XXIVThe Dago Duke and Dan Treu Exchange Confidences
"They were shod horses and they were goin' some. See how deep the corks sunk. Look at the length of the jumps." The sheriff followed the hoof tracks with his eye until they turned at an angle and dropped into the gulch.
"Pft!—like that—and they were gone," said the Dago Duke, with an expressive gesture. "Over there, where I was reposing under the scant shade of a sagebrush, I opened my eyes just in time to see the top of their black hats disappear. Her buggy was turning the hill."
The sheriff stepped off the distance.
"Less than a hundred yards. She must have seen them plainly."
"Certainly; that's when they swung into the gulch."
"Well, sir, it gets me." With the admission the sheriff thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets and looked frankly nonplussed.
"She denied as plain as she could say it in English that she had seen or met anybody and she'll probably do the same under oath."
"No doubt about it," replied the Dago Duke.
"But why should she?" demanded the sheriff in frowning perplexity. "I can think of no reason, yet she must have one. Do you suppose she knew the men—that she's protecting them at the girl's expense?"
The Dago Duke shrugged his shoulders.
"It's possible, but not probable if they were Indians."
"If them wasn't moccasin tracks around the camp, I'll eat 'em," Dan Treu declared with conviction. "I've run with Injuns and fit 'em, too, enough to know their tracks in the dark, but, man, there ain't an Injun within two hundred miles of here, and besides they never got away with anything, there was nothin' gone, and Reservation Injuns ain't killin' for fun these days. That's right, too, about her not knowin' them if they were Injuns. I'll tell you, Dago, I never run up agin' a proposition just like this."
The Dago Duke looked reflectively at the end of his cigarette.
"It seems as though that little girl's fate depends upon this woman."
"You say they are urging you to arrest her?"
The sheriff's face darkened.
"Oh, yes, they've got it all cut and dried just how it happened. They make me think of a pack of wolves that's got a weak one down; he's outnumbered and can't fight back, so jump him! tear him! They're roarin' at me to 'do somethin'—Tinhorn Frank, Symes, Parrott, the whole outfit of 'em. Say, Dago, I wasn't raised to fight women."
"Does your chivalry extend to the lady doc?"
"No, by gum! it don't," replied the sheriff, with a promptness which made the other laugh. "If I knew any way short of choking her to get the truth I'd do it."
"You mean to try?"
"To choke her?"
"To get the truth."
"I'm goin' to appeal to her first."
The Dago Duke laughed sardonically.
"You think it won't work?"
"Not for a minute."
"I'll see what bull-dozing will do, then."
"Better save your breath."
"Why?"
"It's a question of veracity. She'll see that. Her word against mine. Even you must admit, Dan, that I haven't her spotless reputation. A communicant of the church versus the town drunkard. She'd merely say that instead of Gila monsters I was 'having' assassins. This chronic cloud under which I live has its drawbacks. The fact that I haven't had a drink in six weeks wouldn't have the slightest weight if she chooses to persist in her denial that she met these men."
"I suppose you're right," the sheriff admitted reluctantly, "and if this wind keeps up we won't even have tracks to back up your story."
"Besides," added the Dago Duke, "if there is not great friendship between them there is, at least, no open quarrel to furnish a plausible reason for her silence. We would only make ourselves absurd, Dan, by any public charge. But there is some way to get the truth. Try your methods and then—well, I'll try mine."
This was in the forenoon. That evening the Dago Duke leaned against the door-jamb of the White Elephant Saloon and watched Dan Treu coming from Dr. Harpe's office with failure written upon his face. His white teeth gleamed in a smile of amusement as he waited for the sheriff.
"Don't swear, Dan. Never speak disrespectfully of a lady if you can help it."
"Dago," said the sheriff, with his slow, emphaticdrawl, "I wish she was a man just for a minute—half a minute—one second would do."
"She laughed at you, yes?"
"She laughed at me, yes? Well, I guess she did. She gave me the merry ha! ha! I told her you had seen two men on horseback pass her out there in the hills, that I had seen the mark of her buggy wheels and the tracks of the two horses on the run and that the print of moccasins led from the sheep-wagon into the brush. She looked at me with that kind of stare where you can see the lie lying back of it and said—
"I didn't see anybody. I've told you that and I'll swear to it if necessary."
"'Look here, Doc,' I says, 'if you don't tell that you saw these men we'll tell it for you.'"
"That's when she laughed, cackled would be a better word, it sure wasn't a laugh, you'd call ketchin', and says—
"'You fly at it. Try startin' something like that and see what happens to you. I got some pull in this town and you'll find it out if you don't know it. You'll wake up some mornin' and find yourself out of a job. Who do you think would take that drunken loafer's word against mine? And beside, why should I keep anything back that would clear Essie Tisdale? You're crazy, man! Why, she's a friend of mine.'
"You called the turn on her all right, Dago; she said just about what you said she would say."
"You haven't got the right kind of a mind, Dan, to sabe women of her sort. It takes a Latin to do that. There's natural craft and intrigue enough of the feminine in the southern races to follow their illogical reasoning and to understand their moods and caprices as an Anglo-Saxon never can. You are like abig, blundering, honest watch-dog, Dan, trying to do field work that requires a trained hunting dog with a fine nose and hereditary instincts. If this was a horse-stealing case, or cattle rustling, or a sheep raid, and you were dealing with men all around——"
The deputy-sheriff's jaw set grimly.
"I'd have the truth or he'd be in the hospital. I'm handicapped here because there's no money in the treasury to work with. This county's as big as a State and only two or three thousand in it, so we are about as flush as grasshopper year in Kansas. The people are howling about bringin' the murderer to justice at any cost, but if I'd ask 'em to dig up a hundred apiece in cold cash for expense money they'd subside quick."
"This is one of the few occasions when my past extravagances and habits fill me with regret," replied the Dago Duke, with half-humorous seriousness. "My remittance which has shrunk until it is barely sufficient to sustain life, is already spoken for some months ahead by certain low persons who consider themselves my creditors. Tinhorn Frank, who drew to a straight and filled, is one of them, and Slivers, inside, has a mortgage on my body and soul until an alleged indebtedness is wiped out.
"Financially and socially I am nil; mentally and physically my faculties are at your disposal. Do you happen to know anything in the lady's past or present that she would not care to have exploited? Blackmail, yes? I have no scruples. What do you know?"
The deputy gave the Dago Duke a curious look, but did not answer.
"There's something," guessed the other quickly.
"Yes, Dago, there is," said Dan Treu finally with awkward hesitation. "It's something so fierce that I hate to tell it even to you for fear there might be some mistake. It's hard to believe it myself. It sounds so preposterous that I'd be laughed at if I told it to anyone else in Crowheart."
"I'll not laugh," said the Dago Duke. "It's the preposterous—the most unlikely thing you can think of that is frequently true. I've studied that woman, with my comparatively limited opportunities, until I know her better than you think and far, far better than she thinks."
"Dago," the big deputy squirmed as he asked the question:
"Could you believe her a petty thief?"
"Without the least difficulty," replied the Dago Duke composedly.
"That she would rifle a man's pockets—roll him like any common woman of the street?"
"If it was safe—quite, quite safe."
Slowly, even reluctantly, Dan Treu told the Dago Duke the story of the Italians as he had heard it in their broken English from their own lips. Through it all the Dago Duke whistled softly, listening without emotion or surprise. He still whistled when the deputy had finished.
"Do you believe it?" the sheriff asked anxiously, at last.
"Emphatically I do. Let me tell you something, Dan: a woman that will stoop to the petty leg-pulling, sponging, grafting that she does to save two bits or less has got a thief's make-up. Her mania for money, for getting, for saving it, is a matter of common knowledge.
"You know and I know that she will do any indelicate thing which occurs to her to get what she wants without paying for it. When she wants a drink, which the good God knows is often, she asks any man she happens to know and is near to buy it for her. Her camaraderie flatters him. She habitually 'bums' cigarettes and I've known her to go through a fellow's war-bag, in his absence, for tobacco. When she's hungry, which I should judge was all the time, she drops in casually upon a patient and humorously raids the pantry—all with that air of nonchalant good fellowship which shields her from much criticism, since what in reality is miserliness and gluttony passes very well for amusing eccentricity."
Dan Treu laughed.
"You've got her sized up right in that way, Dago. I know a fellow that was sick and had to cache the chocolate and things his folks sent him from the East under the mattress when he saw her coming and he always locked the fruit in his trunk after she had cleaned him out a dozen times as though a flock of seventeen-year locusts had swarmed down upon him. One night about two or three in the morning when she couldn't sleep, she called on a typhoid patient under the pretext of making a professional visit, and got the nurse to fry her some eggs. She's as regular as a boarder at Andy P. Symes's when meal-time rolls around. I wonder sometimes that he stands for it."
The Dago Duke looked at him oddly, but observed merely:
"Do you?"
"And you don't think the dagos made a mistake or misunderstood something through not talkin' English much? It sounded straight to me the way theytold it, but a thing like this is something you don't want to repeat unless you just about saw it for yourself."
"If they told you they had $5.50 taken from them you can bet it's so. Italians of that class know to a penny what they have sent home, what they have in the bank, what there is in their pockets to spend. Generations of poverty have taught them carefulness and thrift. Americans call them ignorant and stupid because their unfamiliarity with the language and customs make them appear so, but they are neither too ignorant nor stupid to misunderstand an incident like this. Are the men still on the works?"
The deputy nodded.
"If you'll loan me your horse I'll ride out and see them myself. My understudy can perhaps stand another day with the sheep without going crazy. When I come back I may be in a better position to call upon the lady doc and talk it over. She's fond of me, you know."
"So I've noticed." Dan Treu grinned as he recalled the invariable exchange of personalities when they met.
XXVCrowheart Demands Justice
The utterly insignificant telegraph operator at an equally insignificant railway station in Mexico loomed a person of colossal importance to Ogden Van Lennop, who had calculated that the reply to his telegram was considerably more than a week overdue. As he went once more to the telegraph office, the only reason of which he could think for being glad that he was the principal owner in the only paying mine in the vicinity was that the operator did not dare laugh in his face.
"Anything for me?"
"Nothing; not yet, sir."
The operator's voice and manner were respectful, but Van Lennop saw his teeth gleam beneath his dark mustache. He had found it quite useless to assure Van Lennop that he need not trouble himself to call as any telegram would be delivered immediately upon its receipt, also he had been long enough in the service to know that young Americans of Van Lennop's type did not ordinarily become so intense over a matter of business.
"Could it have gone astray—this infernal name—it looks like a piece of barbed wire when it's spelled out—is there another place of the same name in Mexico?"
"Not in the world, sir."
"I didn't think so," returned Van Lennop grimly. He continued: "I want you to telegraph the operator in Crowheart and find out positively if the message was delivered to the person to whom it was sent."
"I'll get it off at once, sir."
So this was being "in love?"—this frenzy of impatience, this unceasing anxiety which would not let him sleep! It seemed to Van Lennop that he had nearly run the emotional gamut since leaving Crowheart and all that remained to be experienced was further depths of doubt and dark despair. Had he been too sure of her, he asked himself; had something in his letter or the sending of his telegram displeased her? Was she ill?
He reproached himself bitterly for not telling her before he left, and thought with angry impatience of the caution which had kept him silent because he wanted to be sure of himself.
"Sure of myself!" he repeated it contemptuously. "I should have been making sure of her! The veriest yokel would have known that he was completely—desperately in love with her, but I, like the spineless mollusk that I am, must needs wait a little longer—'to be sure of myself'!"
To shorten the long hours which must intervene before he could expect a reply from Crowheart, Van Lennop ordered his saddle horse and rode to the mine, where a rascally superintendent had stripped the ore shoot and departed with everything but the machinery. Van Lennop had the tangled affairs of the mine fairly well straightened out and the new superintendent was due that day, so the end of his enforced stay was in sight in a day or two more—three at the most.
As his horse picked its way over the mountain trail the fresh air seemed to clear his brain of the jumble of doubts and misgivings and replace them with a growing conviction that something had gone wrong—thatall was not well with Essie Tisdale. His unanswered letter and telegram was entirely at variance with her sweet good-nature. What if she were needing him, calling upon him now, this very minute? He urged his horse unconsciously at the thought. Some accident—he could think of nothing else—unless a serious illness.
The employees at the mine observed that the young American owner was singularly inattentive that day to the complaints and grievances to which heretofore he had lent a patient ear.
His horse was sweating when upon his return he threw the reins to an idle Mexican in front of his hotel and hurried into the office.
Yes; there was a telegram for Señor Van Lennop—two, in fact.
He tore open the envelope of one with fingers which were awkward in their haste. The telegram read:
Message addressed to Miss Essie Tisdale received and delivered.Operator
Message addressed to Miss Essie Tisdale received and delivered.
Operator
Van Lennop stood quite still and read it again, even to the unintelligible date-line. He felt suddenly lifeless, listless, as though he wanted to sit down. It was all over, then. She had received his letter and his telegram, and her reply to his offer of his love and himself was—silence? It was not like her, but there seemed nothing more for him to do. He could not force himself and his love upon her. She knew her own mind. His conceit had led him into error. It was done.
He opened the other telegram mechanically. It was from Prescott and partially in code. It was along one for Prescott to send, but Van Lennop looked at it without interest. He would translate it at his leisure—there was no hurry now—the game had lost its zest.
Van Lennop turned to the dingy register. A train had arrived in his absence and perhaps Britt, the new superintendent, had come. His name was there—that was something for which to be grateful, as he could the sooner get back into the world where he could find in business something better than his own wretched thoughts to occupy his mind.
He walked languidly over the stone flagging to his room and dropped listlessly into a chair. It was not long before he heard Britt's alert step in the corridor quickly followed by his brisk rap upon the door. He always had liked the ambitious young engineer and they shook hands cordially.
"I'm more than glad to see you."
Britt laughed.
"I dare say. A week in a place like this is much like a jail sentence unless you're hard at work. Are things in pretty much of a mess?"
Van Lennop went over the situation briefly, and concluded—
"I'll stay over a day or so, if you desire."
"There's no necessity, I think," said Britt, rising. "I'll keep in touch with you by wire. Crowheart again?"
Van Lennop shook his head.
"I'm going east from here."
"Here's a late paper; perhaps you'd like to look it over. When I'm in a place like this I can read a patent medicine pamphlet, and enjoy it."
Van Lennop smiled.
"Much obliged. There's the supper gong. Don't wait for me; I'll be a little late."
Van Lennop had no desire for food, much less for conversation, so he picked up the travel-worn newspaper which Britt had tossed upon the table and glanced at the headlines.
The stock market was stronger. Nevada Con was up three points. The girl with the beautiful eyebrows had married that French jackanapes after all. Another famine in India. A Crowheart date-line caught his eye.
Wealthy Sheepman MurderedEdouard Dubois Shot and Killed at His CampBride of a Day to Be Arrested
The story of Essie Tisdale's marriage with Dubois followed, and even the news editor's pencil could not eliminate Sylvanus Starr's distinctive style. He had made the most of a chance of a lifetime. "An old man's darling"—"Serpent he had warmed in his bosom"—"Weltering in his blood"—all the trite phrases and vulgarisms of country journalism were used to tell the sensational story which sickened Van Lennop as he read:
"The arrest of the murdered patriarch's beautiful bride is expected hourly, as the leading citizens of Crowheart are clamoring for justice and are bringing strong pressure to bear upon Sheriff Treu, who seems strangely reluctant to act."
The paper dropped from Van Lennop's nerveless hand and he sat staring at it where it lay. He picked it up and read the last paragraph, for his dazed brain had not yet grasped its meaning. But when its entire significance was made clear to him it came with a rush:it was like the instantaneous effect of some powerful drug or stimulant that turned the blood to fire and crazed the brain. The blind rage which made the room swing round was like the frenzy of insanity. Van Lennop's face went crimson and oaths that never had passed his lips came forth, choking-hot and inarticulate.
"The leading citizens of Crowheart, the outcasts and riff-raff of civilization, the tinhorn gamblers, the embezzlers, ex-bankrupts and libertines, the sheep-herders and reformed cattle-thieves, the blackmailers and dance-hall touts swollen by prosperity, disguised by a veneer of respectability, want justice, do they? By God!" Van Lennop shook his clenched fist at the empty air, "the leading citizens of Crowheart shallHAVEjustice!"
He smoothed Prescott's crumpled telegram and reached for his code-book.
When he had its meaning he pulled a telegraph-blank toward him, and wrote:
Carry out my instructions to the letter. Do not neglect the smallest detail. Leave no stone unturned to accomplish the end in view.Van Lennop
Carry out my instructions to the letter. Do not neglect the smallest detail. Leave no stone unturned to accomplish the end in view.
Van Lennop
XXVILatin Methods
"Oh, Doc!" It was the telegraph operator, hatless, in his shirt-sleeves, hurrying toward her from the station as she passed.
Doctor Harpe stood quite still and waited, not purposely but because a sudden weakness in her knees made it impossible for her to meet him half-way. She was conscious that the color was leaving her face even as her upper lip stretched in the straight, mirthless smile with which she faced a crisis. She knew well enough why he called her, the dread of this moment had been with her ever since her foolish boast of Van Lennop's letter and the destruction of his telegram.
"You gave that message to Essie? She got it all right, didn't she, Doc?"
She had prepared herself a hundred times to answer this question, but now that it was put she found it no easier to decide on a reply; to know what answer would best save her from the consequences of the stupid error into which her hatred had led her.
If she said that she had lost it and subsequent events had driven it from her mind, he would duplicate the message. If she said she had delivered it and her falsehood was discovered, her position was rendered more dangerous, ten-fold. She decided on the answer which placed discovery a little farther off.
"Sure, she got it; I gave it to her that afternoon."
Her assurance closed the incident so far as the telegraph operator was concerned; it was the real beginning of it to Doctor Harpe, whose intelligenceenabled her to realize to the utmost the position in which she now had irrevocably placed herself. She turned abruptly and walked to her office with a nervous rapidity totally unlike her usual swagger.
When the door was closed behind her she paced the floor with excited strides. It was useless to attempt to hide from herself the fact that she was horribly, cravenly afraid of Ogden Van Lennop; for she recognized beneath his calm exterior a quality which inspired fear. She was afraid of him as an individual, afraid of his money and the power of his influence if he chose to use them, for Dr. Harpe had brains enough, worldly wisdom enough, to know that he was beyond her reach.
In Crowheart, she believed that through her strong personality and the support of Andy P. Symes she could accomplish nearly anything she undertook; but she knew that in the great world outside where she had discovered Van Lennop was a factor, she would be only an eccentric female doctor, amusing perhaps, mildly interesting, even, but entirely inconsequential.
Her thoughts became a chaotic jam of incoherent explanations as she thought of an accounting to Van Lennop should he return, and again she raged at herself for the insane impulse which had led her to boast of a farewell letter to her. The sleepless hours in which she had gone over and over the situation with every solution growing more preposterous than the last, had been telling upon the nerves which never had quite recovered from the shock and the incidents which followed Alice Freoff's death. The slightest excitement seemed to set them jangling of late.
They were twitching now; her eyelids, her shoulders, her mouth seemed never in repose when she was alone. Her hand shook uncontrollably as she refilleda whiskey glass and rolled and smoked another cigarette. It was no new thing, this nervous paroxysm, being nearly always the climax to a night of exaggerated fear. The necessity for self-possession and outward calmness in public made it a relief to let her nerves go when alone.
"If he comes back, I'm ruined! He'll cut loose on me in public and he'll sting; I know him well enough for that." Her hands grew clammy at the thought. "It'll put a crimp in my practice. If it wasn't for the backin' of Symes I'd as well pull my freight—but he hasn't come yet. It's not likely he ever will with no word from her and this scandal comin' close on the heels of her silence. I'm a fool to worry—to let myself get in such a state as this."
She no longer entertained the hallucination that she might attract Van Lennop to herself; to save herself from public exposure, should he by any chance return, was her one thought, her only aim. And always her hopes simmered down to the one which centred in Symes's influence in Crowheart and his compulsory protection of herself. He dared not desert her.
"Let him try it!" She voiced her defiant thoughts. "Let him go back on me if he dare! If I get in a place where I've absolutely nothing to lose—if he throws me down—Andy P. Symes and Crowheart will have food for thought for many a day. But, pshaw! I'm rattled now; I've pulled out before and I'll——"
A hand upon the door-knob startled her. Hastily she shoved the glass and bottle from sight and pulled herself together.
"Oh, it's you?" Her tone was not cordial, as the Dago Duke stood before her.
"Did you think it was your pastor," inquired thatperson suavely as he sniffed the air, "come to remonstrate with you upon your intemperate habits?"
She laughed her short, harsh laugh as she took the bottle from its hiding-place and shoved it toward him.
"Help yourself."
She had long since learned that it was useless to pretend before the Dago Duke. His mocking, comprehending eyes made pretence ridiculous even to herself. She dreaded meeting him in public because of the flippant disrespect of his manner toward her; privately she found a certain pleasure in throwing off the cloak which hid her dark, inner-self from Crowheart. He assumed her hypocrisy as though it were a fact too obvious to question and she had been obliged to accept his estimate of her.
"How like you, my dear Doctor!" He picked up the bottle and read the label. "Your womanly solicitude for my thirst touches me deeply, but,"—he replaced the bottle upon her desk—"since I've stood off the demon Rum for six weeks now I'll hold him at bay until I finish my little talk with you."
"If you're here on business, cut it short," she said curtly.
"I can't imagine myself here on any other errand" he returned placidly. "Say, Doc,"—there was a note in his wonderful speaking voice which made her look up quickly—"why don't you give back that $5.00 and four bits you pinched from Giovanni Pellezzo?"
The moment showed her remarkable self-control. She could feel her overtaxed nerves jump, but not a muscle of her face moved.
"What are you driving at?" she demanded.
"The name is not familiar to you?"
"Not at all."
"I'm not surprised at that, since your interest in your contract patients extends no further than their pockets."
"If you're here to insult me——"
"I couldn't do that," returned the Dago Duke composedly; "I've tried."
"You've got to explain."
"That's what I came for." He smiled pleasantly.
"Well?" She tapped her foot.
"Don't rush me, Doc. I have so few pleasures, you know that, and the enjoyment I'm extracting from your suspense makes me desire to prolong it. Youareanxious, you must admit that, although you really conceal it very well. But you're gray around the mouth and those lines from your nose down look like—yes, like irrigation laterals—furrows—upon my soul, Doc, you've grown ten years older since I came in. You should avoid worry by all means, but I can understand exactly how you feel when you're not quite sure to which case I may refer."
Her tense nerves seemed suddenly to snap. She struck the desk with her open palm, and cried—
"I'msickof this!"
He looked at her critically.
"I can believe it. Temper adds nothing to your appearance. But, Doc, with your intelligence and experience, how did you come to rifle a man's pocket with a witness in the room?"
She jumped to her feet.
"I won't stand this! I don't have to stand it!"
The Dago Duke crossed his legs leisurely.
"No—you don't have to, but I believe I would if I were you. The fact is, Doc, I dropped in merely to make a little deal with you."
"Blackmail!" she cried furiously.
"In a way—yes. Strictly, I suppose, you might call it blackmail."
"You're broke again—you want money!"
The Dago Duke shuddered.
"Oh, Doc! how can you be so indelicate as to taunt me with my poverty; to suggest, to hint even so subtly, that I would fill my empty pockets from your purse?" He looked at her reproachfully.
"Whatdoyou want, then?"
The Dago Duke's voice took on a purring, feline softness which was more emphatic and final than any loud-mouthed vehemence—
"What do I want? I want you to tell the officers that you passed two men riding on a run from Dubois's sheep-camp—two Indians or 'breeds' in moccasins—and I want you to do it quick!"
"You want me to perjure myself and you 'want me to do it quick,'" she mimicked.
He paid no attention.
"I want you to help clear that girl; if you refuse, Giovanni Pellezzo will swear out a warrant for your arrest, charging you with the theft of $5.50 while he was etherized for a minor operation."
They regarded each other in a long silence.
She said finally—
"You know, of course, that this Italian will have to go after this?"
"You'll have him discharged?"
"Certainly."
"He needs a rest."
"He'll get it."
Another pause came before she asked—
"Do you imagine for a moment that an ignorant foreigner can get a warrant for me on such a charge?"
"I foresee the difficulty."
"You mean to persist?"
He nodded.
She flung at him—
"Try it!"
"If we fail in this," continued the Dago Duke evenly, "there's the case of Antonio Amato, whose hand the nurse, acting under your instructions, held after thrusting a pencil in his limp fingers and signed a check when he was dying and unconscious. Which check you cashed after his death, in violation of the State banking laws from which perhaps even you are not exempt if this man's relatives choose to bring you to account for the irregularity."
"It is a lie!"
"It is not impossible," he continued, "to get the nurse who left you before Nell Beecroft came, saying that she knew enough about you both to 'send you over the road.' It is not too difficult to bring to light the examples of your incredible incompetency which prove you unfit to sign a death certificate, nor is your record in Nebraska hard to get."
She moistened her colorless lips before she spoke.
"And where is the money coming from to do all this?"
She had touched the weak spot in his attack, but he replied with assurance.
"It will be ready when needed."
"This is persecution—a plot to ruin me on the trumped-up charges of irresponsible people."
The Dago Duke's keen ear detected the faint note of uncertainty and agitation beneath the defiance of her tone.
"These things are true—and more," he returned unemotionally. "But consider, even if you beat us at every turn through personal influence, you will paydearly for your victories in money, in peace, in reputation. These things will leave a stigma which will outlast you. It will arouse suspicion of your ability and skill among your private patients who now trust you. You'll have to fight every inch of the road to retain your ground, or any part of it, against the new and abler physicians who must come with the growth of the country. You'll not be wanted by your best friends when it comes to a case of life and death. You'll become only a kind of licensed midwife rushing about from one accouchement to another, and, even for this, you must finesse and intrigue in the manner which has made the incompetents of your sex in medicine the bête noir of the profession."
The sneering smile she had forced faded as he talked. It was like the deliberate voice of Prophecy, drawing pictures which she had seen in waking nightmares that she called the "blues" and was wont to drive away with a drink or a social call outside.
She raised her chin from her chest where it had sunk, and summoned her courage.
"You have taken a great deal of trouble to inform yourself upon the subject of the medical profession and my unfitness for it."
The Dago Duke hesitated and an expression which was new to it crossed his face, a look of mingled pride and pain.
"I have gone to less trouble than you think," he answered finally. "I was reared in the atmosphere of medicine. My father was a beloved and trusted physician to the royal family of my country. I was to have followed in his footsteps and partially prepared myself to do so. The reason that I have not is not too difficult to guess since it is the same which sends me sheep-herding at $40 a month."
"But my identity is neither here nor there." The Dago Duke threw up his hand with a characteristic, foreign gesture as though dismissing himself from the conversation and half regretting even so much of his personal history. "It serves but one purpose and that is that you may know that the degrees which I have earned, not bought, qualify me to speak of your ability, or lack of it, with rather more authority than the average layman's." He arose languidly and sauntered across the room where he stood looking up at her framed diploma, and added, "To judge, too, of the value of a sheepskin like that. How much did you pay for it, Doc?" Seeming to expect no reply, he continued serenely, "Well I'll have to be going. Stake me to a cigarette paper? I haven't talked so much or been so strongly moved since my remittance was reduced to $100 a month. I can't get drunk like a gentlemen on that—you couldn't yourself—and it's an inhuman outrage. It may drive me to reform—I've thought of it. You're such a sympathetic listener, Doc. It makes me babble." His hand was on the door-knob. "Since you've nothing to say I suppose you mean to stick to your story, but you must admit, Doc, I've at least been as much of a gentleman as a rattlesnake. I'm rattling before I strike."
The door had closed upon his back when she tore it open.
"Wait a minute!" She was panting as though she had been running a distance. He saw, too, the desperation in her eyes. "Give me—a little—time!"
The Dago Duke's tone was one of easy friendliness.
"All you need, but don't forget the suspense is hard on Essie Tisdale."
XXVIIEssie Tisdale's Moment
Mrs. Sylvanus Starr, who was indisposed, sat up in herrobe de nuitof pink, striped outing-flannel and looked down into the street.
"Pearline," she said hastily, "turn the dish-pan over the roast beef and cache the oranges. Planchette, hide the cake and just lay this sweet chocolate under the mattress—the doctor's coming."
"She cleaned us out last time all right," commented Lucille.
"Her legs are hollow," observed Camille, "she can eat half a sheep."
"What's half a sheep to a growing girl?" inquired Mrs. Starr as she plucked at her pompadour and straightened the counterpane.
The Starrs were still tittering when Dr. Harpe walked in. Their hilarity quickly passed at the sight of her face. Another intelligence, a new personality from which they unconsciously shrank looked at them through Dr. Harpe's familiar features. The Starrs were not analytical nor given to psychology, therefore it was no subtle change which could make them stare. It was as though a ruthless hand had torn away a mask disclosing a woman who only resembled some one they had known. She was a trifle more than thirty and she looked to-day a haggard forty-five.
A grayish pallor had settled upon her face, and her neck, by the simple turning of her head, had the lines of withered old age. Her lips were colorless, and dry, and drooped in a kind of sneering cruelty, whileher restless, glittering eyes contained the malice and desperation of a vicious animal when it's cornered. The uneasiness and erratic movements of a user of cocaine was in her manner.
"What ails you now?" Her voice was harsh and Mrs. Starr flushed at the blunt question.
She saw that Dr. Harpe was not listening to her reply.
"Get this filled." The prescription she wrote and handed her was scarcely legible. "I'll be in again."
She stalked downstairs without more words.
The Starrs looked at each other blankly when she had gone.
"What's the matter with Dr. Harpe?"
Elsewhere throughout the town the same question was being asked. The clairvoyant milliner cautiously asked the baker's wife as they watched her turn the corner—
"Have you noticed anything queer about Dr. Harpe?"
There was that about her which repelled, and those who were wont to pass her on the street with a friendly flourish of the hand and a "Hello, Doc," somehow omitted it and substituted a nod and a stare of curiosity. Her swaggering stride of assurance was a shamble, and, as she came down the street now with her head down, her Stetson pulled low over her eyes, her hand thrust deep in one pocket of her square cut coat, her skirt flapping petticoatless about her, she looked even to the wife of the baker, who liked her, and to the clairvoyant milliner, who imitated her, a caricature upon womankind.
There was a look of evil upon her face at the moment not easy to describe. She and Augusta hadquarrelled—for the first time—and when she could least afford to quarrel.
She had spoken often of Andy P. Symes as "the laziest man in Crowheart" and Augusta always had giggled; to-day she had resented it. Was it, Dr. Harpe asked herself, that she was losing control of Augusta because she was losing her own? Nothing more disastrous could happen to her at this time than to lose her footing in the Symes household. Her power over Symes went with her prestige, for her word would have little weight if the Dago Duke even partially carried out his threats. Her disclosure would appear but the last resort of malice and receive little credence.
As she walked down the street with bent head she was asking herself if the props were to be pulled from beneath her one by one, if the invisible lines emanating from her own acts were tightening about her to her undoing?
With a fierce gesture she pushed these thoughts from her as though they were tangible things. No, no! she would not be beaten! Insomnia, narcotics and stimulants had unnerved her for the time, but she was strong enough to pull herself together and stay the circumstances which threatened to swamp her midway in her career. Bolstered for the moment by this resolve, she threw back her head and raised her eyes.
The Dago Duke, Dan Treu, and an important looking stranger were crossing the street and she felt intuitively that it was for the purpose of meeting her face to face. The Dago Duke bowed with his exaggerated salutation of respect as they passed, the deputy-sheriff with an odd constraint of manner, while the stranger who raised his hat in formal politeness gave her a look which seemed to search her soul. Itfrightened her. Who was he? She had seen him at old Dubois's funeral. Was he some new factor to be reckoned with, or was it merely her crazy nerves that made her see fresh danger at every turn, a new enemy in every stranger?
She climbed the stairs to her office in a kind of nervous frenzy. She felt like screaming, like beating upon the walls with her bare fists. Inaction was no longer possible. She must do something, else this agony of uncertainty and suspense would drive her mad. She strode up and down at a pace which left her breathless, clenching and unclenching her hands, while thickly, between set teeth, she raved at Essie Tisdale, upon whom her venom concentrated.
"I could throttle her!" She looked at her curved, outspread fingers, tense and strong as steel hooks. "I could choke her with my own hands till she is black! Curse her—curse her! She's been a stumbling block in my way ever since I came. The sight of her is a needle in my flesh. I'd only want a minute if I could get my fingers on her throat! I'd shut that baby mouth of hers for good and all. God! How I hate her!" She hissed the words in venomous intensity, racked with the strength of her emotions, weak from it, her ghastly face moist with perspiration.
"I've humiliated her!" she gasped. "I've made her suffer. I've downed her, but there's something left yet that I haven't crushed! I'm not satisfied; I haven't done enough. I want to break her spirit, to break her heart, to finish her for all time!"
She groped for the door-knob as one who sees dimly, and all but ran down the corridor. Even as she went the thought flashed through her mind that shewas making a fool of herself, that she was being led by an impulse for which she would be sorry.
But she was at a pitch where the voice of caution had no weight; she wanted what she wanted and in her heart she knew that she was going to Essie Tisdale with the intention of inflicting physical pain. Nothing less would satisfy her. Yet, when the door opened in response to her knock, her upper lip stretched in its straight, mirthless smile.
"Hello, Ess!" She stepped back a bit into the dimly lighted corridor and the girl all but shrank from the malice glowing in her eyes.
Essie did not immediately respond, so she asked in mock humility—
"Can't I come in, Mrs. Dubois?"
She saw the girl wince at the name by which no one as yet had called her.
"Why this timidity, this unexpected politeness, when it's not usual for you even to knock?"
She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
"True enough, Mrs. Dubois, but naturally a poor country doctor like me would hesitate before bolting in upon the privacy of a rich widow."
"If you use 'poor' in the sense of incompetent I am afraid I must agree with you," was the unexpected answer.
"Ah, beginning to feel your oats, my dear." She slouched into the nearest chair and flung her hat carelessly upon the floor.
"You notice it, my dear?" mimicked Essie Tisdale.
"When a range cayuse has a few square meals he gets onery."
"While they merely give a well-bred horse spirit."
Dr. Harpe looked at her searchingly. There wasa change in Essie Tisdale. She had a new confidence of manner, a cool poise that was older than her years, while that intangible something which she could never crush looked at her more defiantly than ever from the girl's sparkling eyes. She had a feeling that Essie Tisdale welcomed her coming. Certainly her assurance and animation was strangely at variance with her precarious position. What had happened? Dr. Harpe intended to learn before she left the room.
"At any rate you've paid high for your oats, Ess," she said finally.
The girl agreed coolly—
"Very."
"And you're not done paying," she added significantly.
"That remains to be seen."
Dr. Harpe's eyes narrowed in thought.
"Ess," in a patronizing drawl, "why don't you pull your freight? I'll advance you the money myself."
"Run away? Why?"
"You're going to be arrested—that's a straight tip. You may get off, but think what you'll have to go through first. Skip till things simmer down. They'll not go after you."
The girl flashed a smile of real merriment at her, which almost cost Dr. Harpe her self-control. The young and now glowing beauty of the girl before her, the unconscious air of superiority and confidence which had its wellspring in some mysterious source was maddening to her. The interview was taxing her self-control to the limit and she felt that in some inexplicable way the tables were turning.
"You—won't go, then?" Her voice held a menace.
"Why should I, since I am innocent? Take a vacation yourself, Dr. Harpe, with the money you so generously offer me. You need it."
She followed the girl's dancing eyes to the mirror opposite which was tilted so that it reflected the whole of her uncouth pose. Slid far down in the chair with her heels resting on the floor and wrinkling hose exposed above her boottops, a knot of dull, red hair slipped to one side with shorter ends hanging in dishevelment about her face, she looked—the thought was her own—like a drab of the streets in the magistrate's court in the morning. She was startled, shocked by her own appearance. Was she, Emma Harpe, as old, as haggard, as evil-looking as that!
She had clung with peculiar tenacity to the hallucination that she still had youthful charm of face and figure. As she stared, it seemed as though the sand was sliding a little faster from beneath her feet. She shoved the loose knot of hair to its place and straightened herself, growing hot at the realization that she had betrayed to Essie Tisdale something of her consternation.
She turned upon her fiercely—
"Look here, Ess, if you want to be friends with me, and have my influence to get you out of this mess, you'd better change your tactics."
"Haven't I yet made it clear to you that I care no more for your friendship than for your enmity? Do you imagine that you can frighten liking, or force respect after the occasion which we both remember?"
"There's one thing I can do—I can make Crowheart too hot to hold you!" Her grip on herself was going fast.
Essie Tisdale stood up and, folding her arms, drewherself to her slim height while she looked at her in contemptuous silence.
"I know there is no low thing to which you would not stoop to make good your boast. You make me think of a viper that has exhausted its venom. You have the disposition to strike, but you no longer have the power."
"You think not? And why? Do you imagine that your position in Crowheart will be changed one iota by the fact that you've got a few dollars that are red with blood?" She flung the taunt at her with savage insolence.
"My position in Crowheart is of no importance to me. But"—her voice cut like finely tempered steel—"don't goad me too far. Don't forget that I know you for what you are—a moral plague—creeping like a pestilence among people who are not familiar with your face. I know, and youknowthat I know you are in no position, Dr. Harpe, to point a finger at the commonest women in the dance hall below."
The woman sprang from her chair and walked to her with the crouching swiftness of a preying animal. She grasped Essie Tisdale's wrist in a grip which left its imprint for hours after.
"How dare you!"
Essie Tisdale raised her chin higher.
"How dare I?" She smiled in the infuriated woman's face. "It takes no courage for me to oppose you now. When I was a biscuit-shooter here, as you lost no opportunity to remind me, you loomed large! That time has gone by. Crowheart will know you some day as I know you. Your name will be a byword in every saloon and bunk-house in the country!"
"I'llkillyou!"
The tense fingers were curved like steel hooks as she sprang for Essie Tisdale's slender throat, but even as the girl shoved her chair between them a masculine voice called "Esther" and a rap came upon the door.
Doctor Harpe's arms dropped to her side and she clutched handfuls of her skirt as she struggled for self-control.
Essie Tisdale walked swiftly to the door and threw it wide. The towering stranger stood in the corridor looking in amazement from one woman to the other.
The girl turned and said with careful distinctness:
"You have been so occupied of late that perhaps you have not heard the news. My uncle—Mr. Richard Kincaid—Dr. Harpe."