by Unknown
Now that she had done all she could the young woman tried to put the matter out of her mind by busying herself with the affairs of the ranch. She had a talk with a cattle buyer, after which she rode out to see the engineer who had charge of the building of the irrigation system she had installed. An answer would, she was sure, be awaiting her upon her return home.
Her anticipation was well founded. One of the housemaids told her that the operator at San Jacinto had twice tried to get her on the telephone. The mistress of the ranch stepped at once to the receiver.
"Give me San Jacinto," she said to the operator.
As soon as she was on the wire with the operator he delivered the message he had for her. It was from Santa Fé and carried the signature of Stephen Davis:
"Gordon has been missing since last night. I fear the worst. For God's sake, tell me what you know."
Valencia leaned against the telephone receiver and steadied herself. She felt strangely faint. The wall opposite danced up and down and the floor swayed like the deck of a vessel in a heavy sea. She set her teeth hard to get a grip on herself. Presently the wave of light-headedness passed.
She moved across the room and sank down into a chair in front of her desk. They had then murdered him after all. She and her people were responsible for his death. There was nothing to be done now--nothing at all.
Then, out of the silence, a voice seemed to call to her--the voice of Richard Gordon, faint and low, but clear. She started to her feet and listened, shaken to the soul by this strange summons from that world which lay beyond the reach of her physical senses. What could it mean? She had the body of a healthy young animal. Her nerves never played her any tricks. But surely there had come to her a call for help not born of her own excited fancy.
In an instant she had made up her mind. Her finger pressed an electric button beside the desk, and almost simultaneously a second one. The maid who appeared in the doorway in answer to the first ring found her mistress busily writing.
Valencia looked up. "Rosario, pack a suitcase for me with clothes for a week. Put in my light brown dress and a couple of shirt-waists. I'll be up presently." Her gaze passed to the major domo who now stood beside the maid. "I'm going to Santa Fé to-night, Fernando. Order the grays to be hitched to the buggy."
"To-night! But, Señorita, the train has gone."
"Juan will go with me. We'll drive right through. My business is important."
"But it is seventy miles to Santa Fé, and part of the way over mountain roads," he protested.
"Yes. We should reach there by morning. I mean to travel all night. Make the arrangements, please, and tell Juan. Then return here. I want to talk over with you the ranch affairs. You will have charge of the ditches, too, during my absence. Don't argue, Fernando, but do as I say."
The old man had opened his mouth to object, but he closed it without voicing his views. A little smile, born of his pride in her wilfulness, touched his lips and wrinkled the parchment skin. Was she not a Valdés? He had served her father and her grandfather. To him, therefore, she could do no wrong.
CHAPTER XV
ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD
The night of his disappearance Dick had sauntered forth from the hotel with the jaunty assurance to Davis that he was going to call on a young lady. He offered no further details, and his friend asked for none, though he wondered a little what young woman in Santa Fé had induced Gordon to change his habits. The old miner had known him from boyhood. His partner had never found much time for the society of eligible maidens. He had been too busy living to find tea-cup discussions about life interesting. The call of adventure had absorbed his youth, and he had given his few mature years ardently to the great American game of money-making. It was not that he loved gold. What Richard Gordon cared for was the battle, the struggle against both honorable and unscrupulous foe-men for success. He fought in the business world only because it was the test of strength. Money meant power. So he had made money.
It was not until Dick failed to appear for breakfast next morning that Davis began to get uneasy. He sent a bellboy to awaken Gordon, and presently the lad came back with word that he could get no answer to his knocks. Instantly Steve pushed back his chair and walked out of the room to the desk in the lobby.
"Got a skeleton key to Mr. Gordon's room--317, I think it is?" he demanded.
"Yes. We keep duplicate keys. You see, Mr. Davis, guests go away and carry the keys----"
"Then I want it. Afraid something's wrong with my friend. He's always up early and on hand for breakfast. He hasn't showed up this mo'ning. The bell hop can't waken him. I tell you something's wrong."
"Oh, I reckon he'll turn up all right." The clerk turned to the key rack. "Here's the key to Room 317. Mr. Gordon must have left it here. Likely he's gone for a walk."
Davis shook his head obstinately. "Don't believe it. I'm going up to see, anyhow."
Within five minutes he discovered that the bed in Room 317 had not been slept in the previous night. He was thoroughly alarmed. Gordon had no friends in the town likely to put him up for the night. Nor was he the sort of rounder to dissipate his energies in all-night debauchery. Dick had come to Santa Fé for a definite purpose. The old miner knew from long experience that he would not be diverted from it for the sake of the futile foolish diversions known by some as pleasure. Therefore the mind of Davis jumped at once to the conclusion of foul play.
And if foul play, then the Valdés claimants to the Rio Chamo Valley were the guilty parties. He blamed himself bitterly for having let Dick venture out alone, for having taken no precautions whatever to guard him against the Mexicans who had already once attempted his life.
"I'm a fine friend. Didn't even find out who he was going out to call on. Fact is, I didn't figure he was in any danger so long as he was in town here," he explained to the sheriff.
He learned nothing either at the police headquarters or at the newspaper offices that threw light on the disappearance of Gordon. No murder had been reported during the night. No unusual disturbance of any kind had occurred, so far as could be learned.
Before noon he had the town plastered with posters in English and in Spanish offering a reward of five hundred dollars for news leading to the recovery of Richard Gordon or for evidence leading to the conviction of his murderers in case he was dead. This brought two callers to the hotel almost at once. One was the attorney Fitt, the other a young woman who gave her name as Kate Underwood. Fitt used an hour of the old miner's time to no purpose, but the young woman brought with her one piece of news.
"I want to know when Mr. Gordon was last seen," she explained, "because he was calling on my mother and me last night and left about ten o'clock."
The little man got to his feet in great excitement. "My dear young woman, you're the very person I've been wanting to see. He told me he was going calling, but I'm such a darned chump I didn't think to ask where. Is Dick a friend of your family?"
"No, hardly that. I met him when he came to our office in the State House to look up the land grant papers. We became friendly and I asked him to call because we own the old Valdés house, and I thought he would like to see it." She added, rather dryly: "You haven't answered my question."
"I'll say that so far as I know you are the last person who ever saw Dick alive except his murderers," Davis replied, a gleam of tears in his eyes.
"Oh, it can't be as bad as that," she cried. "They wouldn't go that far."
"Wouldn't they? He was shot at from ambush while we were out riding one day in the Chama Valley."
"By whom?"
"By a young Mexican--one of Miss Valdés servants."
"You don't mean that Valencia----?"
She stopped, unwilling to put her horrified thought into words. He answered her meaning.
"No, I reckon not. She wanted Dick to tell her who it was, so she could punish the man. But that doesn't alter the facts any. He was shot at. That time the murderer missed, but maybe this time----"
Miss Underwood broke in sharply. "Do you know that he has been followed ever since he came to town, that men have dogged his steps everywhere?"
Davis leaned across the table where he was sitting. "How do you know?" he questioned eagerly.
"I saw them and warned him. He laughed about it and said he knew already. He didn't seem at all worried."
"Worried! He's just kid enough to be tickled to death about it," snapped the miner, masking his anxiety with irritation. "He hadn't sense enough to tell me for fear it would disturb me--and I hadn't the sense to find out in several days what you did in five minutes."
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.