The Western Romance MEGAPACK ®: 20 Classic Tales

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The Western Romance MEGAPACK ®: 20 Classic Tales Page 20

by Zane Grey


  “Not just this minute, please. I’ve been lying here all day, with nobody but Steve. Finally he got so restless I had to turn him out to pasture. It wouldn’t be right hospitable to send you away so soon. That box can wait till you have had all of me you can stand. What I need is good nursing, and I need it awful bad,” he explained plaintively.

  “Has Mrs. Corbett been neglecting you?”

  “Mrs. Corbett—no!” he shouted with a spirit indomitable, but a voice still weak. “She’s on earth merely to cook me chicken broth and custard. It’s you that’s been neglecting me.”

  The gleam of a strange fire was in her dark, bright eyes; in her cheeks the soft glow of beating color.

  “And my business on earth is to fight you, is it not? But I can’t do that till you are on your feet again, sir.”

  He gave her back her debonair smile.

  “I’m not so sure of that. Women fight with the weapons of their sex—and often win, I’m told.”

  “You mean, perhaps, tears and appeals for pity. They are weapons I cannot use, sir. I had liefer lose.”

  “I dare say there are other weapons in your arsenal. I know you’re too game to use those you’ve named.”

  “What others?” she asked quietly.

  He let his eyes rest on her, sweep over her, and come back to the meeting with hers. But he did not name them. Instead, he came to another angle of the subject.

  “You never know when you are licked, do you? Why don’t you ask me to compromise this land grant business?”

  “What sort of a compromise have you to offer, sir?” she said after a pause.

  “Have your lawyers told you yet that you have no chance?”

  “Would it be wise for me to admit I have none, before I go to discuss the terms of the treaty?” she asked, and put it so innocently that he acknowledged the hit with a grin.

  “I thought that, if you knew you were going to lose, you might be easier to deal with. I’m such a fellow to want the whole thing in my bargains.”

  “If that’s how you feel, I don’t think I’ll compromise.”

  “Well, I didn’t really expect you would. I just mentioned it.”

  “It was very good of you. Now I think I’ll go back to my cousin.”

  “If you must I’m coming over to his room as soon as the doc will let me, and as soon as he’ll see me.”

  She gave him a sudden flash of happy eyes. “I hope you will. There must be no more trouble between him and you. There couldn’t be after this, could there?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not if it takes two to make a quarrel. He can say what he wants to, make a door-mat out of me, go gunning after me till the cows come home, and I won’t do a thing but be a delegate to a peace conference. No, ma’am. I’m through.”

  “You don’t know how glad I am to hear it.”

  “Are you as anxious I should make up my quarrel with you as the ones with your friends?” he asked boldly.

  The effrontery of this lean, stalwart young American—if effrontery it was, and no other name seemed to define it—surprised another dash of roses into the olive.

  “The way to make up your quarrel with me is to make up those with my friends,” she answered.

  “All right. Suits me. I’ll call those deputies off and send them home. Pablo and Sebastian will never go to the pen on my evidence. They’re in the clear so far as I’m concerned.”

  She gave him both her hands. “Thank you. Thank you. I’m so glad.”

  The tears rose to her eyes. She bit her lip, turned and left the room.

  He called after her:

  “Please don’t forget my tin box.”

  “I’ll remember your precious box,” she called back with a pretense of scorn.

  He laughed to himself softly. There was sunshine in his eyes.

  She had resolved to leave him to Mrs. Corbett in future, but within the hour she was back.

  “I came about your tin box. Nobody seems to know where it is. Everybody remembers having seen it in your hands. I suppose we left it on the ground when we brought you to the house, but I can’t find anybody that removed it. Perhaps some of my people have seen it. I’ll send and ask them.”

  He smiled disconsolately.

  “I may as well say good-bye to it.”

  “If you mean that my boys are thieves,” she retorted hotly.

  “I didn’t say that, ma’am; but mebbe I did imply they wouldn’t return that particular box, when they found what was in it. I shouldn’t blame them if they didn’t.”

  “I should. Very much. This merely shows you don’t understand us at all, Mr. Gordon.”

  “I wish I had that box. It ce’tainly disarranges my plans to have it gone,” he said irritably.

  “I assure you I didn’t take it.”

  “I don’t lay it to you, though it would ce’tainly be to your advantage to take it,” he laughed, already mollified.

  “Will you please explain that?”

  “All my claims of title to this land grant are in that box, Miss Valdés,” he remarked placidly, as if it were a matter of no consequence.

  She went white at his words.

  “And it is lost—probably in the hands of my people. We must get it back.”

  “But you’re on the other side of the fence,” he reminded her gaily.

  With dignity she turned on him.

  “Do you think I want to beat you that way? Do you think I am a highwayman, or that I shall let my people be?”

  “You make them draw the line between murder and robbery,” he suggested pleasantly.

  “I couldn’t stop them from attacking you, but I can see they don’t keep your papers—all the more, that it is to their interest and mine to keep them.”

  She said it with such fine girlish pride, her head thrown a little back, her eyes gleaming, scorn of his implied distrust in her very carriage. For long he joyfully carried the memory of it.

  Surely, she was the rarest creature it had ever been his fortune to meet. Small wonder the gallant Spaniard Don Manuel loved her. Small wonder her people fed on her laughter, and were despondent at her frowns.

  Dick Gordon was awake a good deal that night, for the pain and the fever were still with him; but the hours were short to him, full of joy and also of gloom. Shifting pictures of her filled the darkness. His imagination saw her in many moods, in many manners. And when from time to time he dropped into light sleep, it was to carry her into his dreams.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  DICK GORDON APOLOGIZES

  Don Manuel was at first too spent a man even to wish to get well. As his cousin’s nursing dragged him farther and farther back into this world from which he had so nearly slipped, he was content to lie still and take the goods the gods provided.

  She was with him for the present. That sufficed. Whether he lived or died he did not care a hand’s turn; but the while Fate flipped a coin to determine whether it should be life or death for him, he had Valencia’s love as he feared he would never have it in case he recovered.

  For these days she lived for him alone. Her every thought and desire had been for him. On this his soul fed, since he felt that, as they slipped back into the ordinary tide of life, she would withdraw herself gently but surely from him.

  He had fought against the conviction that she loved his rival, the Colorado claimant to the valley. He had tried to persuade himself that her interest in the miner was natural under the circumstances and entirely independent of sentiment. But in the bottom of his heart such assurances did not convince.

  “You will be able to sit up in a few days. It’s wonderful how you have improved,” she told him one day as she finished changing his pillow.

  “Yes, I shall be well soon. You will be reli
eved of me,” he said with a kind of gentle sadness.

  “As if I wanted to be,” she reproved softly, her hand smoothing down his hair.

  “No. You’re very good to me. You don’t want to be rid of me. But it’s best you should be. I have had all of you that’s good for me, my cousin, unless I could have more than I dare hope.”

  She looked through the window at the sunlit warmth of the land, and, after a long time, said:

  “Must we talk of that, Manuel?”

  “No, niña—not if I am once sure. I have guessed; but I must be certain beyond the possibility of mistake. Is my guess right? That it can never be.”

  She turned dim eyes on him and nodded. A lump had risen to her throat that forbade speech.

  “I can still say, dearest, that I am glad to have loved you,” he answered cheerfully, after an instant’s silence. “And I can promise that I shall trouble you no more. Shall we talk of something else?”

  “There is one thing I should like to tell you first,” she said with pretty timidity. “How proud I am that such a man could have loved me. You are the finest man I know. I must be a foolish girl not to—care for you—that way.”

  “No. A woman’s heart goes where it must. If a man loses, he loses.”

  She choked over her words. “It doesn’t seem fair. I promised. I wore your ring. I said that if you saved…him…I would marry you. Manuel, I…I’ll keep faith if you’ll take me and be content to wait for…that kind of love to grow.”

  “No, my cousin. I have wooed and lost. Why should you be bound by a pledge made at such a time? As your heart tells you to do, so you must do.” He added after a pause: “It is this American, is it not?”

  Again she nodded twice, not looking at him lest she see the pain in his eyes.

  “I wish you joy, Valencia—a world full of it, so long as life lasts.”

  He took her fingers in his, and kissed them before he passed lightly to another subject:

  “Have you heard anything yet of the tin box of Mr. Gordon’s?”

  She accepted the transition gratefully, for she was so moved she was afraid lest she break down.

  “Not yet. It is strange, too, where it has gone. I have had inquiries made every where.”

  “For me, I hope it is never found. Why should you feel responsibility to search for these papers that will ruin you and your tenants?”

  “If my men had not attacked and tried to murder him he would still have his evidence. I seek only to put him in the position he was in before we injured him.”

  “You must judge for yourself, Valencia. But, if you don’t mind, I shall continue to wish you failure in your search,” he replied.

  It was now that Jimmie Corbett came into the room to say that Mr. Gordon would like to call on Don Manuel, if the latter felt able to receive him.

  Pesquiera did not glance at his cousin. He answered the boy at once.

  “Tell Mr. Gordon I shall be very glad to see him,” he said quietly.

  Nor did he look at her after the boy had left the room, lest his gaze embarrass her, but gave his attention wholly to propping himself up on his elbow.

  Dick stood a moment filling the doorway before he came limping into the room. From that point he bowed to Miss Valdés, then moved forward to the bed.

  He did not offer to shake hands, but stood looking down at his rival, with an odd look of envy on his face. But it was the envy of a brave and generous man, who acknowledged victory to his foe.

  “I give you best, Don Manuel,” he finally said. “You’ve got me beat at every turn of the road. You saved my life again, and mighty near paid with your own. There ain’t anything to say that will cover that, I reckon.”

  The Spaniard’s eyes met his steadily, but Pesquiera did not say a word. He was waiting to see what the other meant.

  “You’re a gamer man than I am, and a better one. All I can say is that I’m sorry and ashamed of myself for the way I treated you. If you still want to fight me, I’ll stand up and give you a chance to pepper me. Anything you think right.”

  “If you put it so, sir, I have no choice but to join you in regrets and hopes of future amity.”

  “I can understand that you’d like to spill me over a ten-acre lot, and that you don’t listen to my apologies with any joy,” said the Coloradoan, smiling whimsically down at his former foe.

  “I do not forget that the first offense was mine, Señor Gordon,” the Spaniard answered.

  Then came Jimmie Corbett again with a message for Miss Valdés.

  “Pablo wants to see you, ma’am. Just rode over from the ranch. Says it’s important.”

  The hands of the two men met in a strong grip as Valencia left the room, and so, too, did their steady gazes. Each of them knew that the other was his rival for the heart of the girl. Oddly enough, each thought the other was the successful suitor. But there was in each some quality of manliness that drew them together in spite of themselves.

  Valencia found Pablo sitting on the porch. A rifle lay across his knees ready for emergencies. The deputies had ridden away to the other end of the valley that morning, but Menendez did not intend to be caught napping in case of their unexpected return.

  Miss Valdés smiled. “You needn’t be so careful, Pablo. I bring you good news—better than you deserve. Mr. Gordon has promised to drop the cases against you and Sebastian. Even if the officers arrest you, nothing can come of it except a trip to Santa Fé for a few days. If I were you I would give myself up. The rewards have been withdrawn, so it is not likely your friends will betray you.”

  “But, Doña, are you sure? Will this Americano keep his word? Is it certain they will not hold me in prison?”

  “I tell you it is sure. Is that not enough? Did you find Mr. Gordon so ready to give you his word and break it when he was your prisoner?”

  “True, Doña. He laughed at us and told us to kill him. He is a brave man.”

  “And brave men do not lie.”

  Pablo turned to his horse and took down from the horn of the saddle a gunny sack tied to it. This he opened. From it he drew a tin box that had been badly blistered with heat.

  “It is Señor Gordon’s tin box. After you carried him to the house here the other night I found it under a cottonwood. So I took it home with me. They are papers. Important— Is it not so?”

  “Yes. I have been looking everywhere for them. You did right to bring them back to me.”

  “Perhaps they may help you win the land. Eh, Doña?”

  “Perhaps. You know I offered a reward of twenty-five dollars for the box. It is yours. Buy some furniture with it when you and Juanita go to housekeeping.”

  “That is all past, alas, Señorita. Juanita looks down her nose when I am near. She does not speak to me.”

  “Foolish boy! That is a sign she thinks much of you. Tell her you did wrong to accuse her. Beg her to forgive you. Do not sulk, but love her and she will smile on you.”

  “But—this Señor Gordon?”

  “All nonsense, Pablo. I have talked with Juanita. It is you she loves. Go to her and be good to her. She is back there in the milkhouse churning. But remember she is only a girl—so young, and motherless, too. It is the part of a man to be kind and generous and forbearing to a woman. He must be gentle—always gentle, if he would hold her love. Can you do that, Pablo? Or are you only a hot-headed, selfish, foolish boy?”

  “I will try, Doña,” he answered humbly. “For always have I love’ her since she was such a little muchacha.”

  “Then go. Don’t tell her I sent you. She must feel you have come because you could no longer stay away.”

  Pablo flashed his teeth in a smile of understanding and took the path that led round the house. He followed it to the sunken cellar that had been built for a milkhouse. Noiselessly he t
iptoed down the steps and into the dark room. The plop-plop of a churn dasher told him Juanita was here even before his eyes could make her out in the darkness.

  Presently he saw more clearly the slender figure bent a little wearily over the churn. Softly he trod forward. His hand went out and closed on the handle above hers. In startled surprise she turned.

  “You—Pablo!” she cried faintly.

  “I have so longed to see you—to come to you and tell you I was wrong, niña— Oh, you don’t know how I have wanted to come. But my pride—my hard, foolish pride—it held me back. But no longer, heart of my heart, can I wait. Tell me that you forgive—that you will love me again—in spite of what I said and have done. I cannot get along without my little Juanita,” he cried in the soft Spanish that was native to them both.

  She was in his arms, crying softly, nestling close to him so that his love might enfold her more warmly. Always Juanita had been a soft, clinging child, happy only in an atmosphere of affection. She responded to caresses as a rose does to the sunlight. Pablo had been her first lover, the most constant of them all. She had relied upon him as a child does upon its mother. When he had left her in anger and not returned she had been miserably unhappy. Now all was well again, since Pablo had come back to her.

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE PRINCE CONSORT

  Valencia returned to Don Manuel’s room carrying a gunny sack. She found Dick Gordon sitting beside his rival’s bed amiably discussing with him the respective values of the Silver Doctor and the Jock Scott for night fishing. Dick rose at her entrance to offer a chair.

  She was all fire and animation. Her eyes sparkled, reflecting light as little wavelets of a sun-kissed lake.

  “Supreme Court decision just come down in your favor?” asked the other claimant to the valley with genial irony.

  “No, but—guess what I’ve got here.”

  “A new hat,” hazarded Gordon, furrowing his brow in deep thought.

  “Treason!” protested Manuel. “Does the lady live who would put her new hat in a gunny sack?”

 

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