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

wearing him down. I'll be glad to watch him, to talk with him if he will listen to me."

But first she forced herself to what seemed a casual chat with Patten, finding him loitering upon the hotel veranda. She suggested to him that Norton was beginning to show the strain, that he looked haggard under it, and wondered if he had quite recovered from his recent illness?

Patten, after his pompous way, leaned back in his chair, his thumbs in his armholes, his manner that of a most high judge.

"He's as well as I am," he announced positively. "Thin, to be sure, just from being laid up those ten days. And from a lot of hard riding and worry. That's all."

Out of Patten's vest-pocket peeped a lead-pencil. Curiously enough, it carried her mind back to Patten's incompetence. For it suggested the fountain pen which of old occupied the pencil's place and which the sheriff had taken in his haste to secrete a bit of paper with Patten's scrawl upon it. She wondered again just what had been on that paper, and if it were meant to help Norton prove that Patten had no right to the M.D. after his name? The incident, all but forgotten, remained prominently in her mind, soon to assume a position of transcendent importance.

And then, one after the other, here and there throughout the county came fresh crimes which not only set men talking angrily but which drew the eyes of the State and then of the neighboring States upon this corner of the world. Newspapers in the cities commented variously, most of them sweepingly condemning the county's sheriff for a figurehead and a boy who should never have been given a man's place in the sun. New faces were seen in San Juan, in Las Estrellas, Las Palmas, Pozo, everywhere, and men said that the undesirable citizens of the whole Southwest were flocking here where they might reap with others of their ilk and go scot free. Naturally, the Casa Blanca became headquarters for a large percentage of the newcomers.

"The condition in and about San Juan," commented one of the most reputable and generally conservative of the attacking dailies, "has become acute, unprecedented for this time in our development. The community has become the asylum of the lawless. The authorities have shown themselves utterly unable to cope with the situation. A well-known figure of the desert town who long ago should have gone to the gallows is daily growing bolder, attaching to himself the wildest of the insurging element, and is commonly looked upon as a crime dictator. Unless there comes a stiffening in the moral fiber of the local officers, we dread to consider the logical outcome of these conditions."

And so forth from countless quarters. Galloway openly jeered at Norton. New faces, looking out from the Casa Blanca, grinned widely as the sheriff now and then rode past. Engle and Struve and Tom Cutter, anxious and beginning to be afraid of what lurked in the future, met at the hotel and sought to hit upon a solution of the problem.

"Norton has got something up his sleeve," growled the hotel keeper, "and he's as stubborn as a mule. He's after Galloway, and it begins to look as though he were forgetting that his job is to serve the county first and his own private quarrels next. I've jawed him up and down; it only makes him shake his head like a horse with flies after him."

The three, hoping that their combined arguments might have weight with Norton, went to him and did not leave him until they had made clear what their thoughts were, what the whole State was saying of him. And, as Struve had predicted, he shook his head.

"These later robberies haven't been Galloway's work," he told them positively. "They were pulled off by the same man who stuck up Kemble of the Quigley mines. Inside of a week I'll get something done; I'll promise you that. But let me do it my way."

Engle alone of the three drew a certain satisfaction from the interview.

"He has promised something definite," he told them. "Did you ever know him to do that and fail to keep his word? Maybe we're getting a little excited, boys."

The latest crime had been the robbery of the little bank at Packard Springs. The highwayman had gone in the night to the room of the cashier, forced him to dress, go to the bank, and open his safe. The result was a theft of a couple of thousand dollars, no trace left behind, and a growing feeling of insecurity throughout the county. It was for this crime that Norton meant and promised to make an arrest.

Exactly seven days from the day of his promise Norton rode into San Juan and asked for Tom Cutter. Struve, meeting him at the hotel door, looked at him sharply.

"Made that arrest yet, Norton?" he demanded. Norton smiled.

"No, I haven't," he admitted coolly. "But I've got a few minutes before my week's up, haven't I? Fix me up with something to eat and I'll have a talk with you and Tom while I attend to the inner man."

But over his meal, while Cutter and Struve watched him impatiently, he did little talking other than to ask carelessly where del Rio was.

"Damn it, man," cried Struve irritably. "You've hinted at him before now. If he's a crook, why don't you go grab him? He's in his room."

Norton swung about upon Struve, his eyes suddenly filled with fire.

"Look here, Struve," he retorted, "I've had about a bellyful of badgering. I'm running my job and it will be just as well for you to keep your hands off. As for why I don't make an arrest . . . Come on, Tom. You, too, Julius," his smile coming back. "I'm going to get del Rio."

"I don't believe . . ." began Struve.

"Seeing is believing," returned Norton lightly. "Come on."

Followed by the two men, Norton went direct to del Rio's room, at the front of the house, just across the hall from Virginia's office. At del Rio's quick "Entra," he threw open the door and went in. Del Rio, seated smoking a cigar, looked up with curious eyes which did not miss the two men following the sheriff.

"You are under arrest for the bank robbery at Packard Springs," said Norton crisply.

"Que quiere usted decir?" demanded the Mexican, to whom the English words were meaningless.

Norton threw back his vest, showing his star. And while he kept his eye upon del Rio he said quietly to Cutter:

"Look through his trunk and bags."

Del Rio, understanding quickly enough, sat smoking swiftly, his eyes narrowing as they clung steadily to Norton's. Cutter, a rising hope in his breast that at last his superior had made good, went to the trunk in the corner. Del Rio shrugged and remained silent.

Cutter began tumbling out upon the floor an assortment of clothing, evincing little respect for the Mexican's finery. Suddenly, when his hands had gone to the bottom, he sat back upon his heels, a leaping light in his eyes.

"Caught with the goods on, by God!" he cried. "Look here, Struve!"

He had whipped out a canvas bag which gave forth the chink of gold. Another came after it. And across each bag was stamped "Packard Springs Bank."

Del Rio's eyes had wandered a moment to Cutter and the evidence. Then they came back to Norton, filled with black malevolence. One did not need to understand the southern language to grasp the meaning of the words muttered under his breath.

Within the half-hour Strove, Cutter, and Engle had apologized to Norton; after this, they promised him to keep their hands off and their mouths shut.

That evening Virginia and Norton sat long together on Struve's veranda. There was more silence than talk between them. Norton seemed abstracted; the girl was plainly constrained, anxious, and found it difficult to keep her mind upon the thin thread of conversation joining their occasional remarks. Abruptly, out of one of their wordless intervals, she said quickly:

"Congratulate me on being a rich woman! I got a check from an old, almost forgotten, patient to-day. A hundred dollars, all in one lump! It's a fortune in San Juan, isn't it?"

Norton laughed with her.

"I feel like spending it all in a breath," she ran on. "I went right away to Mr. Engle and had him cash it so that I could see what five twenty-dollar gold pieces looked like. And I chinked them and played with them like a child! Do you think I am growing greedy for gold in my old age? . . . You ought to see them piled up, though; five twenties. Isn't gold a pretty thing? I've a notion to go get them and show them to you; they're right on my table ..."

She broke off suddenly, her hand on his arm.

"Did you see some one out there at the corner of the house?" she asked quickly. "Do you think . . ."

Then she laughed again and settled back in her chair.

"Already thinking somebody is going to steal my gold! My five twenties. Just to punish myself I am going to leave them on my office table all night; do you suppose I'll be wondering all the time if somebody is crawling in at a window and taking them?"

Five minutes later she said good night and left him.

"I'll be up early in the morning," she said laughingly. "Just to make sure that my gold is there!"

An hour later Virginia Page, sitting fully dressed in the darkness of her bedroom, got quietly to her feet and went to the door leading to her office. With wildly beating heart she stood listening, seeking to peer through the crack of the door she had left ajar. She had heard the faint, expected sound of some one moving cautiously.

Now she heard it again, then the rustling of loose papers lying on her table, then the faint, golden chink of yellow-minted disks. As she suddenly scratched the match in her hand, drawing it along the wall, she threw the door open. The tiny flame, held high, retrieved the room from darkness into sufficient pale light. The man at her table whirled upon her, an exclamation caught in his throat, one hand going to his hip, the other closing tight upon what it held.

She came in, her eyes steadily upon his, her face deathly pale. As the match fell from her fingers she went to the open window and drew down the shade. Then she lit a second match, set it to her lamp, and sank wearily into her chair.

"Shall we thresh matters out, Mr. Norton?" she asked.

CHAPTER XVIII (DESIRE OUTWEIGHS DISCRETION)

 

Following Virginia's barely audible words there was a long silence. Her eyes, dark with the trouble in them, rested upon Norton's face and saw the frown go from his brows while slowly the red seeped into his bronzed cheeks. For the first time in her life she saw him staggered by the shock of surprise, held hesitant and uncertain. For a little there was never a movement of his rigid muscles; one hand rested upon the butt of his revolver, the other was closed upon the stack of gold pieces. When at last he