Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 4, 1926 — page 32: what you’re looking at

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

342 able than gold, which lay hidden like buried treasure underneath it. Towarp the evening of the second day of their journey, when his party was less than twenty miles from Quartz City, C. G. Winningham noticed a dust cloud angling in obliquely from the south. Four men and a woman were under that dust cloud—the Vari gang. Constantly gaining on the Winningham party they were, and at last they caught them. But they didn’t pass; not immediately. Quietly, systematically, with only a few threats, and a few leering side glances at Eloise Winningham, the Varis appropriated the well-conditioned horses and burros of C. G. Winningham. : Then they hurried ahead, leaving behind them an angry, sputtering tenderfoot, his frightened daughter, and five scrawny, ex- hausted horses in the place of the animals they had taken. Eloise Winningham, happy that the Varis had passed on without more serious trou- ble, proceeded to quiet her angry father. “Never mind, dad, we are almost there, anyhow. And even a fighting man like you couldn’t hold off four ruffians like those.” Perhaps there was a glint of mocking laughter deep in her blue eyes; but if there was, her father didn’t see it. He was too busy contemplating the fact that he must now spend another night on the desert, a sleepless night of torture, while other men with better mounts were piling ahead of him into Quartz City. From high on the western edge of Star ‘Mesa, Silent Jerry had seen the merging of the dust clouds which hovered over the Vari gang and C. G. Winningham’s caval- cade, then their separation again. Here and there on the desert he could see the other dust clouds and black specks under them, men rushing blindly toward Quartz City. But the sight didn’t spur him on; he had other and more important work to do. Wind-driven sand had almost oblit- erated the letters ‘‘ J. Budhouser ” from a granite stone resting on other stones at the highest point on Star Mesa. Patiently ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Silent Jerry set to work with his pros- pector’s hammer and cold chisel to renew the monument. Quartz City could wait. It would be there to-morrow, the next day, and probably the next. CHAPTER VIII. PIG GRABOW’S HOLD. INERAL riches are not the only sources of riches in a boom town. There are other ways of wealth, and surer ones. A rapid, expert assayist, for instance, can profit greatly, as little Jack Burke, fresh from California Tech, was proving in Quartz City, with his mor- tars and beakers and acids. Any purveyor of food, too, can line his pockets, for prices are high and terms cash. Householders can rent sleeping places for exorbitant prices; certain types of girls can wheedle much of the loose money in such a place into their own possession. Even common labor can command its own price. Most certain of all to grow wealthy is the man who controls the liquor, for he is likely to control the graft also, just as Pig Grabow did in Quartz City. A czar leap before the inrush of wealth seekers, Gra- bow retained his position. His bar was a constant source of income and influence; his hotel fairly bulged with well paying guests. In addition he levied big tribute on the girls he had invited to Quartz City, collected the profits from the chow house dance hall, which now blazed forth in glory every night and grafted right and left. Grabow was the official arbitrator of the town. He made decisions in all important disputes, and made them stick by reason of the power behind him. When no money was at stake he made it his rule to be fair, impartial in his verdicts, but a hundred dollars would make him decide that a stolen claim belonged to the claim jumper, or that a night-prowling sneak thief was innocent of any crime. Difficult it is to understand why any people should let such a man rule them with the autocracy of a sultan and the morals of a Fagin. Perhaps inhabitants COPMICLOOOKS (F@)