by Unknown
She shook her head decisively.
"No. It would have to be a money settlement. Miss Valdés's people are settled all over the estate. Some of them have bought small ranches. You see, she couldn't--throw them down--as you Americans say."
"That's right," he agreed. "Well, I shouldn't wonder but it can be fixed up some way."
They had been driving across a flat cactus country, and for some time had been approaching the grove of willows into which she now turned. Some wooden barns, a corral, an adobe house, and outhouses marked the place as one of the more ambitious ranches of the valley.
An old Mexican came forward with a face wreathed in smiles.
"Buenos, Doña Maria," he cried, in greeting.
"Buenos, Antonio. This gentleman is Mr. Richard Muir."
"Buenos, señor. A friend of Doña Maria is a friend of Antonio."
"The older people call me 'doña,'" the girl explained. "I suppose they think it strange a girl should have to do with affairs, and so they think of me as 'doña,' instead of 'señorita,' to satisfy themselves."
A vague suspicion, that had been born in the young man's mind immediately after his rescue from the river now recurred.
His first thought then had been that this young woman must be Valencia Valdés; but he had dismissed it when he had seen the initial M on her kerchief, and when she had subsequently left him to infer that such was not the case.
He remembered now in what respect she was held in the home hacienda; how everybody they had met had greeted her with almost reverence. It was not likely that two young heiresses, both of them beautiful orphans, should be living within a few miles of each other.
Besides, he remembered that this very Antelope Springs was mentioned in the deed of conveyance which he had lately examined before leaving the mining camp. She was giving orders about irrigating ditches as if she were owner.
It followed then that she must be Valencia Valdés. There could be no doubt of it.
He watched her as she talked to old Antonio and gave the necessary directions. How radiant and happy she was in this life which had fallen to her; by inheritance! He vowed she should not be disinherited through any action of his. He owed her his life. At least, he could spare her this blow.
They drove home more silently than they had come. He was thinking over the best way to do what he was going to do. The evening before they had sat together in front of the fire in the living-room, while her old duenna had nodded in a big arm-chair. So they would sit to-night and to-morrow night.
He would send at once for the papers upon which his claim depended, and he would burn them before her eyes. After that they would be friends--and, in the end, much more than friends.
He was still dreaming his air-castle, when they drove through the gate that led to her home. In front of the porch a saddled bronco trailed its rein, and near by stood a young man in riding-breeches and spurs. He turned at the sound of wheels; and the man in the buggy saw that it was Manuel Pesquiera.
The Spaniard started when he recognized the other, and his eyes grew bright. He moved forward to assist the young woman in alighting; but, in spite of his bad knee, the Coloradoan was out of the rig and before him.
"Buenos, amigo" she nodded to Don Manuel, lightly releasing the hand of Muir.
"Buenos, señorita" returned that young man. "I behold you are already acquaint' with Mr. Richard Gordon, whose arrival is to me very unexpect'."
She seemed to grow tall before her guest's eyes; to stand in a kind of proud splendor that had eclipsed her girlish slimness. The dark eyes under the thick lashes looked long and searchingly at him.
"Mr. Richard Gordon? I understand this gentleman's name to be Muir," she made voice gently.
Dick laughed with a touch of shame. Now once in his life he wished he could prove an alibi. For, under the calm judgment of that steady gaze, the thing he had done seemed scarce defensible.
"Don Manuel has it right, señorita. Gordon is my name; Muir, too, for that matter. Richard Muir Gordon is what I was christened."
The underlying red of her cheeks had fled and left them clear olive. One might have thought the scornful eyes had absorbed all the fire of her face.
"So you have lied to me, sir?"
"Let me lay the facts before you, first. That's a hard word, señorita."
"You gave your name to me as Muir, You imposed yourself on my hospitality under false pretenses. You are only a spy, come to my house to mole for evidence against me."
"No--no!" he cried sharply. "You will remember that I did not want to come. I foresaw that it might be awkward, but I did not foresee this."
"That you would be found out before you had won your end? I believe you, sir," she retorted contemptuously.
"I see I'm condemned before I'm heard."
"Will any explanation alter the facts? Are you not a liar and a cheat? You gave me a false name to spy out the land."
"Am I the only one that gave a wrong name?" he asked.
"That is different," she flamed. "You had made a mistake and, half in sport, I encouraged you in it. But you seem to have found out my real name since. Yet you still accepted what I had to offer, under a false name, under false pretenses. You questioned me about the grants. You have lived a lie from first to last."
"It ain't as bad as you say, ma'am. Don Manuel had told me it wasn't safe to come here in my own name. I didn't care about the safety, but I wanted to see the situation exactly as it was. I didn't know who you were when I came here. I took you to be Miss Maria Yuste. I----"
"My name is Maria Yuste Valencia Valdés," the young woman explained proudly. "When, may I ask, did you discover who I was?"
"I guessed it at Antelope Springs."
"Then why did you not tell me then who you are? Surely that was the time to tell me. My deception did you no harm; yours was one no man of honor could have endured after he knew who I was."
"I didn't aim to keep it up very long. I meant, in a day or two----"
"A day or two," she cried, in a blaze of scorn. "After you had found out all I had to tell; after you had got evidence to back your robber-claim; after you had made me breathe the same air so long with a spy?"
Her face was very white; but she faced him in her erect slimness, with her dark eyes fixed steadily on him.
"You ain't quite fair to me; but let that pass for the present. When I asked you about the grants didn't you guess who I was? Play square with me. Didn't you have a notion?"
A flood of spreading color swept back into her face.
"No, I didn't. I thought perhaps you were an agent of the claimant; but I didn't know you were passing under a false name, that you were aware in whose house you were staying. I thought you an honest man, on the wrong side--nothing so contemptible as a spy."
"That idea's fixed in your mind, is it?" he asked quietly.
"Beyond any power of yours to remove it," she flashed back.
"The facts, Señor Gordon, speak loud," put in Pesquiera derisively.
Dick Gordon paid not the least attention to him. His gaze was fastened on the girl whose contempt was lashing him.
"Very well, Miss Valdés. Well let it go at that just now. All I've got to say is that some day you'll hate yourself for what you have just said."
Neither of them had raised their voices from first to last. Hers had been low and intense, pulsing with the passion that would out. His had held its even way.
"I hate myself now, that I have had you here so long, that I have been the dupe of a common cheat."
"All right. 'Nough said, ma'am. More would certainly be surplusage. I'll not trouble you any longer now. But I want you to remember that there's a day coming when you'll travel a long way to take back all of what you've just been saying. I want to thank you for all your kindness to me. I'm always at your service for what you did for me. Good-bye, Miss Valdés, for the present."
"I am of impression, sir, that you go not too soon," said Pesquiera suavely.
Miss Valdés turne
d on her heel and swept up the steps of the porch; but she stopped an instant before she entered the house to say over her shoulder:
"A buggy will be at your disposal to take you to Corbett's. If it is convenient, I should like to have you go to-night."
He smiled ironically.
"I'll not trouble you for the buggy, señorita. If I'm all you say I am, likely I'm a horse thief, too. Anyhow, we won't risk it. Walking's good enough for me."
"Just as you please," she choked, and forthwith disappeared into the house.
Gordon turned from gazing after her to find the little Spaniard bowing before him.
"Consider me at your service, Mr. Gordon----"
"Can't use you," cut in Dick curtly.
"I was remarking that, as her kinsman, I, Don Manuel Pesquiera, stand prepared to make good her words. What the Señorita Valdés says, I say, too."
"Then don't say it aloud, you little monkey, or I'll throw you over the house," Dick promised immediately.
Don Manuel clicked his heels together and twirled his black mustache.
"I offer you, sir, the remedy of a gentleman. You, sir, shall choose the weapons."
The Anglo-Saxon laughed in his face.
"Good. Let it be toasting-forks, at twenty paces."
The challenger drew himself up to his full five feet six.
"You choose to be what you call droll. Sir, I give you the word, poltroon--lâche--coward."
"Oh, go chase yourself."
One of Pesquiera's little gloved hands struck the other's face with a resounding slap. Next instant he was lifted from his feet and tucked under Dick's arm.
There he remained, kicking and struggling, in a manner most undignified for a blue blood of Castile, while the Coloradoan stepped leisurely forward to the irrigating ditch which supplied water for the garden and the field of grain behind. This was now about two feet deep, and running strong. In it was deposited, at full length, the clapper little person of Don Manuel Pesquiera, after which Dick Gordon turned and went limping down the road.
From the shutters of her room a girl had looked down and seen it all. She saw Don Manuel rescue himself from the ditch, all dripping with water. She saw him gesticulating wildly, as he cursed the retreating foe, before betaking himself hurriedly from view to the rear of the house, probably to dry himself and nurse his rage the while. She saw Gordon go on his limping way without a single backward glance.
Then she flung herself on her bed and burst into tears.
CHAPTER V
"AN OPTIMISTIC GUY"
Dick Gordon hobbled up the road, quite unaware for some time that he had a ricked knee. His thoughts were busy with the finale that had just been enacted. He could not keep from laughing ruefully at the difference between it and the one of his day-dreams. He was too much of a Westerner not to see the humor of the comedy in which he had been forced to take a leading part, but he had insight enough to divine that it was much more likely to prove melodrama than farce.
Don Manuel was not the man to sit down under such an insult as he had endured, even though he had brought it upon himself. It would too surely be noised round that the Americano was the claimant to the estate, in which event he was very likely to play the part of a sheath for restless stilettos.
This did not trouble him as much as it would have done some men. The real sting of the episode lay in Valencia Valdés' attitude toward him. He had been kicked out for his unworthiness. He had been cast aside as a spy and a sneak.
The worst of it was that he felt his clumsiness deserved no less an issue to the adventure. Confound that little Don Manuel for bobbing up at such an inconvenient time! It was fierce luck.
He stopped his tramp up the hill, and looked back over the valley. Legally it was all his. So his Denver lawyers had told him, after looking the case over carefully. The courts would decide for him in all probability; morally he had not the shadow of a claim. The valley in justice belonged to those who had settled in it and were using it for their needs. His claim was merely a paper one. It had not a scintilla of natural justice back of it.
He resumed his journey. By this time his knee was sending telegrams of pain to headquarters. He cut an aspen by the roadside and trimmed it to a walking-stick and, as he went forward, leaned more and more heavily upon it.
"I'm going to have a game leg for fair if I don't look out," he told himself ruefully. "This right pin surely ain't good for a twelve-mile tramp."
It was during one of his frequent stops to rest that a buggy appeared round the turn from the same direction he had come. It drew to a halt in front of him, and the lad who was driving got out.
"Señorita Maria sends a carriage for Señor Gordon to take him to Corbett's," he said.
Dick was on hand with a sardonic smile.
"Tell the señorita that Mr. Gordon regrets having put her to so much trouble, but that he needs the exercise and prefers to walk."
"The señorita said I was to insist, señor."
"Tell your mistress that I'm very much obliged to her, but have made other arrangements. Explain to her I appreciate the offer just the same."
The lad hesitated, and Dick pushed him into decision.
"That's all right, Juan--José--Pedro--Francisco--whatever your name is. You've done your levelest. Now, hike back to the ranch. Vamos! Sabe."
"Si, señor."
Dick heard the wheels disappear in the distance, and laughed aloud.
"That young woman's conscience is hurting her. I reckon this tramp to Corbett's is going to worry her tender heart about as much as it does me, and I've got to sweat blood before I get through with it. Here goes again, Dicky."
Every step sent a pain shooting through him, but he was the last man to give up on that account what he had undertaken.
"She let me go without any lunch," he chuckled. "I'll bet that troubles her some, too, when she remembers. She's got me out of the house, but I'll bet the last strike in the Nancy K. against a dollar Mex that she ain't got me out of her mind by a heap."
A buggy appeared in sight driven by a stout, red-faced old man. Evidently he was on his way to the ranch.
"Who, hello, Doctor! I'm plumb glad to see you; couldn't wait till you came, and had just to start out to meet you," cried Dick.
He stood laughing at the amazement in the face of the doctor, who was in two minds whether to get angry or not.
"Doggone your hide, what are you doing here? Didn't I tell you not to walk more than a few steps?" that gentleman protested.
"But you didn't leave me a motor-car and, my visit being at an end, I ce'tainly had to get back to Corbett's." As he spoke he climbed slowly into the rig. "That leg of mine is acting like sixty, Doctor. When you happened along I was wondering how in time I was ever going to make it."
"You may have lamed yourself for life. It's the most idiotic thing I ever heard of. I don't see why Miss Valdés let you come. Dad blame it, have I got to watch my patients like a hen does its chicks? Ain't any of you got a lick of sense? Why didn't she send a rig if you had to come?" the doctor demanded.
"Seems to me she did mention a rig, but I thought I'd rather walk," explained Gordon casually, much amused at Dr. Watson's chagrined wonder.
"Walk!" snorted the physician. "You'll not walk, but be carried into an operating-room if you're not precious lucky. You deserve to lose that leg, and I don't say you won't."
"I'm an optimistic guy, Doctor. I'll say it for you. I ain't got any legs to spare."
"Huh! Some people haven't got the sense of a chicken with its head cut off."
"Now you're shouting. Go for me, Doc. Then, mebbe, I'll do better next time."
The doctor gave up this incorrigible patient and relapsed into silence, from which he came occasionally with an explosive "Huh!" Once he broke out with: "Didn't she feed you well enough, or was it just that you didn't know when you were well off?"
For he was aware that his patient's fever was rising and, like a good practitioner, he fumed at such useless relapse.<
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The knee had been doing fine. Now there would be the devil to pay with it. The utter senselessness of the proceeding irritated Watson. What in Mexico had got into the young idiot to make him do such a fool thing? The doctor guessed at a quarrel between him and Miss Valdés. But the close-mouthed American gave him no grounds upon which to base his suspicion.
The first thing that Dick did after reaching Corbett's was to send two telegrams. One was addressed to Messrs. Hughes & Willets, 411-417 Equitable Building, Denver, Colorado; the other went to Stephen Davis, Cripple Creek, of the same state.