CHAPTER 19. A VILLON OF THE DESERT
When Alice Mackenzie looked back in after years upon the incidentsconnected with that ride to the Rocking Chair, it was always with a kindof glorified pride in her villain-hero. He had his moments, had thistwentieth-century Villon, when he represented not unworthily thedivinity in man; and this day held more than one of them. Since he waswhat he was, it also held as many of his black moods.
The start was delayed, owing to a cause Leroy had not foreseen. WhenYork went, sleepy-eyed, to the corral to saddle the ponies, he found thebars into the pasture let clown, and the whole remunda kicking up itsheels in a paddock large as a goodsized city. The result was that ittook two hours to run up the bunch of ponies and another half-hour tocut out, rope, and saddle the three that were wanted. Throughout theprocess Reilly sat on the fence and scowled.
Leroy, making an end of slapping on and cinching the last saddle,wheeled suddenly on the Irishman. "What's the matter, Reilly?"
"Was I saying anything was the matter?"
"You've been looking it right hard. Ain't you man enough to say itinstead of playing dirty little three-for-a-cent tricks--like lettingdown the corral-bars?"
Reilly flung a look at Neil that plainly demanded support, and thendescended with truculent defiance from the fence.
"Who says I let down the bars? You bet I am man enough to say what Ithink; and if ye think I ain't got the nerve--"
His master encouraged him with ironic derision. "That's right, Reilly.Who's afraid? Cough it up and show York you're game."
"By thunder, I AM game. I've got a kick coming, sorr."
"Yes?" Leroy rolled and lit a cigarette, his black eyes fixed intentlyon the malcontent. "Well, register it on the jump. I've got to be off."
"That's the point." The curly-headed Neil had lounged up to hiscomrade's support. "Why have you got to be off? We don't savvy yourgame, cap."
"Perhaps you would like to be major-domo of this outfit, Neil?" scoffedhis chief, eying him scornfully.
"No, sir. I ain't aimin' for no such thing. But we don't like theway things are shaping. What does all this here funny business mean,anyhow?" His thumb jerked toward Collins, already mounted and waitingfor Leroy to join him. "Two days ago this world wasn't big enough tohold him and you. Well, I git the drop on him, and then you begin tocotton up to him right away. Big dinner last night--champagne corkspopping, I hear. What I want to know is what it means. And here's thisMiss Mackenzie. She's good for a big ransom, but I don't see it amblingour way. It looks darned funny."
"That's the ticket, York," derided Leroy. "Come again. Turn your wolfloose."
"Oh! I ain't afraid to say what I think."
"I see you're not. You should try stump-speaking, my friend. There's afield fox you there."
"I'm asking you a question, Mr. Leroy."
"That's whatever," chipped in Reilly.
"Put a name to it."
"Well, I want to know what's the game, and where we come in."
"Think you're getting the double-cross?" asked Leroy pleasantly, hisvigilant eyes covering them like a weapon.
"Now you're shouting. That's what I'd like right well to know. There hesits"--with another thumbjerk at Collins--"and I'm a Chink if he ain'tcarryin' them same two guns I took offen him, one on the train and onehere the other day. I ain't sayin' it ain't all right, cap. But what Ido say is--how about it?"
Leroy did some thinking out loud. "Of course I might tell you boys to goto the devil. That's my right, because you chose me to run this outfitwithout any advice from the rest of you. But you're such infants, Ireckon I had better explain. You're always worrying those fat brains ofyours with suspicions. After we stuck up the Limited you couldn't trustme to take care of the swag. Reilly here had to cook up a fool schemefor us all to hide it blindfold together. I told you straight what wouldhappen, and it did. When Scott crossed the divide we were in a Jim Dandyof a hole. We had to have that paper of his to find the boodle. ThenHardman gets caught, and coughs up his little recipe for helping to findhidden treasure. Who gets them both? Mr. Sheriff Collins, of course.Then he comes visiting us. Not being a fool, he leaves the documentsbehind in a safety-deposit vault. Unless I can fix up a deal with him,Mr. Reilly's wise play buncoes us and himself out of thirty thousanddollars."
"Why don't you let him send for the papers first?"
"Because he won't do it. Threaten nothing! Collins ain't that kind of ahairpin. He'd tell us to shoot and be damned."
"So you've got it fixed with him?" demanded Neil.
"You've a head like a sheep, York," admired Leroy. "YOU don't need anybrick-wall hints to hit you. As your think-tank has guessed, I have cometo an understanding with Collins."
"But the gyurl--I allow the old major would come down with a right smartransom."
"Wrong guess, York. I allow he would come down with a right smart posseand wipe us off the face of the earth. Collins tells me the major hassent for a couple of Apache trailers from the reservation. That meansit's up to us to hike for Sonora. The only point is whether we take thatburied money with us or leave it here. If I make a deal with Collins,we get it. If I don't, it's somebody else's gold-mine. Anything more thecommittee of investigation would like to know?" concluded Leroy, as hiscold eyes raked them scornfully and came to rest on Reilly.
"Not for mine," said Neil, with an apologetic laugh. "I'm satisfied. Ijust wanted to know. And I guess Cork corroborates."
Reilly growled something under his breath, and turned to hulk away.
"One moment. You'll listen to me, now. You have taken the liberty toassume I was going to sell you out. I'll not stand that from any manalive. To-morrow night I'll get back from Tucson. We'll dig up the lootand divide it. And right then we quit company. You go your way and Igo mine." And with that as a parting shot, Leroy turned on his heel andwent direct to his horse.
Alice Mackenzie might have searched the West with a fine-tooth comb andnot found elsewhere two such riders for an escort as fenced her thatday. Physically they were a pair of superb animals, each perfect afterhis fashion. If the fair-haired giant, with his lean, broad shouldersand rippling flow of muscles, bulked more strikingly in a display ofsheer strength, the sinewy, tigerish grace of the dark Apollo leftnothing to be desired to the eye. Both of them had been brought up inthe saddle, and each was fit to the minute for any emergency likely toappear.
But on this pleasant morning no test of their power seemed likely toarise, and she could study them at her ease without hindrance. She hadnever seen Leroy look more the vagabond enthroned. For dress, he worethe common equipment of Cattleland--jingling spurs, fringed chaps,leather cuffs, gray shirt, with kerchief knotted loosely at the neck,and revolver ready to his hand. But he carried them with an air, aninimitable grace, that marked him for a prince among his fellows.Something of the kind she hinted to him in jesting paradoxical fashion,making an attempt to win from his sardonic gloom one of his quick,flashing smiles.
He countered by telling her what he had heard York say to Reilly of her."She's a princess, Cork," York had said. "Makes my Epitaph gyurl looklike a chromo beside her. Somehow, when she looks at a fellow, he feelslike a whitewashed nigger."
All of them laughed at that, but both Leroy and the sheriff tried tobanter her by insisting that they knew exactly what York meant.
"You can be very splendid when you want to give a man that whitewashedfeeling; he isn't right sure whether he's on the map or not," reproachedthe train-robber.
She laughed in the slow, indolent way she had, taking the straw hat fromher dark head to catch better the faint breath of wind that was soughingacross the plains.
"I didn't know I was so terrible. I don't think you ever had any awe ofanybody, Mr. Leroy." Her soft cheek flushed in unexpected memory of thatmoment when he had brushed aside all her maiden reserves and ravishedmad kisses from her. "And Mr. Collins is big enough to take care ofhimself," she added hastily, to banish the unwelcome recollection.
Collins, with his eyes on the
light-shot waves that crowned her vividface, wondered whether he was or not. If she had been a woman to desirein the queenly, half-insolent indifference of manner with which she hadfirst met him, how much more of charm lay in this piquant gaiety, in thewarm sweetness of her softer and more pliant mood! It seemed to him shehad the gift of comradeship to perfection.
They unsaddled and ate lunch in the shade of the live-oaks at El DoradoSprings, which used to be a much-frequented watering-hole in the dayswhen Camp Grant thrived and mule-skinners freighted supplies in to feedUncle Sam's pets. Two hours later they stopped again at the edge of theSanta Cruz wash, two miles from the Rocking Chair Ranch.
It was while they were resaddling that Collins caught sight of a cloudof dust a mile or two away. He unslung his field-glasses, and lookedlong at the approaching dust-swirl. Presently he handed the binocularsto Leroy.
"Five of them; and that round-bellied Papago pony in front belongs toSheriff Forbes, or I'm away wrong."
Leroy lowered the glasses, after a long, unflurried inspection. "Looksthat way to me. Expect I'd better be burning the wind."
In a few sentences he and Collins arranged a meeting for next day up inthe hills. He trailed his spurs through the dust toward Alice Mackenzie,and offered her his brown hand and wistful smile irresistible. "Good-by.This is where you get quit of me for good."
"Oh, I hope not," she told him impulsively. "We must always be friends."
He laughed ruefully. "Your father wouldn't indorse those unwisesentiments, I reckon--and I'd hate to bet your husband would," he addedaudaciously, with a glance at Collins. "But I love to hear you sayit, even though we never could be. You're a right game, stanch littlepardner. I'll back that opinion with the lid off."
"You should be a good judge of those qualities. I'm only sorry you don'talways use them in a good cause."
He swung himself to his saddle. "Good-by."
"Good-by--till we meet again."
"And that will be never. So-long, sheriff. Tell Forbes I've got aparticular engagement in the hills, but I'll be right glad to meet himwhen he comes."
He rode up the draw and disappeared over the brow of the hillock. Shecaught another glimpse of him a minute later on the summit of the hillbeyond. He waved a hand at her, half-turning in his saddle as he rode.
Presently she lost him, but faintly the wind swept back to her ahaunting snatch of uncouth song:
"Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee, In my narrow grave just six by three,"
Were the words drifted to her by the wind. She thought it patheticallylikely he might get the wish of his song.
To Sheriff Forbes, dropping into the draw a few minutes later with hisposse, Collins was a well of misinformation literally true. Yes, hehad followed Miss Mackenzie's trail into the hills and found her at amountain ranch-house. She had been there a couple of days, and was aboutto set out for the Rocking Chair with the owner of the place, when hearrived and volunteered to see her as far as her uncle's ranch.
"I reckon there ain't any use asking you if you seen anything of WolfLeroy's outfit," said Forbes, a weather-beaten Westerner with a shrewd,wrinkled face.
"No, I reckon there's no use asking me that," returned Collins, with alaugh that deceptively seemed to include the older man in the joke.
"We're after them for rustling a bunch of Circle 33 cows. Well, I'llbe moving. Glad you found the lady, Val. She don't look none played outfrom her little trek across the desert. Funny, ain't it, how she couldhave wandered that far and her afoot?"
The Arizona sun was setting in its accustomed blaze of splendor, whenVal Collins and Alice Mackenzie put their horses again toward the ranchand the rainbow-hued west. In his contented eyes were reflected thesunshine and a serenity born of life in the wide, open spaces. They rodein silence for long, the gentle evening breeze blowing in soughs.
"Did you ever meet a man of such promises gone wrong so utterly? Hemight have been anything--and it has come to this, that he is huntedlike a wild beast. I never saw anything so pitiful. I would giveanything to save him."
He had no need to ask to whom she was referring. "Can't be done. Goodqualities bulge out all over him, but they don't count for anything.'Unstable as water.' That's what's the matter with him. He is the slaveof his own whims. Hence he is only the splendid wreck of a man, fullof all kinds of rich outcropping pay-ore that pinch out when you try towork them. They don't raise men gamer, but that only makes him a moredangerous foe to society. Same with his loyalty and his brilliancy. He'sgot a haid on him that works like they say old J. E. B. Stuart's did. Hewould run into a hundred traps, but somehow he always worked his men outof them. That's Leroy, too. If he had been an ordinary criminal hewould have been rounded up years ago. It's his audacity, his iron nerve,his good horse-sense judgment that saves his skin. But he's certainly upagainst it at last."
"You think Sheriff Forbes will capture him?"
He laughed. "I think it more likely he'll capture Forbes. But we knownow where he hangs out, and who he is. He has always been a mystery tillnow. The mystery is solved, and unless he strikes out for Sonora, Leroyis as good as a dead man."
"A dead man?"
"Does he strike you as a man likely to be taken alive? I look to see adramatic exit to the sound of cracking Winchesters."
"Yes, that would be like him," she confessed with shudder. "I think hewas made to lead a forlorn hope. Pity it won't be one worthy of the bestin him."
"I guess he does have more moments set to music than most of us, andI'll bet, too, he has hidden way in him a list of 'Thou shalt nots.' Iread a book once by a man named Stevenson that was sure virgin gold. Heshowed how every man, no matter how low he falls, has somewhere in hima light that burns, some rag of honor for which he is still fighting I'dhate to have to judge Leroy. Some men, I reckon, have to buck against somuch in themselves that even failure is a kind of success for them."
"Yet you will go out to hunt him down?" she' said, marveling at thebroad sympathy of the man.
"Sure I will. My official duty is to look out for society. If somethingin the machine breaks loose and goes to ripping things to pieces, theengineer has to stop the damage, even if he has to smash the rod that'scausing the trouble."
The ponies dropped down again into the bed of the wash, and plowedacross through the heavy sand. After they had reached the solid road,Collins resumed conversation at a new point.
"It's a month and a day since I first met you Miss Mackenzie," he said,apparently apropos of nothing.
She felt her blood begin to choke. "Indeed!"
"I gave you a letter to read when I was on the train."
"A letter!" she exclaimed, in well-affected surprise.
"Did you think it was a book of poems? No, ma'am, it was a letter. Youwere to read it in a month. Time was up last night. I reckon you readit."
"Could I read a letter I left at Tucson, when it was a hundred milesaway?" she smiled with sweet patronage.
"Not if you left it at Tucson," he assented, with an answering smile.
"Maybe I DID lose it." She frowned, trying to remember.
"Then I'll have to tell you what was in it."
"Any time will do. I dare say it wasn't important."
"Then we'll say THIS time."
"Don't be stupid, Mr. Collins. I want to talk about our desert Villon."
"I said in that letter--"
She put her pony to a canter, and they galloped side by side in silencefor half a mile. After she had slowed down to a walk, he continuedplacidly, as if oblivious of an interruption:
"I said in that letter that I had just met the young lady I wasexpecting to marry."
"Dear me, how interesting! Was she in the smoker?"
"No, she was in Section 3 of the Pullman."
"I wish I had happened to go into the other Pullman, but, of course, Icouldn't know the young lady you were interested in was riding there."
"She wasn't."
"But you've just told me--"
"That I said i
n the letter you took so much trouble to lose thatI expected to marry the young woman passing under the name of MissWainwright."
"Sir!"
"That I expected--"
"Really, I am not deaf, Mr. Collins."
"--expected to marry her, just as soon as she was willing."
"Oh, she is to be given a voice in the matter, is she?"
"Ce'tainly, ma'am."
"And when?"
"Well, I had been thinking now was a right good time."
"It can't be too soon for me," she flashed back, sweeping him withproud, indignant eyes.
"But I ain't so sure. I rather think I'd better wait."
"No, no! Let us have it done with once and for all."
He relapsed into a serene, abstracted silence.
"Aren't you going to speak?" she flamed.
"I've decided to wait."
"Well, I haven't. Ask me this minute, sir, to marry you."
"Ce'tainly, if you cayn't wait. Miss Mackenzie, will you--"
"No, sir, I won't--not if you were the last man on earth," sheinterrupted hotly, whipping herself into a genuine rage. "I never wasso insulted in my life. It would be ridiculous if it weren't so--sooutrageous. You EXPECT, do you? And it isn't conceit, but a deep-seatedcertainty you can't get away from."
He had her fairly. "Then you DID read the letter."
"Yes, sir, I read it--and for sheer, unmatched impudence I have neverseen its like."
"Now, I wish you would tell me what you REALLY think," he drawled.
Not being able, for reasons equestrian, to stamp her foot, she gave herbronco the spur.
When Collins again found conversation practicable, the Rocking Chair, awhite adobe huddle in the moonlight, lay peacefully beneath them in thealley.
"It's a right quaint old ranch, and it's seen a heap of rough-and-tumblelife in its day. If those old adobe bricks could tell stories, I expectthey could put some of these romances out of business." Miss Mackenzie'scovert glance questioned suspiciously what this diversion might mean.
"All this country's interesting. Take Tucson now that burg is loaded tothe roofs with live stories. It's an all-right business town, too--thebest in the territory," he continued patriotically. "She ain't so greatas Douglas on ore or as Phoenix on lungers, but when it comes, to thegit-up-and-git hustle, she's there rounding up the trade from early morntill dine."
He was still expatiating in a monologue with grave enthusiasm on thetown of his choice, when they came to the pasture fence of the ranch.
"Some folks don't like it--call it adobe-town, and say it's full ofgreasers. Everybody to his taste, I say. Little old Tucson is goodenough for me."
She gave a queer little laugh as he talked. She had put a taboo on hislove story herself, but she resented the perfectly unmoved good humorwith which he seemed to be accepting her verdict. She made up her mindto punish him, but he gave her no chance. As he helped her to dismount,he said:
"I'll take the horses round to the stable, Miss Mackenzie. Probably Iwon't see you again before I leave, but I'm hoping to meet you again inTucson one of these days. Good-by."
She nodded a curt good-by and passed into the house. She was vexed andindignant, but had too strong a sense of humor not to enjoy a joke evenwhen it was against herself.
"I forgot to ask him whether he loves me or Tucson more, and as one ofthe subjects seems to be closed I'll probably never find out," she toldherself, but with a queer little tug of pain in her laughter.
Next moment she was in the arms of her father.