Relieved of Clarence Brant's embarrassing presence, Jim Hooker did not,
however, refuse to avail himself of that opportunity to expound to the
farmer and his family the immense wealth, influence, and importance of
the friend who had just left him. Although Clarence's plan had suggested
reticence, Hooker could not forego the pleasure of informing them
that “Clar” Brant had just offered to let him into an extensive land
speculation. He had previously declined a large share or original
location in a mine of Clarence's, now worth a million, because it was
not “his style.” But the land speculation in a country of unsettled
titles and lawless men, he need not remind them, required some
experience of border warfare. He would not say positively, although he
left them to draw their own conclusions with gloomy significance, that
this was why Clarence had sought him. With this dark suggestion, he took
leave of Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins and their daughter Phoebe the next day,
not without some natural human emotion, and peacefully drove his team
and wagon into the settlement of Fair Plains.
He was not prepared, however, for a sudden realization of his
imaginative prospects. A few days after his arrival in Fair Plains,
he received a letter from Clarence, explaining that he had not time to
return to Hooker to consult him, but had, nevertheless, fulfilled his
promise, by taking advantage of an opportunity of purchasing the Spanish
“Sisters'” title to certain unoccupied lands near the settlement. As
these lands in part joined the section already preempted and occupied by
Hopkins, Clarence thought that Jim Hooker would choose that part for the
sake of his neighbor's company. He inclosed a draft on San Francisco,
for a sum sufficient to enable Jim to put up a cabin and “stock” the
property, which he begged he would consider in the light of a loan, to
be paid back in installments, only when the property could afford it.
At the same time, if Jim was in difficulty, he was to inform him. The
letter closed with a characteristic Clarence-like mingling of enthusiasm
and older wisdom. “I wish you luck, Jim, but I see no reason why you
should trust to it. I don't know of anything that could keep you from
making yourself independent of any one, if you go to work with a LONG
AIM and don't fritter away your chances on short ones. If I were you,
old fellow, I'd drop the Plains and the Indians out of my thoughts, or
at least out of my TALK, for a while; they won't help you in the long
run. The people who believe you will be jealous of you; those who don't,
will look down upon you, and if they get to questioning your little
Indian romances, Jim, they'll be apt to question your civilized facts.
That won't help you in the ranching business and that's your only real
grip now.” For the space of two or three hours after this, Jim was
reasonably grateful and even subdued,--so much so that his employer, to
whom he confided his good fortune, frankly confessed that he believed
him from that unusual fact alone. Unfortunately, neither the practical
lesson conveyed in this grim admission, nor the sentiment of gratitude,
remained long with Jim. Another idea had taken possession of his fancy.
Although the land nominated in his bill of sale had been, except on the
occasion of his own temporary halt there, always unoccupied,
unsought, and unclaimed, and although he was amply protected by legal
certificates, he gravely collected a posse of three or four idlers from
Fair Plains, armed them at his own expense, and in the dead of night
took belligerent and forcible possession of the peaceful domain which
the weak generosity and unheroic dollars of Clarence had purchased for
him! A martial camp-fire tempered the chill night winds to the pulses of
the invaders, and enabled them to sleep on their arms in the field they
had won. The morning sun revealed to the astonished Hopkins family
the embattled plain beyond, with its armed sentries. Only then did Jim
hooker condescend to explain the reason of his warlike occupation, with
dark hints of the outlying “squatters” and “jumpers,” whose incursions
their boldness alone had repulsed. The effect of this romantic situation
upon the two women, with the slight fascination of danger imported
into their quiet lives, may well be imagined. Possibly owing to some
incautious questioning by Mr. Hopkins, and some doubts of the discipline
and sincerity of his posse, Jim discharged them the next day; but
during the erection of his cabin by some peaceful carpenters from the
settlement, he returned to his gloomy preoccupation and the ostentatious
wearing of his revolvers. As an opulent and powerful neighbor, he took
his meals with the family while his house was being built, and generally
impressed them with a sense of security they had never missed.
Meantime, Clarence, duly informed of the installation of Jim as his
tenant, underwent a severe trial. It was necessary for his plans that
this should be kept a secret at present, and this was no easy thing for
his habitually frank and open nature. He had once mentioned that he had
met Jim at the settlement, but the information was received with such
indifference by Susy, and such marked disfavor by Mrs. Peyton, that
he said no more. He accompanied Peyton in his rides around the rancho,
fully possessed himself of the details of its boundaries, the debatable
lands held by the enemy, and listened with beating pulses, but a hushed
tongue, to his host's ill-concealed misgivings.
“You see, Clarence, that lower terrace?” he said, pointing to a
far-reaching longitudinal plain beyond the corral; “it extends from my
corral to Fair Plains. That is claimed by the sisters' title, and, as
things appear to be going, if a division of the land is made it will be
theirs. It's bad enough to have this best grazing land lying just on
the flanks of the corral held by these rascals at an absurd prohibitory
price, but I am afraid that it may be made to mean something even worse.
According to the old surveys, these terraces on different levels were
the natural divisions of the property,--one heir or his tenant taking
one, and another taking another,--an easy distinction that saved the
necessity of boundary fencing or monuments, and gave no trouble to
people who were either kinsmen or lived in lazy patriarchal concord.
That is the form of division they are trying to reestablish now. Well,”
he continued, suddenly lifting his eyes to the young man's flushed face,
in some unconscious, sympathetic response to his earnest breathlessness,
“although my boundary line extends half a mile into that field, my house
and garden and corral ARE ACTUALLY UPON THAT TERRACE OR LEVEL.” They
certainly appeared to Clarence to be on the same line as the long field
beyond. “If,” went on Peyton, “such a decision is made, these men will
push on and claim the house and everything on the terrace.”
“But,” said Clarence quickly, “you said their title was only valuable
where they have got or can give POSSESSION. You already have yours. They
can't take it from you except by force.”
“No,” said Peyton grimly, “nor will they dare to do it as long as I live
to fight them.”
“But,” persisted Clarence, with the same singular hesitancy of manner,
“why didn't you purchase possession of at least that part of the land
which lies so dangerously near your own house?”
“Because it was held by squatters, who naturally preferred buying what
might prove a legal title to their land from these impostors than to
sell out their possession to ME at a fair price.”
“But couldn't you have bought from them both?” continued Clarence.
“My dear Clarence, I am not a Croesus nor a fool. Only a man who was
both would attempt to treat with these rascals, who would now, of
course, insist that THEIR WHOLE claim should be bought up at their own
price, by the man who was most concerned in defeating them.”
He turned away a little impatiently. Fortunately he did not observe that
Clarence's averted face was crimson with embarrassment, and that a faint
smile hovered nervously about his mouth.
Since his late rendezvous with Susy, Clarence had had no chance to
interrogate her further regarding her mysterious relative. That that
shadowy presence was more or less exaggerated, if not an absolute myth,
he more than half suspected, but of the discontent that had produced it,
or the recklessness it might provoke, there was no doubt. She might be
tempted to some act of folly. He wondered if Mary Rogers knew it. Yet,
with his sensitive ideas of loyalty, he would have shrunk from any
confidence with Mary regarding her friend's secrets, although he
fancied that Mary's dark eyes sometimes dwelt upon him with mournful
consciousness and premonition. He did not imagine the truth, that this
romantic contemplation was only the result of Mary's conviction that
Susy was utterly unworthy of his love. It so chanced one morning that
the vacquero who brought the post from Santa Inez arrived earlier than
usual, and so anticipated the two girls, who usually made a youthful
point of meeting him first as he passed the garden wall. The letter bag
was consequently delivered to Mrs. Peyton in the presence of the others,
and a look of consternation passed between the young girls. But
Mary quickly seized upon the bag as if with girlish and mischievous
impatience, opened it, and glanced within it.
“There are only three letters for you,” she said, handing them to
Clarence, with a quick look of significance, which he failed to
comprehend, “and nothing for me or Susy.”
“But,” began the innocent Clarence, as his first glance at the letters
showed him that one was directed to Susy, “here is”--
A wicked pinch on his arm that was nearest Mary stopped his speech, and
he quickly put the letters in his pocket.
“Didn't you understand that Susy don't want her mother to see that
letter?” asked Mary impatiently, when they were alone a moment later.
“No,” said Clarence simply, handing her the missive.
Mary took it and turned it over in her hands.
“It's in a man's handwriting,” she said innocently.
“I hadn't noticed it,” returned Clarence with invincible naivete, “but
perhaps it is.”
“And you hand it over for me to give to Susy, and ain't a bit curious to
know who it's from?”
“No,” returned Clarence, opening his big eyes in smiling and apologetic
wonder.
“Well,” responded the young lady, with a long breath of melancholy
astonishment, “certainly, of all things you are--you really ARE!” With
which incoherency--apparently perfectly intelligible to herself--she
left him. She had not herself the slightest idea who the letter was
from; she only knew that Susy wanted it concealed.
The incident made little impression on Clarence, except as part of the
general uneasiness he felt in regard to his old playmate. It seemed
so odd to him that this worry should come from HER,--that she herself
should form the one discordant note in the Arcadian dream that he had
found so sweet; in his previous imaginings it was the presence of Mrs.
Peyton which he had dreaded; she whose propinquity now seemed so full
of gentleness, reassurance, and repose. How worthy she seemed of any
sacrifice he could make for her! He had seen little of her for the last
two or three days, although her smile and greeting were always ready
for him. Poor Clarence did not dream that she had found from certain
incontestable signs and tokens, both in the young ladies and himself,
that he did not require watching, and that becoming more resigned to
Susy's indifference, which seemed so general and passive in quality, she
was no longer tortured by the sting of jealousy.
Finding himself alone that afternoon, the young man had wandered
somewhat listlessly beyond the low adobe gateway. The habits of the
siesta obtained in a modified form at the rancho. After luncheon, its
masters and employees usually retired, not so much from the torrid
heat of the afternoon sun, but from the first harrying of the afternoon
trades, whose monotonous whistle swept round the walls. A straggling
passion vine near the gate beat and struggled against the wind. Clarence
had stopped near it, and was gazing with worried abstraction across the
tossing fields, when a soft voice called his name.
It was a pleasant voice,--Mrs. Peyton's. He glanced back at the gateway;
it was empty. He looked quickly to the right and left; no one was there.
The voice spoke again with the musical addition of a laugh; it seemed
to come from the passion vine. Ah, yes; behind it, and half overgrown
by its branches, was a long, narrow embrasured opening in the wall,
defended by the usual Spanish grating, and still further back, as in the
frame of a picture, the half length figure of Mrs. Peyton, very handsome
and striking, too, with a painted picturesqueness from the effect of the
checkered light and shade.
“You looked so tired and bored out there,” she said. “I am afraid you
are finding it very dull at the rancho. The prospect is certainly not
very enlivening from where you stand.”
Clarence protested with a visible pleasure in his eyes, as he held back
a spray before the opening.
“If you are not afraid of being worse bored, come in here and talk
with me. You have never seen this part of the house, I think,--my own
sitting-room. You reach it from the hall in the gallery. But Lola or
Anita will show you the way.”
He reentered the gateway, and quickly found the hall,--a narrow, arched
passage, whose black, tunnel-like shadows were absolutely unaffected
by the vivid, colorless glare of the courtyard without, seen through an
opening at the end. The contrast was sharp, blinding, and distinct;
even the edges of the opening were black; the outer light halted on
the threshold and never penetrated within. The warm odor of verbena
and dried rose leaves stole from a half-open door somewhere in the
cloistered gloom. Guided by it, Clarence presently found himself on the
threshold of a low-vaulted room. Two other narrow embrasured windows
like the one he had just seen, and a fourth, wider latticed casement,
hung with gauze curtains, suffused the apartment with a clear, yet
mysterious twilight that seemed its own. The gloomy walls were warmed
by bright-fringed bookshelves, topped with trifles of light feminine
coloring and adornment. Low easy-chairs and a lounge, small fanciful
tables, a dainty desk, gayly colored baskets of worsteds or mysterious
kaleidoscopic fragments, and vases of flowers pervaded the apartment
with a mingled sense of grace and comfort. There was a womanly
refinement in its careless negligence, and even the delicate wrapper of
Japanese silk, gathered at the waist and falling in easy folds to the
feet of the graceful mistress of this charming disorder, looked a part
of its refined abandonment.
Clarence hesitated as on the threshold of some sacred shrine. But Mrs.
Peyton, with her own hands, cleared a space for him on the lounge.
“You will easily suspect from all this disorder, Mr. Brant, that I spend
a greater part of my time here, and that I seldom see much company. Mr.
Peyton occasionally comes in long enough to stumble over a footstool or
upset a vase, and I think Mary and Susy avoid it from a firm conviction
that there is work concealed in these baskets. But I have my books
here, and in the afternoons, behind these thick walls, one forgets the
incessant stir and restlessness of the dreadful winds outside. Just
now you were foolish enough to tempt them while you were nervous, or
worried, or listless. Take my word for it, it's a great mistake. There
is no more use fighting them, as I tell Mr. Peyton, than of fighting the
people born under them. I have my own opinion that these winds were
sent only to stir this lazy race of mongrels into activity, but they are
enough to drive us Anglo-Saxons into nervous frenzy. Don't you think
so? But you are young and energetic, and perhaps you are not affected by
them.”
She spoke pleasantly and playfully, yet with a certain nervous tension
of voice and manner that seemed to illustrate her theory. At least,
Clarence, in quick sympathy with her slightest emotion, was touched by
it. There is no more insidious attraction in the persons we admire, than
the belief that we know and understand their unhappiness, and that our
admiration for them is lifted higher than a mere mutual instinctive
sympathy with beauty or strength. This adorable woman had suffered. The
very thought aroused his chivalry. It loosened, also, I fear, his quick,
impulsive tongue.
Oh, yes; he knew it. He had lived under this whip of air and sky for
three years, alone in a Spanish rancho, with only the native peons
around him, and scarcely speaking his own tongue even to his guardian.
He spent his mornings on horseback in fields like these, until the
vientos generales, as they called them, sprang up and drove him nearly
frantic; and his only relief was to bury himself among the books in his
guardian's library, and shut out the world,--just as she did. The smile
which hovered around the lady's mouth at that moment arrested Clarence,
with a quick remembrance of their former relative positions, and a
sudden conviction of his familiarity in suggesting an equality of
experience, and he blushed. But Mrs. Peyton diverted his embarrassment
with an air of interested absorption in his story, and said:--
“Then you know these people thoroughly, Mr. Brant? I am afraid that WE
do not.”
Clarence had already gathered that fact within the last few days, and,
with his usual impulsive directness, said so. A slight knitting of Mrs.
Peyton's brows passed off, however, as he quickly and earnestly went on
to say that it was impossible for the Peytons in their present relations
to the natives to judge them, or to be judged by them fairly. How they
were a childlike race, credulous and trustful, but, like all credulous
and trustful people, given to retaliate when imposed upon with a larger
insincerity, exaggeration, and treachery. How they had seen their houses
and lands occupied by strangers, their religion scorned, their customs
derided, their patriarchal society invaded by hollow civilization or
frontier brutality--all this fortified by incident and illustration,
the outcome of some youthful experience, and given with the glowing
enthusiasm of conviction. Mrs. Peyton listened with the usual divided
feminine interest between subject and speaker.
Where did this rough, sullen boy--as she had known him--pick up this
delicate and swift perception, this reflective judgment, and this odd
felicity of expression? It was not possible that it was in him while he
was the companion of her husband's servants or the recognized “chum” of
the scamp Hooker. No. But if HE could have changed like this, why not
Susy? Mrs. Peyton, in the conservatism of her sex, had never been quite
free from fears of her adopted daughter's hereditary instincts; but,
with this example before her, she now took heart. Perhaps the change was
coming slowly; perhaps even now what she thought was indifference and
coldness was only some abnormal preparation or condition. But she only
smiled and said:--
“Then, if you think those people have been wronged, you are not on our
side, Mr. Brant?”
What to an older and more worldly man would have seemed, and probably
was, only a playful reproach, struck Clarence deeply, and brought his
pent-up feelings to his lips.
“YOU have never wronged them. You couldn't do it; it isn't in your
nature. I am on YOUR side, and for you and yours always, Mrs. Peyton.
From the first time I saw you on the plains, when I was brought, a
ragged boy, before you by your husband, I think I would gladly have
laid down my life for you. I don't mind telling you now that I was even
jealous of poor Susy, so anxious was I for the smallest share in your
thoughts, if only for a moment. You could have done anything with me you
wished, and I should have been happy,--far happier than I have been ever
since. I tell you this, Mrs. Peyton, now, because you have just doubted
if I might be 'on your side,' but I have been longing to tell it all to
you before, and it is that I am ready to do anything you want,--all you
want,--to be on YOUR SIDE and at YOUR SIDE, now and forever.”
He was so earnest and hearty, and above all so appallingly and
blissfully happy, in this relief of his feelings, smiling as if it were
the most natural thing in the world, and so absurdly unconscious of his
twenty-two years, his little brown curling mustache, the fire in
his wistful, yearning eyes, and, above all, of his clasped hands and
lover-like attitude, that Mrs. Peyton--at first rigid as stone, then
suffused to the eyes--cast a hasty glance round the apartment, put her
handkerchief to her face, and laughed like a girl.
At which Clarence, by no means discomposed, but rather accepting her
emotion as perfectly natural, joined her heartily, and added:--
“It's so, Mrs. Peyton; I'm glad I told you. You don't mind it, do you?”
But Mrs. Peyton had resumed her gravity, and perhaps a touch of her
previous misgivings.
“I should certainly be very sorry,” she said, looking at him critically,
“to object to your sharing your old friendship for your little playmate
with her parents and guardians, or to your expressing it to THEM as
frankly as to her.”
She saw the quick change in his mobile face and the momentary arrest of
its happy expression. She was frightened and yet puzzled. It was not the
sensitiveness of a lover at the mention of the loved one's name, and yet
it suggested an uneasy consciousness. If his previous impulsive outburst
had been prompted honestly, or even artfully, by his passion for Susy,
why had he looked so shocked when she spoke of her?
But Clarence, whose emotion had been caused by the sudden recall of his
knowledge of Susy's own disloyalty to the woman whose searching eyes
were upon him, in his revulsion against the deceit was, for an instant,
upon the point of divulging all. Perhaps, if Mrs. Peyton had shown more
confidence, he would have done so, and materially altered the evolution
of this story. But, happily, it is upon these slight human weaknesses
that your romancer depends, and Clarence, with no other reason than the
instinctive sympathy of youth with youth in its opposition to wisdom and
experience, let the opportunity pass, and took the responsibility of it
out of the hands of this chronicler.
Howbeit, to cover his confusion, he seized upon the second idea that was
in his mind, and stammered, “Susy! Yes, I wanted to speak to you about
her.” Mrs. Peyton held her breath, but the young man went on, although
hesitatingly, with evident sincerity. “Have you heard from any of her
relations since--since--you adopted her?”
It seemed a natural enough question, although not the sequitur she had
expected. “No,” she said carelessly. “It was well understood, after the
nearest relation--an aunt by marriage--had signed her consent to Susy's
adoption, that there should be no further intercourse with the family.
There seemed to us no necessity for reopening the past, and Susy herself
expressed no desire.” She stopped, and again fixing her handsome eyes on
Clarence, said, “Do you know any of them?”
But Clarence by this time had recovered himself, and was able to answer
carelessly and truthfully that he did not. Mrs. Peyton, still regarding
him closely, added somewhat deliberately, “It matters little now what
relations she has; Mr. Peyton and I have complete legal control over her
until she is of age, and we can easily protect her from any folly of
her own or others, or from any of the foolish fancies that sometimes
overtake girls of her age and inexperience.”
To her utter surprise, however, Clarence uttered a faint sigh of relief,
and his face again recovered its expression of boyish happiness. “I'm
glad of it, Mrs. Peyton,” he said heartily. “No one could understand
better what is for her interest in all things than yourself. Not,” he
said, with hasty and equally hearty loyalty to his old playmate, “that
I think she would ever go against your wishes, or do anything that she
knows to be wrong, but she is very young and innocent,--as much of a
child as ever, don't you think so, Mrs. Peyton?”
It was amusing, yet nevertheless puzzling, to hear this boyish young man
comment upon Susy's girlishness. And Clarence was serious, for he had
quite forgotten in Mrs. Peyton's presence the impression of superiority
which Susy had lately made upon him. But Mrs. Peyton returned to
the charge, or, rather, to an attack upon what she conceived to be
Clarence's old position.
“I suppose she does seem girlish compared to Mary Rogers, who is a much
more reserved and quiet nature. But Mary is very charming, Mr. Brant,
and I am really delighted to have her here with Susy. She has such
lovely dark eyes and such good manners. She has been well brought up,
and it is easy to see that her friends are superior people. I must
write to them to thank them for her visit, and beg them to let her stay
longer. I think you said you didn't know them?”
But Clarence, whose eyes had been thoughtfully and admiringly wandering
over every characteristic detail of the charming apartment, here raised
them to its handsome mistress, with an apologetic air and a “No” of such
unaffected and complete abstraction, that she was again dumbfounded.
Certainly, it could not be Mary in whom he was interested.
Abandoning any further inquisition for the present, she let the talk
naturally fall upon the books scattered about the tables. The young
man knew them all far better than she did, with a cognate knowledge of
others of which she had never heard. She found herself in the attitude
of receiving information from this boy, whose boyishness, however,
seemed to have evaporated, whose tone had changed with the subject, and
who now spoke with the conscious reserve of knowledge. Decidedly, she
must have grown rusty in her seclusion. This came, she thought bitterly,
of living alone; of her husband's preoccupation with the property; of
Susy's frivolous caprices. At the end of eight years to be outstripped
by a former cattle-boy of her husband's, and to have her French
corrected in a matter of fact way by this recent pupil of the priests,
was really too bad! Perhaps he even looked down upon Susy! She smiled
dangerously but suavely.
“You must have worked so hard to educate yourself from nothing, Mr.
Brant. You couldn't read, I think, when you first came to us. No? Could
you really? I know it has been very difficult for Susy to get on with
her studies in proportion. We had so much to first eradicate in the way
of manners, style, and habits of thought which the poor child had
picked up from her companions, and for which SHE was not responsible.
Of course, with a boy that does not signify,” she added, with feline
gentleness.
But the barbed speech glanced from the young man's smoothly smiling
abstraction.
“Ah, yes. But those were happy days, Mrs. Peyton,” he answered, with an
exasperating return of his previous boyish enthusiasm, “perhaps because
of our ignorance. I don't think that Susy and I are any happier for
knowing that the plains are not as flat as we believed they were, and
that the sun doesn't have to burn a hole in them every night when it
sets. But I know I believed that YOU knew everything. When I once saw
you smiling over a book in your hand, I thought it must be a different
one from any that I had ever seen, and perhaps made expressly for you.
I can see you there still. Do you know,” quite confidentially, “that you
reminded me--of course YOU were much younger--of what I remembered of my
mother?”
But Mrs. Peyton's reply of “Ah, indeed,” albeit polite, indicated some
coldness and lack of animation. Clarence rose quickly, but cast a long
and lingering look around him.
“You will come again, Mr. Brant,” said the lady more graciously. “If you
are going to ride now, perhaps you would try to meet Mr. Peyton. He is
late already, and I am always uneasy when he is out alone,--particularly
on one of those half-broken horses, which they consider good enough for
riding here. YOU have ridden them before and understand them, but I am
afraid that's another thing WE have got to learn.”
When the young man found himself again confronting the glittering light
of the courtyard, he remembered the interview and the soft twilight of
the boudoir only as part of a pleasant dream. There was a rude awakening
in the fierce wind, which had increased with the lengthening shadows.
It seemed to sweep away the half-sensuous comfort that had pervaded
him, and made him coldly realize that he had done nothing to solve the
difficulties of his relations to Susy. He had lost the one chance of
confiding to Mrs. Peyton,--if he had ever really intended to do so.
It was impossible for him to do it hereafter without a confession of
prolonged deceit.
He reached the stables impatiently, where his attention was attracted
by the sound of excited voices in the corral. Looking within, he was
concerned to see that one of the vacqueros was holding the dragging
bridle of a blown, dusty, and foam-covered horse, around whom a dozen
idlers were gathered. Even beneath its coating of dust and foam and
the half-displaced saddle blanket, Clarence immediately recognized the
spirited pinto mustang which Peyton had ridden that morning.
“What's the matter?” said Clarence, from the gateway.
The men fell apart, glancing at each other. One said quickly in
Spanish:--
“Say nothing to HIM. It is an affair of the house.”
But this brought Clarence down like a bombshell among them, not to be
overlooked in his equal command of their tongue and of them. “Ah! come,
now. What drunken piggishness is this? Speak!”
“The padron has been--perhaps--thrown,” stammered the first speaker.
“His horse arrives,--but he does not. We go to inform the senora.”
“No, you don't! mules and imbeciles! Do you want to frighten her to
death? Mount, every one of you, and follow me!”
The men hesitated, but for only a moment. Clarence had a fine assortment
of Spanish epithets, expletives, and objurgations, gathered in his rodeo
experience at El Refugio, and laid them about him with such fervor
and discrimination that two or three mules, presumably with guilty
consciences, mistaking their direction, actually cowered against the
stockade of the corral in fear. In another moment the vacqueros had
hastily mounted, and, with Clarence at their head, were dashing down the
road towards Santa Inez. Here he spread them in open order in the grain,
on either side of the track, himself taking the road.
They did not proceed very far. For when they had reached the gradual
slope which marked the decline to the second terrace, Clarence, obeying
an instinct as irresistible as it was unaccountable, which for the last
few moments had been forcing itself upon him, ordered a halt. The casa
and corral had already sunk in the plain behind them; it was the spot
where the lasso had been thrown at him a few evenings before! Bidding
the men converge slowly towards the road, he went on more cautiously,
with his eyes upon the track before him. Presently he stopped. There
was a ragged displacement of the cracked and crumbling soil and the
unmistakable scoop of kicking hoofs. As he stooped to examine them, one
of the men at the right uttered a shout. By the same strange instinct
Clarence knew that Peyton was found!
He was, indeed, lying there among the wild oats at the right of the
road, but without trace of life or scarcely human appearance. His
clothes, where not torn and shredded away, were partly turned inside
out; his shoulders, neck, and head were a shapeless, undistinguishable
mask of dried earth and rags, like a mummy wrapping. His left boot was
gone. His large frame seemed boneless, and, except for the cerements of
his mud-stiffened clothing, was limp and sodden.
Clarence raised his head suddenly from a quick examination of the body,
and looked at the men around him. One of them was already cantering
away. Clarence instantly threw himself on his horse, and, putting spurs
to the animal, drew a revolver from his holster and fired over the man's
head. The rider turned in his saddle, saw his pursuer, and pulled up.
“Go back,” said Clarence, “or my next shot won't MISS you.”
“I was only going to inform the senora,” said the man with a shrug and a
forced smile.
“I will do that,” said Clarence grimly, driving him back with him
into the waiting circle; then turning to them he said slowly, with
deliberate, smileless irony, “And now, my brave gentlemen,--knights
of the bull and gallant mustang hunters,--I want to inform YOU that I
believe that Mr. Peyton was MURDERED, and if the man who killed him is
anywhere this side of hell, I intend to find him. Good! You understand
me! Now lift up the body,--you two, by the shoulders; you two, by the
feet. Let your horses follow. For I intend that you four shall carry
home your master in your arms, on foot. Now forward to the corral by the
back trail. Disobey me, or step out of line and”--He raised the revolver
ominously.
If the change wrought in the dead man before them was weird and
terrifying, no less distinct and ominous was the change that, during the
last few minutes, had come over the living speaker. For it was no longer
the youthful Clarence who sat there, but a haggard, prematurely worn,
desperate-looking avenger, lank of cheek, and injected of eye, whose
white teeth glistened under the brown mustache and thin pale lips that
parted when his restrained breath now and then hurriedly escaped them.
As the procession moved on, two men slunk behind with the horses.
“Mother of God! Who is this wolf's whelp?” said Manuel.
“Hush!” said his companion in a terrified whisper. “Have you not heard?
It is the son of Hamilton Brant, the assassin, the duelist,--he who
was fusiladed in Sonora.” He made the sign of the cross quickly. “Jesus
Maria! Let them look out who have cause, for the blood of his father is
in him!”