The Black Pearl. Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

      CHAPTER I

      It was just at sunset that the train which had crawled across the desert drew up, puffing and panting, before the village of Paloma, not many miles from the Salton Sea. After a moment's delay, one lone passenger descended. Paloma was not an important station.

      Rudolf Hanson, the one passenger, whom either curiosity or business had brought thither, stood on the platform of the little station looking about him. To the right of him, beyond the village, blooming like an oasis from the irrigation afforded by the artesian wells, rose the mountains, the foothills green and dimpled, the slopes with their massed shadows of pines and oaks climbing upward and gashed with deep purple cañons, and above them the great white, solemn peaks, austere and stately guardians of the desert which stretched away and away, its illimitable distances lost at last in the horizon line.

      Hanson, of the far west, was used to magnificent scenic effects, but the desert that sparkled like the gold of man's eternal quest, that lay with its sentinel hills enfolded and encompassed in color, colors that seemed as if some spinner of the sunset courts wove forever fresh combinations and sent these ethereal tapestries out to float over the wide spaces of the wilderness—this caused him to catch his breath and exclaim.

      It was truly a sight to take any man's breath away; but even such a view could only arrest Hanson's interest temporarily. He was hungry, and the station agent, a weedy youth, was making a noisy closing up. Intentionally noisy, for when one is the agent of a small desert station, the occasional visitor is apt to whet one's curiosity to razor edge.

      Roused by these sounds, and by his growing hunger, which the cool purity of the air only augmented, Hanson turned to the boy.

      "Where's a place to stay?" he asked.

      "There ain't but one," replied the youth; "the San Gorgonio hotel. You walk right up this street until you come to it, on the left side. It's got a sign out, electric," he added with some pride. He looked curiously at Hanson, standing tall and straight with his ruddy, good-looking face, keen, quick, gray eyes and curling light hair. "Going to be here long?" he asked tentatively.

      "I don't know," returned Hanson idly. "Guess not. No string on me, though, even if I'd choose to put in a month or so here. This way, you say?" He lifted his suit case and began to walk in the direction the station agent had indicated.

      "Say," the latter called after him, "you don't want to miss the show to-night."

      "What show?" Hanson turned, interest amounting almost to eagerness in his tone.

      "Benefit." The boy rolled the word unctuously under his tongue. "I guess maybe you saw why in the papers. The river got on a tear and cut into a nice little town here on the desert, drowned some of the folks and did a lot of damage generally, so we're raising some money to send to 'em."

      The stranger's interest had increased perceptibly. "Sounds good to me," he said heartily. "What's your features?"

      "Just one," the other answered impressively. "We don't need no more in this part of the world, if we got her."

      "Her!" cried Hanson, and now his cold eyes were alight. "Who the hell is her?"

      "Why, the Black Pearl!" as if surprised that anyone should be unaware of the fact. "'Course we got a few thousand square miles of desert waiting to be reclaimed, and any amount of mountains full of ore, but to us they's small potatoes and few in a hill beside the Black Pearl."

      Hanson swore softly and ecstatically. "If that ain't that good old blind luck of mine hitting me again after all these years," he muttered. "Say, son, I'm making no secret of my business. Don't have to. I am a theatrical manager—vaudeville. Got great backing this year and am out for new features. Set my heart on the Black Pearl and got to figuring on her. Sweeney had her on his circuit last winter. Well, Sweeney, let me tell you, is pretty shrewd. He knows a good thing when he's got it, so I thought there was no show for me. Presently, I hear that she's scrapped with Sweeney and is off to the desert like a flash. So she's really here?"

      "Sure," said the boy.

      "So," continued Hanson, who was loquacious by nature, but sufficiently shrewd and experienced only to let himself be so when he thought it worth his while, "I begin to figure on my chances. I learn that Sweeney's trying to coax her back by letter, so I says to myself: 'Rudolf, you just chassez down to Paloma and see what you can do,' but honest, son," he put his suit case down in the road and pushed his hat back on his head and put his hands on his hips, "honest to God, I didn't expect anything like this, the first night I got here, too."

      His companion shifted his quid of tobacco to the other side of his mouth and nodded understandingly.

      Hanson's eyes were fixed ruminatively but unseeingly upon the golden desert, its sand dunes touched with a deep rose soon to be eclipsed by the jealous tyrian purples which were beginning to mass themselves gorgeously beneath the oranges and flame of the setting sun.

      "Gee whiz!" he muttered, "and I was figuring that if I hung round here a week or so and played my hand all right, I'd maybe get her to do a few steps for me in the parlor. Oh, Lordy! And now I got a chance to see her before the footlights and size up her capacity for getting over them."

      The station agent looked puzzled and a little offended. "There won't be any footlights," he said; "and you're mistaken if you think she's up to any rough work like climbing over them, any way."

      Hanson laughed loudly. "That's all right, son, you ain't on to the shop talk, that's all. But now, where is this show and what time does it begin?"

      "Oh, in an hour or so, whenever Pearl's minded, and it's to be held at Chickasaw Pete's place—saloon. You see," apologetically, "we ain't a very big community, and that's the only place where there's a decent floor for her to dance on."

      Hanson raised his brows and laughed. "Well"—he pulled out his watch and looked at it—"I've got time to wash the upper crust of sand off anyway, and get a bite or so first. I suppose I'll see you later. Up this way, you say?"

      The agent nodded assent. "It's a good betting proposition," he mused. "He knows what he wants and he usually gets it, I'm thinking, or there's something to pay. But what'll the Pearl do? I guess she's the biggest gamble any man could tackle."

      As his new acquaintance had predicted, Hanson had no difficulty in finding the San Gorgonio, a small hostelry not by any means so gorgeous as its name implied, being merely an unpretentious frame building with a few palms in the enclosure before it, and there he speedily got a room and some supper. It might be deemed significant that he gave more time and attention to his toilet than his food, but that may have been because he believed in the value of a pleasing appearance as well as in a winning address when transacting business with a woman. In any event, his motives, whatever they might be, were quite justifiable, as he undoubtedly possessed a bold and striking type of good looks which had never failed of receiving a due appreciation from most women.

      Assured,