The Black Pearl | Page 7

brilliance, her eyes gleamed, she showed her white teeth when she laughed.
"Quit your fooling, both of you," she said composedly, rising to her feet. "I ain't going to have tales flying all over the desert about the ructions stirred up the night I danced for the benefit of the flood sufferers. Shake hands, you two," imperiously. "Go on, do what I tell you. That's right," as the two men perfunctorily shook hands. "Bob don't mean a thing, Mr. Hanson. It's just his temper, and there ain't going to be any wine, because I'm going home, but--" and here she smiled into his eyes--"you can walk a piece of the way with me, if you want to. Come on, mother and Hughie. Good-night, Bob."
CHAPTER II
Hanson had decided that the best way to gain certain information he desired was to seek the bar-keeper, who, after his constitution, gossiped as naturally and as volubly as a bird sings; so, quite early the next morning, he sauntered into Chickasaw Pete's place.
Jimmy, who was industriously polishing the bar and singing the while one of the more lugubrious and monotonous hymns, looked up with his customary little chuckle.
"Feeling fine, ain't you?" he said derisively. "Want to start right out and corral the whole desert, don't you? Think you can travel right over to San Bernardino yonder? Looks about three miles off, don't he?"
"Me?" said Hanson, expanding his chest. "I feel like I was about sixteen. Like I was home in Kaintucky, jumping a six-bar fence after a breakfast of about fifty buckwheat cakes and syrup."
"That's the way it takes them all; but you just wait until about noon, and you won't feel so gay," warned Jimmy. "What are you doin' to-day, anyway, hunting more trouble?"
"Not me," cried the other. "I came here to the desert pearl fishing."
"That's a good one." Jimmy's chuckle expanded into a series. "But you ain't the only one. There's Bob Flick, for instance, as you discovered last night."
The smile went out of Hanson's eyes, his face set. He ceased to lounge against the bar and involuntarily straightened himself:
"What about Bob Flick?" he asked.
"Lots about Bob." Jimmy's tone was equable, but he shot Hanson a quick glance. "He was our faro dealer for a while, but he's interested in mines now. He's dead sure. Come to think of it, he's a lot of dead things," he mused; "but don't ever confuse him with a dead one." Delight at his own wit expressed itself in mirthful chuckles. "He's dead game, and he's a dead shot, two important things for a man that's playing to win when in certain localities, and he's dead certain that he's the God-appointed guardeen of the Black Pearl."
"What's she got to say about it?" growled Hanson.
The bar-keeper shrugged his shoulders. "Ask me what the desert out there's thinking, and I'll tell you what's going on inside the Pearl's head. Say," animatedly, "I told you to ask me about those emeralds last night, didn't I?"
The manager laughed shortly. "I saw 'em close, son, after I left you. I know stones. Square cut emeralds. Lord! They sure cost some good man his pile, and he was no piker, either."
"Bob Flick," said Jimmy, with a glow of local pride. "Kind of thank offering, when the Pearl found him in the desert after he'd been lost three days. Bob was new to this country then and reckless, like a tenderfoot is, and the first thing he did was to go and get lost. Well, they had several searching parties looking for him, but the Pearl, she got on her horse and went after him alone, and, by George! she found him, lying about gone in a dry arroyo.
"Bob said he'd been wandering round crazy as a loon, seeing three big lions with eyes like coals of fire stalking him night and day, and him always trying to dodge 'em. He says at last they came nearer and nearer until he stumbled and fell, and then he felt their hot breath on his cheek, and he knew nothing more until he finally realized that some one was trying to pour water down his throat and he kind of half come to himself; and suddenly, he said, that awful gray desert, worse than any hell a man ever feared, seemed all kind and tender like a mother, and then, some way, it burst into bloom, and that bloom was the Black Pearl bending over him. Oh, you ought to hear him tell it! Well--she got him up on her horse and got him home, and her and her mother nursed him back to health. And since that time Bob ain't never felt the same about the desert. You couldn't drive him away now.
"When he was well enough to travel, he went to 'Frisco and ordered a