The Bells of San Juan - Jackson Gregory (most read books TXT) 📗

him here, from the city to the rim of the desert--the step had been her doing, nobody's but hers. And she had come here far less for the sake of Elmer Page's cough than for the sake of his manhood. She wanted him to grow to be a man one could be proud of; there were times when his eyes evaded her and she feared the outcome.

"He is just a boy," she told herself, seeking courage. It seemed such a brief time ago that she had blown his nose for him and washed his face. She made excuses for him, but did not close her eyes to the truth. The good old saw that boys will be boys failed to make of Elmer all that she would have him.

Further to this consideration was another matter which filled the hours for her. The few dollars with which she had established herself in San Juan marched in steady procession out of her purse and fewer other dollars came to take their places. The Indian Ramorez whose stomach trouble she had mitigated came full of gratitude and Casa Blanca whiskey and paid La Señorita Doctor as handsomely as he could; he gave her his unlimited and eternal thanks and a very beautiful hair rope. Neither helped her very greatly to pay for room and board. Another Indian offered her a pair of chickens; a third paid her seventy-five cents on account and promised the rest soon. When she came to know his type better she realized that he had done exceptionally well by her.

She went often to the Engles', growing to love all three of them, each in a different way. Florrie she found vain, spoiled, selfish, but all in so frank a fashion that in return for an admittedly half-jealous admiration she gave a genuine affection. And she was glad to see how Elmer made friends with them, always appearing at his best in their home. He and Florrie were already as intimate as though they had grown up with a back-yard fence separating their two homes; they criticised each other with terrible outspokenness, they made fun of each other, they very frequently "hated and despised" each other and, utterly unknown to either Florrie Engle or Elmer Page, were the best of friends.

Of Roderick Norton San Juan saw little through these weeks. He came now and then, twice ate with Virginia and Elmer at Struve's, talked seriously with John Engle, teased Florrie, and went away upon the business which called him elsewhere. Upon one of these visits he told Virginia that Brocky Lane was "on the mend" and would be as good as new in a month; no other reference was made to her ride with him.

But through his visits to San Juan, brief and few though they were, Roderick Norton was enabled to assure himself with his own eyes that Kid Rickard was still to be found here if required, that Antone, as usual, was behind the Casa Blanca bar; that Jim Galloway was biding his time with no outward show of growing restless or impatient. Tom Cutter, Norton's San Juan deputy, was a man to keep both eyes open, and yet there were times when the sheriff was not content with another man's vision.

Nor did the other towns of the county, scattered widely across the desert, beyond the mountains and throughout the little valleys, see much more of him. If a man wished word with Rod Norton these days his best hope of finding him lay in going out to el Rancho de las Flores.

It was Norton's ranch, having been Billy Norton's before him, one of the choice spots of the county bordering Las Cruces Rancho where Brocky Lane was manager and foreman. Beyond the San Juan mountains it lay across the head of one of the most fertile of the neighboring valleys, the Big Water Creek giving it its greenness, its value, and the basis for its name. Here for days at a time the sheriff could in part lay aside the cares of his office, take the reins out of his hired foreman's hands, ride among his cattle and horses, and dream such dreams as came to him.

"One of these days I'll get you, Jim Galloway," he had grown into the habit of musing. "Then they can look for another sheriff and I can do what I want to do."

And his desire had grown very clearly defined to him; it was the old longing of a man who comes into a wilderness such as this, the longing to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before his coming. With his water rights a man might work modern magic; far back in the hills he had found the natural site for his storage dams; slightly lower in a nest of hills there would be some day a pygmy lake whose seductive beauty to him who dwells on desert lands calls like the soft beauty of a woman; upon a knoll where now was nothing there would come to be a comfortable, roomy, hospitable ranch-house to displace forever the shacks which housed the men now farther down the slopes; and everywhere, because there was water aplenty, would there be roses and grape-vines and orange-trees. All this when he should get Jim Galloway.

From almost any knoll upon the Rancho de las Flores he could see the crests of Mt. Temple lifted in clear-cut lines against the sky. If he rode with Gaucho, his foreman, among the yearlings, he saw Mt. Temple; if he rode the fifty miles to San Juan he saw the same peaks from the other side. And a hundred times he looked up at them with eyes which were at once impatient and stern; he began to grow angry with Galloway for so long postponing the final issue.

For, though he did not go near the cliff caves, he knew that the rifles still lay there awaiting Jim Galloway's readiness. A man named Bucky Walsh was prospecting for gold upon the slopes of Mt. Temple, a silent, leather-faced little fellow, quick-eyed and resourceful. And, above the discovery of color, it was the supreme business of Bucky Walsh to know what happened upon the cliffs above him. If there were anything to report no man knew better than he how to get out of a horse all there was of speed in him.

In the end Norton called upon the reserves of his patience, saying to himself that if Jim Galloway could bide his time in calmness he could do the same. The easier since he was unshaken in his confidence that the time was coming when he and Galloway would stand face to face while guns talked. Never once did he let himself hope for another ending.

Giving what time he had free to ranch matters at Las Flores the sheriff found other things to occupy him. There was a gamblers' fight one night at the camp at Las Palmas mines, a man badly hurt, an ill-starred bystander dead, the careless gunman a fugitive, headed for the border. Norton went out after him, shifted saddle from jaded beast to fresh again and again, rode two hundred miles with only the short stops for hastily taken food and water and got his man willy-nilly a mile below the border. What was more, he made it his personal business that the man was convicted and sentenced to a long term; about San Juan there was no crime less tolerable than that of "shooting wild."

But all this brought him no closer to Jim Galloway; Galloway, meeting him shortly afterward in San Juan, laughed and thanked him for the job. It appeared that the man whom Norton had brought back to stand trial was not only no friend of the proprietor of the Casa Blanca, but an out-spoken enemy.

"You'll be asking favors of me next, Norton," grinned the big, thick-bodied man. "I'd pay you real money for getting a few like him out of my way. Get me, don't you?" and he passed on, his eyes turned tauntingly.

Yes, Norton "got" him. No man in the southwest harbored more bitter ill-will for the lawless than Jim Galloway . . . unless the lawless stood in with him. Aforetime many a hardy, tempestuous spirit had defied the crime-dictator; here of late they were few who hoped to slit throats or cut purses and not pay allegiance to the saloon-keeper of San Juan.

Upon the heels of this affair, however, came another which was destined to bring Roderick Norton to a crisis in his life. Word reached him at Las Flores that a lone prospector in the Red Hills had been robbed of a baking-powder tin of dust and that the prospector, recovering from the blows which had been rained on his head, had identified one of his two assailants. That one was Vidal Nuñez; circumstances hinted that the other well might be Kid Rickard.

Norton promptly instructed Tom Cutter to find out what he could of Rickard's movements upon the day of the robbery, and himself set out to bring in Vidal Nuñez, taking a grim joy in his task when he remembered how Nuñez had been the man who, with a glance, had cautioned Antone to hold his tongue after the shooting of Bisbee at the Casa Blanca.

"Here's a man Jim Galloway won't thank me for rounding up," he told himself. "And we are going to see if his arm is long enough to keep Nuñez out of the penitentiary."

He went to San Juan, learned that nothing had been seen of the Mexican there, set the machinery of the man hunt in full swing, doubled back through the settlements to the eastward, and for two weeks got nothing but disappointment for his efforts. Nuñez had disappeared and none who cared to tell knew where. But Norton kept on doggedly; confident that the man had not had the opportunity to get out of the country, he was equally confident that, soon or late, he would get him. Then came the second meeting with Jim Galloway.

[Illustration: Then came the second meeting with Jim Galloway.]

The two men rode into each other's view on the lonely trail half-way between San Juan and Tecolote, which is to say where the little, barren hills break the monotony of the desert lands some eight or ten miles to the eastward of San Juan. It was late afternoon, and Galloway, riding back toward town, had the sun in his eyes so that he could not have known as soon as did Norton whom he was encountering. But Galloway was not the man to ride anywhere that he was not ready for whatever man he might meet; Norton's eyes, as the two drew nearer on the blistering trail, marked the way Galloway's right hand rested loosely on the cantle of his saddle and very near Galloway's right hip.

Norton, merely eying him sharply, was for passing on without a word or a nod. The other, however, jerked in his horse, clearly of a mind for parley.

"Well?" demanded Norton.

"I was just thinking," said Galloway dryly, "what an exceptionally fitting spot we've picked! If I got you or you got me right now nobody in the world need ever know who did the trick. We couldn't have found a much likelier place if we'd sailed away to an island in the South Seas."

"I was thinking something of the same kind," returned Norton coolly. "Have you any curiosity in the matter? If you think you can get your gun first . . . why, then, go to it!"

Galloway eased himself in the saddle.

"If I thought I could beat you to it," he answered tonelessly, "I'd do it. As you know. If I even thought that I'd have an even break with you," he added, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully as they took stock of the sheriff's right hand swinging free at his side and never far from the butt of the revolver fitting loosely in his holster, "I'd take the