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

going to take care of Roddy now while you sleep at least a couple of hours."

She and Engle had asked themselves the question as soon as Virginia's note came to them: "What in the world were she and Norton doing on the mountainside at that time of night?" But they had no intention of asking it of any one else. Rather John Engle hastened to answer it for others.

"Muchachos" he said to the men when he sent them back to San Juan, "there was an accident last night. Señor Norton had a fall from his horse, striking his head. My cousin, Miss Page, together with Señor Norton and Señor Patten, was taking a short cut this way to make a call at Pozo. Señor Patten and Miss Page succeeded in getting Señor Norton here, where they had to operate upon him immediately. He is doing well now, thanks to their prompt action; he will be well soon. You may tell his friends."

And then, seeing little that he could do here and much that he might accomplish elsewhere, John Engle rode on his spurs back to San Juan to lay down the law to Patten.

Throughout the days and nights which followed, Virginia and Mrs. Engle nursed Norton back into a semblance of strength. One of them was always at his side. When at last the bandage might be removed from the blindfolded eyes Norton's questing glance found Virginia first of all.

"Virginia," he said quietly, "thanks to you I can start in all over now."

She understood. So did Mrs. Engle. For Norton had explained to both the banker and his wife, holding nothing back from them, telling them frankly of crimes committed, of his attempted abduction of the girl who in turn had "abducted him." He had restitutions to make without the least unnecessary delay. He must square himself and he thanked God that he could square himself, that his crimes had been bloodless, that he had but to return the stolen moneys. And, to wipe his slate clean, he stood ready to pay to the full for what he had done, to offer his confession openly, to accept without a murmur whatever decree the court might award him.

Again John Engle did his bit. He went to the county-seat and saw the district attorney, an upright man, but one who saw clearly. The lawyer laid his work aside and came immediately with Engle to the King's Palace.

"Any court, having the full evidence," he said crisply, "would hold you blameless. Give me the money you have taken; I shall see that it is returned and that no questions are asked. And if you've got any idiotic compulsion about open confession . . . Well, think of somebody besides yourself for a change. Try thinking about the Wonder Girl a little, it will be good for you."

For he never called her anything but that, the Wonder Girl. When he had heard everything, he came to her after his straightforward fashion and gripped her hand until he hurt her.

"I didn't know they made girls like you," he told her before she even knew who he was.

It was he who, summoning all of his forensic eloquence, finally quieted Norton's disturbed mind. Norton in his weakened condition was all for making a clean breast before the world, for acknowledging himself unfit for his office, for resigning. But in the end when he was told curtly that he owed vastly more to the county than to his stupid conscience, that he had been chosen to get Jim Galloway, that that was his job, that he could do all the resigning he wanted to afterward, and that finally he was not to consider his own personal feelings until he had thought of Virginia's, Norton gave over his regrets and merely waxed impatient for the time when he could finish his work and go back to Las Flores rancho. For it was understood that he would not go alone.

"I'll free del Rio because I have to, not because I want to," said the lawyer at the end. "Trusting to you to bring him in again later. He is one of Galloway's crowd and I know it, despite his big bluffs. Galloway is away right now, somewhere below the border. Just what he is up to I don't know. I think del Rio does. When Galloway gets back you keep your eye on the two of them."

After the county attorney's departure Rod Norton rested more easily. He was making restitution for all that he had done, he was getting well and strong again, he had been given such proof as comes to few men of the utter devotion of a woman. Through many a bright hour he and Virginia, daring to look confidently ahead, talked of life as it might be lived upon Las Flores when the lake was made, the lower lands irrigated, the big home built.

"And," she confessed to him at the last, her face hidden against his breast, "I never want to see a surgeon's lancet again in all of my life, Rod Norton!"

When at length the sheriff could bestride a horse he wondered impatiently what it could be that kept Jim Galloway so long away. And if he was never coming back. But he knew that high up among the cliffs, hidden away in the ancient caves, Jim Galloway's rifles were still lying.

CHAPTER XXIII (THE STRONG HAND OF GALLOWAY)

 

Oh, you will all dance and shout together very soon," said Ignacio wisely to his six bells in the old Mission garden. "You will see! Captain and the Dancer and Lolita, the Little One, La Golondrina, and Ignacio Chavez, all of you together until far out across the desert men hear. For it is in the air that things will happen. And then, when it is all done . . . Why then, amigos, who but me is going to build a little roof over you that runs down both ways, to save you from the hot sun and the rains? . . . Oh, one knows. It is in the air. You will see!"

For Jim Galloway had returned, a new Galloway, a Galloway who carried himself up and down the street with bright, victorious eyes, and the stride of full confidence, who, at least in the eyes of Ignacio Chavez, was like a blood-lusting lion "screwing up his muscles" to spring. Galloway's return brought to Roderick Norton a fresh vigilance, to Virginia a sleepless anxiety, to Florence Engle unrest, uncertainty, very nearly pure panic. During the first few days of his absence she had allowed herself the romantic joy of floating unchecked upon the tide of a girlish fancy, dreaming dreams after the approved fashion which is youth's, dancing lightly upon foamy crests, seeing only blue water and no rocks under her. Then, with the potency of the man's character removed with the removal of his physical being, she grew to see the shoals and to draw back from them, shuddering somewhat pleasurably. Now that he was again in San Juan and that her eyes had been held by his in the first meeting upon the street, her heart fluttered, her vision clouded, she wondered what she would do.

There was to be no lost action in Galloway's campaign now. Within half a dozen hours of his arrival there was a gathering of various of his henchmen at the Casa Blanca. Just what passed was not to be known; it was significant, however, that among those who had come to his call were the Mexican, del Rio, Antone, Kid Rickard, and a handful of the other most restless spirits of the county. Norton accepted the act in all that it implied to his suspicions and sent out word to Cutter, Brocky Lane, and those of his own and Brocky's cowboys whom he counted on.

Galloway's second step, known only to himself and Florrie, was a private meeting with the banker's daughter. It occurred upon the second evening following his return, just after dark among the cottonwoods, but a hundred yards from her home. He had made the opportunity with the despatch which marked him now; he had watched for her during the day, had appeared merely to pass her by chance on the street, and had paused just long enough to ask her to meet him.

"I have done all that I planned to do," he announced triumphantly, his eyes holding hers, forcing upon her spirit the mastery of his own. "The power in Mexico is going to be Francisco Villa. I have seen him. Let me talk with you to-night, Florence. History is in the making; it may be you and I together who shape the destiny of a people."

After all, she was but a little over sixteen, her head filled with the bright stuff of romance, and he was a forceful man who for his own purposes had long studied her. She came to the tryst, albeit half in trembling, a dozen tremulous times ready for a fleeing retreat.

Again he was all deference to her. He builded cunningly upon the fact that he trusted her; that he, a strong man, put his faith in her, a woman. He flattered her as she had never been flattered, not too subtly, yet not so broadly as to arouse her suspicion of his intent. He spoke quietly at first, then his voice seeming charged with his leaping ambition set responsive chords within her thrilling. He pictured to her the state he was going to found, organize, rule, an uncertain number of fair miles stretching along a tropical coast; he made her see again a palatial dwelling with servants in livery, the blue waters of the Gulf, the white of dancing sails. He spoke of a peace which was going to be declared between warring factions below the border within thirty days, of the magnificence to be Francisco Villa's, of the position to be occupied by Jim Galloway at Villa's side. His planned development of a gold-mine he mentioned merely casually.

And then at length when Florrie was prepared for the passionate declaration he humbled himself at her feet, lifted his hands to her in supplication, told her in burning words of his love. Whether the man did love her with all of the strength of his nature or whether he but meant to strike through her at John Engle, the richest man of this section of the State, it was for Jim Galloway alone to know. Certainly not for Florrie, who listened wide-eyed. . . . Once she thought that he was about to sweep her up into his arms; they had lifted suddenly from his sides. She had drawn back, crying sharply: "No, no!" But he had waited, had again grown deeply deferential, swerving immediately to further vividly colored pictures of life as it might be, of power and pomp, of a secure position from which a man and a woman might direct policies of state, shaping the lives of other men and women.

And in the end of that ardent interview Jim Galloway's caution was still with him, his knowledge of the girl's nature clear in his mind. He did not ask her answer; he merely sought a third opportunity to speak with her, suggesting that upon