by Zane Grey
The kisses of Manuel stirred within her new and strange emotions, though she accepted rather than returned them. A faint vague unease chilled her heart. Was it because she had been immodest in letting him so far have his way?
When they returned to the hotel Manuel’s ring was on her finger. She was definitely engaged to him.
It was long before she slept. She thought of Manuel, the man chosen it seemed by Fate to be her mate. But she thought, too, of the lithe, broad-shouldered young American whose eyes could be so tender and again so hard. Why was it he persisted in filling her mind so much of the time? Why did she both admire him and resent his conduct, trust him to the limit one hour and distrust the next? Why was it that he—an unassuming American without any heroics—rather than her affianced lover seemed to radiate romance as he moved? She liked Manuel very much, she respected him greatly, trusted him wholly, but—it was this curly-headed youth of her mother’s race that set her heart beating fast a dozen times a day.
She resolved resolutely to put him out of her mind. Had he not proved himself unworthy by turning the head of Juanita, whom he could not possibly expect to marry? Was not Manuel in every way worthy of her love? Her finger touched the diamond ring upon her hand. She would keep faith in thought as well as in word and deed.
At last she fell asleep—and dreamed of a blond, gray-eyed youth fighting for his life against a swarm of attacking Mexicans.
CHAPTER XX
DICK LIGHTS A CIGARETTE
Gordon met Miss Valdés in the El Tovar dining-room next morning. He was trying at the same time to tell Davis the story of his kidnaping and to eat a large rare steak with French-fried potatoes. The young man had chosen a seat that faced the door. The instant his eyes fell upon her he gave up both the story and the steak. Putting aside his napkin, he rose to meet her.
She had fallen asleep thinking of him, her dreams had been full of his vivid personality, and she had wakened to an eager longing for the sight of his gay, mocking eyes. But she had herself under such good control that nobody could have guessed how fast her heart was beating as her fingers touched his.
“We are glad your adventure is ended, Mr. Gordon, and that it has turned out no worse. Probably Mr. Davis has told you that he and I got our heads together a great many times a day,” she said, a little formally.
“You were mighty good to take so much interest in such a scalawag,” he answered warmly.
The color deepened ever so little in her face. “I couldn’t let my men commit murder under the impression they were doing me a service,” she explained lightly. “There are several things I want to talk over with you. Can you call on me this morning, Mr. Gordon?”
“Can I?”
He put the question so forcefully that she smiled and dashed a bucket of cold water over his enthusiasm.
“If you’ll be so good then. And bring Mr. Davis along with you, please. He’ll keep us from quarreling too much.”
“I’ll throw him out of the window if he don’t behave right,” Davis promised joyfully. He was happy to-day, and he did not care who knew it.
Valencia passed on to her table, and Dick resumed his seat. He had a strong interest in this young woman, but even the prospect of a talk with her could not make him indifferent to the rare steak and French-fried potatoes before him. He was a healthy normal American in his late twenties, and after several days of starvation well-cooked food looked very good to him.
“There’s some mail waiting for you upstairs—one of the letters is a registered one, mailed at Corbett’s,” his friend told him as they rose to leave. He was like a hen with one chick in his eagerness to supply Dick’s wants and in his reluctance to let Gordon out of his sight.
The registered letter was the one Valencia had sent him, inclosing the one written by her grandfather to her father. Her contrite little note went straight to his emotions. If not in words, at least in spirit, it pleaded for pardon. Even the telegram she had wired implied an undeniable interest in him. Dick went with a light heart to the interview she had appointed him.
He slipped an arm through that of Davis. “Come on, you old bald-headed chaperone. Didn’t you hear the lady give you a bid to her party this mo’ning? Get a move on you.”
“Ain’t you going to let her invite get cold before you butt in?” retorted Steve amiably.
Valencia took away from the dining-room a heart at war with itself. The sight of his gaunt face, carrying the scars of many wounds and the lines marked by hunger, stirred insurgent impulses. The throb of passion and of the sweet protective love that is at the bottom of every woman’s tenderness suffused her cheeks with warm life and made her eyes wonderful. Out of the grave he had come back to her, this indomitable foe who played the game with such gay courage. It was useless to tell herself that she was plighted to a better man, a worthier one. Scamp he might be, but Dick Gordon held her heart in the hollow of his strong brown hand.
Some impulse of shyness, perhaps of reluctance, had restrained her from wearing Manuel’s ring at breakfast. But when she returned to her room she went straight to the desk where she had locked it and put the solitaire on her finger. The fear of disloyalty drove her back to her betrothed from the enticement of forbidden thoughts. She must put Richard Gordon out of her mind. It was worse than madness to be dreaming of him now that she was plighted to another.
Gordon, coming eagerly to meet her, found a young woman more reserved, more distant. He was conscious of this even before his eyes stopped at the engagement ring sparkling on her finger, the visible evidence that his rival had won.
“You have been treated cruelly, Mr. Gordon. Tell me that you are again all right,” she said, the color flooding her face at the searching question of his eyes.
“Right as a rivet, thanks. It is to you I owe my freedom, I suppose.”
“To Manuel,” she corrected. “His judgment was better than mine.”
“I can believe that. He didn’t ride all night across dangerous mountain roads to save me.”
“Oh, that!” She tossed off his thanks with a little shrug. “They are so impulsive, my boys…like children, you know.… I was a little afraid they might—”
“I was a little afraid myself they might,” he agreed dryly. “But when you say children—well, don’t you think wolves is a more accurate term for them?”
“Oh, no—no!” Her protest was quick, eager, imperative. “You don’t know how loyal they can be—how faithful. They are really just like children, so impulsive—so unreasoning.”
“Afraid I can’t enthuse with you on that subject for a day or two yet,” he answered with a laugh. “Truth is I found their childlike impulses both painful and annoying. Next time you see them you might mention that I’m liable to have an impulse of my own they won’t enjoy.”
“That’s one of the things I want to talk with you about. Manuel says you mean to prosecute. I hope you won’t. They’re friends of mine. They thought they were helping me. Of course I have no claim on you, but—”
“You have a claim, Miss Valdés. We’ll take that up presently. Just now we’re talking about a couple of criminals due for a term in the penitentiary. I offered them terms. They wouldn’t accept. Good enough. They’ll have to stand the gaff, I reckon.”
She realized at once there was no use arguing with him. The steel in his eyes told her he had made up his mind and was not to be moved. But she could not desert her foolish dependents.
“I know. What you say is quite true, but—I’ll have to come to some agreement with you. I can’t let them be punished for their loyalty to me.”
Her direct, unflinching look, its fearlessness, won his admiration. In her slim suppleness, vibrant, feminine to the finger tips, alluring with the unconscious appeal of sex, there was a fine courage to face frankly essential facts. But he was a hard man to move once he had made up his mind
. For all his frivolous impudence and his boyish good nature, he knew his own mind, and held to it with the stiffness characteristic of outdoor Westerners.
“You’re not in this, Miss Valdés. I’ll settle my own accounts with your friends Sebastian and Pablo.”
“But even for your own sake—” She stopped, intuitively aware that this was not the ground upon which to treat with him. He would never drop the charges against the Mexicans merely because there was danger in pressing them.
“I reckon I’ll have to try to look out for myself. Maybe next time I won’t be so easy a mark,” he answered with an almost insolent laugh.
Valencia was a little puzzled. Things were not going right, and she did not quite know the reason. There was just a touch of bitterness in his voice, of aloofness in his manner. She did not know that the sight of the solitaire sparkling on her left hand stirred in him the impulse to hurt her, to refuse rather than concede her requests.
“You’re not going to push the cases against Pablo and Sebastian and still try to live in the valley, are you?” she asked, beginning to feel a little irritation at him.
“That’s just what I’m going to do.”
“You mustn’t. I won’t have it. Don’t you see what my people will think, that because Pablo and Sebastian were loyal to me—”
His acrid smile cut her sentence in two. “That’s about the third time you’ve mentioned their loyalty. Me, I don’t see it. Sebastian owns land under the Valdés grant. He didn’t want me to take it from him. Mr. Pablo Menendez—well, he had private reasons of his own, too.”
The resentment flamed in her heart. If he was shameless enough to refer to the affair with Juanita she would let him know that she knew.
“What were his reasons, Mr. Gordon—that is, if they are not a private affair between you and him?”
“Not at all.” The steel-blue eyes met hers, steadily. Dick was yielding to a desire to hurt himself as well as her, to defy her judgment if she had no better sense than to condemn him. “The idiot is jealous.”
“Jealous—why?” The angry color beat its way to the surface above her cheek bones. Her disdain was regal.
“About Juanita.”
“What about Juanita?”
“The usual thing, Miss Valdés. He was afraid she had the bad taste to prefer another man to himself.”
Davis broke in. “Now, don’t you be a goat, Dick. Miss Valdés, he—”
“If you please, Mr. Davis. I’m quite sure Mr. Gordon is able to defend himself,” she replied scornfully.
“Didn’t know I was defending myself. What’s the charge against me?” asked the young miner with a touch of quiet insolence.
“There isn’t any—if you don’t see what it is. And you’re quite right, Mr. Gordon. Your difficulties with Pablo are none of my business. You’ll have to settle them yourselves—with Juanita’s help. May I ask whether you received the registered letter I sent you, Mr. Gordon?”
Dick was angry. Her cool contempt told him that he had been condemned. He knew that he was acting like an irresponsible schoolboy, but he would not justify himself. She might think what she liked.
“Found it waiting for me this morning, Miss Valdés.”
“It was very fair and generous of you to send me the letter, I recognize that fully. But of course I can’t accept such a sacrifice,” she told him stiffly.
“Not necessary you should. Object if I smoke here?”
Valencia was a little surprised. He had never before offered to smoke in the house except at her suggestion. “As you please, Mr. Gordon. Why should I object?”
From his coat pocket Dick took the letter Don Bartolomé had written to his son, and from his vest pocket a match. He twisted the envelope into a spill, lit one end, and found a cigarette. Very deliberately he puffed the cigarette to a glow, holding the letter in his fingers until it had burned to a black flake. This he dropped in the fireplace, and along with it the unsmoked cigarette.
“Easiest way to settle that little matter,” he said negligently.
“I judge you’re a little impulsive, too, sometimes, Mr. Gordon,” Valencia replied coldly.
“I never rode all night over the mountains to save a man who was trying to rob me of my land,” he retorted.
This brought a sparkle to her eyes. “I had to think of my foolish men who were getting into trouble.”
“Was that why you offered a hundred dollars’ reward for the arrest of these same men?” came his indolent, satiric reply.
“Don Manuel offered the reward,” she told him haughtily.
An impish smile was in his eyes. “At your suggestion, he tells me. And I understand you insisted on paying the bill, Miss Valdés.”
“Why should he pay it? The men worked for me. They were brought up on my father’s place. They are my responsibility, not his,” she claimed with visible irritation.
“And now they’re my responsibility, too—until I land them in the penitentiary,” he added cheerfully.
From his pocket he took a billbook and selected two fifty-dollar bills. These he offered to Valencia.
She stood very straight. “You owe me nothing, sir.”
“I owe you the hundred dollars you paid to get hold of Sebastian. And I’m going to pay it.”
“I don’t acknowledge the debt. I wanted Sebastian for his sake, not yours. Certainly I shall not accept the money.”
“Just as you say. It isn’t mine. Care if I smoke again?” he asked genially.
She caught his meaning in a flash. “Not at all. Burn them if you like.”
“Now, see here,” interrupted Davis amiably. “You’re both acting like a pair of kids. I’m not going to stand for any hundred-dollar smokes, Dick. Gimme those bills.” He snatched them from his friend and put them in his pocket. “When you two get reasonable again we’ll decide whose money it is. Till then I expect I’ll draw the interest on it.”
“And now, since our business is ended, I think I’ll not detain you any longer, Mr. Gordon, except to warn you that it will be foolhardy to return to the Rio Chama Valley with intentions such as you have.”
“Good of you to warn me, Miss Valdés. It’s not the first time, either, is it? But I’m that bull-headed. Steve will give me a recommend as the most sot chump in New Mexico. Won’t you Steve?”
“I sure will—before a notary if you like. You’ve got a government mule backed off the map.”
“I’ve done my duty, anyhow.” Miss Valdés turned to the older man, and somehow the way she did it seemed to wipe Gordon out of the picture. “There is something I want to talk over with you, Mr. Davis. Can you wait a few moments?”
“Sure I can—all day if you like.”
Dick retired with his best bow. “Steve, you always was popular with the ladies.”
Valencia, uncompromising, waited until he had gone. Then, swiftly, with a little leap of impulse as it were, she appealed to Davis.
“Don’t let him go back to the valley. Don’t let him push the cases against Sebastian and Pablo.”
The old miner shook his head “Sorry, Miss Valencia. Wish I could stop him, but I can’t. He’ll go his own way—always would.”
“But don’t you see they’ll kill him. It’s madness to go back there while he’s pushing the criminal case. Before it was bad enough, but now—” She threw up her hands with a gesture of despair.
“I reckon you’re right. But I can’t help it.”
“Then look out for him. Don’t let him ride around in the hills. Don’t let him leave the house at night. Never let him go alone. Remember that he is in danger every hour while he remains in the valley.”
“I’ll remember, Miss Valencia,” Davis promised.
He wondered as he walked away why the talk between Dick and Miss Valdés had gone so
badly. He knew his friend had come jubilantly, prepared to do anything she asked of him. The fear and anxiety that had leaped to her face the instant Gordon had gone showed him that the girl had a deep interest in the young man. She, too, had meant to meet him half way in wiping out the gulf between them. Instead, they had only increased it.
CHAPTER XXI
WHEN THE WIRES WERE CUT
Don Manuel rode into the moonlit plaza of the Valdés ranch, dismounted, and flung the reins to the boy that came running. Pesquiera nodded a careless greeting and passed into the house. He did not ask of anyone where Valencia was, nor did he send in a card of announcement. A lover’s instinct told him that he would find her in the room that served both as an office and a library for her, seated perhaps before the leaping fireglow she loved or playing softly on the piano in the darkness.
The door was open, and he stood a moment on the threshold to get accustomed to the dim light.
A rich, low-pitched voice came across the room to him.
“It is you, Manuel?”
He stepped swiftly forward to the lounge upon which she was lying and knelt on one knee beside her, lifting her hand to his lips. “It is I, corazon mia, even Manuel the lucky.”
She both smiled and sighed at that. A chord in her responded to the extravagance of his speech, even though vaguely it did not quite satisfy. A woman of the warm-blooded south and no plaster saint, she answered presently with shy, reluctant lips the kisses of her lover. Why should she not? Had he not won her by meeting the test she had given him? Was he not a gallant gentleman, of her own race and caste, bound to her by ties of many sorts, in every way worthy to be the father of her children? If she had to stifle some faint, indefinable regret, was it not right that she should? Her bridges were burned behind her. He was the man of her choice. She listened, eyes a little wistful, while he poured out ardently the tale of his devotion.
