The Desert Trail. Coolidge Dane
ordered oysters, "a dozen in the milk." Then he ordered a beefsteak, to make up for several he had missed, and asked the cook to fry it rare. He was just negotiating for a can of pears that had caught his eye when an old man came in and took the stool beside him, picking up the menu with a trembling hand.
"Give me a cup of coffee," he said to the waiter, "and" – he gazed at the bill of fare carefully – "and a roast-beef sandwich. No, just the coffee!" he corrected, and at that Bud gave him a look. He was a small man, shabbily dressed and with scraggly whiskers, and his nose was very red.
"Here," called Bud, coming to an instant conclusion, "give 'im his sandwich; I'll pay for it!"
"All right," answered the waiter, who was no other than Sunny Jim, the proprietor, and, whisking up a sandwich from the sideboard, he set it before the old man, who glanced at him in silence. For a fraction of a second he regarded the sandwich apathetically; then, with the aid of his coffee, he made way with it and slipped down off his stool.
"Say," observed the proprietor, as Bud was paying his bill, "do you know who that oldtimer was?"
"What oldtimer?" inquired Bud, who had forgotten his brusk benefaction.
"Why, that old feller that you treated to the sandwich."
"Oh – him! Some old drunk around town?" hazarded Bud.
"Well, he's that, too," conceded Sunny Jim, with a smile. "But lemme tell you, pardner, if you had half the rocks that old boy's got you wouldn't need to punch any more cows. That's Henry Kruger, the man that just sold the Cross-Cut Mine for fifty thousand cash, and he's got more besides."
"Huh!" grunted Bud, "he sure don't look it! Say, why didn't you put me wise? Now I've got to hunt him up and apologize."
"Oh, that's all right," assured the proprietor; "he won't take any offense. That's just like Old Henry – he's kinder queer that way."
"Well, I'll go and see him, anyway," said Bud. "He might think I was butting in."
And then, going about his duty with philosophical calm, he ambled off, stiff-legged, down the street.
II
It was not difficult to find Henry Kruger in Gadsden. The barkeepers, those efficient purveyors of information and drinks, knew him as they knew their thumbs, and a casual round of the saloons soon located him in the back room of the Waldorf.
"Say," began Bud, walking bluffly up to him, "the proprietor of that restaurant back there tells me I made a mistake when I insisted on paying for your meal. I just wanted to let you know – "
"Oh, that's all right, young man," returned Old Henry, looking up with a humorous smile; "we all of us make our mistakes. I knowed you didn't mean no offense and so I never took none. Fact is, I liked you all the better for it. This country is getting settled up with a class of people that never give a nickel to nobody. You paid for that meal like it was nothing, and never so much as looked at me. Sit down, sit down – I want to talk to you!"
They sat down by the stove and fell into a friendly conversation in which nothing more was said of the late inadvertence, but when Bud rose to go the old man beckoned him back.
"Hold on," he protested; "don't go off mad. I want to have a talk with you on business. You seem to be a pretty good young fellow – maybe we can make some dicker. What are you looking for in these parts?"
"Well," responded Bud, "some kind of a leasing proposition, I reckon. Me and my pardner jest come in from Mexico, over near the Chihuahua line, and we don't hardly know what we do want yet."
"Yes, I've noticed that pardner of yours," remarked Henry Kruger dryly. "He's a great talker. I was listening to you boys out on the street there, having nothing else to do much, and being kinder on the lookout for a man, anyway, and it struck me I liked your line of talk best."
"You're easy satisfied, then," observed Bud, with a grin. "I never said a word hardly."
"That's it," returned Kruger significantly; "this job I've got calls for a man like that."
"Well, Phil's all right," spoke up Bud, with sudden warmth. "We been pardners for two years now and he never give nothing away yet! He talks, but he don't forget himself. And the way he can palaver them Mexicans is a wonder."
"Very likely, very likely," agreed Kruger, and, then he sat a while in silence.
"We got a few thousand dollars with us, too," volunteered Bud at last. "I'm a good worker, if that's what you want – and Phil, he's a mining engineer."
"Um-m," grunted Kruger, tugging at his beard, but he did not come out with his proposal.
"I tell you," he said at last. "I'm not doing much talking about this proposition of mine. It's a big thing, and somebody might beat me to it. You know who I am, I guess. I've pulled off some of the biggest deals in this country for a poor man, and I don't make many mistakes – not about mineral, anyway. And when I tell you that this is rich – you're talking with a man that knows."
He fixed his shrewd, blue eyes on the young man's open countenance and waited for him to speak.
"That's right," he continued, as Bud finally nodded non-committally; "she's sure rich. I've had an eye on this proposition for years – just waiting for the right time to come. And now it's come! All I need is the man. It ain't a dangerous undertaking – leastwise I don't think it is – but I got to have somebody I can trust. I'm willing to pay you good wages, or I'll let you in on the deal – but you'll have to go down into Mexico."
"Nothin' doing!" responded Bud with instant decision. "If it's in Arizona I'll talk to you, but no more Mexico for me. I've got something pretty good down there myself, as far as that goes."
"What's the matter?" inquired Kruger, set back by the abrupt refusal. "Scared?"
"Yes, I'm scared," admitted Bud, and he challenged the old man with his eyes.
"Must have had a little trouble, then?"
"Well, you might call it that," agreed Bud. "We been on the dodge for a month. A bunch of revoltosos tried to get our treasure, and when we skipped out on 'em they tried to get us."
"Well," continued Kruger, "this proposition of mine is different. You was over in the Sierra Madres, where the natives are bad. These Sonora Mexicans ain't like them Chihuahua fellers – they're Americanized. I'll tell you, if it wasn't that the people would know me I'd go down after this mine myself. The country's perfectly quiet. There's lots of Americans down there yet, and they don't even know there is a revolution. It ain't far from the railroad, you see, and that makes a lot of difference."
He lowered his voice to a confidential whisper as he revealed the approximate locality of his bonanza, but Bud remained unimpressed.
"Yes," he said, "we was near a railroad – the Northwestern – and seemed like them red-flaggers did nothing else but burn bridges and ditch supply trains. When they finally whipped 'em off the whole bunch took to the hills. That's where we got it again."
"Well," argued Kruger, "this railroad of ours is all right, and they run a train over it every day. The concentrator at Fortuna" – he lowered his voice again – "hasn't been shut down a day, and you'll be within fifteen miles of that town. No," he whispered; "I could get a hundred Americans to go in on this to-morrow, as far's the revolution's concerned. It ain't dangerous, but I want somebody I can trust."
"Nope," pronounced Bud, rising ponderously to his feet; "if it was this side the line I'd stay with you till the hair slipped, on anything, but – "
"Well, let's talk it over again some time," urged Kruger, following him along out. "It ain't often I git took with a young feller the way I was with you, and I believe we can make it yet. Where are you staying in town?"
"Up at the Cochise," said Bud. "Come on with me – I told my pardner I'd meet him there."
They turned up the broad main street and passed in through the polished stone portals of the Cochise, a hotel so spacious in its interior and so richly appointed in its furnishings that a New Yorker, waking up there, might easily imagine himself on Fifth Avenue.
It