by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER XIII
BILL WILSON GOES VISITING
"I Don't know what you've been doing to Jose Pacheco, lately," wasDade's way of broaching the subject, "but Don Andres asked me to'persuade' you not to go on rodeo, on account of some trouble betweenyou and Jose."
"He wants my scalp, is all," Jack explained easily, picking burrs fromthe fringe of his sash--burrs he had gotten when he ran a race withTeresita from the farther side of the orchard to the spring, a shorttime before. "Valencia told me--and he got it from Manuel--that Jose isright on the warpath. If it wasn't for his being laid up--"
"Oh, I know. You'd like to go over and have it out with him. But youcan't. The Pachecos and the Picardos are almost like one family. I don'tsuppose Jose ever stayed away from here so long since he was a baby, ashe has since we came. It's bad enough to keep old friends away, withoutmixing up a quarrel. Have you seen Jose lately? Don Andres seemed tothink so, but I told him you'd have said something about it to me ifyou had."
"I met him in the trail, a week or so ago," Jack admitted with manifestreluctance. "He wasn't overly friendly, but there wasn't any realtrouble, if that's what you're afraid of." He looked sidelong at theother, saw the hurt in Dade's eyes at this evidence of the constraintgrowing intangibly between them, and laughed defiantly.
"Upon my soul!" he exclaimed, "one would think I was simple-minded, theway you act! D'you think a man never scowled my way before? D'you thinkI'm afraid of Jose? D'you think I don't know enough to take care ofmyself? What the devil do you think? Can't go on rodeo--you're afraid Imight get hurt! I ain't crazy to go, for that matter; but I don't knowas I relish this guardian-angel stunt you're playing. You've got yourhands full without that. You needn't worry about me; I've managed tosqueak along so far without getting my light put out--"
"By being a tolerably fair shot, yes," Dade assented, his face hardeninga little under the injustice. "But since I'm hired to look after DonAndres' interests, you're going to do what I tell you. You'll stay hereand boss the peons while I'm gone. A friendship between two familiesthat has lasted as many years as you are old, ain't going to be bustedup now, if I can help it. It's strained to the snapping-point right now,just because the don is friendly with us gringos. Of course, we can'thelp that. He had his ideas on the subject before he ever saw me or you.Just the same, it's up to us not to do the snapping; and I know onegringo that's going to behave himself if I have to take him down and seton him!"
"Whee-ee! Somebody else is hitting the war-post, if I know the signs!"Dade stirred to anger always tickled Jack immensely, perhaps because ofits very novelty, and restored him to good humor. "Have it your own way,then, darn you! I don't want to go on rodeo, nohow."
"I know that, all right," snapped Dade, and started off with his hattilted over his eyes. No one, he reminded himself, would want to spend amonth or so riding the range when he could stay and philander with aspretty a Spanish girl as ever played the game of cat-and-mouse with aman. And Jack never had been the kind to go looking for trouble; truthto tell, he had never found it necessary, for trouble usually flew tomeet him as a needle flies to the magnet.
But, a wound is not necessarily a deadly one because it sendsexcruciating pain-signals to a man's heart and brain; and love seldom isfatal, however painful it may be. Dade was slowly recovering, under therather heroic treatment of watching his successor writhe and exult byturns, as the mood of the maiden might decree. Strong medicine, that, tobe swallowed with a wry face, if you will; but it is guaranteed to cureif the sufferer is not a mental and moral weakling.
Dade was quite ready to go out to rodeo work; indeed, he was anxious togo. But, not being a morbid young man, he did not contemplate carrying abroken heart with him. Teresita was sweet and winsome and maddeninglyalluring; he knew it, he felt it still. Indeed, he was made to realizeit every time the whim seized her to punish Jack by smiling upon Dade.But she was as capricious as beauty usually is, and he knew that also;and after being used several times as a club with which to beat Jackinto proper humility (and always seeing very clearly that he was merelythe club and nothing more) he had almost reached the point where hecould shrug shoulders philosophically at her coquetry; and what isbetter, do it without bitterness. At least, he could do it when he hadnot seen her for several hours, which made rodeo time a relief for whichhe was grateful.
What hurt him most, just now, was the constraint between him and Jack;time was when Jack would have told him immediately of any unpleasantmeeting with Jose. It never occurred to Dade that he himself hadfostered the constraint by his moody aloofness when he was fighting thefirst jealous resentment he had ever felt against the other in the yearsof their constant companionship. An unexpected slap on the shoulderalmost sent him headlong.
"Say, old man, I didn't mean it," Jack began contritely, referringperhaps to his petulant speech, rather than to his mode of making hispresence known. "But--come over here in the shade, and let's have it outonce for all. I know you aren't stuck up over being majordomo, but allthe same you're not the old Dade, whether you know it or not. You goaround as if--well--you know how you've been. What I wanted to say is,what's the matter? Is it anything I've said or done?"
He sat down on the stone steps of a hut used for a storehouse andreached moodily for his smoking material. "I know I didn't say anythingabout running up against Jose--but it wasn't anything beyond a fewwords; and, Dade, you've been almighty hard to talk to lately. If you'vegot anything against me--"
"Oh, quit it!" Dade's face glowed darkly with the blood which shamebrought there. He opened his lips to say more, took a long breathinstead, closed them, and looked at Jack queerly. For one recklessmoment he meditated a plunge into that perfect candor which may beeither the wisest or the most foolish thing a man may do in all hislife.
"I didn't think you noticed it," he said, his voice loweredinstinctively because of the temptation to tell the truth, and hisglance wandering absently over to the corral opposite, where Surry stoodwaiting placidly until his master should have need of him. "There hasbeen a regular brick wall between us lately. I felt it myself and Iblamed you for it. I--"
"It wasn't my building," Jack cut in eagerly. "It's you, you old pirate.Why, you'd hardly talk when we happened to be alone, and when I tried toact as if nothing was wrong, you'd look so darned sour I just had toclose my sweet lips like the petals of a--"
"Cabbage," supplied Dade dryly, and placed his cigarette between lipsthat twitched.
Former relations having thus been established after their own fashion,Dade began to wonder how he had ever been fool enough to think ofconfessing his hurt. It would have built that wall higher and thicker;he saw it now, and with the lighting of his cigarette he swung back to amore normal state of mind than he had been in for a month.
"I'm going up toward Manuel's camp, pretty soon," he observed lazily,eying Jack meditatively through a thin haze of smoke. "Want to take aride up that way and let the sun shine on your nice new saddle?" Thoughhe called it Manuel's camp from force of habit, that hot-bloodedgentleman had not set foot over its unhewn doorsill for three weeks andmore.
Jack hesitated, having in mind the possibility of persuading Teresitathat she ought to pay a visit to the Simpson cabin that day to displayher latest accomplishment by asking in real, understandable English, howthe pup was getting along; and to show the pretty senora the proper wayto pat tortillas out thin and smooth, as Margarita had been bribed toteach Teresita herself to do.
"Sure, I'll go," he responded, before the hesitation had becomepronounced, and managed to inject a good deal of his old heartiness intothe words.
"I'm going to have the cattle pushed down this way," Dade explained, "soyou can keep an eye on them from here and we won't have to keep up thatcamp. Since they made Bill Wilson captain of the Vigilantes, there isn'tquite so much wholesale stealing as there was, anyway, and enoughvaqueros went with Manuel so I'll need every one that's left. I'll leaveyou Pedro, because he can't do any hard riding, after that fall he gotthe other day. The tw
o of you can keep the cattle pretty well down thisway."
"All right. Say, what was it made you act so glum since we came downhere?" Jack, as occasionally happens with a friend, was not content toforget a grievance while the cause of it remained clouded with mystery.
"Are you sore over that trouble I had in town? I know how you feelabout--well, about killings; but, Dade, I had to. I hate it myself. Youneedn't think I like the idea, just because I haven't talked about it. Afellow feels different," he added slowly, "when it's white men. When wefought Injuns, I don't believe it worried either one of us to think we'dkilled some. We were generally glad of it. But these others--they weremean enough and ornery enough; but they were humans. I was glad at thetime, but that wore off. And I've caught you looking at me kinda queer,lately, as if you hated me, almost. You ought to know--"
"I know you're always going off half-cocked," chuckled Dade, quitehimself again. "No, now you mention it, I don't like the idea ofshooting first and finding out afterwards what it was all about, the wayso many fellows have got in the habit of doing. Guns are all right intheir place. And when you get away out where the law doesn't reach, andyou have to look out for yourself, they come in mighty handy. But likeevery other kind of power, most men don't know when and how to use thegun argument; and they make more trouble than they settle, half thetime. You had a right to shoot, that day, and shoot to kill. Why, didn'tthe Committee investigate you, first thing after Bill was elected, andfind that you were justified? Didn't they wipe your reputation cleanwith their official document, that Bill sent you a copy of? No, thatnever bothered me at all, old man. You want to forget about it. You onlysaved the Committee the trouble of hanging 'em, according to Bill. Say,Valencia was telling me yesterday--"
"Well, what the dickens did ail you, then?"
Dade threw out both hands helplessly and gave a rueful laugh. "You'reharder to dodge than an old cow when you've got her calf on the saddle,"he complained.
"The trouble was," he explained gravely, "that these last boots of minepinched like the devil, and I've been mad for a month because my feetare half a size bigger than yours. I wanted to stump you for a trade,only I knew yours would cripple me up worse than these did. But I've got'em broke in now, so I can walk without tying my face into a hard knot.There's nothing on earth," he declared earnestly, "will put me on thefight as quick as a pair of boots that don't fit."
Jack paid tribute to Dade's mendaciousness by looking at him doubtfully,not quite sure whether to believe him; and Dade chuckled again, wellpleased with himself. Even when Jack finally told him quite frankly thathe was a liar, he only laughed and went over to where Surry stoodrolling the wheel in his bit. He would not answer Jack's chagrinedvilifications, except with an occasional amused invitation to go to thedevil.
So the wall of constraint crumbled to the nothingness out of which itwas built, and the two came close together again in that perfectcompanionship that may choose whatever medium the mood of man maydirect, and still hold taut the bond of their friendship.
While they rode together up the valley, Jack told the details of theencounter with Jose, and declared that he was doing all that even Dadecould demand of him by resisting the desire to ride down to Santa Claraand make Jose swallow his words.
"I'd have done it anyway, as soon as I brought Teresita home," he added,with a hint of apology for his seeming weakness. "But, darn it, I knewall the time that she made him think she was running away from me. Itdid look that way, when she stopped as soon as she met him; I can'tswear right now whether Tejon was running away, or whether he was justsimply running!" He laughed ruefully. "She's an awful little tease--justplumb full of the old Nick, even if she does look as innocent and asmeek as their pictures of the Virgin Mary. She had us both guessing,let me tell you! He was pretty blamed insulting, though, and I'd havelicked the stuffing out of him right then and there, if she hadn't swungin and played the joker the way she did. Made Jose look as if he'd beendoused with cold water--and him breathing fire and brimstone the minutebefore.
"It was funny, I reckon--to Teresita; we didn't see the joke. Every timeI bring up the subject of that runaway, she laughs; but she won't saywhether it was a runaway, no matter how I sneak the question in. So Ijust let it go, seeing Jose is laid up now; only, next time I bump intoJose Pacheco, he's going to act pretty, or there's liable to be a littleexcitement.
"I wish I had my pistols. I wrote to Bill Wilson about them again, theother day; if he doesn't send them down pretty soon, I'm going afterthem." He stopped, his attention arrested by the peculiar behavior of aherd of a hundred or more cattle, a little distance from the road.
"Now, what do you suppose is the excitement over there?" he asked; andfor answer Dade turned from the trail to investigate.
"Maybe they've run across the carcass of a critter that's been killed,"he hazarded, "though this is pretty close home for beef thieves to getin their work. Most of the stock is killed north and east of Manuel'scamp."
The cattle, moving restlessly about and jabbing their long, wicked hornsat any animal that got in the way, lifted heads to stare at themsuspiciously, before they turned tail and scampered off through themustard. From the live oak under which they had been gathered came awelcoming shout, and the two, riding under the tent-like branches,craned necks in astonishment.
"Hello, Jack," spoke the voice again. "I'm almighty glad to see yuh!Hello, Dade, how are yuh?"
"Bill Wilson, by thunder!" Jack's tone was incredulous.
Bill, roosting a good ten feet from the ground on a great, horizontallimb, flicked the ashes from the cigar he was smoking and grinned downat them unabashed.
"You sure took your time about getting here," he remarked, hitchinghimself into a more comfortable posture on the rough bark. "I've beenpraying for you, two hours and more. Say, don't ever talk to me abouthungry wolf-packs, boys. I'll take 'em in preference to the meek-eyedcow-bossies, any time."
They besought him for details and got them in Bill's own fashion oftelling. Briefly, he had long had in mind a trip down to the Picardoranch, just to see the boys and the country and have a talk over thestirring events of the past month; and, he added, he wanted to bringJack his pistols himself, because it was not reasonable to expect anygreaser to withstand the temptation of keeping them, once he got them inhis hands.
Therefore, having plenty of excuses for venturing so far from his place,and having "tied the dove of peace to the ridge-pole" of town by meansof some thorough work on the part of the new Committee, he had boldlyset forth that morning, soon after sunrise, upon a horse which somebodyhad sworn that a lady could ride.
Bill confessed frankly that he wasn't any lady, however; and so, whenthe horse ducked unexpectedly to one side of the trail, because ofsomething he saw in the long grass, Bill surprised himself very much bygetting his next clear impression of the situation from the ground.
"I dunno how I got there, but I was there, all right, and it didn't feelgood, either. But I'd been making up my mind to get off and try walkingthough, so I done it. Say, I don't see nothing so damned attractiveabout riding horseback, anyway!"
He yelled at the horse to stop, but it appeared that his whoas were soterrifying that the horse ran for its life. So Bill started to walk,beguiling the time, by soliloquizing upon--well, Bill put it this way:"I walked and I cussed, and I cussed and I walked, for about four hoursand a half. Say! How do you make out it's only twenty miles?"
"Nearer thirty" corrected Dade, and Bill grunted and went on with thestory of his misfortunes. Walking became monotonous, and he wearied ofsoliloquy before the cattle discovered him.
"Met quite a band, all of a sudden," said Bill. "They throned up theirheads and looked at me like I was wild Injuns, and I shooed 'em off--ortried to. They did run a little piece, and then they all turned andlooked a minute, and commenced coming again, heads up and tailsa-rising. And," he added naively, "I commenced going!" He said hethought that he could go faster than they could come; but the faster hedeparted, the more eager was the
ir arrival. "Till we was all of us onthe gallop and tongues a-hanging."
Bill was big, and he was inclined to flesh because of no exercise morestrenuous than quelling incipient riots in his place, or weighing thedust that passed into his hands and ownership. He must have run for somedistance, since he swore by several forbidden things that the chaselasted for five miles--"And if you don't believe it, you can ride backup the trail till you come to the dent I made with my toes when Istarted in."
Other cattle came up and joined in the race, until Bill had quite afollowing; and when he was gasping for breath and losing hope of seeinganother day, he came upon a live oak, whose branches started almost fromthe roots and inclined upward so gently that even a fat man who has losthis breath need not hesitate over the climbing.
"Thank the good Lord he don't cut all his trees after the same pattern,"finished Bill fervently, "and that live oaks ain't built like redwoods.If they was, you'd be wiping off my coat-buttons right now, trying toidentify my remains!"
Being polite young men, and having a sincere liking for Bill, they hidcertain exchanges of grins and glances under their hat-brims (Bill beingabove them and the brims being wide) and did not by a single wordbelittle the escape he had had from man-eating cows. Instead, Dadecoaxed him down from the tree and onto Surry, swearing solemnly that thehorse was quite as safe as the limb to which Bill showed a dispositionto cling. Bill was hard to persuade, but since Dade was a man whoinspired faith instinctively, the exchange was finally accomplished,Bill still showing that strange, clinging disposition that made him gripthe saddle-horn as a drowning man is said to grasp at a straw.
So they got him to the house, the two riding Jack's peppery palimenowith some difficulty; while Surry stepped softly that he might notdislodge that burden in the saddle, whose body lurched insecurely andmade the horse feel at every step the ignorance of the man. They got himand themselves to the house; and his presence there did its part towardsstrengthening Don Andres' liking for gringos, while Bill himself gaineda broader outlook, a keener perception of the rights of the native-bornCalifornians.
Up in San Francisco there was a tendency to make light of those rights.It was commonly accepted that the old land grants were outrageous, andthat the dons who prated of their rights were but land pirates who wouldbe justly compelled by the government to disgorge their holdings. Billhad been in the habit of calling all Spaniards "greasers," just as theaverage Spaniard spoke of all Americans as "gringos," or heathenishforeigners.
But on the porch of Don Andres, his saddle-galled person reclining atease in a great armchair behind the passion vines, with the fragile stemof a wine-glass twirling between his white, sensitive, gambler-fingerswhile he listened to the don's courtly utterances as translatedfaithfully by Dade (Jack being absent on some philandering mission ofhis own), big Bill Wilson opened his eyes to the other side of thequestion and frankly owned himself puzzled to choose.
"Seems like the men that came here when there wasn't anything but Injunsand animals, and built up the country outa raw material, ought to havesome say now about who's going to reap the harvest," he admitted toDade. "Don't look so much like gobbling, when you get right down tocases, does it? But at the same time, all these men that leave the eastand come out here to make homes--seems like they've got a right tosettle down and plow up a garden patch if they want to. They're going todo it, anyway. Looks like these grandees'll have to cash in their chipsand quit, but it's a darned shame."
As to the town, Bill told them much that had happened. Politics werestill turbulent; but Perkins' gang of hoodlums was fairly wiped out, andthe Committee was working systematically and openly for the bestinterests of the town. There had been a hanging the week before; apublic hanging in the square, after a trial as fair as any courtproperly authorized could give.
"Not much like that farce they pulled off that day with Jack," assertedBill. "Real lawyers, we had, and real evidence for and against thefeller, and tried him for real murder. Things are cooling down fast, upthere, and you can walk the streets now without hanging onto your moneywith one hand and your gun with the other. Jack and you can come backany time. And say, Jack!" Having heard his voice beyond the vines, Billmade bold to call him somewhat peremptorily.
"There's some gold left, you know, that belongs to you. I didn't send itall down; didn't like the looks of that--er--" He checked himself on thepoint of saying greaser. "And seeing you're located down here for thesummer, and don't need it, why don't you put it into lots? You two canpick up a couple of lots that will grow into good money, one of thesedays. Fact is, I've got a couple in mind. I'd like to see you fellowsget some money to workin' for you. This horseback riding is too blamedrisky."
"That looks reasonable to me," said Dade. "We've got the mine, ofcourse, but the town ought to go on growing, and lots should be a goodplace to sink a thousand or two. I've got a little that ain't working."Then seeing the inquiring look in the eyes of Don Andres, he explainedto him what Bill had suggested.
Don Andres nodded his white head approvingly. "The Senor Weelson isright," he said. "You would do well, amigos, to heed his advice."
"Just as Jack says," Dade concluded; and Jack amended that statement bysaying it was just as Bill said. If Bill knew of a lot or two andthought it would be a good investment, he could buy them in their names.And Bill snorted at their absolute lack of business instinct and let thesubject drop into the background with the remark that, for men that hadcome west with the gold fever, they surely did seem to care very littleabout the gold they came after.
"The fun of finding it is good enough," declared Jack, unashamed, "solong as we have all we need. And when we need more than we've got,there's the mine; we can always find more. Just now--"
He waved his cigarette towards the darkening hills; and in the littlesilence that followed they heard the sweet, high tenor of a vaquerosomewhere, singing plaintively a Spanish love-song. When the voicetrailed into a mournful, minor "Adios, adios," a robin down in theorchard added a brief, throaty note of his own.
Bill sighed and eased his stiffened muscles in the big chair. "Well, Idon't blame either one of you," he drawled somewhat wistfully. "If I wasfifteen years limberer and fifty pounds slimmer, I dunno but what I'dset into this ranch game myself. It's sure peaceful."
Foolishly they agreed that it was.