Copper Streak Trail | Page 9

money I
wanted, himself. He's one of these liers-in-wait you read about--Mayer
is.
"So I didn't come to you till the last, bein' as Zurich was one of your
directors. I studied some more--and then I hunted up old Hank
Bergman and told him my troubles," said Pete suavely. "He expressed
quite some considerable solicitude. 'Why, Petey, this is a shockin'
disclosure!' he says. 'A banker is a man that makes a livin' loanin' other
people's money. Lots of marble and brass to a bank, salaries and other
expenses. Show me a bank that's quit lendin' money and I'll show you a
bank that's due to bust, muy pronto! I got quite a wad in the Merchants
and Miners,' he says, 'and you alarm me. I'll give you a check for it, and
you go there first off to-morrow and see if they'll lend you what you
need. You got good security. If they ain't lendin',' he says, 'then you just
cash my check and invest it for me where it will be safe. I lose the
interest for only four days,' he says--'last Monday, the fifteenth, being
my quarter day. Hold out what you need for yourself.'
"'I don't want any,' says I. 'The First National say they can fit me out by
Wednesday if I can't get it before. Man don't want to borrow from his
friends,' says I. 'Then put my roll in the First National,' says Hank.
That's all! Only--I saw some of the other old-timers last night." Pete
fingered his sheaf significantly.

"You have us!" said Marsh. "What do you want?"
"I want the money for this check--so you'll know I'm not permeated
with any ideas about heaping coals of fire on your old bald head. Come
through, real earnest! I'll see about the rest. Exerting financial pressure
is what they call this little racket you worked on me, I believe. It's a
real nice game. I like it. If you ever mull or meddle with my affairs
again I'll turn another check. That's for your official information--so
you can keep the bank from any little indiscretions. I'm telling you!
This isn't blackmail. This is directions. Sit down and write me a draft
on El Paso."
Marsh complied. Peter Johnson inspected the draft carefully.
"So much for the bank for to-day, the nineteenth," said Pete. "Now a
few kind words for you as the individual, Mr. George Marsh, quite
aside from your capacity as a banker. You report to Zurich that I
applied for a loan and you refused it--not a word more. I'm tellin' you!
Put a blab on your office boy." He rolled his thumb at young Hudson.
"And hereafter if you ever horn in on my affairs so much as the weight
of a finger tip--I'm tellin' you now!--I'll appear to you!"
CHAPTER III
The world was palpably a triangle, baseless to southward; walled out
by iron, radiant ramparts--a black range, gateless, on the east; a gray
range on the west, broken, spiked, and bristling. At the northern limit of
vision the two ranges closed together to what seemed relatively the
sharp apex of the triangle, the mere intersection of two lines. This point,
this seemingly dimensionless dot, was in reality two score weary miles
of sandhills, shapeless, vague, and low; waterless, colorless, and forlorn.
Southward the central desert was uninhabitable; opinions differed about
the edges.
Still in Arizona, the eye wearied; miles and leagues slid together to
indistinguishable inches. Then came a low line of scattered hills that
roughly marked the Mexican border.

The mirage played whimsical pranks with these outpost hills. They
became, in turn, cones, pyramids, boxes, benches, chimney stacks,
hourglasses. Sometimes they soared high in air, like the kites of a baby
god; and, beneath, the unbroken desert stretched afar, wavering, misty,
and dim.
Again, on clear, still days, these hills showed crystalline, thin, icy,
cameo-sharp; beyond, between, faint golden splotches of broad
Sonoran plain faded away to nothingness; and, far beyond that
nothingness, hazy Sonoran peaks of dimmest blue rose from illimitable
immensities, like topmasts of a very large ship on a very small globe;
and the earth was really round, as alleged.
It was fitting and proper that the desert, as a whole, had no name: the
spinning earth itself has none. Inconsiderable nooks and corners were
named, indeed--Crow Flat, the Temporal, Moonshine, the Rinconada. It
should rather be said, perhaps, that the desert had no accepted name.
Alma Mater, Lungs called it. But no one minded Lungs.
Mr. Stanley Mitchell woke early in the Blue Bedroom to see the
morning made. He threw back the tarpaulin and sat up, yawning; with
every line of his face crinkled up, ready to laugh for gladness.
The morning was shaping up well. Glints of red snapped and sparkled
in the