“I’m not a murderer,” Johnny exclaimed impatiently. “How many times do I have to tell people that?”
“You didn’t do a good job of convincing the California police. In fact, your running away was proof...”
“Stop it, Mike,” cut in Laura Henderson. “You’re wearing out that record...”
“I’ll play it until the cows come home. Fletcher and this gorilla were at that motel in San Bernardino. Hugh Kitchen was found in their car — and they’ve been trying to cut in on the Silver Tombstone ever since. What more do you want?”
“A lot more than that,” Johnny said. “Sam and I stopped at the motel by sheer accident. We’d never even heard of Hugh Kitchen. We’d never heard of the Silver Tombstone...”
“But you’ve heard plenty about it since then. And you threw in with Tompkins, the damned crook.” Mike Henderson shook his head angrily. “Pokes around in the Silver Tombstone for two years, then pretends he’s found a rich vein... Yes, he found it all right... in my mine.”
“In your mine?”
“What do you suppose this is all about? You can buy all the silver in the Silver Tombstone for a silver dollar. Tompkins wants to own the mine so he can dig into my mine...”
“That isn’t true, Mike,” Helen Walker said suddenly. “I thought we’d agreed...”
“I agreed to pay you fifty thousand for the Silver Tombstone,” Henderson stated. “I didn’t agree that there was a rich vein in your mine.”
“Then why would you pay fifty thousand dollars for it?”
“Because the lawsuits would cost more. I know all about the apex laws and I don’t want to get involved in them. Some stupid judge might even decide against me; so I’m willing to pay fifty thousand dollars...”
“To buy me off?”
“If you want to put it that way — yes.”
“Well, I don’t want to put it that way. The deal is off...”
“Now wait a minute!” cried Henderson. “You agreed...”
“I agreed, but I didn’t sign. I’m not taking charity.”
“Attagirl!” said Laura Henderson.
“Keep out of this, Laura,” Henderson snarled. “There’re some things you don’t know.”
“Not very many.”
“What’s an apex law?” Johnny asked.
Henderson gestured impatiently. “This isn’t the time for a course in mining law.”
“An apex law,” Laura Henderson began to explain, in defiance of her brother, “means that a mine owner can follow a vein wherever it leads, into adjoining mines even, provided only that the vein apexes — or begins — on his own claim. And it is virtually impossible to prove where a vein apexes...”
“Then what’s the sense of the law?” Johnny asked. “Lawyers have to live, don’t they? It’s a vicious law, in the hands of unscrupulous miners and lawyers. Up in Deadwood, South Dakota, George Hearst had to spend twenty-six million dollars in buying up adjoining claims just to protect his Homestake Mine from apex suits. And the Anaconda Copper Corporation paid F. Augustus Heinze eleven million for a claim consisting of nineteen square feet. They didn’t pay the money for the nineteen square feet, but to settle some one hundred and fifty suits that Heinze had outstanding against them at the time. Or that they had against Heinze...”
“Laura,” Mike Henderson broke in impatiently, “what’s the sense of all that?”
“I think Johnny Fletcher should have all the information he needs,” retorted Laura Henderson, “for if anyone is going to settle this mess, he’s the one.”
“Why, thanks,” said Johnny, surprised.
“He can settle it,” said Mike Henderson angrily, “by confessing.”
“You’re a stubborn cuss,” Johnny said. “Once you get your mind made up about something nothing can change it.”
“Nothing but proof otherwise.”
“Lend me a hundred dollars,” said Johnny, “and I’ll get you the proof.”
“I’d just as soon burn a hundred dollars as give it to you.”
Laura Henderson went into her bedroom. She returned in a moment with two fifty dollar bills. “Here’s the money!” She handed the bills to Johnny.
“Laura!” cried Mike Henderson.
“It’s my money.”
“You’re a fool.”
“Maybe I am,” Laura said calmly. “And maybe you’re the one who’s the fool. All I know is that Fletcher arrived in California without a cent and within a short time was flashing fifty dollar bills—”
“Stolen, no doubt!” cut in Mike Henderson.
“Perhaps. But at any rate he had enough ingenuity to get the money. Then he was arrested, escaped, and with the police of the entire state after him, he was able to go clear across the state, and almost through another. He’s had a lot of people working against him and he’s come through. I say he’s got something. And I’m willing to string along with him.”
“You’ll regret it.”
“No, she won’t,” Johnny said. “She’s the second smartest person in this setup. I say second, because the smartest one is the one who murdered Hugh Kitchen — the one I’m going to nail for you with this hundred dollars.”
“You understand,” said Mike Henderson, “you’re taking that money at the point of a gun—”
“He isn’t!” cried Laura. “I gave him the money.”
“You haven’t any money of your own. Whatever you have you’ve gotten from me.”
“Mike,” said Johnny, “you’re becoming an awfully obnoxious guy.”
“All this talk isn’t going to get us anywhere, Johnny,” interrupted Sam. “It’ll be morning in a little while and we want to be on our way by then.”
“A long ways, too,” said Johnny. He looked around the circle of faces. “Good-bye, now.”
Laura Henderson was the only one who replied. “Good-bye, Johnny Fletcher... and good luck.”
Johnny opened the door and stepped out. Sam followed, making a threatening gesture with the shotgun before closing the door.
Chapter Eighteen
The grey dawn was already breaking, Johnny noted. He shook his head. Mike Henderson was probably already at the telephone. Within ten minutes, Joe Cotter would be out. There wasn’t enough time.
Or was there.
A station wagon stood inside an open garage. Johnny glanced quickly at Sam and headed for the vehicle. The keys were in it, which would save them the couple of minutes it would have taken them to fashion a wire spark-jumper.
“You’ll notice,” said Sam, as he climbed into the station wagon beside Johnny, “I ain’t even afraid of stealing a car any more.”
“We’re only borrowing this for a little while.”
The starter caught instantly and Johnny backed the station wagon out of the garage, turned it on the macadam and headed for a wire gate fifty feet away.
He stopped in front of the gate and Sam sprang out and opened it. They didn’t bother to close it. Johnny turned the car left, in the direction of Hansonville. Sam grunted.
“All right, I hope we run into him.”
“Joe?”
“Who else?”
They sped through the little hamlet and negotiated the graveled road to Tombstone probably faster than it had ever been covered before.
At Tombstone they turned left once more on the main paved road. The speedometer indicated sixty-five a minute after they left the town and Johnny pressed his foot down upon the accelerator. The needle shot up to seventy, advanced to seventy-five, then eighty. It hovered there for a little while, then Johnny began easing off. When the needle got down to sixty, Sam looked at him puzzled.