Part 26 (2/2)

”Maybe now yer paw was a desert prospector,” he suggested.

”Uh-huh.” Lucy nodded her fluffy head vigorously up and down. This was another childlike action which she had found pleasing to men--especially the older men. Of course she was lying like a little sailor; but ”Uncle” seemed interested in her, and business was dull just then. She would pretend to be all that he seemed to wish her to be as long as she could successfully follow his conversational leads.

”What do they call you, girlie?” he asked next.

”Lucy.”

”Lucy, eh? Lucy what, now?”

”Lucy Dalles.”

”Dalles, huh? Dalles!” His weird old eyes, peculiarly tinted from years of looking into the mirage-draped distances of the desert, were strangely reminiscent.

”Maybe that ain't your right name, though,” he kept on feelingly.

”Maybe not,” replied Lucy quite truthfully. After all, she had only her father's and her mother's word for it. For all she knew she might be the reincarnation of the Queen of Sheba. ”Let's try a shot, Uncle,”

she added, sensing deep water ahead.

Indolently he picked up a .22 rifle, and rang the bell of her most difficult bull's-eye target eight shots out of ten. He paid her and seemed in nowise elated over her fulsome praise, designed to keep him shooting.

He took up his long cane again. ”I'll drift up the drag a ways,” he said, ”and see what's goin' on. Nothin' but desert owls lived here when I traveled through last--two years ago. I'll be back. Maybe I'll want to ast ye a few p'inted questions. Will ye answer, eh?”

”Sure,” she told him lightly, whacking her gum for emphasis. ”Come and pour your heart out to me, Uncle--I'll listen.”

Lucy had taken more of the well-filled buckskin poke that the old man had pulled from the neck of his greasy s.h.i.+rt to pay her for the pastime.

She leaned out and craned her neck to watch him moving up the street, glancing through doors and openly investigating on every side.

Her intuition told her that the gray old rat had something on his mind.

Lonely old soul that he was, she reasoned, he was bashful and at a loss how to conduct himself in the unfamiliar presence of a woman. ”When he's all gowed up he'll talk my head off,” she decided. ”He's going to fortify himself now. Guess I'll have to look into this.”

When the bent, plodding figure had disappeared through the entrance to Ghost Falcott's Palace Dance Hall, Lucy called across the street to a boy sitting on the edge of the new board sidewalk. The boy crossed to her and she handed him a dime.

”Find Al Drummond and tell him I want to see him at once,” she directed.

A little later Al Drummond presented himself. His face showed the effects of a sleepless night, but he was already refortified with jacka.s.s brandy for the ordeals of the day, and was in nowise stupid.

They leaned on the carpeted counter, heads close together, and talked in lowered voices.

”What this old bird has got on his chest I can't tell,” Lucy explained.

”But I played up to him, and if he gets all gowed up he'll spill it.

He's crazy as they make 'em, Al. It may not amount to anything at all, but I'm for always lookin' into such little things. You never can tell, Al. Maybe this'll be good. Anyway, he's got a leather bag that's heavy with jack, and he won't need that when he hits the trail again. Warm up to him and get 'im started, then steer him to me.”

”Wise little kid,” Al Drummond commented. ”Leave it to me.”

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