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CHAPTER XIII

Bill's disappearance brought quick changes to the little hotel at Calivada. His ready acceptance of Mrs. Jones's alternative was a complete surprise, and it was several days before she and Millie realized that he had taken her at her word. Even then they thought he had gone off on one of his temporary jaunts in the hills. When the days grew into a fortnight and he did not return they instituted a search among the near-by villages and mining-camps. Everett Hammond and Raymond Thomas were solicitous aids in the inquiry, not for the two women they were defrauding, nor because they felt any concern for Bill's welfare. Rather was their full attention turned toward securing a deed which the Pacific Railroad would consider law-proof. Had the property been entirely within the state of Nevada, Bill's signature would not have been imperative, but the California laws regarding the sale of property were evadable by numerous small technicalities, and shrewd counsel demanded that bona-fide deeds must appear as freewill transfers from both the husband and wife. It was for this reason that Bill's disappearance was a matter of deep satisfaction to both Hammond and Thomas. They had begun to despair of his putting his name to the deed. Now, should he not return within six months, they evolved a new scheme and one which would be law-proof if it could be carried through.

If Mrs. Jones could be persuaded into a divorce, and the decree obtained with full rights to the property, the deed would be legal without Bill's name. It was for this reason that Hammond and Thomas put themselves at Mrs. Jones's service and did everything in their power to discover Bill's whereabouts. It was several weeks before they traced him to Sacramento and from there to the veterans' home at Yountville. By this time Mrs. Jones was quite beside herself, for, in spite of Bill's shiftlessness, which was quite enough to wear away the patience of the average woman, she felt a deep affection for the generous-hearted, whimsical old creature and his companionship through fifteen years, and at a time when her father's death had left her desolate had relieved the monotony of a life which had had little else but hard work. Millie, too, missed her foster-father, whose frequent sallies kept humor alive when work and poverty pressed hard. In reverent and grateful memory she held the thought of his care for her when she had been left a waif by her own father's death. And so, together, Millie and Mrs. Jones pressed Thomas for news of Bill.

He knew that if they learned his whereabouts they would not rest until they had brought him home again. Mrs. Jones's persistent melancholy since Bill's departure told Thomas that in order to get Bill back, the deed itself would be abrogated by her, should that be one of his conditions of return. Therefore both he and Hammond determined that they would not let the two women know of Bill's whereabouts. Instead, they said they had traced him as far as Placerville, known to old-timers as the Hangtown of the gold days, and that from there he had taken the trail up over the Georgetown Divide, where he said he was going to find work in the mines. Search throughout the entire district, Hammond and Thomas informed her, had failed to locate him, and they assured her and Millie that inquiry should be kept up until he was found.

Winter came, bringing with it no news from Bill, and Mrs. Jones settled into a melancholy resignation wherein she seldom smiled and where she spent most of her time in the rocking-chair by the front window, gazing down the path up which Bill had usually zigzagged his recalcitrant way. Thomas was quick to recognize her symptoms and he resolved upon his master-stroke.

One day toward the end of March when a heavy storm had blown up from the lake and the entire forest was torn and twisted by a wind in high and angry mood, Mrs. Jones sat crying in front of the window, wondering where Bill was and beset with the fear that some place beyond the ridge in that vast ocean of mountain billows Bill might be homeless and cold and without food. A sudden gust shook the hillside, bringing down a grizzled pine that had stood close to the house. The crash of its falling resounded down the slope and Mrs. Jones, keyed to high pitch by her vigil of three months, was brought to a sudden burst of despair just as Thomas, who had come to Calivada to superintend the wiring of the house which was now to be put on modern basis, came down the stairs. It was his chance and he took it.

"Mrs. Jones!" There was a surcharge of pity in his voice as he glided across the room and stood over her chair, placing a gentle hand upon her shoulder. "I hate to see you upset. We've done everything in our power to find Mr. Jones and we will leave no stone unturned until we succeed. In the mean time you must think of yourself and Millie."

"It was thinking of myself and Millie that drove him out of his home." Mrs. Jones buried her head on her hand and leaned against the window-sill. The wind, with renewed shock, beat the sleet against the window-pane. "He may be out this minute wandering the hills with no place to go," she sobbed, "and he ain't young no more, neither.

"Of course, I thought all along," she went on, "that by selling the place I could take care of him in his old age, and now he ain't here and the place can't be sold."

"The place can be sold, Mrs. Jones, and you will then have enough money to institute a real search for Mr. Jones." Thomas's emphasis of the possibility of a sale without Bill's signature relaxed Mrs. Jones's mood and she sat up straight in her chair, lifting questioning eyes toward him.

"There is a way." He answered her unspoken inquiry with calm deliberation, while he scrutinized her for the least sign of encouragement or of antagonism as his plan unfolded. "It is a difficult way and one which you may balk at pursuing, but it will justify itself in the end."

"Oh, what is it, Mr. Thomas?" Mrs. Jones's brown eyes widened and hope returned to them as she smoothed out an imaginary wrinkle in her gingham apron and folded her arms across her waist, rocking expectantly back and forth. "I'd do 'most anything if I thought it'd bring Bill back," she exclaimed, raising her voice to an enthusiastic pitch.

Thomas brought an arm-chair from the center-table and sat down beside her. Clasping his hands, he leaned forward, "You can get a divorce, and – "

"Oh, I could never do that!" Mrs. Jones protested and stopped rocking as she lifted up her hands in horror. "He 'ain't never done anything; and besides – "

"That's not the question." Thomas was quick to interrupt her flow of excuses. "I know he has done nothing, Mrs. Jones. But as things stand at present you have neither Bill nor the money for the place. You can't give a clear title to the place while you are married to Mr. Jones unless it bears his signature. You have not the money to find him. A divorce will straighten all this out. You can sell the place for enough money to find Bill. You can remarry him and you will both have a comfortable old age."

"Oh!!!" Mrs. Jones drew the word out with a long inflection of surprise, and she shook her head in the wisdom of a new light. "I see what ye mean." After a moment's abstraction in which she pondered Thomas's suggestion, she continued, "Some way or 'nuther it don't seem straight by Bill."

"It's the only way I see to settle matters. But I sha'n't try to persuade you against your will, Mrs. Jones." Thomas brought to bear on the situation his finest modulations, both in voice and manner, as he sat nonchalantly in his chair, one knee cocked over the other and his foot swinging listlessly back and forth, portraying a personal indifference which Mrs. Jones's simple mind could not penetrate.

"It does seem a good way," she mused aloud, adding, in little spurts, "but I guess – maybe – Well – I think I'll talk it over with Millie."

Mrs. Jones did talk it over with Millie. Also, she had several prolonged interviews with Thomas on the subject, and three days later she put her name to the petition which asked for a divorce from Bill Jones without so much as giving the document a thorough reading. Whatever Thomas proposed was to her, by the very fact of its being his idea, a thing worthy to be done. Millie, being of the same turn of mind, aided her in accepting his decision. And it was only when the first publication of summons appeared in the Reno papers that her heart sank at the words which characterized Bill as a drunkard and a man who was cruel to his wife – lies which Thomas justified as necessary to strengthen the one truthful ground for the divorce – that of failure to provide. Even that Mrs. Jones felt was beside the truth, for although Bill had never exerted himself needlessly, he had performed the chores, gone after the mail, made beds, and, by his gift to her on their marriage day of his three hundred and twenty acres, which were far the better portion of the property, he had made some slight concession to his responsibilities. Bill's digressions had been those of omission rather than those of commission, and Mrs. Jones's misgivings were frequent during the three months that followed.

In the mean time, Thomas and Hammond were quick to inaugurate a new regime at the hotel. Mrs. Jones and Millie remained on in the capacity of guests, while a clerk and a housekeeper were brought from the city to take over the management. Modern improvements and equipment soon turned it into a hostelry that verged on the fashionable. With the early spring freshet augmenting the waterfall and the stream into a cataract whose potential horse-power did not escape Everett Hammond, he made a hurried trip from San Francisco with an official of the Pacific Railroad and succeeded in persuading the company to advance a comfortable sum of money for an option on the Jones property. Mrs. Jones and Millie, fretting under the suspense and without funds, were given a small amount to tide them over until the sale should be consummated, when they were to receive a large block of certificates in the Golden Gate Land Company.

All would have been well with Thomas, who saw life spreading before him in a panorama of ease and elegance, had it not been for two people – Lemuel Townsend and John Marvin. Lemuel Townsend had been placed by the November elections on the list of Superior Court judges, where he immediately came into his own as presiding judge in the majority of divorce cases in Reno. Thomas, unable to withstand the rôle of popular and irresistible Beau Brummell among the prospective divorcées at the hotel, had run against Townsend's displeasure two days before the election, when he had dared to play interloper in Lemuel Townsend's attentions to Mrs. Margaret Davis. With Townsend, it had been love at first sight. With Mrs. Davis it was something less, her only idea at that time being a quick snatch at freedom and a hurried trip back to Broadway, where she hoped to sign up for the summer circuit. Lem Townsend did well enough to pass the time, and it was her own diversion rather than any feeling for him which bade her accept his attentions. Thomas on frequent trips had scattered his flatteries between Millie and the various divorcées. Mrs. Davis came in for her full share and several times there had been clashes between the two men, Thomas invariably stepping aside, but only after verbal skirmishes with Townsend.

Marvin had not been seen in the neighborhood since a few days after Bill Jones had disappeared. He had returned to his cabin, after having established himself in an office in San Francisco with the intention of taking Bill back with him. During the days spent on the trails in search of the old man he had successfully evaded Sheriff Blodgett and had gone back to his office, where he had received a forwarded letter from Bill at the veterans' home at Yountville. He had taken one trip to the home with the purpose of persuading Bill to return with him to the city. But when he saw how comfortable Bill was there in the hillside country, surrounded by the old veterans who vied with one another in recounting their past prowess, he decided to let him alone until such time as he could effect a reconciliation between Bill and Mrs. Jones.

This, he trusted, would be at the termination of the case brought against him by the Pacific Railroad to recover the timber which he had sold to Rodney Harper previous to the sale of his timber-land to the Golden Gate Land Company by Mrs. Marvin. Then, too, he hoped the way would be made straight for him and Millie, although he had half lost hope under his realization of Thomas's superior eligibility.

These things, known to the latter, destroyed his composure and made the lapse between the filing of Mrs. Jones's divorce suit and the termination of its three months' summons by publication, required by law, a period of anxiety. He knew that if Marvin were vindicated before Mrs. Jones could secure her divorce his whole framework would collapse, as Millie and Mrs. Jones, straightforward as they were, would brook no hint of dishonesty on his part. Once discovered as unworthy of trust, their confidence in him would be broken and Marvin would be restored to full standing, not only in Millie's affections, but in Mrs. Jones's approval.

In the latter part of March he took a hurried trip to Reno, where, in conference with Blodgett, who had never been able to forgive Marvin's evasion of arrest, maneuvers to have the two suits tried at the same time sent him back to San Francisco rejoicing in the anticipation that his days of discomfort would soon be over and he could return to his own world again.

CHAPTER XIV

Mid-April came with its arabesquan days of sunlight and shadow and its fragile broidery of new leaf and timid blossom. It was as if its coming had stirred anew the life in Reno's divorce colony. All winter the courts had been dull, most of the men and women seeking divorces arriving in the early fall and biding their time of six months by hibernating through the long, cold season. But now there was a renewed activity in divorce circles. The court calendars were full and there was a steady stream of gaily clad applicants making their way in and out of the Washoe County court-house, going in with nervous, hasty, anxious tread and coming out with a gait which spoke of a new freedom and a smile that bespoke life as once again worth living.

It was one morning just after the flux of spring divorces had begun that Sheriff Blodgett stood looking over the calendar in Judge Lemuel Townsend's court-room. He scowled as he read the words announcing that the first case was that of the Railroad Company versus John Marvin. He patted the warrant which still occupied the waiting list in his pocket. Placing a chair close to the court-room door, he waited for the crowd to begin to file in. He knew that he could not arrest a man in the court-room, but he intended to keep his eye on the corridor, and to that end had propped one of the doors open with a chair so that he could see clear to the swinging doors that led in from the street. If Marvin put in an appearance, he intended to arrest him at once. The thought gave him satisfaction and he sat twirling his long, drooping mustache with one hand and fondling the handcuffs in his coat pocket with the other. Revenge at last would play its part to-day, for, even if Marvin failed to appear and therefore balked him again, the railroad company would get judgment, anyway.

It was at this point in his reverie that Thomas entered the court-room, greeting the sheriff with a genial, "Oh, hello there, Blodgett! I guess our day's come."

With a patronizing pat on Blodgett's shoulder, Thomas passed and went to the clerk, where he procured a list of the day's cases. He, too, nodded in satisfaction, as he saw that the Pacific Railroad case, in which he was attorney, was to come up first. Running his finger down the line, he stopped at another close to the end, smiled again, and turned to the sheriff.

"The Marvin case is first," he observed.

The sheriff nodded and a frown slowly puckered his brow. He walked slowly up to Thomas, who stood at the clerk's desk just within the railing. He hesitated, clearing his throat, and found the courage to ask, with a slight timidity in his voice and manner, "You ain't a-goin' to bring up the old story of my serving the warrant at Calivada, are you?"

Thomas laughed. "No," he replied; "I don't think I'll have to go into that. But I will ask you about the time you went to Marvin's camp."

Blodgett heaved his shoulders in relief, and, with hands in his pockets, went back to his station at the door. "That's all right!" He exhaled a full breath once again.

Thomas turned the leaves of the calendar, looked ahead for a day or two, without noticing much that he saw, then turned the leaves back again to the day's list. He went to the court-room window and looked out upon the valley that ran from Reno up toward the foothills. He sniffed the keen, cool air that was blown up to him. He stood contemplating the rushing waters of the Truckee River below. After several minutes' thought he faced Blodgett again.

"I'm going to ask you what time you were at Marvin's camp, for I want to show he was taking down the timber," he announced.

"I didn't get out where the timber was," the sheriff replied.

"But you know he had a gang of lumbermen there?" In Thomas's tone and in the gleam on his cold, blue eyes the sheriff caught the message of persuasion.

"Oh, sure." He nodded with the air of a man who understood what was wanted of him.

"And they drove you off by force?"

Blodgett nodded again.

"And you remember the date?"

"I guess I won't fergit it." There was emphasis in Blodgett's answer and he arose impatiently from his chair and stood, his arms akimbo, peering down the corridor. "Do you think Marvin'll be here to-day?" This time he was interlocutor. "I got a notion he won't," he added, fathering his disappointment by admitting the possibility of frustration in the one desire that had held him ever since Marvin had foiled him by the technicality of the state boundary-line. He was bound, however, that there should be no opportunity for escape this time.

"I don't care whether he turns up or not," Thomas answered, going to the lawyers' table, opening his brief-case, and setting them out before him as he swung gracefully into a chair. "The case is a cinch," he emphasized, with a grin that found reflection in Blodgett's eyes.

With a warning to the clerk to keep an eye on things until he should return, Blodgett left the court-room and swaggered up the corridor, stopping at the door of the other rooms and taking a frowning survey of the occupants, hoping that Marvin had entered one of them by mistake. If John Marvin was in Reno he was not going to escape arrest this day. With this comforting conclusion in mind, he took up his stand just outside of the court-house door at the top of the steps.

In the mean time Everett Hammond, escorting Mrs. Jones and Millie Buckley, entered Judge Townsend's court-room and were greeted effusively by Thomas.

"Oh, good morning!" He bowed low over Mrs. Jones's hand, which he held in his. "I'm glad to see you." Staring at Millie, who looked very fetching in a trim blue serge tailor suit, he beamed. "How fine you look this morning; quite irresistible, I assure you!"

Millie blushed and looked with frightened glance from the judge's bench to the lawyers' table, and from there to the witness-stand and back toward the door, for all the world as if she were contemplating a rapid escape. She took a deep breath. "I don't feel irresistible," she said. "I feel just as if I wanted to cry and run away." She pouted at Thomas, with entreaty in her pretty eyes.

Thomas laughed, put his hand on her arm in deprecation, and shrugged her fears away. "Oh, the trial won't amount to anything, little lady. What do you say to that, Mrs. Jones?"

The older woman's brown eyes were staring straight ahead, as if she saw a real horror and was without power to controvert it. "All I can say," she replied, in a high-pitched, high-strung voice, "is that I'm here." She waited for a moment, casting furtive glances at Hammond and Thomas, who stood one on each side of her. Having found the courage to assert herself, she burst out, "And I wish I wasn't!"

"Now, now, Mrs. Jones!" There was banter in Hammond's voice, but there was concern in the wise direction of his eyes toward Thomas. "You're a mighty brave woman and I know you're going through with this, for it means that you'll be in a much better position to find your husband and look out for your old age after you get the money for the place."

Mrs. Jones made no response, but cast anxious eyes about the room, and she folded her hands in resignation across her ample waist-line.

"It's like going to the dentist. The worst part is making up your mind to it." Thomas leaned over Mrs. Jones and smiled his most engaging smile. He received no answer to it, so he turned to Millie, who stood at the other side of him.

Before he could speak, the girl rid herself of the question that had been ever present in her mind now for six months, and one which she had never failed to ask him every time she saw him or wrote to him.

"Have you heard anything of daddy?"

Thomas's smile disappeared. He left the little group of four in the middle of the space inside of the rails and sat down again at the table, annoyance in the slump with which he threw himself into his chair. "No, we haven't been able to locate him." He would have been sullen had he dared, but his game was too nearly played and he did not wish to foozle at the last, so he controlled his mood and forced a smile as he thought of a method of getting away from his client's importunity for awhile.

"It must be distasteful for you two women to remain in here any longer than possible," he said, rising from his chair again and pointing to a door at one side of the court-room. "Lennon," he called to the clerk, "my clients can wait in there, can't they?"

The clerk acquiescing, he and Hammond courteously escorted Mrs. Jones and Millie to the door and showed them into a small room which had been fitted up for hysterical women overcome with the proceeding in their cases, or for those who, like Mrs. Jones and Millie, wished to avoid the embarrassment of a long wait in the court-room.

As the two women went through the door, Thomas turned to Hammond and advised, in a low voice: "You better go, too, Hammond. Keep them cheered up."

With bad grace in his shrug and in his eyes, he followed Thomas's suggestion, first murmuring in his partner's ear: "I'll be damn glad when this day is over. All I've been doing this last week is to keep these darned women from backing out."