CHAPTER XIV
PRIOR to leaving New Orleans, Webster had cabled Billy Geary that he was taking passage on La Estrellita and stating the approximate date of his arrival at San Buenaventura—which information descended upon that young man with something of the charm of a gentle rainfall over a hitherto arid district. He had been seeing Dolores Ruey at least once a day ever since her return to Sobrante; indeed, only the fear that he might wear out his welcome prevented him from seeing her twice a day. He was quick, therefore, to seize upon Webster's cablegram as an excuse to call upon Dolores and explain the mystery surrounding his friend's nonappearance.
“Well, Dolores,” he began, in his excitement calling her by her first name for the first time, “they say it's a long lane that hasn't got a saloon at the end of it. I've heard from Jack Webster.”
“What's the news, Bill?” Dolores inquired. From the first day of their acquaintance she had been growing increasingly fond of Geary; for nearly a week she had been desirous of calling him Bill, which is a comfortable name and, to Dolores's way of thinking, a peculiarly appropriate cognomen for such a distinctly American young man. At mention of the beloved word he glanced down at her pleasurably.
“Thank you,” he said. “I'm glad you got around to it finally. Those that love me always call me Bill.”
“You called me Dolores.”
“I move we make it unanimous. I'm a foe to formality.”
“Second the motion, Bill. So am I—when I care to be—and in our case your formality is spoiling our comradeship. And now, with reference to the extraordinary Senor Webster——”
“Why, the poor old horse has been down with ptomaine poisoning. They carried him off the train at St. Louis and stood him on his head and pumped him out and just did manage to cancel his order for a new tombstone. He says he's feeding regularly again and has booked passage on La Estrellita, so we can look for him on the next steamer arriving.”
“Oh, the poor fellow!” Dolores murmured—so fervently that Billy was on the point of hurling his heart at her feet on the instant.
The thousand dollars Webster had cabled Billy “for a road-stake” had been dwindling rapidly under the stimulus of one continous opportunity to spend the same in a quarter where it was calculated to bring the most joy. The pleasures of the Sobrantean capital were not such that the average Yankee citizen might be inspired to prefer them with any degree of enthusiasm, but such as they were, Dolores Ruey had them all. In a country where the line between pure blood and mixed is drawn so strictly as it is in Sobrante, Billy Geary was, of course, a social impossibility. He was a Caucasian who would shake hands and have a drink with a gentleman whose nails showed blue at the bases, for all his white skin—and in the limited upper-class circles of Buenaventura, where none but pure-bred descendants of purebred Castilians intermingled, the man or woman who failed, however slightly, to remember at all times that he was white, was distinctly persona non grata.
The first time Billy appeared in public riding in the same victoria with Mother Jenks and Dolores, therefore, he was fully aware that for the future Dolores Ruey was like himself, socially defunct in Sobrante. However, he did not care, for he had a sneaking suspicion Dolores was as indifferent as he; in fact, he took a savage delight in the knowledge that the girl would be proscribed, for with Dolores cut off from all other society she must, of necessity, turn to him throughout her visit. So, up to the night La Estrellita, with John Stuart Webster on board, dropped anchor on the quarantine-ground, Mr. Geary was the unflagging ballyhoo for a personally conducted tour of Dolores Ruey's native land within a radius of fifteen miles about Buenaventura. He was absolutely bogged in the quagmire of his first love affair, but until his mining concession should amply justify an avowal of his passion, an instinctive sense of the eternal fitness of things reminded Billy of the old proverb that a closed mouth catches no flies. And in the meantime (such is the optimism of youth) he decided there was no need for worry, for when a girl calls a fellow Bill, when she tells him he's a scout and doesn't care a whoop for any society except his—caramba! it's great!
A wireless from Webster warned Billy of the former's imminent arrival. Just before sunset Billy and Dolores, riding along the Malecon, sighted a blur of smoke far out to sea—a blur that grew and grew until they could make out the graceful white hull of La Estrellita, before the swift tropic night descended and the lights of the great vessel shimmered across the harbour.
“Too late to clear quarantine to-night,” Billy mourned, as he and Dolores rode back to her hotel. “All the same, I'm going to borrow the launch of my good friend Leber and his protégé Don Juan Cafetéro, and go out to the steamer to-night. I can heave to a little way from the steamer and welcome the old rascal, anyhow; he'll be expecting me to do that, and I wouldn't disappoint him for a farm.”
Fortunately, good little Leber consented to Billy's request, and Don Juan Cafetéro was sober enough to turn the engine over and run the launch. From the deck of the steamer Webster, smoking his postprandial cigar, caught sight of the launch's red and green sidelights chugging through the inky blackness; as the little craft slid up to within a cable's-length of the steamer and hove to, something told Webster that Billy Geary would soon be paging him. He edged over to the rail.
“That you, Bill?” he shouted.
“Hey! Jack, old pal!” Billy's delighted voice answered him.
“I knew you'd come, Billy boy.”
“I knew you'd know it, Johnny. Can't come aboard, you know, until the ship clears, but I can lie off here and say hello. How is your internal mechanism?”
“Grand. I've got the world by the tail on a down-hill haul once more, son. However, your query reminds me I haven't taken the medicine the doctor warned me to take after meals for a couple of weeks. Wait a minute, Bill, until I go to my stateroom and do my duty by my stomach.”
For ten minutes Billy and Don Juan Cafetéro bobbed about in the launch; then a stentorian voice shouted from the steamer. “Hey, you! In the launch, there. Not so close. Back off.”
Don Juan kicked the launch back fifty feet. “That will do!” the voice called again.
“Hello!” Billy soliloquized. “That's Jack Webster's voice. I've heard him bossing a gang of miners too often not to recognize that note of command. Wonder what he's up to. I thought he acted strangely—preferring medicine to me the minute I hailed him!”
While he was considering the matter, a voice behind him said very softly and indistinctly, like a man with a harelip:
“Mr. Geary, will you be good enough to back your launch a couple of hundred feet? When I'm certain I can't be seen from the steamer, I'll come aboard.” Billy turned, and in the dim light of his binnacle lamp observed a beautiful pair of white hands grasping the gunwale on the starboard quarter. He peered over and made out the head and shoulders of a man.
“All right,” he replied in a low voice. “Hang where you are, and you'll be clear of the propeller.”
He signalled Don Juan, who backed swiftly away, while Billy doused the binnacle lamp.
“That'll do,” the thick voice said presently. “Bear a hand, friend, and I'll climb over.”
He came, as naked as Mercury, sprawled on his belly in the cockpit, opened his mouth, spat out a compact little roll of tinfoil, opened it and drew out a ball of paper which he flattened out on the floor of the cockpit and handed up to Billy.
“Thank you,” he said, very courteously and distinctly now. “My credentials, Mr. Geary, if you please.”
Billy re-lighted the lamp and read:
Dear Billy:
I do not know the bearer from Adam's off ox; all I know about him is that he has all the outward marks of a gentleman, the courage of a bear-cat, a sense of humor and a head for which the Présidente of Sobrante will gladly pay a considerable number of pesos oro. Don't give up the head, because I like it and we do not need the money—yet. Take him ashore without anybody knowing it; hide him, clothe him, feed him—then forget all about him.
Ever thine,
J. S. Webster.
“Kick the boat ahead again, Cafferty,” Billy ordered quietly. He turned to the late arrival.
“Mr. Man, your credentials are all in apple-pie order. Do you happen to know this bay is swarming with man-eating sharks?”
The man raised a fine, strong, youthful face and grinned at him. “Hobson's choice, Mr. Geary,” he replied. “Afloat or ashore, the sharks are after me. Sir, I am your debtor.” He crawled into the cabin and stretched out on the settee as John Stuart Webster's voice came floating across the dark waters. “Hey, Billy!”
“Hey, yourself!”
“Everything well with you, Billy?”
“All is lovely, Jack, and the goose honks high. By the way, that friend of yours called with his letter of introduction. I took care of him.”
“Thanks. I suppose you'll call for me in that launch to-morrow morning?”
“Surest thing you know, Jack. Good-night, old top.”
“Good-night, Billy. See you in the morning.” Don Juan Cafetéra swung the launch and headed back for the city. At Leber's little dock Billy stepped ashore, while Don Juan backed out into the dark bay again in order to avoid inquisitive visitors. Billy hastened to El Buen Amigo and returned presently with a bundle of clothes; at an agreed signal Don Juan kicked the launch into the dock again and Billy went aboard.
“Hat, shirt, necktie, duck suit, white socks, and shoes,” he whispered. “Climb into them, stranger.” Once more the launch backed out in the bay, where Webster's protégé dressed at his leisure, and Billy handed Don Juan a couple of pesos.
“Remember, John,” he cautioned the bibulous one as they tied up for the night, “nothing unusual happened to-night.”
“Divil a thing, Misther Geary. Thank you, sor,” the Gaelic wreck replied blithely and disappeared in the darkness, leaving Billy to guide the stranger to El Buen Amigo, where he was taken into the confidence of Mother Jenks and, on Billy's guarantee of the board bill, furnished with a room and left to his own devices.
John Stuart Webster came down the gangplank into Leber's launch hard on the heels of the port doctor.
“You young horse-thief,” he cried affectionately. “I believe it's the custom down this way for men to kiss each other. We'll dispense with that, but by——” He folded Billy in a paternal embrace, then held him at arm's length and looked him over.
“Lord, son,” he said, “you're as thin as a snake. I'll have to feed you up.”
As they sped toward the landing, he looked Billy over once more. “I have it,” he declared. “You need a change of climate to get rid of that malaria. Just show me this little old mining claim of yours, Bill, and then hike for God's country. Three months up there will put you right again, and by the time you get back, we'll be about ready to weigh the first cleanup.”
Billy shook his head. “I'd like to mighty well, Jack,” he replied, “but I just can't.”
“Huh! I suppose you don't think I'm equal to the task of straightening out this concession of yours and making a hummer out of it, eh?”
The young fellow looked across at him sheepishly. “Mine?” he jeered. “Who's talking about a mine. I'm thinking of a girl!”
“Oh!”
“Some girl, Johnny.”
“I hope she's not some parrakeet,” Webster bantered. “Have you looked up her pedigree?”
“Ah-h-h!” Billy spat over the side in sheer disgust. “This is an American girl—born here, but white—raised in the U. S. A. I've only known her three weeks, but—ah!” And Billy kissed his hand into space.
“Well, I'm glad I find you so happy, boy. I suppose you're going to let your old Jack-partner give her the once-over and render his report before you make the fatal leap—eh?”
“Sure! I want you to meet her. I've been telling her all about you, and she's crazy to meet you.”
“Good news! I had a good friend once—twice—three times—and lost him every time. Wives get so suspicious of their husband's single friends, you know, so Ï hope I make a hit with your heart's desire, Billy. When do you pull off the wedding?”
“Oh,” said Billy, “that's premature, Jack. I haven't asked her. How could I until I'm able to support her?”
“Look here, son,” Webster replied, “don't you go to work and be the kind of fool I was. You get married and take a chance. If you do, you'll have a son sprouting into manhood when you're as old as I. A man ought to marry young, Bill. Hang the odds. I know what's good for you.”
At the hotel, while Webster shaved and arrayed himself in an immaculate white duck suit, with a broad black silk belt, buck shoes, and a Panama hat. Billy sent a note to Dolores, apprising her that John Stuart Webster had arrived—and would she be good enough to receive them?
Miss Ruey would be that gracious. She was waiting for them in the veranda just off the patio, outwardly calm, but inwardly a foment of conflicting emotions. As they approached she affected not to see them and turning, glanced in the opposite direction; nor did she move her head until Billy's voice, speaking at her elbow, said:
“Well, Dolores, here's my old Jack-partner waiting to be introduced. Jack, permit me to present Miss Dolores Ruey.”
She turned her face and rose graciously, marking with secret triumph the light of recognition that; leaped to his eyes, hovered there the hundredth part of a second and departed, leaving those keen, quizzical blue orbs appraising her in the most natural manner imaginable. Webster bowed. .
“It is a great happiness to meet you, Miss Ruey,” he said gravely.
Dolores gave him her hand. “You have doubtless forgotten, Mr. Webster, but I think we have met before.”
“Indeed!” John Stuart Webster murmured interestedly. “So stupid of me not to remember. Where did we meet?”
“He has a profound sense of humour,” she soliloquized. “He's going to force me into the open. Oh, dear, I'm helpless.” Aloud she said: “On the train in Death Valley last month, Mr. Webster. You came aboard with whiskers.”
Webster shook his head slowly, as if mystified. “I fear you're mistaken, Miss Ruey. I cannot recall the meeting, and if I ever wore whiskers, no human being would ever be able to recognize me without them. Besides, I wasn't on the train in Death Valley last month. I was in Denver—so you must have met some other Mr. Webster.”
She flushed furiously. “I didn't think I could be mistaken,” she answered a trifle coldly.
“It is my misfortune that you were,” he replied graciously. “Certainly, had we met at that time, I should not have failed to recognize you now. Somehow, Miss Ruey, I never have any luck.”
She was completely outgeneralled, and having the good sense to realize it, submitted gracefully. “He's perfectly horrible,” she told herself, “but at least he can lie like a gentleman—and I always did like that kind of man.”
So they chatted on the veranda until luncheon was announced and Dolores left them to go to her room.
“Well?” Billy queried the moment she was out of earshot. “What do you think, Johnny?”
“I think,” said John Stuart Webster slowly, “that you're a good picker, Bill. She's my ideal of a fine young woman, and my advice to you is to marry her. I'll grub-stake you. Bill, this stiff collar is choking me; I wish you'd wait here while I go to my room and rustle up a soft one.”
In the privacy of his room John Stuart Webster sat down on his bed and held his head in his hands, for he had just received a blow in the solar plexus and was still groggy; there was an ache in his head, and the quizzical light had faded from his eyes. Presently, however, he pulled himself together and approaching the mirror looked long at his weather-beaten countenance.
“Too old,” he murmured, “too old to be dreaming dreams.”
He changed to a soft collar, and when he descended to the patio to join Billy once more he was, to all outward appearances, his usual unperturbed self, for his was one of those rare natures that can derive a certain comfort from the misery of self-sacrifice—and in that five minutes alone in his room John Stuart Webster had wrestled with the tragedy of his life and won.
He had resolved to give Billy the right of way on the highway to happiness.
CHAPTER XV
LATE in the afternoon of the day of his arrival in Buenaventura, in the cool recess of the deep veranda flanking the western side of the patio of the Hotel Mateo, John Stuart Webster sat in a wicker chair, cigar in mouth, elbows on knees, hands clasping a light Malacca stick, with the end of which he jabbed meditatively at a crack in the recently sprinkled tiled floor, as if punctuating each bitter thought that chased its predecessor through his somewhat numbed brain.
In Mr. Webster's own whimsical phraseology, his clock had been fixed, on the instant he recognized in the object of his youthful partner's adoration the same winsome woman he had enthroned in his own secret castle of love. From that precise second Billy's preserve was as safe from encroachment by his friend as would be a bale of Confederate currency in an armour-steel vault on the three-thousand-foot level of a water-filled mine. Unfortunately for Webster, however, while he knew himself fairly well, he was not aware of this at the time. Viewed in the light of calmer reflection, Mr. Webster was quite certain he had made a star-spangled monkey of himself.
He sought solace now in the fact that there had been mitigating circumstances. Throughout the entire journey from the steamer to the hotel, Billy had not once mentioned in its entirety the name of his adored one. In any Spanish-American country the name Dolores is not so uncommon as to excite suspicion; and Webster who had seen the mercurial William in and out of many a desperate love affair in the latter's brittle teens and early twenties, attached so little importance to this latest outbreak of the old disease that it did not occur to him to cross-examine Billy, after eliciting the information that the young man had not lost his heart to a local belle.
The knowledge that Billy's inamorata was an American girl served to clear what threatened to be a dark atmosphere, and so Webster promptly had dismissed the subject.
Any psychologist will tell one that it is quite possible for a person to dream, in the short space of a split second, of events which, if really consummated, would involve the passage of days, weeks, months, or even years! Now, Jack Webster was an extra fast thinker, asleep or awake, and in his mind's eye, as he sat there in the patio, he had a dreadful vision of himself with a delicate spray of lilies of the valley in the lapel of his dress coat, as he supported the malarial Billy to the altar, there to receive the promise of Dolores to love, honour, and obey until death them did part. As the said Billy's dearest friend and business associate—as the only logical single man available—the job was Webster's without a struggle. Diablo! Why did people persist in referring to such runners-up in the matrimonial handicap as best men, when at the very least calculation the groom was the winner?
That wedding party was the very least of the future events Mr. Webster's hectic imagination conjured up. In the course of time (he reflected), a baby would doubtless arrive to bless the Geary household. Godfather? John Stuart Webster, of course. And when the fruit of that happy union should be old enough to “ride horsey,” who but the family friend would be required to get down on all fours and accommodate the unconscious tyrant? Boy or girl, it would make no difference; whichever way the cat jumped, he would be known as Uncle Jack; Billy would drag him up to the house once or twice a week, and he would go for the sake of the baby; then they would make him stay all night, and Mrs. Billy would sigh and try to smile when she detected cigarette ashes on the chiffonier in the spare bedroom—infallible sign that there was a bachelor about. Besides, happily married women have a mania for marrying off their husband's bachelor friends, and Mrs. Billy might scout up a wife for him—a wife he didn't want—and——No, he would not be the family friend. Nobody should ever Uncle Jack him if he could help it, and the only way to avoid the honour would be to eschew the job of best man, to resolve, in the very beginning of things, to beware of entangling friendships. Thus, as in a glass darkly, John Stuart Webster, in one illuminating moment, saw his future, together with his sole avenue of escape.
All too forcibly Webster realized that Billy's bally-hooing must have created a favourable impression in Dolores's mind prior to the arrival of the victim; hence it seemed reasonable to presume that when she discovered in Billy Geary's Jack Webster her own soiled, ragged, bewhiskered, belligerent, battered knight, Sir John Stuart Webster of Death Valley, California, U. S. A., extreme measures would have to be taken instantly to save the said Webster from being spattered with a dear old friendship in the future—and a dear old friendship with Dolores Ruey was something he did not want, had never figured on, and shuddered at accepting. All things considered, it had appeared wise to him to challenge, politely but firmly, her suggestion that they had met.
Of course, Webster had not really thought all this at the time; he had felt it and acted entirely upon instinct. A little private cogitation, however, had served to straighten out his thinking apparatus and-convince him that he had acted hastily—wherefore he would (a still, small voice whispered) repent at leisure. Dolores had not pressed the question (he was grateful to her for that), and for as long as five minutes he had congratulated himself on his success in “putting it over” on her. Then he had caught her scrutinizing the knuckles of his right hand; following her glance, he had seen that the crests of two knuckles were slightly bluish and tender, as new skin has a habit of showing on tanned knuckles. With a sinking heart he had recalled how painfully and deeply he had lacerated those knuckles less than a month before on the strong white teeth of a fat male masher, and while the last ugly shred of evidence had dropped off a week before, nevertheless to the critical and discerning eye there was still faint testimony of that fateful joust—just sufficient to convict!
He had glanced at her swiftly; she had caught the glance and replied to it with the faintest possible gleam of mischievous challenge in her glorious brown orbs; whereupon John Stuart Webster had immediately done what every honest male biped has been doing since Adam told his first lie to Eve—blushed, and had drawn a little taunting smile for his pains.
As Solomon once remarked, the wicked flee when no man pursueth; and that smile had scarcely faded before John Stuart Webster had unanimously resolved upon the course he should have pursued in the first place. He would investigate Billy's mining concession immediately; provided it should prove worth while, he would finance it and put the property on a paying basis; after which he would see to it that the very best doctors in the city of Buenaventura should inform Billy, unofficially and in the strictest confidence, that if he desired to preserve the life of Senor Juan Webstaire, he should forthwith pack that rapidly disintegrating person off to a more salubrious climate.
Having made his decision, John Stuart Webster immediately took heart of hope and decided to lead trumps. He leaned over and slapped Billy Geary's knee affectionately.
“Well, Bill, you saffron-coloured old wreck, how long do you suppose it will take for you to pick up enough strength and courage to do some active mining? You're looking like food shot from guns.”
“Billy needs a vacation and a change of climate,” Dolores declared with that motherly conviction all womankind feels toward a sick man.
“So I do, Dolores,” Billy replied. “And I'm going to take it. Up there in the hills back of San Miguel de Padua, the ubiquitous mosquito is not, the climate is almost temperate—and 'tis there that I would be.”
“You can't start too soon to please me, Billy,” Webster declared. “I'm anxious to get that property on a paying basis, so I can get out of the country.”
“Why, Johnny,” the amazed Billy declared, “I thought you would stay and help run the mine.”
“Indeed! Well, why do you suppose I spent so much time teaching you how to run a mine, you young idiot, if not against just such a time as this? You found this concession and tied it up; I'll finance it and help you get everything started; but after that, I'm through, and you can manage it on salary and name the salary yourself. You have a greater interest in this country than I, William; and so with your kind permission we'll hike up to that concession tomorrow and give it the double-O; then, if I can O. K. the property, we'll cable for the machinery I ordered just before I left Denver, and get busy. We ought to have our first clean-up within ninety days. What kind of labour have you in this country? Anything worth while? If not, we'll have to import some white men that can do things.”
“Gosh, but you're in a hurry,” Billy murmured. He had been long enough in Sobrante to have acquired a touch of the manana spirit of the lowlands, and he disliked exceedingly the thought of having his courtship interrupted on a minute's notice.
“You know me, son. I'm a hustler on the job,” Webster reminded him brutally; “so the sooner you start, the sooner you can get back and accumulate more malaria. What accommodations have you up there?”
“None, Jack.”
“Then you had better get some, Billy. I think you told me we have to take horses at San Miguel de Padua to ride in to the mine.” Billy nodded. “Then you had better buy a tent and bedding for both of us, ship the stuff up to San Miguel de Padua, go up with it and engage horses, a good cook, and a couple of reliable mozos. When you have everything ready, telegraph me and I'll come up.”
“Why can't you come up with me?” Billy demanded.
“I have to see a man, and write some letters and send a cablegram and wait for an answer. I may have to loaf around here for two or three days. By the way, what did you do for that friend I sent to letter of introduction?”
“Exactly what you told me to do, Johnny”
“Where is he now?”
“At El Buen Amigo—the same place where I'm living.”
“All right. We'll not discuss business any more, because we have finished with the business in hand—at least I have, Billy. When you get back to your hostelry, you might tell my friend I shall expect him over to dine with me this evening, if he can manage it.”
For an hour they discussed various subjects; then Billy, declaring the siesta was almost over and the shops reopening as a consequence, announced his intention of doing his shopping, said good-bye to Dolores and Webster, and lugubriously departed on the business in hand.
“Why are you in such a hurry, Mr. Webster?” Dolores demanded. “You haven't been in Buenaventura six hours until you've managed to make me perfectly miserable.”
“I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean to.”
“Didn't you know Billy Geary is my personal property?”
“No, but I suspected he might be. Bill's generous that way. He never hesitates to give himself to a charming woman.”
“This was a case of mutual self-defense. Billy hasn't any standing socially, you know. I believe he has been seen shooting craps—isn't that what you call it?—with gentlemen of more or less colour; then he appeared in public with me, minus a chaperon—”
“Fooey!”
“Likewise fiddlesticks! I should have had the entrée to the society of my father's old friends but for that; when old Mrs. General Maldonado lectured me (the dear, aristocratic soul conceived it to be her duty) on the impropriety of appearing on the Male-con with Billy and my guardian, who happens to be Billy's landlady, I tried to explain our American brand of democracy, but failed. So I haven't been invited anywhere since, and life would have been very dull without Billy. He has been a dear—and you have taken him away.”
Webster laughed. “Well, be patient, Miss Ruey, and I'll give him back to you with considerably more money than he will require for your joint comfort. Billy in financial distress is a joy forever, but Billy in a top hat and a frock coat on the sunny side of Easy Street will be absolutely irresistible.”
“He's a darling. Ever since my arrival he has dedicated his life to keeping me amused.” She rose. “Despite your wickedness, Mr. Webster, I am going to be good to you. Billy and I always have five o'clock tea here in the veranda. Would you care to come to my tea-party?”
“Nothing could give me greater pleasure,” he assured her.
She nodded brightly to him. “I'm going to run up to my room and put some powder on my nose,” she explained.
“But you'll return before five o'clock?” Webster was amazed to hear himself plead.
“You do not deserve such consideration, but I'll come back in about twenty minutes,” she answered and left him in the spot where we find him at the opening of this chapter, in pensive mood, jabbing his Malacca stick into a crack in the tiled floor.
Presently Webster shuddered. “Good heavens,” he soliloquized, “what a jackass-play I made when I declined to admit we had met before. What harm could I have accomplished by admitting it? I must be getting old, because I'm getting cowardly. I'm afraid of myself! When I met that girl last month, it was in a region that God forgot—and I was a human caterpillar, which a caterpillar is a hairy, lowly, unlovely thing that crawls until it is metamorphosed into a butterfly and flies. Following out the simile, I am now a human butterfly, not recognizable as the caterpillar to one woman out of ten million; yet she pegs me out at first. Gad, but she's a remarkable girl! And now I'm in for it. I've aroused her curiosity; and being a woman, she will not rest until she has fathomed the reason back of my extraordinary conduct. I think I'm going to be smeared with confusion. A spineless man like you, Johnny Webster, stands as much show in a battle of wits with that woman as a one-legged white man at a coon cakewalk. I'm afraid of her, and I'm afraid of myself. I'm glad I'm going up to the mine. I'll go as quickly as I can, and stay as long as I can.”
As Webster viewed the situation, his decision to see as little as possible of Dolores during his brief stay in Sobrante was a wise one. The less he saw of her (he told himself), the better for his peace of mind, for he was forty years old, and he had never loved before. For him this fever that burned in his blood, this delicious agony that throbbed in his heart—and all on the very ghost of provocation—were so many danger-signals, heralds of that grand passion which, coming to a man of forty, generally lasts him the remainder of his natural existence.
“This certainly beats the Dutch!” he murmured, and beyond the peradventure of a doubt, it did. He reflected that all of his life the impulses of his generous nature had been his undoing. In an excess of paternalism he had advised Billy to marry the girl and not permit himself to develop into a homeless, childless, loveless man such as Exhibit A, there present; following his natural inclination to play any game,' red or black, he had urged Billy to marry the girl immediately and had generously offered a liberal subsidy to make the marriage possible, for he disliked any interference in his plans to make those he loved happy. And now——
Webster was forced to admit he was afraid of himself. His was the rapidly disappearing code of the old unfettered West, that a man shall never betray his friend in thought, word, or deed. To John Stuart Webster any crime against friendship was the most heinous in all the calendar of human frailty; even to dream of slipping into Billy's shoes now would be monstrous; yet Webster knew he could not afford a test of strength between his ancient friendship for Billy and his masculine desire for a perfect mate. Remained then but one course:
“I must run like a road-runner,” was the way Webster expressed it.
CHAPTER XVI
DOLORES had been gone an hour before Webster roused from his bitter introspection sufficiently to glance at his watch. “Hum-m-m!” he grunted disapprovingly.
“Oh, I've been here fully half an hour,” Dolores's voice assured him. He turned guiltily and found her leaning against the jamb in a doorway behind him and farther down the veranda. She was gazing at him with that calm, impersonal yet vitally interested glance that had so captivated him the first time he saw her.
“Well, then”—bluntly—“why didn't you say so?”
“The surest way to get oneself disliked is to intrude on the moods of one's friends. Moreover, I wanted to study you in repose. Are you quite finished talking to yourself and fighting imaginary enemies? If so, you might talk to me for a change; I'll even disagree with you on any subject, if opposition will make you any happier.”
He rose and indicated the chair. “Please sit down, Miss Ruey. You are altogether disconcerting—too confoundedly smart. I fear I'm going to be afraid of you until I know you better.”
She shrugged adorably and took the proffered chair. “That's the Latin in her—that shrug,” Webster thought. “I wonder what other mixtures go to make up that perfect whole.”
Aloud he said: “So you wanted to study me in repose? Why waste your time? I am never in repose.”
“Feminine curiosity, Mr. Webster. Billy has talked so much of you that I wanted to see if you measured up to the specifications.”
“I don't mind your looking at me, Miss Ruey, but I get fidgety when you look through me.” He was glad he said that, because it made her laugh—more immoderately, Webster thought, than the circumstances demanded. Nevertheless he had an insane desire to make her laugh like that again, to watch her mobile features run the gamut from sweet, nunlike repose to mirthful riot.
“I can't help it—really,” she protested. “You're so transparent.”
Mr. Webster reflected that doubtless she was right. Men in his fix generally were pitifully obvious. Nevertheless he was nettled. “Oh, I'm not so sure of that. I was just accusing myself of being a bonehead, and bone is opaque.”
“Perhaps I have an X-ray eye,” she replied demurely. “However, just to show you how easy you are to read, I'll not look at your silly head. Just let me have your hand, and I'll tell you all about yourself.”
“Is there any charge?”
“Yes, a nominal one. However, I guarantee a truthful reading; if, when I am through, you are not wholly satisfied, you do not have to pay the price. Is that a satisfactory arrangement?”
“Right as a fox,” he declared, and held out his great calloused hand. He thrilled as she took it in both of hers, so soft and beautiful, and flattened it out, palm upward, on her knee. “A fine, large, useful hand,” she commented musingly. “The callouses indicate recent hard manual toil with a pick land shovel; despite your recent efforts with soap and brush and pumice-stone, there still remain evidences of some foreign matter ingrained in those callous spots. While, of course, I cannot be certain of my diagnosis without a magnifying glass, I venture the conjecture that it is a mineral substance, and your hands are so tanned one can readily see you have been working in the sun—in a very hot sun, as a matter of fact. Inasmuch as the hottest sun I ever felt was in Death Valley, as I crossed it on the train last month, your hand tells me you have been there.
“The general structure of the hand indicates that you are of a peace-loving disposition, but are far from being a peace-at-any-price advocate.” She flipped his hand over suddenly. “Ah, the knuckles confirm that last statement. They tell me you will fight on provocation; while your fingers are still stiff and thick from your recent severe labours, nevertheless they indicate an artistic nature, from which I deduce that upon the occasion when you were in conflict last your opponent received a most artistic thrashing.”
Webster twitched nervously. “Skip the coarse side of my nature,” he pleaded, “and tell me something nice about myself.”
“I am coming to that. This line indicates that you are very brave, gentle, and courteous. You are quick and firm in your decisions, but not always right, because your actions are governed by your heart instead of your head. Once you have made a decision, you are reckless of the consequences. Your lifeline tells me you are close to fifty-three years of age——”
“Seeress, you're shooting high and to the right,” he interrupted, for he did not relish that jab about his age. “I'll have you know I was forty years old last month, and that I can still do a hundred yards in twelve seconds flat—in my working clothes.”
“Well, don't feel peeved about it, Mr. Webster. I am not infallible; the best you can hope for from me is a high percentage of hits, even if I did shoot high and to the right that time. In point of worldly experience you're a hundred and six years old but I lopped off fifty per cent, to be on the safe side. To continue: You are of an extremely chivalrous nature—particularly toward young ladies travelling without chaperons; you are kind, affectionate, generous to a fault, something of a spendthrift. You will always be a millionaire or a pauper, never anything between—at least for any great length of time.”
“You've been talking to that callow Bill Geary.” Mr. Webster's face was so red he was sensible of a distinct feeling of relief that she kept her face bent over his hand.
“I haven't. He's been talking to me. One may safely depend upon you to do the unexpected. Your matrimonial line is unbroken, proving you have never married, although right here the line is somewhat dim and frayed.” She looked up at him suddenly. “You haven't been in love, have you?” she queried with childlike insouciance. “In love—and disappointed?”
He nodded, for he could not trust himself to speak.
“How sad!” she cooed sympathetically. “Did she marry another, or did she die?”
“She—she—yes, she died.”
“Cauliflower-tongue, in all probability, carried her off, poor thing! However, to your fortune: You are naturally truthful and would not make a deliberate misstatement of fact unless you had a very potent reason for it. You are sensitive to ridicule; it irks you to be teased, particularly by a woman, although you would boil in oil rather than admit it. You never ask impertinent questions, and you dislike those who do; you are not inquisitive; you never question other people's motives unless they appear to have a distinct bearing on your happiness or prosperity; you resent it when anybody questions your motives, and anybody who knows your nature will not question them. However, you have a strong sense of sportsmanship, and when fairly defeated, whether in a battle of fists or a battle of wits, you never hold a grudge, which is one of the very nicest characteristics a man can have——”
“Or a woman,” he suggested feebly.
“Quite right. Few woman have a sense of sportsmanship.”
“You have.”
“How do you know?”
“The witness declines to answer, on the ground that he might incriminate himself; also I object to the question because it is irrelevant, immaterial, and not cross-examination.”
“Accepted. You stand a very good chance of becoming a millionaire in Sobrante, but you must beware of a dark man who has crossed your path——”
“Which one?” Webster queried mirthfully. “All coons look alike to me—Greasers also.”
“Mere patter of our profession, Mr. Webster,” she admitted, “tossed in to build up the mystery element and simulate wisdom. Fortune awaited you in the United States, but you put it behind you, at the call of friendship, for a fortune in Sobrante. Now you have reconsidered that foolish action and at this moment you are contemplating sending a cablegram to a fat old man who waddles when he walks, recalling your decision not to accept a certain proposition of a business nature. However, you are too late. The fat old man with the waddle has made other arrangements, and if you want to make money, you'll remain in Sobrante. I think that is all, Mr. Webster.” He was gazing at her with an expression composed of equal parts of awe, amazement, consternation, adoration, and blank stupidity.
“Well,” she queried innocently, “to quote Billy's colloquial style: did I put it over?”
“You did very well for an amateur, but I'm a doubting Thomas. I have to poke my finger into the wound, so to speak, before I'll believe. About this fat old man who waddles when he walks: a really topnotch palmist could tell me his name.”
“Well, I'm only an amateur, but still I think I might, to quote Billy again, make a stab at it. A little while ago you said I had a strong sense of sportsmanship. Do you care to bet me about ten dollars I cannot give you the fat party's initials—all three of them?”
He gazed at her owlishly. She was the most perfectly amazing girl he had ever met; he was certain she would win the ten dollars from him, but then it was worth ten dollars to know for a certainty whether she was perfect or possessed of a slight flaw; so he silently drew forth a wallet that would have choked a cow and skinned off a ten-dollar gold certificate of the United States of America.
“I'm game,” he mumbled. “To quote Billy again: 'Put up or shut up.'”
“The fat gentleman's initials are E. P. J.”
“By the twelve apostles, Peter, Simon——”
“Don't blaspheme, Mr. Webster.”
He stood up and shook himself. “When you order the tea,” he said very distinctly, “please have mine cold. I need a bracer after that. Take the ten. You've won it.”
“Thanks ever so much,” she answered in a matter-of-fact tone and tucked the bill inside of her shirtwaist. “I am a very poor woman and—'Every little bit added to what you've got makes just a little bit more,'” she carolled, swaying her lithe, beautiful body and snapping her fingers like a cabaret dancer.
He could have groaned with the futility of his overwhelming desire for her; it even occurred to him what a shame it was to waste a marvel like her on a callow young pup like Billy, who had fought so many deadly skirmishes with Dan Cupid that a post-impressionistic painting of the Geary heart must resemble a pincushion. Then he remembered that this was an ungenerous, a traitorous thought, and that he had not paid the lady her fee.
“Well, what's the tariff?” he asked.
“You really feel that I have earned a professional's fee?”
“Beyond a doubt.”
She stood a moment gazing thoughtfully down at the tip of her little toe, struggling to be quite cool and collected in the knowledge that she was about to do a daring, almost a brazen thing—wondering with a queer, panicky little fluttering of her heart if he would think any the less of her for it.
“Well—I—that is——”
“The cauliflower ear is not unknown among pugilists in our own dear native land, but the cauliflower tongue appears to blossom exclusively in Sobrante,” he suggested wickedly.
She bit her lips to repress a smile. “Since you have taken Billy away from me this evening, I shall make you take Billy's place this evening. After dinner you shall hire an open victoria with two little white horses and drive me around the Malecon. There is a band concert to-night.”
“If it's the last act of my wicked life!” he promised fervently. Strange to relate, in that ecstatic moment no thought of Billy Geary marred the perfect serenity of what promised to be the most perfectly serene night in history.