by Unknown
"That's one of the things I want to talk with you about. Manuel says you mean to prosecute. I hope you won't. They're friends of mine. They thought they were helping me. Of course I have no claim on you, but----"
"You have a claim, Miss Valdés. We'll take that up presently. Just now we're talking about a couple of criminals due for a term in the penitentiary. I offered them terms. They wouldn't accept. Good enough. They'll have to stand the gaff, I reckon."
She realized at once there was no use arguing with him. The steel in his eyes told her he had made up his mind and was not to be moved. But she could not desert her foolish dependents.
"I know. What you say is quite true, but--I'll have to come to some agreement with you. I can't let them be punished for their loyalty to me."
Her direct, unflinching look, its fearlessness, won his admiration. In her slim suppleness, vibrant, feminine to the finger tips, alluring with the unconscious appeal of sex, there was a fine courage to face frankly essential facts. But he was a hard man to move once he had made up his mind. For all his frivolous impudence and his boyish good nature, he knew his own mind, and held to it with the stiffness characteristic of outdoor Westerners.
"You're not in this, Miss Valdés. I'll settle my own accounts with your friends Sebastian and Pablo."
"But even for your own sake----" She stopped, intuitively aware that this was not the ground upon which to treat with him. He would never drop the charges against the Mexicans merely because there was danger in pressing them.
"I reckon I'll have to try to look out for myself. Maybe next time I won't be so easy a mark," he answered with an almost insolent laugh.
Valencia was a little puzzled. Things were not going right, and she did not quite know the reason. There was just a touch of bitterness in his voice, of aloofness in his manner. She did not know that the sight of the solitaire sparkling on her left hand stirred in him the impulse to hurt her, to refuse rather than concede her requests.
"You're not going to push the cases against Pablo and Sebastian and still try to live in the valley, are you?" she asked, beginning to feel a little irritation at him.
"That's just what I'm going to do."
"You mustn't. I won't have it. Don't you see what my people will think, that because Pablo and Sebastian were loyal to me----"
His acrid smile cut her sentence in two. "That's about the third time you've mentioned their loyalty. Me, I don't see it. Sebastian owns land under the Valdés grant. He didn't want me to take it from him. Mr. Pablo Menendez--well, he had private reasons of his own, too."
The resentment flamed in her heart. If he was shameless enough to refer to the affair with Juanita she would let him know that she knew.
"What were his reasons, Mr. Gordon--that is, if they are not a private affair between you and him?"
"Not at all." The steel-blue eyes met hers, steadily. Dick was yielding to a desire to hurt himself as well as her, to defy her judgment if she had no better sense than to condemn him. "The idiot is jealous."
"Jealous--why?" The angry color beat its way to the surface above her cheek bones. Her disdain was regal.
"About Juanita."
"What about Juanita?"
"The usual thing, Miss Valdés. He was afraid she had the bad taste to prefer another man to himself."
Davis broke in. "Now, don't you be a goat, Dick. Miss Valdés, he----"
"If you please, Mr. Davis. I'm quite sure Mr. Gordon is able to defend himself," she replied scornfully.
"Didn't know I was defending myself. What's the charge against me?" asked the young miner with a touch of quiet insolence.
"There isn't any--if you don't see what it is. And you're quite right, Mr. Gordon. Your difficulties with Pablo are none of my business. You'll have to settle them yourselves--with Juanita's help. May I ask whether you received the registered letter I sent you, Mr. Gordon?"
Dick was angry. Her cool contempt told him that he had been condemned. He knew that he was acting like an irresponsible schoolboy, but he would not justify himself. She might think what she liked.
"Found it waiting for me this morning, Miss Valdés."
"It was very fair and generous of you to send me the letter, I recognize that fully. But of course I can't accept such a sacrifice," she told him stiffly.
"Not necessary you should. Object if I smoke here?"
Valencia was a little surprised. He had never before offered to smoke in the house except at her suggestion. "As you please, Mr. Gordon. Why should I object?"
From his coat pocket Dick took the letter Don Bartolomé had written to his son, and from his vest pocket a match. He twisted the envelope into a spill, lit one end, and found a cigarette. Very deliberately he puffed the cigarette to a glow, holding the letter in his fingers until it had burned to a black flake. This he dropped in the fireplace, and along with it the unsmoked cigarette.
[Illustration: Holding the letter in his fingers until it had burned to a black flake]
"Easiest way to settle that little matter," he said negligently.
"I judge you're a little impulsive, too, sometimes, Mr. Gordon," Valencia replied coldly.
"I never rode all night over the mountains to save a man who was trying to rob me of my land," he retorted.
This brought a sparkle to her eyes. "I had to think of my foolish men who were getting into trouble."
"Was that why you offered a hundred dollars' reward for the arrest of these same men?" came his indolent, satiric reply.
"Don Manuel offered the reward," she told him haughtily.
An impish smile was in his eyes. "At your suggestion, he tells me. And I understand you insisted on paying the bill, Miss Valdés."
"Why should he pay it? The men worked for me. They were brought up on my father's place. They are my responsibility, not his," she claimed with visible irritation.
"And now they're my responsibility, too--until I land them in the penitentiary," he added cheerfully.
From his pocket he took a billbook and selected two fifty-dollar bills. These he offered to Valencia.
She stood very straight. "You owe me nothing, sir."
"I owe you the hundred dollars you paid to get hold of Sebastian. And I'm going to pay it."
"I don't acknowledge the debt. I wanted Sebastian for his sake, not yours. Certainly I shall not accept the money."
"Just as you say. It isn't mine. Care if I smoke again?" he asked genially.
She caught his meaning in a flash. "Not at all. Burn them if you like."
"Now, see here," interrupted Davis amiably. "You're both acting like a pair of kids. I'm not going to stand for any hundred-dollar smokes, Dick. Gimme those bills." He snatched them from his friend and put them in his pocket. "When you two get reasonable again we'll decide whose money it is. Till then I expect I'll draw the interest on it."
"And now, since our business is ended, I think I'll not detain you any longer, Mr. Gordon, except to warn you that it will be foolhardy to return to the Rio Chama Valley with intentions such as you have."
"Good of you to warn me, Miss Valdés. It's not the first time, either, is it? But I'm that bull-headed. Steve will give me a recommend as the most sot chump in New Mexico. Won't you Steve?"
"I sure will--before a notary if you like. You've got a government mule backed off the map."
"I've done my duty, anyhow." Miss Valdés turned to the older man, and somehow the way she did it seemed to wipe Gordon out of the picture. "There is something I want to talk over with you, Mr. Davis. Can you wait a few moments?"
"Sure I can--all day if you like."
Dick retired with his best bow. "Steve, you always was popular with the ladies."
Valencia, uncompromising, waited until he had gone. Then, swiftly, with a little leap of impulse as it were, she appealed to Davis.
"Don't let him go back to the valley. Don't let him push the cases against Sebastian and Pablo."
The old miner shook his head "Sorry, Miss Valencia. Wish I could sto
p him, but I can't. He'll go his own way--always would."
"But don't you see they'll kill him. It's madness to go back there while he's pushing the criminal case. Before it was bad enough, but now----" She threw up her hands with a gesture of despair.
"I reckon you're right. But I can't help it."
"Then look out for him. Don't let him ride around in the hills. Don't let him leave the house at night. Never let him go alone. Remember that he is in danger every hour while he remains in the valley."
"I'll remember, Miss Valencia," Davis promised.
He wondered as he walked away why the talk between Dick and Miss Valdés had gone so badly. He knew his friend had come jubilantly, prepared to do anything she asked of him. The fear and anxiety that had leaped to her face the instant Gordon had gone showed him that the girl had a deep interest in the young man. She, too, had meant to meet him half way in wiping out the gulf between them. Instead, they had only increased it.
CHAPTER XXI
WHEN THE WIRES WERE CUT
Don Manuel rode into the moonlit plaza of the Valdés ranch, dismounted, and flung the reins to the boy that came running. Pesquiera nodded a careless greeting and passed into the house. He did not ask of anyone where Valencia was, nor did he send in a card of announcement. A lover's instinct told him that he would find her in the room that served both as an office and a library for her, seated perhaps before the leaping fireglow she loved or playing softly on the piano in the darkness.
The door was open, and he stood a moment on the threshold to get accustomed to the dim light.
A rich, low-pitched voice came across the room to him.
"It is you, Manuel?"
He stepped swiftly forward to the lounge upon which she was lying and knelt on one knee beside her, lifting her hand to his lips. "It is I, corazon mia, even Manuel the lucky."
She both smiled and sighed at that. A chord in her responded to the extravagance of his speech, even though vaguely it did not quite satisfy. A woman of the warm-blooded south and no plaster saint, she answered presently with shy, reluctant lips the kisses of her lover. Why should she not? Had he not won her by meeting the test she had given him? Was he not a gallant gentleman, of her own race and caste, bound to her by ties of many sorts, in every way worthy to be the father of her children? If she had to stifle some faint, indefinable regret, was it not right that she should? Her bridges were burned behind her. He was the man of her choice. She listened, eyes a little wistful, while he poured out ardently the tale of his devotion.
"You do love me, don't you, Manuel?" she demanded, a little fiercely. It was as if she wanted to drown any doubts she might have of her own feeling in the certainty of his.
"More than life itself, I do believe," he cried in a low voice.
Her lithe body turned, so that her shining eyes were close to his.
"Dear Manuel, I am glad. You don't know how worried I've been ... still am. Perhaps if I were a man it would be different, but I don't want my people to take the life of this stranger. But they mean him harm--especially since he has come back and intends to punish Pablo and Sebastian. I want them to let the law take its course. Something tells me that we shall win in the end. I've talked to them--and talked--but they say nothing except 'Si, doña.' But with you to help me----"
"They'd better not touch him again," broke in her lover swiftly.
"It's a great comfort to me, Manuel, that you have blotted out your own quarrel with him. It was magnanimous, what I should expect of you."
He said nothing, but the hand that lay on hers seemed suddenly to stiffen. A kind of fear ran shivering through her. Quickly she rose from the couch.
"Manuel, tell me that I am right, that you don't mean to ... hurt him?" Her dark eyes searched his unflinchingly. "You don't mean ... you can't mean ... that----?"
"Let us forget the American and remember only that we love, my beloved," he pleaded.
"No ... No!" The voice of the girl was sharp and imperative. "I want the truth. Is it that you are still thinking of murdering him, Manuel?"
The sting of her words brought a flush to his cheeks. "I fight fair, Valencia. I set against his life my own, with all the happiness that has come flooding it. Nor is it that I seek the man's life. For me he might live a thousand years--and welcome. But my honor----"
"No, Manuel. No--no--no! I will not have it. If you are betrothed to me your life is mine. You shall not risk it in a barbarous duel."
"Let us change the subject, dear heart."
"Not till I hear you say that you have given up this wicked intention of yours."
He gave up the attempt to evade her and met her fairly as one man does another.
"I can't say that, Valencia, not even for you. This quarrel lies between him and me. I have suffered humiliation and disgrace. Until those are wiped out there must be war between me and the American."
"Since the day I first wore your ring, Manuel, I have asked nothing of you. I ask now that you will forget the slight this man has put upon you ... because I ask it of you with all my heart."
A slight tremor ran through his blood. He felt himself slipping from his place with her.
"I can't, Valencia. You don't know what you ask, how impossible it is for me--a Pesquiera, son of my honored fathers--to grant such a request." He stretched his hands toward her imploringly.
"Yet you say you love me?"
"Heaven knows whether it is not true, my cousin."
"You want me to believe that, even though you refuse the first real request I ever made of you?"
"Anything else in the world that is in my power."
"It is easy to say that, Manuel, when it isn't something else I want. Give me this American's life. I shall know, then, that you love me."
"You know now," he answered quietly.
"Is love all sighs and vows?" she cried impatiently. "Will it not sacrifice pride and vanity for the object of its devotion?"
"Everything but honor," answered the man steadfastly.
She made a gesture of despair.
"What is this honor you talk so much about? It is neither Christian nor lawful nor right."
"It is a part of me, Valencia."
"Then your ideas are archaic. The duel was for a time when every man had to seek his personal redress. There is law in this twentieth century."
"Not as between man and man in the case of a personal indignity--at least, not for Manuel Pesquiera."
"But it is so needless. We know you are brave; he knows it, too. Surely your vanity----"
He smiled a little sadly.
"I think it is not vanity, but something deeper. None of my ancestors could have tolerated this stigma, nor can their son. My will has nothing to do with it, and my desire still less. It is kismet."
"Then you must know the truth--that if you kill this man I can never----"
"Never what?"
"Never marry you."
"Why?"
"His blood would stand between us."
"Do you mean that you--love him?"
Her dark eyes met his steadily.
"I don't think I mean that, Manuel. How could I mean that, since I love you and am betrothed to you? Sometimes I hate him. He is so insolent in his daring. Then, too, he is my enemy, and he has come here to set this happy valley to hate and evil. Yet, if I should hurt him, it would stand between us forever."
"I am sorry."
"Only sorry, Manuel?"
He clamped his teeth on the torrent of protest that rose within him when she handed him back his ring. It would do no good to speak more. The immutable fact stood between them.
"I did not know life could be so hard--and cruel," she cried out in a burst of passion.
She went to the open window and looked out upon the placid, peaceful valley. She had a swift, supple way of moving, as if her muscles responded with effortless ease to her volition; but the young man noticed that to-night there was a drag to her motions.
His heart yearned toward her. He longed mig
htily to take her in his arms and tell her that he would do as she wished. But, as he had said, something in him more potent than vanity, than pride, than his will, held him to the course he had set for himself. His views of honor might be archaic and ridiculous, but he lived by his code as tenaciously as had his fathers. Gordon had insulted and humiliated him publicly. He must apologize or give him satisfaction. Until he had done one or the other Manuel could not live at peace with himself. He had put a powerful curb upon his desire to wait as long as he had. Circumstances had for a time taken the matter out of his hands, but the time had come when he meant to press his claims. The American might refuse the duel; he could not refrain from defending himself when Pesquiera attacked.