I kept on. The man had simply run himself to death. Maybe it had been the heat, maybe it had been his heart. I found him blotching the road in the moonlight less than five miles from the car.
His tongue wasn’t swollen, his clothes were on and he hadn’t shredded the flesh from his fingers, digging in the coarse sand with his hands at the last, so I knew he hadn’t died from thirst.
That seemed to account for everybody. Just two men.
I buried him where I found him in a shallow grave that would keep the buzzards off, even if it didn’t stop coyotes. I figured on coming back and finishing the job later.
I put the papers from his coat in my pocket.
He’d been a judge of a superior court some place, and his name was Charles McNaught. I had some canned tomatoes and cooked up a little bacon and warmed over some beans. I was tired. I’d been on the move all day and most of the night. The moon was getting pretty well in the west.
I figured on making Owl Wells because it was nearest and if Pete had been able to move the other man he’d be there.
If he couldn’t move him by morning it’d mean there’d be two graves instead of just one.
The burro would have liked a long lay-off, but I gave him only two hours. Then we hit for the wells.
It was ten o’clock in the morning when we got there. Pete was there — alone.
“Cash in?” I asked.
He nodded. “Find the judge?”
“Yeah. If he’d waited at the car he’d have been O.K. If he’d thought of the radiator he’d have had enough water to have lasted him a week. But he ate a fried chicken lunch and then started to run. His pump stopped.”
Pete ran his fingers through the white stubble along his chin. There was a funny look in his eye.
“Listen to me, and listen careful,” he said. “My man got conscious along toward morning. He could talk. I knew he was going and he knew it, too. His name is Harrisson Bocker. He’s a millionaire. He’s got a son named Edward that’s in college some place or other. I’ve got the address written down.
“The guy could talk rationally about some things. Other things he was goofy on. Seemed he’d made some sort of what he called a ‘spendthrift trust’ for his boy. The judge was the trustee. Old Bocker figured the judge was maybe croaked. That’d invalidate the trust and mean the boy would take the money all in one gob. Bocker said he’d blow it in. He always was an easy mark, sort of a rich man’s kid.
“Well, the long and short of it was, he made me his trustee if old McNaught had cashed in, changed his will accordingly. I’m sole trustee. What I say goes. The kid don’t get any money until he’s forty unless I say he can have it. I can let him have all I want. If he gets married without my consent he loses everything. What do you think of that?”
I looked old Pete over.
“I think the guy was batty and you let him go ahead knowing he was crazy as a loon. He never even saw you before. What do you know about trusts?”
Pete chuckled.
“That’s what you think. Nobody can prove nothin’, and I’ve always wanted to have the handling of one of these rich men’s sons. Let us go get the coroner. I want this here official.”
II. A Desert Man’s Ward
I was a witness at the inquest, and then I lost track of Pete for a few months. I heard generally what was happening. The kid didn’t take kindly to Pete as a trustee. He got a lawyer and they fought for a while, but the codicil to the will was in his dad’s own handwriting all right, and Pete gave some pretty strong testimony. The kid couldn’t even get money to pay a lawyer unless Pete let him have it, after the first court sustained the trust. So the kid gave in and accepted Pete.
In summer vacation Pete stopped the kid’s allowance and brought him up to Kernville.
Kernville’s up in the mountains on the rim of the Mojave Desert. It’s where the big mountains and the edge of the big desert meet, and it has something of both the desert and the mountains in its climate.
Looked at in one way, it’s civilization, but it’s pretty close to the jumping-off place. The desert sends streamers licking at the foot of the mountains like dry tongues. The cañons are filled with sand, prickly pear, Joshua trees, the weird desert cacti. The mountains are high, dry walls of crumbling rock with snow glistening on the ridges. Then, on the other side of the mountains, are roaring streams, pine timber, shaded slopes.
The Mojave Desert stretches to the east, runs into Death Valley, then sweeps along through the Pahrump Valley down through Nevada and Arizona, way on into New Mexico. It’s all the domain of the desert, although the desert changes in every locality.
Men grow hard in Kernville. Big Bill Bruze lived in Kernville and he was hard. Nell Thurmond waited tables for Martha Stout, and Big Bill was sweet on Martha’s help. And you couldn’t blame him. Nell was pretty.
I was there when young Bocker arrived.
He gave his name as E. Reed Bocker. Pete asked him why he did that and the kid said Edward was common. He was like that.
Pete glared at him. “Your name’s Ed Bocker up here,” he said, “common or not.” And E. Reed Bocker became Ed Bocker.
Pete put him to work in the mine.
Big Bill Bruze was foreman at the mine.
Ed Bocker was one of those handsome men. He had a profile like a movie picture actor, and his eyes were big and soulful. He was well muscled, not strong, just beautifully molded. His waist was slim, his shoulders broad and he drawled his a’s when he talked.
I guess it was the first time that Pete had seen the kid at close range. He sure was enough to make a man go take a drink of rotgut.
He was so soft his skin would blister if he made three passes with a shovel. His hair had to be combed just so, and he had to have his suits pressed every couple of days. He brought along a bag of golf sticks “for exercise.”
That was when Pete stopped his allowance and put him to work.
Within three days Ed Bocker was the most hated man in Kernville. He was everything he shouldn’t be: a patronizing, educated, snobbish, weak-willed nincompoop, and three years at college hadn’t helped him any.
Martha Stout was the only one who saw anything good in the kid.
Martha had trained animals in a circus before she got so fat she couldn’t wear tights.
“It ain’t the kid,” she said. “It’s his training.”
And she sold Nell Thurmond on the idea, because Nell started returning the kid’s smiles.
That started the fight.
The kid thought he was working in the mine. He actually wasn’t earning his salt. Pete was paying the superintendent for the privilege of having the kid draw wages. And the kid was snobbing it around, telling everybody how everything should be done.
Then he and Nell fell for each other. She liked his soulful eyes, and she and Bill Bruze had a spat over something anyhow.
The two went to the picture show, Ed and the girl. Big Bill was waiting outside.
Ed had confided to me that he’d taken boxing lessons in school, and had stood well at the head of his class. He seemed to think he could handle Dempsey with one hand.
But Big Bill called him.
The kid turned up his upper lip.
“I don’t brawl,” he said, and stuck out his arm for Nell to take.
Nell looked at him.
“Aren’t you going to stick up for your rights?” she asked.
Big Bill Bruze stepped forward and slapped the kid across the mouth. He flushed, but kept his eyes straight ahead.
“I don’t brawl,” he repeated.
Nell’s eyes blazed.
“Well, you’re going to brawl if you go with me, big boy!” she said, and pushed him into Big Bill. At the same time Big Bill stuck out his left. It smeared the kid up a bit.