Frank Merriwell's Backers; Or, The Pride of His Friends

  CHAPTER XIX.

  NEW ARRIVALS IN HOLBROOK.

  The town of Holbrook had been greatly stirred. It had not yet settledinto its accustomed grooves. The proprietor of the best hotel in townhad received a consignment of fine furniture, carpets, draperies,wallpaper and pictures, and he had set about renovating and decoratingseveral of the largest rooms in his house, having for that purpose anumber of workmen imported from some Eastern point. It was said that therooms had been rearranged to connect with each other in a suite, andthat when they were completed, and furnished, and decorated they weredazzlingly magnificent, nothing like them ever before having been seenin the place. The good citizens of Holbrook wondered and were amazed atall this; but they did not know that not one dollar had been expended bythe proprietor of the hotel. All this work had been done without expenseof his to accommodate some guests who came in due time and tookpossession of those rooms.

  The California Special had dropped four persons in Holbrook, whoregretfully left the comfort of a palace car and looked about them withsome show of dismay on the cluttered streets and crude buildings of theSouthwestern town. Holbrook was even better in general appearance thanmany Western towns, but, contrasted with clean, orderly, handsomeEastern villages, it was offensive to the eyes of the proud lady who wasaided from the steps of the car and descended to the station platformwith the air of a queen. She turned up her aristocratic nose a little onglancing around.

  This woman was dressed in the height of fashion, although somewhat tooheavily for the country she now found herself in; but there was abouther an air of display that betokened a lack of correct taste, which isever pronounced in those who seek to attract attention and produceastonishment and awe. She had gray hair and a cold, unattractive face.Still there was about her face something that plainly denoted she hadbeen in her girlhood very attractive.

  She was followed by a girl who was so pretty and so modest in appearancethat the rough men who beheld her gasped with astonishment. Never in thehistory of the town had such a pretty girl placed her foot within itslimits. She had a graceful figure, fine complexion, Cupid-bow mouth,flushed cheeks, large brown eyes and hair in which there was a hint ofred-gold, in spite of its darkness.

  A colored maid followed them.

  From another car descended a thin, wiry, nervous man, who had a greatblue beak of a nose, and who hastened to join the trio, speaking tothem.

  The hotel proprietor had at the station the finest carriage he couldfind, and this whisked them away to the hotel as soon as they hadentered it, leaving the loungers about the station wondering, while thetrain went diminishing into the distance, flinging its trail of blacksmoke against the blue of the Arizona sky.

  At the hotel the lady and her daughter occupied two of the finest rooms,the colored maid another, less expensively furnished, and the man withthe blue nose was given the fourth.

  Holbrook wondered what it meant.

  The lady ordered a meal to be served in her rooms.

  The report went forth at once, and again Holbrook stood agog.

  The hotel register was watched. Finally the man with the restless eyesand blue beak entered the office and wrote nervously in the register.

  Barely was he gone when a dozen persons were packed about the desk,seeking to look over one another's shoulders to see what had beenwritten.

  "Whatever is it, Hank?" asked one. "You sure kin read writin'. Whateverdo you make o' it?"

  "'Mrs. D. Roscoe Arlington,' the fust name," said the one called Hank."Then comes 'Miss Arlington,' arter which is 'Mr. Eliot Dodge,' an'lastly I sees 'Hannah Jackson.'"

  "Which last must be the nigger woman," said one of the rough men.

  "I allows so," nodded Hank. "An' it 'pears to me that name o' Arlingtonis some familiar. I somehow thinks I has heard it."

  "Why, to be course you has!" said another of the men. "D. RoscoeArlington, did you say? Who hasn't heerd that name? He's one o' them bigguns what has so much money he can't count it to save his gizzard.Ev-rybody has heerd o' D. Roscoe Arlington. If he keeps on gittin' richthe way he has the past three years or so, old Morgan won't be in thegame. Why, this Arlington may now be the richest man in this country, ifev'rything were rightly known about him. He owns railroads, an' mines,an' ships, an' manufacturin' plants, an' nobody knows what all."

  "That sartin explains a whole lot the fixin' up that has been a-doin'around this ranch," said a little man with a thirsty-looking mouth."They was a-preparin' fer the wife o' this mighty rich gent."

  "But say!" exclaimed a young fellow with a wicked face, "ain't she got aslick-lookin' gal with her, what?"

  Some of them laughed and slapped him on the back.

  "Go on, Pete!" cried one chap. "You're a gay one with greaser gals, butyou won't be able to make a wide trail with that yar young lady, sodon't be lookin' that way."

  "Wonder whatever could 'a' brought such people here," speculated a manwith tobacco juice on his chin. "They must mean to stay a while, elsethey'd never had them rooms fixed up the way they are."

  A ruffianly-looking man with a full beard broke into a low laugh.

  "Why, ain't none o' you heard about the fight what's bein' made to githolt o' a certain mine not so very fur from yere?" he asked. "I meanthe mine owned by a young chap what calls himself Frank Merriwell. Yououghter know somethin' about that."

  "Why, 'pears to me," observed the fellow with tobacco juice on hischin--"'pears to me I did hear that thar was trouble over a minesomewhar down in the Mogollons, an' that Cimarron Bill had been sent totake it."

  "He was sent," said the full-bearded man.

  "Then I 'lows he took it, fer Bill's sure to do any job he tackles."

  "He ain't took it none. Frank Merriwell is still a-holdin' the mine, an'Bill has had his troubles, leavin' a good part o' his backers stiffarter the ruction."

  "Say you so? Waal, this Merriwell sure must be a hot fighter. But Billwill down him in the end, an' you kin bet your last simoleon on that."

  To which the man with the full beard said nothing.

  "All this don't explain any to me jest why this lady an' her party ishyer," said the one with the thirsty mouth.

  "It ain't noways likely she's lookin' arter Cimarron Bill none," saidanother.

  "Whoever is a-takin' my name in vain?" demanded a voice that made themall start and turn toward the door.

  "It's Cimarron Bill hisself!" gasped one, in a whisper.

  And the entire crowd seemed awe-stricken and afraid.