A STACK OF GOLD PIECES
John Engle rapidly came to assume the nature and proportions of a
stubborn bulwark standing sturdily between Roderick Norton and the
fires of criticism, which, springing from little, scattered flames were
now a wide-spread blaze amply fed with the dry fuel of many fields.
Again there had been a general excitement over a crime committed, much
talk, various suspicions, and, in the end, no arrest made. Men who had
stood by the sheriff until now began to lose faith in him. They
recalled how, after the fight in the Casa Blanca, he had let Galloway
go and with him Antone and the Kid; their memories trailed back to the
killing of Bisbee of Las Palmas and the evidence of the boots. They
began to admit, at first reluctantly, then with angry eagerness, that
Norton was not the man his father had been before him, not the man they
had taken him to be. And all of this hurt Norton's stanch friend, John
Engle. All the more that he, too, saw signs of hesitancy which he
found it hard to condone.
"Let him alone," he said many a time. "Give him his chance and a free
hand. He knows what he is doing."
From that point he began to make excuses, first to himself and then to
others. People were forgetting that only a short time ago the sheriff
had lain many days at the point of death; that his system had been
overtaxed; that not yet had his superb strength come back to him. Wait
until once more he was physically fit.
It was merely an excuse, and at the outset no man knew it better than
the banker himself. But as time went by without bringing results and
tongues grew sharper and more insistent everywhere, Engle grew
convinced that there was a grain of truth in his trumped-up argument.
He invited Norton to his home, had him to dinner, watched him keenly,
and came to the conclusion that Norton was riding on his nerves, that
he had not taken sufficient time to recuperate before getting his feet
back into the official stirrups, that the strain of his duties was
telling on him, that he needed a rest and a change or would go to
pieces.
But Norton, the subject broached, merely shook his head.
"I'm all right, John," he said a little hurriedly and nervously. "I am
run down at the heels a bit, I'll admit. But I can't stop to rest
right now. One of these days I'll quit this job and go back to
ranching. Until then . . . Well, let them talk. We can't stop them
very well."
Suspicion of the Quigley mines robbery had turned at first toward del
Rio. But he had established an alibi. So had Galloway. So had Antone
and the Kid.
"There is nothing to do but wait," Norton insisted. "It won't be long
now."
Engle, having less than no faith in Patten's ability, went to Virginia
Page. She saw Norton often; what did she think? Was he on the verge
of a collapse? Was he physically fit?
"All of this criticism hurts him," said the banker thoughtfully. "I
know Rod and how he must take it, though he only shrugs. It's gall and
wormwood to him. He's up against a hard proposition, as we all know;
if he is half-sick, I wonder if the proposition isn't going to be too
much for him? Can't you advise him, persuade him to knock off for a
couple of weeks and clear out? Get into a city somewhere and forget
his work. Why, it's the most pitiful thing in the world to see a man
like him lose his grip."
"He is not quite himself," she admitted slowly. "He is more nervous,
inclined to be short and irritable, than he used to be. You may be
right; or it may be simply that his continued failure to stop these
crimes is wearing him down. I'll be glad to watch him, to talk with
him if he will listen to me."
But first she forced herself to what seemed a casual chat with Patten,
finding him loitering upon the hotel veranda. She suggested to him
that Norton was beginning to show the strain, that he looked haggard
under it, and wondered if he had quite recovered from his recent
illness?
Patten, after his pompous way, leaned back in his chair, his thumbs in
his armholes, his manner that of a most high judge.
"He's as well as I am," he announced positively. "Thin, to be sure,
just from being laid up those ten days. And from a lot of hard riding
and worry. That's all."
Out of Patten's vest-pocket peeped a lead-pencil. Curiously enough, it
carried her mind back to Patten's incompetence. For it suggested the
fountain pen which of old occupied the pencil's place and which the
sheriff had taken in his haste to secrete a bit of paper with Patten's
scrawl upon it. She wondered again just what had been on that paper,
and if it were meant to help Norton prove that Patten had no right to
the M.D. after his name? The incident, all but forgotten, remained
prominently in her mind, soon to assume a position of transcendent
importance.
And then, one after the other, here and there throughout the county
came fresh crimes which not only set men talking angrily but which drew
the eyes of the State and then of the neighboring States upon this
corner of the world. Newspapers in the cities commented variously,
most of them sweepingly condemning the county's sheriff for a
figurehead and a boy who should never have been given a man's place in
the sun. New faces were seen in San Juan, in Las Estrellas, Las
Palmas, Pozo, everywhere, and men said that the undesirable citizens of
the whole Southwest were flocking here where they might reap with
others of their ilk and go scot free. Naturally, the Casa Blanca
became headquarters for a large percentage of the newcomers.
"The condition in and about San Juan," commented one of the most
reputable and generally conservative of the attacking dailies, "has
become acute, unprecedented for this time in our development. The
community has become the asylum of the lawless. The authorities have
shown themselves utterly unable to cope with the situation. A
well-known figure of the desert town who long ago should have gone to
the gallows is daily growing bolder, attaching to himself the wildest
of the insurging element, and is commonly looked upon as a crime
dictator. Unless there comes a stiffening in the moral fiber of the
local officers, we dread to consider the logical outcome of these
conditions."
And so forth from countless quarters. Galloway openly jeered at
Norton. New faces, looking out from the Casa Blanca, grinned widely as
the sheriff now and then rode past. Engle and Struve and Tom Cutter,
anxious and beginning to be afraid of what lurked in the future, met at
the hotel and sought to hit upon a solution of the problem.
"Norton has got something up his sleeve," growled the hotel keeper,
"and he's as stubborn as a mule. He's after Galloway, and it begins to
look as though he were forgetting that his job is to serve the county
first and his own private quarrels next. I've jawed him up and down;
it only makes him shake his head like a horse with flies after him."
The three, hoping that their combined arguments might have weight with
Norton, went to him and did not leave him until they had made clear
what their thoughts were, what the whole State was saying of him. And,
as Struve had predicted, he shook his head.
"These later robberies haven't been Galloway's work," he told them
positively. "They were pulled off by the same man who stuck up Kemble
of the Quigley mines. Inside of a week I'll get something done; I'll
promise you that. But let me do it my way."
Engle alone of the three drew a certain satisfaction from the interview.
"He has promised something definite," he told them. "Did you ever know
him to do that and fail to keep his word? Maybe we're getting a little
excited, boys."
The latest crime had been the robbery of the little bank at Packard
Springs. The highwayman had gone in the night to the room of the
cashier, forced him to dress, go to the bank, and open his safe. The
result was a theft of a couple of thousand dollars, no trace left
behind, and a growing feeling of insecurity throughout the county. It
was for this crime that Norton meant and promised to make an arrest.
Exactly seven days from the day of his promise Norton rode into San
Juan and asked for Tom Cutter. Struve, meeting him at the hotel door,
looked at him sharply.
"Made that arrest yet, Norton?" he demanded. Norton smiled.
"No, I haven't," he admitted coolly. "But I've got a few minutes
before my week's up, haven't I? Fix me up with something to eat and
I'll have a talk with you and Tom while I attend to the inner man."
But over his meal, while Cutter and Struve watched him impatiently, he
did little talking other than to ask carelessly where del Rio was.
"Damn it, man," cried Struve irritably. "You've hinted at him before
now. If he's a crook, why don't you go grab him? He's in his room."
Norton swung about upon Struve, his eyes suddenly filled with fire.
"Look here, Struve," he retorted, "I've had about a bellyful of
badgering. I'm running my job and it will be just as well for you to
keep your hands off. As for why I don't make an arrest . . . Come on,
Tom. You, too, Julius," his smile coming back. "I'm going to get del
Rio."
"I don't believe . . ." began Struve.
"Seeing is believing," returned Norton lightly. "Come on."
Followed by the two men, Norton went direct to del Rio's room, at the
front of the house, just across the hall from Virginia's office. At
del Rio's quick "_Entra_," he threw open the door and went in. Del
Rio, seated smoking a cigar, looked up with curious eyes which did not
miss the two men following the sheriff.
"You are under arrest for the bank robbery at Packard Springs," said
Norton crisply.
"_Que quiere usted decir_?" demanded the Mexican, to whom the English
words were meaningless.
Norton threw back his vest, showing his star. And while he kept his
eye upon del Rio he said quietly to Cutter:
"Look through his trunk and bags."
Del Rio, understanding quickly enough, sat smoking swiftly, his eyes
narrowing as they clung steadily to Norton's. Cutter, a rising hope in
his breast that at last his superior had made good, went to the trunk
in the corner. Del Rio shrugged and remained silent.
Cutter began tumbling out upon the floor an assortment of clothing,
evincing little respect for the Mexican's finery. Suddenly, when his
hands had gone to the bottom, he sat back upon his heels, a leaping
light in his eyes.
"Caught with the goods on, by God!" he cried. "Look here, Struve!"
He had whipped out a canvas bag which gave forth the chink of gold.
Another came after it. And across each bag was stamped "Packard
Springs Bank."
Del Rio's eyes had wandered a moment to Cutter and the evidence. Then
they came back to Norton, filled with black malevolence. One did not
need to understand the southern language to grasp the meaning of the
words muttered under his breath.
Within the half-hour Strove, Cutter, and Engle had apologized to
Norton; after this, they promised him to keep their hands off and their
mouths shut.
That evening Virginia and Norton sat long together on Struve's veranda.
There was more silence than talk between them. Norton seemed
abstracted; the girl was plainly constrained, anxious, and found it
difficult to keep her mind upon the thin thread of conversation joining
their occasional remarks. Abruptly, out of one of their wordless
intervals, she said quickly:
"Congratulate me on being a rich woman! I got a check from an old,
almost forgotten, patient to-day. A hundred dollars, all in one lump!
It's a fortune in San Juan, isn't it?"
Norton laughed with her.
"I feel like spending it all in a breath," she ran on. "I went right
away to Mr. Engle and had him cash it so that I could see what five
twenty-dollar gold pieces looked like. And I chinked them and played
with them like a child! Do you think I am growing greedy for gold in
my old age? . . . You ought to see them piled up, though; five
twenties. Isn't gold a pretty thing? I've a notion to go get them and
show them to you; they're right on my table ..."
She broke off suddenly, her hand on his arm.
"Did you see some one out there at the corner of the house?" she asked
quickly. "Do you think . . ."
Then she laughed again and settled back in her chair.
"Already thinking somebody is going to steal my gold! My five
twenties. Just to punish myself I am going to leave them on my office
table all night; do you suppose I'll be wondering all the time if
somebody is crawling in at a window and taking them?"
Five minutes later she said good night and left him.
"I'll be up early in the morning," she said laughingly. "Just to make
sure that my gold is there!"
An hour later Virginia Page, sitting fully dressed in the darkness of
her bedroom, got quietly to her feet and went to the door leading to
her office. With wildly beating heart she stood listening, seeking to
peer through the crack of the door she had left ajar. She had heard
the faint, expected sound of some one moving cautiously.
Now she heard it again, then the rustling of loose papers lying on her
table, then the faint, golden chink of yellow-minted disks. As she
suddenly scratched the match in her hand, drawing it along the wall,
she threw the door open. The tiny flame, held high, retrieved the room
from darkness into sufficient pale light. The man at her table whirled
upon her, an exclamation caught in his throat, one hand going to his
hip, the other closing tight upon what it held.
She came in, her eyes steadily upon his, her face deathly pale. As the
match fell from her fingers she went to the open window and drew down
the shade. Then she lit a second match, set it to her lamp, and sank
wearily into her chair.
"Shall we thresh matters out, Mr. Norton?" she asked.