laughed.
“It is—Bucky?” The question joyfully answered itself.
“Right guess. Bucky it is.”
He had hold of her hands by this time, was trying to peer down into the
happy-brown eyes he knew were scanning him. “I can’t see you yet, Curly
Haid, but it’s sure you, I reckon. I’ll have to pass my hand over your
face the way a blind man does,” he laughed, and, greatly daring, he
followed his own suggestion, and let his fingers wander across her
crisp, thick hair, down her soft, warm cheeks, and over the saucy nose
and laughing mouth he had often longed to kiss.
Presently she drew away shyly, but the lilt of happiness in her voice
told him she was not offended. “I can see you, Bucky.” The last word
came as usual, with that sweet, hesitating, upward inflection that made
her familiarity wholly intoxicating, even while the comradeship of it
left room for an interpretation either of gay mockery or something
deeper. “Yes, I can see you. That’s because I have been here longer and
am more used to the darkness. I think I’ve been here about a year.” He
felt her shudder. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you.”
“No gladder than I am to feel you,” he answered gayly. “It’s worth the
price of admission to find you here, girl o’mine.”
He had forgotten the pretense that still lay between them, so far as
words went when they had last parted. Nor did it yet occur to him that
he had swept aside the convention of her being a boy. But she was
vividly aware of it, and aware, too, of the demand his last words had
made for a recognition of the relationship that existed in feeling
between them.
“I knew you knew I was a girl,” she murmured.
“You knew more than that,” he challenged joyfully.
But, in woman’s way, she ignored his frontal attack. He was going at
too impetuous a speed for her reluctance. “How long have you known that
I wasn’t a boy—not from the first, surely?”
“I don’t know why I didn’t, but I didn’t. I was sure locoed,” he
confessed. “It was when you came out dressed as a gypsy that I knew.
That explained to me a heap of things I never had understood before
about you.”
“It explained, I suppose, why I never had licked the stuffing out of
any other kid, and why you did not get very far in making a man out of
me as you promised,” she mocked.
“Yes, and it explained how you happened to say you were eighteen. By
mistake you let the truth slip out. Course I wouldn’t believe it.”
“I remember you didn’t. I think you conveyed the impression to me
diplomatically that you had doubts.”
“I said it was a lie,” he laughed. “I sure do owe you a heap of
apologies for being so plumb dogmatic when you knew best. You’ll have
to sit down on me hard once in a while, or there won’t be any living
with me.”
Blushingly she did some more ignoring. “That was the first time you
threatened to give me a whipping,” she recalled aloud.
“My goodness! Did I ever talk so foolish?”
“You did, and meant it.”
“But somehow I never did it. I wonder why I didn’t.”
“Perhaps I was so frail you were afraid you would break me.”
“No, that wasn’t it. In the back of my haid somewhere there was an
instinct that said: ‘Bucky, you chump, if you don’t keep your hands off
this kid you’ll be right sorry all your life.’ Not being given to many
ideas, I paid a heap of respect to that one.”
“Well, it’s too bad, for I probably needed that whipping, and now
you’ll never be able to give it to me.”
“I shan’t ever want to now.”
Saucily her merry eyes shot him from under the long lashes. “I’m not so
sure of that. Girls can be mighty aggravating.”
“That’s the way girls are meant to be, I expect,” he laughed. “But
fifteen-year-old boys have to be herded back into line. There’s a
difference.”
She rescued her hands from him and led the way to a bench that served
for a seat. “Sit down here, sir. There are one or two things that I
have to explain.” She sat down beside him at the farther end of the
bench.
“This light is so dim, I can’t see you away over there,” he pleaded,
moving closer.
“You don’t need to see me. You can hear me, can’t you?”
“I reckon.”
She seemed to find a difficulty in beginning, even though the darkness
helped her by making it impossible for him to see her embarrassment.
Presently he chuckled softly. “No, ma’am, I can’t even hear you. If
you’re talking, I’ll have to come closer.”
“If you do, I’ll get up. I want you to be really earnest.”
“I never was more earnest in my life, Curly.”
“Please, Bucky? It isn’t easy to say it, and you mustn’t make it
harder.”
“Do you have to say it, pardner?” he asked, more seriously.
“Yes, I have to say it.” And swiftly she blurted it out. “Why do you
suppose I came with you to Mexico?”
“I don’t know.” He grappled with her suggestion for a moment. “I
suppose—you said it was because you were afraid of Hardman.”
“Well, I wasn’t. At least, I wasn’t afraid that much. I knew that I
would have been quite safe next time with the Mackenzies at the ranch.”
“Then why was it?”
“You can’t think of any reason?” She leaned forward and looked directly
into his eyes—eyes as honest and as blue as an Arizona sky.
But he stood unconvicted—nay, acquitted. The one reason she had dreaded
he might offer to himself had evidently never entered his head.
Whatever guesses he might have made on the subject, he was plainly
guiltless of thinking she might have come with him because she was in
love with him.
“No, I can’t think of any other reason, if the one you gave isn’t the
right one.”
“Quite sure?”
“Quite sure, pardner.”
“Think! Why did you come to Chihuahua?”
“To run down Wolf Leroy’s gang and to get Dave Henderson out of
prison.”
“Perhaps there is a reason why I should want him out of prison, a
better reason than you could possibly have.”
“I don’t savvy it. How can there be? You don’t know him, do you? He’s
been in prison almost ever since you were born.” And on top of his last
statement Bucky’s eyes began to open with a new light. “Good heavens!
It can’t be possible. You’re not Webb Mackenzie’s little girl, are
you?”
She did not answer him in words, but from her neck she slipped a chain
and handed it to him. On the chain hung a locket.
The ranger struck a match and examined the trinket. “It’s the very
missing locket. See! Here’s the other one. Compare them together.” He
touched the spring and it opened, but the match was burned out and he
had to light another. “Here’s the mine map that has been lost all these
years. How did you get this? Have you always had it? And how long have
you known that you were Frances Mackenzie?”
His questions tumbled out one upon another in his excitement.
She laughed, answering him categorically. “I don’t know, for sure. Yes,
at least a great many years. Less than a week.”
“But—I don’t understand—”
“And won’t until you give me a chance to do some of the talking,” she
interrupted dryly.
“That’s right. I reckon I am getting off left foot first. It’s your
powwow now,” he conceded.
“So long as I can remember exactly I have always lived with the man
Hardman and his wife. But before that I can vaguely recall something
different. It has always seemed like a kind of fairyland, for I was a
very little tot then. But one of the things I seem to remember was a
sweet, kind-eyed mother and a big, laughing father. Then, too, there
were horses and lots of cows. That is about all, except that the chain
around my neck seemed to have some connection with my early life.
That’s why I always kept it very carefully, and, after one of the
lockets broke, I still kept it and the funny-looking paper inside of
it.”
“I don’t understand why Hardman didn’t take the paper,” he interrupted.
“I suppose he did, and when he discovered that it held only half the
secret of the mine he probably put it back in the locket. I see you
have the other part.”
“It was lost at the place where the robbers waited to hold up the T. P.
Limited. Probably you lost it first and one of the robbers found it.”
“Probably,” she said, in a queer voice.
“What was the first clue your father had had for many years about his
little girl. He happened to be at Aravaipa the day you and I first met.
I guess he took a fancy to me, for he asked me to take this case up for
him and see if I couldn’t locate you. I ran Hardman down and made him
tell me the whole story. But he lied about some of it, for he told me
you were dead.”
“He is a born liar,” the girl commented. “Well, to get on with my
story. Anderson, or Hardman, as he now calls himself, except when he
uses his stage name of Cavallado, went into the show business and took
me with him. When I was a little bit of a girl he used to use me for
all sorts of things, such as a target for his knife throwing and to
sell medicine to the audience. Lots of people would buy because I was
such a morsel of a creature, and I suppose he found me a drawing card.
We moved all over the country for years. I hated the life. But what
could I do?”
“You poor little lamb,” murmured the man. “And when did you find out
who you were?”
“I heard you talking to him the night you took him back to Epitaph, and
then I began to piece things together. You remember you went over the
whole story with him again just before we reached the town.”
“And you knew it was you I was talking about?”
“I didn’t know. But when you mentioned the locket and the map, I knew.
Then it seemed to me that since this man Henderson had lost so many
years of his life trying to save me I must do something for him. So I
asked you to take me with you. I had been a boy so long I didn’t think
you would know the difference, and you did not. If I hadn’t dressed as
a girl that time you would not know yet.”
“Maybe, and maybe not,” he smiled. “Point is, I do know, and it makes a
heap of difference to me.”
“Yes, I know,” she said hurriedly. “I’m more trouble now.”
“That ain’t it,” he was beginning, when a thought brought him up short.
As the daughter of Webb Mackenzie this girl was no longer a penniless
outcast, but the heiress of one-half interest in the big Rocking Chair
Ranch, with its fifteen thousand head of cattle. As the first he had a
perfect right to love her and to ask her to marry him, but as the
latter—well, that was quite a different affair. He had not a cent to
bless himself with outside of his little ranch and his salary, and,
though he might not question his own motives under such circumstances,
there would be plenty who would question them for him. He was an
independent young man as one could find in a long day’s ride, and his
pride rose up to padlock his lips.
She looked across at him in shy surprise, for all the eagerness had in
an instant been sponged from his face. With a hard, impassive
countenance he dropped the hand he had seized and turned away.
“You were saying—” she suggested.
“I reckon I’ve forgot what it was. It doesn’t matter, anyhow.”
She was hurt, and deeply. It was all very well for her to try her
little wiles to delay him, but in her heart she longed to hear the
words he had been about to say. It had been very sweet to know that
this brown, handsome son of Arizona loved her, very restful to know
that for the first time in her life she could trustfully let her
weakness lean on the strength of another. And, more than either, though
she sometimes smilingly pretended to deny it to herself, was the
ultimate fact that she loved him. His voice was music to her, his
presence joy. He brought with him sunshine, and peace, and happiness.
He was always so reliable, so little the victim of his moods. What
could have come over him now to change him in that swift instant? Was
she to blame? Had she unknowingly been at fault? Or was there something
in her story that had chilled him? It was characteristic of her that it
was herself she doubted and not him; that it never occurred to her that
her hero had feet of clay like other men.
She felt her heart begin to swell, and choked back a sob. It wrung him
to hear the little breath catch, but he was a man, strong-willed and
resolute. Though he dug his finger nails into his palms till the flesh
was cut he would not give way to his desire.
“You’re not angry at me—Bucky?” she asked softly.
“No, I’m not angry at you.” His voice was cold because he dared not
trust himself to let his tenderness creep into it.
“I haven’t done anything that I ought not to? Perhaps you think it
wasn’t—wasn’t nice to—to come here with you.”
“I don’t think anything of the kind,” his hard voice answered. “I think
you’re a prince, if you want to know.”
She smiled a little wanly, trying to coax him back into friendliness.
“Then if I’m a prince you must be a princess,” she teased.
“I meant a prince of good fellows.”
“Oh!” She could be stiff, too, if it came to that.
And at this inopportune moment the key turned harshly and the door
swung open.
CHAPTER XII.
A CLEAN WHITE MAN’S OPTION
The light of a lantern coming down the steps blinded them for a moment.
Behind the lantern peered the yellow face of the turnkey. “Ho, there,
_Americano!_ They want you up above,” the man said. “The generals, and
the colonels, and the captains want a little talk with you before they
hang you, señor.”
The two soldiers behind the fellow cackled merrily at his wit, and the
encouraged turnkey tried again.
“We shall trouble you but a little time. Only a few questions, señor,
an order, and then _poco tiempo_, after a short walk to the
gallows—paradise.”
“What—what do you mean?” gasped the girl whitely.
“Never mind, _muchacho_. This is no affair of yours. Your turn will
come later. Have no fear of that,” nodded the wrinkled old parchment
face.
“But—but he hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Ho, ho! Let him explain that to the generals and the colonels,”
croaked the old fellow. “And that you may explain the sooner, señor,
hurry—let your feet fly!”
Bucky walked across to the girl he loved and took her hands in his.
“If I don’t come back before three hours read the letter that I wrote
you yesterday, dear. I have left matches on that bench so that you may
have a light. Be brave, pardner. Don’t lose your nerve, whatever you
do. We’ll both get out of this all right yet.”
He spoke in a low voice, so that the guards might not hear, and it was
in kind that she answered.
“I’m afraid, Bucky; afraid away down deep. You don’t half believe
yourself what you say. I can’t stand it to be here alone and not know
what’s going on. They might be—be doing what that man said, and I not
know anything about it till afterward.” She broke down and began to
sob. “Oh, I know I’m a dreadful little coward, but I can’t be like
you—and you heard what he said.”
“Sho! What he says is nothing. I’m an American citizen, and I reckon
that will carry us through all right. Uncle Sam has awful long arms,
and these greasers know it. I’m expecting to come back here again,
little pardner. But if I don’t make it, I want you, just as soon as
they turn you loose, to go straight to your father’s ranch.”
“Come! This won’t do. Look alive, señor,” the turnkey ordered, and to
emphasize his words reached a hand forward to pluck away the sobbing
lad. Bucky caught his wrist and tightened on it like a vise. “Hands
off, here!” he commanded quietly.
The man gave a howl of pain and nursed his hand gingerly after it was
released.
“Oh, Bucky, make him let me go, too,” the girl wailed, clinging to his
coat.
Gently he unfastened her fingers. “You know I would if I could, Curly;
but it isn’t my say-so.”
And with that he was gone. Ashen-faced she watched him go, and as soon
as the door had closed groped her way to the bench and sank down on it,
her face covered with her hands. He was going to his death. Her lover
was going to his death. Why had she let him go? Why had she not done
something—thought of some way to save him?
The ranger’s guards led him to the military headquarters in the next
street from the prison. He observed that nearly a whole company of
Rurales formed the escort, and this led him to conclude that the
government party was very uneasy as to the situation and had taken
precautions against a possible attempt at rescue. But no such attempt
was made. The sunny streets were pretty well deserted, except for a few
lounging peons hardly interested enough to be curious. The air of
peace, of order, sat so incongruously over the plaza that Bucky’s heart
fell. Surely this was the last place on earth for a revolution to make
any headway of consequence. His friends were hidden away in holes and
cellars, while Megales dominated the situation with his troops. To
expect a reversal of the situation was surely madness.
Yet even while the thought was in his mind he caught a glimpse in a
doorway of a man he recognized. It was Rodrigo, one of his allies of
the previous night’s escapade, and it seemed to him that the man was
trying to tell him something with his eyes. If so, the meaning of his
message failed to carry home, for after the ranger had passed he dared
not look back again.
So far as the trial itself went, O’Connor hoped for nothing and was the
less disappointed. One glance at his judges was enough to convince him
of the futility of expectation. He was tried by a court-martial
presided over by General Carlo. Beside him sat a Colonel Onate and
Lieutenant Chaves. In none of the three did he find any room for hope.
Carlo was a hater of Americans and a butcher by temperament and choice,
Chaves a personal enemy of the prisoner, and Onate looked as grim an
old scoundrel as Jeffreys the hanging judge of James Stuart. Governor
Megales, though not technically a member of the court, was present, and
took an active part in the prosecution. He was a stout, swarthy little
man, with black, beady eyes that snapped restlessly to and fro, and
from his manner to the officers in charge of the trial it was plain
that he was a despot even in his own official family.
The court did not trouble itself with forms of law. Chaves was both
principal witness and judge, notwithstanding the protest of the
prisoner. Yet what the lieutenant had to offer in the way of testimony
was so tinctured with bitterness that it must have been plain to the
veriest novice he was no fit judge of the case.
But Bucky knew as well as the judges that his trial was a merely
perfunctory formality. The verdict was decided ere it began, and,
indeed, so eager was Megales to get the farce over with that several
times he interrupted the proceedings to urge haste.
It took them just fifteen minutes from the time the young American was
brought into the room to find him guilty of treason and to decide upon
immediate execution as the fitting punishment.
General Carlo turned to the prisoner. “Have you anything to say before
I pronounce sentence of death upon you?”
“I have,” answered Bucky, looking him straight in the eyes. “I am an
American, and I demand the rights of a citizen of the United States.”
“An American?” Incredulously Megales lifted his eyebrows. “You are a
Spanish gypsy, my friend.”
The ranger was fairly caught in his own trap. He had donned the gypsy
masquerade because he did not want to be taken for what he was, and he
had succeeded only too well. He had played into their hands. They
would, of course, claim, in the event of trouble with the United
States, that they had supposed him to be what his costume proclaimed
him, and they would be able to make good their pretense with a very
decent appearance of candor. What an idiot of sorts he had been!
“We understand each other perfectly, governor. I know and you know that
I am an American. As a citizen of the United States I claim the
protection of that flag. I demand that you will send immediately for
the United States consul to this city.”
Megales leaned forward with a thin, cruel smile on his face. “Very
well, señor. Let it be as you say. Your friend, Señor O’Halloran, is
the United States consul. I shall be very glad to send for him if you
can tell me where to find him. Having business with him to-day, I have
despatched messengers who have been unable to find him at home. But
since you know where he is, and are in need of him, perhaps you can
assist me with information of value.”
Again Bucky was fairly caught. He had no reason to doubt that the
governor spoke truth in saying that O’Halloran was the United States
consul. There were in the city as permanent residents not more than
three or four citizens of the United States. With the political
instinct of the Irish, it would be very characteristic of O’Halloran to
work his “pull” to secure for himself the appointment. That he had not
happened to mention the fact to his friend could be accounted for by
reason of the fact that the duties of the office at that place were few
and unimportant.
“We are waiting, señor. If you will tell us where we may send?” hinted
Megales.
“I do not know any more than you do, if he is not at home.”
The governor’s eyes glittered. “Take care, señor. Better sharpen your
memory.”
“It’s pretty hard to remember what one never knew,” retorted the
prisoner.
The Mexican tyrant brought his clinched fist slowly down on the table
in front of him. “It is necessary to remember, sir. It is necessary to
answer a few questions. If you answer them to our satisfaction you may
yet save your life.”
“Indeed!” Bucky swept his fat bulk scornfully from head to foot. “If I
were what you think me, do you suppose I would betray my friends?”
“You have no option, sir. Answer my questions, or die like a dog.”
“You mean that you would not think you had any option if you were in my
place, but since I’m a clean white man there’s an option. By God! sir,
it doesn’t take me a whole lot of time to make it, either. I’ll see you
rot in hell before I’ll play Judas.”
The words rang like a bell through the room, not loud, but clear and
vibrant. There was a long instant’s silence after the American finished
speaking, and as his eyes swept from one to another of the enemy Bucky
met with a surprise. On Colonel Onate’s face was a haggard look of
fear—surely it was fear—that lifted in relief at the young man’s brave
challenge. He had been dreading something, and the dread was lifted.
Onate! Onate! The ranger’s memory searched the past few days to locate
the name. Had O’Halloran mentioned it? Was this man one of the officers
expected to join the opposition when it declared itself against
Megales? He had a vague recollection of the name, and he could have
heard it only through his friend.
“Was Juan Valdez a member of the party that took the rifles from
Lieutenant Chaves and his escort?”
Bucky laughed out his contempt.
“Speak, sir,” broke in Chaves. “Answer the governor, you dog.”
“If I speak, it will be to tell you what a cur I think you.”
Chaves flushed angrily and laid a hand on his revolver. “Who are you
that play dice with death, like a fool?”
“My name, seh, is Bucky O’Connor.”
At the words a certain fear, followed by a look of triumph, passed over
the face of Chaves. It was as if he had had an unpleasant shock that
had instantly proved groundless. Bucky did not at the time understand
it.
“Why don’t you shoot? It’s about your size, you pinhead, to kill an
unarmed man.”
“Tell all you know and I promise you your life.” It was Megales who
spoke.
“I’ll tell you nothing, except that I’m Bucky O’Connor, of the Arizona
Rangers. Chew on that a while, governor, and see how it tastes. Kill
me, and Uncle Sam is liable to ask mighty loud whyfor; not because I’m
such a mighty big toad in the puddle, but because any man that stands
under that flag has back of him the biggest, best, and gamest country
on God’s green footstool.” Bucky spoke in English this time, straight
as he could send it.
“In that case, I think sentence may now be pronounced, general.”
“I warn you that the United States will exact vengeance for my death.”
“Indeed!” Politely the governor smiled at him with a malice almost
devilish. “If so, it will be after you are dead, Señor Bucky O’Connor,
of the Arizona Rangers.”
Colonel Onate leaned forward and whispered something to General Carlo,
who shook his head and frowned. Presently the black head of Chaves
joined them, and the three were in excited discussion. Arms waved like
signals, as is usual among the Latin races who talk with their hands
and expressive shrugs of the shoulders. Outvoted by two to one, Onate
appealed to the governor, who came up and listened, frowning, to both
sides of the debate. In their excitement the voices raised, and to
Bucky came snatches of phrases that told him his life hung in the
balance. Carlo and Chaves were for having him executed out of hand, at
latest, by sunset. The latter was especially vindictive. Indeed, it
seemed to the ranger that ever since he had mentioned his name this man
had set himself more malevolently to compass his death. Onate
maintained, on the other hand, that their prisoner was worth more to
them alive than dead. There was a chance that he might weaken before
morning and tell secrets. At worst they would still have his life as a
card to hold in case of need over the head of the rebels. If it should
turn out that this was not needed, he could be executed in the morning
as well as to-night.
It may be conceived with what anxiety Bucky listened to the whispered
conversation and waited for the decision of the governor. He was a game
man, noted even in a country famous for its courageous citizens, but he
felt strangely weak now as he waited with that leather-crusted face of
his bereft of all expression.
“Give him till morning to weaken. If he still stays obstinate, hang him
in the dawn,” decided the governor, his beady eyes fixed on the
prisoner.
Not a flicker of the eyelid betrayed the Arizonian’s emotion, but for
an instant the world swam dizzily before him. Safe till morning! Before
then a hundred chances might change the current of the game in his
favor. How brightly the sunshine flooded the room! What a glorious
world it was, after all! Through the open window poured the rich,
full-throated song of a meadow lark, and the burden of its blithe song
was, “How good is this life the mere living.”
CHAPTER XIII.
BUCKY’S FIRST-RATE REASONS
How long Frances Mackenzie gave herself up to despair she never knew,
but when at last she resolutely took herself in hand it seemed hours
later. “Bucky told me to be brave, he told me not to lose my nerve,”
she repeated to herself over and over again, drawing comfort from the
memory of his warm, vibrant voice. “He said he would come back, and he
hates a liar. So, of course, he will come.” With such argument she
tried to allay her wild fears.
But on top of all her reassurances would come a swift, blinding vision
of gallant Bucky being led to his death that crumpled her courage as a
hammer might an empty egg shell. What was the use of her pretending all
was well when at that very moment they might be murdering him? Then in
her agony she would pace up and down, wringing her hands, or would beat
them on the stone walls till the soft flesh was bruised and bleeding.
It was in the reaction, after one of these paroxysms of despair, that
in her groping for an anchor to make fast her courage she thought of
his letter.
“He said in three hours I was to read it if he didn’t come back. It
must be more than three hours now,” she said aloud to herself, and knew
a fresh dread at his prolonged absence beyond the limit he had set.
In point of fact, he had been gone less than three-quarters of an hour,
but in each one of them she had lived a lifetime of pain and died many
deaths.
By snatches she read her letter, a sentence or a fragment of a sentence
at a time as the light served. Luckily he had left a case nearly full
of matches, and one after another of them dropped, charred and burned
out, before she had finished reading. After she had read it, her first
love letter, she must needs go over it again, to learn by heart the
sweet phrases in which he had wooed her. It was a commonplace note
enough, far more neutral than the strong, virile writer who had lacked
the cunning to transmit his feeling to ink and paper. But, after all,
it was from him, and it told the divine message, however haltingly. No
wonder she burned her little finger tips from the flame of the matches
creeping nearer unheeded. No wonder she pressed it to her lips in the
darkness and dreamed her happy dream in those few moments when she was
lost in her love before cruel realities pressed home on her again.
“I told you, Little Curly Haid, that I had first-rate reasons for not
wanting to be killed by these Mexicans. So I have, the best reasons
going. But they are not ripe to tell you, and so I write them.
“I guessed your secret, little pardner, right away when I seen you in a
girl’s outfit. If I hadn’t been blind as a bat I would have guessed it
long since, for all the time my feelings were telling me mighty loud
that you were the lovingest little kid Bucky had ever come across.
“I’ll not leave you to guess my secret the way you did me yours, dear
Curly, but right prompt I’ll set down adore (with one D) and say you
hit the bull’s-eye that time without expecting to. But if I was saying
it I would not use any French words sweetheart, but plain American. And
the word would be l-o-v-e, without any D’s. Now you have got the
straight of it, my dear. I love you—love you—love you, from the crown
of that curly hear to the soles of your little feet. What’s more, you
have got to love me, too, since I am,
“Your future husband,
“BUCKY O’CONNOR.
“P. S.—And now, Curly, you know my first-rate reasons for not meaning
to get shot up by any of these Mexican fellows.”
So the letter ran, and it went to her heart directly as rain to the
thirsty roots of flowers. He loved her. Whatever happened, she would
always have that comfort. They might kill him, but they could not take
away that. The words of an old Scotch song that Mrs. Mackenzie sang
came back to her:
“The span o’ life’s nae large eneugh,
Nor deep enough the sea,
Nor braid eneugh this weary warld,
To part my love frae me.”
No, they could not part their hearts in this world or the next, and
with this sad comfort she flung herself on the rough bed and sobbed.
She would grieve still, but the wildness of her grief and despair was
gone, scattered by the knowledge that however their troubles eventuated
they were now one in heart.
She was roused after a long time by the sound of the huge key grating
in the lock. Through the opened door a figure descended, and by an
illuminating swing of the turnkey’s lantern she saw that it was Bucky.
Next moment the door had closed and they were in each other’s arms.
Bucky’s stubborn pride, the remembrance of the riches which of a sudden
had transformed his little partner into an heiress and set a high wall
of separation between them, these were swept clean away on a great wave
of love which took Bucky off his feet and left him breathless.
“I had almost given you up,” she cried joyfully.
Again he passed his hand across her face. “You’ve been crying, little
pardner. Were you crying on account of me?”
“On account of myself, because I was afraid I had lost you. Oh, Bucky,
isn’t it too good to be true?”
The ranger smiled, remembering that he had about fourteen hours to
live, if the Megales faction triumphed. “Good! I should think it is.
Bully! I’ve been famished to see Curly Haid again.”
“And to know that everything is going to come out all right and that we
love each other.”
“That’s right good hearing and most ce’tainly true on my side of it.
But how do you happen to know it so sure?” he laughed gayly.
“Why, your letter, Bucky. It was the dearest letter. I love it.”
“But you weren’t to read it for three hours,” he pretended to reprove,
holding her at arm’s length to laugh at her.
“Wasn’t it three hours? It seemed ever so much longer.”
“You little rogue, you didn’t play fair.” And to punish her he drew her
soft, supple body to him in a close embrace, and for the first time
kissed the sweet mouth that yielded itself to him.
“Tell me all about what happened to you,” she bade him playfully, after
speech was again in order.
“Sure.” He caught her hand to lead her to the bench and she winced
involuntarily.
“I burned it,” she explained, adding, with a ripple of shy laughter:
“When I was reading your letter. It doesn’t really hurt, though.”
But he had to see for himself and make much over the little blister
that the flame of a match revealed to him. For they were both very much
in love, and, in consequence, bubbling over with the foolishness that
is the greatest inherited wisdom of the ages.
But though her lover had acquiesced so promptly to her demand for a
full account of his adventures since leaving her, that young man had no
intention of offering an unexpurged edition of them. It was his hope
that O’Halloran would storm the prison during the night and effect a
rescue. If so, good; if not, there was no need of her knowing that for
them the new day would usher in fresh sorrow. So he gave her an account
of his trial and its details, told her how he had been convicted, and
how Colonel Onate had fought warily to get the sentence of execution
postponed in order to give their friends a chance to rescue them.
“When Megales remanded me to prison I wanted to let out an Arizona
yell, Curly. It sure seemed too good to be true.”
“But he may want the sentence carried out some time, if he changes his
mind. Maybe in a week or two he may take a notion that—” She stopped,
plainly sobered by the fear that the good news of his return might not
be final.
“We won’t cross that bridge till we come to it. You don’t suppose our
friends are going to sit down and fold their hands, do you? Not if I’ve
got Mike O’Halloran and young Valdez sized up right. Fur is going to
begin to fly pretty soon in this man’s country. But it’s up to us to
help all we can, and I reckon we’ll begin by taking a preliminary
survey of this wickiup.”
Wickiup was distinctly good, since the word is used to apply to a frail
Indian hut, and this cell was nothing less than a tomb built in the
solid rock by blowing out a chamber with dynamite and covering the
front with a solid sheet of iron, into which a door fitted. It did not
take a very long investigation to prove to Bucky that escape was
impossible by any exit except the door, which meant the same thing as
impossible at all under present conditions. Yet he did not yield to
this opinion without going over every inch of the walls many times to
make sure that no secret panel opened into a tunnel from the room.
“I reckon they want to keep us, Curly. Mr. Megales has sure got us real
safe this time. I’d be plumb discouraged about breaking jail out of
this cage. It’s ce’tainly us to stay hitched a while.”
About dark tortillas and frijoles were brought down to them by the
facetious turnkey, who was accompanied as usual by two guards.
“Why don’t my little birdies sing?” he asked, with a wink at the
soldiers. “One of them will not do any singing after daybreak
to-morrow. Ho, ho, my larks! Tune up, tune up!”
“What do you mean about one not singing after daybreak?” asked the
girl, with eyes dilating.
“What! Hasn’t he told you? Señor the ranger is to be hanged at the dawn
unless he finds his tongue for Governor Megales. Ho, ho! Our birdie
must speak even if he doesn’t sing.” And with that as a parting shot
the man clanged the door to after him and locked it.
“You never told me, Bucky. You have been trying to deceive me,” she
groaned.
He shrugged his shoulders. “What was the use, girlie? I knew it would
worry you, and do no good. Better let you sleep in peace, I thought.”
“While you kept watch alone and waited through the long night. Oh,
Bucky!” She crept close to him and put her arms around his neck,
holding him tight, as if in the hope that she could keep him against
the untoward fate that was reaching for him. “Oh, Bucky, if I could
only die for you!”
“Don’t give up, little friend. I don’t. Somehow I’ll slip out, and then
you’ll have to live for me and not die for me.”
“What is it that the governor wants you to say that you won’t?”
“Oh, he wants me to sell our friends. I told him to go climb a giant
cactus.”
“Of course you couldn’t do that,” she sighed regretfully.
He laughed. “Well, hardly, and call myself a white man.”
“But—” She blanched at the alternative. “Oh, Bucky, we must do
something. We must—we must.”
“It ain’t so bad as it looks, honey. You want to remember that Mike
O’Halloran is on deck. What’s the matter with him knocking out a home
run and bringing us both in. I put a heap of confidence in that
red-haided Irishman,” he answered cheerfully.
“You say that just to—to give me courage. You don’t really think he can
do anything,” she said wanly.
“That’s just what I think, Curly. Some men have a way of getting things
done. When you look at O’Halloran you feel this, the same as you do
when you look at Val Collins. Oh, he’ll get us out all right. I’ve been
in several tighter holes than this one.” His mention of Collins
suggested a diversion, and he took up a less distressing theme lightly.
“Wonder what Val is doing at this precise moment. I’ll bet he’s
beginning to make things warm for Wolf Leroy’s bunch of miscreants.
We’ll have the robbers of the Limited behind the bars within two weeks
now, or I miss my guess.”
He had succeeded in diverting her attention better than he had dared to
hope. Her big eyes fixed on his much as if he had raised for her some
forgotten spectre.
“That’s another thing I must tell you. I didn’t think to before. But I
want you to know all about me now. Don’t think me bad, Bucky. I’m only
a girl. I couldn’t help myself,” she pleaded.
“What is it you have done that is so awful?” he smiled, and went to
gather her into his arms.
She stayed him with a gesture of her hand. “No, not yet. Mebbe after
you know you won’t want to. I was one of the robbers of the Limited.”
“You—what!” he exclaimed, for once struck dumb with sheer amazement.
“Yes, Bucky. I expect you’ll hate me now. What is it you called me—a
miscreant? Well, that’s what I am.”
His arms slipped round her as she began to sob, and he gentled her till
she could again speak. “Tell me all about it, little Curly.” he said.
“I didn’t go into it because I wanted to. My master made me. I don’t
know much about the others, except that I heard the names they called
each other.”
“Would you know them again if you saw them? But of course you would.”
“Yes. But that’s it, Bucky. I hated them all, and I was in mortal fear
all the time. Still—I can’t betray them. They thought I went in freely
with them—all but Hardman. It wouldn’t be right for me to tell what I
know. I’ve got to make you see that, dear.”
“You’ll not need to argue that with me, honey. I see it. You must keep
quiet. Don’t tell anybody else what you’ve told me.”
“And will they put me in the penitentiary when the rest go there?”
“Not while Bucky O’Connor is alive and kicking,” he told her
confidently.
But the form in which he had expressed his feeling was unfortunate. It
brought them back to the menace of their situation. Neither of them
could tell how long he would be alive and kicking. She flung herself
into his arms and wept till she could weep no more.
CHAPTER XIV.
LE ROI EST MORT; VIVE LE ROI
When the news reached O’Halloran that Megales had scored on the
opposition by arresting Bucky O’Connor, the Irishman swore fluently at
himself for his oversight in forgetting the Northern Chihuahua. So far
as the success of the insurgents went, the loss of the ranger was a
matter of no importance, since O’Halloran knew well that nothing in the
way of useful information could be cajoled or threatened out of him.
But, personally, it was a blow to the filibuster, because he knew that
the governor would not hesitate to execute his friend if his fancy or
his fears ran that way, and the big, red-headed Celt would not have let
Bucky go to death for a dozen teapot revolutions if he could help it.
“And do you think you’re fit to run even a donation party, you great,
blundering gumph?” Mike asked himself, in disgust. “You a conspirator!
You a leader of a revolution! By the ghost of Brian Boru, you had
better run along back to the kindergarten class.”
But he was not the man to let grass grow under his feet while he
hesitated how to remedy his mistake. Immediately he got in touch with
Valdez and a few of his party, and decided on a bold counterstroke
that, if successful, would oppose a checkmate to the governor’s check
and would also make unnecessary the unloosing of the State prisoners on
the devoted heads of the people.
“But mind, gentlemen,” said Juan Valdez plainly, “the governor must not
be injured personally. I shall not consent to any violence, no matter
what the issue. Furthermore, I should like to be given charge of the
palace, in order to see that his wants are properly provided for. We
cannot afford to have our movement discredited at the outset by
unnecessary bloodshed or by any wanton outrages.”
O’Halloran smothered a smile. “Quite right, señor. Success at all
hazards, but, if possible, success with peace. And, faith, subject to
the approval of the rest of those present, I do hereby appoint you
keeper of the governor’s person and his palace, as well as all that do
dwell therein, including his man servants, his maid servants, and his
daughter. We hold you personally responsible for their safe keeping.
See that none of them cherish the enemy or give aid and comfort to
them.” The Irishman finished, with a broad smile that seemed to say:
“Begad, there’s a clear field. Go in and win, me bye.”
Nothing could be done in broad daylight, while the troops of the
government party patrolled the streets and were prepared to pounce on
the first suspects that poked their noses out of the holes where they
were hidden. Nevertheless, their spies were busy all day, reporting to
the opposition leaders everything that happened of interest. In the
course of the day General Valdez, the father of Juan, was arrested on
suspicion of complicity and thrown into prison, as were a score of
others thought to be in touch with the Valdez faction. All day the
troops of the governor were fussily busy, but none of the real leaders
of the insurgents was taken. For General Valdez, though he had been
selected on account of his integrity and great popularity to succeed
Megales, was unaware of the plot on foot to retire the dictator from
power.
It was just after nightfall that a farmer drove into Chihuahua with a
wagonload of alfalfa. He was halted once or twice by guards on the
streets, but, after a very cursory inspection, was allowed to pass. His
route took him past the back of the governor’s palace, an impressive
stone affair surrounded by beautiful grounds. Here he stopped, as if to
fasten a tug. Out of the hay tumbled fifteen men armed with rifles and
revolvers, all of them being careful to leave the wagon on the side
farthest from the palace.
“Now, me lads, we’re all heroes by our talk. It’s up to us to make
good. I can promise one thing: by this time to-morrow we’ll all be live
patriots or dead traitors. Which shall it be?”
O’Halloran’s concluding question was a merely rhetorical one, for
without waiting for an answer he started at the double toward the
palace, taking advantage of the dense shrubbery that offered cover up
to the last twenty yards. This last was covered with a rush so rapid
that the guard was surprised into a surrender without a protest.
Double guard was on duty on account of the strained situation, but the
officer in charge, having been won over to the Valdez side, had taken
care to pick them with much pains. As a consequence, the insurgents met
friends in place of enemies, and within three minutes controlled fully
the palace. Every entrance was at once closed and guarded, so that no
news of the reversal could reach the military barracks.
So silently had the palace been taken that, except the guards and one
or two servants held as prisoners, not even those living within it were
aware of anything unusual.
“Señor Valdez, you are appointed to notify the señorita that she need
not be alarmed at what has occurred. Señor Garcia will act as captain
of the day, and allow nobody to leave the building under any pretext
whatever. I shall personally put the tyrant under arrest. Rodrigo and
José will accompany me.”
O’Halloran left his subordinates at the door when he entered the
apartments of the governor. The outer room was empty, and the Irishman
passed through it to the inner one, where Megales was accustomed to
take his after-dinner siesta.
To-night, however, that gentleman was in no mood for peaceful
reflection followed by slumber. He was on the edge of a volcano, and he
knew it. The question was whether he could hold the lid on without an
eruption. General Valdez he dared not openly kill, on account of his
fame and his popularity, but that pestilent Irishman O’Halloran could
be assassinated and so could several of his allies—if they only gave
him time. That was the rub. The general dissatisfaction at his rule had
been no secret, of course, but the activity of the faction opposing
him, the boldness and daring with which it had risked all to overthrow
him, had come as so complete a surprise that he had been unprepared to
meet it. Everywhere to-night his guards covered the city, ready to
crush rebellion as soon as it showed its head. Carlo was in personal
charge of the troops, and would remain so until after the election
to-morrow, at which he would be declared formally reëlected. If he
could keep his hands on the reins for twenty-four hours more the worst
would be past. He would give a good deal to know what that mad
Irishman, O’Halloran, was doing just now. If he could once get hold of
him, the opposition would collapse like a house of cards.
At that precise moment in walked the mad Irishman pat to the Mexican’s
thought of him.
“_Buenos noches_, excellency. I understand you have been looking for
me. I am, señor, yours to command.” The big Irishman brought his heels
together and gave a mocking military salute.
The governor’s first thought was that he was a victim of treachery, his
second that he was a dead man, his third that he would die as a Spanish
gentleman ought. He was pale to the eyes, but he lost no whit of his
dignity.
“You have, I suppose, taken the palace,” he said quietly.
“As a loan, excellency, merely as a loan. After to-morrow it will be
returned you in the event you still need it,” replied O’Halloran
blandly.
“You expect to murder me, of course?”
The big Celt looked shocked. “Not at all! The bulletins may perhaps
have to report you accidentally killed or a victim of suicide.
Personally I hope not.”
“I understand; but before this lamentable accident happens I beg leave
to assure myself that the palace really is in your hands, señor. A mere
formality, of course.” The governor smiled his thin-lipped smile and
touched a bell beside him.
Twice Megales pressed the electric bell, but no orderly appeared in
answer to it. He bowed to the inevitable.
“I grant you victor, Señor O’Halloran. Would it render your victory
less embarrassing if I were to give you material immediately for that
bulletin on suicide?” He asked the question quite without emotion, as
courteously as if he were proposing a stroll through the gardens.
O’Halloran had never liked the man. The Irish in him had always boiled
at his tyranny. But he had never disliked him so little as at this
moment. The fellow had pluck, and that was one certain passport to the
revolutionist’s favor.
“On the contrary, it would distress me exceedingly. Let us reserve that
bulletin as a regrettable possibility in the event that less drastic
measures fail.”
“Which means, I infer, that you have need of me before I pass by the
Socratic method,” he suggested, still with that pale smile set in
granite “I shall depend on you to let me know at what precise hour you
would like to order an epitaph written for me. Say the word at your
convenience, and within five minutes your bulletin concerning the late
governor will have the merit of truth.”
“Begad, excellency, I like your spirit. If it’s my say-so, you will
live to be a hundred. Come the cards are against you. Some other day
they may fall more pat for you. But the jig’s up now.”
“I am very much of your opinion, sir,” agreed Megales.
“Then why not make terms?”
“Such as—”
“Your life and your friends’ lives against a graceful capitulation.”
“Our lives as prisoners or as free men?”
“The utmost freedom compatible with the circumstances. Your friends may
either leave or remain and accept the new order of things. I’m afraid
it will be necessary for you and General Carlo to leave the state for
your own safety. You have both many enemies.”
“With our personal possessions?”
“Of course. Such property as you cannot well take may be left in the
hands of an agent and disposed of later.”
Megales eyed him narrowly. “Is it your opinion, on honor, that the
general and I would reach the boundaries of the State without being
assassinated?”
“I pledge you my honor and that of Juan Valdez that you will be safely
escorted out of the country if you will consent to a disguise. It is
only fair to him to say that he stands strong for your life.”
“Then, sir, I accept your terms if you can make it plain to me that you
are strong enough to take the city against General Carlo.”
From his pocket O’Halloran drew a typewritten list and handed it to the
governor, who glanced it over with interest.
“These army officers are all with you?”
“As soon as the word is given.”
“You will pardon me if I ask for proof?”
“Certainly. Choose the name of any one of them you like and send for
him. You are at liberty to ask him whether he is pledged to us.”
The governor drew a pencil-mark through a name. O’Halloran clapped his
hands and Rodrigo came into the room.
“Rodrigo, the governor desires you to carry a message to Colonel Onate.
He is writing it now. You will give Colonel Onate my compliments and
ask him to make as much haste as is convenient.”
Megales signed and sealed the note he was writing and handed it to
O’Halloran, who in turn passed it to Rodrigo.
“Colonel Onate should be here in fifteen minutes at the farthest. May I
in the meantime offer you a glass of wine, Dictator O’Halloran?” At the
Irishman’s smile, the Mexican governor hastened to add,
misunderstanding him purposely: “Perhaps I assume too much in taking
the part of host here. May I ask whether you will be governor in person
or by deputy, señor?”
“You do me too much honor, excellency. Neither in person nor by deputy,
I fear. And, as for the glass of wine—with all my heart. Good liquor is
always in order, whether for a funeral or a marriage.”
“Or an abdication, you might add. I drink to a successful reign, Señor
Dictator: _Le roi est mort; vive le roi!_”
The Irishman filled a second glass. “And I drink to Governor Megales, a
brave man. May the cards fall better for him next time he plays.”
The governor bowed ironically. “A brave man certainly, and you might
add: ‘Who loses his stake without striking one honest blow for it.’”
“We play with stacked cards, excellency. Who can forestall the
treachery of trusted associates?”
“Sir, your apology for me is very generous, no less so than the terms
you offer,” returned Megales sardonically.
O’Halloran laughed. “Well, if you don’t like my explanations I shall
have to let you make your own. And, by the way, may I venture on a
delicate personal matter, your excellency?”
“I can deny you nothing to-night, señor,” answered Megales, mocking at
himself.
“Young Valdez is in love with your daughter. I am sure that she is fond
of him, but she is very loyal to you and flouts the lad. I was
thinking, sir, that—”
The Spaniard’s eye flashed, but his answer came suavely as he
interrupted: “Don’t you think you had better leave Señor Valdez and me
to arrange our own family affairs? We could not think of troubling you
to attend to them.”
“He is a good lad and a brave.”
Megales bowed. “Your recommendation goes a long way with me, señor,
and, in truth, I have known him only a small matter of twenty years
longer than you.”
“Never a more loyal youngster in the land.”
“You think so? A matter of definitions, one may suppose. Loyal to the
authorized government of his country, or to the rebels who would
illegally overthrow it?”
“Egad, you have me there, excellency. ’Tis a question of point of view,
I’m thinking. But you’ll never tell me the lad pretended one thing and
did another. I’ll never believe you like that milksop Chaves better.”
“Must I choose either a fool or a knave?”
“I doubt it will be no choice of yours. Juan Valdez is an ill man to
deny what he sets his heart on. If the lady is willing—”
“I shall give her to the knave and wash my hands of her. Since treason
thrives she may at last come back to the palace as its mistress. _Quien
sabe?_”
“Less likely things have happened. What news, Rodrigo?” This last to
the messenger, who at that moment appeared at the door.
“Colonel Onate attends, señor.”
“Show him in.”
Onate was plainly puzzled at the summons to attend the governor, and
mixed with his perplexity was a very evident anxiety. He glanced
quickly at O’Halloran as he entered, as if asking for guidance, and
then as questioningly at Megales. Had the Irishman played Judas and
betrayed them all? Or was the coup already played with success?
“Colonel Onate, I have sent for you at the request of Governor Megales
to set his mind at rest on a disturbing point. His health is failing
and he considers the advisability of retiring from the active cares of
state. I have assured him that you, among others, would, under such
circumstances, be in a friendly relation to the next administration. Am
I correct in so assuring him?”
Megales pierced him with his beady eyes. “In other words, Colonel
Onate, are you one of the traitors involved in this rebellion?”
“I prefer the word patriot, señor,” returned Onate, flushing.
“Indeed I have no doubt you do. I am answered,” he exclaimed
scornfully. “And what is the price of patriotism these days, colonel?”
“Sir!” The colonel laid his hand on his sword.
“I was merely curious to know what position you would hold under the
new administration.”
O’Halloran choked a laugh, for by chance the governor had hit the nail
on the head. Onate was to be Secretary of State under Valdez, and this
was the bait that had been dangled temptingly under his nose to induce
a desertion of Megales.
“If you mean to reflect upon my honor I can assure you that my
conscience is clear,” answered Onate blackly.
“Indeed, colonel, I do not doubt it. I have always admired your
conscience and its adaptability.” The governor turned to O’Halloran. “I
am satisfied, Senior Dictator. If you will permit me—”
He walked to his desk, unlocked a drawer, and drew forth a parchment,
which he tossed across to the Irishman. “It is my commission as
governor. Allow me to place it in your hands and put myself at the
service of the new administration.”
“If you will kindly write notes, I will send a messenger to General
Carlo and another to Colonel Gabilonda requesting their attendance. I
think affairs may be quickly arranged.”
“You are irresistible, señor. I hasten to obey.”
Megales sat down and wrote two notes, which he turned over to
O’Halloran. The latter read them, saw them officially sealed, and
dispatched them to their destinations.
When Gabilonda was announced, General Carlo followed almost at his
heels. The latter glanced in surprise at O’Halloran.
“Where did you catch him, excellency?” he asked.
“I did not catch him. He has caught me, and, incidentally, you,
general,” answered the sardonic Megales.
“In short, general,” laughed the big Irishman, “the game is up.”
“But the army—You haven’t surrendered without a fight?”
“That is precisely what I have done. Cast your eye over that paper,
general, and then tell me of what use the army would be to us. Half the
officers are with the enemy, among them the patriotic Colonel Onate,
whom you see present. A resistance would be futile, and would only
result in useless bloodshed.”
“I don’t believe it,” returned Carlo bluntly.
“Seeing is believing, general,” returned O’Halloran, and he gave a
little nod to Onate.
The colonel left the room, and two or three minutes later a bell began
to toll.
“What does that mean?” asked Carlo.
“The call to arms, general. It means that the old régime is at an end
in Chihuahua. _Viva Valdez_.”
“Not without a struggle,” cried the general, rushing out of the room.
O’Halloran laughed. “I’m afraid he will not be able to give the
countersign to Garcia. In the meantime, excellency, pending his return,
I would suggest that you notify Colonel Gabilonda to turn over the
prison to us without resistance.”
“You hear your new dictator, colonel,” said Megales.
“Pardon me, your excellency, but a written order—”
“Would relieve you of responsibility. So it would. I write once more.”
He was interrupted as he wrote by a great shout from the plaza. “_Viva
Valdez!_” came clearly across the night air, and presently another that
stole the color from the cheek of Megales.
“Death to the tyrant! Death to Megales!” repeated the governor, after
the shouts reached them. “I fear, Señor Dictator, that your pledge to
see me across the frontier will not avail against that mad-dog mob.” He
smiled, waving an airy hand toward the window.
The Irishman set his bulldog jaw. “I’ll get you out safely or, begad!
I’ll go down fighting with you.”
“I think we are likely to have interesting times, my dear dictator. Be
sure I shall watch your doings with interest so long as your friends
allow me to watch anything in this present world.” The governor turned
to his desk and continued the letter with a firm hand. “I think this
should relieve you of responsibility, colonel.”
By this time General Carlo had reentered the room, with a crestfallen
face.
O’Halloran had been thinking rapidly. “Governor, I think the safest
place for you and General Carlo, for a day or two, will be in the
prison. I intend to put my friend O’Connor in charge of its defense,
with a trustworthy command. There is no need of word reaching the mob
as to where you are hidden. I confess the quarters will be narrows
but—”
“No narrower than those we shall occupy very soon if we do not accept
your suggestion,” smiled Megales. “_Buenos!_ Anything to escape the
pressing attentions of your friends outside. I ask only one favor, the
loan of a revolver, in order that we may disappoint the mad dogs if
they overpower the guard of Señor O’Connor.”
Hastily O’Halloran rapped out orders, gathered together a little force
of five men, and prepared to start. Both Carlo and Megales he furnished
with revolvers, that they might put an end to their lives in case the
worst happened. But before they had started Juan Valdez and Carmencita
Megales came running toward them.
“Where are you going? It is too late. The palace is surrounded!” cried
the young man. “Look!” He swept an excited arm toward the window.
“There are thousands and thousands of frenzied people calling for the
lives of the governor and General Carlo.”
Carlo shook like a leaf, but Megales only smiled at O’Halloran his
wintry smile. “That is the trouble in keeping a mad dog, señor. One
never knows when it may get out of leash and bite perhaps even the hand
that feeds it.”
Carmencita flung herself, sobbing, into the arms of her father and
filled the palace with her screams. Megales handed her over promptly to
her lover.
“To my private office,” he ordered briskly. “Come, general, there is
still a chance.”
O’Halloran failed to see it, but he joined the little group that
hurried to the private office. Megales dragged his desk from the corner
where it set and touched a spring that opened a panel in the wall.
Carlo, blanched with fear at the threats and curses that filled the
night, sprang toward the passageway that appeared.
Megales plucked him back. “One moment, general. Ladies first.
Carmencita, enter.”
Carlo followed her, after him the governor, and lastly Gabilonda,
tearing himself from a whispered conversation with O’Halloran. The
panel swung closed again, and Valdez and O’Halloran lifted back the
desk just as Garcia came running in to say that the mob would not be
denied. Immediately O’Halloran threw open a French window and stepped
out to the little railed porch upon which it opened. He had the chance
of his life to make a speech, and that is the one thing that no
Irishman can resist. He flung out from his revolver three shots in
rapid succession to draw the attention of the mob to him. In this he
succeeded beyond his hopes. The word ran like wildfire that the mad
Irishman, O’Halloran, was about to deliver a message to them, and from
all sides of the building they poured to hear it. He spoke in Mexican,
rapidly, his great bull voice reaching to the utmost confines of the
crowd.
“Fellow lovers of liberty, the hour has struck that we have worked and
prayed for. The glorious redemption of our State has been accomplished
by your patriotic hands. An hour ago the tyrants, Megales and Carlo,
slipped out of the palace, mounted swift horses, and are galloping
toward the frontier.”
A roar of rage, such as a tiger disappointed of its kill might give,
rose into the night. Such a terrible cry no man made of flesh and blood
could hear directed at him and not tremble.
“But the pursuit is already on. Swift riders are in chase, with orders
not to spare their horses so only they capture the fleeing despots. We
expect confidently that before morning the tyrants will be in our
hands. In the meantime, let us show ourselves worthy of the liberty we
have won. Let us neither sack nor pillage, but show our great president
in the City of Mexico that not ruffians but an outraged people have
driven out the oppressors.”
The huge Celt was swimming into his periods beautifully, but it was
very apparent to him that the mob must have a vent for its stored
excitement. An inspiration seized him.
“But one sacred duty calls to us from heaven, my fellow citizens.
Already I see in your glorious faces that you behold the duty. Then
forward, patriots! To the plaza, and let us tear down, let us destroy
by fire, let us annihilate the statue of the dastard Megales which
defaces our fair city. Citizens, to your patriotic duty!”
Another wild yell rang skyward, and at once the fringes of the crowd
began to vanish plazaward, its centre began to heave, its flanks to
stir. Three minutes later the grounds of the palace were again dark and
empty. The Irishman’s oratory had won the day.
CHAPTER XV.
IN THE SECRET CHAMBER
The escaping party groped its way along the passage in the wall, down a
rough, narrow flight of stone steps to a second tunnel, and along this
underground way for several hundred yards. Since he was the only one
familiar with the path they were traversing, the governor took the lead
and guided the others. At a distance of perhaps an eighth of a mile
from the palace the tunnel forked. Without hesitation, Megales kept to
the right. A stone’s throw beyond this point of divergence there began
to be apparent a perceptible descent which terminated in a stone wall
that blocked completely the way.
Megales reached up and put his weight on a rope suspended from the
roof. Slowly the solid masonry swung on a pivot, leaving room on either
side for a person to squeeze through. The governor found it a tight
fit, as did also Gabilonda.
“I was more slender last time I passed through there. It has been
several years since then,” said the governor, giving his daughter a
hand to assist her through.
They found themselves in a small chamber fitted up as a living room in
a simple way. There were three plain chairs, a bed, a table, and a
dresser, as well as a cooking stove.
“This must be close to the prison. We have been coming in that
direction all the time. It is strange that it could be so near and I
not know of it,” said the warden, looking around curiously.
Megales smiled. “I am the only person alive that knew of the existence
of this room or of the secret passage until half an hour ago. I had it
built a few years since by Yaquis when I was warden of the prison. The
other end, the one opening from the palace, I had finished after I
became governor.”
“But surely the men who built it know of its existence.”
Again Megales smiled. “I thought you knew me better, Carlo. The Yaquis
who built this were condemned raiders. I postponed their execution a
few months while they were working on this. It was a convenience both
to them and to me.”
“And is also a convenience to me,” smiled Carlo, who was beginning to
recover from his terror.
“But I don’t quite understand yet how we are to get out of here except
by going back the way we came,” said Gabilonda.
“Which for some of us might prove a dangerously unhealthy journey.
True, colonel, and therefore one to be avoided.” Megales stepped to the
wall, spanned with his fingers a space from the floor above a joint in
the masonry, and pressed against the concrete. Inch by inch the wall
fell back and opened into a lower corridor of the prison, the very one
indeed which led to the cell in which Bucky and his love were
imprisoned. Cautiously the Spaniard’s glance traveled down the passage
to see it was empty before he opened the panel door more than enough to
look through. Then he beckoned to Gabilonda. “Behold, doubting Thomas!”
The warden gasped. “And I never knew it, never had a suspicion of it.”
“But this only brings us from one prison to another,” objected the
general. “We might be penned in here as well as at the castle.”
“Even that contingency has been provided for. You noticed, perhaps,
where the tunnel forked. The left branch runs down to the river-wash,
and by ten minutes’ digging with the tools lying there one can force an
exit.”
“Your excellency is certainly a wonder, and all this done without
arousing the least suspicion of anybody,” admired the warden.
“The wise man, my dear colonel, prepares for emergencies; the fool
trusts to his luck,” replied the governor dryly.
“Are we to stay here for the present, colonel?” broke in the governor’s
daughter. “And can you furnish accommodations for the rest of us if we
stay all night, as I expect we must?”
“My dear señorita, I have accommodations and to spare. But the trouble
is that your presence would become known. I should be the happiest’ man
alive to put my all at the accommodation of Chihuahua’s fairest
daughter. But if it should get out that you are here—” Gabilonda
stopped to shrug his fat shoulders at the prospect.
“We shall have to stay here, or, at least, in the lower tier of cells.
I’m sorry, Carmencita, but there is no other course compatible with
safety,” decided Megales promptly.
The warden’s face cleared. “That is really not a point for me to
decide, governor. This young American, O’Connor, is now in charge of
the prison. I must release him at once, and shall then bring him here
to confer with you as to means of safety.”
Bucky’s eyes opened wide when Gabilonda and Megales came alone and
without a lantern to his cell. In the darkness it was impossible to
recognize them, but once within the closed cell the warden produced a
dark lantern from under his coat.
“Circumstances have arisen that make the utmost vigilance necessary,”
explained the warden. “I may begin my explanations by congratulating
you and your young friend. Let me offer a thousand felicitations.
Neither of you are any longer prisoners.”
If he expected either of them to fall on his neck and weep tears of
gratitude at his pompous announcement, the colonel was disappointed.
From the darkness where the ranger’s little partner sat on the bed came
a deep sigh of relief, but O’Connor did not wink an eyelash.
“I may conclude, then, that Mike O’Halloran has been getting in his
work?” was his cool reply.
“Exactly, señor. He is the man on horseback and I travel afoot,” smiled
Megales.
Bucky looked him over coolly from head to foot. “Still I can’t quite
understand why your ex-excellency does me the honor of a personal
visit.”
“Because, señor, in the course of human events Providence has seen fit
to reverse our positions. I am now your prisoner and you my jailer,”
explained Megales, and urbanely added a whimsical question. “Shall you
have me hanged at dawn?”
“It would be a pleasure, and, I reckon, a duty too. But I can’t promise
till I’ve seen Mike. Do some more explaining, colonel. I want to know
all about the round-up O’Halloran is boss of. Did he make a right good
gather?”
The subtleties of American humor baffled the little Mexican, but he
appreciated the main drift of the ranger’s query, and narrated with
much gesticulation the story of the coup that O’Halloran had pulled off
in capturing the government leaders.
“It was an exceedingly neat piece of strategy,” its victim admitted. “I
would give a good deal to have the privilege of hanging your red-headed
friend, but since that is denied me, I must be grateful he does not
take a fancy to hang me.”
“In case he doesn’t, your excellency,” was Bucky’s addendum.
“I understand he has decided to deport me,” retorted Megales lightly.
“It is perhaps better politics, on the whole, better even than a knife
in the back.”
“Unless rumor is a lying jade, you should be a good judge of that,
governor,” said the American, eyeing him sternly.
Megales shrugged. “One of the penalties of fame is that one gets credit
for much he does not deserve. There was your immortal General Lincoln,
a wit so famous in your country that every good story is fathered upon
him, I understand. So with your humble servant. Let a man accomplish
his vendetta upon the body of an enemy, and behold! the world cries: ‘A
victim of Megales.’”
“Still, if you deserve your reputation as much as our immortal General
Lincoln deserves his, the world may be pardoned for an occasional
error.” O’Connor turned to the warden. “What does he mean by saying
that he is my prisoner? Have you a message for me from O’Halloran,
colonel?”
“It is his desire, señor, that, pending the present uncertain state of
public opinion, you accept the command of the prison and hold safe all
persons detained here, including his excellency and General Carlo. He
desired me to assure you that as soon as is possible he will arrive to
confer with you in person.”
“Good enough, and are you a prisoner, too, colonel?”
“I did not so understand Señor O’Halloran.”
“If you’re not you have to earn your grub and lodgings. I’ll appoint
you my deputy, colonel. And, first off, my orders are to lock up his
excellency and General Carlo in this cell till morning.”
“The cell, Señor O’Connor, is damp and badly ventilated,” protested
Gabilonda.
“I know that a heap better than you do, colonel,” said Bucky dryly.
“But if it was good enough for me and my pardner, here, I reckon it’s
good enough for them. Anyhow, we’ll let them try it, won’t we, Frank.”
“If you think best, Bucky.”
“You bet I do.”
“And what about the governor’s daughter?” asked Gabilonda.
“You don’t say! Is she a guest of this tavern?”
The colonel explained how they had reached the prison and the
circumstances that had led to their hurried flight, while the ranger
whistled the air of a cowboy song, his mind busy with this new phase of
the case.
“She’s one of these here Spanish blue-blooded señoritas used to guitar
serenades under her window. Now, what would you do with her in a jail,
Bucky?” he asked himself, in humorous dismay; but even as he reflected
on it his roving eye fell on his friend. “The very thing. I’ll take
Curly Haid in to her and let them fall in love with each other. You’re
liable to be some busy, Bucky, and shy on leisure to entertain a lady,
let alone two.”
And so he arranged it. Leaving the former governor and General Carlo in
the cell just vacated by them, Frances and he accompanied Gabilonda to
the secret room behind the corridor wall.
All three parties to the introduction that followed acknowledged
secretly to a surprise. Miss Carmencita had expected the friend of big,
rough, homely O’Halloran to resemble him in kind, at least. Instead,
she looked on a bronzed young Apollo of the saddle with something of
that same lithe grace she knew and loved in Juan Valdez. And the shy
boy beside him—why, the darling was sweet enough to kiss. The big,
brown, helpless eyes, the blushing, soft cheeks, the crop of thick,
light curls were details of an extraordinarily taking picture. Really,
if these two were fair specimens, Americans were not so bad, after all.
Which conclusion Juan Valdez’s fondness for that race may have helped
in part to form.
But if the young Spanish girl found a little current of pleasure in her
surprise, Bucky and his friend were aware of the same sensation. All
the charm of her race seemed summed up in Carmencita Megales. She was
of blue blood, every feature and motion told that. The fine, easy set
of her head, the fire in the dark, heavy-lashed eyes, the sweep of
dusky chin and cheek and throat certified the same story. She had, too,
that coquettish hint of uncertainty, that charm of mystery so fatal in
its lure to questing man. Even physically the contradiction of sex
attracted. Slender and lissom as a fawn, she was yet a creature of
exquisitely rounded curves. Were her eyes brown or black or—in the
sunlight—touched with a gleam of copper? There was always uncertainty.
But much more was there fire, a quality that seemed to flash out from
her inner self. She was a child of whims, a victim of her moods. Yet in
her, too, was a passionate loyalty that made fickleness impossible. She
knew how to love and how to hate, and, despite her impulses, was
capable of surrender complete and irrevocable.
All of this Bucky did not read in that first moment of meeting, but the
shrewd judgment behind the level blue eyes came to an appraisal roughly
just. Before she had spoken three sentences he knew she had all her
sex’s reputed capacity for injustice as well as its characteristic
flashes of generosity.
“Are you one of the men who have rebelled against my father and
attempted to murder him?” she flashed.
“I’m the man he condemned to be hanged tomorrow morning at dawn for
helping Juan Valdez take the guns,” retorted Bucky, with a laugh.
“You are his enemy, and, therefore, mine.”
“I’m a friend of Michael O’Halloran, who stood between him and the mob
that wanted to kill him.”
“Who first plotted against him and seduced his officers to betray him,”
she quickly replied.
“I reckon, ma’am, we better agree to disagree on politics,” said Bucky
good-naturedly. “We’re sure liable to see things different from each
other. Castile and Arizona don’t look at things with the same eyes.”
She looked at him just then with very beautiful and scornful ones, at
any rate. “I should hope not.”
“You see, we’re living in the twentieth century up in the sunburned
State,” said Bucky, with smiling aplomb.
“Indeed! And we poor Chihuahuans?”
“When I see the ladies I think you’re ce’tainly in the golden age, but
when I break into your politics, I’m some reminded of that Richard
Third fellow in the Shakespeare play.”
“Referring, I presume, to my father?” she demanded haughtily.
“In a general way, but eliminating the most objectionable points of the
king fellow.”
“You’re very kind.” She interrupted her scorn to ask him where he meant
her to sleep.
He glanced over the room. “This might do right here, if we had that bed
aired.”
“Do you expect to put me in irons?”
“Not right away. Colonel, I’ll ask you to go to the office and notify
me as soon as Señor O’Halloran arrives.” He waited till the colonel had
gone before adding: “I’m going to leave this boy with you, señorita,
for a while. He’ll explain some things to you that I can’t. In about an
hour I’ll be back, perhaps sooner. So long, Curly. Tell the lady your
secret.” And with that Bucky was out of the room.
“Your secret, child! What does he mean?”
The flame of color that swept into the cheeks of Frances, the appeal in
the shamed eyes, held Carmencita’s surprised gaze. Then coolly it
traveled over the girl and came back to her burning face.
“So that’s it, is it?”
But the scorn in her voice was too much for Frances. She had been
judged and condemned in that cool stare, and all the woman in her
protested at its injustice.
“No, no, no!” she cried, running forward and catching at the other’s
hand. “I’m not that. You don’t understand.”
Coldly Carmencita disengaged her hand and wiped it with her kerchief.
“I understand enough. Please do not touch me.”
“May I not tell you my story?”
“I’ll not trouble you. It does not interest me.”
“But you will listen?” implored the other.
“I must ask to be excused.”
“Then you are a heartless, cruel woman,” flamed Frances. “I’m good—as
good as you are.” The color patched her cheek and ebbed again. “I
wouldn’t treat a dog as you do me. Oh, cruel, cruel!”
The surprising extravagance of her protest, the despair that rang in
the fresh young voice, caught the interest of the Mexican girl. Surely
such a heart-broken cry did not consist with guilt. But the facts—when
a young and pretty girl masquerades through the country in the garb of
a boy with a handsome young man, not much room for doubt is left.
Frances was quick to see that the issue was reopened. “Oh, señorita, it
isn’t as you think. Do I look like—” She broke off to cover with her
hands a face in which the pink and white warred with alternate success.
“I ought not to have come. I ought never to have come. I see that now.
But I didn’t think he would know. You see, I had always passed as a boy
when I wanted to.”
“A remarkably pretty one, child,” said Miss Carmencita, a smile
dimpling her cheeks. “But how do you mean that you had passed as a
boy?”
Frances explained, giving a rapid sketch of her life with the Hardmans
during which she had appeared every night on the stage as a boy without
the deception being suspected. She had cultivated the tricks and ways
of boys, had tried to dress to carry out the impression, and had always
succeeded until she had made the mistake of putting on a gypsy girl’s
dress a couple of days before.
Carmencita heard her out, but not as a judge. Very early in the story
her doubts fled and she succumbed to the mothering instinct in her. She
took the American girl in her arms and laughed and cried with her; for
her imagination seized on the romance of the story and delighted in its
fresh unconventionality. Since she had been born Carmencita’s life had
been ordered for her with precision by the laws of caste. Her
environment wrapped her in so that she must follow a set and beaten
path. It was, to be sure, a flower-strewn one, but often she impotently
rebelled against its very orderliness. And here in her arms was a
victim of that adventurous romance she had always longed so
passionately to know. Was it wonder she found it in her heart to both
love and envy the subject of it?
“And this young cavalier—the Señor Bucky, is it you call him?—surely
you love him, my dear.”
“Oh, señorita!” The blushing face was buried on her new friend’s
shoulder. “You don’t know how good he is.”
“Then tell me,” smiled the other. “And call me Carmencita.”
“He is so brave, and patient, and good. I know there was never a man
like him.”
Miss Carmencita thought of one and demurred silently. “I’m sure this
paragon of lovers is at least part of what you say. Does he love you?
But I am sure he couldn’t help it.”
“Sometimes I think he does, but once—” Frances broke off to ask, in a
pink flame: “How does a lover act?”
Miss Carmencita’s laughter rippled up. “Gracious me, have you never had
one before.”
“Never.”
“Well, he should make verses to you and pretty speeches. He should sing
serenades about undying love under your window. Bonbons should bombard
you, roses make your rooms a bower. He should be ardent as _Romeo_,
devoted as a knight of old. These be the signs of a true love,” she
laughed.
Frances’ face fell. If these were the tokens of true love, her ranger
was none. For not one of the symptoms could fairly be said to fit him.
Perhaps, after all, she had given him what he did not want.
“Must he do all that? Must he make verses?” she asked blankly, not
being able to associate Bucky with poetasting.
“He must,” teased her tormentor, running a saucy eye over her boyish
garb. “And why not with so fair a _Rosalind_ for a subject?” She broke
off to quote in her pretty, uncertain English, acquired at a convent in
the United States, where she had attended school:
“From the east to western Ind,
No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures, fairest lin’d,
Are but black to Rosalind.
Let no face be kept in mind
But the fair of Rosalind.”
“So your Shakespeare has it, does he not?” she asked, reverting again
to the Spanish language, in which they had been talking. But swift on
the heels of her raillery came repentance. She caught the dispirited
girl to her embrace laughingly. “No, no, child! Nonsense ripples from
my tongue. These follies are but for a carpet lover. You shall tell me
more of your Señor Bucky and I shall make no sport of it.”
When Bucky returned at the expiration of the time he had set himself,
he found them with their arms twined about each other’s waists,
whispering the confidences that every girl on the threshold of
womanhood has to tell her dearest friend.
“I reckon you like my pardner better than you do me,” smiled Bucky to
Miss Carmencita.
“A great deal better, sir, but then I know him better.”
Bucky’s eyes rested for a moment almost tenderly on Frances. “I reckon
he is better worth knowing,” he said.
“Indeed! And you so brave, and patient, and good?” she mocked.
“Oh! Am I all that?” asked Bucky easily.
“So I have been given to understand.”
Out of the corner of his eye O’Connor caught the embarrassed,
reproachful look that Frances gave her audacious friend, and he found
it easy to fit quotation marks round the admirable qualities that had
just been ascribed to him. He guessed himself blushing _à deux_ with
his little friend, and also divined Miss Carmencita’s roguish merriment
at their confusion.
“I _am_ all those things you mentioned and a heap more you forgot to
say,” claimed the ranger boldly, to relieve the situation. “Only I
didn’t know for sure that folks had found it out. My mind’s a heap
easier to know I’m being appreciated proper at last.”
Under her long, dark lashes Miss Carmencita looked at him in gentle
derision. “I’m of opinion, sir, that you get all the appreciation that
is good for you.”
Bucky carried the war into the enemy’s country. “Which same, I expect,
might be said of Chihuahua’s most beautiful belle. And, talking of
Señor Valdez reminds me that I owe a duty to his father, who is
confined here. I’ll be saying good night ladies.”
“It’s high time,” agreed Miss Megales. “Talking of Señor Valdez,
indeed!”
“Good night, Curly said.”
“Good night, Bucky.”
To which, in mocking travesty, added, in English, Miss Carmencita, who
seemed to have an acute attack of Shakespeare:
“Good night, good night; parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night till It be morrow.”
CHAPTER XVI.
JUAN VALDEZ SCORES
The first thing Bucky did after leaving the two young women was to go
down in person with one of the guards to the cell of David Henderson.
The occupant of the cell was asleep, but he woke up when the two men
entered.
“Who is it?” he demanded.
“Webb Mackenzie’s man come to release you,” answered Bucky.
The prisoner fell to trembling like an aspen. “God, man, do you mean
it?” he begged. “You wouldn’t deceive an old man who has lived fifteen
years in hell?”
“It’s true, friend, every word of it. You’ll live to ride the range
again and count your cattle on the free hillside. Come with me up to
the office and we’ll talk more of it.”
“But may I? Will they let me?” trembled Henderson, fearful lest his cup
of joy be dashed from him. “I’m not dreaming, am I? I’ll not wake the
way I often do and find that it is all a dream, will I?” He caught at
the lapel of O’Connor’s coat and searched his face.
“No, your dreams are true at last, Dave Henderson. Come, old friend,
take a drink of this to steady you. It’s all coming out right now.”
Tears streamed down the face of the man rescued from a living grave. He
dashed them away impatiently with a shaking hand. “I used to be as game
as other men, young man, and now you see what a weakling I am. Don’t
judge me too hard. Happiness is a harder thing to stand than pain or
grief. They’ve tried to break my spirit many a time and they couldn’t,
but you’ve done it now with a word.”
“You’ll be all right as soon as you are able to realize it. I don’t
wonder the shock unnerves you. Have you anything you want to take out
of here with you before you leave forever?”
Pathetically the prisoner looked round on his few belongings. Some of
them had become endeared to him by years of use and association, but
they had served their time. “No, I want to forget it all. I came in
with nothing. I’ll take out nothing. I want to blot it all out like a
hideous nightmare.”
Bucky ordered Colonel Gabilonda to bring up from his cell General
Valdez and the other arrested suspects. They reached the office at the
same time as Mike O’Halloran, who greeted them with the good news that
the day was won. The Megales faction had melted into mist, and all over
the city a happy people was shouting for Valdez.
“I congratulate you, general. We have just telegraphed the news over
the State that Megales has resigned and fled. There can be no doubt
that you will be elected governor to-morrow and that the people’s party
will win the day with an unprecedented vote. Glory be, Chihuahua is at
last free from the heel of tyranny. _Viva Valdez! Viva Chihuahua
libre!_”
Bucky at once introduced to General Valdez the American prisoner who
had suffered so long and unjustly. He recited the story of the
abduction of the child, of Henderson’s pursuit, of the killing of the
trooper, and of the circumstantial evidence that implicated the Texan
and upon which he was convicted. He then drew from his pocket a signed
and attested copy of the confession of the knife thrower and handed it
to the general.
Valdez looked it over, asked an incisive question or two of Bucky,
heard from Henderson his story, and, after a few moments’ discussion of
the matter with O’Halloran, promised a free pardon as his first
official act after being elected to the governorship, in case he should
be chosen.
The vote next day amply justified the hopes of O’Halloran and his
friends. The whole ticket, sent out by telegraph and messengers
throughout the State, was triumphantly elected by large majorities.
Only in one or two out-of-the-way places, where the news of the fall of
Megales did not arrive in time to affect the voting, did the old
government party make any showing worthy of consideration.
It was after Valdez’s election had been made certain by the returns
that O’Halloran and Juan Valdez posted to the prison and visited father
and daughter. They separated in the lower corridor, one to visit the
defeated governor, the other Miss Carmencita. The problem before Juan
Valdez was to induce that young woman to remain in Chihuahua instead of
accompanying her father in his flight. He was a good fighter, and he
meant to win, if it were a possibility. She had tacitly admitted that
she loved him, but he knew that she felt that loyalty demanded she stay
by her father in his flight.
When O’Halloran was admitted to the cell where the governor and the
general were staying he laughed aloud.
“Faith, gentlemen, is this the best accommodation Governor Valdez can
furnish his guests? We must petition him to improve the sanitation of
his hotel.”
“We are being told, one may suppose, that General Valdez is the newly
elected governor?”
“Right, your excellency, elected by a large majority to succeed the
late Governor Megales.”
“Late!” The former governor lifted his eyebrows. “Am I also being told
that necessity demands the posting of the suicide bulletin, after all?”
“Not at all. Sure, I gave you me word, excellency. And that is one of
the reasons why I am here. We have arranged to run a special down the
line to-night, in order to avoid the risk of the news leaking out that
you are still here. Can you make your arrangements to take that train,
or will it hurry your packing too much?”
Megales laughed. “I have nothing to take with me except my daughter.
The rest of my possessions may be forwarded later.”
“Oh, your daughter! Well, that’s pat, too. What about the lad, Valdez?”
“Are you his representative, señor?”
“Oh, he can talk for himself.” O’Halloran grinned. “He’s doing it right
now, by the same token. Shall we interrupt a tête-à-tête and go pay our
compliments to Miss Carmencita? You will want to find out whether she
goes with you or stays here.”
“Assuredly. Anything to escape this cave.”
Miss Carmencita was at that moment reiterating her everlasting
determination to go wherever her father went. “If you think, sir, that
your faithlessness to him is a recommendation of your promised
faithfulness to me, I can only wish you more light on the feelings of a
daughter,” she was informing Valdez, when her father slipped through
the panel door and stood before her.
“Brava, señorita!” he applauded, with subtle irony, clapping his hands.
“Brava, brava!”
That young woman swam blushingly toward him and let her face disappear
in an embrace.
“You see, one can’t have everything, Señor Valdez,” continued Megales
lightly. “For me, I cannot have both Chihuahua and my life; you, it
seems, cannot have both your successful revolution and my daughter.”
“Your excellency, she loves me. Of that I am assured. It rests with you
to say whether her life will be spoiled or not. You know what I can
offer her in addition to a heart full of devotion. It is enough. Shall
she be sacrificed to her loyalty to you?” the young man demanded, with
all the ardor of his warm-blooded race.
“It is no sacrifice to love and obey my father,” came a low murmur from
the former governor’s shoulder.
“Since the world began it has been the law of life that the young
should leave their parents for a home of their own,” Juan protested.
“So the Scripture says,” agreed Megales sardonically. “It further
counsels to love one’s enemies, but, I think, omits mention of the
enemies of one’s father.”
“Sir, I am not your enemy. Political exigencies have thrown us into
different camps, but we are not so small as to let such incidentals
come between us as a vital objection in such a matter.”
“You argue like a lawyer,” smiled the governor. “You forget that I am
neither judge nor jury. Tyrant I may have been to a fickle people that
needed a firm hand to rule them, but tyrant I am not to my only
daughter.”
“Then you consent, your excellency?” cried Valdez joyously.
“I neither consent nor refuse. You must go to a more final authority
than mine for an answer, young man.”
“But you are willing she should follow where her heart leads?”
“But certainly.”
“Then she is mine,” cried Valdez.
“I am not,” replied the girl indignantly over her shoulder.
Megales turned her till her unconsenting eyes met his. “Do you want to
marry this young man, Carmencita?”
“I never told him anything of the sort,” she flamed.
“I didn’t quite ask what you had told him. The question is whether you
love him.”
“But no; I love you,” she blushed.
“I hope so,” smiled her father. “But do you love him? An honest answer,
if you please.”
“Could I love a rebel?”
“No Yankee answers, _muchacha_. Do you love Juan Valdez?”
It was Valdez that broke triumphantly the moment’s silence that
followed. “She does. She does. I claim the consent of silence.”
But victory spoke too prematurely in his voice. Cried the proud Spanish
girl passionately: “I hate him!”
Megales understood the quality of her hate, and beckoned to his future
son-in-law. “I have some arrangements to make for our journey to-night.
Would it distress you, señor, if I were to leave you for a while?”
He slipped out and left them alone.
“Well?” asked O’Halloran, who had remained in the corridor.
“I think, Señor Dictator, I shall have to make the trip with only
General Carlo for a companion,” answered the Spaniard.
The Irishman swung his hat. “Hip, hip, hurrah! You’re a gentleman I
could find it in me heart to both love and hate, governor.”
“And you’re a gentleman,” returned the governor, with a bow, “I could
find it in my heart to hang high as Haman without love or hate.”
Michael linked his arm in that of his excellency.
“Sure, you’re a broth of a lad, Señor Megales,” he said irreverently,
in good, broad Irish brogue. “Here, me bye, where are you hurrying?” he
added, catching at the sleeve of Frances Mackenzie, who was slipping
quietly past.
“Please, Mr. O’Halloran, I’ve been up to the office after water. I’m
taking it to Señorita Carmencita.”
“She doesn’t want water just now. You go back to the office, son, and
stay there thirty minutes. Then you take her that water,” ordered
O’Halloran.
“But she wanted it as soon as I could get it, sir.”
“Forget it, kid, just as she has. Water! Why, she’s drinking nectar of
the gods. Just you do as I tell ye.”
Frances was puzzled, but she obeyed, even though she could not
understand his meaning. She understood better when she slid back the
panel at the expiration of the allotted time and caught a glimpse of
Carmencita Megales in the arms of Juan Valdez.
CHAPTER XVII.
HIDDEN VALLEY
Across the desert into the hills, where the sun was setting in a great
splash of crimson in the saddle between two distant peaks, a bunch of
cows trailed heavily. Their tongues hung out and they panted for water,
stretching their necks piteously to low now and again. For the heat of
an Arizona summer was on the baked land and in the air that palpitated
above it.
But the end of the journey was at hand and the cowpuncher in charge of
the drive relaxed in the saddle after the easy fashion of the vaquero
when he is under no tension. He did not any longer cast swift, anxious
glances behind him to make sure no pursuit was in sight. For he had
reached safety. He knew the ‘Open sesame’ to that rock wall which rose
sheer in front of him. Straight for it he and his companion took their
gather, swinging the cattle adroitly round a great slab which concealed
a gateway to the secret cañon. Half a mile up this defile lay what was
called Hidden Valley, an inaccessible retreat known only to those who
frequented it for nefarious purposes.
It was as the man in charge circled round to head the lead cows in that
a faint voice carried to him. He stopped, listening. It came again, a
dry, parched call for help that had no hope in it. He wheeled his pony
as on a half dollar, and two minutes later caught sight of an exhausted
figure leaning against a cottonwood. He needed no second guess to
surmise that she was lost and had been wandering over the sandy desert
through the hot day. With a shout, he loped toward her, and had his
water bottle at her lips before she had recovered from her glad
surprise at sight of him.
“You’ll feel better now,” he soothed. “How long you been lost, ma’am?”
“Since ten this morning. I came with my aunt to gather poppies, and
somehow I got separated from her and the rig. These hills look so
alike. I must have got turned round and mistaken one for another.”
“You have to be awful careful here. Some one ought to have told you,”
he said indignantly.
“Oh, they told me, but of course I knew best,” she replied, with quick
scorn of her own self-sufficiency.
“Well, it’s all right now,” the cowpuncher told her cheerfully. He
would not for a thousand dollars have told her how near it had come to
being all wrong, how her life had probably depended upon that faint
wafted call of hers.
He put her on his horse and led it forward to the spot where the cattle
waited at the gateway. Not until they came full upon them did he
remember that it was dangerous for strange young women to see him with
those cattle and at the gateway to the Hidden cañon.
“They are my uncle’s cattle. I could tell the brand anywhere. Are you
one of his riders? Are we close to the Rocking Chair Ranch?” she cried.
He flung a quick glance at her. “Not very close. Are you from the
Rocking Chair?”
“Yes. I’m Mr. Mackenzie’s niece.”
“Major Mackenzie’s daughter?” demanded the man quickly.
“Yes.” She said it with a touch of annoyance, for he looked at her as a
man does who has heard of her before. She knew that the story had been
bruited far and wide of how she had passed through the hands of the
train robbers carrying thirty thousand dollars on her person. She had
no doubt that it was in this connection her rescuer had heard of her.
He drew off to one side and called his companion to him.
“Hardman, you ride up to the ranch and tell Leroy I’ve just found Miss
Mackenzie wandering around on the desert, lost. Ask him whether I’m to
bring her up. She’s played out and can’t travel far, tell him.”
The showman rode on his errand and the other returned to Helen.
“You better light, ma’am. We’ll have to wait here a few minutes,” he
explained.
He helped her dismount. She did not understand why it was necessary to
wait, but that was his business and not hers. Her roving eyes fell upon
the cattle again.
“They _are_ my uncle’s, aren’t they?”
“They were,” he corrected. “Cattle change hands a good deal in this
country,” he added dryly.
“Then you’re not one of his riders?” Her stark eyes passed over him
swiftly.
“No, ma’am.”
“Are we far from the Rocking Chair?”
“A right smart distance. You’ve been traveling, you see, for eight or
nine hours.”
It occurred to her that there was something elusive, something not
quite frank, about the replies of this young man. Her glance raked him
again and swept up the details of his person. One of them that
impressed itself upon her mind was the absence of a finger on his right
hand. Another was that he was a walking arsenal. This startled her,
though she was not yet afraid. She relapsed into silence, to which he
seemed willing to consent. Once and again her glance swept him. He
looked a tough, weather-beaten Westerner, certainly not a man whom a
woman need be afraid to meet alone on the plains, but the oftener she
looked the more certain she became that he was not a casual puncher
busy at the legitimate work of his craft.
“Do you—live near here?” she asked presently.
“I live under my hat, ma’am,” he told her.
“Sometimes near here, sometimes not so near.”
This told her exactly nothing.
“How far did you say it was to the Rocking Chair?”
“I didn’t say.”
At the sound of a horses footfall she turned, and she saw that whereas
they had been two, now they were three. The newcomer was a slender,
graceful man, dark and lithe, with quick, piercing eyes, set deep in
the most reckless, sardonic face she had ever seen.
The man bowed, with a sweep of his hat almost derisive. “Miss
Mackenzie, I believe.”
She met him with level eyes that confessed no fear.
“Who are you, sir?”
“They call me Wolf Leroy.”
Her heart sank. “You and he are the men that held up the Limited.”
“If we are, you are the young lady that beat us out of thirty thousand
dollars. We’ll collect now,” he told her, with a silky smile and a
glitter of white, even teeth.
“What do you mean? Do you think I carry money about with me?”
“I didn’t say that. We’ll put it up to your father.”
“My father?”
“He’ll have to raise thirty thousand dollars to redeem his daughter.”
He let his bold eyes show their admiration. “And she’s worth every cent
of it.”
“Do you mean—” She read the flash of triumph in his ribald eyes and
broke off. There was no need to ask him what he meant.
“That’s what I mean exactly, ma’am. You’re welcome to the hospitality
of Hidden Valley. What’s ours is yours. You’re welcome to stay as long
as you like, but I reckon _you’re not welcome to go whenever you want
to_—not till we get that thirty thousand.”
“You talk as if he were a millionaire,” she told him scornfully.
“The major’s got friends that are. If it’s a showdown he’ll dig the
dough up. I ain’t a bit worried about that. His brother, Webb, will
come through.”
“Why should he?” She stood as straight and unbending as a young pine,
courage regnant in the very poise of the fine head. “You daren’t harm a
hair of my head, and he knows it. For your life, you daren’t.”
His eyes glittered. Wolf Leroy was never a safe man to fling a
challenge at. “Don’t you be too sure of that, my dear. There ain’t one
thing on this green earth I daren’t do if I set my mind to it. And your
friends know it.”
The other man broke in, easy and unmoved. “Hold yore hawses, cap. We
got no call to be threatening this young lady. We keep her for a ransom
because that’s business. But she’s as safe here as she would be at the
Rocking Chair. She’s got York Neil’s word for that.”
The Wolf snarled. “The word of a miscreant. That’ll comfort her a heap.
And York Neil’s word don’t always go up here.”
The cowpuncher’s steady eyes met him. “It’ll go this time.”
The girl gave her champion a quiet little nod and a low “Thank you.” It
was not much, but enough. For on the frontier “white men” do not war on
women. Her instinct gave just the right manner of treating his help. It
assumed that since he was what he was he could do no less. Moreover, it
had the unexpected effect of spurring the Wolf’s vanity, or something
better than his vanity. She could see the battle in his face, and the
passing of its evil, sinister expression.
“Beg your pardon, Miss Mackenzie. York’s right. I’ll add my word to his
about your safety. I’m a wolf, they’ll tell you. But when I give my
word I keep it.”
They turned and followed through the gateway the cattle which Hardman
and another rider were driving up the cañon. Presently the walls fell
back, the gulch opened to a saucer-shaped valley in which nestled a
little ranch.
Leroy indicated it with a wave of his hand. “Welcome to Hidden Valley,
Miss Mackenzie,” he said cynically.
“Afraid I’m likely to wear my welcome out if you keep me here until my
father raises thirty thousand dollars,” she said lightly.
“Don’t you worry any about that. We need the refining influences of
ladies’ society here. I can see York’s a heap improved already. Just to
teach us manners you’re worth your board and keep.” Then hardily, with
a sweeping gesture toward the weary cattle: “Besides, your uncle has
sent up a contribution to help keep you while you visit with us.”
York laughed. “He sent it, but he didn’t know he was sending it.”
Leroy surrendered his room to Miss Mackenzie and put at her service the
old Mexican woman who cooked for him. She was a silent, taciturn
creature, as wrinkled as leather parchment and about as handsome, but
Alice found safety in the very knowledge of the presence of another
woman in the valley. She was among robbers and cutthroats, but old
Juanita lent at least a touch of domesticity to a situation that would
otherwise have been impossible. The girl was very uneasy in her mind. A
cold dread filled her heart, a fear that was a good deal less than
panic-terror, however. For she trusted the man Neil even as she
distrusted his captain. Miscreant he had let himself be called, and
doubtless was, but she knew no harm could befall her from his
companions while he was alive to prevent it. A reassurance of this came
to her that evening in the fragment of a conversation she overheard.
They were passing her window which she had raised on account of the
heat when the low voices of two men came to her.
“I tell you I’m not going, Leroy. Send Hardman,” one said.
“Are you running this outfit, or am I, Neil?”
“You are. But I gave her my word. That’s all there’s to it.”
Alice was aware that they had stopped and were facing each other
tensely.
“Go slow, York. I gave her my word, too. Do you think I’m allowing to
break it while you’re away?”
“No, I don’t. Look here, Phil. I’m not looking for trouble. You’re
major-domo of this outfit What you say goes—except about this girl. I’m
a white man, if I’m a scoundrel.”
“And I’m not?”
“I tell you I’m not sayin’ that,” the other answered doggedly.
“You’re hinting it awful loud. I stand for it this time, York, but
never again. You butt in once more and you better reach for your
hardware simultaneous. Stick a pin in that.”
They had moved on again, and she did not hear Neil’s answer.
Nevertheless, she was comforted to know she had one friend among these
desperate outlaws, and that comfort gave her at least an hour or two of
broken, nappy sleep.
In the morning when she had dressed she found her room door unlocked,
and she stepped outside into the sunshine. York Neil was sitting on the
porch at work on a broken spur strap. Looking up, he nodded a casual
good morning. But she knew why he was there, and gratitude welled up in
her heart. Not a young woman who gave way to every impulse, she yielded
to one now, and shook hands with him. Their eyes met for a moment and
he knew she was thanking him.
An eye derisive witnessed the handshake. “An alliance against the teeth
of the wolf, I’ll bet. Good mo’ning, Miss Mackenzie,” drawled Leroy.