“Forty-niner” laughed and the laughter did him good; though he soon explained: “They say I’ll have to lie here for nobody knows how long, without moving, scarcely. That pesky old leg of mine did the job up thorough, while it was at it. Thought it might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, I s’pose. Well, it was the luckiest thing ever happened–you getting lost and me getting hurt. That’s the only way to look at it. But–Atlantic! How’m I ever going to stand it? Having other folks do for you and I, that’d give my right hand to help you–useless.”
“Easily, Ephraim. If it’s a good thing, as you say, why then it can’t be a bad one. Here’s your money. You must use it to pay for anything you want. Or give it all to Mr. Hale about the business. You know.”
“Money! I don’t want that. All I had they took away from me. Put it in the hospital safe till I’m ready to go out. But you can’t live in a city without hard cash in every pocket. Oh! dear! I don’t see what is to be done! One minute it all is clear and I think what I said about my accident being lucky for you; the next–I can’t stand it. What is to become of you, little captain?”
“I’m going to stay right here with you.”
“You are? You will?” demanded the patient, eagerly. “You wouldn’t be afraid? But, maybe, you wouldn’t be allowed. Hospitals are for sick folks and old fools that don’t know enough to sit a horse steady. They’re not for a happy little girl, who can make new friends for herself anywhere. No. I guess, maybe, that Mr. Hale’ll find you a place, or get you on the cars to go home again. Oh! child, I wish you were safe back at Sobrante this minute!”
“And our work not done? Foolish ‘boy!’ As if I’d leave you alone, either, when you’re ill and–and Aunt Sally so far away.”
Ephraim groaned and Jessica looked toward the reporter, who was talking earnestly with the nurse, just outside in the corridor. She heard him say:
“If it could be arranged it would be a solution of the whole difficulty. Her board would be assured, and at the first opportunity she shall be sent to her home. For the present––”
She felt it no shame to listen intently. She knew that they were discussing herself and what was to be done with her. On that subject she had already made up her own mind; so she slipped her hand from Ephraim’s and stepped to Mr. Sharp’s side.
“I want to say right here in this hospital. I will not make anybody a bit of trouble. I will mind everything I am told. I’ll not talk or laugh or anything I should not. I’ll help take care of Ephraim and there’s nobody who knows him here but me. He’s the best man there can be, and he’s old, though he doesn’t look it. Please let me stay. Anyway until all the money is spent. There’s enough for a while, I think. Please.”
In answer to the reporter’s look, rather than Jessica’s words, the nurse replied:
“Yes, we do often have friends of the patients here. If there happen to be rooms empty and so to spare. But a child–we never had a child-boarder before. I’ll consult the head nurse and let you know at once. Or, better why not go and see her for yourself?”
“I’d much prefer,” said Ninian, who had more faith in his own persuasive powers than in hers. “And I’ll take Jessica with me.”
The result was that the little girl was allowed to “remain for the present,” and was assigned a room very near Ephraim’s. Upon her good behavior, as viewed from a hospital standpoint, depended the continuance of her stay.
“She can have her clothes sent here, but only what are necessary,” added the lady, as she dismissed them.
“My clothes! Why–I don’t know where they are.”
“Whew! What do you mean? I–I never thought about clothes,” said Ninian Sharp.
“Nor I, before, since I came. I had only a change of underwear and another flannel frock. Ephraim was to buy me more if I needed, though mother thought I should not. But what I did have were in the saddlebags on Stiffleg’s back.”
“And he marched off to glory with them, the old soldier, eh? Well, that’s soon remedied. There are lots of stores in Los Angeles and lots of girls your size. I’ll get a nurse to fix you out, when she can, and now, back to Ephraim and good-by.”
CHAPTER XVII
THE FINDING OF ANTONIO
For Jessica Trent there followed weeks of a quieter life than she had lived even at isolated Sobrante. “The behavior,” which was to be a test of her stay, proved so pleasing to the hospital residents that some of them wondered how they had ever gotten along without her helpful, happy presence.
Very quickly she lost her first vague fear of the place and learned to hear in the once alarming ambulance gong the signal of relief to somebody. She modulated her voice to the prevailing quietude of the house and her footfalls were as light as the nurses themselves. To many a sufferer, coming there in dread and foreboding, the sight of a child familiar and happy about the great building brought a feeling of comfort and homelikeness which nothing else could have given. She was so apt and imitative that Ephraim often declared:
“All you need, Lady Jess, is a cap and apron to make you a regular professional. Take care of me better’n any of ’em, you do; and I’ll be a prime experience for you, that’s a fact. Another of the good things come out of my fool riding, I s’pose. You’ll be able to nurse the whole parcel of us, when you get back to Sobrante. Beat Aunt Sally all hollow, ’cause you trust a bit to nature and not all to–picra.”
“But you’re not ill, Ephraim Marsh. You’re just broken. So you don’t need medicine. All you need is patience. And your nourishments, regular.”
“I get them all right; but–patience! Atlantic!”
The old man sighed. It was weary work for him, the hardest he had ever done, to lie so motionless while he was so anxious to be active. He really suffered little and he had the best of care. Still, he sighed again, and, unfortunately, Jessica echoed the sigh. Then he looked at her keenly and spoke the thought which had been in his mind for a long time:
“Captain, you must go home. There’s twenty to need bossing there and only one poor old carcass here.”
Poor Lady Jess! She tried to answer brightly as was her habit, but that day homesickness was strong upon her, and at mention of Sobrante her courage failed. She forgot that she was a “nurse”; forgot the good “behavior,” forgot everything, indeed, but her mother’s face and Ned’s mischievous affection. She dropped to her knees and buried her face in the old man’s pillow while she sobbed aloud:
“Oh, ‘Forty-niner,’ shall we ever see that home again?”
Weak and unstrung, the patient moaned in sympathy, while tears fell from his own eyes; and it was upon this dismal tableau that Mr. Hale walked in, unannounced.
“Hurrah, here! What’s amiss? Been quarreling? Just when I’ve come to bring you good news, too.”
“Quarreling, indeed! Ephraim and I could never quarrel. Never. But–but–this isn’t Sobrante, and we’re–I guess we’re awful homesick.”
“That’s a disease can be cured, you know. One of you, at least, can go home. If you wish, Jessica, I will put you on a train and arrange for one of your ‘boys’ to meet you at the railway terminus. But––”
“Hello, everybody!” called a cheery voice, and there in the doorway was Ninian Sharp, smiling, nodding, and embracing all three with one inspiring look. “What’s that I overheard about ‘home’? Been telling state secrets, Hale? My plan beats yours, altogether. We’re all going ‘home’ to Sobrante, in a bunch, one of these fine days. The Lancet never fails!”
Jessica sprang to him and caught his hand to kiss it. He had not been to see them for some days and she had missed him sadly. Far more than Mr. Hale he made her feel that the mystery surrounding “that missing New York money,” as she called it, would certainly be explained. It was he who, by questions innumerable, had recalled to her and to Ephraim the names of persons with whom Mr. Trent had ever done business. Incidents which to her seemed trifling had been of moment in his judgment. With the slight clews they had given him, as the first link in the chain, he had gone on unraveling the knots which followed with infinite patience and perseverance. He kept Mrs. Trent informed of the welfare of her daughter, and, without neglecting his legitimate business, did the thousand and one things which only the busiest of persons can have time to do. For it’s always the indolent who are overcrowded.
“Oh! Mr. Sharp! Have you found it all out?”
“Not I. Hale, here, has found out some things, himself. But he’s a lawyer, which means, a–beg pardon–a snail. If newspapers were as slow as the law–h-m-m–we might all take a nap. Look here, Miss Sunshine, you’ve been crying.”
Jessica blushed as guiltily as if she had been accused of some crime.
“I know it. I’m sorry.”
“So am I. I know why. Because you’re shut up here like a dormouse when you’ve lived like a lark. On with your little red Tam and come with me. Our work is getting on famously, famously. If I could get hold of one person that I’ve hunted this and every other city near for I’d have the matter in a nut shell and the guilty man in–a prison. I’ve found–three or four more of those links I mentioned, Hale, and every man of them is another witness to the uprightness of one, Cassius Trent, late of Sobrante. I began this job for little Jess, but I confess I’m finishing it for the sake of a man I never saw. He was a trump, that fellow. One of the great-hearted, impracticable creatures that keep my faith in humanity. If we could only find that Antonio!”
“Yes. If! But when he rode away from Sobrante that day he seems to have ridden out of the world, so far as any trace he left behind. I’m getting discouraged, for without him all the rest falls to the ground.”
“Well, discouraged? We’ll just step out and find him, won’t we, Lady Jess?”
She had hastened to ask permission to go out with her friend and had come back radiant, now, at prospect even of so brief an outing. It was quite as the reporter had judged; the close confinement of the hospital, after the out-of-door life at Sobrante, was half the cause of Jessica’s depression, and she was ready now to fall in with the gay mood of Ninian Sharp and answered, promptly:
“Oh, yes. We’ll find ‘him,’ since you wish it. But I don’t happen to know which ‘him’ you want?”
“Why, our fine Senor Bernal. Who else?”
“Then let us go to the old Spanish quarter.”
“I’ve been, many times. Sent others also. No. He’s a wise chap and if he is in this town frequents no haunt where he’ll be looked for so surely. No matter. It’s a picturesque corner of the town and maybe a sight of some old adobes would do your homesick eyes good.”
“Or harm,” suggested Mr. Hale.
But they did not stop to hear his objections and were speedily on the car which would take them nearest to the district Jessica had heard of, both from Antonio at home and now from others here. A relic of the old California, whose history she loved to hear from the lips of Pedro, Fra Mateo, or even “Forty-niner” himself.
But once arrived there she was disappointed. They were old adobes, true enough, and the people who lived in them had the same dark, Spanish cast of face which she remembered of Antonio. Yet there the resemblance ended. This was the home of squalor, of poverty that was not self-respecting enough to be clean, and of an indolence which had brought about a wretched state of affairs.
“Oh! is this it? But it can’t be. Antonio’s ‘quarter’ was a splendid place. The old grandees lived there, keeping up a sort of court and all the customs of a hundred years ago. It was ‘a picture, a romance, a dream,’ he said. Of an evening he would describe it all to us at home till I felt as if it were the one spot in the world I most wished to see. But–this!”
“Turn not up your pretty nose, for ‘this,’ my dear little unenlightened maiden, is also a dream–a nightmare. Nevertheless, the very ground your lost hero boasted and embellished with his fancy. The more I hear of this versatile Antonio the greater becomes my longing to behold him. In any case, since we’re here, we must not go away without entering some of these shops. You shall buy a trinket or two and present one of them as a keepsake to this fine senor, when you find him. Oh! that I had your familiar knowledge of his features, this absent ‘grandee,’ that if by accident I met him I might know him on the instant. See. This ‘bazaar’ is somewhat tidier than its neighbors, as well as larger, and there are some really beautiful Navajo blankets in the window. Unfortunately the pocketbook of a reporter isn’t quite equal to more than a dozen of these, at fifty dollars apiece. Something more modest, Lady Jess, and I’ll oblige you!”
She looked up to protest and saw that he was teasing, and exclaimed, with an air of mock injury:
“Those or nothing! But when shall I learn to understand your jest from earnest?”
“When you produce me your Antonio!”
“Upon the instant, then,” she retorted, gayly.
Upon the instant, indeed, there were hurrying footsteps behind them, the sound of some one breathing rapidly and of angrily muttered sentences, that were a jumble of Spanish and English, and in a voice which made Jessica Trent start and turn aside, clutching her companion’s hand.
He turned, also, throwing his arm about her shoulders, lest the rush of the man approaching should force her from the narrow sidewalk. But she darted from him, straight into the path of this wild-looking person and seized him with both hands, while she cried out:
“It’s he! It is Antonio! I’ve found him–Antonio Bernal!”
“Whew! A case of the ‘unexpected,’ indeed! The merest jest and the absolute fact. Hi! I’d rather this than–than be struck by lightning, and it’s on about the same order of things, for it is he, as she claimed. He’s more staggered than I am,” considered this lively newspaper man. Then he thought it time to step forward, and remark:
“Please present me to your friend, Miss Trent,” and lifted his hat, courteously.
Antonio bowed, after his own exaggerated fashion, and with his hand upon his heart; but though his eyes rested keenly on Ninian’s face he kept tight hold of Jessica’s hand and his torrent of words did not cease for an instant. Now and then he lifted the little hand and kissed it, whereupon Lady Jess would snatch it away and coolly wipe it on her skirt, only to have it recaptured and caressed; till, seeing he would neither give over the hateful action nor stop talking, she folded her arms behind her and interrupted with:
“That’s enough, Senor Bernal. This isn’t Sobrante, but I’m your captain here, same as there. You come tell your story to Mr. Hale and this gentleman. See Ephraim Marsh, too. He’s here in hospital with a broken leg. I’m in Los Angeles, also, as you see; and likely to find the same man you say has cheated you. That’s what he’s telling, Mr. Sharp,” she exclaimed.
Antonio hesitated. He had frowned at her tone of command, but now, to the reporter’s amazement, seemed eager to obey it.
“As the senorita will. That gentleman, who came last to Sobrante, was one lawyer, no? So the senora said. Fool! fool! that I was that I did not then and at that moment so disclose the secrets of my heart as was moved, yes. Let the senorita and the handsome friend lead on. I follow. I, Antonio.”
Five minutes earlier, had Ninian Sharp been asked what he should do if he did find this strange person, he would have promptly answered:
“Put him under lock and key, where he can do no harm and be handy to get at.”
Now he found himself as certain that the fellow needed no restraint of the law, at present. That he was dreadfully unhappy and had become as humble as he had before been arrogant. What could so have altered him? And was it thus that the Lady Jess had all her “boys” in leading strings?
“I must look out for myself or I’ll fall under a like spell,” he laughed, as with the air of one who knows it all, though she had been over that way but once, Jessica explained to her late manager:
“This car will take us straight back to the hospital. We’ve not been away long and I think Mr. Hale will still be there. He’ll be glad to see you. Very glad. He and Mr. Sharp have been looking for you. I think you can tell them something they’re anxious to know. Ephraim is there, anyhow. He, poor fellow, can’t go away, even if he wishes–yet.”
Mr. Hale was still in “Forty-niner’s” room and recognized Antonio with such an outburst of surprise that Ephraim opened his eyes, for he had been dozing, and fixed them on the newcomer, inquiringly.
“What! You, you snake! you here?”
“But certainly, yes. I, I, Antonio, at your service. Hast the broken leer? This is bad. Old bones are slow to heal. You will not shoot again at dear Sobrante, you.”
“Won’t? Well, I rather guess it’ll take somebody stronger ’n you to stop it.”
Antonio shrugged his shoulders in a manner deemed offensive by the patient, who struggled to rise, but was prevented by Jessica’s quick movement.
“Ephraim! Antonio! Don’t quarrel, this very first minute. One of you is sick and the other half frantic with some trouble. Please, Antonio, go away now with Mr. Hale and Mr. Sharp. One must never make a noise in a hospital,” said this wise maiden of eleven.
“Ah! so? But it is the lawyer I want, yet. The lawyer who will make a villain return the great money I have given. Caramba! If I had him in my hands this minute!”
Jessica lifted a warning finger and the manager lowered his voice. He even made an attempt at soothing Ephraim, but chose an unfortunate argument.
“Take peace to yourself, ‘Forty-niner.’ All must be told some day. Adios.”
“Adios, you foreign serpent! Old? Old! he calls me–me–old! Why, I’m a babe in arms to Pedro, or Fra Mateo, or even fat Brigida, who washes for us ‘boys.’ Old! A man but just turned eighty! Snake, I’ll outlive you yet. I’ll get well, to spite you; and I’ll be on hand, when they let you out the lockup, to give you the neatest horsewhippin’ you ever see. Old! Get out!”
Fearful of further excitement, the gentlemen hurried Antonio away, yet kept a keen watch upon his movements for, at that word “lockup,” the man’s dark face had turned to an ashen hue.
As they left the hospital the every-busy ambulance rolled past them toward the accident ward. The others averted their eyes, but the Spaniard peered curiously within, and, instantly a shuddering groan burst from his lips. Inside that van lay the solution to all their difficulties; though Antonio alone had comprehended it.
CHAPTER XVIII
APPREHENDED
The pleasantest task which fell to Jessica’s hands, during her hospital life, was the distributing of flowers and fruits, almost daily sent by the charitable for the comfort of the patients.
The nurses received and apportioned these gifts; and, carrying her big, tray-like basket, Lady Jess visited each ward and room in turn, adding to the pretty offering some bright word of her own. For she now had the freedom of the house and knew the occupant of each white bed better, even, than his or her attendant nurse. The quiet manner which she had gained here, her ready help and loving sympathy, made her coming looked for eagerly; but the happiness she thus bestowed was more than returned upon her own heart. Could her “boys” have seen her they would have been proud, but not surprised, for to the appreciative words his own attendant gave his darling, Ephraim would instantly reply?
“’Course. What else could you expect? Didn’t she have the finest man in the world for her father? and isn’t her mother a lady? Isn’t she, herself, the sweetest, lovingest, most unselfish child that ever lived? But it’ll be meat to feed the ‘boys’ with, all these stories you’re telling me. They most worship her now, and after they listen to such talk a spell–h-m-m. The whole secret is just–love. That’s what our captain is made of; pure love. ’Twas a good thing for this old earth when she was born.”
“But you’ll spoil her among you, I fear.”
“Well, you needn’t. Little Jessica Trent can’t be spoiled. ’Cause them same ‘boys’ would be the first ones to take any nonsense out of her, at the first symptoms. She couldn’t stand ridicule. It would break her heart; but they’d give her ridicule and plenty of it if she put on silly airs. You needn’t be afraid for Lady Jess.”
On that very day, after Antonio had left the hospital with his friends, or captors, as the case might prove. Jessica went through the building with her tray of roses, and in the wing adjoining the accident ward saw a man lying in one of the hitherto empty rooms.
“A new patient. He must have been brought in to-day. I’ve never been to the new ones till I was told, but I hate to pass him by. I wonder if it would be wrong to ask him if he wished a flower! And how still he stays. Yet his eyes are very wide open and so round! He looks like somebody I’ve seen–why, little Luis Garcia! ’Tis Luis himself, grown old and thin. For Luis’ sake, then I’ll try.”
A nurse was sitting silent at the patient’s bedside and toward her the child turned an inquiring glance. The answer was a slight, affirmative nod. The attendant’s thought was that it would please Lady Jess to give the rose and could do the patient no harm to receive it. Indeed, nothing earthly could harm him any more.
So Jessica stepped softly in and paused beside the cot. Her face was full of pity and of a growing astonishment, for the nearer she beheld it the more startling was the sick man’s likeness to a childish face hundreds of miles away.
Her stare brought the patient’s own vacant gaze back to a consciousness of things about him. He saw a yellow-haired girl looking curiously upon him and extending toward him a half-blown rose. A fair and unexpected vision in that place of pain, and he asked, half querulously:
“Who are you? An angel come to upbraid me before my time?”
“I’m Jessica Trent, of Sobrante ranch, in Paraiso d’Oro valley.”
“W-h-a-t!”
The nurse bent forward, but he motioned her aside.
“Say that again.”
“I’m just little Jessica Trent. That’s all.”
“All! Trent–Trent. Ah!”
“And you? Are you Luis Garcia’s missing father?”
“Luis–Luis Garcia. Was it Luis, Ysandra called him?”
“Yes, yes. That was the name on the paper my father found pinned to the baby’s dress. The letter told that the baby’s father had gone away promising to come back, but had never come. The mother had heard of my dear father’s goodness to all who needed help, and she was on her way to him when her strength gave out. So she died there in the canyon, and she said the baby’s name was like the father’s. I remember it all, because to us the ‘Maria’ seems like a girl’s name, too. Luis Maria Manuel Alessandro Garcia.”
The man’s round eyes opened wider and wider. It seemed as if his glare pierced the child’s very heart, and she drew back frightened. The nurse motioned her to go, but at her first movement toward the door the patient extended his hands imploring:
“No. Not yet. My time is spent. Let me hear all–all. The child your father found–ah! me! Your father of all men! Did–did it live?”
“Of course it lived. He is a darling little fellow and he looks–he looks so like you that I knew you in a moment. He has the same wide brown eyes, the same black curls, his eyebrows slant so, like yours, he is your image. But he is the cutest little chap you ever saw. He is my own brother’s age and they have grown up together, like twins, I guess. It would break Ned’s heart to have you take him away from us. You won’t now, will you?”
A pitiful smile spread over the pain-racked features, and the man glanced significantly toward the nurse. She smiled encouragingly upon him, but he was not misled. After a moment of silence, during which Jessica anxiously watched his drawn face, he spoke.
“Go, child. Your mission is done. Send a lawyer, quick. Quick. The man I wronged–the savior of my son! A lawyer, quick. Bring the suit case–the case! Let none open it but the child. Quick. Quick!”
Higher authority even than her own convinced the nurse that obedience to his urgency was the only way now to allay the patient’s rising excitement. The accident which had crushed the lower part of his body, so that his life was but a question of hours, had left his head clear for the present; and here, indeed, seemed a case for more than surgical treatment.
Fortunately, the needed “lawyer” was close at hand, waiting with the reporter and the half-distraught Antonio whose shriek of recognition had been Luis Garcia’s welcome to the hospital. Unceasingly, the manager had declared that this was the man all three of them were seeking; had insisted upon returning to the ante-room of the hospital, and avowed that he would never leave the spot until the “villain” had been apprehended.
“He has misled and cheated me. I, Antonio! He has all my money. He has the savings of my life, yes. He has all that I did not yet pay, of the crops so good, to the Senora Trent. More, more. That money–which, ah, me! He told me, yes, a thousand million times, that I, and not that New York company, to me alone was the inheritance of Paraiso d’Oro. My money was to prove it, that inheritance, yes. To me was the power of attorney, was it not? of Cassius Trent, who was the so good man and the so poor fool at business.”
“Look out, there, neighbor! Speaking of fools and business, you don’t appear to have been so brilliant yourself,” corrected Ninian, promptly.
Antonio continued, heedless of the interruption:
“He was the great banker, Garcia, no? What then? Who would so safe keep the money from that far New York? With the master’s wish I gave it to that bank. And the letters–Caramba! So high, to one’s knees, to one’s waist I pile them, the letters! All wrote of his own hand. All say by-and-by, manana, he give me the perfect title and send back that which belongs, after all expenses, no? To them in New York.”
“A pretty scheme. You don’t seem to have profited by it greatly, as yet.”
“I, profit? But I am now the beggar, I, poor Antonio. This day I come from resting in the houses of my friends and I find–what do I find? The bank is not. The banker is not, yes. His house where he lived more plain than our adobes at Sobrante, that house is closed. His man tell me this: ‘He has gone away. One little, little trip, a journey. Across the sea. He will come back. Have patience, Antonio.’ But my money? my papers? my inheritance so all but proved? Tush. He told me not that. ‘When he comes back you can ask him, himself.’ So. Good. He has come back. Here. I see him, sure. I––”
A summons to Mr. Hale cut short this fierce harangue, which had been repeated till their ears were tired.
The banker had come back, indeed, poor creature. By the very train on which he was to depart with his plunder–all rendered into the solid cash which would tell no tales, as he fancied–by this swift-moving juggernaut he was overtaken and crushed down. A moment earlier he would have been in time. But in haste and by a misstep he had ended all his earthly journeyings.
When the lawyer was called the reporter followed his friend and Antonio followed him, and when these three approached the little room in which the dying man lay, the nurse would have sent them back; but Garcia himself pleaded: “Let them be. What matters it how many hear or see? The dress-suit case. Bring it, and bring the child.”
They obeyed and he bade them place the key in Jessica’s small hand.
“Open it, little one.”
But her fingers shook so that the nurse, in pity, pushed them from the lock and herself unfastened the heavily laden case. It contained no clothing, such as might have been looked for within; but rolls and packets neatly tied.
“Open them, child.”
“Oh! please! I do not want to; I am afraid!”
“Afraid, Jessica Trent? Do you not yet understand? That is money, money–of which your father stood accused before the world as having stolen. Afraid to prove your father what you know him–an honest man!” cried Ninian in anger.
She understood him then, and in frantic haste obeyed. Roll after roll, till Mr. Hale said:
“Enough. His strength is failing. This scene is too much for him.”
At that she pushed the gold away and, falling on her knees beside the bed, caught Luis Garcia’s hand and covered it with kisses.
“Oh! thank you, Luis’ father! God bless you, God take care of you!”
“Oh! the divine pity of childhood,” murmured Ninian, huskily. “She forgets that it was he who wronged her in the fact that he has now set her right.”
The sick man’s face brightened, nor did he withdraw his hand.
“You forgive me?”
“Yes, yes.”
“The little Luis. The son I never saw. What shall you tell him of his father?”
“That he was good to me, and that he suffered.”
“More. Tell the boy this: I never knew he lived. I should have known, I should have searched. I did not. Ask him, too, to forgive me. And because of me, turn him not away.”
The nurse motioned all the others to go out, and they went, Ninian Sharp himself standing guard over the dress-suit case the attendant had relocked until it was once more safely deposited in the strong box of the hospital, where even Antonio’s greedy eyes could see it no longer.
But Jessica knelt on, awed and silent, yet now quite unafraid. And Luis Garcia still clasped her hand and fixed his fading gaze upon her pitying face.
“The mother–Ysandra. Where lies she now? Little one, do you know that?”
“Do I not? In the consecrated ground of the old mission itself. With all the good dead priests sleeping about her. Rose vines cover her grave and my own mother tends them herself. Little Luis is made to water it, sometimes, though, for that is a good way to keep her memory green, my mother says. Near by is where my father rests. Would–would you wish to sleep there, too, beside them both, and where Luis could bring flowers to you as to her?”
“I may? You–are–willing? Would–your mother–so kind–little Luis––”
“My mother pities and helps all who suffer. You suffer, poor man, and I wish that she were here to tell you ‘yes’ herself.”
But he had closed his eyes and she could not know if he had heard her, though she was glad to see that the look of pain had almost left his features. She did not speak again but sat quite still until, at last, her hand grew numb and she turned toward the nurse, whispering:
“Can I move it? Will it disturb him? He seems to be asleep.”
The nurse bent over her patient, then gently answered:
“Yes, darling. Your task is over. Nothing will ever trouble him again. He is at peace–asleep.”
CHAPTER XIX
ANTONIO’S MESSAGE
Jessica went back to Ephraim’s room, to tell him this wonderful ending of their once almost hopeless search, and for long they discussed the story that was at once so strange, so moving, and yet so simple.
“Man proposes, God disposes,” quoted “Forty-niner,” with all the emphasis of an original philosophy. “If we’d set out to make up a fairy story we couldn’t have beat this. But I’m so glad, it seems like I could get right up and dance a jig, smashed leg and all.”
“Glad! Ephraim, I’m so glad, too, and the gladness is so deep, deep down that I don’t want to dance. I just want to cry. And that poor man is little Luis’ father. Oh! it is pitiful.”
“Hush, captain. Don’t you go to grieving over that scamp. A man don’t get good nor bad all in a minute. It was hard enough, I ’low, for a fellow to be snatched out of the world that sudden. Yet, if he could speak for himself, he’d say a thousand times better that than what the law would have given him. Let him be. His part is done. He’s passed in his checks and don’t you hear that Heaven won’t pay out on all the good ones. Now–what next?”
Both knew, yet both disliked to mention that which each felt. Till Ephraim swallowed something like a sob and remarked:
“The longer I lie here, like a log, the madder I get at myself and the weaker minded. I’m just about as ready to cry as a whipped baby. I know ’twas the best thing could have happened, my getting hurt, though why a plain, everyday break wouldn’t have answered the purpose just as well as this ‘compound fracture,’ the doctors make such a fuss over and takes so long to heal, I don’t see. Nor never shall. If it had been just ordinary bone-crackin’ I’d been lively as a hop-toad by now, and ready to start right home with you this minute. As it is––”
“Oh, Ephraim! I hate to leave you–but I must get quickly to my mother! Don’t you see I must? To smooth all those sad lines out of her dear face and make her happy again, as this news surely will. They’ll be good to you here, and you can come the first minute they’ll let you.”
“Why not telegraph her? The boys go every day to Marion for the letters you and all send, and the postmaster is the operator, too. Why not that, and wait just a day or two. Likely I’ll be cavortin’ round, supple as a lizard on a fence, by then.”
Jessica did not answer and Ephraim asked:
“How could you go, anyway, without me or some protector? Though I made a bad job of it once I wouldn’t the second time.”
“I don’t know how, dear old fellow, and I do know how bitter disappointed you are that you can’t be there to see my mother’s face and get her thanks right away. But––”
Fortunately for both of these perplexed people, Ninian Sharp came along the passage just then, and one glimpse of his bright, helpful face cleared away Jessica’s anxieties.
“You’ll know what’s best and how to do it, won’t you, dear Mr. Sharp?”
“Certainly. That’s my business. Straightening out the tangled affairs of the silly rest of the world! Fetch on your trouble!”
He was in the gayest of moods, elated over the successful termination of his tedious labors, though in his heart not unmindful of the tragedy which had brought his share in them to an end. What was left, the law’s dealings with Antonio and the division and disposition of the recovered funds, belonged to Mr. Hale, and he very thankfully resigned these matters to that gentleman’s capable hand.
“I want to go home. And I don’t want to leave Ephraim.”
“I want to go with you. And I’m going to leave Ephraim–because he’d have to stay awhile, whether or not. He will be an important witness for the prosecution, providing that New York Company bothers any further after having recovered all that belongs to them, with some that doesn’t. I’ve a ‘loose foot,’ as I’ve heard that your ‘Aunt Sally’ also has betimes, and I mean to shake it out Sobrante way. If you’d like to travel in my company I can’t prevent it, as I see!”
“Oh! you darling man! You mean–I know it, for it’s just like all the rest of your great kindness–that you’re going wholly on purpose to take me home!”
“Beg pardon, but indeed, I’m not. At this present moment I have no stronger desire than to see that wonderful ranch of yours and those ‘boys’ who’ve spoiled you so. Why, I couldn’t stay away, after putting my finger so deeply into your family pie. I propose to start on the nine o’clock train to-morrow morning. Think you can be ready by then?”
“I’m ready this minute! No, I mean, as soon as I bid everybody good-by, and–and––”
“Do a little shopping, eh? That’s what most young ladies delay for, I believe.”
“But I’m neither a young lady nor have I any shopping to do. I couldn’t have because I haven’t any money, you see, even if I knew how to shop.”
“Why?” demanded “Forty-niner,” impatiently. “No money? I don’t believe all ours is gone yet.”
“Why, I forgot that. I really did. And I would love, if Mr. Sharp thinks it would be all right to use it when there is all this hospital board for both of us to pay, to take a tiny bit of a present to–to––”
“Everybody you ever knew, I’ll be bound!” cried Ninian.
“I–believe I would. But of course I can’t. So I’d best treat all alike and take nothing but our glorious goods news.”
“I’m going to take that myself, part of the way. At the finish I’ll let you carry the heavy burden and deliver it yourself into your mother’s hands. Now, come sit down a minute. Ephraim, put on your own thinking cap, and if she forgets anybody you let me know. We are going to take something to everybody, just as you’d like. Now, begin. The mother–but she’s settled, already. For her I’ve made a finished picture from a sketch I have, of a little yellow-haired girl asleep upon a piebald burro’s shoulder. Ned? A train of cars. Luis, ditto. Samson–what for Samson?”
“Would it cost too much to take them each, all the ‘boys’ the same thing, and that would be a bright red necktie?”
“Cost not a bit too much and be a deal easier than thinking of separate things for so many. Next? Aunt Sally?”
“Oh! she’s no trouble. A few bits of new calico ‘print’ for her patchwork would make her very happy.”
They forgot nobody, not even Ferd whom Jessica so disliked; and at the end of the list she rather timidly suggested: “Antonio.”
To that, however, both her friends cried a vehement “No!” Not a cent of their money should ever go to please such a man as the Senor Bernal.
“But, that reminds me. This Antonio himself wishes to have an interview with you before you leave Los Angeles. I want you, though, to feel at liberty to refuse this request if you so desire. He deserves no kindness at your hands.”
“No. Don’t you go near him, captain. He’s a snake and snakes are unpleasant critters even after their fangs are drawn. Leave Antonio to me. When I get well I’ll have a little score to settle with him on my own behalf,” urged Ephraim.
“Why doesn’t he come to me, himself? Instead of sending for me to him. Then I shouldn’t have to trouble you to take me.”
Mr. Sharp looked at Ephraim and smiled, significantly.
“I suppose because he cannot. Else so polished a gentleman would surely do so.”
“Why cannot he? Is he ill, too?”
“Rather ill in his mind, but not in body. Simply, he isn’t allowed.”
“Won’t the hospital folks have him?”
“Not at present.”
“I believe you are teasing me. Where is Antonio?”
“At police headquarters.”
“Oh! with Matron Wood?”
“Not with that good woman, I fear.”
“Mr. Sharp, please, don’t tease me any more. What do you mean?”
“Antonio is under restraint of the law. He is a prisoner, for the present. Detained until Mr. Hale can consult with his New York people and find out their disposition toward the fellow. He has done criminal things without, apparently, any benefit to himself. He says there is something on his mind that he must tell you. We’ll call to see him on our way to the shopping district and get him over and done with. I’ve no desire to continue his acquaintance, myself.”
Jessica’s face grew serious.
“Oh! poor Antonio!”
“Quit that!” commanded “Forty-niner,” with more sharpness than he often used toward his beloved lady.
“But, it is so terrible to be a–prisoner. That means that one can never go out into the fields or climb the mountains, or ride, or hunt, or anything one likes. He has done dreadful wrongs, and I never used to like him as well as I ought, but now I’m sorry for him. I can’t help it, Ephraim, even if it does displease you.”
“H-m-m. He brought his own misfortunes upon himself. But first he had brought worse ones on his truest friends and innocent persons whom he never saw.”
“Maybe he didn’t know any better. Maybe––”
“Child, you are incorrigible. You’d pity–anybody. Yet, perhaps, you are right in a measure. Antonio strikes me as more fool that knave.”
“Well, I’ll be glad to say good-by to him, anyway.”
It was a greatly altered Antonio they found. All his haughtiness was gone and his depression, his fear, was so abject that while Lady Jess pitied him even more than before, the reporter felt only contempt. It was he who cut short the manager’s wordy explanations and commanded:
“Now, if you’ve got anything special to say to Miss Trent, out with it and have done. We must be off.”
“Then leave her alone with me for five minutes, yes.”
“No. What you can say to her must be said in my presence.”
But Jessica petitioned for the favor, and Ninian stepped into an adjoining room, leaving the door ajar.
As soon as he was out of sight, Senor Bernal leaned forward, clasping his hands.
“It is the good turn I do. Well, then, it is the good turn you will answer, no.”
“Of course. I’d do you any ‘good turn’ which was right for me.”
“Then plead for me, my liberty. It is you, senorita, who have the so great, the strange power to move many hearts to your will. Si. You will plead, then, if I tell you–something–a little story–maybe?”
“I’m in no mood for stories, and you’re talking in riddles as you’ve always been fond of doing. Say what you mean at once, Antonio, for I’m going home to-morrow. Home! going home!”
“Ah! me! And? But yes. I will. I will force myself. I will ask it. That–that–title? Know you of that?”
“How should I know?”
“Ephraim. Was not Ephraim at the safe one midnight? Is not Ephraim a little strange–here?” touching his own forehead.
Jessica turned away, indignant.
“No, but you are. The queerest, crookedest man I ever saw. If you’ve anything to tell me, just be quick, I am going. As for Ephraim, I wish, unhappy man, that you had half the goodness and honesty in your whole body that dear old fellow has in his littlest finger. He couldn’t do a mean thing nor even think one, and if you sent for me to abuse him to me you might have spared yourself the trouble.”
“Well, then. It is known, is it not? That when I shook the dust of Sobrante rancho from my feet I took away with me all the papers that appertained to the so great business of the place? Why not? Was I not to go back the master, and for the settlement of all affairs which I had with the Dona Gabriella?”
“You will please never call my mother by her first name again, Antonio Bernal. She is an American gentlewoman, and her title is Mrs. Trent. Understand? She is not afraid of you, nor am I, though she was patient and, for her children’s sakes, would not quarrel nor resent your insolence. All that is changed. You can do us no further harm. My father’s name is freed from all the shadow that your wickedness cast over it, and as for titles to property–poor! None of the Trents, big or little, care anything for property since we have regained honor! Besides, Sobrante isn’t the only home in the world. They are everywhere, waiting for those who will take them. If we lose Sobrante, as I suppose we may, I–just I, Jessica Trent, a child, will make a home for my mother and my brother–somewhere. I am strong. I can work. I am not at all afraid.”
Despite his meanness and cupidity, Antonio was moved. The girl was radiant in her courage and enthusiasm, and her disdain of what he could make her suffer was infinite.
“Good, senorita. When you speak and look like that I can no longer keep silence, I. The papers! It is possible, no? That among them, in my so great haste at leaving Sobrante, that little, yes, it might–it might be among those other papers appertaining to the so great business. Si. If I point the way, if I tell the secret retiring place of me, I, Antonio Bernal, you will plead and set me free? It is a contract, a bargain–yes?”
Jessica pondered. The temptation was strong to say “yes” without delay; but she had now learned to distrust the late manager of her mother’s business, and answered, cautiously:
“I’ll do what I can, Antonio, but if my mother forbids me to ‘plead,’ I shall not disobey her. You did what you pleased, and my friends say you will have to suffer the consequences.”
“Ah! but it is the so old head on the so small shoulders. That wisdom was not of your own, senorita. But, I forgive the suspicion. Yes, I am magnanimous. I am generous, I, Senor Bernal, heir–rightful heir–to Sobrante rancho and all of Paraiso d’Oro. See! Behold! Did the Lady Jessica never hear of El Desierto, no?”
“The Deserted Ranch? Where Pedro says the spirits of dead people walk? Of course. Everybody has heard of that. Why?”
“Sometimes the ‘spirits’ keep hidden treasures safe. Yes. Si. Does the senorita know the trail thither, to that haunted place?”
“No. Nor wish to. Good-by, Antonio. I can wait for no more of your nonsense.”
“The paper. The pencil, which the Lady Jess holds in her hand. One moment, that to me, if the senorita pleases.”
“I brought these for my little shopping trip, which I’m to take with Mr. Sharp. I can’t give them to you, but I’ll lend, for a moment. Here they are. Be quick.”
Antonio seized the pencil and rapidly sketched upon the pad a few dots and lines, suggesting a zigzag road and stations upon it. At the starting point he wrote “Marion,” and at the end “Sobrante.” Midway, and well to the north, where a curving course indicated an arroyo he marked “El Desierto.”
Then he looked up, and Jessica reached forward to take back her possessions.
But with what he considered great chaft and cunning he thrust them behind him and smiled grimly:
“The promise, senorita. First the promise; ‘I will plead for the liberty of Senor Antonio Bernal, so help me––’”
Unperceived by the artful manager, Ninian Sharp had entered the room from a rear door. He was tired of waiting for the interview to end and had overheard most of it from the outer room. He now quietly stretched out his own hand and possessed himself of the rude map, and then as quietly and instantly withdrew with it, calling as he did so:
“Come on, Lady Jess. Time’s up. So is Antonio’s little game; yet, thanks, senor, for playing it so openly, Good-day. Adios. Farewell. Et cetera. Au revoir and all the rest. We’ll show you that title deed–if we find it!”
CHAPTER XX
A RAILWAY JOURNEY
The morning of departure had come and, trembling with both fear and eagerness, Jessica stood beside the reporter upon the station, waiting for the great train to move outward.
“Step aboard, Lady Jess. Homeward bound!”
“Oh! it looks so big and somehow dreadful. I can ride any kind of a horse, or an ostrich, and burros, of course, but––”
“But you don’t know yet how to ride a railway carriage. Then let me tell you you’ll find it so delightful you’ll not want to get out when the journey’s done.”
“Don’t you believe that, Mr. Sharp. The end of the journey, this part, at least, means, Marion, and that’s but a bit of a way from my mother. Is everything ready? Scruff? Is he here?”
“Come and see the sorrowful chap in his moving stable if you wish. Though it hasn’t moved as yet. He’ll probably rebel against the state of affairs, at first; then be just as unwilling to leave the car as he was to enter it. It’s a fine place for sleeping, and sleeping is Scruff’s chief aim in life.”
“He’s had to make up for lost time, for he’d never too much sleep at home, where Ned and Luis were. Oh! to think! To-morrow, to-morrow–this very next day that’s coming–I shall have my arms around those children’s precious necks and feel my mother’s kisses on my lips. I can’t wait. I can’t.”
“Humph! I shall begin to think you can wait and very contentedly if you don’t step into this car pretty soon.”
Jessica had never traveled by rail and the shock of the accident which had befallen Luis’ father made her more timid than she had ever been before. She had pleaded to make the return trip by saddle, as she had come, but Mr. Sharp would not consent.
“Time. Time. We must make time, Lady Jess. A newspaper man never uses a week where a day will do. If he did–well, no knowing if we should ever get out a single issue of The Lancet. Come on. If there were any danger do you think I would make you face it?”
Thus shamed and by the friend who had proved so true to her interests, the little girl shut her eyes, held out her hands and was lightly swung upon the rear platform of the luxurious coach in which they were to make the first half of their trip. Later, they would have to leave the main line for a branch road, terminating at Marion, their postal station. From Marion, the thirty miles of saddle work, with the added detour on account of El Desierto, would be all the reporter fancied he should care for.
“Some day I’ll come back to Sobrante, if I’m invited, and get that famous rider, Samson, to teach me the trick of ‘broncho busting’ or some other caper. But now, the engine can’t travel fast enough to suit my impatience.”
Nor Jessica, neither, after the first few moments of the journey. She forgot her fear in watching the swiftly moving landscape, and found it hard to believe that the landscape itself was still and she who was carried past it. This time there was none of Aunt Sally’s bountiful luncheon but what seemed to Lady Jess something far finer–a dining car. To be sure, during their first meal in this, served by colored waiters whose unfamiliar faces distracted her attention, and swayed by the motion of the train, the girl’s appetite was not worth mentioning; but by the time the supper hour was reached she was ready to enjoy almost everything which her companion ordered for her. It delighted him to observe how swiftly she comprehended and adapted herself to new things, and in his spirit of “teasing” he laid several harmless “traps” for her entanglement.
But she had now learned to distinguish his fun from his earnest and, after one keen glance into his face, would skillfully avoid the little slips of speech or manner that would have so diverted him.
“No, Mr. Sharp, I’m ever so ignorant of the way city people and traveling people do, but one thing Ephraim taught me, even on our quiet way out. That was: ‘Use your eyes, not your tongue, and watch what other folks do.’ So, if watching will prevent my doing awkward things, I’ll watch, surely enough.”
They were to sleep at Marion, and when they finally left the less comfortable car of the branch road at that town, it was very dark and no vehicles were in waiting to convey passengers to the one hotel of the place. Few persons stopped at Marion, except such as resided there or near, and such either walked from the station to their homes or had their own wagons meet them.
Ninian Sharp was disgusted. He was tired, his head ached, and he had anticipated no such “one horse” village as this. “Why, I thought it was your post town and all that.”
“So it is. And a very pretty place by daylight, save that they don’t irrigate.”
“Which means there isn’t a spear of grass within the town limits, doesn’t it?”
“Almost as bad. But now we’ll change places, if you please. I’ve been to Marion several times with my father and once since–since he went away, with Samson. There! They’re taking Scruff out of the car and you must ride him. I know the way. It’s only a mile, about, to the hotel. Of course, there’s a lodging-house nearer, right by this station, indeed, but the hotel’s much nicer. You’ll get a better bed there, and we’d best go on.”
“I’d rather sleep on the ground than walk a mile.”
“You shall do neither. Didn’t you hear me say we’ve changed places now? I’m so near home I am at home and I’m–the captain. Obey orders, sir, and mount Scruff’s back.”
He was too weary to protest and too ill. Subject to acute neuralgia, he was, like plenty of people, rather less courageous when he was in pain than at other times. Besides, now there was something of that decision in Jessica’s tone which sick people find restful, and he quietly threw one leg across Scruff’s back and let the girl do as she pleased.
This was to start forward over the unpaved, unlighted street at a swift unbroken run, which Scruff had some work to equal; but the speed brought them promptly to a wooden “tavern,” from one window of which there gleamed a solitary oil lamp.
“Horrors! Antonio described a ranch called Desolation, or something like that, and I reckon we’ve arrived,” lamented the reporter, jolted into fresh distress by the burro’s trot.
Jessica laughed.
“Wait. Be patient, dear man. Within five minutes you’ll be sleeping on a clean, sweet bed, and when you wake up in the morning it will be to a fine breakfast, a perfect day, and–Sobrante!”
Then she tapped on the window and called:
“Hello, there! Sobrante folks! Open the door, quick!”
A head was thrust out of another window, further along the narrow porch, and a sleepy voice asked:
“What’s that you say? Who wants––”
“I do! Jessica Trent, from Sobrante. But last, right from Los Angeles city. Please be quick!”
In less time than seemed possible, for such a drowsy person to reach it, the door was flung wide and there rushed out upon the porch a man and a woman, who both seized Jessica at one time and in their effort to embrace her succeeded in hugging each other. Whereupon the landlady flung her stalwart husband aside and caught the little girl in her arms, to carry her within.
“Oh! but this is the darling home again! And is it good news you’ve brought, my dear? Ah! by the shining of your bonny eyes one can see that plain. Light up, Aleck! Light up! How can we have such darkness when the bairn is safe back? And begging pardon, lassie, who is this yon?”
Jessica presented her friend and added, quickly:
“Only for him I could never have done that business, Janet, Aleck. And it is done. Everybody––”
“All the countryside knows it already, Jessica Trent. It’s ringing with it, as it rung with the story of a wave little lass who set out alone and unfriended, save for one old man, to clear her father’s memory of a stain some ne’er-do-well had dared to splash it with; and how the old man broke his leg and lost the bairn; and, losing, she fell into wiser hands and all, and all. Why, the ‘boys’ are here long before sun up; hours before mailtime, to get the latest news. Ah! it’s proud is all this land because of you, my wee bit bairnie!”
Again was Jessica caught and kissed till her breath was gone; but released she demanded, and with disappointment in her tone:
“So the news is no news, and does my mother, too, know all?”
“Hasn’t the sweet lady read the papers that the ‘boys’ have carried, loping to break their necks! Ah, lassie, ’twill be an ovation you’ll get when once they sight your bonny head shining on the sandy branch road!”
Jessica turned toward Ninian Sharp with the first feeling of anger she had ever had toward him.
“The papers? Your Lancet, I suppose. But you knew, you knew how much I wanted to surprise my mother.”
“Even so. But could you expect a man to keep back such fine ‘copy’ from his office? If you did, or if I could, somebody else, like The Gossip, would have got ahead of us. It was public property, my little Lady, and private interests, or fancies, always yield to the great public. We’ll discuss this further to-morrow. To-night I’d like to see the bed you promised.”
Jessica caught the hand of her weary friend and begged:
“Forgive me. I forgot. And I suppose that the very feeling which made you so kind and faithful to us, strangers, made you faithful to–to that horrid old Lancet, too. Now Janet, you are to give Mr. Sharp your very nicest bed and breakfast, for he is tired and suffering.”
“’Tis ready this instant. ’Tis always ready, lassie, though few come nowadays, to use it. This way, sir. After I show him I’ll come for you, Lady Jess.”
Jessica had not overpraised the neatness and comfort of this out-of-the-way hostelry, and Ninian Sharp slept dreamlessly till joyous voices outside his window roused him to the fact that morning and hunger had arrived together. Remembering, too, the long ride that lay before him and the necessity of finding a horse for it, he rose and hastily dressed. He had lost his neuralgic pains and his spirits were again such as Jessica had always seen him show. She, too, was up and waiting, and it looked as if her ovation had begun; for she was already the center of an admiring group yet held closest to the side of a big ranchman, grizzled and rugged, but beaming upon her and all the rest like an incarnate joy.
“Samson, Samson, here he is! Mr. Sharp, dear Mr. Sharp, this is my biggest ‘boy’!”
“Huh! Glad to see you, little one. ‘Looks like you’d be quite a man when you get growed up,’” quoted the joker, giving Samson’s hand a cordial grasp.
“Come on! Come on! You’re the lad for us! Well, sir, you do me proud. You do Sobrante proud. You do all the world proud, and that’s my sentiment to a t-i-o-n, sir! Breakfast’s ready.”
“Oh, Mr. Ninian, he’s brought–my mother has sent you the horse that nobody else has ridden since my father did. Nimrod, the swiftest, gentlest thoroughbred that anybody ever rode.”
“Sent him for me? Why, how could she know that we were coming?”
“Why shouldn’t she?” asked Samson. “Him and John Benton was over yesterday, but to-day it was my turn. One of us has been every day since the captain left Sobrante; and since the good news arrived there’s always been a led horse for you, sir. Would have been till the day of judgment, too, if you hadn’t struck us afore. Reckon you aren’t acquainted with our little settlement, sir.”
“Reckon I wasn’t, but I’m beginning to be. My! What a magnificent animal. And it solves the difficulty of finding a mount out to the ranch. I’m not much of a horseman, though. I don’t know but I’d better stick to Scruff and leave Nimrod to Lady Jess.”
Samson wheeled around and eyed the stranger, curiously. Then he advanced and held out his hand again.
“Shake, Sharp. You’re a man, even if you do live in a city, and the first one I ever met who hailed from such a place and didn’t think he knew it all. You’ll do. And you can ride. A baby could, that creatur’. If you can’t stick I’ll hold you on. Now, breakfast, I say.”
This was Jessica’s chance, and before they sat down to the bounteous meal which Janet had been hours in preparing she managed to draw Ninian aside and whisper a request, to which he nodded prompt assent. So nobody but they two knew what was meant when, as the three mounted and were about to ride away, she asked Samson:
“Do you know the trail to El Desierto?”
“Do I know a pisen serpent? What in the name of reason put such a forsaken hole into your head on this joyful occasion?”
“Never mind what, and never mind speech-making, dear old fellow. I have to call at El Desierto on my way to Sobrante and would like to know the shortest road.”
“Is she–has she got a little ‘touched’ down there in your City of Angels and Scamps, eh?”
“Samson, am I still the captain, or am I not?”
“Captain, I salute. Ride on! You, Aleck, hitch up a board and take that trunk of Miss Trent’s to her country seat, and be quick about it. Hurray! I’m so happy I’m looney! Here’s for El Desierto and no questions asked. Hurray!”