CHAPTER III
A MAN'S BOOTS
In the bar at the Casa Blanca, a long, wide room, low-ceilinged and with cool, sprinkled floor, a score of men had congregated. For the most part they were silent, content to look at the signs left by the recent shooting and to have what scraps of explanation were vouchsafed them. And these were meagre enough. The man who had done the shooting was sullen and self-contained. The dead man . . . it was the sheepman from Las Palmas . . . lay in an adjoining card-room, stark under the blanket which the large hands of Jim Galloway had drawn over him.
When the clatter of hoofs rang out in the street a couple of men went to the door. Coming back, "It is the sheriff," they said.
Roderick Norton, entering swiftly, his spurs dragging and jangling, swept the faces in the room with eyes which had in them none of that human glint of good-will which the girl at the arroyo had glimpsed in them. Again they were steely, angry, bespeaking both threat and suspicion.
"Who is it this time?" he demanded sharply.
"Bisbee, from Las Palmas," they told him.
"Who did it?" came the quick question. And then, before an answer could come, his voice ringing with the anger in it: "Antone or Kid Rickard? Which one?"
He had shifted his rifle so that it was caught up under his left arm. His right hand, frank and unhidden, rested upon the butt of the heavy-caliber revolver sagging from his belt. Standing just within the room, he had stepped to one side of the doorway so that the wall was at his back.
"It was the Kid," some one answered, and was continuing, "He says it was self-defense . . ." when Norton cut in bluntly:
"Was Galloway here when it happened?"
"Yes."
"Where's Galloway now?"
It was noteworthy that he asked for Jim Galloway rather than for Kid Rickard.
"In there," they told him, indicating a second card-room adjoining that in which the Las Palmas sheepman lay. Rod Norton, again glancing sharply across the faces confronting him, went to the closed door and set his hand to the knob. But Jim Galloway, having desired privacy just now, had locked the door. Norton struck it sharply, commanding:
"Open up, Galloway. It's Norton."
There came the low mutter of a voice hasty and with the quality of stern exhortation, the snap of the lock, and the door was jerked open. Norton's eyes, probing into every square foot of the chamber, took stock of Jim Galloway, and beyond him of Kid Rickard, slouching forward in a chair and rolling a cigarette.
"Hello, Norton," said Galloway tonelessly. "Glad you showed up. There's been trouble."
A heavy man above the waist-line, thick-shouldered, with large head and bull throat, his muscular torso tapered down to clean-lined hips, his legs of no greater girth than those of the lean-bodied man confronting him, his feet small in glove-fitting boots. His eyes, prominent and full and a clear brown, were a shade too innocent. Chin, jaw, and mouth, the latter full-lipped, were those of strength, smashing power, and a natural cruelty. He was the one man to be found in San Juan who was dressed as the rather fastidiously inclined business men dress in the cities.
"Another man down, Galloway," said Norton with an ominous sternness. "And in your place. . . How long do you think that you can keep out from under?"
His meaning was plain enough; the men behind him in the barroom listened in attitudes which, varying in other matters, were alike in their tenseness. Galloway, however, staring stonily with eyes not unlike polished agate, so cold and steady were they, gave no sign of taking offense.
"You and I never were friends, Rod Norton," he said, unmoved. "Still that's no reason you should jump me for trouble. Answering your question, I expect to keep out from under just as long as two things remain as they are: first, as long as I play the game square and in the open, next, as long as an overgrown boy holds down the job of sheriff in San Juan."
In Norton's eyes was blazing hatred, in Galloway's mere steady, unwinking boldness.
"You saw the killing?" the sheriff asked curtly.
"Yes," said Galloway.
"The Kid there did it?"
For the first time the man slouching forward in the chair lifted his head. Had a stranger looked in at that moment, curious to see him who had just committed homicide . . . or murder . . . he must have experienced a positive shock. Sullen-eyed, sullen-lipped, the man-killer could not yet have seen the last of his teens. A thin wisp of straw-colored hair across a low, atavistic forehead, unhealthy, yellowish skin, with pale, lack-lustre, faded blue eyes, he looked evil and vicious and cruel. One looking from him to Jim Galloway would have suspected that one could be as inhuman as the other, but with the difference that that which was but means to an end with Galloway would be end in itself to Kid Rickard. Something of the primal savage shone in the pale fires of his eyes.
"Yes," retorted the Kid, his surly voice little better than a snarl. "I got him and be damned to him!"
"Bad luck cursing a dead man, Rickard," said Norton coldly. "What did you kill him for?"
Kid Rickard's tongue ran back and forth between his colorless lips before he replied.
"He tried to get me first," he said defiantly.
"Who saw the shooting?"
"Jim Galloway. And Antone."
Rod Norton grunted his disgust with the situation.
"Give me your gun," he commanded tersely.
The Kid frowned. Galloway cleared his throat. Rickard's eyes went to him swiftly. Then he got to his feet, jerked a thirty-eight-caliber revolver from the hip pocket of his overalls and held it out, surrendering it reluctantly. Norton "broke" it, ejecting the cartridges into his palm. Not an empty shell among them; the Kid had slipped in a fresh shell for every exploded one.
"How many times did you shoot?"
"I don't know. Two or three, I guess. . . . Damn it, do you imagine a man counts 'em?"
"What were you and Galloway doing alone in here with the door locked?"
Galloway cut in sharply:
"I didn't want any more trouble; I was afraid somebody . . ."
"Shut up, will you?" cried the sheriff fiercely. "I'll give you all the chance you want to talk pretty soon. Answer me, Rickard."
"I told him to lock me up somewhere until you or Tom Cutter come," said the Kid slowly. "I was afraid somebody might jump me for what I done. I didn't want no more trouble."
Norton turned briefly to the crowded room behind him.
"Anybody know where Cutter is?" he asked.
It appeared that every one knew. Tom Cutter, Rod Norton's deputy, had gone in the early morning to Mesa Verde, and would probably return in the cool of the evening. Frowning, Norton made the best of the situation, and to gain his purpose called four men out of the crowd.
"I want you boys to do me a favor," he said.
"Antone, come here."
The short, squat half-breed standing behind the bar lifted his heavy black brows, demanding:
"Y porqué? What am I to do?"
"As you are told," Norton snapped at him. "Benny, you and Dick walk down the street with Antone; you other boys walk down the other way with Rickard. If they haven't had all the chance to talk together already that they want, don't give them any more opportunity. Step up, Rickard."
The Kid sulked, but under the look the sheriff turned on him came forward and went out, his whole attitude remaining one of defiance. Antone, his swart face as expressionless as a piece of mahogany, hesitated, glanced at Galloway, shrugged, and did as Rickard had done, going out between his two guards. The men remaining in the barroom were watching their sheriff expectantly. He swung about upon Galloway.
"Now," he said quickly, "who fired the first shot. Galloway?"
Galloway smiled, went to his bar, poured himself a glass of whiskey, and standing there, the glass twisting slowly in his fingers, stared back innocently at his interrogator.
"Trying the case already, Judge Norton?" he inquired equably.
"Will you answer?" Norton said coolly.
"Sure." Galloway kept his look steady upon the sheriff's, and into the innocence of his eyes there came a veiled insolence. "Bisbee shot first."
"Where was he standing?"
Galloway pointed.
"Right there." The spot indicated was about three or four feet from where Norton stood, near the second card-room door.
"Where was the Kid?"
"Over there." Again Galloway pointed. "Clean across the room, where the chair is tumbled over against the table."
"How many times did Bisbee shoot?"
Galloway seemed to be trying to remember. He drank his whiskey slowly, reached over the bar for a cigar, and answered:
"Twice or three times."
"How many times did Rickard shoot?"
"I'm not sure. I'd say about the same; two or three times."
"Where was Antone standing?"
"Behind the bar; down at the far end, nearest the door."
"Where were you?"
"Leaning against the bar, talking to Antone."
"What were you talking about?"
This question came quicker, sharper than the others, as though calculated to startle Galloway into a quick answer. But the proprietor of the Casa Blanca was lighting his cigar and took his time. When he looked up, his eyes told Norton that he had understood any danger which might lie under a question so simple in the seeming. His eyes were smiling contemptuously, but there was a faint flush in his cheeks.
"I don't remember," he replied at last. "Some trifle. The shooting, coming suddenly that way . . .
"What started the ruction?"
"Bisbee had been drinking a little. He seemed to be in the devil's own temper. He had asked the Kid to have a drink with him, and Rickard refused. He had his drink alone and then invited the Kid again. Rickard told him to go to hell. Bisbee started to walk across the room as though he was going to the card-room. Then he grabbed his gun and whirled and started shooting."
"Missing every time, of course?"
Galloway nodded.
"You'll remember I said he was carrying enough of a load to make his aim bad."
Norton asked half a dozen further questions and then said abruptly:
"That's all. As you go out will you tell the boys to send Antone in?"
Again a hint of color crept slowly, dully, into Galloway's cheeks.
"You're going pretty far, Rod Norton," he said tonelessly.
"You're damned right I am!" cried Norton ringingly. "And I am going a lot further, Jim Galloway, before I get through, and you can bet all of your blue chips on it. I want Antone in here and I want you outside! Do I get what I want or not?"
Galloway stood motionless, his cigar clamped tight in his big square teeth. Then he shrugged and went to the door.
"If I am standing a good deal off of you," he muttered, hanging on his heel just before he passed out, "it's because I am as strong as any man in the county to see the law brought into San Juan. And"--for the first time yielding outwardly to a display of the emotion riding him, he spat out venomously and tauntingly--"and we'd have had the law here long ago had we had a couple of men in the boots of the Nortons, father and son!"
Rod Norton's face went a flaming red with anger, his hand grew white upon the butt of the gun at his side.
"Some day, Jim Galloway," he said steadily, "I'll get you just as sure as you got Billy Norton!"
Galloway laughed and went out.
To Antone, Norton put the identical questions he had asked of Galloway, receiving virtually the same replies. Seeking the one opportunity suggesting itself into tricking the bartender, he asked at the end:
"Just before the shooting, when you and Galloway were talking and he told you that Bisbee was looking for trouble, why weren't you ready to grab him when he went for his gun?"
Antone was giving his replies as guardedly as Galloway had done. He took his time now.
"Because," he began finally, "I do not belief when Señor Galloway speak that . . ."
His eyes had been roving from Norton's, going here and there about the room. Suddenly a startled look came into them and he snapped his mouth shut.
"Go on," prompted the sheriff.
"I don't remember," grunted Antone. "I forget what Señor Galloway say, what I say. Bisbee say: 'Have a drink.' The Kid say: 'Go to hell.' Bisbee shoot, one, two, three, like that. I forget what we talk about."
Norton turned slowly and looked whither Antone had been looking when he cut his own words off so sharply. The man upon whom his eyes rested longest was a creased-faced Mexican, Vidal Nuñez, who now stood, head down, making a cigarette.
"That's all, Antone," Norton said. "Send the Kid in."
The Kid came, still sullen but swaggering a little, his hat cocked jauntily to one side, the yellow wisp of hair in his faded eyes. And he in turn questioned, gave such answers as the two had given before him.
Now for the first time the sheriff, stepping across the room, looked for such evidence as flying lead might have left for him. In the wall just behind the spot where Bisbee had stood were two bullet holes. Going to the far end of the room where the chair leaned against the table, he found that a pane of glass in the window opening upon the street had been broken. There were no bullet marks upon wall or woodwork.
"Bisbee shot two or three times, did he?" he cried, wheeling on the Kid. "And missed every time? And all the bullets went through the one hole in the window, I suppose?"
The Kid shrugged insolently.
"I didn't watch 'em," he returned briefly.
Galloway and Antone were allowed to come again into the room, and of Galloway, quite as though no hot word had passed between them, Norton asked quietly:
"Bisbee had a lot of money on him. What happened to it?"
"In there." Galloway nodded toward the card-room whose door had remained closed. "In his pocket."
A few of the morbid followed as the sheriff went into the little room. Already most of the men had seen and had no further curiosity. Norton drew the blanket away, noted the wounds, three of them, two at the base of the throat and one just above the left eye. Then, going through the sheepman's pockets, he brought out a handful of coins. A few gold, most of them silver dollars and half-dollars, in all a little over fifty dollars.
The dead man lay across two tables drawn together, his booted feet sticking out stolidly beyond the bed still too short to accommodate his length of body. Norton's eyes rested on the man's boots longer than upon the cold face. Then, stepping back to the door so that all in the barroom might catch the significance of his words, he said sharply:
"How many men of you know where Bisbee always carried his money when he was on his way to bank?"
"In his boots!" answered two voices together.
"Come this way, boys. Take a look at his boots, will you?"
And as they crowded about the table, sensing some new development, Galloway pushing well to the fore, Norton's vibrant voice rang out:
"It was a clean job getting him, and a clean job telling the story of how it happened. But there wasn't overmuch time and in the rush. . . . Tell me, Jim Galloway, how does it happen that the right boot is on the left foot?"
CHAPTER IV
AT THE BANKER'S HOME
Rod Norton made no arrest. Leaving the card-room abruptly he signalled to Julius Struve, the hotel keeper, to follow him. In the morning Struve, in his official capacity as coroner, would demand a verdict. Having long been in strong sympathy with the sheriff he was to be looked to now for a frank prediction of the inquest's result. And, very thoughtful about it all, he gravely agreed with Norton; the coroner's jury, taking the evidence offered by Jim Galloway, Kid Rickard, and Antone, would bring in a verdict of justifiable homicide.
"Later on we'll get 'em, Roddy . . . mebbe," he said finally. "But not now. If you pulled the Kid it would just be running up the county expense all for nothing."
The sheriff left him in silence and leading his horse went the few steps to the hotel. Ignacio Chavez appearing opportunely Norton gave his animal into the breed's custody; Ignacio, accustomed to doing odd jobs for el Señor Roderico Nortone, and to the occasional half dollars resulting from such transactions, led the big gray away while the sheriff entered the hotel. It had been a day of hard riding and scanty meals, and he was hungry.
Bright and new and conspicuous, a gold-lettered sign at Struve's doorway caught his eye and caused him to remember the wounded left hand which had been paining him considerably through the long hot day. The sign bore the name of Dr. V. D. Page with the words Physician and Surgeon; in blue pencilled letters upon the practitioner's card, affixed to the brass chain suspending the sign, were the further words: "Room 5, Struve's Hotel."
The sheriff went to Room 5. It was at the front of the building, upon the ground floor. The door opened almost immediately when he rapped. Confronting him was the girl he had encountered at the arroyo. He lifted his hat, looked beyond her, and said simply:
"I was looking for Dr. Page. Is he in now?"
"Yes," she told him gravely. "Come in, please."
He stepped across the threshold, his eyes trained to quick observation of details taking in at a glance all there was to be seen. The room showed all signs of a fresh unpacking, the one table and two chairs piled high with odds and ends. For the most part the miscellany consisted of big, fat books, bundles of towels and fresh white napkins, rubber-stoppered bottles of varicolored contents, and black leather cases, no doubt containing a surgeon's instruments. Through an open door giving entrance to the adjoining room he noted further signs of unpacking with a marked difference in the character of the litter; the girl stepped quickly to this door, shutting out the vision of a helter-skelter of feminine apparel.
"It is your hand?" she asked, as in most thoroughly matter of fact fashion she put out her own for it. "Let me see it."
But for a moment he bestowed upon her merely a slow look of question.
"You don't mean that you are Dr. Page?" he asked. Then, believing that he understood: "You're the nurse?"
"Is a physician's life in San Juan likely to be so filled with his duties that he must bring a nurse with him?" she countered. "Yes, I am Dr. Page."
He noted that she was as defiant about the matter as the Kid had been about the killing of Bisbee of Las Palmas; plainly she had foreseen that the type of man-animal inhabiting this out-of-the-way corner of the world would be likely to wonder at her hardihood and, perhaps, to jeer.
"I came to-day," she explained in the same matter-of-fact way. "Consequently you will pardon the looks of things. But I am one of the kind that believes in hanging out a shingle first, getting details arranged next. Now may I see the hand?"
"It's hardly anything." He lifted it now for her inspection. "Just a slight cut, you know. But it's showing signs of infection. A little antiseptic . . ."
She took his fingers into hers and bent over the wound. He noted two things, now: what strong hands she had, shapely, with sensitive fingers ignorant of rings; how richly alive and warmly colored her hair was, full of little waves and curls.
She had nothing to say while she treated him. Over an alcohol lamp she heated some water; in a bowl, brought from the adjoining room, she cleansed the hand thoroughly. Then the application of the final antiseptic, a bit of absorbent cotton, a winding of surgeon's tape about a bit of gauze, and the thing was done. Only at the end did she say:
"It's a peculiar cut . . . not a knife cut, is it?"
"No," he answered humorously. "Did it on a piece of lead. . . . How much is it, Doctor?"
"Two dollars," she told him, busied with the drying of her own hands. "Better let me look at it again in the morning if it pains you."
He laid two silver dollars in her palm, hesitated a moment and then went out.
"She's got the nerve," was his thoughtful estimate as he went to his corner table in the dining-room. "But I don't believe she is going to last long in San Juan. . . . Funny she should come to a place like this, anyhow. . . . Wonder what the V stands for?"
At any rate the hand had been skilfully treated and bandaged; he nodded at it approvingly. Then, with his meal set before him, he divided his thoughts pretty evenly between the girl and the recent shooting at the Casa Blanca. The sense was strong upon him as it had been many a time that before very long either Rod Norton or Jim Galloway would lie as the sheepman from Las Palmas was lying, while the other might watch his sunrises and sunsets with a strange, new emotion of security.
The sheriff, who had not eaten for twelve hours, was beginning his meal when the newest stranger in San Juan came into the dining-room. She had arranged her lustrous copper-brown hair becomingly, and looked fresh and cool and pretty. Norton approved of her with his keen eyes while he watched her go to her place at a table across the room. As she sat down, giving no sign of having noted him, her back toward him, he continued to observe and to admire her slender, perfect figure and the strong, sensitive hands busied with her napkin.
A slovenly, half-grown Indian girl, Anita, the cook's daughter, came in from the kitchen, directed the slumbrous eyes of her race upon the sheriff who fitted well in a woman's eye, and went to serve the single other late diner. Norton caught a fleeting view of V. D. Page's throat and cheek as she turned slightly in speaking with Anita. As the serving-maid withdrew Norton rose to his feet and crossed the room to the far table.
"May I bring my things over and eat with you?" he asked when he stood looking down on her and she had lifted her eyes curiously to his. "If you've come to stay you can't go on forever not knowing anybody here, you know. Since you've got to know us sooner or later why not begin to get acquainted? Here and now and with me? I'm Roderick Norton."
One must have had far less discernment than she not to have felt instinctively that the great bulk of human conventions would shrivel and vanish before they could come this far across the desert lands. Besides, the man standing over her looked straight and honestly into her eyes and for a little she glimpsed again the youth of him veiled by the sternness his life had set into his soul and upon his face.
"It is kind of you to have pity upon me in my isolation," she answered lightly and without hesitation. "And, to tell the truth, I never was so terribly lonesome in all my life."
He made two trips back and forth to bring his plate and coffee cup and auxiliary sauce dishes and plated silver, while she wondered idly that he did not instruct the Indian girl to perform the service for him. Even then she half formulated the thought that it was much more natural for this man to do for himself what he wanted than for him to sit down to be waited upon. A small matter, no doubt; but then mountains are made up of small particles and character of just such small characteristics as this.
During the half hour which they spent together over their meal they got to know each other rather better than chance acquaintances are likely to do in so brief a time. For from the moment of Norton's coming to her table the bars were down between them. She was plainly eager to supplement Ignacio Chavez's information of "la gente" of San Juan and its surrounding country, evincing a curiosity which he readily understood to be based upon the necessities of her profession. In return for all that he told her she sketchily spoke of her own plans, very vague plans, to be sure, she admitted with one of her quick, gay smiles. She had come prepared to accept what she found, she was playing no game of hide-and-seek with her destiny, but had wandered thus far from the former limits of her existence to meet life half way, hoping to do good for others, a little imperiously determined to achieve her own measure of success and happiness.
From the beginning each was ready, perhaps more than ready, to like the other. Her eyes, whether they smiled or grew suddenly grave, pleased him; always were they fearless. He sensed that beneath the external soft beauty of a very lovely young woman there was a spirit of hardihood in every sense worthy of the success which she had planned bare-handed to make for herself, and in the man's estimation no quality stood higher than a superb independence. On her part, there was first a definite surprise, then a glow of satisfaction that in this virile arm of the law there was nothing of the blusterer. She set him down as a quiet gentleman first, as a sheriff next. She enjoyed his low, good-humored laugh and laughed back with him, even while she experienced again the unaccustomed thrill at the sheer physical bigness of him, the essentially masculine strength of a hardy son of the southwestern outdoors. Not once had he referred to the affair at the Casa Blanca or to his part in it; not a question did she ask him concerning it. He told himself that so utterly human, so perfectly feminine a being as she must be burning with curiosity; she marvelled that he could think, speak of anything else. When together they rose from the table they were alike prepared, should circumstance so direct, to be friends.
She was going now to call upon the Engles. She had told him that she had a letter to Mrs. Engle from a common friend in Richmond.
"I don't want to appear to be riding too hard on your trail," he smiled at her. "But I was planning dropping in on the Engles myself this evening. They're friends of mine, you know."
She laughed, and as they left the hotel, propounded a riddle for him to answer: Should Mr. Norton introduce her to Mrs. Engle so that she might present her letter, or, after the letter was presented, should Mrs. Engle introduce her to Mr. Norton?
It did not suggest itself to her until they had passed from the street, through the cottonwoods and into the splendid living-room of the Engle home, that her escort was not dressed as she had imagined all civilized mankind dressed for a call. Walking through the primitive town his boots and soft shirt and travel-soiled hat had been in too perfect keeping with the environment for her to be more than pleasurably conscious of them.
At the Engles', however, his garb struck her for a moment of the first shock of contrast, as almost grotesquely out of place.
At the broad front door Norton had rapped. The desultory striking of a piano's keys ceased abruptly, a girl's voice crying eagerly: "It's Roddy!" hinted at the identity of the listless player, a door flung open flooded the broad entrance hall with light. And then the outer door framed banker Engle's daughter, a mere girl in her middle teens, fair-haired, fair-skinned, fluffy-skirted, her eyes bright with expectation, her two hands held out offering themselves in doubled greetings. But, having seen the unexpected guest at the sheriff's side, the bright-haired girl paused for a brief moment of uncertainty upon the threshold, her hands falling to her sides.
"Hello, Florrie," Norton was saying quietly. "I have brought a caller for your mother. Miss Engle, Miss Page."
"How do you do, Miss Page?" Florrie replied, regaining her poise and giving one of her hands to each of the callers, the abandon of her first appearance gone in a flash to be replaced by a vague hint of stiffness. "Mama will be so glad to see you. Do come in."
She turned and led the way down the wide, deep hall and into the living-room, a chamber which boldly defied one to remember that he was still upon the rim of the desert. In one swift glance the newcomer to San Juan was offered a picture in which the tall, carelessly clad form of the sheriff became incongruous; she wondered that he remained at his ease as he so obviously did. Yonder was a grand piano, a silver chased vase upon a wall bracket over it holding three long-stemmed, red roses; a heavy, massive-topped table strewn comfortably and invitingly with books and magazines; an exquisite rug and one painting upon the far wall, an original seascape suggestive of Waugh at his best; excellent leather-upholstered chairs luxuriously inviting, and at once homelike and rich. Just rising from one of these chairs drawn up to the table reading-lamp, a book still in his hand, was Mr. Engle, while Mrs. Engle, as fair as her daughter, just beginning to grow stout in lavendar, came forward smilingly.
"Back again, Roddy?" She gave him a plump hand, patted his lean brown fingers after her motherly fashion, and came to where the girl had stopped just within the door.
"Virginia Page, aren't you? As if any one in the world would have to tell me who you were! You are your mother all over, child; did you know it? Oh, kiss me, kiss me, my dear, for your mother's sake, and save your hand-shakes for strangers."
Virginia, taken utterly by surprise as Mrs. Engle's arms closed warmly about her, grew rosy with pleasure; the dreary loneliness of a long day was gone with a kiss and a hug.
"I didn't know . . . ." she began haltingly, only to be cut short by Mrs. Engle crying to her husband:
"It's Virginia Page, John. Wouldn't you have known her anywhere?"
John Engle, courteous, urbane, a pleasant-featured man with grave, kindly eyes and a rather large, firm-lipped mouth nodded to Norton and gave Virginia his hand cordially.
"I must be satisfied with a hand-shake, Miss Page," he said in a deep, pleasant voice, "but I refuse to be a mere stranger. We are immensely glad to have you with us. . . . Mother, can't you see we have most thoroughly mystified her; swooping down on her like this without giving her an inkling of how and why we expected her?"
Roderick Norton and Florrie Engle had drawn a little apart; Virginia, with her back to them during the greeting of Mrs. and Mr. Engle, had no way of knowing whether the withdrawal had been by mutually spontaneous desire or whether the initiative had been the sheriff's or Miss Engle's. Not that it mattered or concerned her in any slightest particular.
In her hand was the note of introduction she had brought from Mrs. Seth Morgan; evidently both its services and those of Roderick Norton might be dispensed with in the matter of her being presented.
"Of course," Mrs. Engle was saying. An arm about the girl's slim waist, she drew her to a big leather couch. "Marian never does things by halves, my dear; you know that, don't you? That's a letter she gave you for me? Well, she wrote me another, so I know all about you. And, if you are willing to accept the relationship with out-of-the-world folks, we're sort of cousins!"
Virginia Page flushed vividly. She had known all along that her mother had been a distant relative of Mrs. Engle, but she had had no desire, no thought of employing that very faint tie as an argument for being accepted by the banker's family. She did not care to come here like the proverbial poor relation.
"You are very kind," she said quietly, her lips smiling while her eyes were grave. "But I don't want you to feel that I have been building on the fact of kinship; I just wanted to be friends if you liked me, not because you felt it your duty. . . ."
Engle, who had come, dragging his chair after him, to join them, laughed amusedly.
"Answering your question, Mrs. Engle," he chuckled, "I'd certainly know her for Virginia Page! When we come to know her better maybe she will allow us to call her Cousin Virginia? In the meantime, to play safe, I suppose that to us she'd better be just Dr. Page?"
"John is as full of nonsense after banking hours," explained Mrs. Engle, still affectionately patting Virginia's hand, "as he is crammed with business from nine until four. Which makes life with him possible; it's like having two husbands, makes for variety and so saves me from flirting with other men. Now, tell us all about yourself."
Virginia, who had been a little stiff-muscled until now, leaned back among the cushions unconscious of a half sigh of content and of her relaxation. During the long day San Juan had sought to frighten, to repel her. Now it was making ample amends: first the companionable society of Rod Norton, then this simple, hearty welcome. She returned the pressure of Mrs. Engle's soft, warm hands in sheer gratitude.
After that they chatted lightly, Engle gradually withdrawing from the conversation and secretly watching the girl keenly, studying her play of expression, seeking, according to his habit, to make his guarded estimate of a new factor in his household. From Virginia's face his eyes went swiftly now and then to his daughter's, animated in her tête-à-tête with the sheriff. Once, when Virginia turned unexpectedly, she caught the hint of a troubled frown in his eyes.
Broad double doors in the west wall of the living-room gave entrance to the patio. The doors were open now to the slowly freshening night air, and from where she sat Virginia Page had a glimpse of a charming court, an orange-tree heavy with fruit and blossom, red and yellow roses, a sleeping fountain whose still water reflected star-shine and the lamp in its niche under a grape-vine arbor. When Norton and Florence Engle strolled out into the inviting patio Engle, breaking his silence, leaned forward and dominated the conversation.
Virginia had been doing the major part of the talking, answering questions about Mrs. Engle's girlhood home, telling something of herself. Now John Engle, reminding his wife that their guest must be consumed with curiosity about her new environment, sought to interest her in this and that, in and about San Juan.
"There was a killing this afternoon," he admitted quietly. "No doubt you know of it and have been shocked by it, and perhaps on account of it have a little misjudged San Juan. We are not all cutthroats here, by any manner of means; I think I might almost say that the rough element is in the minority. We are in a state of transition, like all other frontier settlements. The railroad, though it doesn't come closer than the little tank station where you took the stage this morning, has touched our lives out here. A railroad brings civilizing influences; but the first thing it does is to induct a surging tide of forces contending against law and order. Pioneers," and he smiled his slow, grave, tolerant smile, "are as often as not tumultuous-blooded and self-sufficient, and prone to kick over the established traces. We've got that class to deal with . . . and that boy, Rod Norton, with his job cut out for him, is getting results. He's the biggest man right now, not only in the country, but in this end of the state."
Continuing he told her something of the sheriff. Young Norton, having returned from college some three years before to live the only life possible to one of his blood, had become manager of his father's ranch in and beyond the San Juan mountains. At the time Billy Norton was the county sheriff and had his hands full. Rumor said that he had promised himself to "get" a certain man; Engle admitted that that man was Jim Galloway of the Casa Blanca. But either Galloway or a tool of Galloway's or some other man had "gotten" Billy Norton, shooting him down in his own cabin and from the back, putting a shotgun charge of buckshot into his brain.
It had occurred shortly after Roderick Norton's return, shortly before the expiration of Billy Norton's term of office. Rod Norton, putting another man in his place on the ranch, had buried his father and then had asked of the county his election to the place made empty by his father's death. Though he was young, men believed in him. The election returns gave him his place by a crushing majority.
"And he has done good work," concluded Engle thoughtfully. "Because of what he has done, because he does not make an arrest until he has his evidence and then drives hard to a certain conviction, he has come to be called Dead-sure Norton and to be respected everywhere, and feared more than a little. Until now it has become virtually a two-man fight. Rod Norton against Jim Galloway. . . ."
"John," interposed Mrs. Engle, "aren't you giving Virginia rather a sombre side of things?"
"Maybe I am," he agreed. "But this killing of the Las Palmas man in broad daylight has come pretty close to filling my mind. Who's going to be next?" His eyes went swiftly toward the patio, taking stock of the two figures there. Then he shrugged, went to the table for a cigar and returned smiling to inform Virginia of life on the desert and in the valleys beyond the mountains, of scattering attempts at reclamation and irrigation, of how one made towns of sun-dried mud, of where the adobe soil itself was found, drifted over with sand in the shade of the cottonwoods.
But Mrs. Engle's sigh, while her husband spoke of black mud and straw, testified that her thoughts still clung about those events and possibilities which she herself had asked him to avoid; her eyes wandered to the tall, rudely garbed figure dimly seen in the patio. Virginia, recalling Jim Galloway as she had seen him on the stage, heavy-bodied, narrow-hipped, masterful alike in carriage and the look of the prominent eyes, glanced with Mrs. Engle toward Rod Norton. He was laughing at something passing between him and Florence, and for the moment appeared utterly boyish. Were it not for the grim reminder of the forty-five-caliber revolver which the nature of his sworn duties did not allow of his laying aside even upon a night like this, it would have been easy to forget that he was all that which the one word sheriff connotes in a land like that about San Juan.
"Can't get away from it, can we?" Engle having caught the look in the two women's eyes, broke off abruptly in what he was saying, and now sat studying his cigar with frowning eyes. "Man against man, and the whole county knows it, one employing whatever criminal's tools slip into his hands, the other fighting fair and in the open. Man against man and in a death grapple just because they are the men they are, with one backed up by a hang-dog crowd like Kid Rickard and Antone, and the other playing virtually a lone hand. What's the end going to be?"
Virginia thought of Ignacio Chavez. He, had he been here, would have answered:
"In the end there will be the ringing of the bells for a man dead. You will see! Which one? Quien sabe! The bells will ring."
CHAPTER V
IN THE DARKNESS OF THE PATIO
Through the silence of the outer night, as though actually Ignacio Chavez were prophesying, came billowing the slow beating of the deep mourning bell. Mrs. Engle sighed; Engle frowned; Virginia sat rigid, at once disturbed and oppressed.
"How can you stand that terrible bell?" she cried softly. "I should think that it would drive you mad! How long does he ring it?"
"Once every hour until midnight," answered Engle, his face once more placid as he withdrew his look from the patio and transferred it to his cigar. And then, with a half smile: "There are many San Juans; there is, in all the wide world, but one San Juan of the Bells. You would not take our distinction from us? Now that you are to become of San Juan you must, like the rest of us, take a pride in San Juan's bells. Which you will do soon or late; perhaps just as soon as you come to know something of their separate and collective histories."
"Tell her, John," suggested Mrs. Engle, again obviously anxious to dispel the more lugubrious and tragic atmospheres of the evening with any chance talk which might offer itself.
"Let her wait until Ignacio can tell her," laughed Engle. "No one else can tell it so well, and certainly no one else has an equal pride or even an equal right in the matter."
But, though he refused to take up the colorful theme of the biographies of the Captain, the Dancer, Lolita, and the rest, John Engle began to speak lightly upon an associated topic, first asking the girl if she knew with what ceremony the old Western bells had been cast; when she shook her head and while the slow throbbing beat of the Captain still insisted through the night's silences, he explained that doubtless all six of Ignacio Chavez's bells had taken form under the calm gaze of high priests of old Spain. For legend had it that all six were from their beginnings destined for the new missions to be scattered broadcast throughout a new land, to ring out word of God to heathen ears. Bells meant for such high service were never cast without grave religious service and sacrifice. Through the darkness of long-dead centuries the girl's stimulated fancies followed the man's words; she visualized the great glowing caldrons in which the fusing metals grew red and an intolerable white; saw men and women draw near, proud blue-blooded grandees on one hand, and the lowly on the other, with one thought; saw the maidens and ladies from the courtyards of the King's palace as they removed golden bracelets and necklaces from white arms and throats, so that the red and yellow gold might go with their prayers into the molten metals, enriching them, while those whose poverty was great, but whose devotion was greater, offered what little silver ornaments they could. Carved silver vases, golden cups, minted coins and cherished ornaments, all were offered generously and devoutly until the blazing caldrons had mingled the Queen's girdle-clasps with a bauble from the beggar girl.
"And in the end," smiled Engle, "there are no bells with the sweet tone of old Mission bells, or with their soft eloquence."
While he was talking Ignacio Chavez had allowed the dangling rope to slip from his hands so that the Captain rested quiet in the starshine. Roderick and Florence were coming in through the wide patio door; Norton was just saying that Florrie had promised to play something for him when the front door knocker announced another visitor. Florence made a little disdainful face as though she guessed who it was; Engle went to the door.
Even Virginia Page in this land of strangers knew who the man was. For she had seen enough of him to-day, on the stage across the weary miles of desert, to remember him and to dislike him. He was the man whom Galloway and the stage-driver had called "Doc," the sole representative of the medical fraternity in San Juan until her coming. She disliked him first vaguely and with purely feminine instinct; secondly because of an air which he never laid aside of a serene consciousness of self-superiority. He had established himself in what he was pleased to consider a community of nobodies, his inferiors intellectually and culturally. He was of that type of man-animal that lends itself to fairly accurate cataloguing at the end of the first five minutes' acquaintance. The most striking of the physical attributes about his person as he entered were his little mustache and neatly trimmed beard and the diamond stick-pin in his tie. Remove these articles and it would have been difficult to distinguish him from countless thousands of other inefficient and opinionated individuals.
Virginia noted that both Mr. and Mrs. Engle shook hands with him if not very cordially at least with good-humored toleration; that Florence treated him to a stiff little nod; that Roderick Norton from across the room greeted him coolly.
"Dr. Patten," Engle was saying, "this is our cousin, Virginia Page."
Dr. Patten acknowledged the introduction and sat down, turning to ask "how Florrie was today?" Virginia smiled, sensing a rebuke to herself in his manner; to-day on the stage she had made it obvious even to him that if she must speak with a stranger she would vastly prefer the talk of the stage-driver than that of Dr. Caleb Patten. When Florence, replying briefly, turned to the piano Patten addressed Norton.
"What was our good sheriff doing to-day?" he asked banteringly, as though the subject he chose were the most apt one imaginable for jest. "Another man killed in broad daylight and no one to answer for it! Why don't you go get 'em, Roddy?"
Norton stared at him steadily and finally said soberly:
"When a disease has fastened itself upon the body of a community it takes time to work a cure, Dr. Patten."
"But not much time to let the life out of a man like the chap from Las Palmas! Why, the man who did the shooting couldn't have done a nicer job if he'd been a surgeon. One bullet square through the carotid artery . . . That leads from the heart to the head," he explained as though his listeners were children athirst for knowledge which he and none other could impart. "The cerebrum penetrated by a second. . . ."
What other technical elucidation might have followed was lost in a thunderous crashing of the piano keys as Florence Engle strove to drown the man's utterance and succeeded so well that for an instant he sat gaping at her.
"I can't stand that man!" Florence said sharply to Norton, and though the words did not travel across the room, Virginia was surprised that even an individual so completely armored as Caleb Patten could fail to grasp the girl's meaning.
When Florence had pounded her way through a noisy bit of "jazz," Caleb Patten, with one of his host's cigars lighted, was leaning a little forward in his chair, alert to seize the first opportunity of snatching conversation by the throat.
"Kid Rickard admits killing Bisbee," he said to Norton. "What are you going to do about it? The first thing I heard when I got in from a professional call a little while ago was that Rickard was swaggering around town, saying that you wouldn't gather him in because you were afraid to."
The sheriff's face remained unmoved, though the others looked curiously to him and back to Patten, who was easy and complacent and vaguely irritating.
"I imagine you haven't seen Jim Galloway since you got in, have you?" Norton returned quietly.
"No," said Patten. "Why? What has Galloway got to do with it?"
"Ask him. He says Rickard killed Bisbee in self-defense."
"Oh," said Patten. And then, shifting in his chair: "If Galloway says so, I guess you are right in letting the Kid go."
And, a trifle hastily it struck Virginia, he switched talk into another channel, telling of the case on which he had been out to-day, enlarging upon its difficulties, with which, it appeared, he had been eminently fitted to cope. There was an amused twinkle in John Engle's eyes as he listened.
"By the way, Patten," the banker observed when there came a pause, "you've got a rival in town. Had you heard?"
"What do you mean?" asked the physician.
"When I introduced you just now to our Cousin Virginia, I should have told you; she is Dr. Page, M.D."
Again Patten said "Oh," but this time in a tone which through its plain implication put a sudden flash into Virginia's eyes. As he looked toward her there was a half sneer upon the lips which his scanty growth of beard and mustache failed to hide. Had he gone on to say, "A lady doctor, eh?" and laughed, the case would not have been altered.
"It seems so funny for a girl to be a doctor," said Florence, for the first time referring in any way to Virginia since she had flown to the door, expecting Norton alone. Even now she did not look toward her kinswoman.
John Engle replied, speaking crisply. But just what he said Virginia did not know. For suddenly her whole attention was withdrawn from the conversation, fixed and held by something moving in the patio. First she had noted a slight change in Rod Norton's eyes, saw them grow keen and watchful, noted that they had turned toward the door opening into the little court where the fountain was, where the wall-lamp threw its rays wanly among the shrubs and through the grape-arbor. He had seen something move out there; from where she sat she could look the way he looked and mark how a clump of rose-bushes had been disturbed and now stood motionless again in the quiet night.
Wondering, she looked again to Norton. His eyes told nothing now save that they were keen and watchful. Whether or not he knew what it was so guardedly stirring in the patio, whether he, like herself, had merely seen the gently agitated leaves of the bushes, she could not guess. She started when Engle addressed some trifling remark to her; while she evaded the direct answer she was fully conscious of the sheriff's eyes steady upon her. He, no doubt, was wondering what she had seen.
It was only a moment later when Norton rose and went to Mrs. Engle, telling her briefly that he had had a day of it, in the saddle since dawn, wishing her good night. He shook hands with Engle, nodded to Patten, and coming to Virginia said lightly, but, she thought, with an almost sternly serious look in his eyes:
"We're all hoping you like San Juan, Miss Page. And you will, too, if the desert stillness doesn't get on your nerves. But then silence isn't such a bad thing after all, is it? Good night."
She understood his meaning and, though a thrill of excitement ran through her blood, answered laughingly:
"Shall a woman learn from the desert? Have I been such a chatter-box, Mrs. Engle, that I am to be admonished at the beginning to study to hold my tongue?"
Florence looked at her curiously, turned toward Norton, and then went with him to the door. For a moment their voices came in a murmur down the hallway; then Norton had gone and Florence returned slowly to the living-room.
Again Virginia looked out into the patio. Never a twig stirred now; all was as quiet as the sleeping fountain, as silent and mystery-filled as the desert itself. Had Roderick Norton seen more than she? Did he know who had been out there? Was here the beginning of some further sinister outgrowth of the lawlessness of Kid Rickard? of the animosity of Jim Galloway? Was she presently to see Norton himself slipping into the patio from the other side, was she again to hear the rattle of pistol-shots? He had asked that she say nothing; she had unhesitatingly given him her promise. Had she so unquestioningly done as he had requested because he was the sheriff who represented the law? or because he was Roderick Norton who stood for fine, upstanding manhood? . . . Again she felt Florence Engle's eyes fixed upon her.
"Florence is prepared at the beginning to dislike me," she thought. "Why? Just because I walked with him from the hotel?"
In the heat of an argument with Mrs. Engle there came an interruption. The banker's wife was insisting that Virginia "do the only sensible thing in the world," that she accept a home under the Engle roof, occupying the room already made ready for her. Virginia, warmed by the cordial invitation, while deeply grateful, felt that she had no right to accept. She had come to San Juan to make her own way; she had no claim upon the hospitality of her kinswoman, certainly no such claim as was implied now. Besides, there was Elmer Page. Her brother was coming to join her to-morrow or the next day, and as soon as it could be arranged they would take a house all by themselves, or if that proved impossible, would have a suite at the hotel. At the moment when it seemed that a deadlock had come between Mrs. Engle's eagerness to mother her cousin's daughter and Virginia's inborn sense of independence, the interruption came.
It arrived in the form of a boy of ten or twelve, a ragged, scantily clothed, swarthy youngster, rubbing a great toe against a bare leg while from the front door he announced that Ignacio Chavez was sick, that he had eaten something muy malo, that he had pains and that he prayed that the doctor cure him.
Patten grunted his disgust.
"Tell him to wait," he said briefly. And, in explanation to the others: "There's nothing the matter with him. I saw him on the street just before I came. And wasn't he ringing his bell not fifteen minutes ago?"
But the boy had not completed his message. Ignacio was sick and did not wish to die, and so had sent him to ask the Miss Lady Doctor to come to him. Virginia rose swiftly.
"You see," she said to Mrs. Engle, "what a nuisance it would be if I lived with you? May I come to see you to-morrow?"
While she said good night Engle got his hat.
"I'll go with you," he said. "But, like Patten, I don't believe there is much the matter with Chavez. Maybe he thinks he'll get a free drink of whiskey."
"You see again," laughed Virginia from the doorway, "what it would be like, Mrs. Engle; if every time I had to make a call and Mr. Engle deemed it necessary to go with me . . . I'd have to split my fees with him at the very least! And I don't believe that I could afford to do that."
"You could give me all that Ignacio pays you," chuckled Engle, "and never miss it!"
The boy waited for them and, when they came out into the starlight, flitted on ahead of them. At the cottonwoods a man stepped out to meet them. "Hello," said Engle, "it's Norton."
"I sent the boy for Miss Page," said Norton quickly. "I had to have a word with her immediately. And I'm glad that you came, Engle. I want a favor of you; a mighty big favor of Miss Page."
The boy had passed on through the shadows and now was to be seen on the street.
"I guess you know you can count on me, Rod," said Engle quietly. "What now?"
"I want you, when you go back to the house, to say that you have learned that Miss Page likes horseback riding; then send a horse for her to the hotel stable, so that if she likes she can have it in the early morning. And say nothing about my having sent the boy."
Engle did not answer immediately. He and Virginia stood trying to see the sheriff's features through the darkness. He had spoken quietly enough and yet there was an odd new note in his voice; it was easy to imagine how the muscles about his lean jaw had tensed, how his eyes were again the hard eyes of a man who saw his fight before him.
"I can trust you, John," continued Norton quickly. "I can trust Ignacio Chavez; I can trust Julius Struve. And, if you want it in words of one syllable, I cannot trust Caleb Patten!"
"Hm," said Engle. "I think you're mistaken there, my boy."
"Maybe," returned Norton. "But I can't afford right now to take any unnecessary chances. Further," and in the gloom they saw his shoulders lifted in a shrug, "I am trusting Miss Page because I've got to! Which may not sound pretty, but which is the truth."
"Of course I'll do what you ask," Engle said. "Is there anything else?"
"No. Just go on with Miss Page to see Ignacio. He will pretend to be doubled up with pain and will tell his story of the tinned meat he ate for supper. Then you can see her to the hotel and go back home, sending the horse over right away. Then she will ride with me to see a man who is hurt . . . or she will not, and I'll have to take a chance on Patten."
"Who is it?" demanded Engle sharply.
"It's Brocky Lane," returned Norton, and again his voice told of rigid muscles and hard eyes. "He's hurt bad, John. And, if we're to do him any good we'd better be about it."
Engle said nothing. But the slow, deep breath he drew into his lungs could not have been more eloquent of his emotion had it been expelled in a curse.
"I'll slip around the back way to the hotel," said Norton. "I'll be ready when Miss Page comes in. Good night, John."
Silently, without awaiting promise or protest from the girl, he was gone into the deeper shadows of the cottonwoods.