by Brand, Max
He ran to the window. There was a two-story drop, but a drainage pipe ran not far away. He was over the window sill instantly, and slithering down the pipe to the ground.
Once there, he breathed more easily; his heart stopped racing; his brain began to function like a useful engine.
The sound he had heard in his sleep might have come from any direction. In fact, it seemed to him that it must have floated into the room from a place directly outside the window. But nothing lived in the moonlight before him. Only the alfalfa extended pale and gleaming, as though covered with frost. A warm wind was blowing. It carried to him the alkaline breath of the desert beyond the oasis, and the thought, once more, of Barry Christian. A picture rushed into his mind of the many riders, and the many loping horses, swinging steadily forward on the blood trail.
He had only perhaps this single night to live through, and yet he was squandering his time on the scream of a woman!
But he turned the corner of the hotel and reached the patio entrance. The gate had been closed. He climbed, using the heavy iron bars that reënforced the wood, until he was at the top of the gate, and off that onto the top of the wall.
There he lay out on his stomach, his head pillowed in his folded arms, and looked about him. The patio of a Spanish-built house is like the brain of a man. Everything that happens in the house will sooner or later show some trace of its occurrence in the patio.
So he waited.
All the windows, like blind, black eyes, looked out on the patio. The silence was perfect. Then a rooster crowed, making a voice that sounded far, far away, coming from behind the oasis, yet it must have been close at hand. A moment later something came through the darkness of a room, something white that approached the window, that flashed in the shaft of the moonlight, and a girl leaned out over the sill.
In the speed of her glance, the rapid turning of her head as she swept the patio, there was desperation. She spun suddenly about. Another form had loomed behind her. Arms of darkness grappled her, and swept her into the shadows, as a great fish might catch prey on the surface and drag it instantly down into the gloomy depths.
The window, a moment later, was closed, the frame groaning against the sides. And the shudder of that sound was matched by the tremor in the body of Rap Brender.
He must do something. He must get to that room.
He had, at first, a feeling that the wise thing would be to go straight to his host and make inquiries. But he remembered the locked door of his room. He had been closed in until other events were concluded on this night, and his door could not have been fastened without the order of Higgins.
And was there anything of which Tom Higgins was incapable?
Brender scanned the farther wall of the patio, near the window which he had been watching. It was a sheer rise, but it was broken by a window in the first story. If he could climb by the aid of that window, his hands would reach the sill of the window above.
That was enough for him. What he could accomplish after getting into the room, he did not ask himself. Forethought rarely troubled him, but impulse ruled his actions.
He crawled back to the gate of the patio and climbed down its inside surface as easily as he had mounted from without. Then, skulking close to the wall, he rounded the patio until he was beneath the window he had marked.
It was not easy to climb. The lower window helped him, but as he gained the top ledge of it, he lost a handhold and slipped. The weight of his body jerked him free. Luck enabled him to land on his feet. He pitched forward on his hands, skinning the palms of them badly.
Then he stood up and huddled into a corner, wondering what noise his fall had made, and what eyes might have been watching him.
Nothing could be gained by such delays, he told himself, except to give fear a chance to enter him. So he tried the climb again, more cautiously. Some of the strength had gone out of him. The sound of his breathing seemed loud enough to arouse the entire household. But he gained a handhold on the sill of the upper window this time.
At that, such a strength of hope surged up in him that he was easily able to draw himself up into the casement. There was hardly any other name for the aperture, considering the thickness of the rock wall.
He put his face against the glass. There was nothing before him except darkness, that seemed to be whirling slowly before his eyes. He tried the window sash. It rose an inch, then stuck. He had to work it softly back and forth in order to raise it completely without making a sound, and as he worked he wondered what eyes might be watching him either from the outside or from the secure blackness within.
Once the sash was up he slipped into the room.
The air was warm there. The smell of the goat-skin rugs and coverings of chairs hung in the air, and another scent, too, high up the scale, like the thin, sweet vibration of a violin — the fragrance of a perfume!
Rap Brender, standing back against the wall, staring at the darkness with eyes which could plumb it hardly a step at a time, told himself that she was not only young, but beautiful. He could not be wrong. A true message had flashed to him through the moonlight across the width of the patio!
For when is instinct wrong?
He moved forward. His hands found a chair, a table. His eyes began to help him more. He saw the loom of a bed — but his carefully exploring hands discovered that it was not occupied.
He reached a door, found the knob, turned it, and gained nothing by the pull which he gave it.
He had come all this way to be stopped by a locked door, then! Suddenly, in disgust and in deep misgiving, he decided that he would return by the way he had come, and regain his room and try to fall asleep again.
He went to the window, but one glance at the patio, at the gate which he had climbed, made him set his teeth with a new determination. He had come too far to give up this effort without more of a battle.
He returned to the door. After all, it might be stuck, not locked. So he took hold on the knob, lifted hard, and felt the heavy frame, as he thought, give a trifle. A moment later it was swinging silently open against him!
He looked out into the hall. A lamp, with the wick turned low, hung down from the ceiling, and gave feeble rays up and down the length of the corridor. On either side of that hall there were doorways, any one of which might give entrance to the place where the girl was kept.
One of those doors now suddenly opened, letting out a full shaft of light from the interior. He had a glimpse of a big man wearing a great pair of mustaches, a tall and splendid fellow with the bearing of a general. With him stepped a smaller companion, dapper, lean, cat-footed, moving obsequiously beside him of the mustaches.
Brender had closed the door of his room. Now, hearing the voices coming, he pressed his ear close to the crack. He heard the footfalls; he heard a quiet, deep voice saying:
“Time and patience will cure all evils, even a woman!”
He heard a muttered answer, and the pair passed on, turning a corner, were gone from hearing.
Brender opened his door again and looked out.
Had they locked the door through which they had appeared?
No doubt they had, but they had left the key, brightly gleaming, in the lock. His heart leaped when he saw it, and, instantly gliding into the hall, he stepped to that other doorway and turned the key. The bolt slid back with an audible clank, and he quickly pulled the door open and stepped inside.
The girl stood at the farther end of the bedroom against the wall. But she was not alone. Confronting her, with back turned to Brender, was a stodgy man in an aggressive pose, arid it was plain that the silence into which Brender had stepped was simply a tense pause in a combat of wills.
CHAPTER IX
The Guardian
HE had made a bit of noise in entering, and the turning of the lock had certainly been a distinct sound, yet neither the girl who faced him nor the man whose back was turned paid any more attention to him than figures in a dream. He had a chance to see the room, with its goa
tskin rug and the big, low bed; and, above all, to be surprised at the position of the lamp set in the casement. From that position it streamed its light straight at the man, and touched the girl with only a vague reflection which showed that her hair was dark and softly luminous, and gave a faint glow to her olive skin.
It was almost as hard to see her now as it had been across the distance of the patio, when the moonlight struck her, but Brender did not need to stand close. He had guessed at her as one surmises a garden in the dark by the fragrance of the rose, and by hope. To him she was beautiful, and the brightest sun and the passage of a score of years could never make him see anything other than beauty in that face.
“I’m glad you came back, Alonso,” said the other man. “She’s playing the stubborn devil again. No promises now. She won’t commit herself. The first chance she gets, she’ll start screeching like a wild cat to draw attention; she’ll have us in jail unless we chloroform her and take her out of the country in the middle of the night.”
He had not turned while speaking. Now the girl said:
“It’s not Alonso. It’s another one of your hired kidnapers!”
The man who confronted her at last whirled about, exclaiming:
“Who dares to — ”
His words stopped with a jerk. He had seen the flashing gesture with which Brender produced a gun. His own hand jumped nervously, but did not complete its motion to draw a weapon, for there was something in the way Rap Brender held the gun that made him seem the master. It was hardly higher than his hip, and tilted a little to the side. If he fired, it would be by the sense of pointing rather than by sight, and it was obvious that he would not point awry.
Now that Brender could see his man, he liked the looks of him very little. His skin was darker than mere sunburn could make it; there was the Mexican smoke in the whites of his eyes, and his cheeks puffed out in tight bags, swollen by good living. He had a short-cropped black mustache, and the only way he showed his emotion now was in the spreading and contraction of the bristling hairs as his mouth worked.
“Rosa,” he said, “is this one of your tricks? Have you anything to do with this fellow? Young man, what do you want?” The Spanish came crowding off his lips.
“Rosa,” said Brender.
“You want what?”
“He wants me, Uncle José,” said the girl in English. “And he seems to be the sort of a fellow who gets what he wants.”
She came away from the wall slowly. Brender had to fight himself to keep from looking at her; only from the corner of his eye he realized that she had flushed, and that she was smiling, and her beauty, as she came into the widening cone of the lamplight, warmed his heart to the roots.
“Unworthy and shameless girl!” groaned the man José. “I think you would go off with him in the middle of the night.”
“What can I do?” said Rosa, still smiling. “He is armed, and we are helpless. Ha!” she cried out softly. “I knew there was one man to be found in the world.”
“Young man,” said Uncle José, “I don’t know what sort of madness is working in your brain. If you’re desperate for money, I can let you have some. Tell me what you want with — ”
“Rosa,” said Brender. He flashed one glance at her, adding: “Will you come?”
“Yes!” said the girl.
“Oh, fool!” cried José.
“Soft, soft,” cautioned Brender through his teeth. “I saw you at the window overlooking the patio, Rosa. Some one dragged you away from it. Was it this fellow?”
“It was,” said she.
“And you’ll go with me?”
“Do you ask me? Will a famished man drink cold spring water? Will a starving man eat? But wait — wait! The hotel is full of my uncle’s men. The stables are filled with his horses. If you try to take me away — ”
“Hush!” said Brender. “I know you want to go, and that’s enough. Is your uncle armed?”
“Yes.”
“Take every weapon on him.”
She went straight to José and stood behind him. She was not smiling now. It was rather a silent laugh that kept her lips parted and her eyes shining.
José half turned to her with an exclamation.
“Look at me,” said Brender. “And stand like a stone. I don’t know the customs in your country. But up here a man who handles a woman the way you’ve done to-night gets his face bashed in with a gun. Stand fast, and think with your hands.”
“José Murcio,” said the girl, “meet my friend — ”
“Brender,” said he. “Raoul to my mother, and Rap to the rest of the world, Miss — ”
“Cardigan.”
She had reached her hands under the arms of José Murcio, drawn back his coat, and removed from inside it a pair of heavy guns.
“Those are the fangs,” she said, “but there’s still poison in him!”
“The law will take care of you, young man,” said Murcio. “The law — ”
“The law’s wanted me for a long time,” said Rap Brender.
The eyes of the girl widened and darkened as she looked at him over the shoulder of Murcio.
“But never for kidnaping,” said Brender. “This will be something new. And I like a change of air and a change of work. Señor Murcio, back into that corner, and turn your face to the wall.”
Murcio slowly retreated. He began to breathe hard, and his knees sagged.
“What are you going to do to me?” he asked.
“Look at him!” said the girl. “And with men he’s a coward, too! Oh, Uncle José, what a king of rats you are!”
“The law,” gasped Murcio. “Decency — the law — every worthy person — Treacherous devil, you have lured him here to trap me — your guardian. The wasted years I’ve poured out in the care of you that — ”
“My wasted money that you’ve appropriated,” said the girl with a savage outburst. “The worthless hound you wanted to marry me to; the years of sneaking and spying — I throw all that in your face. He has no claim on me,” she went on swiftly to Brender. “By my father — I’m an American. I escaped into my country. He followed me and stole me away again. He’s carrying me back to Mexico, where the courts will give him the sort of rulings that he pays for. Let me have five minutes with an American court and I’m free from him forever!”
“You’ll have all the time you want — and all the freedom,” said Brender. “Turn your face to the wall, Murcio. If I have to look at it any more, I’m going to change it with my gun.”
That outburst made Murcio turn suddenly, and he leaned against the wall as though he needed that support.
He kept whispering and gasping, with a sob bubbling up and down in his throat. “It can’t happen — it cannot be — not on the verge of success — that she should be swept away from me — wealth, ease — oh, my hopes!”
Here his voice was altered as Brender, with a few lengths of cord from his pocket, trussed Murcio foot and hand, and laid him on the floor. Murcio’s own handkerchief was balled up and thrust at his mouth. He put his teeth together and fought against the gag. Brender had to tap the teeth with the barrel of his revolver before the Mexican opened his mouth to gasp. That instant the gag was inserted. And, with eyes that bulged with hysterical fear, Murcio stared at Brender. The Mexican’s face began to swell and turn purple.
“Listen,” said Brender. “If you lie calmly, you’ll be able to breathe perfectly well. But if you lose your nerve and start fighting, you’re going to choke yourself. I hope you do!”
He took the girl by the arm.
“He won’t choke?” she whispered.
“No. Except with fright. Is he your uncle?”
“Only by courtesy. He’s the guardian that bad luck gave me. Listen to me. If we try to leave by the hall, they’re sure to see us. What shall we do?”
“The window?” he suggested.
“The lamp has to burn there all night, and a man outside is watching it, to make sure that I don’t try to leave in that way.”
“We’ll have to chance the hall to get to another room,” he told her. “Come!”
She had pulled a broad-brimmed hat over her head. Through the deep shadow it made he could only guess at her face, but he knew that she was smiling.
He opened the door. The hall was empty. The flame had burned the wick of the hanging lamp low, so that the light was cast from it in long, tremulous waves. And it seemed to Brender that the metal knobs of the doors glimmered at him like watching eyes.
They crossed the hall quickly, and he turned through the doorway of the room by which he had entered the house. The moonlight was slanting more deeply through the window, and as they went toward it, he tore the spread from the bed and twirled it into a clumsy rope.
“You can slide down by this,” he told her. “Are you strong in the hands?”
She closed her hand on his wrist. It was like the grip of a hard-fingered boy.
“Good,” said he. “When you reach the ground, don’t wait for me, but start around under the arcade; keep in the shadow. Go to the patio gate and start climbing it. Use the iron crossbars that strengthen it. Take off your shoes. We have to be as soft as shadows.”
Her shoes rattled lightly against the floor as she snatched them off. She slipped over the sill of the window as he tossed out the length of the twisted bed covering. He had tied a knot in his end of it, and held it with a firm grip. And she, gripping the cloth with her hands and twisting her legs around it, cast up at him one frightened glance, then smiled.
His whole heart went out to that smile with a sudden rush.
She disappeared. Smoothly her weight descended, and then the cloth recoiled upward a little as the strain on it ceased.
He snatched it inside, and was himself instantly out the window. It was not easy work. But he had left his boots in the room, and his stockinged feet gripped the ledge of the window eaves below him more securely.
