Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 1, Number 10, DeMotte, Jasper County, 29 September 1932 — The Everlasting Whisper [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Everlasting Whisper

By Jackson Gregory

SYNOPSIS In the California sierra Mark King, prospector, sees Andy Parker killed by Swen Brodie, Parker’s outlaw companion, both known to King. He is on his way to the home of his friend, Ben Gaynor. King and Gaynor share with Brodie and his crowd knowledge of a vast store of hidden gold. King meets Mrs. Gaynor and is impressed by her daughter Gloria’s youthful beauty. He instinctively dislikes a house visitor named Gratton. With Gloria, King rides to the village of Coloma, intending to “sound” Honeycutt. He finds Brodie with the old prospector, and animosity flares. CHAPTER II--Continued --4--“There’s that box on the table,” said King. “Maybe you’ll want to put it away before he makes you another visit.” Honeycutt hastily set his gun down, leaning it against the wall with both hammers still back, and shambled to the table. He caught the box up and hugged it to his thin old breast, breathing hard, went to his tumbled bunk in a corner, sat down on it, thrusting the box out of sight under the untidy heap of dirty bedding. He glanced at his gun. “You git, too.” King felt that he could not have selected a more inopportune moment for his visit, and already began to fear that he would have no success today. But it began to look as though it were a question of now or never; Brodie would return despite the shotgun, and Brodie might now be looked to for rough-shod methods. So, to catch an interest which he know was always readily awakened, he said: ‘‘Brodie and Parker were on Lookout ridge day before yesterday. Brodie shoved Parker over. At Lookout Ridge, Honeycutt.” He stressed the words significantly while keenly watching for the gleam of interest in the faded eyes. It came; Honeycutt jerked his head up. “I wish I’d of shot him,” he wailed. "I wish I’d of blowed his ugly head off.” “It might have saved trouble.” admitted King coolly. “Also, it might have been the job to hang you, Honeycutt. Better leave well enough alone. But listen to me: Brodie told you, and he meant it, that it was going to be Brodie or King who got away with this deal." “He lied! Like you lie'!” Here was Honeycutt probed in his tenderest spot. “It’ll be me! Me, I tell you. Think I’m old, do you? I’m feelin’ right peart this spring; by summer I’ll be strong as a young feller again.” “By summer will be too late. Don’t I tell you that already Brodie has gone as far as Lookout Ridge? That means he’s getting hot on the trail of it, doesn’t it? As hot as I am.” “Then what are you cornin’ pesterin’ me for? If you know where it is?” “I don’t know.” Honeycutt cackled and rubbed his hands at the admission. “But I’m going to find out. So, probably, is Brodie. Now, look here, Honeycutt. I am for making you a straight business proposition. If you know anything, I stand ready to buy your knowledge, in cold, hard cash.” “No man ain’t got the money--not enough--not any Morgan or Rock’feller--” King began opening the parcel he had brought from the post office. As he cut the heavy cord with his pocketknife Honeycutt looked on curiously. King stepped to the table, standing so that out of the corners of his eyes he commanded both doors, and stripped off the wrapping paper. “Look sharp, Honeycutt,” he commanded. “Here’s money enough to last you as long as you live. All yours if you can tell me what I want to know.” A golden twenty-dollar coin rolled free, shone with its virgin newness and lay on the table-top, gleaming its lure into the covetous old eyes. Another followed it and another. King began counting. “There’s one thousand dollars. Right in the pile,” he said. “One thousand dollars.” “One thousand dollars. An' some of it gold. New lookin’, ain’t it, Mark? Let me have the feel of one of them twenties.” King tossed it; it fell upon the bedding, and Honeycutt’s fingers dived after it and held it tight. He began rubbing it, caressing It. King went on counting. “One more thousand in this pile,” he said. “That’s two thousand, Honeycutt!” “Two thousand,” repeated Honeycutt nodding. He got up and shambled on his cane close to the table, leaning against it, thrusting his peering eyes down. King counted out the last crisp note. “Three thousand dollars.” He stepped back a pace. “Three thousand dollars! That’s a might of money, Mark. Three thousand dollars all on my table.” His thin voice was a hushed whisper now.

“I never seen that much money, not all at once and spread out.” “It’s likely that you’ll never see that much again. Unless you and I do business.” “It’s a sight of money, Mark,” Honeycutts whispered again. “It’s a sight of money.” King held his silence. His whole argument was on the table. He went to the door, standing in the sunshine, filling his lungs with the outside air. The sight of the gloating miser sickened him. More than that. It sickened his fancies so that for a minute he asked himself what he and Brodie were doing! The lure of gold. The thing had hypnotized him; he wished that he were out in the mountains riding among the pines and cedars; listening to the voice of the wilderness. It was clean out there. But the emotion, like a vertigo, passed as swiftly as it had come. For he knew that though he had traveled on many a golden trail it was cleanheartedly; that it was tbe game itself that counted ever with him and no such poisonous emotions as grew within the Wretched breast of Loony Honeycutt. He turned back to the room. Honeycutt was near the bunk, groping for his shotgun. He started guiltily, veiled his eyes, and returned emptyhanded to the table. “If it was all in gold, now,” said Honeycutt hurriedly. King made no reference to Honeycutt’s murderous intent. “That paper is the same as gold,” he said. “The government backs it up.” “I know, I know. But what’s a gove’ment? They go busted, don’t

they sometimes? Same as folks? Gold don’t go busted. There ain’t nothin’ like gold. If that was all in twentydollar gold pieces, now--” “I’ll get a car here,” said King. “We’ll drive down to Auburn and take a train to San Francisco. And there I’ll undertake to get you the whole thing in gold. One hundred and fifty twenty-dollar pieces." But old Honeycutt shook his head. “I couldn’t leave here an’ you know it. I--I got things here,” he said with a look of great cunning, “I wouldn’t go away from. With the world full of robbers that would be after me like hounds running’ down a rabbit. I won’t go; you cain’t make me. No man cain’t” , King’s patience deserted him. “I am not going to make you do anything. Further, lam not going to put in any more time on you. I have offered to pay you three thousand dollars for what you know--and there is the very strong likelihood that you don’t know a bit more than I do--” “Don’t know!” shrieked Honeycntt “Wasn’t I a boy grown when the dyin’, delerious man stumbled in on the camp? Didn’t I hear him talk an’ didn’t I see what he had in his fist? Wasn’t I setting right side by side with Gus Ingle when that happened? Wouldn’t I of been one to go, if it hadn’t of been that I had a big knifecut in my side you could of shoved a cat in--give to me by a slant-eyed cuss name of Baldy Winch. Didn’t I watch ’em go, the whole seven of ’em, Baldy Winch, rot him, jeerin’ at me an’ me swearin’ I’d get him yet, him an’ Gus Ingle an’ Preacher Ellson an’ the first Brodie an’ Jimmy Kelp an’ Manny Howard an’ the Italian? Wasn’t I there? If I don’t know nothin’, what’re you askin’ me for?” King had learned little that he did not already know. He came back to the table and began gathering up the money. “Wait a minute, Mark,” pleaded the old man, restless as he understood that the glittering coins were to be taken away. “Let’s talk a while. You an’ me ain’t had a good chat like this for a year.” “I’m going,” retorted King. “But I’ll make you one last proposition.” He thrust into his pocket everything excepting five twenty-dollar gold pieces. These he left standing in a little pile. “I’ll give you just exactly one hundred dollars for a look at what is in that box of yours.” In sudden alarm the old man shambled back to his bunk, his hands on the bedding over the box. “You’d grab it an’ run,” he clacked.. “You’d rob me. You’re worse than Brodie--” “You know better than that,” King told him sternly. “If I wanted to rob you I’d do it without all this monkey business." In his suspicions' old heart Honeycutt knew that. “I’ll go you!” he said abruptly. “Stand back. An’ give me the money first.”

King gave him the money and drew back some three or four paces. Honeycutt drew out the box and poured out the contents. What King saw, three articles only, were these: an old leather pouch, bulging, probably with coins; a parcel; and a burnished gold nugget. The parcel, since it was enwrapped in a piece of cloth, might have been anything. It was shaped like a flat box. Honeycutt leered. “If Swen Brodie had of knowed what he had right in his hands,” he gloated, “he’d never of let go! Not even for a shotgun at his head!” gone far. He’ll come back. You have your last chance to talk business with me, Honeycutt. Brodie wlll get it next time.” “Ho! Will he? Not where I’m goin’ to hide it, Mark King. I got another place; a better place; a place the old hell-sarpint himself couldn’t find.” King left him gloating and placing his treasures back in his box. In his heart he knew that Brodie would come again. Soon. It began to look as though Brodie had the bulge on the situation. For that which Mark King could not come at by fair means Brodie meant to have by foul. For he had little faith in the new “hidin’ place.” But on a near-by knoll, where she sat with her back to a tree, was Gloria. He turned toward her; she waved. He saw that Brodie and two men with him were looking out a window, he heard one of them laughing. They were looking at Gloria--King quickened his step to come to her, his blood ruffled by a new anger which he did not stop to reason over. He could imagine the look in Swen Brodie’s evil little eyes. CHAPTER III Gloria was genuinely glad to see King returning to her. “It seemed that you were gone hours,” she said. “I never saw such a dreary, lonesome place as this sleepy little town. It gives me the fidgets,” she concluded laughingly. “These old mining camps have atmospheres all their own,” he admitted “A dead town turns into a ghost town. It get's on your nerves.” She nodded soberly. As side by side they went along through tbe sunshine King noted how Brodie and a couple of men came out to look after them. He heard the low, sullen bass of the unforgetable voice; saw that Brodie had left his companions and was going straight to old Honeycutt’s shanty. King frowned and for an instant hung on his heel, drawing Gloria’s curious look. “You don’t like that big man with the big voice,” said Gloria, “No,” he said tersely. “It is Swen Brodie?” “Yes. But how do yon know?" “Oh, I know lots of don’t think I know! A Girls are rather knowing creatures; I wonder if you realize that?” “I don’t know much about girls,” he smiled at her. She pondered the matter for a dozen steps, swinging her hat at her side and looking across the housetops to the mountains. She did not know any other man who would have said that in just that way. Archie and Teddy, any of her boy friends in town--they knew all about girls! Or thought that they did. Mr. Gratton with his smooth way; he led her to suppose that he had been giving girls a great deal of studious thought for many years, and that only after this thorough investigation did he feel In a position to declare herself to be the most wonderful of her sex. “Don't you like girls?” she asked. For once she wasn’t “fishing”; she wanted to know. “Of course I do,” he told her heartily. “As well as a man can--under the circumstances.” “You mean not knowing them better?” When he nodded she looked up at him again, hesitated, and then demanded: “You like me, don’t you?” She had never asked a man that before; she was not accustomed to employing either that direct method or matter-of-fact tone. Just now there was no hint of the coquette in her; she was just a very grave-eyed girl, as serious in her tete-a-tete with an interesting male as she could have been were she sixty years old. “Of course I do,” he said heartily, a little surprised by the abruptness of the question and yet without hesitation. “Very much.” She flushed prettily; she, Gloria Gaynor, flushed up because Mark King said in blunt, unvarnished fashion: “I like you very much.” The grave sobriety went out of her eyes; they shone happily. Through the long shadows of evening they rode back to the log house. Gratton looked at them sharply and suspiciously. King with a nod to the various guests and a few words with Mrs. Gaynor, entirely given to warm praise of her daughter, drew Ben aside for a discussion of conditions as he had found them and left them today. He was dead sure that Brodie had gone back to Honeycutt, had gotten what he wanted, and was off in a beeline to put to the proof the old man’s tale. Gloria was off to bed early, saying “good night everybody" rather absently. She climbed up the stairs wearily. Whep her mother slipped away from the others, she found Gloria ready for bed but standing before her window, looking out at the first stars. Gloria usually had so many bright, gushing things to say after a day of pleasure, but tonight she appeared oddly preoccupied. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

His Whole Argument Was on the Table.