“That’s a Villaga horse!” said Dorn, and the discovery did nothing to dissipate the frown dragging his heavy brows down. His thought was, “Now here’s further hell to pay for last night, for Juan getting home half dead if he ever got there at all.” And he was prepared to see Diana Villaga burst out of the house at the sound of oncoming hoofbeats.
Through the vines pendant from the wide eaves he glimpsed someone standing on the porch. It was a girl, but it was Lorna and she came running down the steps and down the slope to meet him. There was someone else there on the porch too, and this one followed more slowly into the yard, waiting there. It was Ramon Villaga, Diana’s and Juan’s brother.
Lorna fairly flew to the meeting. Her eyes looked enormous and Bill Dorn felt that it was not alone the loss and shock and horror of last night that put this look into them but some new experience—something perhaps connected with Ramon Villaga’s visit.
“Oh, Bill!” she gasped, and reached up and twined her fingers in his horse’s mane in such fashion that he, seeing how her hand shook, put his own down over it, hard and steady.
“You’re all on edge, Lorna.”
There was little patience in any Villaga at any time, none at all in Ramon this morning. Seeing Dorn stop he came forward, walking swiftly. A score of steps away Dorn read the desperation in the boy’s face that was so white and drawn, and instantly he leaped to the conclusion that Juan was dead, that Ramon came now to square the deal for his brother. But then, so eloquent do human eyes and faces grow at certain moments of the profoundest stress, another keen glance told him that, though there might well be murder in Ramon Villaga’s heart, there was something else which bulked above it, which held the hot impulse in check.
“Hello, Ramon,” he said evenly, and added, before Ramon had time to return his greeting or make clear that he did not intend to, “Is Juan all right?”
Ramon coming to a stop a few feet away was as stiff as ever a Villaga could be.
“My brother, Señor, is alive; thank you for asking,” he said as formally as though to an utter stranger, and accompanied his words with as old fashioned a bow as even Don Francisco could have achieved. “Or perhaps I should say that he was alive when I left home.” His eyes, for all their unwinking steadiness, were passionately charged with hate, with bitterness, with an unspeakable anguish. “But I did not come here to speak of him. It is hard, Señor Dorn, to ask a favor of you, yet that is what I must do. My sister sent me. She asks if you will come to see her immediately.”
“Why should I come to her?” snapped Dorn. At another time he might have been patient with the boy, but not today. “What does Diana want? Why doesn’t she come over here?”
“I had rather that you did not ask me those questions,” muttered Ramon.
Dorn shrugged heavily. “Suit yourself. Anyhow I’m not going. Good Lord, man!” he burst out angrily. “Can’t you see I’ve enough to do here?”
Ramon swallowed, bit his lip and swallowed again.
“My sister, I am afraid, Señor, is dying,” he said thickly. “It is only because hers is a dying request that I—”
Dorn’s exclamation of utter amazement cut him short. “Dying? Diana! Ramon, what are you talking about? Have you gone crazy?”
“Perhaps.” Ramon in his turn assayed a shrug, but his weary shoulders merely twitched. “Now you have heard her request I will give you her message. She says that unless already you have taken your revenge on Don Michael, you are to hold your hand until you have talked with her.”
“I haven’t found Bundy yet, but I’ve burned his damned dance-hall gambling joint to the ground,” Dorn flared out. “And I’ve burnt his whole string of freight wagons. Does that answer you?”
“It is going to make bad matters much worse, that is all.”
“But you haven’t told me what is wrong with Diana!” Still looking him steadily in the eye Ramon said quite clearly: “Her trouble is like my brother’s, Señor.”
Dorn came down from his horse in a flash and caught Ramon by both shoulders, glaring into his eyes with eyes no less terrible. “You mean that she too rode here to burn us out last night?” he shouted.
“You can ask her your questions, Señor—if you arrive in time to ask her anything. Or do you refuse to come?”
“Of course I’m coming! I’m on my way the minute I can saddle a fresh horse.”
CHAPTER XV
The Hacienda Villaga an Indian girl, red-eyed and distressed looking, ushered Bill Dorn into the patio, saying, hardly above a tremulous whisper, “Señorita Villaga is waiting for you there, Señor.”
On a couch among cushions in the rim of the shade, with golden flecks of sunshine shimmering on the gaily colored flowers and the fresh clean shrubbery beyond her, lay Diana. He hurried to her and stood looking down at her, a pang of commiseration in his heart. Her cheeks were like magnolia petals for waxy whiteness; her large eyes now seemed altogether too big for her small face and glittered like black diamonds. She had some sort of scarlet robe wrapped around her and was covered to the waist by a silken spread, a gay thing of mixed oriental coloring. A crumpled white blossom lay on the pillow near her head; it had fallen from her rich midnight mane of hair.
“Diana!” She lay very still, looking at him, without speaking, without smiling. One hand drooped at her side; it too looked to be carved of wax, and he could see the faint throb of a blue pulse.
“Diana! Tell me! Ramon wouldn’t talk. I know so little. Are you badly hurt?”
Still for a little while she did not speak. She was trying to think clearly, she was gathering her strength. And she kept looking at him in that queer, intent way as though he were some strange sort of stranger and she was bent on making him out. So he drew a garden chair up to the side of her couch and sat down, waiting for her. He made a gesture as though to put his hand out to hers, but though she didn’t move, being too weak for that, yet he saw that inwardly she winced. Perhaps her pallid mouth hardened ever so slightly or the muscles about her eyes tightened.
“I hate you so!” said Diana.
He scarcely caught the words, though he leaned closer as he saw her lips part; her voice, once such silver bell music for sweet clearness, was now little better than a faint harsh whisper. But had he missed the words entirely he must have read the hate in her eyes.
He said swiftly and very gently: “Never mind that right now, Diana. We can talk of such things later, when you’re strong again. Will you tell me how you were hurt and how badly? Have you had a doctor, and—” A faint angry shadow touched her jet black brows.
“I had them bring me here—down to the placita—to die,” she said. “It is nice here, no? One of your bullets last night at Palm Rancho—maybe from your gun, Don Beel?—And Juanito, too! They will not tell me, but I know my Juanito is dying like me. Did I tell you, Señor Dorn, how I hate you?”
“But, Diana,” said Dorn, very patient with her and feeling heart-stricken to see all her dash and verve and brightly dark brilliancy brought to this, “I did not know you and Juan were with Bundy’s crowd—”
“Yes, I hate you. I wish I did not have to die, so I could live to see you suffer and die! I have always hated you, ever since I first saw Don Michael. For you knew I loved him and that he loved me—and you were always taking him away from me. So I hated you.”
“I am sorry,” said Dorn. He looked at her a long while levelly and searchingly. He said to himself, “I mustn’t stay here talking with her, letting her use up her strength this way.” So to her he added in a quietly matter-of-fact way: “Believe me, Diana, I am sorry. Some other time you and I are going to get this all straightened out. Not now, for you’ve got to rest and hurry to get well and—”
“Fool! Do you think I am a baby? Give me some wine.” On a little green weathered table, with a napkin thrown over them, were decanter, water jug and glasses. He poured for her a glass of the ruby
red Villaga wine and held it to her lips. She managed to drink four or five swallows and thereafter spoke a hint more strongly.
“I live now for only two things,” said Diana. “To talk with you, to say good-bye to my Michael who loves me as I love him. I want you to know that you never fooled us Villagas. I first, then all of us, knew you for the cheat and liar and robber you are. And you have worked so hard to make it seem that you are the honest one, Don Michael the rogue!”
“I am going now, Diana. Later—”
“You sit still, Beel Dorn! If you move I’m going to jump up and run after you until I drop down dead.”
“All right,” said Dorn heavily. “What else do you want to tell me?”
“Many things. First, you, through that sheriff of yours, are trying to make people think Don Michael killed that old prospector, Jake Fanning. He did not and you know it. One Eye Perez killed Fanning.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me. And someone killed Perez—”
“And that was not Don Michael! He did not even have his gun that night. But you know who killed Perez; it was that dance hall girl who lies when she says she is Lorna Kent.”
“You seem to know—”
“Both Hank Smith and Mexico Fontana saw her kill him!”
“They’re liars both, Diana, and you know that.”
“Yes, seguro. But liars at times tell what is true. And now there is another thing which you have started people to say: That somebody killed the old lady Kent—and you will have them think that that too was done by Don Michael! And so I ask you this: How did it happen that her death came so quick after she made her will, leaving everything she had to her niece?”
“What do you know about any will?” he demanded.
“Was I not at her house the day she made it?” she shot back at him with a faint upflare of triumph. “When she sent the man to carry it to the banker in Liberty, did she not say to me: ‘Well, that’s done. I ought to have done it long ago. My niece Lorna won’t have to be a pauper anyhow.’” So that’s where the will was, in Liberty at the bank. And now if Lorna Brown were only Lorna Kent—“Then,” said Diana, “this dance hall girl came. All that we know about her is that she’s a cheap little liar and that in a fine rage she shot a man in the back. Had she been up at Palm Ranch before she showed up at Nacional? Who knows?”
“You mean that she killed Mrs. Kent?”
“Of course. Anyhow, Don Michael did not do it.”
Bill Dorn meant to spare her everything, yet looking at her curiously he said involuntarily, the words slipping out: “To you Bundy is perfect; above all crimes?”
“Yes! He is muy caballero. A good business man, yes; hard, yes. But every act of his is by daylight in the open!”
“Even the raid last night on Palm Ranch!”
Instantly he said it he was sorry. The look of death was in Diana’s eyes and no matter what she said he was going to get up and go. But the instant she started to answer him he realized that this subject could not possibly have been avoided. For it was to speak of this more than anything else that Diana Villaga had summoned him.
“Michael Bundy did not raid Palm Ranch last night! He had nothing to do with that, and he did not know anything about it. It was I, Diana Villaga, who loves him so much and who hates you so much, that raided Palm Ranch! I and my brothers whom I made come along; I and the men that I talked to and used to my purpose. And if there hadn’t been a blundering fool among us to start things before I gave the word, we’d have made a better, cleaner job of Halfway, and would have got away without a drop of our blood being spilled. But if you get ten men together you can be sure of one fool, maybe nine!”
He stared at her in amazement which was being slowly upgathered into consternation. What she said was preposterous, and he wouldn’t believe a word of it—yet when he watched her and listened to her and then sat staring into her eyes, he did believe every word. “It was not Michael Bundy. He had nothing to do with the raid on Palm Ranch. He was away and did not know anything about it. It was I, Diana Villaga! Because I love him so much, because I hate you so!”
“No!” said Dorn. “No! You may have gone along; that would be like you after all. But—”
“It was I! I alone who thought of it, who arranged it, who did it with a few blundering men to help. And I am glad!”
He did not want to be convinced. He was thinking: “Good God! Look at what I’ve done to Bundy today! And if he really had nothing to do with the raid—” His mind groped wildly, almost blindly for something to assure him that she must be lying. Then he thought of Hank Smith lying there at Halfway, his head split open by Wong’s horrible weapon. He said sternly:
“Diana! You can’t tell me this. I know! You see, one of the men left behind dead, was Hank Smith, Bundy’s right hand man for all devilment—”
“Don Michael was away on business, I tell you. He has been away several days. He went to Nacional, to San Marco, to Liberty, to get more money. Hank Smith was left behind. And don’t you think anyone can buy Hank Smith with a handful of pesos?”
Again, stubborn against believing what he already believed, he snatched at a straw. He said quietly, not wishing to be curt or stern, yet being both: “Anyone could buy Hank Smith with money, yes. But—”
“But the Villagas have no money! Not una centavo! Did you ever see Diana Villaga, Señor, when she was all dressed for a dance maybe, locking pretty in a white dress and wearing a long string of pearls? When the money of the Villagas went, did they not keep their fine name and their honor—and their few jewels? Those came to me from my great-great-great-great grandmamma. I tore the string apart. Did you look in the dead Hank Smith’s pockets?”
“If this is true—But it can’t be! Why should you, you and your brothers—”
“My father, too, if he had been young like us! Why? I am going to tell you why. You stole Don Michael’s thought. He was going to have a town there at Palm Ranch. He was going to have his freight wagons come that way. But you drove him out; you made his wagons go the long, long way around. Bueno; that hurt but it did not beat him! No one can beat my Don Michael! He is like a king. So he is going to make a change in his plan; he is going to bring freight down from the north, from San Marcos, and his wagons will come through Villaga Rancho! And so it is here, at Villaga, that we will have a town and all the things Palm Ranch is stealing from us! And I knew, if I burned your dirty houses to the ground and ruined all you had done, you would have no more money to go on with; and there would not be any town there to be a rival to our town. That is why, Señor Dorn!”
Her voice had sunk lower and lower so that at the end he could scarcely hear her; had he not watched her lips so intently some of the words must have escaped him. As it was he missed nothing. And when she had done he saw her eyes close, white wax lids with the faintest blue traceries, and he could see no pulse in throat or wrist or any stir of her breast in breathing. He feared her dead, slipping away so softly.
He wanted to ask, “Why do you tell me all this, Diana?” But already he saw her exhausted; that she was not dead he knew because her eyes came open again and were fixed on him as cold and black and unwinking as the eyes of a lidless snake. Such malevolence he had never seen; it put a chill ripple in his blood; he remembered with a start what Lorna had said once—it seemed long years ago! “She must carry a knife in her stocking! If some day she stabs you in the back—”
“I know,” whispered Diana harshly. “I know your thought, Don Beel! You wonder why I tell you these things! It is because I want you to know and to remember always that it was I—I!—when you were making your last stand, who cut the ground out from under your clumsy boots! I who have ruined you and helped my Don Michael to victory. And—and—Go! Go away! Get out of my sight. Never come back to Villaga even when I am dead!”
He rose slowly. His face had grown almost as white as hers. In his heart were anger and a newly
born despair and a deep pity for her. He rather guessed she had ruined him, doing a better job of it than she knew! Yet even at that moment of inner confusion he was granted a flash of true vision, seeing perhaps more clearly into her troubled bosom than she could ever have seen. He wanted to say a gentle, “Good-bye, Diana.” But he said nothing.
He returned straightway to Palm Ranch. In the corral he left his horse with Bud Williams and Duke Jones, two quiet, dull-eyed figures sitting on the fence.
“Saddle another horse for me, will you?” he asked. “I’m getting a bite to eat, then I’ve got some more riding to do.”
“We just found out, Bill,” said Bud, “that anyhow two or three of the horses were in the barn and burned along with it.”
Dorn went straight on to the house. Lorna was sitting on the top step, her slim body bent forward so that her face was on her crossed arms. Cap Jinks leaned droopily against a post supporting the porch roof, looking down upon her curly head abstractedly. Both figures stiffened into attention when they heard his footsteps. “Have you had a single thing to eat today?” were Lorna’s first words.
“I’m eating now, if Josefa can dig up something, and then I’m riding.”
“You’re the ridin’est man I ever knowed,” grunted Jinks. “Didn’t you get enough las’ night an’ this mornin’?”
“I’ll go tell Josefa,” said Lorna, and went into the house. Bill watched her and shook his head. She didn’t run as she always did; there wasn’t much spring in her step today.
“What about the Villaga girl?” Jinks wanted to know.
“Wait until Lorna comes out, Cap. It’s not the kind of a story a man wants to tell twice.”
The three sat on the steps in the sunshine—they felt that they could do with a lot of sunshine today!—and Dorn got through his story the shortest way, after having eased himself into it by saying, “By the way, Diana says that Mrs. Kent did make a will; that she sent it out to Liberty to the bank.”
The Sixth Western Novel Page 17