THE BEGINNING OF THE END
When Norton stirred and would have opened his eyes but for the bandage
drawn over them, she was at his side. She had been kneeling there for
a long time, waiting. Her hand was on his where it had crept softly
from his wrist.
"You must lie very still," she commanded gently. "I am with you and
everything is all right. There was . . . an accident. No, don't try
to move the cloth; please, Roderick." She pushed his hand back down to
his side. "We are in the King's Palace, just you and I, and everything
is all right."
He was feverish, and she soothed him; sick, and she mothered him and
nursed him; troubled, uncertain, perplexed, and she comforted him. At
the first she went no further than saying that there had been an
accident; that already she had sent to San Juan for all that was needed
to make him comfortable; that Mr. Engle had been instructed to speed a
man to the railroad for further necessities; that now for his own sake,
for her sake, he must just lie very still . . . try not even to think.
He was listless, seeming without volition, quite willing to surrender
himself into her keeping. What dazed thoughts were his upon this first
awakening were lost, forgotten in the brief doze into which she
succeeded in luring him. When again he stirred and woke she was still
at his side, kneeling upon the hard rock floor beside him. . . . She
had had Patten help her to lift him down from the table before she
despatched Patten with the note for John Engle. Again she pleaded with
him to lie still and just trust to her.
He was very still. She knew that he was trying to piece together his
fragmentary thoughts and impressions, seeking to bridge over from last
night to to-day. So she talked softly with him, soothing him alike
with the tenderness of her voice and the pressure and gentle stroke of
her hand upon his hand and arm. He had had an accident but was going
to be all right from now on. But he must not be moved for a little.
Therefore Engle would come soon, and perhaps Mrs. Engle with him. And
a wagon bringing a real bed and fresh clean sheets and all of those
articles which she had listed. It would not be very long now until
Engle came.
But at last when she paused his hand shut down upon hers and he asked
quietly:
"I didn't dream it all, did I, Virginia? It is hard to know just what
I did and what I dreamed I did. But it seems more than a dream. . . .
Was it I who robbed Kemble of the Quigley mines?"
"Yes," she told him lightly, as though it were a matter of small
moment. "But you were not responsible for what you did."
"And there were other robberies? I even tried to steal from you?"
"Yes," she answered again.
"And you wanted to have me submit to an operation? And I would not?"
"Yes."
"And then . . . then you . . . you did it?"
So she explained, feeling that certainty would be less harmful to him
now than a continual struggle to penetrate the curtain of semidarkness
obscuring his memory.
"I took it upon myself," she told him at the end. "I took the chance
that you might die; that it might be I who had killed you. Perhaps I
had no right to do it. But I have succeeded; I have drawn you back
from kleptomania to your own clear moral strength. You will get well,
Rod Norton; you will be an honest man. But I took it upon myself to
take the chances for you. Now . . . do you think that you can forgive
me?"
He appeared to be pondering the matter. When his reply came it was
couched in the form of a question:
"Would you have done it, Virginia . . . if you didn't love me a little
as I love you?"
And her answer comforted him. He was sleeping when the Engles came.
Later came the big wagon, one of Engle's men driving, Ignacio Chavez
and two other Mexicans accompanying on horseback. Virginia had
forgotten nothing. Quick hands did her bidding now, altering the
anteroom of the King's Palace into a big airy bedroom. There was a
great rug upon the floor, a white-sheeted and counterpaned bed, fresh
pajamas, table, chair, alcohol-stove, glasses and cups and
water-pitchers. There were cloths for fresh bandages, wide palm-leaf
fans . . . there was even ice and the promise of further ice to come.
The sun was shut out by heavy curtains across the main entrance and the
broken-out holes in the easterly wall.
"My dear," said Mrs. Engle, taking both of Virginia's hands into her
own, "I don't know just what has happened and I don't care to know
until you get good and ready to tell me about it. But I can see by
looking at you that you are at the end of your tether. I'm going to
take care of Roddy now while you sleep at least a couple of hours."
She and Engle had asked themselves the question as soon as Virginia's
note came to them: "What in the world were she and Norton doing on the
mountainside at that time of night?" But they had no intention of
asking it of any one else. Rather John Engle hastened to answer it for
others.
"_Muchachos_" he said to the men when he sent them back to San Juan,
"there was an accident last night. Señor Norton had a fall from his
horse, striking his head. My cousin, Miss Page, together with Señor
Norton and Señor Patten, was taking a short cut this way to make a call
at Pozo. Señor Patten and Miss Page succeeded in getting Señor Norton
here, where they had to operate upon him immediately. He is doing well
now, thanks to their prompt action; he will be well soon. You may tell
his friends."
And then, seeing little that he could do here and much that he might
accomplish elsewhere, John Engle rode on his spurs back to San Juan to
lay down the law to Patten.
Throughout the days and nights which followed, Virginia and Mrs. Engle
nursed Norton back into a semblance of strength. One of them was
always at his side. When at last the bandage might be removed from the
blindfolded eyes Norton's questing glance found Virginia first of all.
"Virginia," he said quietly, "thanks to you I can start in all over
now."
She understood. So did Mrs. Engle. For Norton had explained to both
the banker and his wife, holding nothing back from them, telling them
frankly of crimes committed, of his attempted abduction of the girl who
in turn had "abducted him." He had restitutions to make without the
least unnecessary delay. He must square himself and he thanked God
that he could square himself, that his crimes had been bloodless, that
he had but to return the stolen moneys. And, to wipe his slate clean,
he stood ready to pay to the full for what he had done, to offer his
confession openly, to accept without a murmur whatever decree the court
might award him.
Again John Engle did his bit. He went to the county-seat and saw the
district attorney, an upright man, but one who saw clearly. The lawyer
laid his work aside and came immediately with Engle to the King's
Palace.
"Any court, having the full evidence," he said crisply, "would hold you
blameless. Give me the money you have taken; I shall see that it is
returned and that no questions are asked. And if you've got any
idiotic compulsion about open confession . . . Well, think of somebody
besides yourself for a change. Try thinking about the Wonder Girl a
little, it will be good for you."
For he never called her anything but that, the Wonder Girl. When he
had heard everything, he came to her after his straightforward fashion
and gripped her hand until he hurt her.
"I didn't know they made girls like you," he told her before she even
knew who he was.
It was he who, summoning all of his forensic eloquence, finally quieted
Norton's disturbed mind. Norton in his weakened condition was all for
making a clean breast before the world, for acknowledging himself unfit
for his office, for resigning. But in the end when he was told curtly
that he owed vastly more to the county than to his stupid conscience,
that he had been chosen to get Jim Galloway, that that was his job,
that he could do all the resigning he wanted to afterward, and that
finally he was not to consider his own personal feelings until he had
thought of Virginia's, Norton gave over his regrets and merely waxed
impatient for the time when he could finish his work and go back to Las
Flores rancho. For it was understood that he would not go alone.
"I'll free del Rio because I have to, not because I want to," said the
lawyer at the end. "Trusting to you to bring him in again later. He
is one of Galloway's crowd and I know it, despite his big bluffs.
Galloway is away right now, somewhere below the border. Just what he
is up to I don't know. I think del Rio does. When Galloway gets back
you keep your eye on the two of them."
After the county attorney's departure Rod Norton rested more easily.
He was making restitution for all that he had done, he was getting well
and strong again, he had been given such proof as comes to few men of
the utter devotion of a woman. Through many a bright hour he and
Virginia, daring to look confidently ahead, talked of life as it might
be lived upon Las Flores when the lake was made, the lower lands
irrigated, the big home built.
"And," she confessed to him at the last, her face hidden against his
breast, "I never want to see a surgeon's lancet again in all of my
life, Rod Norton!"
When at length the sheriff could bestride a horse he wondered
impatiently what it could be that kept Jim Galloway so long away. And
if he was never coming back. But he knew that high up among the
cliffs, hidden away in the ancient caves, Jim Galloway's rifles were
still lying.