The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  "Ah! You have a kind heart, Mr. Gordon. Your sympathy does you credit. Still--business is business, of course."

  "Of course," Dick picked up a pen and began to jab holes aimlessly into a perfectly good blotter tacked to the table. "Well, let's hear the story--just a sketch of it. Why do the rightful heirs lose out and the villain gain possession?"

  Mr. Fitt smiled blandly. He had satisfied himself that his client was good pay and he did not intend to take offense. "It pleases you to be facetious, Mr. Gordon. But we all know that what this country needs--what such a valley as the Rio Chama ought to have--is up to date American development. People and conditions are in a primitive state. When men like you get possession of the Moreño and similar tracts New Mexico will move forward with giant strides to its great destiny. Time does not stand still. The day of the indolent semi-feudal Spanish system of occupancy has passed away. New Mexico will no longer remain mañana land. You--and men like you--of broad ideas, progressive, energetic----"

  "Quite a philanthropist, ain't I?" interrupted Gordon, smiling lazily. "Well, let's hear the yarn, Mr. Fitt."

  The attorney gave up his oration regretfully. He subsided into a chair and resumed the conversational tone.

  "You've got to understand how things were here in the old Spanish days, gentlemen. Don Bartolomé for instance was not merely a cattleman. He was a grandee, a feudal lord, a military chief to all his tenants and employees. His word was law. The power of life and death lay in him."

  Dick nodded. "Get you."

  "The old Don was pasturing his sheep in the Rio Chama valley and he had started a little village there--called the place Torreon, I think, from a high tower house he had built to overlook the valley so that Indians could be seen if they attempted an attack. Well, he takes a notion that he'd better get legal title to the land he was using, though in those days he might have had half of New Mexico for his cattle and sheep as a range. So he asks Facundo Megares, governor of the royal province, for a grant of land. The governor, anxious to please him, orders the constitutional alcalde, a person named José Garcia de la Mora, to execute the act of possession to Valdés of a tract described as follows, to wit----"

  "I've heard the description," cut in the young man. "Well, did the Don take possession?"

  "We claim that he never did. He visited there, and his shepherds undoubtedly ran sheep on the range covered by the grant. But Valdés and his family never actually resided on the estate. Other points that militate against the claim of his descendants may be noted. First, that minor grants of land, taken from within the original Valdés grant, were made by the governor without any protest on the part of the Don. Second, that Don Bartolomé himself, subsequently Governor and Captain-General of the province of New Mexico, did, in his official capacity as President of the Council, endorse at least two other small grants of land cut out from the heart of the Valdés estate. This goes to show that he did not himself consider that he owned the land, or perhaps he felt that he had forfeited his claim."

  "Or maybe it just showed that the old gentleman was no hog," suggested Gordon.

  "I guess the law will construe it as a waiver of his claim. It doesn't make any allowances for altruism."

  "I've noticed that," Gordon admitted dryly.

  "A new crowd of politicians got in after Mexico became independent of Spain. The plums had to be handed out to the friends of the party in power. So Manuel Armijo, the last Mexican Governor of the province, being a favorite of the President of that country because he had defeated some Texas Rangers in a battle, and on that account endowed with extraordinary powers, carved a fat half million acres out of the Valdés grant and made a present of it to José Moreño for 'services to the government of Mexico.' That's where you come in as heir to your grandfather, who purchased for a song the claim of Moreño's son."

  "My right has been lying dormant twenty-five years. Won't that affect its legality?"

  "No. If we knock out the Valdés' grant, all we have to do is to prove the legality of the Moreño one. It happens we have evidence to show that he satisfied all legal requirements by living on the land more than four years. This gave him patent in perpetuity subject to taxes. By the payment of these we can claim title." Fitt rubbed his hands and walked backward and forward briskly. "We've got them sewed up tight, Mr. Gordon. The Supreme Court has sustained our contention in the almost parallel Baca case."

  "Fine," said Dick moodily. He knew it was unreasonable for him to be annoyed at his counsel because the latter happened to be an alert and competent lawyer. But somehow all his sympathies were with Valencia Valdés and her dependents.

  "If you'd like to look at the original documents in the case, Mr. Gordon----"

  "I would."

  "I'll take you up to the State House this afternoon. You can look over them at your leisure."

  Davis laughed at his friend as they walked back to the hotel.

  "I don't believe you know yourself what you want. You act as if you'd rather lose than win the suit."

  "Sometimes I'm a white man, Steve. I don't want to grab other people's property just because some one can dig up a piece of paper that says it's mine. We sit back and roast the trusts to a fare-you-well for hogging all there is in sight. That's what Fitt and his tribe expect me to do. I'm damned if I will."

  CHAPTER XII

  "I BELIEVE YOU'RE IN LOVE WITH HER, TOO"

  It was characteristic of Dick Gordon that he established at once a little relation of friendliness between him and the young woman at the State House who waited upon him with the documents in the Valdés grant case. She was a tall, slight girl with amazingly vivid eyes set in a face scarcely pretty. In her manner to the world at large there was an indifference amounting almost to insolence. She had a way of looking at people as if they were bits of the stage setting instead of individuals.

  A flare of interest had sparkled in her eyes when Gordon's fussy little attorney had mentioned the name of his client, but it had been Dick's genial manner of boyish comradeship that had really warmed Miss Underwood to him. She did not like many people, but when she gave her heart to a friend it was without stipulations. Dick was a man's man. Essentially he was masculine, virile, dominant. But the force of him was usually masked either by his gay impudence or his sunny friendliness. Women were drawn to his flashing smile because they sensed the strength behind it.

  Kate Underwood could have given a dozen reasons why she liked him. There were for instance the superficial ones. She liked the way he tossed back the tawny sun-kissed hair from his eyes, the easy pantherish stride with which he covered ground so lightly, the set of his fine shoulders, the peculiar tint of his lean, bronzed cheeks. His laugh was joyous as the song of a bird in early spring. It made one want to shout with him. Then, too, she tremendously admired his efficiency. To look at the hard, clear eye, at the clean, well-packed build of the man, told the story. The movements of his strong, brown hands were sure and economical. They dissipated no energy. Every detail of his personality expressed a mind that did its own thinking swiftly and incisively.

  "It's curious about these documents of the old Valdés and Moreño claims. They have lain here in the vaults--that is, here and at the old Governor's Palace--for twenty years and more untouched. Then all at once twenty people get interested in them. Scarce a day passes that lawyers are not up to look over some of the copies. You have certainly stirred things up with your suit, Mr. Gordon."

  Dick looked out of the window at the white adobe-lined streets resting in a placid coma of sun-beat.

  "Don't you reckon Santa Fé can stand a little stirring up, Miss Underwood?"

  "Goodness, yes. We all get to be three hundred years old if we live in this atmosphere long enough."

  The man's gaze shifted. "You'd have to live here a right long time, I reckon."

  A quick slant of her gay eyes reproached him. "You don't have to be so gallant, Mr. Gordon. The State pays me fifteen hundred dollars a year to wait on you, anyhow."

  "You do
n't say. As much as that? My, we're liable to go bankrupt in New Mexico, ain't we? And, if you want to know, I don't say nice things to you because I have to, but because I want to."

  She laughed with a pretense at incredulity. "In another day or two I'll find out just what special favor I'm able to do Mr. Gordon. The regular thing is to bring flowers or candy, you know. Generally they say, too, that there never has been a clerk holding this job as fit for it as I am."

  "You're some clerk, all right. Say, where can I find the original of this Agua Caliente grant, Miss Kate?"

  She smiled to herself as she went to get him a certified copy. "Only two days, and he's using my first name. Inside of a week he'll be calling me 'Dearie,'" she thought. But she knew very well there was no danger. This young fellow was the kind of man that could be informal without the slightest idea of flirting or making love.

  Kate Underwood's interest in the fight between the claimants for the Valdés and Moreño grants was not based entirely upon her liking for Dick. He learned this the fourth day of his stay in Santa Fé.

  "Do you know that you were followed to the hotel last night, Mr. Gordon?" she asked him, as soon as he arrived at the State House.

  His eyes met hers instantly. "Was I? How do you know?"

  "I left the building just after you did. Two Mexicans followed you. I don't know when I first suspected it, but I trailed along to make sure. There can be no doubt about it."

  "Not a bit of doubt. Found it out the first day when I left the hotel," he told her cheerfully.

  "You knew it all the time," she cried, amazed.

  "That doesn't prevent me from being properly grateful to you for your kindness," he hastened to say.

  "What are they following you for?" she wanted to know.

  Dick told her something of his experiences in the Rio Chama Valley without mentioning that part of them which had to do with Miss Valdés. At the sound of Manuel Pesquiera's name the eyes of the girl flashed. Dick had already noticed that his name was always to her a signal for repression of some emotion. The eyes contracted and hardened the least in the world. Some men would not have noticed this, but more than once Gordon's life had hung upon the right reading of such signs.

  "You think that Mr. Pesquiera has hired them to watch you?" she suggested.

  "Maybe he has and maybe he hasn't. Some of those willing lads of Miss Valdés don't need any hiring. They want to see what I'm up to. They're not overlooking any bets."

  "But they may shoot you."

  He looked at her drolly. "They may, but I'll be there at the time. I'm not sleeping on the job, Miss Kate."

  "You didn't turn around once yesterday."

  "Hmp! I saw them out of the edge of my eyes. And when I turned a corner I always saw them mighty plain. They couldn't have come very close without my knowing it."

  "Don Manuel is very anxious to have Miss Valdés win, isn't he?"

  Dick observed that just below the eyes two spots were burning in the usually pale cheeks.

  "Yes," he answered simply.

  "Why?"

  "He's her friend and a relative."

  It seemed to Gordon that there was a touch of defiance in the eyes that held to his so steadily. She was going to find out the truth, no matter what he thought.

  "Is that all--nothing more than a friend or a relative?"

  The miner's boyish laugh rippled out. "You'd ought to have been a lawyer, Miss Kate. No, that ain't all Don Manuel doesn't make any secret of it. I don't know why I should. He wants to be prince consort of the Valdés kingdom."

  "Because of ... the estate?"

  "Lord, no! He's one man from the ground up, M. Pesquiera is. In spite of the estates."

  "You mean that he ... loves Valencia Valdés?"

  "Sure he does. Manuel doesn't care much who gets the kingdom if he gets the princess."

  "Is she so ... pretty?"

  Dick stopped to consider this. "Why, yes, I reckon she is pretty, though I hadn't thought of it before. You see, pretty ain't just the word. She's a queen. That is, she looks like a queen ought to but don't. Take her walk for instance: she steps out like as if in another moment she might fly."

  "That doesn't mean anything. It's almost silly," replied the downright Miss Underwood, not without a tinge of spite.

  "It means something to me. I'm trying to give you a picture of her. But you'd have to see her to understand. When she's around mean and little things crawl out of your mind. She's on the level and square and fine--a thoroughbred if there ever was one."

  "I believe you're in love with her, too."

  The young man found himself blushing. "Now don't get to imagining foolishness. Miss Valdés hates the ground I walk on. She thinks I'm the limit, and she hasn't forgotten to tell me so."

  "Which, of course, makes you fonder of her," scoffed Miss Underwood. "Does she hate the ground that Don Manuel walks on?"

  "Now you've got me. I go to the foot of the class, because I don't know."

  "But you wish you did," she flung at him, with a swift side glance.

  "Guessing again, Miss Kate. I'll sure report you if you waste the State's time on such foolishness," he threatened gaily.

  "Since you're in love with her, why don't you marry Miss Valdés and consolidate the two claims?" demanded the girl.

  Her chin was tilted impudently toward him, but Gordon guessed that there was an undercurrent of meaning in her audacity.

  "What commission do you charge for running your matrimonial bureau?" he asked innocently.

  "The service comes free to infants," she retorted sweetly.

  She was called away to attend to other business. An hour later she passed the desk where he was working.

  "So you think I'm an infant at that game, do you?"

  "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," was her saucy answer.

  "You haven't--not a mite. What about Don Manuel? Is he an infant at it, too?"

  A sudden flame of color swept her face. The words she flung at Gordon seemed irrelevant, but he did not think them so. "I hate him."

  And with that she was gone.

  Dick's eyes twinkled. He had discovered another reason for her interest in his fortunes.

  Later in the day, when the pressure of work had relaxed, the clerk drifted his way again while searching for some papers.

  "Your lawyers are paid to look up all this, aren't they? Why do you do it, then?" she asked.

  "The case interests me. I want to know all about it."

  "Would you like to see the old Valdés house here in Santa Fé? My father bought it when Alvaro Valdés built his new town house. One day I found in the garret a bundle of old Spanish letters. They were written by old Bartolomé to his son. I saved them. Would you care to see them?"

  "Very much. The old chap was a great character. I suppose he was really the last of the great feudal barons. The French Revolution put an end to them in Europe--that and the industrial revolution. It's rather amazing that out here in the desert of this new land dedicated to democracy the idea was transplanted and survived so long."

  "I'll bring the letters to-morrow and you can look them over. Any time you like I'll show you over the house. It's really rather interesting--much more so than their new one, which is so modern that it looks like a thousand others. Valencia was born in the old house. What will you give me to let you into the room?"

  He brushed aside her impudence with a laugh. "Your boss is looking this way. I think he's getting ready to fire you."

  "He's more likely to be fired himself. I'm under civil service and he isn't. Will you take your shoes off when you go into the holy of holies?"

  "What happens to little girls when they ask too many questions? Go 'way. I'm busy."

  CHAPTER XIII

  AMBUSHED

  On her return from luncheon that same afternoon Miss Underwood brought Dick a bundle of letters tied with a ribbon. She tossed them down upon the desk in front of him.

  "I haven't read them myself. Of course they're in Spa
nish. I did try to get through one of them, but it was too much like work and I gave it up. But since they're written by her grandfather they'll interest you more than they did me," Miss Kate told him, with the saucy tilt to her chin that usually accompanied her impudence.

  He had lived in Chihuahua three years as a mining engineer, so that he spoke and read Spanish readily. The old Don wrote a stiff angular hand, but as soon as he became accustomed to it Dick found little difficulty. Some of the letters were written from the ranch, but most of them carried the Santa Fé date line at the time the old gentleman was governor of the royal province. They were addressed to his son Alvaro, at that time a schoolboy in Mexico City. Clearly Don Bartolomé intended his son to be informed as to the affairs of the province, for the letters were a mine of information in regard to political and social conditions. They discussed at length, too, the business interests of the family and the welfare of the peons dependent upon it.