Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 4, 1926 — page 31: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SILENT Mohave, Winningham immediately decided to join the rush. His rotund body swelled with excitement; his rubicund face became redder than ever, his little blue eyes danced with eagerness. “Eloise,” he said to his daughter, who acted as his secretary, ‘“‘ Eloise, now’s our chance to retrieve the fallen fortune of the ancient house of Winningham, The chance of a lifetime! “Think of it, girl; millions in mineral wealth lying out there in the desert and mountains; millions waiting for us to claim it. And here we are, right on the ground floor, among the first who know the news. ““ Oh, there’ll be other prospectors ahead of us, but they'll be picyunish. We'll be able to operate on a grand scale. Where the little fellow makes his hundreds or thou- sands, we’ll make millions! Think of it, Eloise! The chance of a lifetime! We never were so lucky!” Eloise Winningham wasn’t so sure.- She was a small, golden-haired girl, as modest as her father was pompous. Her great blue eyes were wistful, tired, as if wearied of seeing her father’s perpetual enthusiasms fall into failure. Pretty she was, but not a striking beauty. | Very slender and small-featured, her fragile prettiness grew on one rather than claimed immediate homage. Yet she had spirit, and now she asserted it. ‘‘ Father,” she said, ‘I think you are perfectly ridiculous to imagine you can beat these desert men at their own game. They know the country like a book; they know how to live out there. They can fight for a thing, and when they get it, fight to keep it.” ‘ Bight!” repeated Winningham, fiercely throwing out his chest. ‘“ There’s no man alive who’s got more fight per square inch than C. G. Winningham!” He saw that his boastful declaration hadn’t impressed the girl, and he descended to parley: “Listen, Eloise, I’m not saying that I can go out there and grab the best claim on the desert. But I do think I can go out there, and, if necessary, buy up a lot of claims from other men, and turn around and sell them to a mining syndicate. ‘“‘ That’ssmy business, you know, Eloise, JERRY. $41 appraising mines, and I'll never have an- other chance like this to pick up such claims at rock bottom prices.” ‘But you don’t know what you’re get- ting into,” the girl protested. “Don’t I, though? I know it’s rough, and hard, and all that. But you and I have been to Johannesburg more than once, haven’t we? And Quartz City can’t be very different from that. Both are mining towns, aren’t they? We’ve camped on the desert, too. Come on, Eloise, perk up! ‘Nothing risked, nothing gained, you know.” The argument was unanswerable. Eloise gave in reluctantly. It furnished her rather painful amusement to see her father pre- pare for the expedition, rushing around with the pomposity of a major-domo. Six burros he wanted and he must have immediately, two saddle horses for himself and Eloise, and an extra pair for emergen- cies. Two compasses, too, he demanded, many canteens, and all the varieties of groceries which the town could furnish. At first he thought it best to pack horses, burros and food on a huge truck, and let that carry them as far as it could go into the sandy waste, but Eloise laughed him out of that notion. The elaborate little Winningham caval- cade started from Mohave at dawn of the same morning that old Mateo Chico and Angelica departed from Barstow; the same day Squint Vari’s gang left for Pokato. Silent Jerry, coming down from the north, had two days’ start on both parties, but he moved with less feverish rapidity. Swept into that great human stampede toward Quartz City, these four little ex- peditions—the silent desert man, the four gangsters and their woman, the old Mexi- can and his daughter, and the city-bred _Winninghams—altogether formed a typical cross-section of the dream-dazzled mob which was racing toward riches. A frantic, crazed mob it was, which charged miles over the withering desert, ignoring pain, and thirst, and heat, in a desperate endeavor to be among the first to reach that tough little town on the moun- tain side, and the dingy metal, more valu-- (E) S.C Michooo