"Not worth mentioning, don. Just a little accident. Wouldn't happen again in a thousand years. Never did see such poor shots as your valley lads. Say, will you excuse me just a minute? I got some awful important business to attend to."
"Most entirely, Señor Gordon."
"Thanks. Won't be a minute."
To Pesquiera's amazement, he dived through the door, from which smoke poured in clouds, and was at once lost to sight within.
"He is a madman," the Spaniard murmured.
"Or devil," added Sebastian significantly. "You will see, señor, he will come out safe and unharmed."
But he did not come out at all, though the minutes dragged themselves away one after another.
"I'm going after him," cried Davis, starting forward.
But Don Manuel flung strong arms about him, and threw the miner back into the hands of the Mexicans.
"Hold him," he cried in Spanish.
"Let me go. Let me go, I say!" cried the miner, struggling with those who detained him.
But Pesquiera had already gone to the rescue. He, too, plunged through the smoke. Blinded unable to breathe, he groped his way across the door lintel into the blazing hut.
The heat was intense. Red tongues of flame licked out from all sides toward him. But he would not give up, though he was gasping for breath and could not see through the dense smoke.
A sweep of wind brushed the smoke aside for an instant, and he saw the body of his enemy lying on the floor before him. He stooped, tried to pick it up, but was already too far gone himself.
Almost overcome, he sank to his knees beside Gordon. Close to the floor the air was still breathable. He filled his lungs, staggered to his feet, and tried to drag the unconscious man across the threshold with him.
A hundred fiery dragons sprang unleashed at him. The heat, the stifling smoke were more than flesh and blood could endure. He stumbled over a fallen chair, got up and plowed forward again, still with that dead weight in his arms; collapsed again, and yet once more pulled himself to his feet by the sheer strength of the dogged will in him.
So, at last, like a drunken man, he reeled into safety, the very hair and clothes of the man on fire from the inferno he had just left.
A score of eager hands were ready to relieve him of his burden, to support his lurching footsteps. Two of them were the strong brown hands of the woman he loved more than any other on earth, the woman who had galloped into sight just in time to see him come staggering from that furnace with the body of the man who was his hated rival. It was her soft hands that smothered the fire in his hair, that dragged the burning coat from his back.
He smiled wanly, murmured "Valencia," and fainted in her arms.
Gordon clutched in his stiffened fingers a tin box blistered by the heat.
* * *
CHAPTER XXIII
THE TIN BOX
Dick Gordon lay on a bed in a sunny south room at the Corbett place.
He was swathed in bandages, and had something the appearance of a relic of the Fourth of July, as our comic weeklies depict Young America the day after that glorious occasion. But, except for one thing which he had on his mind, the Coloradoan was as imperturbably gay as ever.
He had really been a good deal less injured than his rescuer; for, though a falling rafter had struck him down as he turned to leave the hut, this very accident had given him the benefit of such air as there had been in the cabin. Here and there he had been slightly burned, but he had not been forced to inhale smoke.
Wound in leg and all, the doctor had considered him out of danger long before he felt sure of Don Manuel.
The young Spaniard lay several days with his life despaired of. The most unremitting nursing on the part of his cousin alone pulled him through.
She would not give up; would not let his life slip away. And, in the end, she had won her hard fight. Don Manuel, too, was on the road to recovery.
While her cousin had been at the worst, Valencia Valdés saw the wounded Coloradoan only for a minute of two each day; but, with Pesquiera's recovery, she began to divide her time more equitably.
"I've been wishing I was the bad case," Dick told her whimsically when she came in to see him. "I'll bet I have a relapse so the head nurse won't always be in the other sick room."
"Manuel is my cousin, and he has been very, very ill," she answered in her low, sweet voice, the color in her olive cheeks renewed at his words.
The eyes of the Anglo-Saxon grew grave.
"How is Don Manuel to-night?"
"Better. Thank Heaven."
"That's what the doctor told me."
Dick propped himself on an elbow and looked directly at her, that affectionate smile of his on his face.
"Miss Valdés, do you know, ever since I've been well enough, I've been hoping that if one of us had to cross the Great Divide it would be me?"
Her troubled eyes studied him.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because it would seem more right that way. I came here and made all this trouble in the valley. I insulted him. I had in mind another hurt to him that we won't discuss just now. Then, when it comes to a showdown, he just naturally waltzes into Hades and saves my life for me at the risk of his own. No, ma'am, I sure couldn't have stood it if he had died."
"I'm glad you feel that way," she answered softly, her eyes dim.
"How else could I feel, and be a white man? I tell you, it makes me feel mean to think about that day I threw him in the water. Just because I'm a great big husky, about the size of two of him, I abused my strength and——"
"Just a moment," the girl smiled. "You are forgetting he struck you first."
"Oh, well! I reckon I could have stood that."
"Will you be willing to tell him how you feel about it?"
"Will I? Well, I guess yes."
The young woman's eyes were of starry radiance. "I'm so glad—so happy. I'm sure everything will come right, now."
He nodded, smiling.
"That's just the way I feel, Miss Valencia. They couldn't go wrong, after this—that is, they couldn't go clear wrong."
"I'm quite certain of that."
"I want to go on record as saying that Manuel Pesquiera is the gamest man I know. That isn't all. He's a thoroughbred on top of it. If I live to be a hundred I'll never be as fine a fellow. My hat's off to him."
There was a mist in her soft eyes as she poured a glass of ice water for him. "I'm so glad to hear you say that. He is such a splendid fellow."
He observed she was no longer wearing the solitaire and thought it might be to spare his feelings. So he took the subject as a hunter does a fence.
"I wish you all the joy in the world, Miss Valdés. I know you're going to be very happy. I've got my wedding present all picked out for you," he said audaciously.
She was busy tidying up his dresser, but he could see the color flame into her cheeks.
"You have a very vivid imagination, Mr. Gordon."
"Not necessary in this case," he assured her.
"You're quite sure of that, I suppose," she suggested with a touch of ironic mockery.
"I haven't read any announcement in the paper," he admitted.
"It is always safe to wait for that."
"Which is another way of saying that it is none of my business. But then you see it is." He offered no explanation of this statement, nor did he give her time to protest. "Now about that wedding present, Miss Valdés. It's in a tin box I had in the cabin before the fire. Can you tell me whether it was saved? My recollection is that I had it at the time the rafter put me to sleep. But of course I don't remember anything more till I found myself in bed here."
"A tin box? Yes; you had it in your hands when Manuel brought you out. They could hardly pry your fingers from it."
"Would you mind having that box brought to me, Miss Valdés? I want to be sure the present hasn't been injured by fire."
"Of course not. I don't just know where it is, but it must be somewhere about the place."
&nb
sp; She was stepping toward the door, with that fine reaching grace of a fawn that distinguished her, when his voice stopped her. She stopped, delicate head poised and half turned, apparently waiting for further directions.
"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 relieved 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."
A Daughter of the Dons Page 18
