by Zane Grey
Davis and Miss Underwood went together over every foot of the road between her home and the hotel. One ray of hope they got from their examination of the ground he must have traversed to reach the El Tovar, as the hotel was named. At one spot—where a double row of cottonwoods lined the road—a fence had been knocked down and many feet had trampled the sandy pasture within. Steve picked up a torn piece of cloth about six inches by twelve in dimension. It had evidently been a part of a coat sleeve. He recognized the pattern as that of the suit his friend had been wearing.
“A part of his coat all right,” he said. “They must have bushwhacked him here. By the foot-prints there were a good many of them.”
“I’m glad there were.”
“Why?”
“For two reasons,” the girl explained. “In the first place, if they had wanted to kill him, one or two would have been enough. They wouldn’t take any more than was necessary into their confidence.”
“That’s right. Your head’s level there.”
“And, in the second place, two men can keep a secret, but six or eight can’t. Some one of them is bound to talk to his sweetheart or wife or friend.”
“True enough. That five hundred dollars might get one of ’em, too.”
“Somehow I believe he is alive. His enemies have taken him away somewhere—probably up into the hills.”
“But why?”
“You ought to know that better than I do. What could they gain by it?”
He scratched his gray head. “Search me. They couldn’t aim to hold him till after the trial. That would be a kid’s play.”
“Couldn’t they get him to sign some paper—something saying that he would give up his claim—or that he would sell out cheap?”
“No, they couldn’t,” the old man answered grimly. “But they might think they could. I expect that’s the play. Dick never in the world would come through, though. He’s game, that boy is. The point is, what will they do when they find he stands the acid?”
Miss Underwood looked quickly at him, then looked quickly away. She knew what they would do. So did Davis.
“No, that’s not the point. We must find him—just as soon as we can. Stir this whole town up and rake it with a fine-tooth comb. See if any of Miss Valdés’ peons are in town. If they are have them shadowed.”
They separated presently, she to go to the State House, he to return to the El Tovar. There he found the telegram from Miss Valdés awaiting him. Immediately he dictated an answer.
Before nightfall a second supply of posters decorated walls and billboards. The reward was raised to one thousand dollars for information that would lead to the finding of Richard Gordon alive and the same sum for evidence sufficient to convict his murderers in case he was dead. It seemed impossible that in so small a place, with everybody discussing the mysterious disappearance, the affair could long remain a secret. Davis did not doubt that Miss Underwood was correct in her assumption that the assailants of Gordon had carried him with them into some hidden pocket of the hills, in which case it might take longer to run them to earth. The great danger that he feared was panic on the part of the abductors. To cover their tracks they might kill him and leave this part of the country. The closer pursuit pressed on them the more likely this was to happen. It behooved him to move with the greatest care.
CHAPTER XVI
VALENCIA MAKES A PROMISE
When Manuel descended from the El Tovar hack which had brought him from the station to that hotel the first person he saw standing upon the porch was Valencia Valdés. He could hardly believe his eyes, for of course she could not be here. He had left her at Corbett’s, had taken the stage and the train, and now found her waiting for him. The thing was manifestly impossible. Yet here she was.
Swiftly she came down the steps to meet him.
“Manuel, we are too late. Mr. Gordon has gone.”
“Gone where?” he asked, his mind dazed as it moved from one puzzle to another.
“We don’t know. He was attacked night before last and carried away, whether dead or alive we have no proof.”
“One thing at a time, Valencia. How did you get here?”
“I drove across the mountains—started when I got the news from Mr. Davis that his friend had disappeared.”
“Do you mean that you drove all night—along mountain roads?” he asked, amazed.
“Of course. I had to get here.” She dismissed this as a trifle with a little gesture of her hand. “Manuel, we must find him. I believe he is alive. This is some of Pablo’s work. Down in old-town some one must know where he is. Bring him to me and I’ll make him tell what he has done with Mr. Gordon.”
Pesquiera was healthily hungry. He would have liked to sit down to a good breakfast, but he saw that his cousin was laboring under a heavy nervous tension. Cheerfully he gave up his breakfast for the present.
But when, three hours later, he returned from the old adobe Mexican quarter Manuel had nothing to report but failure. Pablo had been seen by several people, but not within the past twenty-four hours. Nor had anything been seen of Sebastian. The two men had disappeared from sight as completely as had Gordon.
Valencia, in the privacy of one of the hotel parlors, broke down and wept for the first time. Manuel tried to comfort her by taking the girl in his arms and petting her. She submitted to his embrace, burying her face in his shoulder.
“Oh, Manuel, I’m a—a murderess,” she sobbed.
“You’re a goose,” he corrected. “Haven’t you from the first tried to save this man from his own rashness? You’re not to blame in any way, Val.”
“Yes… Yes,” she sobbed. “Pablo and Sebastian would never have dared touch him if they hadn’t known that I’d quarreled with him. It all comes back to that.”
“That’s pure nonsense. For that matter, I don’t believe he’s dead at all. We’ll find him, as gay and insolent as ever, I promise you.”
Hope was buoyant in the young man’s heart. For the first time he held his sweetheart in his arms. She clung to him, as a woman ought to her lover, palpitant, warm, and helpless. Of course they would find this pestiferous American who had caused her so much worry. And then he—Manuel—would claim his reward.
“Do you think so…really? You’re not just saying so because…?” Her olive cheek turned the least in the world toward him.
Manuel trod on air. He felt that he could have flown across the range on the wings of his joy.
“I feel sure of it, niña.” Daring much, his hand caressed gently the waves of heavy black hair that brushed his cheek.
Almost in a murmur she answered him. “Manuel, find him and save him. Afterward…”
“Afterward, alma mia?”
She nodded. “I’ll…do what you ask.”
“You will marry me?” he cried, afraid to believe that his happiness had come at last.
“Yes.”
“Valencia, you love me?”
She trod down any doubts she might feel. Was he not the one suitable mate for her of all the men she knew?
“How can I help it. You are good. You are generous. You serve me truly.” Gently she disengaged herself and wiped her eyes with a lace kerchief. “But we must first find the American.”
“I’ll find him. Dead or alive I’ll bring him to you. Dear heart, you’ve given me the strength that moves mountains.”
A little smile fought for life upon her sad face. “You’ll not have strength unless you eat. Poor Manuel, I think you lost your breakfast. I ordered luncheon to be ready for us early. We’ll eat now.”
A remark of Manuel during luncheon gave his vis-à-vis an idea.
“Mr. Davis is most certainly thorough. I never saw a town so plastered with bills before,” he remarked.
Valencia laid down her knife and fork
as she looked at him. “Let’s offer a reward for Pablo and Sebastian—say, a hundred dollars. That would bring us news of them.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “I’ll get bills out this afternoon. Perhaps I’d better say no incriminating questions will be asked of those giving us information.”
Stirred to activity by the promise of such large rewards, not only the sheriff’s office and the police, but also private parties scoured the neighboring country for traces of the missing man or his captors. Every available horse in town was called into service for the man-hunt. Others became sleuths on foot and searched cellars and empty houses for the body of the man supposed to have been murdered. Never in its history had so much suspicion among neighbors developed in the old-town. Many who could not possibly be connected with the crime were watched jealously lest they snap up one of the rewards by stumbling upon evidence that had been overlooked.
False clews in abundance were brought to Davis and Pesquiera. Good citizens came in with theories that lacked entirely the backing of any evidence. One of these was that a flying machine had descended in the darkness and that Gordon had been carried away by a friend to avoid the payment of debts he was alleged to owe. The author of this explanation was a stout old lady of militant appearance who carried a cotton umbrella large enough to cover a family. She was extraordinarily persistent and left in great indignation to see a lawyer because Davis would not pay her the reward.
That day and the next passed with the mystery still unsolved. Valencia continued to stay at the hotel instead of opening the family town house, probably because she had brought no servants with her from the valley and did not know how long she would remain in the city. She and Manuel called upon the Underwoods to hear Kate’s story, but from it they gathered nothing new. Mrs. Underwood welcomed them with the gentle kindness that characterized her, but Kate was formal and distant.
“She doesn’t like me,” Valencia told her cousin as soon as they had left. “I wonder why. We were good enough friends as children.”
Manuel said nothing. He stroked his little black mustache with the foreign manner he had inherited. If he had cared to do so perhaps he could have explained Kate Underwood’s stiffness. Partly it was embarrassment and partly shyness. He knew that there had been a time—before Valencia’s return from college—when Kate lacked very little of being in love with him. He had but to say the word to have become engaged—and he had not said it. For, while on a visit to the East, he had called upon his beautiful cousin and she had won his love at once. This had nipped in the bud any embryonic romance that might otherwise have been possible with Kate.
A little old Mexican woman with a face like wrinkled leather was waiting to see them in front of the hotel.
“Señor Pesquiera?” she asked, with a little bob of the body meant to be a bow.
“Yes.”
“And Señorita Valdés?”
“That is my name,” answered Valencia.
“Will the señor and the señorita take a walk? The night is fine.”
“Where?” demanded Manuel curtly.
“Into old-town, señor.”
“You have something to tell us.”
“To show you, señor—for a hundred dollars.”
“Sebastian—or is it Pablo?” cried Valencia, in a low voice.
“I say nothing, señorita” whined the old woman. “I show you; then you pay. Is it not so?”
“Get the money, Manuel,” his cousin ordered quietly.
Manuel got it from the hotel safe. He took time also to get from his room a revolver. Gordon had fallen victim to an ambush and he did not intend to do so if he could help it. In his own mind he had no doubt that some of their countrymen were selling either Pablo or Sebastian for the reward, but it was better to be safe than to be sorry.
The old crone led them by side streets into the narrow adobe-lined roads of old-town. They passed through winding alleys and between buildings crumbling with age. Always Manuel watched, his right hand in his coat pocket. At the entrance to a little court a man emerged from the shadow of a wall. He whispered with the old dame for a minute.
“Come. Make an end of this and show us what you have to show, muy pronto,” interrupted Manuel impatiently.
“In good time, señor,” the man apologized.
“Just a word first, my friend. I have a revolver in my hand. If there is trickery in your mind, better give it up. I’m a dead shot, and I’ll put the first bullet through your heart. Now lead on.”
The Mexican threw up his hands in protest to all the saints that his purpose was good. He would assuredly keep faith, señor.
“See you do,” replied the Spaniard curtly.
Their guide rapped three times on a door of a tumble-down shack. Cautiously it was opened a few inches. There was another whispered conversation.
“The señor and the señorita can come in,” said the first man, standing aside.
Manuel restrained the young woman by stretching his left arm in front of her.
“Just a moment. Light a lamp, my friends. We do not go forward in the dark.”
At this there was a further demur, but finally a match flickered and a lamp was lit. Manuel moved slowly forward into the room, followed by Valencia. In a corner of the room a man lay bound upon the floor, his back toward them. One of the men rolled him over as if he had been a sack of potatoes. The face into which they looked had been mauled and battered, but Valencia had no trouble in recognizing it.
“Sebastian!” she cried.
He said nothing. A sullen, dogged look rested on his face. Manuel had seen it before on the countenance of many men. He knew that the sheep grazer could not be driven to talk.
Miss Valdés might have known it, too, but she was too impatient for finesse. “What have you done with Mr. Gordon? Tell me—now—at once,” she commanded.
The man’s eyes did not lift to meet hers. Nor did he answer a single word.
“First, our hundred dollars, Señorita,” one of the men reminded her.
“It will be paid when you deliver Sebastian to us in the street with his hands tied behind him,” Manuel promised.
They protested, grumbling that they had risked enough already when they had captured him an hour earlier. But in the end they came to Pesquiera’s condition. The prisoner’s hands were tied behind him and his feet released so that he could walk. Manuel slid one arm under the right one of Sebastian. The fingers of his left hand rested on the handle of a revolver in his coat pocket.
Valencia, all impatience, could hardly restrain herself until they were alone with their prisoner. She walked on the other side of her cousin, but as soon as they reached the Plaza she stopped.
“Where is he, Sebastian? What have you done with him? I warn you it is better to tell all you know,” she cried sternly.
He looked up at her doggedly, moistened his lips, and looked down again without a word.
“Speak!” she urged imperiously. “Where is Mr. Gordon? Tell me he is alive. And what of Pablo?”
Manuel spoke in a low voice. “My cousin, you are driving him to silence. Leave him to me. He must be led, not driven.”
Valencia was beyond reason. She felt that every minute lost was of tremendous importance. If Gordon was alive they must get help to him at once. All her life she had known Sebastian. When she had been a little tot he had taught her how to ride and how to fish. Since her return from college she had renewed acquaintance with him. Had she not been good to his children when they had small-pox? Had she not sold him his place cheaper than any other man could have bought it? Why, then, should he assume she was his enemy? Why should he distrust her? Why, above all, had he done this foolish and criminal thing?
Her anger blazed as she recalled all this and more. She would show Sebastian that because she had been indulgent he could
not trade defiantly upon her kindness.
“No,” she told Manuel. “No. I shall deal with him myself. He will speak or I shall turn him over to the sheriff.”
“Let us at least go to the hotel, Valencia. We do not want to gather a crowd on the street.”
“As you please.”
They reached the hotel parlor and Valencia gave Sebastian one more chance.
The man shuffled uneasily on his feet, but did not answer.
“Very well,” continued Miss Valdés stiffly, “it is not my fault that you will have to go to the penitentiary and leave your children without support.”
Manuel tried to stop her, but Valencia brushed past and left the room. She went straight to a telephone and was connected with the office of the sheriff. After asking that an officer be sent at once to arrest a man whom she was holding as prisoner, she hung up the receiver and returned to the parlor.
In all she could not have been absent more than five minutes, but when she reached the parlor it was empty. Both Manuel and his prisoner had gone.
CHAPTER XVII
AN OBSTINATE MAN
When Richard Gordon came back from unconsciousness to a world of haziness and headaches he was quite at a loss to account for his situation. He knew vaguely that he was lying flat on his back and that he was being jolted uncomfortably to and fro. His dazed brain registered sensations of pain both dull and sharp from a score of bruised nerve centers. For some reason he could neither move his hands nor lift his head. His body had been so badly jarred by the hail of blows through which he had plowed that at first his mind was too blank to give him explanations.
Gradually he recalled that he had been in a fight. He remembered a sea of faces, the thud of fists, the flash of knives. This must be the reason why every bone ached, why the flesh on his face was caked and warm moisture dripped from cuts in his scalp. It dawned upon him that he could not move his arms because they were tied and that the interference with his breathing was caused by a gag. When he opened his eyes he saw nothing, but whenever his face or hands stirred from the jolting something light and rough brushed his flesh; An odor of alfalfa filled his nostrils. He guessed that he was in a wagon and covered with hay.