Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26)

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  “Ol’ man Pesita’ll be some surprised when I show him what I got for him,” mused Billy. “Say!” he exclaimed suddenly and aloud, “Why the devil should I take all this swag back to that yellow-faced yegg? Who pulled this thing off anyway? Why me, of course, and does anybody think Billy Byrne’s boob enough to split with a guy that didn’t have a hand in it at all. Split! Why the nut’ll take it all!

  “Nix! Me for the border. I couldn’t do a thing with all this coin down in Rio, an’ Bridgie’ll be along there most any time. We can hit it up some in lil’ ol’ Rio on this bunch o’ dough. Why, say kid, there must be a million here, from the weight of it.”

  A frown suddenly clouded his face. “Why did I take it?” he asked himself. “Was I crackin’ a safe, or was I pullin’ off something fine fer poor, bleedin’ Mexico? If I was a-doin’ that they ain’t nothin’ criminal in what I done — except to the guy that owned the coin. If I was just plain crackin’ a safe on my own hook why then I’m a crook again an’ I can’t be that — no, not with that face of yours standin’ out there so plain right in front of me, just as though you were there yourself, askin’ me to remember an’ be decent. God! Barbara — why wasn’t I born for the likes of you, and not just a measly, ornery mucker like I am. Oh, hell! what is that that Bridge sings of Knibbs’s:

  There ain’t no sweet Penelope somewhere that’s longing much for me, But I can smell the blundering sea, and hear the rigging hum; And I can hear the whispering lips that fly before the out-bound ships, And I can hear the breakers on the sand a-calling “Come!”

  Billy took off his hat and scratched his head.

  “Funny,” he thought, “how a girl and poetry can get a tough nut like me. I wonder what the guys that used to hang out in back of Kelly’s ‘ud say if they seen what was goin’ on in my bean just now. They’d call me Lizzy, eh? Well, they wouldn’t call me Lizzy more’n once. I may be gettin’ soft in the head, but I’m all to the good with my dukes.”

  Speed is not conducive to sentimental thoughts and so Billy had unconsciously permitted his pony to drop into a lazy walk. There was no need for haste anyhow. No one knew yet that the bank had been robbed, or at least so Billy argued. He might, however, have thought differently upon the subject of haste could he have had a glimpse of the horseman in his rear — two miles behind him, now, but rapidly closing up the distance at a keen gallop, while he strained his eyes across the moonlit flat ahead in eager search for his quarry.

  So absorbed was Billy Byrne in his reflections that his ears were deaf to the pounding of the hoofs of the pursuer’s horse upon the soft dust of the dry road until Bridge was little more than a hundred yards from him. For the last half-mile Bridge had had the figure of the fugitive in full view and his mind had been playing rapidly with seductive visions of the one-thousand dollars reward — one-thousand dollars Mex, perhaps, but still quite enough to excite pleasant thoughts. At the first glimpse of the horseman ahead Bridge had reined his mount down to a trot that the noise of his approach might thereby be lessened. He had drawn his revolver from its holster, and was upon the point of putting spurs to his horse for a sudden dash upon the fugitive when the man ahead, finally attracted by the noise of the other’s approach, turned in his saddle and saw him.

  Neither recognized the other, and at Bridge’s command of, “Hands up!” Billy, lightning-like in his quickness, drew and fired. The bullet raked Bridge’s hat from his head but left him unscathed.

  Billy had wheeled his pony around until he stood broadside toward Bridge. The latter fired scarce a second after Billy’s shot had pinged so perilously close — fired at a perfect target but fifty yards away.

  At the sound of the report the robber’s horse reared and plunged, then, wheeling and tottering high upon its hind feet, fell backward. Billy, realizing that his mount had been hit, tried to throw himself from the saddle; but until the very moment that the beast toppled over the man was held by his cartridge belt which, as the animal first lunged, had caught over the high horn of the Mexican saddle.

  The belt slipped from the horn as the horse was falling, and Billy succeeded in throwing himself a little to one side. One leg, however, was pinned beneath the animal’s body and the force of the fall jarred the revolver from Billy’s hand to drop just beyond his reach.

  His carbine was in its boot at the horse’s side, and the animal was lying upon it. Instantly Bridge rode to his side and covered him with his revolver.

  “Don’t move,” he commanded, “or I’ll be under the painful necessity of terminating your earthly endeavors right here and now.”

  “Well, for the love o’ Mike!” cried the fallen bandit “You?”

  Bridge was off his horse the instant that the familiar voice sounded in his ears.

  “Billy!” he exclaimed. “Why — Billy — was it you who robbed the bank?”

  Even as he spoke Bridge was busy easing the weight of the dead pony from Billy’s leg.

  “Anything broken?” he asked as the bandit struggled to free himself.

  “Not so you could notice it,” replied Billy, and a moment later he was on his feet. “Say, bo,” he added, “it’s a mighty good thing you dropped little pinto here, for I’d a sure got you my next shot. Gee! it makes me sweat to think of it. But about this bank robbin’ business. You can’t exactly say that I robbed a bank. That money was the enemy’s resources, an’ I just nicked their resources. That’s war. That ain’t robbery. I ain’t takin’ it for myself — it’s for the cause — the cause o’ poor, bleedin’ Mexico,” and Billy grinned a large grin.

  “You took it for Pesita?” asked Bridge.

  “Of course,” replied Billy. “I won’t get a jitney of it. I wouldn’t take none of it, Bridge, honest. I’m on the square now.”

  “I know you are, Billy,” replied the other; “but if you’re caught you might find it difficult to convince the authorities of your highmindedness and your disinterestedness.”

  “Authorities!” scoffed Billy. “There ain’t no authorities in Mexico. One bandit is just as good as another, and from Pesita to Carranza they’re all bandits at heart. They ain’t a one of ’em that gives two whoops in hell for poor, bleedin’ Mexico — unless they can do the bleedin’ themselves. It’s dog eat dog here. If they caught me they’d shoot me whether I’d robbed their bank or not. What’s that?” Billy was suddenly alert, straining his eyes back in the direction of Cuivaca.

  “They’re coming, Billy,” said Bridge. “Take my horse — quick! You must get out of here in a hurry. The whole post is searching for you. I thought that they went toward the south, though. Some of them must have circled.”

  “What’ll you do if I take your horse?” asked Billy.

  “I can walk back,” said Bridge, “it isn’t far to town. I’ll tell them that I had come only a short distance when my horse threw me and ran away. They’ll believe it for they think I’m a rotten horseman — the two vaqueros who escorted me to town I mean.”

  Billy hesitated. “I hate to do it, Bridge,” he said.

  “You must, Billy,” urged the other.

  “If they find us here together it’ll merely mean that the two of us will get it, for I’ll stick with you, Billy, and we can’t fight off a whole troop of cavalry out here in the open. If you take my horse we can both get out of it, and later I’ll see you in Rio. Good-bye, Billy, I’m off for town,” and Bridge turned and started back along the road on foot.

  Billy watched him in silence for a moment. The truth of Bridge’s statement of fact was so apparent that Billy was forced to accept the plan. A moment later he transferred the bags of loot to Bridge’s pony, swung into the saddle, and took a last backward look at the diminishing figure of the man swinging along in the direction of Cuivaca.

  “Say,” he muttered to himself; “but you’re a right one, bo,” and wheeling to the north he clapped his spurs to his new mount and loped easily off into the night.

  CHAPTER XI

  BARBARA RELEASES A CONSPIRATOR

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p; IT was a week later, yet Grayson still was growling about the loss of “that there Brazos pony.” Grayson, the boss, and the boss’s daughter were sitting upon the veranda of the ranchhouse when the foreman reverted to the subject.

  “I knew I didn’t have no business hirin’ a man thet can’t ride,” he said. “Why thet there Brazos pony never did stumble, an’ if he’d of stumbled he’d a-stood aroun’ a year waitin’ to be caught up agin. I jest cain’t figger it out no ways how thet there tenderfoot bookkeeper lost him. He must a-shooed him away with a stick. An’ saddle an’ bridle an’ all gone too. Doggone it!”

  “I’m the one who should be peeved,” spoke up the girl with a wry smile. “Brazos was my pony. He’s the one you picked out for me to ride while I am here; but I am sure poor Mr. Bridge feels as badly about it as anyone, and I know that he couldn’t help it. We shouldn’t be too hard on him. We might just as well attempt to hold him responsible for the looting of the bank and the loss of the pay-roll money.”

  “Well,” said Grayson, “I give him thet horse ‘cause I knew he couldn’t ride, an’ thet was the safest horse in the cavvy. I wisht I’d given him Santa Anna instid — I wouldn’t a-minded losin’ him. There won’t no one ride him anyhow he’s thet ornery.”

  “The thing that surprises me most,” remarked the boss, “is that Brazos doesn’t come back. He was foaled on this range, and he’s never been ridden anywhere else, has he?”

  “He was foaled right here on this ranch,” Grayson corrected him, “and he ain’t never been more’n a hundred mile from it. If he ain’t dead or stolen he’d a-ben back afore the bookkeeper was. It’s almighty queer.”

  “What sort of bookkeeper is Mr. Bridge?” asked the girl.

  “Oh, he’s all right I guess,” replied Grayson grudgingly. “A feller’s got to be some good at something. He’s probably one of these here paper-collar, cracker-fed college dudes thet don’t know nothin’ else ‘cept writin’ in books.”

  The girl rose, smiled, and moved away.

  “I like Mr. Bridge, anyhow,” she called back over her shoulder, “for whatever he may not be he is certainly a well-bred gentleman,” which speech did not tend to raise Mr. Bridge in the estimation of the hard-fisted ranch foreman.

  “Funny them greasers don’t come in from the north range with thet bunch o’ steers. They ben gone all day now,” he said to the boss, ignoring the girl’s parting sally.

  Bridge sat tip-tilted against the front of the office building reading an ancient magazine which he had found within. His day’s work was done and he was but waiting for the gong that would call him to the evening meal with the other employees of the ranch. The magazine failed to rouse his interest. He let it drop idly to his knees and with eyes closed reverted to his never-failing source of entertainment.

  And then that slim, poetic guy he turned and looked me in the eye, “....It’s overland and overland and overseas to — where?” “Most anywhere that isn’t here,” I says. His face went kind of queer. “The place we’re in is always here. The other place is there.”

  Bridge stretched luxuriously. “‘There,’” he repeated. “I’ve been searching for THERE for many years; but for some reason I can never get away from HERE. About two weeks of any place on earth and that place is just plain HERE to me, and I’m longing once again for THERE.”

  His musings were interrupted by a sweet feminine voice close by. Bridge did not open his eyes at once — he just sat there, listening.

  As I was hiking past the woods, the cool and sleepy summer woods, I saw a guy a-talking to the sunshine in the air, Thinks I, “He’s going to have a fit — I’ll stick around and watch a bit,” But he paid no attention, hardly knowing I was there.

  Then the girl broke into a merry laugh and Bridge opened his eyes and came to his feet.

  “I didn’t know you cared for that sort of stuff,” he said. “Knibbs writes man-verse. I shouldn’t have imagined that it would appeal to a young lady.”

  “But it does, though,” she replied; “at least to me. There’s a swing to it and a freedom that ‘gets me in the eye.’”

  Again she laughed, and when this girl laughed, harder-headed and much older men than Mr. L. Bridge felt strange emotions move within their breasts.

  For a week Barbara had seen a great deal of the new bookkeeper. Aside from her father he was the only man of culture and refinement of which the rancho could boast, or, as the rancho would have put it, be ashamed of.

  She had often sought the veranda of the little office and lured the new bookkeeper from his work, and on several occasions had had him at the ranchhouse. Not only was he an interesting talker; but there was an element of mystery about him which appealed to the girl’s sense of romance.

  She knew that he was a gentleman born and reared, and she often found herself wondering what tragic train of circumstances had set him adrift among the flotsam of humanity’s wreckage. Too, the same persistent conviction that she had known him somewhere in the past that possessed her father clung to her mind; but she could not place him.

  “I overheard your dissertation on HERE AND THERE,” said the girl. “I could not very well help it — it would have been rude to interrupt a conversation.” Her eyes sparkled mischievously and her cheeks dimpled.

  “You wouldn’t have been interrupting a conversation,” objected Bridge, smiling; “you would have been turning a monologue into a conversation.”

  “But it was a conversation,” insisted the girl. “The wanderer was conversing with the bookkeeper. You are a victim of wanderlust, Mr. L. Bridge — don’t deny it. You hate bookkeeping, or any other such prosaic vocation as requires permanent residence in one place.”

  “Come now,” expostulated the man. “That is hardly fair. Haven’t I been here a whole week?”

  They both laughed.

  “What in the world can have induced you to remain so long?” cried Barbara. “How very much like an old timer you must feel — one of the oldest inhabitants.”

  “I am a regular aborigine,” declared Bridge; but his heart would have chosen another reply. It would have been glad to tell the girl that there was a very real and a very growing inducement to remain at El Orobo Rancho. The man was too self-controlled, however, to give way to the impulses of his heart.

  At first he had just liked the girl, and been immensely glad of her companionship because there was so much that was common to them both — a love for good music, good pictures, and good literature — things Bridge hadn’t had an opportunity to discuss with another for a long, long time.

  And slowly he had found delight in just sitting and looking at her. He was experienced enough to realize that this was a dangerous symptom, and so from the moment he had been forced to acknowledge it to himself he had been very careful to guard his speech and his manner in the girl’s presence.

  He found pleasure in dreaming of what might have been as he sat watching the girl’s changing expression as different moods possessed her; but as for permitting a hope, even, of realization of his dreams — ah, he was far too practical for that, dreamer though he was.

  As the two talked Grayson passed. His rather stern face clouded as he saw the girl and the new bookkeeper laughing there together.

  “Ain’t you got nothin’ to do?” he asked Bridge.

  “Yes, indeed,” replied the latter.

  “Then why don’t you do it?” snapped Grayson.

  “I am,” said Bridge.

  “Mr. Bridge is entertaining me,” interrupted the girl, before Grayson could make any rejoinder. “It is my fault — I took him from his work. You don’t mind, do you, Mr. Grayson?”

  Grayson mumbled an inarticulate reply and went his way.

  “Mr. Grayson does not seem particularly enthusiastic about me,” laughed Bridge.

  “No,” replied the girl, candidly; “but I think it’s just because you can’t ride.”

  “Can’t ride!” ejaculated Bridge. “Why, haven’t I been riding ever since I came here?”

/>   “Mr. Grayson doesn’t consider anything in the way of equestrianism riding unless the ridden is perpetually seeking the life of the rider,” explained Barbara. “Just at present he is terribly put out because you lost Brazos. He says Brazos never stumbled in his life, and even if you had fallen from his back he would have stood beside you waiting for you to remount him. You see he was the kindest horse on the ranch — especially picked for me to ride. However in the world DID you lose him, Mr. Bridge?”

  The girl was looking full at the man as she propounded her query. Bridge was silent. A faint flush overspread his face. He had not before known that the horse was hers. He couldn’t very well tell her the truth, and he wouldn’t lie to her, so he made no reply.

  Barbara saw the flush and noted the man’s silence. For the first time her suspicions were aroused, yet she would not believe that this gentle, amiable drifter could be guilty of any crime greater than negligence or carelessness. But why his evident embarrassment now? The girl was mystified. For a moment or two they sat in silence, then Barbara rose.

  “I must run along back now,” she explained. “Papa will be wondering what has become of me.”

  “Yes,” said Bridge, and let her go. He would have been glad to tell her the truth; but he couldn’t do that without betraying Billy. He had heard enough to know that Francisco Villa had been so angered over the bold looting of the bank in the face of a company of his own soldiers that he would stop at nothing to secure the person of the thief once his identity was known. Bridge was perfectly satisfied with the ethics of his own act on the night of the bank robbery. He knew that the girl would have applauded him, and that Grayson himself would have done what Bridge did had a like emergency confronted the ranch foreman; but to have admitted complicity in the escape of the fugitive would have been to have exposed himself to the wrath of Villa, and at the same time revealed the identity of the thief. “Nor,” thought Bridge, “would it get Brazos back for Barbara.”

  It was after dark when the vaqueros Grayson had sent to the north range returned to the ranch. They came empty-handed and slowly for one of them supported a wounded comrade on the saddle before him. They rode directly to the office where Grayson and Bridge were going over some of the business of the day, and when the former saw them his brow clouded for he knew before he heard their story what had happened.