Part 6 (1/2)

A young hopeful, frightened into frenzy, obeyed with alacrity, and Farriss, seizing the atlas from his hand, thumbed it until he found a map of Colorado. Together the three pored over it.

”There it is!” Stella Donovan cried suddenly. ”Down toward the bottom.

Looks like desert country.”

”Pretty dry place for Celeste,” laughed Willis. ”I might call her up and kid her about it if----”

Farriss looked at him sourly. ”You might get a raise in salary,” he snapped sharply, ”if you'd keep your mind on the job. What you can do is call up, say you're the detective bureau, and ask carelessly about Beaton. That'll throw a scare into her. You've got her number?”

”Riverside 7683,” Willis said in a businesslike voice. ”The Beecher apartments. I'll try it.”

He disappeared into the clattering local room, to return a moment later, white of face, bright of eye, and with lips parted.

”What's the dope?” Farriss shot at him.

”Nothing!” cried the excited young man. ”Nothing except that fifteen minutes ago Celeste La Rue kissed the Beecher apartments good-bye and, with trunk, puff, and toothbrush, beat it.”

”To Haskell,” added the city editor, ”or my hair is pink. And by G.o.d, I believe there's a story there. What's more, I believe we can get it.

It's blind chance, but we'll take it.”

”Let Mr. Willis----” began Miss Donovan.

”Mind your own business, Stella,” commanded Farriss, ”and see that your hat's on straight. Because within half an hour you're going to draw on the night cas.h.i.+er for five hundred dollars and pack your little portmanteau for Haskell.”

Willis's face fell. ”Can't I go, too?” he began, but Farriss silenced him on the instant.

”Kid,” he said sharply but kindly, ”you're too good a hound for the desert. The city needs you here--and, dammit, you keep on sniffing.”

Turning to the unsettled girl beside him, he went on briskly:

”Work guardedly; query us when you have to; be sure of your facts, and consign your soul to G.o.d. Do I see you moving?”

And when Farriss looked again he did.

CHAPTER VII: MISS DONOVAN ARRIVES

When the long overland train paused a moment before the ancient box car that served as the depot for the town of Haskell, nestled in the gulch half a mile away, it deposited Miss Stella Donovan almost in the arms of Carson, the station-agent, and he, wary of the wiles of women and the ethics of society, promptly turned her over to Jim Westcott, who had come down to inquire if the station-agent held a telegram for him--a telegram that he expected from the East.

”She oughtn't to hike to the Timmons House alone, Jim,” Carson said.

”This yere is pay-day up at the big mines, an' the boys are havin' a h.e.l.l of a time. That's them yellin' down yonder, and they're mighty likely to mix up with the Bar X gang before mornin', bein' how the liquor is runnin' like blood in the streets o' Lundun, and there's half a mile between 'em.”

In view of these disclosures, Miss Donovan welcomed the courteous acquiescence of Westcott, whom she judged to be a man of thirty-one, with force and character--these written in the lines of his big body and his square, kind face.

”I'm Miss Stella Donovan of New York,” she said directly.

”And I,” he returned, with hat off in the deepening gloom, ”am Jim Westcott, who plugs away at a mining claim over yonder.”

”There!” laughed the girl frankly. ”We're introduced. And I suppose we can start for the Timmons House.”