerantly.

"I knew you'd spring something like this," said Stan. "Take your time."

"I'm afraid it's you that will take time, my boy. Can't you dig up any evidence to help you?"

"I don't see how. I went to sleep and didn't hear a thing; didn't wake up till they arrested me."

"Oh! You're claiming that you didn't do the robbin' at all? I see-e!

Standing on your previous record and insistin' you're the victim of foul play? Sympathy dodge?... Hum! You stick to that, my boy," said Pete benevolently. "Maybe that's as good a show as any. Get a good lawyer.

If you could hire some real fine old gentleman and a nice little old gray-haired lady to be your parents and weep at the jury, it might help a heap.... If you'd only had sense enough to have hid that money where it couldn't have been found, or where it wouldn't have been a give-away on you, at least! I suppose you was scared. But it sorter reflects back on me, since you've been running with me lately. Folks will think I should have taught you better. What made you do it, Stanley?"

"I suppose you think you're going to get me roiled, you old fool! You've got another guess, then. You can't get my nanny! But I do think you might tell me what's been going on. Even a guilty man has his curiosity. Did you get the money I left for you?"

Pete's jaw sagged; his eye expressed foggy bewilderment.

"Money? What money? I thought they got it all when they arrested you?"

"Oh, don't be a gloomy a.s.s! The money I left with Old Man Taylor; the money you got down here for preliminary expenses on the mine."

"Mine?" echoed Pete blankly. "What mine?"

"Old stuff!" Stanley laughed aloud. "Go to it, old-timer! You can't faze me. When you get good and ready to ring off, let me know."

"Well, then," said Pete, "I will. Here we go, fresh. And you may not be just the best-pleased with my plan at first, son. I'm not going to bail you out."

"What the h.e.l.l!" said Stan. "Why not?"

"I've thought it all out," said Pete, "and I've talked it over with the sheriff. He's agreed. You have to meet the action of the Grand Jury, anyhow; you couldn't leave the county; and you're better off in jail while I go back to New York to rustle money."

"Oh--you're going, are you?"

"To-night. You couldn't leave the county even if you were out on bond.

The sheriff's a square man; he'll treat you right; you'll have a chance to get shut of that insomnia, and right here's the safest place in Pima County for you. I want a letter to that cousin of yours in Abingdon."

"'Tisn't Abingdon--it's Vesper. And I'm not particularly anxious to tell him that I'm in jail on a felony charge."

"Don't want you to tell him--or anybody. I suppose you've told your girl already? Yes? Thought so. Well, don't you tell any one else. You tell Cousin Oscar I'm your pardner, and all right; and that you've got a mine, and you'll guarantee the expenses for him and an expert in case they're not satisfied upon investigation. I'll do the rest. And don't you let anybody bail you out of jail. You stay here."

"If I hadn't seen you perform a miracle or two before now, I'd see you d.a.m.ned first!" said Stan. "But I suppose you know what you're about. It's more than I do. Make it a quick one, will you? I find myself bored here."

"I will. Let me outline two of the many possibilities: If I don't bail you out, I'm doin' you dirt, ain't I? Well, then, if Zurich & Gang think I'm double-crossin' you they'll make me a proposition to throw in with them and throw you down on the copper mine. That's my best chance to find out how to keep you from goin' to the pen, isn't it? And if you don't tell Vesper that you're in jail--but Vesper finds it out, anyhow--that gives me a chance to see who it is that lives in Vesper and keeps in touch with Cobre. And I'll tell you something else: When I come back I'll bail you out of jail and we'll start from here."

"For the mine, you mean?"

"Sure! Start right from the jail door at midnight and ride west. Zurich & Company won't be expecting that--seein' as how I left you in the lurch, this-a-way."

"But my cousin will never be able to stand that ride. It's a hundred and sixty miles--more too."

"Your cousin can join us later--or whoever ever comes along with development money. There'll be about four or five of us--picked men. I'm goin' this afternoon to see an old friend--Joe Benavides--and have him make all arrangements and be all ready to start whenever we get back, without any delay. I won't take the sheriff, because we might have negotiations to transact that would be highly indecorous in a sheriff.

But he's to share my share, because he put up a lot more money for the mine to-day. I sent it on to Yuma, where an old friend of mine and the sheriff's is to buy a six-horse load of supplies and carry 'em down to join us, startin' when I telegraph him.

"Got it all worked out. You do as I tell you and you'll wear diamonds on your stripes. Give me a note for that girl of yours, too."