by Max Brand
Her first name was Miriam, and the mere turning of that name through his mind enchanted Kobbe. Miriam Mantiez! It seemed to him that there was soft mystery and exquisite charm in that phrase. And he repeated it gently to himself.
But in the meantime the rancher had said: “You must not trouble Señor Kobbe with talk, Miriam. He is busy with his thoughts. And one of those thoughts may be worth a very great deal to me. Who knows what he has discovered or what he has seen or where he has been in that ride which he took just before dinner?”
There was a very patent query behind this placid question. But Kobbe returned no answer.
“Unless,” continued Alvarez, chuckling, “he was considering the question of the man in the tree. You see,” he added, “that Miriam knows all my thoughts, all my plans, all my past, all my future, all my hopes. And you may talk with perfect freedom before her.”
Kobbe murmured that this was interesting, but that his ride had showed him nothing of importance.
“Except a look at the landscape?” queried the rancher.
“Yes,” said Kobbe.
“And nothing else?”
It was a very sharp touch and Kobbe straightened a little under the prick of it.
“What do you mean, Señor Alvarez?”
“Nothing,” said the rancher, smiling broadly. “But there are people as well as trees growing on my estate, you know.”
It was plain that he had been informed of the interview between Kobbe and Lopez. No doubt he had been told the name of the other, that one of his men had watched the meeting from a distance. And the connotation of this was that Alvarez was keeping spies upon the trail of Kobbe every moment of his stay on the place. Yet when Kobbe met the eyes of Alvarez steadily, the latter turned his glance away, and it was plain that he was not suspicious about the results of the conversation. It was almost as though his spy had heard the exact words of the talk between him and Lopez. And Kobbe could not keep a slight flush from his face. At the same time he felt two things about Alvarez. The one was that the rich don was as full of craft as a serpent. The other was that the complacent laughter of Alvarez showed that he was certain that Kobbe was entirely pledged to his service. And one conclusion was as disagreeable as the other to Kobbe.
Dinner ended. They settled down in a high-vaulted music room and Miriam played for them at a piano and then sang. In the pauses the beat and faint humming of a distant banjo kept breaking in from far away by the servants’ quarters beyond the house. Kobbe moved closer to the window until he could look out, and he saw two men pacing ceaselessly up and down on the inside of the wall of hewn rock. They carried rifles, and their whole manner was that of soldiers. No doubt there were other men armed in this fashion and in this fashion mounting guard over the house of the rich man. Was it not strange, then, that Alvarez should pay so much money and so much attention in order to secure one more guard on the inside of the house? He resolved to put that question to the master of the house at the first opportunity. Or was it not better to leave well enough alone? What he desired was to stay near this charming girl until — he hardly knew what.
A servant entered with a whispered message for Alvarez. He rose at once and left the room after an apology to Señorita Mantiez, and a wave to Kobbe. Kobbe half expected that she would turn to him and begin a conversation of some sort. And in fact, as her fingers trailed carelessly through some meaningless chords, he thought that she was about to end and was merely hunting for an opening word to begin to talk. He decided to help her.
“May I take that chair at your right?” asked Kobbe.
“Stay where you are!” she said.
He could hardly believe his ears. “I didn’t quite hear you,” said Kobbe.
“Stay where you are,” she said, and began to play something which he did not recognize, just loud enough, as it seemed to him, to enable her to speak to him without fearing that the sound of her voice would carry any farther than his ear. And the heart of Kobbe began to race.
“Do you mean...?”
“That he is still watching, of course.”
Kobbe flushed and set his teeth.
“You must smoke and look happy,” she said.
Automatically he produced a cigarette. “Because of what? Of Señor Alvarez?”
“Yes. He is very suspicious, and he can almost read minds, Señor Kobbe, when he is excited.”
“That’s not very amiable.”
“Not at all.”
“Why does he do it?”
“He is jealous.”
“Jealous?” Kobbe stared at her.
“That is it. He is afraid of other men... because he is older than I, you see?”
He would have paid a year of life for the sake of seeing her face as she talked. “Do you mean to say... I cannot understand you, señorita.”
“We are betrothed, señor. I am surprised that he did not tell you.”
“Not a word! But... but you will be a very great lady as the wife of Señor Alvarez. I wish you great happiness, also.”
“I shall be happy enough, thank you. But people do not marry for romance in these times, of course.”
“They do not?”
“No. Girls must realize that life is a hard proposition.”
“Ah?”
“And so they are raised to look for contentment in marriage... not great happiness. Señor Alvarez has explained it all to me many times.”
Kobbe could not speak. He puffed at the cigarette until he had regained his composure. He managed to say at last: “It is all a new theory to me.”
“Oh, it is not a theory. It is a fact.”
“He is very sure.”
“He knows the facts.”
“What are they, please?”
“When people are driven along by a great, wild love, they are wildly happy for a month, and then they begin to be discontented. Then they grow unhappy. Then they regret. Then they begin to hate each other.”
“You speak like a professor of love, señorita.”
“Oh, no. Only what he has taught me. But the reason is that love is blind, you know.”
“I have read that in a book, I think.”
“It simply means that when people are in love, they are not seeing one another, for they are merely seeing their love. But when the love grows just a little cold, then they begin to see the truth. And it is always such a great ways below the thing they saw in their blindness that they can hardly stand the shock of the truth.”
“Do none stand it successfully?”
“Almost none,” she said.
“Except one’s own parents,” he said.
“My mother died when I was only a baby,” she said. “And yours?”
“They worshipped each other.”
“And did they begin with true love?”
“Like music,” he said. “He was coming down from a mine where he had been working. His hands were sore; his legs were tired; his pockets were empty. His winter’s work had been for nothing, and he had his jaw set for fighting. Then he saw my mother galloping her horse across the trail, with a white feather in her hat, and the wind rippling in her hair. He saw her, and he loved her. They were married in a week. And they loved each other to the day of their deaths.”
“Is it true?” she said. And her fingers ceased upon the piano.
“Perfectly true!”
Then she began to play very softly on the piano, drawling the phrases of the music, and all of them were filled with a speaking sadness.
“I wish,” she said at last, “that you had not told me that.”
“Why?”
“Because I think that I should have been happier without knowing.”
And Kobbe knew that his words had taken hold upon her and were working deep and deeper into her mind.
VII. OVER THE WALL
SHE WAS THRUMMING at the piano again, but the music was so soft that he knew it could not interrupt her thoughts.
“Oh, of course,” she said at last, “I understand tha
t there are these romances. But most of them are in books. However, Señor Alvarez and I have decided that the other way is the safer way.”
“You and Señor Alvarez?” he echoed as the picture grew bright in his mind.
“I’m surprised that he hasn’t told you, since he knows that you’re to be with us for such a long time.”
Still she played the piano. Still her head was turned from him.
He came to his feet, and at the noise she turned toward him. It was only for a glance, but he could tell in that instant that at the least she was not happy. And he forgot that he was showing her the misery of his own face. This child, with all the beauty of her life before her, to be wedded to a man past the middle of his life, gray, already half-prepared for the grave.
He murmured something as an excuse and stumbled out of the room, out of the house. In the garden he dropped on a bench and turned his face up to the stars and the cool of the wind. But when he was motionless, his torment grew too much for him to bear. He started up and began to pace back and forth, for when he was in motion he could struggle better toward a solution of his problem.
She was to marry Alvarez! For that purpose doubtless he had raised her, reveling in the prospect of her beauty one day becoming his. She had passed from his protégée to his fiancée, and in the end she was to be his wife. That certainly must be the story. He saw the tall form of a guard stalking near the wall, and accosted him, for the fellow might be able to tell him something worth knowing.
He had expected a Spanish accent, for in New Mexico Spanish is far more familiar than English, and particularly on the estate of a Spanish-American.
“Maybe you’re Kobbe?” he said.
“That’s my name.”
“Well,” said the guard, “darned if I ain’t glad to see you. I guess you’re here on the same business that keeps me.”
“Perhaps. What’s your work?”
“Chasing around, hunting ghosts.”
“Ghosts?”
“Ever since that gent shoved a knife at Alvarez, he’s been scared green. I’m to keep guard here like a soldier. If I see anybody sneaking around, I’m to holler to ’em once, and then start shooting.”
“Maybe the fellow Alvarez shot is one of a gang. Maybe Alvarez is waiting for the next one of the gang to show up?”
“Did he tell you that?” murmured the guard. “He’s dreaming, partner. I’ve lived around these parts a mighty long time before Alvarez come, and I’ve been here all the time Alvarez has been here. He ain’t made no enemies. He’s a sure enough quiet one. Besides, the folks in this neighborhood ain’t the kind that gang together to get a man. They do their hunting one by one.”
“Perhaps it’s all in the imagination of Señor Alvarez.”
“It sure is. By the way, I was over to see the shooting today. That was neat work you done. When I see you knock them cans over, I says to myself: ‘Alvarez will want Kobbe to help on this job.’ And by Jiminy, here you are!”
He laughed softly, rocking back and forth. “You’ll get easy work and fat pay,” he said. “I guess me and Harry, yonder, and the others do the outside work, and you work on the inside. All I got to say is that if anybody tries to do anything to Alvarez, he’s going to get filled with lead.”
“What does Miss Mantiez think?” asked Kobbe.
“She don’t do no thinking except what Alvarez tells her to do,” said the cowpuncher sourly.
“How can that be?”
“Why, since her dad died...”
“Who was he?”
“I see you’re a sure enough stranger around here.”
“I am.”
“Well, Mantiez used to own this here ranch. He was a fine old gent. He was always giving a show of some kind or other. Gave so many that everybody called this Rodeo Ranch. Gave so many that he got plumb in debt. He was a sort of ‘everybody’s friend.’ Couldn’t say no to a stranger, even. If a miner was broke, he’d come in to Señor Mantiez. If a cowpuncher was down on his luck, he could get a job or a stake or leave to lie around and get chuck with the other boys until he was fed up fat or landed a job somewheres. That was the sort that Mantiez was.
“Of course he’d run over his head in debt. Everybody owed him and he owed the bank. Finally along comes Alvarez, buys in on the bank, and decides that he wants the ranch. He closes in on the ranch; Mantiez has to lay down, and inside of a month the ranch belonged to Alvarez and Mantiez had died of something or other... I dunno what. Everybody said it was a busted heart that really killed him. He had to trust everybody, of course. The last person he trusted was Alvarez. He turned over his girl to him. And dog-gone me if he didn’t do a good job of it!”
“Made Alvarez guardian of the girl?”
“Right. And Alvarez has been working ever since for her. Gave her a damned fine education. Had all kinds of teachers here for her and—”
“But never sent her away to school.”
“Sure, he didn’t. He kept her here and spent five times as much as it would cost if she’d gone to a school, everybody says. And now, what do you think?”
“Well?”
“As if he hadn’t done enough for her already, Alvarez is going to up and marry her!” He shook his head in wonder at such greatness of heart.
“He’s a lucky man,” said Kobbe.
“Lucky? Giving her this here whole ranch? Why, he ain’t got any other heir. It’ll all go to that girl!”
“Do you think that had any weight with her?”
“She’s human, I guess,” said the other. “But the main thing was that she don’t know how to think anything different from what Alvarez tells her. However, everybody agrees that it’s pretty fine of Alvarez to turn this here ranch back to the Mantiez family. But about that El Capitán horse...”
Kobbe hardly heard the question. He returned a vague answer and strolled off through the garden. He passed down the side of the house and to the rear, out of sight of the guard, and it was when he approached the broad shining face of a pool into which the fountain had ceased playing that the shot was fired. The wasp hum darted past his forehead, but he was already in mid-air, leaping back into the shrubbery near the pool.
Another bullet followed him and clipped a slender branch above his head and sent it rustling down. Then Kobbe went into action. He had seemed formidable enough in the broad light of the day at the rodeo. But here under the starlight he was turned into a great lurking cat. Behind him he could hear the distant shout of the guard. But he did not wait for assistance. He raced through the shrubbery and darted straight at the wall of the garden.
From behind it he saw the head and shoulders of a man and a gun raised. At the flash of metal he fired, heard a muffled cry, and the figure disappeared. In another instant he was on top of the wall. He saw just beneath him — for a declivity of the ground beyond the wall made it considerably lower than the garden side — a horse with an empty saddle and, on the ground beside the horse, a motionless form.
He dropped down, kicked the revolver away from the hand of the fallen man, and jerked the limp figure to its knees. Then he found that he was looking into the face of Lopez! He swore softly beneath his breath, and Lopez groaned a response.
Kobbe released his grip and the other staggered to his feet. For a second he groped idly around him as though to make sure of his surroundings or to reach his fallen weapon. Then his senses seemed to return. He drew himself up and glared at Kobbe.
“In the name of heaven, Lopez,” said Kobbe, “have you descended to this? Are you hunting me as if I were a rat?”
Lopez supported his right arm with his left. It was plain that the bullet had struck the gun, cast it into the face of Lopez with stunning force, and had then ripped up the arm of Lopez.
“I hunted you like a rat,” said Lopez, “because whatever you may be to other men, to us you are only a traitor.”
“Get on your horse,” answered Kobbe. “And thank heaven that your traitor does not treat you according to your own fashion.”
/>
“You let me go at your own peril,” answered Lopez. “For if I escape now, I shall come again, John, until we have wiped you out of the way. Alvarez is doomed!”
“I take the peril,” answered Kobbe hastily. “Now get into the saddle. They’re coming. If they see us together, I’ll be compelled to take you in spite of myself!”
Lopez hesitated. But whatever was in his mind remained unspoken. He turned, caught the horn of the saddle with his unwounded hand, and dragged himself up. A touch of his spurs sent him flying over the slope, while a shout from the wall warned Kobbe that the guard had come up at last.
Kobbe jerked up his revolver and opened a fire which was intentionally wild. From the wall the guard was alternately shooting and cursing, but Lopez, leaning low over the neck of a fast horse, was almost instantly screened by a veil of mist.
VIII. AN INTERVIEW
THERE WAS A wild pursuit. Kobbe himself was in the van on the chestnut, but in spite of the speed of the stallion, Lopez had gained a lead which could not be overcome, nor could his trail be followed. They came back late in the night and Kobbe found that a message was waiting for him to come at once to Alvarez. He found the rancher walking in deep thought up and down the library. It was not hard to see that he was very excited and very angry.
When Kobbe entered, he was given hardly a glance by his employer, who strode over to the fireplace and, with his hands clasped behind his back, and his back turned to Kobbe, puffed viciously at a cigar and snapped his words over his shoulder.
“What luck this evening, Kobbe?”
“He had too long a start,” said Kobbe. “We had no luck at all.”
“Your horse was not fast enough?”
“I had to keep back with the others. My speed was their speed.”
“What made you stay with them?”
“I might have run into a trap if I had gone on by myself.”
“You are paid to take chances, Kobbe.”
“I am not paid to throw my life away.”
“Good!” But the snarl with which he spoke meant quite the opposite of the word. “When Jenkins found you, what were you doing?”