THE TEXAN
Steve tapped gently on the window pane with the ball of his middle
finger. Instantly the sobbing was interrupted. The black head of hair
lifted from the pillow to listen the better. He could guess how
fearfully the heart of the girl was beating.
Again he tapped on the glass. With a lithe twist of her body the girl
sat up on the bed. She waited tensely for a repetition of the sound, not
quite sure from where it had come.
Her questing eyes found at last the source of it, a warning forefinger
close to the pane that seemed to urge for silence. Rising, she moved
slowly to the window, uneasy, doubtful, yet with hope beginning to stir
at her heart. She formed a cup for her eyes with her palms so as to hold
back the light while she peered through the glass into the darkness
without.
Over to the left she made out the contour of a face, a brown Mexican
face with quick, eager eyes that spoke comfort to her. Her first thought
was that it belonged to a friend. Hard on the heels of that she gave a
little cry of joy and began with trembling fingers to raise the window.
"Steve!" she cried, laughing and crying together.
And as soon as she had adjusted the window she caught his hand between
both of hers and pressed it hard. Steve was here. He would save her as
he had before. She was all right now.
"Ruth! Little Ruth!" he cried softly, in a whisper.
"Did you hear? Do you know?" she asked.
"Only that he brought you here, the hellhound, and that Pasquale--"
He stopped, his sentence unfinished. There was no need to alarm her
about that old philanderer. Time enough for that if she scratched the
surface and found the savage beneath.
"--Won't let me go home," she finished for him.
"But what are you doing here? How did Harrison trap you?"
"I had been strolling with Daisy Ellington after supper. It was not
late--hardly dark yet. She stopped at the hotel to talk with Miss
Winters and I started to walk home alone. I took the short cut across
the empty block just below Brinker's. He was waiting among the
cottonwoods there--he and two Mexicans. As soon as he stepped into the
light I was afraid."
"Why didn't you cry out?"
"I didn't like to make a scene about nothing. And after that first
moment I had no time. He caught hold of me and put his hand across my
mouth. Horses were there ready saddled. He lifted me in front of him and
kept my mouth covered till we were clear of the town. It didn't matter
how much I screamed when we had reached the desert."
"I didn't think even Harrison had the nerve to kidnap an Arizona girl
and bring her across the line. If he had happened to meet a bunch of
cowpunchers--"
"He didn't start after me. It was you he wanted. But he found out you
weren't in town and took me instead. All the way down he talked about
you--boasted how he would marry me in spite of you and how he would take
you and have Pasquale flay you alive."
Yeager lifted a warning finger. "Remember you have a friend here.
Good-night."
He lowered himself quickly, slid down the porch post, and disappeared
into the darkness almost instantly.
Ruth heard voices. One gave commands, the others answered mildly with
"Si, Excellency." Dim figures moved about below, one heavy, bulky,
dominating. He gestured, snapped out curt directions, and presently
vanished. Two guards were left. They paced up and down beneath her
window. She understood that Pasquale was providing against any chance of
escape. Half an hour ago she would have shuddered. Now she could even
smile faintly at his precautions. Steve would evade them when the right
time came.
Her confidence in him, since it looked only to the results, was greater
than that he felt in his own power. The range-rider saw the difficulties
before him. He was alone in a camp of wild, ignorant natives who moved
at the nod of Pasquale. When he let himself think of Ruth as a prisoner
at the mercy of that savage old outlaw's whim, the heart of Steve failed
him. What could one man do against so many?
He felt that she was perfectly safe for the present, but Yeager found it
impossible to sleep in the stable. Taking his blankets with him, he
slipped noiselessly out to the cottonwood clump back of Pasquale's
headquarters. Here, at least, he could see the light in her window and
be sure that all was well with her.
As he moved noiselessly from one tree to another which gave a better
view of the window, Steve stumbled against the prostrate body of a man.
Some one ripped out a sullen oath and a grip of steel caught at the
ankle of the cowpuncher.
Taken by surprise, Yeager was dragged to the ground.
"What are you doing here?" demanded a voice Steve recognized instantly
as belonging to Harrison.
The prisoner made no resistance. He ran into a patter of frightened,
apologetic Spanish.
"What's your name?"
"Pedro Cabenza, señor," replied the owner of that name. "It is so hot in
the stable. So I bring my blankets here and sleep."
"Hmp!" Harrison took time for reflection. "Know where I put up?"
"Si, señor."
The prizefighter gave him a dollar. "Stay here. Keep an eye on that
lighted window upstairs. If anything happens--if you hear a noise--if a
woman screams, come and knock me up right away. Understand?"
The docile Cabenza repeated his instructions like a parrot.
"Good enough," Harrison nodded. "I'll give you another dollar when you
come. But don't wake me for nothing."
"No, señor."
"And you'd better keep your mouth shut unless you want your head beat
off," advised the white man as he left.
The one who had given his name as Cabenza grinned to himself. He was
now Harrison's hired watcher. Both of them were in league to frustrate
any deviltry on the part of Pasquale. He wondered what the prizefighter
would give to know that he had his enemy so wholly in his power, that he
had only to lay hands on him and cry out to doom him to a painful and a
violent death.
Yeager dozed and wakened and dozed again. Always when he looked the
light was still burning. Toward morning he saw the figure of Ruth in the
window. When she turned away the light went out. He judged she had put
her anxieties from her and given herself to sleep at last. But not until
the camp began to stir with the renewal of life for another day did he
leave his post and return to the stable.
During the morning he slept under a cottonwood and made up arrears of
rest lost while on guard. About noon Harrison came down the street and
stopped at sight of him. The man was livid with anger. Yeager could
guess the reason. He had spent a stormy ten minutes with old Pasquale
demanding his rights and had issued from the encounter without profit.
From the place where Steve was sitting he had heard the high, excited
voices. It had occurred to him that the protest of Harrison had gone
about as far as it could be safely carried, for Gabriel was both a
ruthless and a hot-tempered despot.
Harrison sat down sullenly without speaking and stared straight in front
of him. He was boiling with impotent fury. Pasquale had the whip hand
and meant to carry things his own way. Of that he no longer had any
doubt. In bringing Ruth to Noche Buena he had made a great mistake.
"Do you want to make some money, you--what's your name?" he presently
rasped out.
Yeager answered with the universal formula of the land. "Si, señor. And
my name is Cabenza--Pedro Cabenza."
The prizefighter glanced warily around, then lowered his voice. "I mean
a lot of money--twenty dollars, maybe."
"Gold?" asked the peon, wide-eyed.
"Gold. How far would you go to earn that much?"
"A long way, señor."
Harrison caught him by the wrist with a grip that drove the blood back.
"Listen, Cabenza. _Would you go as far as the camp of Garcia Farrugia?_"
The close-gripped, salient jaw was thrust forward. Black eyes blazed
from a set, snarling face.
So, after all, the man was trafficking with the Federal governor all the
time just as he was with the Constitutionalists. Yeager had once or
twice suspected as much.
"To the camp of Governor Farrugia," gasped Cabenza. "But--what for,
señor?"
"To carry him a letter. Never mind what for. You will get your pay. Is
it not enough?"
"And--Pasquale?"
"Need never know. You can slip away this afternoon and be back by
to-morrow night."
Cabenza shook his head regretfully. "No. I am one of the horse
wranglers. My boss would miss me if I was not here. I cannot go."
The other man swore. At the same time he recognized the argument as
effective. He must find a messenger who could absent himself without
stirring up questions.
"Then keep your mouth clamped," ordered Harrison. "I may be able to use
you here. Anyhow, I want you to be ready to help if I need you."
He slipped a dollar into the brown palm of the peon and left him.
Steve looked after him with narrowed eyes. "Mr. Harrison is liable to
bump into trouble if he don't look out. He's gone crazy with the heat,
looks like. First thing, he'll pick on the wrong greaser and Mr.
Messenger will take the letter to Pasquale instead of Farrugia. That's
about what'll happen."
Something else happened first, however, that distracted the attention of
Mr. Yeager, alias Cabenza, from this regrettable possibility. A man
rode into camp, followed by a Mexican leading a pack-horse. The first
rider was straight, tall, and wide-shouldered; also he was deep-chested
and lean-loined, forty-five or thereabout, and had "Texan" written all
over his weather-beaten face and costume. At sight of him Steve gave a
silent whoop of joy. A white man had come to Noche Buena, a Texan (he
was ready to swear), and he wore his big serviceable six-guns low. Also,
he carried on his face and in his bearing the look of reckless
competence that comes only from death faced in the open fearlessly and
often.
Inside of five minutes Cabenza had gathered information as follows: Adam
Holcomb was a soldier of fortune who had fought all over South America
and Mexico. During the Spanish War he had been a Rough Rider in Cuba and
later had been a volunteer officer in the Philippines. The army routine
had no attraction for him. What he liked was actual fighting. So the
outbreak of the Revolution had drawn him across the border, where he had
done much to lick the Constitutionalist troops into shape. Now he had
come to Noche Buena to teach the artillery of the Legion how to shoot
straight, after which they would all march south and take the great city
with the golden gates. Personally this Gringo was a devil, of course,
but Pasquale was a prince of devils whose business it was to keep all
lesser ones in order. So, in the Spanish equivalent of our American
slang, they should worry. Thus a comrade explained the Texan and his
presence to Pedro.
Cabenza contrived to be in the way when someone was wanted to fill the
water-jug of Holcomb. Ochampa, who for the moment had charge of the
artillery officer, swooped down upon the peon and put him temporarily at
the service of his guest to fetch and carry at his orders. So Pedro
unpacked the belongings of the American officer and prepared what had to
serve as the substitute for a bath. He was so adept at this that the
captain privately decided to requisition him for his servant.
Having finished this and laid out towels, Cabenza brushed the boots of
the captain outside while that gentleman splashed within the cabin. He
chose the time while he was arranging the shaving-outfit on the table to
convey a piece of information to Holcomb.
"What's that? An American woman--held captive at his house by Pasquale,"
repeated the soldier of fortune, astonished.
"A girl, not a woman. About eighteen, maybe," supplemented Cabenza, in
Mexican, of course.
"A woman from the street, I reckon. And if you look into it you'll find
she's here of her own free will."
Steve was now stropping a razor. His back was toward the officer, but
without turning he could see him by looking in the glass.
"You've got the wrong steer, captain. She's as straight a girl as ever
lived," answered Yeager in perfectly good English.
Holcomb sat up straight. "Turn round, my man," he ordered crisply.
The range-rider did as he was told. The light, blue-gray eyes of the
officer bored into his.
"You're no Mexican," charged the Texan.
"No. Arizona is where I hang up my hat."
"What are you, then? A spy?"
"I reckon, maybeso." Steve admitted the thrust lightly. "Got time to
hear all about it, captain?"
"Go ahead."
The range-rider told it, the whole story, so far as it could be related
by him. Such details as his modesty omitted Holcomb's imagination was
easily able to supply.
The Texan paced up and down the room with the long, light, military
stride.
"And you say Pasquale has been with her all day--that he ate lunch with
her and is riding with her now?"
"Yes. Just watch his eyes when he looks at her if you're in doubt about
the old villain. There's a tiger look in them, and something else that's
worse." Yeager chanced to glance out of the window. "Here they come now
back from their ride. Why not meet them as they alight?"
The captain reached for his hat and led the way down the street. Cabenza
followed him, a step or two in the rear. They reached headquarters just
as Pasquale lifted Ruth from the saddle. He held her for a moment in his
strong arms and grinned down at her frightened, fascinated eyes.
"Adios, chatita!" he murmured, his little eyes dancing with triumph.
She fled from him into the house, terror giving speed to her limbs.
Upon Holcomb the dictator turned eyes that had grown cold and harsh
again.
"Welcome, captain, welcome, to the Northern Legion," he said brusquely,
offering a gauntleted hand.
They went into the house together, Pasquale's arm across the shoulder of
the Texan.
"Dios, I'm glad to see you, captain," the insurgent chief ran on
quickly. "This riff-raff of mine can't hit a hillside. Hammer the
artillery into shape and I'll say gracias."
"Yes. I see you have a countrywoman of mine visiting you," the American
said quietly.
"From Arizona." The Mexican laughed harshly. "We should get together
more, your country and mine. We should bind the States and the Republic
together by closer ties. A man without a wife is but a half man.
Captain, I shall marry."
It was common knowledge of the camp that in his outlaw days Pasquale had
a wife and family. The sons were grown up now. The rumor ran that the
wife had found a more congenial mate and was separated from Gabriel by
common agreement. Holcomb made no reference to this free-and-easy
arrangement.
"Congratulations, general. Is the lady some high-born señorita?"
"The lady you have just seen is my choice--the young woman from
Arizona," answered Pasquale, flashing from under his heavy grizzled
brows a sharp, questioning look at the Texan.
"Indeed! I shall be happy to meet the lady and wish her joy," replied
Holcomb lightly.
"You shall, captain. She's a little reluctant yet, but Gabriel has a way
of overcoming that. I shall be married on Saturday."
"Ah!"
The face of the Texan had as much expression as a piece of flint.
Pasquale, watching him warily, wondered what he was thinking behind
those hard, steel-gray eyes.