Claim Number One Part 41

Agnes charged. "And I had saved it for you! I had saved it!"

"You would have been too late," returned the doctor sharply. "The machinery for your humiliation was already in motion. I doubt whether even the Governor could have stopped it in another day without a great deal of unpleasant publicity for you. Boyle meant to have this piece of land, and he got it. That's all."

Ten-Gallon was fooling around the fire. He drew over toward the group as the Governor came back.

"Can my son be removed from here?" the old man asked.

The doctor said that he could not, without practically throwing away his slender chance for life.

"Do for him what you can; you seem to be a capable man, sir; you inspire confidence in me," said the Governor, laying his hand appealingly on the doctor's shoulder; "and if you can save him, I'll pay you twice what this infernal claim was worth to you!"

"I've done all that can be done for him, without hope or expectation of reward," said the doctor; "and I'll stick by him to the end, one way or another. We can care for him here as long as this weather holds, just as well as they could in a hospital."

"Well, as far as what this claim's worth goes," put in Ten-Gallon, edging into the conversation, "you don't need to lose any sleep over that."

"What do you mean?" demanded Slavens, turning upon him sharply.

Ten-Gallon stirred the dust with his toe, stooped and picked up an empty revolver-cartridge.

"It ain't worth that!" said he, presenting it in the palm of his hand.

"I don't know what you're driving at," said the doctor, inclined to walk away and leave him.

"I mean that Hun Shanklin queered all of you," said Ten-Gallon. "You had the wrong figgers, and you filed on the wrong claim!"

Pressed for an explanation of how he knew, Ten-Gallon told them that he had been Shanklin's partner at the beginning, and that Shanklin had deceived and cheated both him and Boyle.

"Ah, then he did double-cross my son!" cried the Governor triumphantly, seizing this vindication for the young man's deed with avid eagerness.

"He sure did," Ten-Gallon agreed; "and he done it right! I know all about you"--nodding to the doctor--"and what happened to you back of that tent in Comanche that night. Shanklin had it in for you ever since you showed up his game the night that sucker feller was goin' to put down that wad of money. He'd been layin' for you, one way and another, for a couple of days or so. You walked right into his hand that night."

"I seemed to," admitted Slavens with bitter recollection.

"Shanklin knew about copper in these rocks over here----"

"So it's copper?" said Slavens, unable to restrain his words.

"Copper; that's what it is," nodded Ten-Gallon. "But it ain't on this claim, and I'll show that in a minute, too. Hun had been writin' to Jerry about it, tryin' to git up a company to pay him for what he knew, so they could locate the man that drawed Number One there, see? Well, Hun, he'd known about that copper a long time; he could go to it with his eyes shut. So he got the description of the land as soon as the survey maps was out, and he offered to sell the location for five thousand dollars. He had samples of the ore, and it run rich, and it _is_ rich, richest in this state, I'm here to tell you, gentlemen.

"But Jerry wouldn't give him no five thousand for what he knew. So Hun he got some other fellers on the string, and him and me was partners on the deal and was goin' to split even on account of some things I knew and was to keep under my katy.

"Well, Hun sold the figgers of that land to Jerry for five hundred dollars in the end, and he sold it to them other fellers for the same.

When it come out that you was Number One, Doc--and us fellers knew that in the morning of the day of the drawin', for we had it fixed with Mong--Hun he tells Jerry that you'll never sell out for no reasonable price.

"'We'll have to soak that feller,' he says, 'and git him out of the way.' Jerry he agreed to it, and they had men out after you all that day and night, but they didn't git a chance at you. Then you walked right into old Hun's hand. Funny!" commented Ten-Gallon stopping there to breathe.

"Very!" said the doctor, putting his hand to the tender scar on his forehead.

He pushed back his hat and turned to the Governor.

"Very funny!" said he.

"Of course, Jerry, he was winded some when you put in your bill there ahead of him and Peterson that morning and filed on the claim he had it all framed up to locate the Swede feller on. Jerry telephoned over to Comanche and found out from Shanklin how you got the numbers, and then he laid out to start a fire under you and git you off. Well, he done it, didn't he?"

Ten-Gallon leered up at Slavens with some of his old malevolence and official hauteur in his puffy face.

"Go on with your story, and be careful what charges you lay against my son!" commanded the Governor sharply.

Ten-Gallon was not particularly squelched or abashed by the rebuke. He winked at Agnes as if to express a feeling of secret fellows.h.i.+p which he held for her on account of things which both of them might reveal if they saw fit.

"Shanklin, he closed up his game in Comanche three or four days ago and went over to Meander," Ten-Gallon resumed. "He never had split with me on that money he got for the numbers of this claim out of Jerry and that other crowd. So I follered him. Yesterday morning, you know, the land left over from locatin' them that had drawed claims was throwed open to anybody that wanted to file on it.

"Well, the first man in the line was that old houn' that's layin' over there with his toes turnin' cold. He filed on something, and when I collared him about the money, he throwed me down. He said he sold the numbers of land that didn't have no more copper on it than the palm of his hand, and he said he'd just filed on the land that had the mines. He showed me the papers; then he hopped his horse and come on down here."

"Incredible!" exclaimed the Governor.

"It was like him," Slavens corroborated. "He was a fox."

"I was goin' to take a shot at him," bragged Ten-Gallon, "but he was too fur ahead of me. He had a faster horse than mine; and when I got here last night he was already located on that claim. The copper mine's over there where the old feller's tent stands, I tell you. They ain't enough of it on this place to make a yard of wire."

"And you carried the story of Shanklin's deception and fraud to my son,"

nodded the Governor, fixing a severe eye on Ten-Gallon, "and he sought the gambler for an explanation?"

"Well, he was goin' to haul the old crook over the fire," admitted Ten-Gallon, somewhat uneasy under the old man's eye.

The Governor walked away from them again in his abstracted, self-centered way, and stood looking off across the troubled landscape. Dr. Slavens stepped to the tent to see how the patient rested, and Ten-Gallon gave Agnes another wink.

"Comanche's dwindlin' down like a fire of shavin's," said he. "n.o.body couldn't git hurt there now, not even a crawlin' baby."

Indignation flushed her face at the man's familiarity. But she reasoned that he was only doing the best he knew to be friendly.

"Are you still chief of police there?" she asked.

"I'm marshal now," he replied. "The police force has been done away with by the mayor and council."

"Well then, I still have doubt about the safety of Comanche," she observed, turning from him.

Governor Boyle approached Ten-Gallon and pointed to Hun Shanklin's body.

"You must do something to get that carca.s.s out of camp right away," he said. "Isn't there a deputy coroner at Comanche?"

"The undertaker is," said Ten-Gallon, drawing back at the prospect of having to lay hands on the body of the man whom he feared in death as he had feared him in life.

"Send him over here," Governor Boyle directed.

Ten-Gallon departed on his mission, and the Governor took one of the trodden blankets from in front of the tent and spread it over Shanklin's body, shrouding it completely. Dr. Slavens had lowered the flap of the tent to keep the sun from the wounded man's face. When he came out, Agnes met him with an inquiring look.

"He's conscious," said the doctor. "The blow of that heavy bullet knocked the wind out of him for a while."