Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1940)

afore she falls asleep on you. Jubie, just fix that pile of clothes so I can bed her down — " "Oh — oh, no, Mrs. Davis. I like to hold her. Besides, I ought to make it up to her somehow for takin' her seat!" "Well — " shyly — "if you've a mind to — " Jubie, with her characteristic important little bounce, asked, "You goin' to stake you out a claim up there and get rich too, Maisie?" "No, Jubie, I'm just goin' to get a job in a cafe." "Cookin'?" Jubie's crestfallen expression showed her disappointment that anyone as godlike as Maisie should descend to so menial an occupation. Maisie hastened to reassure her. "No, honey — singin' or dancin' or both, maybe." Jubie's faith was instantly restored and augmented. "Honest?" "Honest . . . Where you folks from?" "Well, our home state's Arkansas," Bert said, and Jubie supplemented: "That's where our farm is. Harold and me had the cutest lil' ole donkey there, didn't we, Harold?" Maisie said, "You sure musta made good time to get all the way from Arkansas since the gold strike — " "Oh," Bert said, "we ain't been there in more'n a year — not since we lost the farm. 'Course, we was only tenantin', anyways. It ain't really belonged to us for five years." Softly, Sarah said, "There was all the drought and dust. Then the bank wouldn't loan us no more money and we had to git off." "Gee, that's too bad. . . ." HAROLD turned square around in his seat so he could face Maisie, and declaimed proudly, "We been in five states, follerin' the crops around! Me and Jubie're gettin' so's we kin pick almost as much in a day together as Mom kin." " 'Course we ain't migr'tory workers, like they call us, no more, now," Jubie explained. "We're prospectors!" "Doesn't all this kind of cut in on your school work?" Maisie asked, and was immediately ashamed of her thoughtlessness. "They don't go to school," Sarah said. "We ain't in any one place more'n two-three weeks, sometimes only a coupla days. It kinda irks me, them not growin' up eddicated, but don't seem they's nothin' we kin do about it." Jubie waved her hands expansively. "If we git us a lot of gold, we figger on gittin' us a real house again and then me and Harold's goin' to school!" "Aw, I ain't goin' to no ole school!" Harold said, shocked. "I'm jest a-goin to eat chalklit candy and ice cream till I bust wide open!" Jubie fixed him with a baleful eye. "There you go — thinkin' about your ole stummick again!" "I'm thinkin' about gettin' me a donkey again, too, if you're so smart!" "Hesh up, Harold," Sarah said in her mild voice. "First we got to find the gold, afore we spend it." "And mebbe that ain't goin' to be as easy as we think," Bert said. "Gold's up there, ain't it? All you gotta do is go out and look fer it." Sarah was not to be discouraged. Bert, driving his broken-down car, a dinner consisting of a bit of bread and cheese in his stomach, chuckled. "Well, I got good eyes and a strong back and a pickaxe and, what's more, a mighty strong hankerin' to git us our share. All we need now's the right luck." Maisie said, "I got a feelin' your luck's goin' to be good!" As if she had just spoken words of unexpected great wisdom, Jubie turned to her excitedly. "That's the very thing Pop said, Maisie! We ain't had no car trouble in two hundred miles, neither. I'm awful sorry about your car — that's about the worst luck you kin have, ain't it?" "Maybe so, honey," Maisie said tenderly. "Maybe it is." They fell silent then, while Bert kept the car at a slow steady pace along the rutted desert road. His hands gripped the wheel hard, his eyes stared straight ahead into the feeble glow of the headlights. Now and then another car overtook them, but not very often. Harold had curled up in the front seat so he was beneath the level of Maisie's vision. Sarah's head dropped forward, bobbing with the motion of the car; and Jubie nestled up against Maisie's shoulder, one hand still clutching the frayed sweater around her throat. The baby was asleep, too, and Queenie had found sanctuary somewhere on the floor. They all slept except Bert and Maisie. The desert wheeled past, silent and forlorn. Far off, black tablelands moved slowly against the starlit sky. It was quite cold. The lump in Maisie's throat grew bigger, harder, and her eyes burned with the tears she tried fiercely to blink back. But after a while she too fell into an uneasy doze. . . . She sat upright, flexing her tired muscles to rest them. It was dawn, and they were entering the ghost town. But it was a ghost town no longer. Cars and tents were everywhere, smoke was rising into the air from makeshift stoves or plain campfires. The wooden buildings, though still dilapidated, had taken on that subtle look of being occupied by living people. And the place, even this early in the morning, was violently astir. Bert stopped the car in front of the largest building, where a new, crudely lettered sign said, "Spot Cash General Store. Groceries — Miners Supplies — Whiskey." Everybody piled out, yawning and stretching. "When," asked Harold, going straight to the point, "are we gonna eat, Mom?" "Can't cook no breakfast afore we set up the stove," his mother told him, and his father added, "Don't jest want to pick a camp site till we make a couple inquiries about where they's gold." "Say!" Maisie exclaimed, her eyes lighting on the sign on the store, "There's a grocery store! I'd like to get some things I need." Yt ITH Jubie in tow, she walked up the rickety steps. Inside there was a counter consisting of boards laid over sawhorses. The open shelves had been hastily reinforced and haphazardly stacked with canned goods. More merchandise stood in broken-open cases on the floor. The storekeeper, a middle-aged, hard-featured man, was standing in his shirt sleeves behind the counter, chewing on a match. He gave them a suspicious look. "First of all," Maisie said happily, "gimme five or six cans of milk. The best you got." He didn't remove the match. "It's all the same," he said. "Quarter a can." "Two bits apiece?" "This ain't no neighborhood chain store, lady. I got to truck everything in. It's no easy job, neither." "Yeah," Maisie said scornfully. "You look overworked!" "Nobody's askin' you to buy," he said indifferently. "Keep your shirt on. I got five bucks to blow on groceries and I want a nice, big sackful for my money. The milk, pork and beans, corned beef, half a dozen oranges. . . ." "No patty de foy grass?" "Are your eggs fresh, too?" Maisie inquired with a steady look. "I'll take some if they are." She managed to get two sacks of groceries for her five dollars, a small one for her and a big one for Jubie, and they returned to the car in high spirits. "My land," Sarah said when she saw them, "you sure must be hungry, Miss Maisie!" "I guess we all are, so I want you to have breakfast on me today, see?" Sarah quickly explored the sacks. "Why, they's enough here fer four days!" she exclaimed. "Milk — pork and beans — " "Pork and beans!" Harold was incredulous. "A whole can for you alone, Harold," Maisie told him. They all climbed back into the car, Jubie gurgling, she give five dollars and twenty-five cents fer it, "Judgin' from the prices they're askin' — and gettin'— around here, I ought to make that five bucks back easy with half a dozen songs," Maisie said confidently. Bert started the car up. "Remember," Sarah reminded him, "we wanta stop close to some water." "Let's eat — let's eat!" said Harold. The main street was crowded on both sides with tents and cars wherever there was any room between two houses, but a block or two down from the store Bert noticed an empty space and stopped the car, nodding in satisfaction back at Sarah "Pile out, everybody!" Maisie said gaily. As they opened the doors a peremptory voice called: "Just a minute, folks!" A man whose disposition might have been own twin to that of the storekeeper was lounging in the doorway oi a tent set up next to the empty space. "Aimin' to pitch a tent here?" he drawled. "Yep," Bert said. The man spat down into the dust at his feet "Cost you five dollars a week," he said. Maisie flared up. "Say, what's the big idea? This ground doesn't belong to you!" "I got it claimed and staked out, lady. That's as good as ownin' it" Maisie tossed her head. "Drive on, Mr. Davis. There's other places." The man grinned evilly. "No place anyways near water. Here it's five dollars. Or you can go up the road pretty near two miles." Bert said slowly, "That's too fur to carry water. How much cash we got left, Sarah?" There was a moment's heavy silence. Sarah said, "A dollar ninety," And then there was more silence. "Okay, mister," Maisie said at last. "I guess this place'll have to do." The man walked over to the car and held out his hand. "Five dollars, then — in advance." Maisie smiled disarmingly. "Never mind about that. I'll give you an extra buck for waitin' a few days." "Oh, no, sister," he said quickly. "You stay here, you gotta pay now." "But I'm gettin' a job in town. You'll get your dough all right!" The man's mouth twisted strangely, as if he were trying to beat down a laugh. "A job? Doin' what?" Maisie misunderstood the smothered laugh "Singin', mister — singing!" she said in crisp and unfriendly tones. "Where? In the middle of the street?" "I'm not in competition with the Salvation Army. I do my work in cafes and cabarets. Catch on?" "Ain't no such here." "Well, then — in a bar — or dance hall — or whatever they got in the way of night spots." The man spat again. "Say, who're you tryin' to kid?" He talked as if he were inexpressibly tired and bored. "Anybody feels the need of a little relaxin' around here gits a pint from Harris at the store — if they got the price, which they ain't usually — and takes it back to their tent." THE flesh of Maisie's legs and arms tingled a little. She recognized the sensation for what it was: fear, panic. "But they told me there'd be a lot of places like that!" she said incredulously. "In a gold rush people got to have entertainment — some place to have a good time and spend their money. . . ." The man slumped lower in his stance against the front pole of the tent. "Sister . . . nobody in this town's got any money! You don't see no limousines or ritzy hotels, do you? If folks wasn't so hard up, they wouldn't be here lookin' fer gold! Well, I found some, but until the assayers show up, I got to have cash. So either pay up or move on." Maisie set her lips in a hard, determined line. "Try someplace else, near here," she told Bert. "They can't all be like him." But they were. Maisie and the Davises went all down the street, then back again. Anywhere within even halfway convenient reach of the town's central water supply was expensive — five, six, seven dollars. Most of the men they talked to said they had struck gold and staked a claim — but everywhere the story was the same: There was no cash, and wouldn't be until the government assayer had arrived and evaluated their ore. Halfway through their fruitless quest Maisie knew what she was going to have to do. She didn't want to do it; she tried to forget about the existence of Bill Anders and his ranch. But at last they came to the end of the settlement and saw a gate with a sign that read: PRfVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT; 82