AT THE BANKER'S HOME
Rod Norton made no arrest. Leaving the card-room abruptly he signalled
to Julius Struve, the hotel keeper, to follow him. In the morning
Struve, in his official capacity as coroner, would demand a verdict.
Having long been in strong sympathy with the sheriff he was to be
looked to now for a frank prediction of the inquest's result. And,
very thoughtful about it all, he gravely agreed with Norton; the
coroner's jury, taking the evidence offered by Jim Galloway, Kid
Rickard, and Antone, would bring in a verdict of justifiable homicide.
"Later on we'll get 'em, Roddy . . . mebbe," he said finally. "But not
now. If you pulled the Kid it would just be running up the county
expense all for nothing."
The sheriff left him in silence and leading his horse went the few
steps to the hotel. Ignacio Chavez appearing opportunely Norton gave
his animal into the breed's custody; Ignacio, accustomed to doing odd
jobs for el Señor Roderico Nortone, and to the occasional half dollars
resulting from such transactions, led the big gray away while the
sheriff entered the hotel. It had been a day of hard riding and scanty
meals, and he was hungry.
Bright and new and conspicuous, a gold-lettered sign at Struve's
doorway caught his eye and caused him to remember the wounded left hand
which had been paining him considerably through the long hot day. The
sign bore the name of Dr. V. D. Page with the words Physician and
Surgeon; in blue pencilled letters upon the practitioner's card,
affixed to the brass chain suspending the sign, were the further words:
"Room 5, Struve's Hotel."
The sheriff went to Room 5. It was at the front of the building, upon
the ground floor. The door opened almost immediately when he rapped.
Confronting him was the girl he had encountered at the arroyo. He
lifted his hat, looked beyond her, and said simply:
"I was looking for Dr. Page. Is he in now?"
"Yes," she told him gravely. "Come in, please."
He stepped across the threshold, his eyes trained to quick observation
of details taking in at a glance all there was to be seen. The room
showed all signs of a fresh unpacking, the one table and two chairs
piled high with odds and ends. For the most part the miscellany
consisted of big, fat books, bundles of towels and fresh white napkins,
rubber-stoppered bottles of varicolored contents, and black leather
cases, no doubt containing a surgeon's instruments. Through an open
door giving entrance to the adjoining room he noted further signs of
unpacking with a marked difference in the character of the litter; the
girl stepped quickly to this door, shutting out the vision of a
helter-skelter of feminine apparel.
"It is your hand?" she asked, as in most thoroughly matter of fact
fashion she put out her own for it. "Let me see it."
But for a moment he bestowed upon her merely a slow look of question.
"You don't mean that you are Dr. Page?" he asked. Then, believing that
he understood: "You're the nurse?"
"Is a physician's life in San Juan likely to be so filled with his
duties that he must bring a nurse with him?" she countered. "Yes, I am
Dr. Page."
He noted that she was as defiant about the matter as the Kid had been
about the killing of Bisbee of Las Palmas; plainly she had foreseen
that the type of man-animal inhabiting this out-of-the-way corner of
the world would be likely to wonder at her hardihood and, perhaps, to
jeer.
"I came to-day," she explained in the same matter-of-fact way.
"Consequently you will pardon the looks of things. But I am one of the
kind that believes in hanging out a shingle first, getting details
arranged next. Now may I see the hand?"
"It's hardly anything." He lifted it now for her inspection. "Just a
slight cut, you know. But it's showing signs of infection. A little
antiseptic . . ."
She took his fingers into hers and bent over the wound. He noted two
things, now: what strong hands she had, shapely, with sensitive fingers
ignorant of rings; how richly alive and warmly colored her hair was,
full of little waves and curls.
She had nothing to say while she treated him. Over an alcohol lamp she
heated some water; in a bowl, brought from the adjoining room, she
cleansed the hand thoroughly. Then the application of the final
antiseptic, a bit of absorbent cotton, a winding of surgeon's tape
about a bit of gauze, and the thing was done. Only at the end did she
say:
"It's a peculiar cut . . . not a knife cut, is it?"
"No," he answered humorously. "Did it on a piece of lead. . . . How
much is it, Doctor?"
"Two dollars," she told him, busied with the drying of her own hands.
"Better let me look at it again in the morning if it pains you."
He laid two silver dollars in her palm, hesitated a moment and then
went out.
"She's got the nerve," was his thoughtful estimate as he went to his
corner table in the dining-room. "But I don't believe she is going to
last long in San Juan. . . . Funny she should come to a place like
this, anyhow. . . . Wonder what the V stands for?"
At any rate the hand had been skilfully treated and bandaged; he nodded
at it approvingly. Then, with his meal set before him, he divided his
thoughts pretty evenly between the girl and the recent shooting at the
Casa Blanca. The sense was strong upon him as it had been many a time
that before very long either Rod Norton or Jim Galloway would lie as
the sheepman from Las Palmas was lying, while the other might watch his
sunrises and sunsets with a strange, new emotion of security.
The sheriff, who had not eaten for twelve hours, was beginning his meal
when the newest stranger in San Juan came into the dining-room. She
had arranged her lustrous copper-brown hair becomingly, and looked
fresh and cool and pretty. Norton approved of her with his keen eyes
while he watched her go to her place at a table across the room. As
she sat down, giving no sign of having noted him, her back toward him,
he continued to observe and to admire her slender, perfect figure and
the strong, sensitive hands busied with her napkin.
A slovenly, half-grown Indian girl, Anita, the cook's daughter, came in
from the kitchen, directed the slumbrous eyes of her race upon the
sheriff who fitted well in a woman's eye, and went to serve the single
other late diner. Norton caught a fleeting view of V. D. Page's throat
and cheek as she turned slightly in speaking with Anita. As the
serving-maid withdrew Norton rose to his feet and crossed the room to
the far table.
"May I bring my things over and eat with you?" he asked when he stood
looking down on her and she had lifted her eyes curiously to his. "If
you've come to stay you can't go on forever not knowing anybody here,
you know. Since you've got to know us sooner or later why not begin to
get acquainted? Here and now and with me? I'm Roderick Norton."
One must have had far less discernment than she not to have felt
instinctively that the great bulk of human conventions would shrivel
and vanish before they could come this far across the desert lands.
Besides, the man standing over her looked straight and honestly into
her eyes and for a little she glimpsed again the youth of him veiled by
the sternness his life had set into his soul and upon his face.
"It is kind of you to have pity upon me in my isolation," she answered
lightly and without hesitation. "And, to tell the truth, I never was
so terribly lonesome in all my life."
He made two trips back and forth to bring his plate and coffee cup and
auxiliary sauce dishes and plated silver, while she wondered idly that
he did not instruct the Indian girl to perform the service for him.
Even then she half formulated the thought that it was much more natural
for this man to do for himself what he wanted than for him to sit down
to be waited upon. A small matter, no doubt; but then mountains are
made up of small particles and character of just such small
characteristics as this.
During the half hour which they spent together over their meal they got
to know each other rather better than chance acquaintances are likely
to do in so brief a time. For from the moment of Norton's coming to
her table the bars were down between them. She was plainly eager to
supplement Ignacio Chavez's information of "_la gente_" of San Juan
and its surrounding country, evincing a curiosity which he readily
understood to be based upon the necessities of her profession. In
return for all that he told her she sketchily spoke of her own plans,
very vague plans, to be sure, she admitted with one of her quick, gay
smiles. She had come prepared to accept what she found, she was
playing no game of hide-and-seek with her destiny, but had wandered
thus far from the former limits of her existence to meet life half way,
hoping to do good for others, a little imperiously determined to
achieve her own measure of success and happiness.
From the beginning each was ready, perhaps more than ready, to like the
other. Her eyes, whether they smiled or grew suddenly grave, pleased
him; always were they fearless. He sensed that beneath the external
soft beauty of a very lovely young woman there was a spirit of
hardihood in every sense worthy of the success which she had planned
bare-handed to make for herself, and in the man's estimation no quality
stood higher than a superb independence. On her part, there was first
a definite surprise, then a glow of satisfaction that in this virile
arm of the law there was nothing of the blusterer. She set him down as
a quiet gentleman first, as a sheriff next. She enjoyed his low,
good-humored laugh and laughed back with him, even while she
experienced again the unaccustomed thrill at the sheer physical bigness
of him, the essentially masculine strength of a hardy son of the
southwestern outdoors. Not once had he referred to the affair at the
Casa Blanca or to his part in it; not a question did she ask him
concerning it. He told himself that so utterly human, so perfectly
feminine a being as she must be burning with curiosity; she marvelled
that he could think, speak of anything else. When together they rose
from the table they were alike prepared, should circumstance so direct,
to be friends.
She was going now to call upon the Engles. She had told him that she
had a letter to Mrs. Engle from a common friend in Richmond.
"I don't want to appear to be riding too hard on your trail," he smiled
at her. "But I was planning dropping in on the Engles myself this
evening. They're friends of mine, you know."
She laughed, and as they left the hotel, propounded a riddle for him to
answer: Should Mr. Norton introduce her to Mrs. Engle so that she might
present her letter, or, after the letter was presented, should Mrs.
Engle introduce her to Mr. Norton?
It did not suggest itself to her until they had passed from the street,
through the cottonwoods and into the splendid living-room of the Engle
home, that her escort was not dressed as she had imagined all civilized
mankind dressed for a call. Walking through the primitive town his
boots and soft shirt and travel-soiled hat had been in too perfect
keeping with the environment for her to be more than pleasurably
conscious of them.
At the Engles', however, his garb struck her for a moment of the first
shock of contrast, as almost grotesquely out of place.
At the broad front door Norton had rapped. The desultory striking of a
piano's keys ceased abruptly, a girl's voice crying eagerly: "It's
Roddy!" hinted at the identity of the listless player, a door flung
open flooded the broad entrance hall with light. And then the outer
door framed banker Engle's daughter, a mere girl in her middle teens,
fair-haired, fair-skinned, fluffy-skirted, her eyes bright with
expectation, her two hands held out offering themselves in doubled
greetings. But, having seen the unexpected guest at the sheriff's
side, the bright-haired girl paused for a brief moment of uncertainty
upon the threshold, her hands falling to her sides.
"Hello, Florrie," Norton was saying quietly. "I have brought a caller
for your mother. Miss Engle, Miss Page."
"How do you do, Miss Page?" Florrie replied, regaining her poise and
giving one of her hands to each of the callers, the abandon of her
first appearance gone in a flash to be replaced by a vague hint of
stiffness. "Mama will be so glad to see you. Do come in."
She turned and led the way down the wide, deep hall and into the
living-room, a chamber which boldly defied one to remember that he was
still upon the rim of the desert. In one swift glance the newcomer to
San Juan was offered a picture in which the tall, carelessly clad form
of the sheriff became incongruous; she wondered that he remained at his
ease as he so obviously did. Yonder was a grand piano, a silver chased
vase upon a wall bracket over it holding three long-stemmed, red roses;
a heavy, massive-topped table strewn comfortably and invitingly with
books and magazines; an exquisite rug and one painting upon the far
wall, an original seascape suggestive of Waugh at his best; excellent
leather-upholstered chairs luxuriously inviting, and at once homelike
and rich. Just rising from one of these chairs drawn up to the table
reading-lamp, a book still in his hand, was Mr. Engle, while Mrs.
Engle, as fair as her daughter, just beginning to grow stout in
lavendar, came forward smilingly.
"Back again, Roddy?" She gave him a plump hand, patted his lean brown
fingers after her motherly fashion, and came to where the girl had
stopped just within the door.
"Virginia Page, aren't you? As if any one in the world would have to
tell me who _you_ were! You are your mother all over, child; did you
know it? Oh, kiss me, kiss me, my dear, for your mother's sake, and
save your hand-shakes for strangers."
Virginia, taken utterly by surprise as Mrs. Engle's arms closed warmly
about her, grew rosy with pleasure; the dreary loneliness of a long day
was gone with a kiss and a hug.
"I didn't know . . . ." she began haltingly, only to be cut short by
Mrs. Engle crying to her husband:
"It's Virginia Page, John. Wouldn't you have known her anywhere?"
John Engle, courteous, urbane, a pleasant-featured man with grave,
kindly eyes and a rather large, firm-lipped mouth nodded to Norton and
gave Virginia his hand cordially.
"I must be satisfied with a hand-shake, Miss Page," he said in a deep,
pleasant voice, "but I refuse to be a mere stranger. We are immensely
glad to have you with us. . . . Mother, can't you see we have most
thoroughly mystified her; swooping down on her like this without giving
her an inkling of how and why we expected her?"
Roderick Norton and Florrie Engle had drawn a little apart; Virginia,
with her back to them during the greeting of Mrs. and Mr. Engle, had no
way of knowing whether the withdrawal had been by mutually spontaneous
desire or whether the initiative had been the sheriff's or Miss
Engle's. Not that it mattered or concerned her in any slightest
particular.
In her hand was the note of introduction she had brought from Mrs. Seth
Morgan; evidently both its services and those of Roderick Norton might
be dispensed with in the matter of her being presented.
"Of course," Mrs. Engle was saying. An arm about the girl's slim
waist, she drew her to a big leather couch. "Marian never does things
by halves, my dear; you know that, don't you? That's a letter she gave
you for me? Well, she wrote me another, so I know all about you. And,
if you are willing to accept the relationship with out-of-the-world
folks, we're sort of cousins!"
Virginia Page flushed vividly. She had known all along that her mother
had been a distant relative of Mrs. Engle, but she had had no desire,
no thought of employing that very faint tie as an argument for being
accepted by the banker's family. She did not care to come here like
the proverbial poor relation.
"You are very kind," she said quietly, her lips smiling while her eyes
were grave. "But I don't want you to feel that I have been building on
the fact of kinship; I just wanted to be friends if you liked me, not
because you felt it your duty. . . ."
Engle, who had come, dragging his chair after him, to join them,
laughed amusedly.
"Answering your question, Mrs. Engle," he chuckled, "I'd certainly know
her for Virginia Page! When we come to know her better maybe she will
allow us to call her Cousin Virginia? In the meantime, to play safe, I
suppose that to us she'd better be just Dr. Page?"
"John is as full of nonsense after banking hours," explained Mrs.
Engle, still affectionately patting Virginia's hand, "as he is crammed
with business from nine until four. Which makes life with him
possible; it's like having two husbands, makes for variety and so saves
me from flirting with other men. Now, tell us all about yourself."
Virginia, who had been a little stiff-muscled until now, leaned back
among the cushions unconscious of a half sigh of content and of her
relaxation. During the long day San Juan had sought to frighten, to
repel her. Now it was making ample amends: first the companionable
society of Rod Norton, then this simple, hearty welcome. She returned
the pressure of Mrs. Engle's soft, warm hands in sheer gratitude.
After that they chatted lightly, Engle gradually withdrawing from the
conversation and secretly watching the girl keenly, studying her play
of expression, seeking, according to his habit, to make his guarded
estimate of a new factor in his household. From Virginia's face his
eyes went swiftly now and then to his daughter's, animated in her
tête-à-tête with the sheriff. Once, when Virginia turned unexpectedly,
she caught the hint of a troubled frown in his eyes.
Broad double doors in the west wall of the living-room gave entrance to
the patio. The doors were open now to the slowly freshening night air,
and from where she sat Virginia Page had a glimpse of a charming court,
an orange-tree heavy with fruit and blossom, red and yellow roses, a
sleeping fountain whose still water reflected star-shine and the lamp
in its niche under a grape-vine arbor. When Norton and Florence Engle
strolled out into the inviting patio Engle, breaking his silence,
leaned forward and dominated the conversation.
Virginia had been doing the major part of the talking, answering
questions about Mrs. Engle's girlhood home, telling something of
herself. Now John Engle, reminding his wife that their guest must be
consumed with curiosity about her new environment, sought to interest
her in this and that, in and about San Juan.
"There was a killing this afternoon," he admitted quietly. "No doubt
you know of it and have been shocked by it, and perhaps on account of
it have a little misjudged San Juan. We are not all cutthroats here,
by any manner of means; I think I might almost say that the rough
element is in the minority. We are in a state of transition, like all
other frontier settlements. The railroad, though it doesn't come
closer than the little tank station where you took the stage this
morning, has touched our lives out here. A railroad brings civilizing
influences; but the first thing it does is to induct a surging tide of
forces contending against law and order. Pioneers," and he smiled his
slow, grave, tolerant smile, "are as often as not tumultuous-blooded
and self-sufficient, and prone to kick over the established traces.
We've got that class to deal with . . . and that boy, Rod Norton, with
his job cut out for him, is getting results. He's the biggest man
right now, not only in the country, but in this end of the state."
Continuing he told her something of the sheriff. Young Norton, having
returned from college some three years before to live the only life
possible to one of his blood, had become manager of his father's ranch
in and beyond the San Juan mountains. At the time Billy Norton was the
county sheriff and had his hands full. Rumor said that he had promised
himself to "get" a certain man; Engle admitted that that man was Jim
Galloway of the Casa Blanca. But either Galloway or a tool of
Galloway's or some other man had "gotten" Billy Norton, shooting him
down in his own cabin and from the back, putting a shotgun charge of
buckshot into his brain.
It had occurred shortly after Roderick Norton's return, shortly before
the expiration of Billy Norton's term of office. Rod Norton, putting
another man in his place on the ranch, had buried his father and then
had asked of the county his election to the place made empty by his
father's death. Though he was young, men believed in him. The
election returns gave him his place by a crushing majority.
"And he has done good work," concluded Engle thoughtfully. "Because of
what he has done, because he does not make an arrest until he has his
evidence and then drives hard to a certain conviction, he has come to
be called Dead-sure Norton and to be respected everywhere, and feared
more than a little. Until now it has become virtually a two-man fight.
Rod Norton against Jim Galloway. . . ."
"John," interposed Mrs. Engle, "aren't you giving Virginia rather a
sombre side of things?"
"Maybe I am," he agreed. "But this killing of the Las Palmas man in
broad daylight has come pretty close to filling my mind. Who's going
to be next?" His eyes went swiftly toward the patio, taking stock of
the two figures there. Then he shrugged, went to the table for a cigar
and returned smiling to inform Virginia of life on the desert and in
the valleys beyond the mountains, of scattering attempts at reclamation
and irrigation, of how one made towns of sun-dried mud, of where the
adobe soil itself was found, drifted over with sand in the shade of the
cottonwoods.
But Mrs. Engle's sigh, while her husband spoke of black mud and straw,
testified that her thoughts still clung about those events and
possibilities which she herself had asked him to avoid; her eyes
wandered to the tall, rudely garbed figure dimly seen in the patio.
Virginia, recalling Jim Galloway as she had seen him on the stage,
heavy-bodied, narrow-hipped, masterful alike in carriage and the look
of the prominent eyes, glanced with Mrs. Engle toward Rod Norton. He
was laughing at something passing between him and Florence, and for the
moment appeared utterly boyish. Were it not for the grim reminder of
the forty-five-caliber revolver which the nature of his sworn duties
did not allow of his laying aside even upon a night like this, it would
have been easy to forget that he was all that which the one word
sheriff connotes in a land like that about San Juan.
"Can't get away from it, can we?" Engle having caught the look in the
two women's eyes, broke off abruptly in what he was saying, and now sat
studying his cigar with frowning eyes. "Man against man, and the whole
county knows it, one employing whatever criminal's tools slip into his
hands, the other fighting fair and in the open. Man against man and in
a death grapple just because they are the men they are, with one backed
up by a hang-dog crowd like Kid Rickard and Antone, and the other
playing virtually a lone hand. What's the end going to be?"
Virginia thought of Ignacio Chavez. He, had he been here, would have
answered:
"In the end there will be the ringing of the bells for a man dead. You
will see! Which one? _Quien sabe_! The bells will ring."