Dust of the Desert
Page 17
CHAPTER XVI
ACCUSATION
Grant was stunned. The vision of the figure with the fine patrician facethere on the bed--in the breast the savage mark of violence--seemed buta part with the disordered fancies of recent hours. Beating of Benicia'shands on the locked door and the faint sound of her calls aroused him.He stepped to the bedside and felt for a pulse, listened for a breath.There was none.
Murder had been done swiftly and surely--and done with the ancientdagger from the weapon cluster on the wall of his own room. In thestunning discovery he had just made Grant did not find any grimcorrelation between these two circumstances. He pulled up a coverlet toconceal ugly stains, then stepped to the door and unlocked it.
Benicia was waiting there. The eyes meeting his were blazing horror.Almost Grant read in them unthinkable accusation. He put out his handsto support her, for she was swaying in her effort over the doorstep.
"No--no!" Benicia shuddered and drew away from him as though he werea man unclean. Mystified, Grant stepped aside to let her pass. He sawher run to the side of the high bed and kneel there. Her hands wentout blindly to grope for the still features on the pillow. They playeduncertainly over them, then rested on the heavy mane of hair. Herfingers repeated little smoothing gestures. A breathless faltering oflove phrases in the Spanish came from her lips. Grant, seeing that thegirl retained mastery over herself, tiptoed from the chamber; it wasnot meet that he should be witness to a soul's acceptance of the bitterfact of death.
He blundered into Bim coming back to the patio from his excursion atthe head of servants beyond the great front door and told him what hadhappened; of the dagger dropped through the window and the murder. Thebig Arizonan reared back as if roweled.
"My God, man, that leaves the girl alone here in this jumping-offplace!--With that snake Urgo in the offing. Boy, it's up to us to helpher out!"
Grant gripped his pal's hand with a low, "I knew I could count on you,old scout."
The dry patter of sandals came down the arcade from a knot of lightswhere some of the servants had gathered in indecision waiting to begiven orders. Grant recognized 'Cepcion in the mountainous figureapproaching and was recalled to the necessities of the moment.
"Tell her, Bim, what has happened and send her to her mistress. Then wemust get out men to circle the Garden and prevent any person's gettingaway."
Bagley strode to meet the major domo and rattled swift Spanish at her.The waddling Indian woman quivered and lifted her fat arms above herhead. A dreadful wavering cry came from her lips. Instantly the cry wastaken up by the servants at the far end of the patio--a bone-chilling,animal noise which climbed slowly to the highest register and endedin a yelp. At the sound Grant's blood went cold. This Indian deathhowl was the cry of the desert kind, calling the despair of creatureschained to a land of drought and ever-present death.
To escape it he went with Bim out of the great door to the unwalledspaces where the avenue of palms stood sentinels against the night.Beyond the bridge over the oasis stream lay the clutter of huts thatwas the Papago village, a fief under the overlordship of the manorhouse. Not a light showed among the thirty or forty beehive shapes whenthe two men started to walk under the palms; but suddenly a cry arosefrom the midst of the village answering that coming down the night windfrom the mourners in the great house. Rumour of death had outstrippedthe two who walked.
The single cry from the village instantly grew in volume. Treble voicesof squaws lifted the abomination of noise to the saw edge of a screech;men's harsher notes rumbled and boomed intolerably. All the night wasmade bedlam.
Lights were winking through the chinks of the jacals when Grant andBim came to the outskirts of the village. There was confusion offorms skittering about from hut to hut. Bim seized upon one man anddemanded to know the whereabouts of Quelele, head man of the village.The big Indian soon stood before them with a gesture of hand to breastindicating they were to command him.
"Somebody has killed your master," Bim told him. "Get out men on horsesto circle the Garden and go out along the road both ways. Cover everyfoot and bring in anybody you may find."
Quelele sped with hoarse shouts down the village's single street; adozen men joined him in a race for the corrals.
"There's no way for the murderer to get out and live except along theroad," was Bim's comment as they turned to retrace their steps to thehouse. "If he took to the mountains even with a horse he couldn't lasta day; they're straight up and down."
They had not gone fifty yards from the Papago village when a new soundpunctuated the death cry, now settled to a monotonous chant promisinghours' duration. It was the _bum-bum-bum_ of the water-drum--giganticgourds floated, cut side down, in a tub of water and drubbed withsticks. That noise was accompanied by the locust-like slither andrattle of the rasping sticks, another primitive tempo-settinginstrument of the Southwestern natives.
The death howl began to catch its measure by the boom and screak ofthese two instruments. A noise to beat against the inside of men'sskulls and set the bone of them in rhythm. Savage as the peaks ofAltar, unremitting as the drive of wind-blown sand against granite.
_Bum-chut-chut-chut!_ Sob of a land in chains.
"Oh, tell them to cut it!" Grant's frayed nerves cried out protest. Theother merely gave a wave of his hand comprehending resignation.
"Might as well tell the wind to stop. This'll keep up for threedays--this ding-dong business. It's custom, old son."
As they drew near to the house of death again Grant caught his mindharking back to that moment when he had come from Don Padraic's chamberto confront the girl's wild eyes--eyes with almost the unthinkable lookof accusation in them. That aspect of her eyes dumbfounded him, lefthim groping for an explanation.
Once at the house, Grant took his friend to his chamber and showedhim the knife where it lay on the floor as he had dropped it. The bigArizonan stooped over with the candle near the grisly thing--his hawk'snose and salient cheekbones were outlined against the candle flame likethe raised head of some emperor on a Roman coin--and very gingerly heturned the dagger over.
"Finger prints here on the haft," he grunted.
"Yes, mine," Grant put in. "I picked it up at first withoutknowing--without reckoning there might be--" He broke off to pourwater into the quaint old willow-ware bowl which stood with its eweron a stand in a corner, then he scrubbed his hands vigorously. A greatrelief came to him with this act of purification.
"Yours--yes, and probably somebody else's," Bim was mumbling histhoughts aloud. He stood erect once more and measured the height of thebarred window over the lintel of which was fixed the rosette of arms."Hum. I simply don't figger why the man who wanted to kill the olddon came to the outside of this room, clum up the wall an' reached inthrough those bars there to take one of these old knives. Can't see whyall that fuss--more particular, why he snuck back here an' tossed theknife through the bars after his bloody work."
"Perhaps he wanted it to appear I am the murderer," Grant hazardeddoubtfully.
"You!" Bim looked up with a wry smile. "Why should you want to kill offthat fine old man?--What motive?"
"What motive for anybody here in the house or in the Papago villageoutside for that matter?" Grant voiced his perplexity. "Don Padraic wasthe _padrone_ of every Indian from the Gulf to Arizora. From what hisdaughter tells me there's not a Papago on the place here who wouldn'tgladly have died in his place. The whole thing's too deep for me."
They left the dim chamber with its relic of violence still lying onthe floor and walked out into the perfumed patio. It was the hour whenfirst heralds of dawn were coursing across the sky. Grant looked upto the dimming stars and read there the same message that had come tohim the hours before swift stroke of tragedy: the fragility of thatspider web man spins into the gulf of infinite time. And the oneness ofthis unlimned stretch of vacancy called the Desert of Altar with thatethereal desert of stars. How infinitesimal in the face of either thesoul of man, its hopes!
A great sense of
impotence weighed down on Grant. His thoughts dweltwith the girl he loved, sore stricken by this cowardly blow in thedark, bereft of one who had been soul of her soul. Now, the last of hername, alone in this bleak wilderness with none to fend for her againstthe wiles of Urgo except the child-like Indians: what a situation forBenicia to face! The man yearned to go to where she knelt alone withher dead, to take her in his arms and give her pledge of his love andprotection. Yet that was not meet. The gulf of Benicia's grief deniedhim.
Bim brought Grant out of his reverie with, "It's my hunch we won't haveto look far to find the man behind this bad business."
"You mean--?"
"That same--Hamilcar Urgo," was Bim's positive assertion. Grantobjected:
"But you passed him well on the way to Magdalena this afternoon. It'snot likely he'd risk coming back in his car to attempt porch-climbingand murder. That's not in his line."
"Sure not! But one of these Indians around here who knows the lay ofthe house--somebody who savvyed, for instance, about those old kniveson your wall--a hundred silver pesos from Urgo's pocket--"
Grant's mind was in no state to analyze subtleties of villainy. "Ican't see what Urgo could possibly gain by killing Don Padraic unlessthere's a great deal behind his relations with Benicia's father you andI don't know."
The fat shape of 'Cepcion waddled down the nearby arcade in thedirection of the room wherein Benicia had locked herself. Bim's eyesidly followed her as he pressed his argument:
"Maybe so--maybe not. But figger the thing thisaway: Urgo's dead set onmarryin' this high-spirited senorita--if you'll excuse me trompin' ona tender subject, old hoss--an' he reckons they's two folks who don'tencourage those ideas to the limit--her father and yourself. Yourselfhe tries to get on suspicion and because you riled him on the trainlike you say. Now he does for the father an' counts he has the girl forthe taking, she having no kith or kin to come up in support, as youmight say."
The dawn reddened and still the two men in the patio fruitlesslypursued speculation. A sudden step crunched the gravel behind them.Both leaped at the sound, so taut were their nerves. They turned to seeBenicia standing in the half light with the misty banks of geraniumsfor a background. With her were the giant Papago Quelele and two otherIndians. They carried loops of hair ropes.
"Senor Hickman"--the girl's voice was deadly cold--"Senor Hickman, myservant 'Cepcion has just brought to me the dagger she found in yourroom. The dagger is stained with my father's blood, senor. There areprints of fingers on the haft of that dagger, Senor Hickman."
Grant caught the poisonous edge of hatred in the voice, read the bitteraccusation in her eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but Beniciachecked him.
"I saw you leave those prints of my father's blood on the door of hischamber, senor. Before my very eyes, senor! Just now when 'Cepcionbrings me the dagger she finds in your room I compare the print offingers on its haft with the print on the door. They are the same. Whathave you to say, Senor Hickman?"
"Say!" Bim Bagley's voice snapped like a whip lash. "Are you accusingGrant Hickman here of murder?" Benicia never even cast a glance at him.She repeated:
"What have you to say to this, Senor Hickman?" Grant answered levelly,"Enough already has been said, Senorita O'Donoju." Benicia signalled toQuelele and he advanced with the ropes.