CONCERNING A DIFFICULT SITUATION, RECKLESSLY INVITED
For a moment in the heavy silence Jim Kendric sat appalled by what he
had done. In the grip of the game he had been swayed by emotion, not
tarrying for cold logic during an episode when time raced. He had
hoped to win. Thus, since he had discovered that Rios, too, was
enamored of his beautiful cousin, he would tease an old enemy, sober
Bruce, jolt Barlow--and vex Betty. He had not thought of himself nor
of Zoraida.
No one spoke. The first sound was a long shuddering breath from young
Bruce; his face was a sick white save for a spot of red in each cheek;
his eyes looked like those of a man with a high fever. Kendric sat
staring in perplexity at the gold he had won, automatically gathering
it toward him. Zoraida stood motionless, displaying herself, awaiting
his eyes. And abruptly, when he lifted his head, his eyes went not to
her but to Betty.
The girl appeared fascinated and horrified. Jim's eyes pleaded with
her. Betty began to twist her hands in an agony of bewildered
emotions. Zoraida, waiting for Jim's face to be lifted to her and not
one accustomed to waiting on a man, frowned. But swiftly and before
anyone but the always watchful Rios saw, she broke the silence with her
little cooing laughter. She put out her two white arms toward the men
at the table, saying softly:
"Will you help me down, Señor Jim?"
Before Kendric could answer Bruce was on his feet. The blood charged
to his face so that the red spots were merged in the crimson flood.
The boy looked ready for murder.
"Stop this, Zoraida!" he said excitedly. "Stop it! You are mad. Have
you forgotten?--Good God!"
"Betty--" said Kendric, hardly knowing what he would say. He wanted
her to understand--
"Don't speak to me!" Betty flung the words at him passionately. "You
are an unthinkable beast!"
Bruce heard nothing that was said, saw nothing but Zoraida. He came
two steps toward her and then stopped, staring at her.
"Zoraida," he commanded, as one who speaks with love's authority, "you
don't realize what you are doing. It is that cursed wine you have
drunk or there is just desperation in the air and it has got into you.
This hideous jest has gone far enough--too far. Tell them, tell
Kendric, that it was all a jest. Nothing more."
"Had you won," said Zoraida sweetly, "what then, Señor Bruce? Would
you have been jesting?"
Bruce's lips moved but no words came. Suddenly he whirled from her
upon Kendric, his face distorted with rage.
"Damn you!" he burst out.
No longer was it merely a case of murder in his look. The urge to kill
had swept into his heart, rushed hotly along his pounding arteries.
Before now had Kendric seen men frenzy-lashed, like Bruce, briefly
insane with the blood impulse and as Bruce cursed him he knew that he
meant to kill him. There were half a dozen paces between the two men
and already was Bruce's hand lost under the skirt of his coat. Kendric
sprang to his feet and as he did so Bruce whipped out his pistol.
There seemed no loss of time between the action and the discharge. But
Kendric had been quick and only his promptness saved the life in him
that night. As he went to his feet he swept up in his hand a heap of
the shining gold pieces and flung them straight into the boy's purpling
face. The bullet went by Kendric's head doing no harm beyond
splintering the wall behind him. Before Bruce could shake his head and
fire again Kendric was upon him, worrying him as a dog worries a cat.
Bruce, even in the desperation driving him, and with a gun in his hand,
was little more than a stripling in the hard hands at his wrist and
throat. A sudden heave and mighty jerk came close to breaking his arm
and freed the pistol from his claw-like fingers. Kendric hurled him
back so that Bruce staggered half across the room and crashed to the
floor. Before he could come to his feet the pistol had been dropped
into Kendric's coat pocket.
During the whole time Twisty Barlow had sat like a man bereft of
volition, his face puckered queerly, his mouth a little open. He
looked at the gold on the table top and at Zoraida; when Kendric had
hurled the coins into Bruce's face he looked at the gold rolling across
the floor and again back to Zoraida. Rios, having risen quietly, stood
with one hand on the back of his chair, one hand at his mustache,
looking steadily at his cousin. Even while Kendric and Bruce battled
Rios gave them scant attention. He was watching Zoraida as though his
life itself depended on his reading her wild heart aright.
Slowly, as though he had been half stunned, Bruce rose from the floor.
Once more his face was white and looked sick. He had in his eyes the
startled expression of a man rudely awakened from profound slumber. He
walked with dragging feet across the room and dropped wearily into a
chair. He put his elbows on his knees and his head into his hands.
Zoraida, seeing that Kendric would not come to her, caught up her gown
and leaped lightly down, landing softly like a cat. She put into her
eyes what she pleased, a confusion of messages, a swooning passion, a
maidenly tenderness, a joy that seemed to peep forth shyly. On
tiptoes, as though she would not break the hush of the room, she went
to the hall door, smiling a little in her backward look. A moment she
whispered to the serving man at the door; then she was gone and they
heard only the light patter of her slippers.
The man to whom Zoraida had whispered spoke in an undertone to his
fellows. One of them went out swiftly; the others threw wide the three
doors and then gathered up the fallen gold. It was replaced in its box
and gravely presented to Kendric. He threw back the lid, thrust into
his pocket without counting what he deemed equal to the amount he had
played and tossed the box back to the servant.
"Divide with your friends," he said shortly, and turned toward Betty.
But already, with the doors open, she had sought escape. He saw the
whisk of her skirt and marked the erect carriage of her head of brown
hair as she went out.
Jim Kendric stood looking about him and cursed himself for a fool.
Headlong he had always been, plunging ever into deep waters that were
not over clear, but he could not recall the time he had been a greater
blunderer. He had no more than decided that the one thing for him to
do was to simplify matters than here he went already interfering in
other people's business and making a mess of the whole thing. Betty
adjudged him being desirous of becoming Zoraida's lover; Bruce sought
his death; Rios's eyes were like knives; Barlow still sent his sullen
glances from the box of gold in a servant's hands to the door through
which Zoraida had passed. Kendric went to where Bruce still sat and
put his hand gently on the slack shoulder.
"Bruce, old man----" he said.
But Bruce, though with little spirit in the movement, shook the hand
away.
"There's no call for talk between you and me, Jim," he said wearily.
"Talk can't change things. Just now I wanted to kill you!" He
shuddered.
The man with whom Zoraida had whispered was speaking quietly with Rios.
Kendric, seeing them beyond Bruce's bowed head, saw a fire of rebellion
burning in Rios's eyes. Then, surprising him when he expected an
outburst, Rios merely shrugged his shoulders and left the room. The
servant came on to Barlow. Again he whispered. Barlow heard him
through stolidly, then for the first time looked long and steadily at
Kendric. Kendric guessed from the workings of his face that he was
struggling with his own problem. Gradually the sailor closed his mouth
until at last the teeth were clamped tight, the muscles at the corners
of his jaw bulging.
"Barlow," said Kendric then, "there's too infernally much whispering in
corners in this house. Even if we three seem to be at cross purposes
now we have been friends----"
"You talk of friendship!" Barlow spoke with cold bitterness. "When
here I crawl around with a hole in my shoulder; when West there in his
chair has just tried to bore you and got smashed in the face for his
trouble? After what's happened tonight, man, you and me are done." He
stalked off to the door. But at the threshold he paused long enough to
turn and mutter: "We all know what we are after, I guess. Don't fool
yourself, Jim Kendric, that everything's landslidin' you [Transcriber's
note: your?] way."
Plainly Zoraida's orders had been intended to clear the room save for
Kendric. For the servant came to Bruce when Barlow had gone and spoke
to him. Kendric tried to catch the words but could not. But he saw
Bruce suddenly jerk up his head and watched a slow return of color into
the drawn face. Then Bruce, eyeing Kendric with suspicion and in open
hostility, quitted him in a silence that was ominous.
Kendric's anger, ever ready like his mirth, burned hot through him. He
had shot Barlow in Bruce's quarrel, not knowing Barlow in the dark, and
for this Barlow hated him. Bruce had sought to kill him, and for this
Bruce hated him. He had sought to befriend Betty, and Betty hated him.
He had played fair with them all, and now all of them were set against
him.
"Devil take the whole outfit!" he cried out passionately. "From now
on, Jim Kendric, you feather your own nest and hit the one-man trail
for the open."
The servingman, whom Zoraida's commands had constituted a sort of
master of ceremonies, came to Kendric, his look curious but not
unfriendly. The box with its gold was still in his hands.
"You will follow me, señor?" he invited. "_La Señorita Reinita_
awaits you."
"I'll do nothing of the sort," snapped Kendric. "I am going outside
for a smoke and you can tell your lady queen so with my compliments."
But the man stood in front of him, shaking his head dubiously. He
looked distressed. In his simple mind orders from Zoraida were orders
absolute, and yet such largesse as Jim's bought respect and something
akin to affection.
"Later you will smoke outside, señor," he urged. "Now it would be
best--oh, surely, best, señor!--to follow me to La Señorita."
Jim shoved by him toward the door. The fellow looked a trifle
uncertain, his small calibre brain confused by two contending impulses.
But in an instant long habit and an old fear that was greater than his
new liking, asserted themselves. He slipped between Kendric and the
door and at his glance the other servant joined him. The two glanced
at each other and then at Kendric's set and determined face and then
looked swiftly down the long hallway behind them. This look was
eloquent and Kendric guessed its meaning; that way had their companion
gone hastily when Zoraida had left; that way, perhaps, would he be
returning presently with others of her hireling pack at his heels.
"Stand aside," commanded Jim. "I'm on my way."
They were stalwart men and they did not stand aside. Rather they
stepped closer together, shoulder to shoulder, grim in their stubborn
obedience to the orders they had been given. Sick of waiting and words
and obstructions, Kendric bore down on them, vowing to go through
though they might raise an outcry and double their strength. They were
ready for him and stood up to him. But their impulse of obedience and
routine duty was a pale weak motive before his rage at eternal
hindrance. He charged them like a mad bull; he struck to right and
left with the mighty blows of lusty battle-joy, and though they struck
back and sought to grapple with him he hurled one of them against the
wall with a bleeding mouth and sent the other toppling backward,
crashing to the floor in the hall. And through he went, growling
savagely. But only to confront the third man returning with half a
dozen sullen-eyed half breeds at his heels, only to see beyond them the
bright interested eyes of Zoraida.
"Call your hound dogs off," he roared at her. "I'm going through."
Zoraida clapped her hands.
"_Muchachos_," she commanded them, "tame me this wild man! But no
pistols or knives, mind you!"
She drew up close to one wall and watched; she might have been an
excited child at a three-ring circus. Kendric found time to marvel at
her even as he shot by her, hurling the whole of his compact weight
into the mass of bodies defying him passageway. And as flesh struck
flesh, Zoraida clapped her hands again and watched eagerly.
"One against six--seven," she whispered. "One against nine!" she
added, for already the two men who had sought to hold Kendric back from
the hallway were up and after him. "He is a mad fool--and yet, by the
breath of God, he is a man!"
And a man's fight did he treat her to, carried out of himself, gone for
the moment the madman she had named him. It was Jim Kendric's way to
fight in silence, but now he shouted as he struck, defying them,
cursing them, striking as hard as God had given him strength, recking
not in the least of blows received, heart and mind centered alone on
the pulsing, throbbing prayer to feel a bone crack before him, to see a
head snap back, to feel blood gush forth from a battered face. A man
tripped him cunningly from the side and he all but fell. But he struck
back with his boot and steadied himself by hurling his toppling body
against a resisting body and crashed on. Yes, and through, though they
clutched at him and dragged after him! A man hung to his belt and he
dragged him four or five steps; then he turned and drove his fist into
the man's neck and freed himself and bore on. So he came to the end of
the hall and to a locked door and turned with his back to the wall.
And again Zoraida's hound dogs were in front of him.
He laughed at them and taunted them and reviled them. They were nine
men and upon many of the dark faces were signs of his passing. And as
they came closer there was respect as well as caution in their look.
They meant to beat him down; in their minds was no doubt of the
ultimate outcome, for were they not nine to one? But they had felt his
fists and had no joy in the memory. So they drew on slowly.
Kendric watched them narrowly. In the eyes of the nearest man he saw a
sudden flickering; it flashed over him that the fellow meant trickery
and no fair man-to-man fight. He stood with his back to the door; he
saw the approaching man's eyes switch to it briefly. Then it flashed
upon Kendric that he was to be attacked from behind--
But even as the thought came and before he could leap aside, the door
was jerked open and from behind he felt arms about him. He struggled
and strained in a tensing grip. Not just one man was there behind him;
two at the very least and maybe three. He heard them muttering. Then
the men in front came on in a flying body and with a dozen men piling
over him Jim Kendric at last went down. And once down, being the man
to know when he had played out his string, he lay still.
"Will _el señor_ Jim come with me?" Zoraida was above him, smiling
curiously. "Or shall I have him carried along by my men?"
"I'll come," he answered shortly. "Having no choice. Call them off
before I stifle."
Zoraida ordered, the men fell back and Kendric rose. She made a quick
signal and they filed out through a further door.
"Come," she said to him. She caught up a cloak which had slipped from
her shoulders, a thing of silken scarlet, and led the way down the hall.
He followed, ready and eager for a talk with her which would be the
last. He fully meant to make a break for the open tonight. And alone.
He was assuring himself that he drew a vast pleasure from that
consideration--that he was free from now on to play out his own hand in
his own way without reference to others. What he did not admit to
himself was that he was trumping up an explanation of the fact that,
while he was following Zoraida, he was thinking of Betty. He was
wondering where Betty had gone in such a flurry, when he should have
been asking himself where Zoraida was taking him and for what purpose
of her own.