Darkness had fallen when Calumet returned to the Lazy Y. He had passed the day riding over the familiar ranges, returning to almost forgotten spots, reviving the life of his youth and finding the memories irksome. He was in no pleasant frame of mind when he rode in, and he disdained the use of the corral or the stable, staking his horse out in the pasture, remembering the scant supply of grain in the bin in the stable, and telling himself that "them two skates"—referring to the horses he had seen in the corral—"need it worse than Blackleg," his own pony.
After staking Blackleg out, he took the saddle and bridle from the animal and stalked toward the ranchhouse. A light burned on the kitchen table. He saw it from a distance and resisted an impulse to enter the house from the kitchen, walking, instead, around to the front, where he found the door to the office unbarred. He threw the saddle into a corner, lighted the candle that still stood on the desk where he had placed it the night before, and stood for a long time in its glare, examining the ragged gashes on his arm. Twice during the day he had washed the wounds with water secured from the river, binding the arm with a handkerchief; but he noted with a scowl that the arm was swollen and the wound inflamed. He finally rewound the bandage, tieing the ends securely. Then he stood erect beside the desk, listening and undecided.
No sound reached his ears. The Claytons, he assured himself, must have retired.
He walked over to the sofa and sat upon it, frowning. He was hungry, having been without food since morning, and he found himself wondering if he might not find food in the kitchen. Obeying an impulse, he got up from the sofa and went to the door through which Betty had entered the night before, noting that it was still barred as he had left it that morning. He carefully removed the fastenings and swung the door open, intending to go into the kitchen. He halted on the threshold, however, for beside a table in the dining room, in the feeble glare of a light that stood at her elbow, sat Betty, reading a book.
She looked up as the door opened, betraying no surprise, smiling mildly, and speaking as she might have spoken had she been addressing a friend.
"Won't you come in?"
She placed the book down, sticking a piece of paper between the leaves to mark her place, and stood up.
"I have been waiting for you. I heard you come in. I expected you for supper, and when you didn't come I saved yours. If you will come out into the kitchen I will get it for you."
Calumet did not move. Had Betty shown the slightest dismay or perturbation at sight of him he would not have hesitated an instant in walking past her to get the food which she had said was in the kitchen. But her easy unconcern, her cool assumption of proprietorship, aroused in him that obstinacy which the revelation of her power over him had brought into being. He did not purpose to allow her to lead him to anything.
"I don't reckon I'll grub," he said.
"Then of course you have been to Lazette," she returned. "You had dinner there."
"Look here," he said truculently; "does it make any difference to you where I've been or what I've done?"
"Perhaps it really doesn't make any difference," she answered calmly; "but of course I am interested. I don't want you to starve."
His face expressed disgust. "Holy smoke!" he said; "I reckon I ain't man enough to take care of myself!"
"I don't think that is the question. Can't we get at it in the proper spirit? You belong here; you have a right to be here. And I am here because your father wanted me to stay. I want you to feel that you are at home, and I don't want to be continually quarreling with you. Be mean and stubborn if you want to—I suppose you can't help that. But so long as conditions are as they are, let us try to make the best of them. Even if you don't like me, even if you resent my presence here, you can at least act more like a human being and less like a wild man. Why," she continued, with a dry laugh, "just now you spoke of being a man, and this morning after you killed Lonesome you acted like a big, over-grown boy. You had your arm hurt and refused to allow me to dress it. Did you think I wanted to poison you?"
"What I thought this morning is my business," returned Calumet gruffly. Betty's voice had been quietly conversational, but it had carried a subtle sting with its direct mockery, and Calumet felt again as he had felt the night before, like an unruly scholar being rebuked by his teacher. Last night, though, the situation had been a novel one; now the thought that she was laughing at him, taunting him, filled him with rage.
"Mebbe you'll be interested in knowin' what I think right now," he said. "It's this: you've got a bad case of swelled head. You're one of them kind of female critters which want to run things their own way. You're—"
Her laugh interrupted him. "We won't argue that again, if you please. If you remember, you had something to say on that subject last night, and I want you to know that I haven't the slightest desire to hear your opinion of me. Won't you sit down?" She invited again, motioning to a chair beside the table, opposite hers. "If you absolutely refuse to eat, I presume there is no help for it, though even if you had dinner in Lazette you must be hungry now, for a ride of twenty miles is a strict guarantee of appetite. Please sit down. There is something I want to give you, something your father left for you. He told me to have you read it as soon as you came."
She stood motionless until Calumet left the door and seated himself in the chair beside the table, and then she went out of the room; he could hear her steps on the stairs. She returned quickly and laid a bulky envelope on the table beside him.
"Here it is," she said.
As Calumet took up the envelope and tore it open she dropped into the other chair, took up her book, opened it, and settled herself to read. Calumet watched her covertly for a moment, and then gave his attention to the contents of the envelope.
There were a number of sheets of paper on which Calumet recognized his father's handwriting.
"MY SON:—Feeling that I am about to die, it is my desire to do what I can toward setting things right between us. Betty Clayton will tell you that I have repented of my treatment of you, but she cannot tell you how deep is the realization of the injury I have done you through my inhuman attitude toward you. I fear that I have ruined your character and that it may be too late to save you from those passions which, if not checked, will spoil your life.
"I know that children sometimes inherit the evil that has abided with their parents, and I am certain that you have inherited mine, because while you stayed at home I saw many evidences of it, aye, I used to delight in its manifestation. Toward the end of your stay at home I grew to hate you. But it was because of that woman. If ever there was an evil spirit in the guise of a human being, it was she. She—well, you will learn more of her later.
"I am going to try at this late day to repair the damage I did you. I have come to the conclusion that the surest way to do this is to force you to give me in death that respect and veneration which you refused me while I lived. You see that, in spite of my boasted repentance, I still have left a spark of satanic irony, and I do not expect you to believe me when I tell you that I have planned this for your own good. But it seems to me that if you can exhibit respect for the one who is directly responsible for your cursed passions you will be able to govern them on all occasions. That is my conviction, and if you do not agree with me there is no hope for you.
"Betty Clayton will tell you the conditions, and she will be your judge. I believe in Betty, and if you do not see that she is a true-blue girl you are more of a fool than I think you are."
At this point Calumet glanced sidelong at Betty, but she seemed engrossed in her book, and he resumed reading.
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"That is all I have to say on that subject. You will have to look to Betty for additions. By this time, if she has carried out my wishes, she has told you what you may expect. I have told her the story which I am going to tell you, and I am certain that when you have finished it you will see that I am not entirely to blame. You will see, too, what havoc Tom Taggart has wrought in my life; why he has tried many times to kill me. Calumet, beware of the Taggarts! For the last five years they have been a constant menace to me; I have been forced to be on my guard against them day and night. They have hounded me, induced my men to betray me. In five years I have not slept soundly because of them. But I have foiled them. I am dying now, and that which they seek will be hidden until you fulfill the conditions which I impose on you. I know you are coming home—I can feel it—and I know that when you read what is to follow you will be eager to square my account with Tom Taggart.
"Before going any further, before you read my story, I want you to know that the cursed virago whom you saw buried in the cottonwood was not your real mother. Your mother died giving you birth, and her body lies in a quiet spot beside the Rio Pecos, at Twin Pine crossing, about ten miles north of the Texas border. God rest her."
Again Calumet glanced at Betty. She was reading, apparently unconscious of him, and without disturbing her Calumet laid down the finished page and took up another.
"I was twenty-five when your mother died," this page began. "I had a little ranch in the Pecos valley near Twin Pine crossing, and I had just begun to taste prosperity. After your mother died things began to go wrong. It didn't take me long to conclude that she had been responsible for what success I had had, and that without her I couldn't hope to keep things together. I didn't try very hard; I'll admit that. I just gradually let go all holds and began to slip—began to drift back into the sort of company I'd kept before I met your mother. They were not bad fellows, you understand—just the rakehelly, reckless sort that keep hanging on to the edge of things and making a living by their wits. I'd come West without any definite idea of what I wanted to do, and I fell in with these men naturally and easily, because they were of my type.
"I had three intimates among them—a tall, clean-limbed fellow with the bluest and steadiest eyes I ever saw in a man, who called himself 'Nebraska'; a rangy Texan named Quint Taylor, who maintained that manual labor was a curse and quoted the Scriptures to prove it; and Tom Taggart. Tom and I were thick. I liked him, and he'd done things for me that seemed to prove that he thought a lot of me. He didn't like it a little bit when I married your mother—her name was Mary Lannon, and I'd got acquainted with her while riding for a few months for her father, who owned a ranch near Eagle Pass, close to the Rio Grande. She was white, boy, and so were her folks, and you can be proud of her. And if she had lived you could be proud of me—she'd have kept on making me a man.
"Taggart didn't like the idea of me getting hooked up. He didn't want to break up the old associations. He and the others hung around for a year, waiting for something to turn up, and when your mother died it wasn't long before I was back with them. I left you in care of Jane Connor—her husband, Dave, owned the Diamond Dot ranch, which adjoined mine.
"During the year the boys had been knocking around without me they'd fallen in with an Indian from Yucatan, from the tribe called the Toltecs. This Indian called himself Queza—he'd been exiled because he was too lazy to work. The boys got him drunk one night, and he blabbed everything he knew about his tribe—how rich it was; how they'd discovered a diamond mine, and that gold was so common that they used it to make household ornaments. His story got the boys excited and they pumped him dry. They found out where his tribe lived, how to get there, and all that.
"Queza told them that the diamonds wouldn't be hard to get, that there were altar idols and ornaments in a big cave which was hollowed out of the face of a rock cliff, and that there was a bridge over to it, and that the cave wasn't guarded because the tribe had a superstitious fear of the priests who had charge of the idols and things, and that the people didn't care for gold and diamonds, anyway, because they were so common.
"The boys had got all this out of Queza about a month before I sold out and joined them, and they'd rustled some money somewhere, and had everything fixed up to go to Yucatan to bring home some of that gold and diamonds. They wanted me to go along. I was in that frame of mind in which I didn't care much about what happened to me, and they didn't have to argue long. We dropped down the Rio Grande to a little place on the Gulf coast near where Brownsville is now. We bought a little boat from a fisherman—she wasn't more than thirty feet long and didn't look like she could stand much weather; but Nebraska, who'd told us that he'd done a little sailing on the California coast when he was a lot younger than he was then, said she'd stand anything we was likely to get in the Gulf. So we stocked her with provisions and water to last a month or so, and Nebraska pointed her nose toward Yucatan.
"I didn't think then what a rank job it was that we were going to do, but it won't do me any harm in your eyes to say that after we'd got started and I began to realize what it all meant, I was ashamed. I felt like a sneak and a coward all through the deal, but I couldn't back out after I'd started, and so I went through with it.
"We run into a spell of bad weather and had to hug the coast mighty close, and it was two weeks before we pulled into Campeche Bay, on the northwest coast of Yucatan. We worked the boat about half a mile up a little creek four or five miles south of Campeche, and worked half a day hiding her, so that she'd be there when we got back. Then, taking what grub was left, we struck out for the interior. It won't be any use telling you about that journey—you couldn't imagine, and I couldn't begin to tell you, what a miserable, slow, tortuous affair it was. It gets hot in New Mexico, but we got a taste of hell in that Yucatan jungle. That country wasn't built for a white man.
"So I'm not going to try to tell you about the trip. We were tough and eager, and we stuck it out, traveling mostly by night, setting our course by the stars, about which I knew something. But we were a week going a hundred miles, and we were beginning to get into that frame of mind where we were noticing one another's faults and getting not a bit backward in talking about them, when one night at dusk we got a glimpse of the place we were looking for.
"Queza had called the place a town, and maybe that name fits it as well as another. It made me dizzy to look at it. We'd been climbing the slope of a mountain all afternoon—traveling in the daytime now, because we were getting near the end of our journey—Nebraska in the lead, the rest trailing him. We saw Nebraska stop and duck back into some brush. Then we all sneaked up to him and got our first look at the town.
"It looked to me as though the place had been made to hide in. The mountain dropped away below us, straight down about a hundred feet, a smooth rock wall. Another wall of rock joined it on the right, making a big L. There was a level that began at the two walls and extended both ways for probably half a mile, until it met the slope of the other side of the mountain. It was nothing but two shoulders, joined, on the top of the mountain.
"Just below us there was a break in the level—a wide gash about fifty feet across, so deep that we couldn't see the bottom. There was a ledge on our side about three or four feet wide, and a bridge stretched from it across the canyon. We decided that the bridge was the one Queza had told the boys about—it led to the cave where the treasure was kept. We laid there for an hour, watching. The buildings were all huddled together—a lot of flat, brown adobe houses. We could see the natives moving down among them, but none of us noticed anything unusual going on until Taggart calls our attention.
"'Did you notice?' he said.
"'Notice what?' we all answered.
"'That they're all women down there—I ain't seen a man!'
"That was a fact. There didn't seem to be a man anywhere about. We talked it over and concluded that we'd got there at a most advantageous time. We decided that the men were away, on a hunt, most probably, and after we'd watched a while longer we decided that we'd sneak down some way and go after the treasure about midnight. We figured they'd all be sleeping about that time. After dark they lit fires and sat around them.
"We watched until about eleven—until we saw that nearly all the fires had gone out—and then we sneaked down the slope of the mountain. We didn't make any noise; we were silent and slippery as ghosts as we made our way through the timber on the slope. It was slow work, though; the woods were full of tangled vines and prickly bushes, and we got clawed up considerable and had all we could do to keep from cussing out loud when a thorn or something would rip a cheek open. It was blacker than any night I've ever seen before or since; we couldn't see a foot ahead, and the sounds we heard in the woods didn't make us feel any too comfortable, for all we'd got used to living in the open. We knew, of course, that the sounds came from birds and bats and moths and such, but when a man is out on a job like that his nerves are not what they are at other times—every sound seems unusual and magnified. I didn't like so much silence from the village down below us—it seemed too quiet; and it appeared to me that the noises we heard in the woods were most too continuous to be caused by only us four. We went in single file, one man almost touching the other, to be sure we'd all stay together. I'd hear a bird go whizzing away at a distance, and it appeared to me that there was no call for it to light out with us two or three hundred feet away from it; and then there were queer noises which I couldn't just place as coming from birds. I don't know why I noticed these things, but I did, just the same, though I didn't say anything to the other boys, because they'd probably thought I was losing my nerve. And, besides, there wasn't time to talk.
"It took us more than an hour to reach the level where the village was, and it was long after midnight when we, keeping in the shadow of the cliff, started toward the bridge over the canyon, which led to the cave where we thought we'd find the treasure.
"We'd got pretty near the bridge, Taggart and me in the lead, Nebraska and Taylor stringing along behind, when I heard a sudden scuffling and looked around. It wasn't so dark on the level as it had been in the woods, and I saw a dozen dark figures grouped around Nebraska and Taylor. The dark figures were all about us, and more were coming from the huts, all yelling like devils. And they were men, too; they'd been hiding in the huts; they'd discovered us the day before and suspected what we came for. I found that out later.
"Well, for a few minutes there was plenty of excitement. Taylor and Nebraska had got pretty well behind us, and the Toltecs had cut them off. Taggart showed yellow. I started back to help Nebraska and Taylor, who had their knives out—I could see them shining—when Taggart grabbed me.
"'Let's run for the bridge, you fool!' he said. 'It's every man for himself now!'
"While I was scuffling with Taggart, trying to get away from him and get back to the boys, a figure detached itself from the bunch around them and came flying toward us. It was a woman, I could see that in an instant. Taggart saw her coming, too; he must have known it was a woman, but he pulled out his knife, and when she came close enough to us he drove at her with it. He missed her because I shoved him away. He fell, and, while he was on the ground, the woman—or girl, because she wasn't more than eighteen or nineteen—grabbed me by the arm and jabbered to me in Spanish, of which I'd learned a little.
"'They're going to kill all of you!' she said. 'They've been watching you for two days. They left me to watch you yesterday. I don't want them to kill you—I like you! Come!'
"She pulled at me, trying to drag me toward the bridge. I didn't have any objections to her liking me as much as she pleased, for she was a beauty—I found that out afterward, of course; but though I couldn't see her face very well just them, I liked her voice and knew she must be good to look at. But I didn't like the idea of leaving the other boys, and told her so.
"'You'll all be killed, anyway,' she said, all excited. 'They might as well die now as later. They'll kill you, too, if you go back!'
"That was logic, all right, but I'd have gone back anyway if I hadn't heard Nebraska and Taylor working their guns just then. The Toltecs broke and scattered—some of them. Three or four of them couldn't after the boys began to shoot. Soon as the Toltecs broke away a little, Nebraska and Taylor made for where we stood. I saw them coming and told the girl to lead us. The three of us—the girl, Taggart, and me—got to the bridge, which was a light, flimsy, narrow affair made of two long, straight saplings lashed together with vines, with a couple of strips of bark for a bottom—and crossed it. Then we stood on the ledge in front of the mouth of the cave, watching Nebraska and Taylor. They were coming for all they were worth, shooting as they ran and keeping the bunch of Toltecs at a respectable distance, though the Toltecs were running parallel with them, trying to bring them down with arrows.
"Nebraska and Taylor made the bridge. They had got about half way over when a dozen or so of the Toltecs threw themselves at the end of the bridge which rested on the village side of the canyon, grabbed hold of it, and pulled it off the ledge on our side. I yelled to the boys and jumped for the end of the bridge. But I was too late. The bridge balanced for an instant, and then the end on which the boys were standing started to sink. Nebraska saw what was coming, off and jumped for the ledge on which we were standing. He missed it by five feet. There wasn't a sound from his lips as he shot down into the awful blackness of the canyon. I got sick and dizzy, but not so sick that I couldn't see what was happening to Taylor. Taylor didn't jump for the ledge. He turned like a cat and grabbed a rail of the bridge, trying to climb back to the level. He'd have made it, too, but the Toltecs wouldn't let him. They jabbed at him with their spears and arrows and threw knives at him. One of the knives struck him in the shoulder, and when I heard him scream I pulled my guns and began to shoot across the canyon. I hadn't thought of it before; there are times when a man's brain refuses to work like he'd like to have it. But the Toltecs didn't mind the shooting a little bit.
"Three or four of them got hit and backed away from the edge of the canyon, but there were enough others to do what they were trying to do, and they did it. I stood there, helpless, and saw them shove Taylor off the bridge with their spears. When he finally let go and went turning over and over down into the black hole, my whole insides fanned up into my throat. That sensation has never left me; I wake up nights seeing Taylor as he let go of the bridge, watching him sink, tumbling over and over into that black gash, and I get sick and dizzy just as I did that night.
"But just then I didn't have much of a chance to be sick long. While I was standing there wondering what to do I saw a Toltec priest come out of the cave. He had a spear in his hand and was sneaking up on Taggart—who stood there almost fainting from fright. There was murder in the priest's eyes; I saw it and bent my gun on him. The trigger snapped on dead cartridges, and I yanked out my knife. I'd have been too late, at that. But the girl saw the priest, and she dodged behind him and gave him a shove. He pitched out and went head first down into the canyon.
"The Toltecs on the other side were watching, and they saw the priest go. Until now they hadn't shot at us, probably afraid of hitting the girl, but when they saw her push the priest over the edge of the canyon they saw that her sympathies were with us, and they let drive at us with their arrows. We were all slightly wounded—not enough to mention—and we got back into the cave where their arrows couldn't reach us. Three or four times the Toltecs tried to swing the bridge back into position, but they couldn't make it because there was no one on our side to help them, and Taggart and me made things mighty unpleasant for them with our sixes. They finally went away and held a council of war, which seemed to leave them undecided. They evidently hadn't figured on the girl turning traitor. If she hadn't they'd have got me and Taggart in short order.
"We'd got where the treasure was, all right, but it was a mighty bad outlook for us. We were kind of anxious about the bridge, being afraid the Toltecs would get it back into place; but the girl, who called herself Ezela, showed us that getting the bridge back wasn't possible without help from our side. She said that the priest she'd dumped down into the canyon was the only one with the tribe at the time; the others had gone to a distant village. She said, too, that there was a secret passage from the cave; she'd discovered it, and no one but her and the priests knew anything about it, but that the Toltecs would send runners for the priests and we'd have to get out before they came, or they'd lay for us at the outlet.
"Well, we hustled. We felt bad about Nebraska and Taylor, and were determined not to leave without some of the treasure, and after Ezela showed us where it was I kept her busy talking while Taggart got about as much as he could carry. Ezela offered no objections; on the other hand, when Taggart came back she told me to get some of the treasure too. Taggart hadn't taken enough to miss; there were millions of dollars' worth of gold and diamonds in the room, where they'd raised a kind of an altar, and I had my choice.
"I took some of the gold, but what attracted me—not because it was pretty, but because I saw in a minute that it was valuable—was a hideous image about six inches high. I had had an idea all along that Queza had been lying about the diamonds, but when I saw the image I knew he'd told the truth. There were about a hundred diamonds on the image, stuck all around it, the image itself being gold. The diamonds ran from a carat to seven or eight carats, and there was no question about them being the real thing. I stuck the thing into a hip pocket, figuring that with the few other ornaments I had I would have plenty to carry. Then I went back to where Ezela and Taggart were waiting for me.
"Ezela led us through a long, narrow passage, down some steps to another passage, and pretty soon we were sneaking along this and I began to get a whiff of fresh air. In a little while we found ourselves on a narrow ledge in the canyon, about thirty or forty feet below the level where the bridge had been, and it was so dark down there that we couldn't see one another.
"Ezela whispered to us to follow her, and to be careful. We had to be careful, and after what had happened, crawling along that ledge wasn't the most cheerful job in the world. It would have been a ticklish thing to do in the daytime, but at night it was a thousand times worse. I kept thinking about poor Taylor and Nebraska, and there were times when I felt that I just had to yell and jump out into the black hole around us. Taggart showed it worse than me. It took us an hour to traverse that ledge. We'd strike a short turn where there wouldn't be more than six or eight inches of ledge between us and eternity, and we couldn't see a thing—I've thought since that maybe it was a good thing we couldn't. But we could feel the width of the ledge with our feet, and there were times when my legs shook under me like I had the ague. Taggart was pretty near collapse all the time. He kept mumbling to himself, making queer little throaty noises and grabbing at me. Two or three times I had to turn and talk to him, or he'd have let go all holds and jumped.
"We finally made solid ground, and it was a full hour before me or Taggart could get up after we'd sat down, we were that tuckered out. The girl didn't seem to mind it a bit; she told me she'd discovered the secret passage that way. She'd been nosing around the mountain one day and had crept along the edge, finding that it led to the treasure cave.
"There wasn't any time lost by us in getting away from that place. Ezela told us there wasn't any use hoping that Nebraska and Taylor were alive, because the canyon was over a thousand feet deep and there was a roaring river at the bottom. I don't like to think of that fall.
"Taggart objected to Ezela going with us, but I couldn't think of letting her stay to be punished by her tribe for what she'd done—they'd have burned her, sure, she said. Besides, I may as well tell the truth, I'd got to liking Ezela a good bit by this time. She was good to look at, and she'd been hanging around me, telling me that she wanted to go with us, and that she'd done what she had for my sake, because she liked me. All that sort of stuff plays on a man's vanity when it comes from a pretty girl, and it didn't take me long to decide that I was in love with her and that, aside from humane reasons, I ought to take her with me. So I took her.
"We reached the boat after a week of heart-breaking travel, and we hadn't got over two miles out in the bay when we saw that we hadn't left any too soon. A hundred or so Toltecs were on the beach, doing a war dance and waving their spears at us. We had a pretty close call of it for grub, but we made a little town on the gulf and stocked up, and then we headed for the mouth of the Rio Grande. We camped one night a week later on United States soil, and that night while I was asleep Taggart tried to knife me. I'd showed Taggart the diamond image one day while Ezela was asleep in the boat, and he'd got greedy for it. Ezela screamed when she saw him getting close to me with the knife, and I woke in time to grab him before he got a chance to get the knife into me. He finally broke away, leaving all the treasure he'd brought except a little that he had in his pockets—he'd had a bundle of it strapped to his belt besides that—and I didn't see him again for four years.
"I took Ezela up the Pecos to the Connors', where I'd left you, bought a wagon and horses and a few things—bedding and grub and such stuff—and lit out for New Mexico. I figured that I had enough of the kind of friends I'd been keeping, and I didn't want to be ridiculed for tying up to an Indian girl—white folks don't like to see that. I came here and took up this land, figuring that I wouldn't be disturbed. I'd been here four years when Taggart came. I'd sold some of the treasure, but, for some reason which I've never been able to figure out, I kept the idol. I think I was afraid to try to sell it on account of the big diamonds in it.
"I gave Taggart the treasure he'd left behind the night he tried to knife me, but he wasn't satisfied; he wanted more, wanted me to sell the Toltec image and split with him. Of course I wouldn't do that because of the way he'd acted, and he swore to get it some day.
"He took up some land about fifteen miles down the river, and he's stayed there ever since. I've been afraid to go anywhere with the idol for fear he'd waylay me and get it. One day while I was away somewhere he came here and told Ezela about me having the idol. From that time on I led a life of hell. Ezela turned on me. She said I'd desecrated the altars of her tribe, and she kept harping to me about it until I got so I couldn't bear the sight of her.
"I discovered soon after we came here that I had been mistaken in thinking I had loved her—what I had thought was love was merely gratitude. My gratitude didn't last, of course, with her hounding me continually about the idol. Finally I discovered that she and Taggart were plotting against me. Of course, Taggart was after the image himself. He didn't care anything about her religious scruples, but he made her believe he sympathized with her, and made a fool of her. I tried to kill Taggart the day I found that out, but he got away, and after that he never traveled alone and I didn't get another chance. I ordered Ezela away, but she said she wouldn't go until she got the image. Many times I debated the idea of putting her out of the way, but there was always the knowledge in my mind that she had saved my life, and I hadn't the heart to do it.
"You know how we lived. My life was constantly in danger, and I became hardened, suspicious, brutal. You got the whole accumulation. Taggart and Ezela bribed my men to watch me. I had to discharge them. After Ezela died I thought Taggart would leave me alone. But he didn't—he wanted the image. One day he and his boy Neal came over and ambushed me. They shot me in the shoulder. I was in the house, defending myself as best I could, when Malcolm Clayton came. By this time Betty has told you the rest and you know just what you can expect from the Taggarts.
"That is the whole history of the Toltec idol. I am not proud of my part in the affair, but Tom Taggart must never have the idol. Remember that! I don't want him to have it! Neither do I want you to have it, or the money I leave, unless you can show that you forgive me. As I have said, I don't take your word for it—you must prove it.
"I know you are coming home, and I wish I could live to see you. But I know I won't. Don't be too hard on me. Your father,"JAMES MARSTON."
For a long time after he had completed the reading of the letter, Calumet was silent, staring straight ahead of him. The information contained in the account of his father's adventures was soothing—the termagant who had presided over his boyhood destinies had not been his real mother, and his father had left him a score to settle. He already hated the Taggarts, not particularly because they were his father's enemies, but rather because Tom Taggart had been a traitor. He felt a contempt for him. He himself was mean and vicious—he knew that. But he had never betrayed a friend. It was better to have no friend than to have one and betray him. He looked around to see that Betty was still apparently absorbed in her book.
"Do you know what is in this letter?" he said.
She laid the book in her lap and nodded affirmatively.
"You opened it, I suppose?" he sneered.
"No," she returned, unmoved. "Your father read it to me."
"Kind of him, wasn't it? What do you think of it?"
"What I think isn't important. What do you think of it?"
"Nosey, eh?" he jeered. "If it won't inconvenience you any, I'll keep what I think of it to myself. But it's plain to me now that when you caught me tryin' to guzzle your granddad you thought I belonged to the Taggart bunch. You told me I'd have to try again—or somethin' like that. I reckon you thought I was after the idol?"
"Yes."
"Then the Taggarts have tried to get it since you've been here?"
"Many times."
"But you left the front door open the night I came," insinuated Calumet, his eyes glowing subtly. "That looks like you was invitin' someone to come in an' get the idol."
"We never bother much about barring the doors. Besides, I don't remember to have told you that the idol is in the house," she smiled.
He looked at her with a baffled sneer. "Foxy, ain't you?" He folded the letter and placed it into a pocket, she watching him silently. Her gaze fell on the injured arm; she saw the angry red streaks spreading from beneath the crude bandage and she got up, laying her book down and regarding him with determined eyes.
"Please come out into the kitchen with me," she said; "I am going to take care of your arm."
He looked up at her with a glance of cold mockery. "When did you get my permission to take care of it? It don't need any carin' for. An' if it did, I reckon to be able to do my own doctorin'."
She looked at him steadily and something in her gaze made him feel uncomfortable.
"Don't be silly," she said. She turned and went out into the kitchen. He could hear her working over the stove. He saw her cross the room with a tea kettle, fill it with water from a pail, return and place the kettle on the stove. He was determined that he would not allow her to dress the wound, but when ten minutes later she appeared in the kitchen door and told him she was ready, he got up and went reluctantly out.
She washed the arm, bathing the wound with a solution of water and some medicine which she poured from a bottle, and then bandaged it with some white cloth. Neither said anything until after she had delicately tied a string around the bandage to keep it in place, and then she stepped back and regarded her work with satisfaction.
"There," she said; "doesn't that feel better?"
"Some," he returned, grudgingly. He stood up and watched her while she spread a cloth partly over the table and placed some dishes and food upon it. He was hungry, and the sight of the food made him feel suddenly ravenous. He watched her covertly, noting her matter-of-fact movements. It was as though she had not the slightest idea that he would refuse to eat, and he felt certain that he could not refuse. She was making him feel uncomfortable again; that epithet, "silly," rankled in him and he did not want to hear her apply it to him again. But he would have risked it had she looked at him. She did not look at him. When she had finally arranged everything to suit her taste she turned her back and walked to the door of the dining-room.
"There is your supper," she said quietly. "I have fixed up your room for you—the room you occupied before you left home. I am going to leave the light burning in the dining-room—you might want to read your letter again. Blow the light out when you go to bed. Good night."
He grumbled an incoherent reply, turning his back to her. Her calm, unruffled acceptance of his incivility filled him with a cold resentment.
"What did you say?" she demanded of him from the door.
He turned sullenly. The light mockery in her voice stung him, shamed him—her eyes, dancing with mischief, held his.
"Good night," he said shortly.
"Good night," she said again. She laughed and vanished.
For an instant Calumet stood, scowling at the vacant doorway. Then he turned and went over to the table in the kitchen, looking down at the food and the dishes. She had compelled him to be civil. He gripped one end of the table cloth, and for an instant it seemed as though he meditated dumping dishes and food upon the floor. Then he grinned, grimly amused, and sat in the chair before the table, taking up knife and fork.
Early as he arose the next morning, he found that Betty had been before him. He saw her standing on the rear porch when he went out to care for his horse, and she smiled and called a greeting to him, which he answered soberly.
For some reason which he could not explain he felt a little reluctance toward going into the kitchen for breakfast this morning. Yet he did go, though he waited outside until Betty came to the door and called him. He was pretending to be busy at his saddle, though he knew this was a pretext to cover his submission to her. He did not move toward the house until she vanished within it.
He was quiet during the meal, wondering at the change that had come over him, for he felt a strange resignation. He told himself that it was gratitude for her action in caring for his injured arm, and yet he watched her narrowly for any sign that would tell him that she was aware of his thoughts and was enjoying him. But he was able to determine nothing from her face, for though she smiled often there was nothing in her face at which he could take offense. She devoted much of her time and attention to Bob. And Bob talked to Calumet. There was something about the boy that attracted Calumet, and before the meal ended they were conversing companionably. But toward the conclusion of the meal, when in answer to something Bob said to him he smiled at the boy, he saw Betty looking at him with a glance of mingled astonishment and pleasure, he sobered and ceased talking. He didn't want to do anything to please Betty.
He was saddling Blackleg after breakfast, intending to go down the river a short distance, when he became aware that Betty was standing near him. Without a word she handed him a bulky envelope with his name written on it. He took it, tore open an end, and a piece of paper, enclosing several bills, slipped out. He shot a quick glance at Betty; she was looking at him unconcernedly. He counted the bills; there were ten one hundred dollar gold certificates.
"What's this for?" he demanded.
"Read the letter," she directed.
He unfolded the paper. It read:
"MY DEAR SON: The money in this envelope is to be used by you in buying material to be used to repair the ranchhouse. I have prepared an itemized list of the necessary materials, which Betty will give you. Your acceptance of the task imposed on you will indicate that you intend to fulfill my wishes. It will also mean that you seriously contemplate an attempt at reform. The fact that you receive this money shows that you are already making progress, for you would never get it if Betty thought you didn't deserve it, or were not worthy of a trial. I congratulate you."YOUR FATHER."
"Got it all framed up on me, eh?" said Calumet. "So you think I've made progress, an' that I'm goin' to do what you want me to do?"
"Your progress hasn't been startling," she said dryly. "But youhaveprogressed. At least, you have shown some inclination to listen to reason. Here is the itemized list which your father speaks of." She passed over another paper, which Calumet scanned slowly and carefully. His gaze became fixed on the total at the bottom of the column of figures.
"It amounts to nine hundred and sixty dollars," he said, looking at her, a disgusted expression on his face. "Looks like the old fool was mighty careless with his money. Couldn't he have put down another item to cover that forty dollars?"
"I believe that margin was left purposely to take care of a possible advance in prices over those with which your father was familiar at the time he made out the list," she answered, smiling in appreciation of his perturbation.
"That's keepin' cases pretty close, ain't it?" he said. "Suppose I'd blow the whole business?"
"That would show that you could not be trusted. Your father left instructions which provide for that contingency."
"What are they?"
"I am not to tell."
"Clever, ain't it?" he said, looking at her with displeased, hostile eyes. She met his gaze with a calm half-smile which had in it that irritating quality of advantage that he had noticed before.
"I am glad you think it clever," she returned.
"It was your idea, I reckon?"
"I believe I did suggest it to your father. He was somewhat at a loss to know how to deal with you. He told me that he had some doubts about the scheme working; he said you would take it and 'blow' it in, as you said you might, but I disagreed with him. I was convinced that you would do the right thing."
"You had a lot of faith in me, didn't you?" he said, incredulously. "You believed in a man you'd never seen."
"Your father had a picture of you," she said, looking straight at him. "It was taken when you were fifteen, just before you left the ranch. It showed a boy with a cynical face and brooding, challenging eyes. But in spite of all that I thought I detected signs of promise in the face. I was certain that if you were managed right you could be reformed."
"Youwerecertain," he said significantly. "What do you think now?"
"I haven't altered my opinion." Her gaze was steady and challenging. "Of course," she added, blushing faintly; "I believe I was a little surprised when you came and I saw that you had grown to be a man. You see, I had looked at your picture so often that I rather expected to see a boy when you came. I had forgotten those thirteen years. But it has been said that a man is merely a grown-up boy and there is much truth in that. Despite your gruff ways, your big voice, and your contemptible way of treating people, you are very much a boy. But I am still convinced that you are all right at heart. I think everybody is, and the good could be brought forward if someone would take enough interest in the subject."
"Then you take an interest in me?" said Calumet, grinning scornfully.
"Yes," she said frankly; "to the extent of wondering whether or not time will vindicate my judgment."
"Then you think I won't blow this coin?" he said, tapping the bills.
"I think you will spend it for the articles on the list I have given you."
He looked at her and she was certain there was indecision in the glance.
"Well," he said abruptly, turning from her; "mebbe I will an' mebbe I won't. But whatever I do with it will be done to suit myself. It won't be done to please you."
He mounted his pony and rode to the far end of the ranchhouse yard. When he turned in the saddle it was with the conviction that Betty would be standing there watching him. Somehow, he wished she would. But she was walking toward the ranchhouse, her back to him, and he made a grimace of disappointment as he urged his pony out into the valley.