TIA JUANA'S CAULDRON COOLS
Limasito received the tidings of the amazing turn in the affairs of
Gentleman Geoff's Billie with mingled emotions in which pride and
respectful awe predominated, but to Kearn Thode it came as an
uncomprehended disaster.
In vain he told himself that he should rejoice at her change of
fortune; that he had divined from the moment of their first meeting the
subtle shade of difference in caste between the young girl and those
who surrounded her, and strove to exult that she had indeed come into
her own.
A strange, unacknowledged depression assailed him. His proffered aid
had once more proved superfluous; the young relative of the Ripley
Halsteads and heiress of Giles Murdaugh would have no need of the good
offices of his sister, nor in their reversed positions would his
friendship be as instrumental in her future as he had hoped.
She was quick-witted and adaptable; she would be a tremendous social
success with a little expert coaching, and he----? A petroleum
engineer, a mere cog in the wheel of a great corporation, without
prospects other than might lie in the success of his present doubtful
mission, could be of no future interest to Willa Murdaugh.
Decency demanded that he congratulate her on her good fortune, he
assured himself as he rode out that evening to the Casa de Limas. But
decency did not explain or defend the fact that he roweled his willing
pinto all the way, and arrived in a state of mind that was the reverse
of felicitation.
She received his forced greeting with the matter-of-fact directness
which was characteristic of her.
"Yes. It's a pretty big thing to have come to me all of a sudden," she
remarked, "but I reckon it isn't going to carry me off my feet. Dad
always told me never to start anything I couldn't finish, and although
this seems to have been kind of started for me before I was born, I
reckon I can see it through. I never guessed I wasn't Dad's own girl
and I'd just as lief never have known, but it's going to work in with
what I want to do."
"Of course!" He essayed to speak lightly. "Your future is assured
now, the future your--Gentleman Geoff wanted you to have. It sounds
like presumption now; my offer to take you to my sister----"
"Why?" Her clear eyes turned wonderingly on him in the moonlight, and
he mentally cursed his dog-in-the-manger mood. "I thought it was real
kind of you, kinder than anything that anyone except Dad has ever done.
I didn't even have a name, you know. I was just the daughter of--what
did that lawyer call him?--a 'peripatetic gambler', but you--you----"
She broke off in sudden confusion, and he drew a swift breath.
"You were yourself, and I told you that nothing else mattered." His
tone was very low.
"But I'm something else, now." There was a note of shy, wistful
eagerness in her voice. "I--I'm Willa Murdaugh and that seems to mean
a lot, up in New York. I'm not just Gentleman Geoff's Billie, I'm
going to be a lady, like your sister----"
"You will be a much more important one, with a highly exalted social
position and hosts of influential friends," he responded slowly. "You
will meet her, she is an acquaintance of the Halsteads and their set,
but you will find her a simple, unfashionable girl, compared to the
rest. If you had gone to make your home with her, as I suggested, you
would not have known the smart crowd that will flock about you now, but
clever people who have done or are doing big things. I wonder how the
social life will strike you?"
"All of a heap, I expect," she replied, absently. Her voice was
colorless, stunned. "That was what you meant, that I should go and
live with your sister? And you, would you have been there, too?"
"I?" he laughed with a trace of bitterness. "I am a rolling stone,
Miss Murdaugh. My work calls me to the ends of the earth, but I would
probably have looked in on you every few years to say 'hello.'
However, you would scarcely have been with my sister as long as that.
Some lucky fellow would have persuaded you to make him happy. You will
be a great social success----"
"As if I cared!" She stopped him with her familiar little gesture.
"I--I didn't just understand what you meant. I thought--but it doesn't
matter anyway, does it? I've got to get in the game anyway, but you
don't suppose I want to, do you? You don't suppose I want the money of
that old man who stacked the cards against my poor father, or care
about these Halstead people that never knew I was alive? I am doing it
because I think Dad would want me to, and because it will help me in
something else I've set out to do."
"The thing you spoke of, that you could not let me or anyone in on?" he
asked in surprise. "Haven't you relinquished it, whatever it was?
You'll be too much taken up with your new life to remember old plans
and ideas when you plunge into the society game."
"'Relinquish'?" she repeated, and he saw her whole form grow tense and
rigid. "Why, it's what I'm living for--what I'm going through with
this inheritance outfit for! Dad said the Indians were right, they
never forget a kindness or an injury. I'm like them, in that. I'll
never forget, never, until the score is wiped clean!"
"Someone has hurt you?" he demanded. "You have another trouble, aside
from your grief? The government will take care of El Negrito, it must
be something else. Won't you tell me? It may be that I can help, in
some way. I--I would do anything for you!"
"Nobody can help me." She shook her head gently. "I told you once,
Mr. Thode, that I must play a lone hand."
"But you can trust me," he urged. "If I could only make you believe
that! If I could only make you see how much it would mean to me to be
of the slightest service----"
He halted abruptly, and she waited, scarcely breathing, for there was
an impetuous fervent ring in his tones which made her heart leap
suddenly and then almost cease to beat. But the young man did not
continue.
"Thank you," she said at last, very quietly. "I am sure that I could
trust you, Mr. Thode, but there is nothing you or anyone could do; it
is just that I owe a debt to someone, and I mean to pay it. But don't
let us talk of that any more. Shall I see you, sometime, up in New
York?"
"Perhaps, when my work here is finished." He turned his head away from
her. "You will have so many new friends that you will scarcely
remember those you leave behind down here."
"How unjust you are!" She faced him hotly. "Do you think I could ever
forget what you did when El Negrito came; how you rode to the barracks
at the risk of your life?"
"I had small choice," he reminded her. "Had I stayed I would have been
killed."
"So would we all. But it was not for yourself you took the chance, it
was for us." She laid her hand upon his arm. "I--I don't want you to
think that I will ever forget and I hope that we shall be friends."
"Always that!" He took her small hand in both of his. "It doesn't
seem likely, but if there is ever anything that I can do for you, any
service that I can render, I would like to feel, in spite of the little
time you have known me, that you would call on me before anyone else
you may meet. After all, Gentleman Geoff laid a charge upon me, you
know, and I want to be worthy of it. When I return, if I may, I will
come to you."
"Oh, will you?" She flushed and gently withdrew her hand. "That is,
unless you will be ashamed of me. I reckon I'll be kind of a shock to
city folks, the same as they'll be to me."
"Now it is you who are unjust!" he cried. "I shall always be proud of
your friendship, and remember these days in Limasito as the most
wonderful I have ever known----"
Thode checked himself once more.
"Good-bye, Billie. When next I see you, it will be Miss Willa Murdaugh
who will greet me, but it is Gentleman Geoff's Billie who will linger
in my thoughts always. Will you say once again what you said to me in
the lane: 'Buena suerte'?"
"Good luck, with all my heart, but not good-bye." She hesitated. "I
sha'n't see you to-morrow before we start?"
He shook his head.
"The whole town will be on hand to give you a send-off. I would not
intrude on the leave-taking of all your old friends, and besides I must
ride far out to-morrow," he prevaricated. "There is a lease I must
look into for the company over near La Roda. So it must be good-bye,
now."
"Not that, but hasta la vista!" She lifted her chin valiantly,
although her smile was a trifle wan. "That means 'until we meet
again', you know, and I feel somehow that it will be soon."
"I hope so, with all my heart!" With a swift, impetuous movement he
bent and kissed her hand. "Hasta la vista!"
Billie watched him until he disappeared down the avenue of flowering
trees, then, brushing her hand across her eyes, she turned and went
into the house.
Sallie Bailey looked up with a twinkle from the shirt she was patching.
"Well, carita, did he?" she demanded with much interest.
"Did he what?" Billie paused at the foot of the stairs.
"Did he--say anything?"
"Oh, a heap. I'm going to be a hit in society and forget all my
friends and everything down here and roll in that money like a pinto in
the pasture. I wish to goodness that I was dead!"
"No, you don't," Sallie retorted comfortably. "You're just beginning
to take notice, that's all, and so's he. He ain't saddle-broke yet and
he's gun-shy, but he'll get used to the report o' that money o' yours
in time. Men are a good deal like pintos; some you can coax and some
you can bully, but they all of 'em buck at the first gate. Don't you
worry your head about Mr. Kearn Thode, honey; wait till the next
round-up, and you'll have him roped, tied, and branded before he knows
where he's at."
Billie mounted three steps and halted, her head held high.
"Him?" she queried with infinite scorn. "I don't want him! Dad asked
him to look out for me, you see, and he thinks I'm kind of on his
hands, but I'll show him! I'm liable to make some big mistakes, and I
reckon that Mrs. Halstead will earn all the money my grandfather left
her to teach me the rules of the game, but I'll sit tight and learn if
it breaks me and when it comes my turn to play, I'll show them all I'm
not a piker, anyway!"
"You wasn't ever that, Billie," the older woman observed gently, for
the girl's hurt heart was on her sleeve. "I reckon he only meant to be
kind."
"I don't want kindness!" the ungrateful Billie responded savagely. "I
don't want condescension and duty-friendship. I want, I want--oh, I
want Dad!"
Limasito was indeed out in full force to speed her on her way the
following morning. The news had traveled quickly over the countryside
and every style of conveyance, from a mule-team to the latest improved
jitney, lined the plaza. White, Mex', and Mongolian, from the richest
oil operator to the lowliest peon, her friends had gathered to say
farewell.
They stampeded her on the Calle Rivera and unceremoniously held up Mr.
North's impressive car before the hotel, while Jim Baggott, in an
ancient silk hat and bibulously primed for the occasion, read an
ungrammatical but fervent valediction.
Billie could only throw both hands out to them, laughing and sobbing in
one breath as the car moved off down a lane of solidly packed humanity
and disappeared in a whirl of dust.
"'S on the house!" Jim Baggott waved toward the bar with one hand and
openly wiped his eyes with the other. "Gonna make a gosh-almighty
swell of her, are they? Well, I wish'm luck, but they'll never change
her heart or break her spirit. She's our'n, an' she'll come back if I
have to go after her myself, so help me! What you-all have?"
True to his word, Kearn Thode had ridden out at daybreak and ridden
hard, but only the pinto knew where they were going and he was too
jaded to care. A sleepless night of bewilderment and self-disgust at
his own surly, unaccountable mood had brought a revelation that stunned
and humbled him.
He loved her! In a blinding flash of realization, he saw that from the
moment of their first meeting she had possessed him, body and soul. It
was that which had stirred his resentment to berserk rage when Starr
Wiley had laid insolent hands upon her in the lane; it was for her and
her alone that he had run the gantlet of El Negrito's forces and dared
the desperate ride.
And she? Immeasurably removed from him now, impenetrably walled in
from his presumptuous gaze by the newly-gained inheritance, there was
yet a golden key which he might find here in this flower-grown
wilderness which would grant him entrance to her world on an equal
footing with all men. She could not have learned to care for him in
their few hours of companionship, but at least no one else held claim
to her. There was still a chance!
It was characteristic of him that, having worked out his problem, he
wasted no thought on futile regret or selfish repining at the fortune
which had smiled on her. It should smile on him, too, and then, and
not till then, he would go to her.
The Pool of the Lost Souls! That was the solution, that the golden key
to the future! That others had been before him in the fruitless search
of weary generations past was of no moment in the fire of his
enthusiasm.
The noontide blaze of heat found him many miles upon an unfamiliar
road, and, heedless of lurking enemies in the undergrowth, he flung
himself down in the shade of a mighty orchid-laden tree, while the
puzzled but equable pinto grazed nearby.
Worn with the emotional conflict through which he had passed, and the
sleepless night preceding the hard-ridden hours, his day-dream faded
into deep slumber and the shadows were slanting across the road when he
awoke with a sudden start. No living thing was in sight save the pinto
tethered close at hand; the road ran level and white and deserted as
far as the eye could see and only the afternoon breeze rustled the
dense foliage above and about him, yet Thode could have sworn that he
was under observation.
He flung the thought from him with a laugh as he picked himself up, but
it persisted in spite of his efforts to exorcise it. Something
unexplained but almost tangible rode at his shoulder on the homeward
way, and he caught himself more than once straining his ears for a
betraying sound behind him. So acute was the sensation of surveillance
that he pulled up abruptly around a sharp turn in the road and
listened, but no following hoof-beats broke the stillness, and mentally
deriding the notion, he cantered on into town.
His mid-day reverie had carried him back over every detail of the
legend Ben Hallock had related of the Pool, and one chance remark
returned to him with the force of an inspiration. Hallock himself had
learned the story from a hunchbacked Mexican who had it from his
grandmother, and the little José, the crippled victim of Starr Wiley's
heedless brutality, had been hunchbacked; the old crone in the shack by
the zapote trees, his grandmother, looked as if many mysteries and
legends might be hidden behind her fierce, inscrutable eyes.
This was slender foundation on which to build a theory, but how else
had the little lad awakened the vengeful antipathy of Wiley? What was
it that he refused to tell him?
Thode had more than a suspicion that Wiley's objective in Limasito was
closely allied to his own. If José had indeed been Hallock's
informant, and the unscrupulous promoter had traced the legend to this
latest source, his anger at being unable to bully the boy into further
disclosures would be easily understood.
That night, when the moon had risen, Thode crossed the plaza and
started out on foot for the shack. He would not allow himself a glance
in the direction of the metamorphosed Blue Chip, but resolutely held
his thoughts to the immediate issue. José had accepted him not only as
a benefactor but as the friend of his adored señorita; would he be
induced to speak?
The shack was dark when he finally reached it and only silence greeted
his knock upon the sagging door. It yielded to his touch, and after a
moment's hesitation he stepped inside, and groping, found the lamp.
Touching a match to the wick, he replaced the cracked chimney and
looked about him. Gone!
The little one-room dwelling was in chaos, the chest of drawers
ransacked and even the two poor beds had been pulled violently apart.
Everything spoke of hasty and frenzied flight. What could it mean?
As the young engineer stood bewildered at this unexpected scene, there
came over his senses once more the inexplicable intuition of the
afternoon. Someone, something was spying upon him!
He thrust it into the back of his mind, however, striving to recall a
memory which eluded him. What had Billie told him of a witch's
cauldron in the grove of zapote trees, where the old crone had wrought
magic which to her, at least, was very real? Could the explanation of
this amazing evanescence be found there?
Shading the lamp with his hand, he stumbled out the door and followed
the weed-choked path to the little clearing. A huge battered kettle
lay on its side in a heap of ashes which looked as though they had
recently been alight. Thode stirred them with his foot, then bent
hastily; they were still warm, and from their midst protruded a gleam
of something white.
Kneeling, he set the lamp carefully upon the ground beside him and
pulled the scrap of paper from its hiding-place. It was partially
burned, but some freak of air-current or flame had left its destruction
incomplete, and he saw that a rude plan or map had been drawn upon it.
He had only time to note that an irregular oval was traced in its
center, with a crooked, wavering cross at one end. Then as he bent
closer to the light a twig snapped treacherously behind him and a
crushing blow upon his head blotted out consciousness.