BOOK TWOTHE SIN-BUSTER
CHAPTER I
It was supper-time at the Sylvania Palace Grille. Sylvania was an outfitting town for prospectors and cow-punchers, and the occupants of the little oilcloth-covered tables in the “Grille” were almost exclusively of these two classes. The telephone operator and the express-agent had already taken their meal, and their departure, and this was not the day for the tri-weekly stage, the driver of which sometimes patronized Mrs. Hallard’s rotisserie.
Sing Fat and Sing Gong, the two Chinese waiters, slipped about attending to the demands of patrons, and Mrs. Hallard herself, from behind a counter, kept tabs on the room and set out the liquid refreshments that the various customers called for.
The place was full of noise and bustle. The rattle of heavy crockery, the clink of steel knives and forks, the raking of boots and spurs over the plank floor, the clamor of voices and the monotonoussing-song of the two Chinese calling orders to the cook, made up a medley in which, Mrs. Hallard was wont to declare, she could hardly hear herself think.
Despite this handicap, however, very little escaped her. She managed to hear, with no apparent difficulty, Steve Salton’s gently preferred request that she “chalk up” the amount of his bill, and to catch his mumbled replies to her swift interrogatories as to his prospects for paying.
“It’s all right if you’re going to have it,” she said, with business-like crispness. “But I ain’t here for my health, you know. I want to see the color of your dust before too long.”
“That’s reasonable,” was Steve’s reply. “You’ll see yer pay O. K. soon ’s I locate, an’ I’m bound to when—”
“Cut it out!” Mrs. Hallard was already pushing change across the counter to another customer. “It’s chalked up, Steve.”
“Kate! oh, Kate!” The voice of an old habitué came across the bedlam of sound: “Tell one o’ them pigtailed lumps o’ sin,” it went on, “to fetch me another pony o’ that white pizen o’ your’n, quicker!”
“Gong,” the presiding genius of the place said calmly to one of the China boys, “Go tell Tombstone he don’t need no more gin. Tell ’im I said so.”
Gong carried the message, delivering it over his shoulder as he set another customer’s order of “ham and” before him. Tombstone’s face, when he received it, was worthy of his name.
“Hell!” he ejaculated to anyone who might listen, “That’s what comes o’ hashin’ off ’n a woman.”
He was still muttering gloomily when he went up to the desk to pay his score.
“Kate,” he said with drunken gravity, as he swayed before her, “The love o’ tyranny’s a bad thing in a man. It’s plumb perilous fer a female.”
Mrs. Hallard glanced from his money to him.
“What’s eatin’ you, Tombstone?” she demanded, ringing up the cash-register.
“’T ain’t me. It’s you, The love o’ power air devourin’ you to that extent you can’t serve a man his rations without cuttin’ ’em short. It were plumb tyrannical in you to send me that there message about the gin.”
Mrs. Hallard’s handsome black eyes surveyed him coldly.
“When a gent’s that far in he goes howlin’ a lady’s Christian name in public like you done just now,” she said, “it’s a sign he don’t need no more at present. There’s your change, Tombstone. Now vâmose!”
“Jake Lowrey!” she sent her voice level acrossthe reeking room to where a big, shaggy miner was disputing with one of the Chinamen, “This here’s an eatin’-house. ’T ain’t a cussin’ bee. If you don’t like the victuals served you, you know what you kin do. But while you’re in here you quit swearin’.”
“I ain’t a cussin’ fer cussin’s sake,” the big miner pleaded, above the laughter of the others. “I’m only inquirin’ into the nature o’ this here sunny-side Fat’s fetched me with my hash.”
“What color is it?” the proprietor of the eating-house asked, and the egg on Jake’s plate immediately became the center of all attention.
“It’s yeller,” its owner called, surveying it critically.
“Naw ’t ain’t neither; it’s red,” another observer decided.
“It’s a lie. It’s just the color of an orange, an’ oranges is yeller, ain’t they?” This from a third critic.
“If it’s yeller it’s a new-laid egg,” Mrs. Hallard pronounced, judicially. “If it’s red, it’s a fresh egg. Any other hen-fruit in this place is ranch eggs, unless it’s chickens, an’ we don’t serve them on the half-shell.”
During the silence that followed this elucidation of the egg question the outside door of the place opened hesitatingly, and a young Mexican girllooked in. Mrs. Hallard nodded, and she entered, leading by the hand a blind countryman who carried a guitar. The pair were evidently well known to Mrs. Hallard’s patrons, and through the thick cloud of tobacco smoke that filled the room a number of the men shouted their greetings.
“Buenos noches, Conchita.”
“Howdy, Buttercup.”
“Put her here, ’Chita!”
The girl responded to each greeting with a flash of white teeth. A number of new-comers flocked in after her, finding seats and shouting their orders to the China-boys.
“Come on, ’Chita, hit ’er up!” some one called.
The girl had guided her companion to a chair, and the latter now twanged a few notes upon his guitar. Presently Conchita began to dance, slowly, at first, gradually quickening the pace, as she flitted back and forth in the little open space before the counter.
By degrees this space became too confined for her movements, and she drifted, like a bit of thistledown, along the aisles between the tables.
When she came opposite Jake Lowrey she gave a quick little leap and sprang upon the table before him, where she pirouetted among the bottles of condiments, and the tall glass of beer over which he was lingering. She skirted them all, daintily, her twinkling feet never still.
Suddenly she paused, balancing marvelously upon one toe, the other outstretched before the man. Lowrey’s hand was already in his pocket, now it came out holding a silver coin which he placed upon the outstretched toe. In an instant it was snapped into the air and caught by the whirling dancer as it came down. A chorus went up from the assembly.
“Here y’ are, Conchita!” “You know me, ’Chita.” “Put ’er here, little gal!” The men bid openly for the dancer’s favor, making haste to clear their tables as an inducement for her to notice them.
She sprang from Jake’s table to another, across the aisle, and repeated her graceful, agile performance, weaving in and out among the dishes, kissing her fingers and smiling. Thus she wandered from table to table, picking her favorites and taking toll of each, going wilfully, it seemed, from silver lure held plainly in sight, to tables where much less was offered.
In and out she flashed, now here, now there, until it became apparent to all that she was working, step by step, toward the one table whose occupant had extended no invitation.
This one was in a corner of the room, and at it sat a young man who was to all appearances neither a prospector nor a cowboy, though he worea certain indefinable air of the plain. It showed in the bronze of his face, where it was not covered by a crisp brown beard, of a cut not worn by the usual desert-dweller; in his big, strong, tanned hands, that were supple and deft, despite the marks of hard work upon them, and in the steady, farseeing gaze of his brown eyes.
The little dancer was close to the stranger’s table now, and bending low to avoid a hanging lamp, she sprang upon it, and calling something to the guitar-player, set her feet a-twinkle through a bewildering maze of perfectly calculated steps.
She glided about the edge of her tiny stage; she blew lightly across it; she whirled madly in the centre of it. Everyone in the room gazed, spell-bound, realizing that their pet dancer was outdoing herself on this occasion.
Through it all the girl’s eyes never left the face that was upturned to her gaze, the brown eyes regarding her with a sort of consideration that no others in the room had shown. Admiration, challenge, desire, those other eyes had betrayed, but these were different. Their quiet questioning held no reproach; they were full of friendliness, and of interest, and the coin that was presently laid upon her out-thrust toe was cheerfully, even gaily proffered, but the girl suddenly felt that both the interest and the gaiety were different from her own.
She tossed the silver dollar in air and caught it, with a nod of thanks. Then she sprang to the floor and ran up the aisle to where the blind Mexican still strummed his guitar strings.
“Este bestante!” she cried, pouring her earnings into his deep-crowned hat. “No mas.”
She kissed her fingers gaily to the applauding men and turned toward the door. Only Kate Hallard’s keen eyes noted, without seeming to see, that she had knotted one silver coin into a corner of her kerchief, and slipped it into her bosom.
No more visitors came into the Palace Grille. Sylvania had supped, and the men at the tables one by one came forward when the girl had gone, to pay their bills and slip out into the street. In the shortest of five minutes all were gone save the stranger in the corner, and the two Chinese, who padded softly about, putting the place to rights.
Kate Hallard had seen the stranger throughout mealtime. She noted, moreover, that he had more than one glance for her, the while he sat taking his supper in a deft, dainty way that some men get from much eating out of doors.
She was accustomed to being watched. More than one habitué of the place had taken his turn at gazing at her, during the year that she had been running the Palace Grille. She was not unpleasant to look at, if a man were not over-sensitive aboutsome things. She had an abundance of fair hair that was not bleached, despite the contrast of her black, long-lashed eyes. They were handsome eyes, if bolder and harder than they might have been if life itself had been less hard and bold for this woman of the desert.
That ithadbeen hard was told by the cold, steady gaze of the dark eyes; by the worn line of the cheek, and by the half contemptuous, half tolerant set of thin lips that ought still to be full, and curved, and red.
As she glanced over at the stranger, when both the boys were out of the room, he left his seat and came down to the counter. He was taller than she had thought, she noted, and very slender. Despite this latter fact, however, he gave an impression of more than usual strength and activity. “He’d be one blame hard man to down,” she thought, in the instant before he was leaning upon the counter, tendering the price of his meal.
“This must be a mighty uncomfortable life for a woman,” he said in a matter of fact way, watching her register the payment.
“Mebby,” she answered, shortly. He spoke again, with a sort of gentle persistence.
“I shouldn’t think you’d care much about it?” There was a questioning quality in his voice, that Mrs. Hallard felt would presently win an answer,whether she would or no. She went on “ridding up” the counter, and set a bottle of “square-face” back on the shelf behind her, with rather unnecessary energy.
“Don’t know as my caring about it would make any difference,” she finally said. “Leastways it never made none to me, an’ I guess it needn’t to nobody else.” This last was said with some significance of emphasis.
“I know,” the stranger spoke half absently. “But I’d have thought,” he continued, looking up, “that you would have preferred to keep to the range.”
A startled look came into the hard black eyes.
“What do you mean?” Kate Hallard cried. “What doyouknow about the range? Who be you, anyway?”
“Did you sell it?” the stranger persisted, ignoring her questions.
“Sell it!” she burst out, shrilly. “If you know anything about it, you know I never got a chance to sell it. It melted; it never got to be mine.”
Her voice had risen until the sound brought Sing Fat in from the kitchen to observe. Seeing this, she lowered it.
“Look a’ here, Mister,” she said, sharply, “If you’re as wise as you’re tryin’ to make out, you know how I got done outer the range.”
“I honestly don’t know,” was the reply. “I found your deed, and I’ve been hunting you up to give it to you.”
She stared at him, in a sort of awe.
“You found that deed?” she whispered.
“Yes; I have it. But how did you lose the property?”
She left off her desultory arranging of bottles, and leaned toward him, across the counter.
“Hallard bought the range off’n an Easterner named Oliphant,” she began. “He was goin’ to stock it, an’ then you’d never a’ seen me here. He’s got the deed all square, an’ he leaves it with me till he goes down to Phoenix to record it. Then he goes and gits killed bustin’ an outlaw horse fer Hod Granger, and leaves me to manage fer myself.”
The stranger uttered a little murmur of sympathy.
“But you had the deed,” he suggested, as Mrs. Hallard seemed lost in thought.
“Oh, yes! I had it all right. But I give it to Frank Arnold to record fer me. He was goin’ down to Phoenix, an’ I guess they was some hoodoo onto it; fer Frank, he got killed too—got killed in a cloudburst—an’ when they found his body every bone in it was broke an’ they was hardly a rag onto it. So the deed was lost.”
“But surely this man Oliphant would have made it right for you?”
“Would he though? That’s where you ain’t guessin’ right.” Mrs. Hallard’s laugh had no mirth in it.
“That’s what they told me,” she said. “An’ so I see a lawyer, an’ he undertakes to write Oliphant, that’s gone back east. But after a spell he comes an’ tells me the sneakin’ thief’s gone an’ sold that prop’ty twice, an’ cleared out. Think o’ that, will you, an’ him a old, old man.... Out here fer his health, he was. Lord! if he don’t need a hotter climate ’n even this is.”
“Was the second deed recorded?”
“You bet your life it was. The man that’d bought it saw to that, an’ he didn’t have the luck to git killed, neither.”
“I must say he tried to act decent, though,” Mrs. Hallard added, “but o’ course he’d paid his money fer the prop’ty, same ’s Ed Hallard did, an’ Ed, he paid twelve thousand.”
“Yes, I know.” The stranger had the deed in his hand. “What did the man do for you?” he asked.
“Well: not much, but mebby he wouldn’t a’ done that if it hadn’t bin fer Mr. Westcott—”
“Whodid you say?” The stranger’s gentle voice suddenly sharpened to keen interest.
“Ash Westcott. He was my lawyer,” Mrs. Hallard explained.
“It was he who told you about the second sale?”
“Sure! How else ’d I know?”
“I see.” He stood pondering her story until at last she took up the tale again.
“Mr. Westcott—he talked it over with the man that bought it. I didn’t have nothin’ but my word to back me; an’ as he told me, I really couldn’t make a claim, an’ I didn’t have no case to go after Oliphant with. But the other feller he give me three hundred dollars fer a quit claim, an’ that set me up here.”
“You gave a quit claim?”
“Just to make the man feel easy. Westcott said it’d be the best way. He was mighty kind about raisin’ the money fer me. I hadn’t a red after I’d settled up Ed’s debts an’ small matters.”
“Here’s your deed.”
She took it, eagerly, and they pored over it together. The stranger pointed to a signature at the end of the acknowledgment.
“Do you know that man?” he asked.
She studied the name. “Never hearn of him,” she said, “What’s he got to do with it?”
“He was the notary before whom the deed was acknowledged,” was the reply. “If we could get hold of him we might learn something, and I thinkit would pay you to try to find out something from Oliphant.”
“I don’t know where he is,” was the bitter response, “an’ if I did, I tell you I ain’t got a cent to do anything with. I ain’t more ’n makin’ a livin’ here.”
“I guess that could be fixed,” the stranger said. “I’ve got some.”
She looked him over, fixedly, with her black eyes.
“An’ where do you come in?” she demanded.
He laughed, ever so gently.
“I’m not figuring about that,” he answered. “But if I were you, and could get hold of the money to do it, I’d try and see this thing through; and,” he added, significantly, “I guess I’d hunt up some other lawyer than this Mr. Westcott.”
He met her gaze without hesitation.
“There’s some folks does say Westcott’s sharp,” she said, slowly. “Be you one of ’em?”
The man smiled, without speaking.
“I don’t believe it,” Kate Hallard mused. “He wouldn’t dare. Besides,” she added, after a little thought, “he’d a known he was fair skinnin’ me, and he was the one tried to see to it I had a little money out’n it. He wouldn’t a’ taken my last nickel.”
A strange look came into the man’s face.“Maybe he didn’t spend much time reflecting on that,” he said, slowly. “Anyway, if I were you I’d see about it, and I guess the money can be found.”
“You ain’t told me yet who you be,” Kate Hallard remarked, studying him narrowly.
“My name is Gabriel Gard.”
“Well, Mister Gabriel Gard,” she said, “I never hearn ofyoubefore, an’ I ain’t sure I understand as well ’s I wanter before I make any deals.”
“You can trust me,” Gard said, simply, meeting her eyes.
“And this Westcott,” she exclaimed, sharply, “If he’s done me so! If he has—”
She gripped the counter, her teeth showing, savagely.
“Easy!” said Gard quietly, “Better keep cool. The man ain’t worth riling yourself up over. Besides, I believe we can do something, with this.”
He touched the deed, and she picked it up again.
“I want to try to get hold of Oliphant,” he began, outlining his plan, “and this notary, Arthur Sawyer.”
Kate Hallard regarded him with an unwonted expression of mingled helplessness and perplexity.
“Oliphant’s gone back east as I said,” she answered, “An’ this here Sawyer ’s new to me. I never knew nothing about him.”
Gard stood considering, a long sequence of unexpected difficulties developing itself before his mind. He had found the Hallard deed among the deputy’s papers, and had kept it carefully, against such time as he could restore it to the owner. His first act after leaving Broome, when the pair reached the railroad track, had been to go to Yuma. Here he acquired the habiliments of civilization, and found a temporary home for Jinny. He had stopped in Tucson long enough to file his claim there, and then set about finding the Edward Hallard to whom the deed referred. It was a matter of a fortnight before his inquiries revealed the fact of Ed Hallard’s death, and the whereabouts of his widow. Now he had no way of judging how long it might be before he could strike the trail of this unknown Arthur Sawyer who had taken the acknowledgment of the deed.
In any event, he realized that the delay meant postponement of certain cherished plans of his own; perhaps danger to them. He had met a man at Yuma, and another in Tucson, who had known him as Barker, and though they had not recognized him, so greatly was he changed, still he could not ignore the possibility that any day someone might remember him. Until his plans were perfected, the territory was perilous ground for him.
He frowned a moment, lost in thought; then he squared his shoulders and met Mrs. Hallard’s gaze with eyes that were full of steady peace. He had made up his mind. His own matters must wait until he had straightened out this woman’s tangle of wrong.
“We’ve got to find this man Sawyer,” he repeated, “And I hardly know where to begin trailing him. We’ve got to get hold of Westcott, too; you say he’s at Tucson?”
“He lives there,” was the reply; “or did last I knew. I ain’t heard from him in a long time now. No need to.”
“Well: I guess the best thing to do first, is to write to him. You tell him you’ve found your deed: no need to say how. We’ll see what he’s got to say, and—” There was the least perceptible hesitation, “if he comes up here, and you want me to,” he continued evenly, “I’ll talk with him for you.”
Mrs. Hallard looked relieved.
“You’re mighty good,” she cried, “Fact is I’m afraid ... you see, I....”
The outer door was pushed open and a big Mexican vaquero put in his head.
“What’s up, Manuel?” Mrs. Hallard asked.
The vaquero hesitated: “No massupper?” he said, tentatively.
“Supper all right,” was the reply. “You’re late, Manuel. What you doin’ off the range?”
The Mexican made a laughing gesture, crooking up his elbow. Mrs. Hallard frowned, noting his condition.
“You don’t git no booze here,” she said, “You’ve had enough. Fat’ll bring you some coffee an’ you eat a meal an’ git back on the range. You had trouble enough last time, I should think.”
The fellow sat down, shamefacedly, and Sing Fat came in to serve him. A moment later another customer entered.
“That’s always the way it goes,” Kate Hallard commented, “One straggler always brings another. They’ll come dribblin’ in now, one at a time, till closin’-time.... But I say, Mr. Gabriel Gard, don’t you go thinkin’ I don’t appreciate what you’ve done. I’ll write Westcott like you say, an’ mebby it’ll come out all right; but I ain’t much hopeful of it. Things don’t, much, outside o’ story books.”
The hard look was in her face again. Gard met it with his steady smile.
“You watch this one come out right,” said he. “I guess things mostly are right, if we could see ’em straight.” He was turning toward the door.
“We’re liable sometimes to pick ’em up by the wrong end,” he added. “We’ll find out which isthe right end of this before we lift it, and then—” the smile deepened, and included the dark eyes—“Then we’ll lift,” he called back as he closed the door behind him.
Sylvania’s one business street was lighted only by the stars, and the feebler rays that shone from a few illuminated windows. In the yellow glare from one of these a group of cowboys were dismounting by the rail of Jim Bracton’s Happy Family Saloon.
“Howdy, Stranger,” one of them called, as he stumbled against Gard on reaching the ground, “Excuseme.”
He glanced a second time at Gard’s face and smiled, genially. “Thinkin’ o’ minglin’ up in this mad whirl?” he asked, “Come on.” And together they entered the precincts of the Happy Family.
CHAPTER II
The scene in which Gard found himself was of a sort he had known familiarly enough in years past. The low-ceilinged shanty, rough-boarded and blackened; the sawdust-strewn floor, the painted bar with its distorting mirror and motley array of bottles, and even the faces of the men showing duskily through the smoke-veiled light of flaring coal-oil lamps, seemed to him like details of a half-forgotten dream.
The evening was fairly begun and the place was filling. A group of prospectors near the bar were listening derisively to the brand-new theory one of their number was propounding, regarding the whereabouts of the lost Peg-leg mine. At the farther end of the room the thump of a broken-down wheel-of-fortune and the monotonous calls of its manipulator, proclaimed the occupation of the crowd of Mexicans gathered there. Some cowboys at a table near the door were engaged in a game of dominoes, and beyond them three or fourmen were playing poker. Gard noticed with some surprise that one man of this group was an Indian, who seemed to be betting freely.
“That there’s old Joe Papago,” the cowboy who had come in with him volunteered, noting his glance. “Old Joe, he’s the best-fixed Injun ’round here. I hearn he sold ten head o’ beef cows over t’ Tucson, yesterday, an’ got his money. Must ’a’ got whiskey, too, by the looks of ’im.”
He put a foot on the bar rail and surveyed the scene tolerantly.
“There’s a mighty ornery bunch o’ human buzzards hangs out in this town o’ Sylvania,” he said, candidly. “But a feller’s gotter pass some time in social pursuits now ’n again, an’ he has to take his kind as he meets up with ’em.”
Gard was still recently enough from solitude to thrill with the sense of human companionship.
“’T ain’t always the roughest looking ones that are the worst,” he suggested, sympathetically.
“That’s where you’re shoutin’.” The cow-puncher brought a big fist down emphatically. “For all right hell,” he said, “a real polished gent can give these chaps cards an’ spades an’ beat ’em to the devil when he tries. We had one here last year, a gent that played cards—played ’em too damn well fer his own health, finally. But he was that polished in his manners as I ever went anywheresto see, an’ he could lie in five different languages.”
“Yes, sir,” he added, meditatively, “five different kinds o’ mortal human conversations that feller had a cinch onto; an’ he couldn’t behave hisself in ary one of ’em.”
“What you havin’?” he suddenly broke off to ask, as the barkeeper signified his readiness to attend to them.
“I’m drinking lemonade,” Gard said, and the cow-puncher took another look at him.
“Gimme the same,” he finally told the barkeeper, with serious politeness.
“Mebby I’d oughter beg your pardon”; he turned to Gard with a look of anxiety on his face. “I reckon I was a little careless in my talk if you happen to be a sin-buster.”
“A what?”
“Sin-buster. You sabe bronco-buster, don’t you; an’ trust-buster?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Well then, ain’t sin-buster plain United States? It’s what a preacher-feller oughter be if he’s on his job, ain’t it?”
“I guess it is,” was Gard’s reply, “but I’m not a preacher. I just haven’t been drinking much of late years, and don’t know ’s I care to.”
“Oh! that’s it? Well lemonade ’s pretty goodstuff,” the cow-puncher said, cheerfully. “I can’t seem to remember when I’ve had none, but I reckon it’ll taste first rate. I ordered it thinkin’ you was maybe religious.”
He finished a little ruefully, with a questioning inflection on the last words. Gard laughed.
“I’m not, I guess,” he said, “leastways not so ’s to hurt me.”
“That’s good,” the cow-puncher nodded, approvingly, “Though religion don’t hurt a good person,” he added, meditatively.
He removed his broad-brimmed felt hat and peered into the crown. His head was thatched with close-cropped, grizzly-gray hair; his face was tanned and seamed by wind and weather, thin-lipped and stern as to the mouth, under his short moustache, with steadfast blue eyes that had the plainsman’s and the sailor’s trick of vigilance. It was a face to be trusted—shrewd, honest, capable, yet full of a simplicity that was almost childlike. Gard found himself warming to the fellow.
“I suppose you belong about here?” he suggested.
“Sure. My name’s Sandy Larch. I’m foreman out ’t the Palo Verde, below here. Know the range?”
Gard admitted that he did not. “I’m new ’round here,” he explained, as he told his name.
“I’m looking for a man,” he added, tentatively, “a notary named Sawyer: Arthur Sawyer. Ever hear of him?”
Sandy Larch reflected, repeating the name thoughtfully. “Was he a lunger?” he finally asked, “A little feller, with broken wind, an’ a cough that ’d drive you wild to hear?”
“I don’t know.” The description took Gard’s memory back to the days when he, too, had had such a cough. “I never saw him,” he explained, “But I’m mighty anxious to get hold of him.”
“There was a man up in the Navajo country,” Sandy continued, “Where thepatronwas runnin’ the Bar Circle G. He stayed ’round quite a considerable, doctorin’ his lungs. Then thepatronsold out up there; he had this range too, in them days; an’ I ain’t never seen this Sawyer chap down this way. Thepatronmight tell you. Know him—Morgan Anderson?”
It was a name well known in the territory. Gard had seen its owner once or twice, in the old days. He said something of the sort to the cow-puncher.
“He’s away just now,” the latter told him; “but he’ll be back in a few days, an’ you can ask him. I’d know whatever did become o’ that chap.... Look a’ there, will you?”
He glanced over to where the men were playingpoker. One of them had reached over and pulled a big brown flask from the Papago’s coat-pocket.
“Time you treated us to a drink, Joe,” he said, with a half-insolent air of fellowship.
The Indian nodded, smiling vacuously, and the bottle went around the table, each man helping himself. When it came back to its owner he rose with it, and crossed to the door, going out into the street. The men at the table looked at one another with a grin and one of them examined the hand of cards that the Indian had left behind him. He had just laid it down again when the Papago came back, and the game was resumed.
“Wouldn’t that rattle your slats now?” Sandy Larch asked, disgustedly.
“Joe,” he continued, “don’t dast drink even his own lickker in here. It’s agin the law for an Indian; an’ Jim Bracton wouldn’t stand fer ’t; he goes outside to take a drink, while them buzzards swills it in here, right before him; an’ they’re gittin’ his wad, too.”
Gard made no reply. He had more than once glanced at the group, while he and the foreman were talking, and now he watched them interestedly, an intent look in his deep eyes. A moment later he had turned, and was moving toward the players.
“Thinkin’ o’ sittin’ in?” Sandy Larch asked,jestingly. “They’s sure need of an honest-notioned man to deal them cards. But it’d be ticklish business.... Good Lord!”
He was staring in earnest, now, and instinctively reached for the gun in his back-pocket, though he did not draw it. The stranger had approached the poker-players, and stood over them, his big, empty hands outspread upon the table before them.
The men whom he had interrupted looked up in surprise. The prospectors who had been discussing the Peg-leg suddenly became silent. The dominoe-players ceased the rattle of their game and stared. A hush was upon the whole room, a tense feeling of pending excitement. One or two men instinctively measured their own distance from the door, and from the center of coming activities. Jim Bracton stared open-mouthed from behind his bar.
“Who is the feller?” he demanded. “Friend o’ yourn, Larch?”
“Not that I knows,” was the foreman’s reply. “I never saw him before, but I’m sure willin’ to sit in to any game where he holds a hand.”
He started forward, ready to draw on the instant, but the stranger seemed not to see him. He had gathered the eyes of the poker-players in his own indignant gaze, and now addressed them collectively:
“Gentlemen,” he said, quietly, “you ought not to be doing this.”
“Glory be!” groaned Sandy Larch under his breath, “now wha’ d’ you think o’ that fer a simple speech?”
The astounded men to whom Gard spoke sat silent, not one of them making a move. They were held spell-bound by the gentle quality of his fearlessness.
“Somebody ’s been breaking the law, and selling this Indian whiskey,” Gard went on, in a matter-of-fact tone. “It was a mighty bad thing to do, and you are doing something a heap wickeder. He is drunk now, and he doesn’t rightly sense what he’s doing. You ought not to play cards with him. You’re drinking his liquor and helping him to get drunker; and—you’re cheating him, out of his money.”
The big wheel-of-fortune had ceased to whirr now, and the silence of the room was broken only by a snarling question from one of the men Gard had addressed.
“What in hell o’ your business is it?”
“It’s every man’s business when another man breaks the law,” was the quiet reply. “You’d better quit playing now, friend,” Gard continued, turning to the Papago. “You’d better quit right off, while you’ve got something left, and go home.”
“You stay where you be, Joe,” growled the man who had asked the question. “Don’t you climb out fer no tenderfoot. I’ll settle the—”
He stopped speaking as the stranger’s eyes blazed full upon him for an instant.
“You gonow, Joe,” Gard said, in a low, even voice.
Like a man in a dream old Joe rose, slipping into his pocket the coins he had been about to put into the game when Gard interfered. The tenseness of the situation had brought him to some measure of sobriety, and he did not reel as he left the room. A moment later the patter of his pony’s unshod feet came to the listening ears within.
Gard still held the other men in a gaze that seemed to search and estimate the hidden thought of each.
“Now they’ll kill him, sure,” Sandy Larch thought, slipping nearer, but the stranger took no notice of him.
“Friends,” he said, breaking at last the tense silence that ruled the room, “There’s a law against making an Indian drunk, and there’s a law against robbing him. They’re white men’s laws; and white men ought to keep ’em.”
“It ain’t right”; he went on, still leaning upon the table, and the men listened, as if hypnotized. “There’s things a man can’t do without gettinglower down than any man wants to be, and cheating a drunken Indian is one of ’em. That’s the truth of it. You ought not to do it, and when you do somebody’s got to make you stop. That’s why I interfered.... There ain’t any reason though,” he added, as if an after thought, “why you shouldn’t go on with your game, now; I’m going to say good-night.”
He straightened up, and turning his back upon the group walked quietly toward the door. Half-a-dozen men were ready, now, to draw in his defense, but there was no need. Not a man of those whom he had brought to book moved. They sat like men dazed, until the door had closed upon Gard; then, with an oath, one of them seized upon the cards.
“What th’ Almighty ’s the matter with you fools?” he growled. “Whose deal is it, anyhow? Git int’ the game, you. This ain’t no damned kindergarten!”
They resumed their playing, sullenly, and the spell upon the room was broken. Sandy Larch wiped his damp forehead upon a huge red handkerchief, and turned to the bar.
“Jim,” he said, feebly, “set down that there bottle o’ whiskey, will ye? I sure need it in my business right now.”
He measured a liberal potion and swallowed it.
“An’ he said he wa’nt no sin-buster,” he muttered. “He sure was on the job, though.”
“But wa’nt that a sweet line o’ talk to hand out to men folks, Jim? How’d it come they didn’t kill ’im?”
“Search me,” was the barkeeper’s reply. “I had my gun all limbered. I sure expected the place ’d be shot up.”
“He tells ’em it wasn’t right,” Sandy mused, absently refilling his glass. “He tells them b-a-a-d men’twasn’t right! An’ there they sits, like they was throwed an’ hog-tied, while he turns ’round his back to ’em an’ walks out like they ain’t a thing on earth to be afraid of. Lord! He can have me!”
He drained his glass and departed, leaving the Happy Family to its own devices.
Gard, meantime, had walked out beyond the town to the open desert. His spirit was full of trouble, hot with indignation at what he had seen, oppressed with a sense of the complexity of the life into which he was so suddenly plunged. It was hard to realize that the still, bright stars above him were shining, as well, upon the clean peace that dwelt in the glade. His thoughts turned thither like homing birds, and he walked on across the cactus-dotted sands, until he could look toward the shadowy bulk of the far mountains, visible in the marvelous desert starlight. Somewhere in thatdirection, he knew, the glade lay, and gradually a feeling came to him of quiet, and of renewing strength. He was able to think calmly of the sudden complication in his plans, and to consider the best course to pursue.
He would see Morgan Anderson as soon as possible. In the meantime Mrs. Hallard would write to Westcott. He would probably be obliged to talk with the lawyer for her: the mere thought set his nerves tense; until this matter was settled his own affairs must wait. Of this there was no question in his mind as he directed his steps in a wide circuit back to the town.
He was nearing its outskirts when he felt a light touch upon his arm. One of his hands was seized in two small, clinging ones, and covered with soft, hot kisses. He turned quickly, freeing himself with a little shake, and looked into the upturned face of ’Chita, the dancer.
The bright stars lighted her face to a mystic, witching glow; her eyes gleamed upon him in soft summons as she leaned toward him, seeking again to possess herself of his hand.
He drew back, ever so little, and seeing this she stretched both arms out to him in a wide, pleading gesture, her smiling lips parted in mute supplement to the invitation of her gleaming eyes.
Still as a graven man he stood, regarding hersteadily, and she came no nearer. Instead, she shrank a little, her hands dropping to her sides, her dark eyes fastened upon his. Gard’s stern eyes softened and he came a step closer, brooding over the trembling girl without touching her.
“Child,” he said, “haven’t you any mother? Isn’t there anybody to take care of you?”
Only her heaving shoulders answered him.
“Don’t cry,” Gard said, his voice full of pity. “I—I don’t like to hear little girls cry.”
She shivered toward him again, and reaching quickly, her arm stole round his neck, the other hand seeking his face. “I love you,” she whispered. Her fingers pressed his lips, and he put her back, firmly.
“Don’t,” he said sharply. “You don’t understand. Why—you’re only a little girl. Where is your home, child? I am going to take you there.” She sprang back with a cry, and her anger flashed out upon him.
“Oh!” she stamped one foot upon the sand. “Do I not understand? Think you I do not? You miserable! You have never the heart of acaballero. You are buthombre, after all!”
She caught her breath.
“Gringo swine!” she hissed. “Hombre!It is not the heart of acaballero!”
“I haven’t got the heart to crush little girls,” heanswered, “if that’s what you mean. Tell me where you live. I’m going to take you home. You must not be out here alone.”
He spoke now with protecting concern. The girl’s mood had changed again, and she was sobbing passionately.
“Do you live in the town?” Gard persisted, and she shook her head. Half unconsciously she was walking beside him as he moved forward.
“Hush!” she suddenly cried, checking her sobs.
Across the desert came the sound of a man’s voice, calling angrily. ’Chita put out a hand, arresting Gard’s steps.
“It is my father,” she whispered. “He is blind; but he has ears of the coyote. If he hears you—if he knows—he will beat me!”
She was but a child, now, in her terror, and Gard reassured her.
“He’ll never know,” he said. “No one will ever know. You go back, now, like a good girl. And remember: you must never do a silly thing like this again. Will you promise me?”
She lifted a pale face toward his, in the starlight. Her eyes were luminous, now, with new, strange emotion.
“Señor,” she whispered, “itisthe heart of acaballero. Señor—you are good.”
“You will promise?” Gard persisted.
Again that summoning voice rang across the desert. The girl called in Spanish that she was coming.
“I promise,” she cried, with a sobbing catch of the breath. “Buenos noches, Señor.”
She caught Gard’s hand again, for an instant, resting her cheek against it, the fraction of a second.
“Buenos noches,” she whispered again, and sped away into the soft, starry gloom.