Judge Peyton had bequeathed his entire property unconditionally to his
wife. But his affairs were found to be greatly in disorder, and his
papers in confusion, and although Mrs. Peyton could discover no actual
record of the late transaction with Mr. Brant, which had saved her the
possession of the homestead, it was evident that he had spent large sums
in speculative attempts to maintain the integrity of his estate. That
enormous domain, although perfectly unencumbered, had been nevertheless
unremunerative, partly through the costs of litigation and partly
through the systematic depredations to which its great size and long
line of unprotected boundary had subjected it. It had been invaded
by squatters and “jumpers,” who had sown and reaped crops without
discovery; its cattle and wild horses had strayed or been driven beyond
its ill-defined and hopeless limits. Against these difficulties the
widow felt herself unable and unwilling to contend, and with the advice
of her friends and her lawyer, she concluded to sell the estate, except
that portion covered by the Sisters' title, which, with the homestead,
had been reconveyed to her by Clarence. She retired with Susy to the
house in San Francisco, leaving Clarence to occupy and hold the casa,
with her servants, for her until order was restored. The Robles Rancho
thus became the headquarters of the new owner of the Sisters' title,
from which he administered its affairs, visited its incumbencies,
overlooked and surveyed its lands, and--occasionally--collected its
rents. There were not wanting critics who averred that these were
scarcely remunerative, and that the young San Francisco fine gentleman,
who was only Hamilton Brant's son, after all, yet who wished to ape
the dignity and degree of a large landholder, had made a very foolish
bargain. I grieve to say that one of his own tenants, namely, Jim
Hooker, in his secret heart inclined to that belief, and looked upon
Clarence's speculation as an act of far-seeing and inordinate vanity.
Indeed, the belligerent Jim had partly--and of course darkly--intimated
something of this to Susy in their brief reunion at the casa during
the few days that followed its successful reoccupation. And Clarence,
remembering her older caprices, and her remark on her first recognition
of him, was quite surprised at the easy familiarity of her reception
of this forgotten companion of their childhood. But he was still more
concerned in noticing, for the first time, a singular sympathetic
understanding of each other, and an odd similarity of occasional action
and expression between them. It was a part of this monstrous peculiarity
that neither the sympathy nor the likeness suggested any particular
friendship or amity in the pair, but rather a mutual antagonism and
suspicion. Mrs. Peyton, coldly polite to Clarence's former COMPANION,
but condescendingly gracious to his present TENANT and retainer, did not
notice it, preoccupied with the annoyance and pain of Susy's frequent
references to the old days of their democratic equality.
“You don't remember, Jim, the time that you painted my face in the
wagon, and got me up as an Indian papoose?” she said mischievously.
But Jim, who had no desire to recall his previous humble position before
Mrs. Peyton or Clarence, was only vaguely responsive. Clarence, although
joyfully touched at this seeming evidence of Susy's loyalty to the past,
nevertheless found himself even more acutely pained at the distress
it caused Mrs. Peyton, and was as relieved as she was by Hooker's
reticence. For he had seen little of Susy since Peyton's death, and
there had been no repetition of their secret interviews. Neither had he,
nor she as far as he could judge, noticed the omission. He had been more
than usually kind, gentle, and protecting in his manner towards her,
with little reference, however, to any response from her, yet he was
vaguely conscious of some change in his feelings. He attributed it, when
he thought of it at all, to the exciting experiences through which he
had passed; to some sentiment of responsibility to his dead friend; and
to another secret preoccupation that was always in his mind. He believed
it would pass in time. Yet he felt a certain satisfaction that she was
no longer able to trouble him, except, of course, when she pained Mrs.
Peyton, and then he was half conscious of taking the old attitude of
the dead husband in mediating between them. Yet so great was his
inexperience that he believed, with pathetic simplicity of perception,
that all this was due to the slow maturing of his love for her, and
that he was still able to make her happy. But this was something to
be thought of later. Just now Providence seemed to have offered him a
vocation and a purpose that his idle adolescence had never known. He did
not dream that his capacity for patience was only the slow wasting of
his love.
Meantime that more wonderful change and recreation of the Californian
landscape, so familiar, yet always so young, had come to the rancho. The
league-long terrace that had yellowed, whitened, and wasted for half a
year beneath a staring, monotonous sky, now under sailing clouds, flying
and broken shafts of light, and sharply defined lines of rain, had taken
a faint hue of resurrection. The dust that had muffled the roads and
byways, and choked the low oaks that fringed the sunken canada, had
long since been laid. The warm, moist breath of the southwest trades had
softened the hard, dry lines of the landscape, and restored its color as
of a picture over which a damp sponge had been passed. The broad expanse
of plateau before the casa glistened and grew dark. The hidden woods of
the canada, cleared and strengthened in their solitude, dripped along
the trails and hollows that were now transformed into running streams.
The distinguishing madrono near the entrance to the rancho had changed
its crimson summer suit and masqueraded in buff and green.
Yet there were leaden days, when half the prospect seemed to be seen
through palisades of rain; when the slight incline between the terraces
became a tumultuous cascade, and the surest hoofs slipped on trails of
unctuous mud; when cattle were bogged a few yards from the highway, and
the crossing of the turnpike road was a dangerous ford. There were
days of gale and tempest, when the shriveled stalks of giant oats were
stricken like trees, and lay across each other in rigid angles, and
a roar as of the sea came up from the writhing treetops in the sunken
valley. There were long weary nights of steady downpour, hammering
on the red tiles of the casa, and drumming on the shingles of the
new veranda, which was more terrible to be borne. Alone, but for the
servants, and an occasional storm-stayed tenant from Fair Plains,
Clarence might have, at such times, questioned the effect of this
seclusion upon his impassioned nature. But he had already been
accustomed to monastic seclusion in his boyish life at El Refugio, and
he did not reflect that, for that very reason, its indulgences might
have been dangerous. From time to time letters reached him from the
outer world of San Francisco,--a few pleasant lines from Mrs. Peyton, in
answer to his own chronicle of his half stewardship, giving the news of
the family, and briefly recounting their movements. She was afraid that
Susy's sensitive nature chafed under the restriction of mourning in the
gay city, but she trusted to bring her back for a change to Robles when
the rains were over. This was a poor substitute for those brief, happy
glimpses of the home circle which had so charmed him, but he accepted
it stoically. He wandered over the old house, from which the perfume
of domesticity seemed to have evaporated, yet, notwithstanding Mrs.
Peyton's playful permission, he never intruded upon the sanctity of the
boudoir, and kept it jealously locked.
He was sitting in Peyton's business room one morning, when Incarnacion
entered. Clarence had taken a fancy to this Indian, half steward, half
vacquero, who had reciprocated it with a certain dog-like fidelity,
but also a feline indirectness that was part of his nature. He had been
early prepossessed with Clarence through a kinsman at El Refugio, where
the young American's generosity had left a romantic record among the
common people. He had been pleased to approve of his follies before
the knowledge of his profitless and lordly land purchase had commended
itself to him as corroborative testimony. “Of true hidalgo blood, mark
you,” he had said oracularly. “Wherefore was his father sacrificed by
mongrels! As to the others, believe me,--bah!”
He stood there, sombrero in hand, murky and confidential, steaming
through his soaked serape and exhaling a blended odor of equine
perspiration and cigarette smoke.
“It was, perhaps, as the master had noticed, a brigand's own day!
Bullying, treacherous, and wicked! It blew you off your horse if you so
much as lifted your arms and let the wind get inside your serape; and as
for the mud,--caramba! in fifty varas your forelegs were like bears, and
your hoofs were earthen plasters!”
Clarence knew that Incarnacion had not sought him with mere
meteorological information, and patiently awaited further developments.
The vacquero went on:--
“But one of the things this beast of a weather did was to wash down the
stalks of the grain, and to clear out the trough and hollows between,
and to make level the fields, and--look you! to uncover the stones and
rubbish and whatever the summer dust had buried. Indeed, it was even as
a miracle that Jose Mendez one day, after the first showers, came upon
a silver button from his calzas, which he had lost in the early summer.
And it was only that morning that, remembering how much and with what
fire Don Clarencio had sought the missing boot from the foot of the
Senor Peyton when his body was found, he, Incarnacion, had thought he
would look for it on the falda of the second terrace. And behold, Mother
of God it was there! Soaked with mud and rain, but the same as when the
senor was alive. To the very spur!”
He drew the boot from beneath his serape and laid it before Clarence.
The young man instantly recognized it, in spite of its weather-beaten
condition and its air of grotesque and drunken inconsistency to the
usually trim and correct appearance of Peyton when alive. “It is the
same,” he said, in a low voice.
“Good!” said Incarnacion. “Now, if Don Clarencio will examine the
American spur, he will see--what? A few horse-hairs twisted and caught
in the sharp points of the rowel. Good! Is it the hair of the horse that
Senor rode? Clearly not; and in truth not. It is too long for the flanks
and belly of the horse; it is not the same color as the tail and the
mane. How comes it there? It comes from the twisted horsehair rope of a
riata, and not from the braided cowhide thongs of the regular lasso of a
vacquero. The lasso slips not much, but holds; the riata slips much and
strangles.”
“But Mr. Peyton was not strangled,” said Clarence quickly.
“No, for the noose of the riata was perhaps large,--who knows? It
might have slipped down his arms, pinioned him, and pulled him off.
Truly!--such has been known before. Then on the ground it slipped again,
or he perhaps worked it off to his feet where it caught on his spur, and
then he was dragged until the boot came off, and behold! he was dead.”
This had been Clarence's own theory of the murder, but he had only
half confided it to Incarnacion. He silently examined the spur with the
accusing horse-hair, and placed it in his desk. Incarnacion continued:--
“There is not a vacquero in the whole rancho who has a horse-hair riata.
We use the braided cowhide; it is heavier and stronger; it is for
the bull and not the man. The horse-hair riata comes from over the
range--south.”
There was a dead silence, broken only by the drumming of the rain upon
the roof of the veranda. Incarnacion slightly shrugged his shoulders.
“Don Clarencio does not know the southern county? Francisco Robles,
cousin of the 'Sisters,'--he they call 'Pancho,'--comes from the south.
Surely when Don Clarencio bought the title he saw Francisco, for he was
the steward?”
“I dealt only with the actual owners and through my bankers in San
Francisco,” returned Clarence abstractedly.
Incarnacion looked through the yellow corners of his murky eyes at his
master.
“Pedro Valdez, who was sent away by Senor Peyton, is the foster-brother
of Francisco. They were much together. Now that Francisco is rich from
the gold Don Clarencio paid for the title, they come not much together.
But Pedro is rich, too. Mother of God! He gambles and is a fine
gentleman. He holds his head high,--even over the Americanos he gambles
with. Truly, they say he can shoot with the best of them. He boasts and
swells himself, this Pedro! He says if all the old families were like
him, they would drive those western swine back over the mountains
again.”
Clarence raised his eyes, caught a subtle yellow flash from
Incarnacion's, gazed at him suddenly, and rose.
“I don't think I have ever seen him,” he said quietly. “Thank you for
bringing me the spur. But keep the knowledge of it to yourself, good
Nascio, for the present.”
Nascio nevertheless still lingered. Perceiving which, Clarence handed
him a cigarette and proceeded to light one himself. He knew that the
vacquero would reroll his, and that that always deliberate occupation
would cover and be an excuse for further confidence.
“The Senora Peyton does not perhaps meet this Pedro in the society of
San Francisco?”
“Surely not. The senora is in mourning and goes not out in society, nor
would she probably go anywhere where she would meet a dismissed servant
of her husband.”
Incarnacion slowly lit his cigarette, and said between the puffs, “And
the senorita--she would not meet him?”
“Assuredly not.”
“And,” continued Incarnacion, throwing down the match and putting his
foot on it, “if this boaster, this turkey-cock, says she did, you could
put him out like that?”
“Certainly,” said Clarence, with an easy confidence he was, however, far
from feeling, “if he really SAID it--which I doubt.”
“Ah, truly,” said Incarnacion; “who knows? It may be another Senorita
Silsbee.”
“The senora's adopted daughter is called MISS PEYTON, friend Nascio. You
forget yourself,” said Clarence quietly.
“Ah, pardon!” said Incarnacion with effusive apology; “but she was born
Silsbee. Everybody knows it; she herself has told it to Pepita. The
Senor Peyton bequeathed his estate to the Senora Peyton. He named
not the senorita! Eh, what would you? It is the common cackle of the
barnyard. But I say 'Mees Silsbee.' For look you. There is a Silsbee of
Sacramento, the daughter of her aunt, who writes letters to her. Pepita
has seen them! And possibly it is only that Mees of whom the brigand
Pedro boasts.”
“Possibly,” said Clarence, “but as far as this rancho is concerned,
friend Nascio, thou wilt understand--and I look to thee to make the
others understand--that there is no Senorita SILSBEE here, only the
Senorita PEYTON, the respected daughter of the senora thy mistress!” He
spoke with the quaint mingling of familiarity and paternal gravity of
the Spanish master--a faculty he had acquired at El Refugio in a like
vicarious position, and which never failed as a sign of authority. “And
now,” he added gravely, “get out of this, friend, with God's blessing,
and see that thou rememberest what I told thee.”
The retainer, with equal gravity, stepped backwards, saluted with his
sombrero until the stiff brim scraped the floor, and then solemnly
withdrew.
Left to himself, Clarence remained for an instant silent and thoughtful
before the oven-like hearth. So! everybody knew Susy's real relations to
the Peytons, and everybody but Mrs. Peyton, perhaps, knew that she
was secretly corresponding with some one of her own family. In other
circumstances he might have found some excuse for this assertion of her
independence and love of her kindred, but in her attitude towards Mrs.
Peyton it seemed monstrous. It appeared impossible that Mrs. Peyton
should not have heard of it, or suspected the young girl's disaffection.
Perhaps she had,--it was another burden laid upon her shoulders,--but
the proud woman had kept it to herself. A film of moisture came across
his eyes. I fear he thought less of the suggestion of Susy's secret
meeting with Pedro, or Incarnacion's implied suspicions that Pedro was
concerned in Peyton's death, than of this sentimental possibility. He
knew that Pedro had been hated by the others on account of his position;
he knew the instinctive jealousies of the race and their predisposition
to extravagant misconstruction. From what he had gathered, and
particularly from the voices he had overheard on the Fair Plains Road,
it seemed to him that Pedro was more capable of mercenary intrigue than
physical revenge. He was not aware of the irrevocable affront put upon
Pedro by Peyton, and he had consequently attached no importance to
Peyton's own half-scornful intimation of the only kind of retaliation
that Pedro would be likely to take. The unsuccessful attempt upon
himself he had always thought might have been an accident, or if it was
really a premeditated assault, it might have been intended actually for
HIMSELF and not Peyton, as he had first thought, and his old friend had
suffered for HIM, through some mistake of the assailant. The purpose,
which alone seemed wanting, might have been to remove Clarence as a
possible witness who had overheard their conspiracy--how much of it they
did not know--on the Fair Plains Road that night. The only clue he held
to the murderer in the spur locked in his desk, merely led him beyond
the confines of the rancho, but definitely nowhere else. It was,
however, some relief to know that the crime was not committed by one of
Peyton's retainers, nor the outcome of domestic treachery.
After some consideration he resolved to seek Jim Hooker, who might be
possessed of some information respecting Susy's relations, either from
the young girl's own confidences or from Jim's personal knowledge of the
old frontier families. From a sense of loyalty to Susy and Mrs. Peyton,
he had never alluded to the subject before him, but since the young
girl's own indiscretion had made it a matter of common report, however
distasteful it was to his own feelings, he felt he could not plead the
sense of delicacy for her. He had great hopes in what he had always
believed was only her exaggeration of fact as well as feeling. And he
had an instinctive reliance on her fellow poseur's ability to detect it.
A few days later, when he found he could safely leave the rancho alone,
he rode to Fair Plains.
The floods were out along the turnpike road, and even seemed to have
increased since his last journey. The face of the landscape had changed
again. One of the lower terraces had become a wild mere of sedge and
reeds. The dry and dusty bed of a forgotten brook had reappeared, a
full-banked river, crossing the turnpike and compelling a long detour
before the traveler could ford it. But as he approached the Hopkins
farm and the opposite clearing and cabin of Jim Hooker, he was quite
unprepared for a still more remarkable transformation. The cabin, a
three-roomed structure, and its cattle-shed had entirely disappeared!
There were no traces or signs of inundation. The land lay on a gentle
acclivity above the farm and secure from the effects of the flood, and
a part of the ploughed and cleared land around the site of the cabin
showed no evidence of overflow on its black, upturned soil. But
the house was gone! Only a few timbers too heavy to be removed,
the blighting erasions of a few months of occupation, and the dull,
blackened area of the site itself were to be seen. The fence alone was
intact.
Clarence halted before it, perplexed and astonished. Scarcely two weeks
had elapsed since he had last visited it and sat beneath its roof with
Jim, and already its few ruins had taken upon themselves the look of
years of abandonment and decay. The wild land seemed to have thrown off
its yoke of cultivation in a night, and nature rioted again with all its
primal forces over the freed soil. Wild oats and mustard were springing
already in the broken furrows, and lank vines were slimily spreading
over a few scattered but still unseasoned and sappy shingles. Some
battered tin cans and fragments of old clothing looked as remote as if
they had been relics of the earliest immigration.
Clarence turned inquiringly towards the Hopkins farmhouse across the
road. His arrival, however, had already been noticed, as the door of the
kitchen opened in an anticipatory fashion, and he could see the slight
figure of Phoebe Hopkins in the doorway, backed by the overlooking heads
and shoulders of her parents. The face of the young girl was pale and
drawn with anxiety, at which Clarence's simple astonishment took a shade
of concern.
“I am looking for Mr. Hooker,” he said uneasily. “And I don't seem to be
able to find either him or his house.”
“And you don't know what's gone of him?” said the girl quickly.
“No; I haven't seen him for two weeks.”
“There, I told you so!” said the girl, turning nervously to her parents.
“I knew it. He hasn't seen him for two weeks.” Then, looking almost
tearfully at Clarence's face, she said, “No more have we.”
“But,” said Clarence impatiently, “something must have happened. Where
is his house?”
“Taken away by them jumpers,” interrupted the old farmer; “a lot of
roughs that pulled it down and carted it off in a jiffy before our very
eyes without answerin' a civil question to me or her. But he wasn't
there, nor before, nor since.”
“No,” added the old woman, with flashing eyes, “or he'd let 'em have
what ther' was in his six-shooters.”
“No, he wouldn't, mother,” said the girl impatiently, “he'd CHANGED, and
was agin all them ideas of force and riotin'. He was for peace and
law all the time. Why, the day before we missed him he was tellin' me
California never would be decent until people obeyed the laws and the
titles were settled. And for that reason, because he wouldn't fight
agin the law, or without the consent of the law, they've killed him, or
kidnapped him away.”
The girl's lips quivered, and her small brown hands twisted the edges of
her blue checked apron. Although this new picture of Jim's peacefulness
was as astounding and unsatisfactory as his own disappearance, there was
no doubt of the sincerity of poor Phoebe's impression.
In vain did Clarence point out to them there must be some mistake; that
the trespassers--the so-called jumpers--really belonged to the same
party as Hooker, and would have no reason to dispossess him; that, in
fact, they were all HIS, Clarence's, tenants. In vain he assured them of
Hooker's perfect security in possession; that he could have driven the
intruders away by the simple exhibition of his lease, or that he could
have even called a constable from the town of Fair Plains to protect him
from mere lawlessness. In vain did he assure them of his intention to
find his missing friend, and reinstate him at any cost. The conviction
that the unfortunate young man had been foully dealt with was fixed in
the minds of the two women. For a moment Clarence himself was staggered
by it.
“You see,” said the young girl, with a kindling face, “the day before
he came back from Robles, ther' were some queer men hangin' round his
cabin, but as they were the same kind that went off with him the day the
Sisters' title was confirmed, we thought nothing of it. But when he
came back from you he seemed worried and anxious, and wasn't a bit like
himself. We thought perhaps he'd got into some trouble there, or been
disappointed. He hadn't, had he, Mr. Brant?” continued Phoebe, with an
appealing look.
“By no means,” said Clarence warmly. “On the contrary, he was able to do
his friends good service there, and was successful in what he attempted.
Mrs. Peyton was very grateful. Of course he told you what had happened,
and what he did for us,” continued Clarence, with a smile.
He had already amused himself on the way with a fanciful conception
of the exaggerated account Jim had given of his exploits. But the
bewildered girl shook her head.
“No, he didn't tell us ANYTHING.”
Clarence was really alarmed. This unprecedented abstention of Hooker's
was portentous.
“He didn't say anything but what I told you about law and order,”
she went on; “but that same night we heard a good deal of talking and
shouting in the cabin and around it. And the next day he was talking
with father, and wanting to know how HE kept his land without trouble
from outsiders.”
“And I said,” broke in Hopkins, “that I guessed folks didn't bother a
man with women folks around, and that I kalkilated that I wasn't quite
as notorious for fightin' as he was.”
“And he said,” also interrupted Mrs. Hopkins, “and quite in his nat'ral
way, too,--gloomy like, you remember, Cyrus,” appealingly to her
husband,--“that that was his curse.”
The smile that flickered around Clarence's mouth faded, however, as he
caught sight of Phoebe's pleading, interrogating eyes. It was really too
bad. Whatever change had come over the rascal it was too evident that
his previous belligerent personality had had its full effect upon the
simple girl, and that, hereafter, one pair of honest eyes would be
wistfully following him.
Perplexed and indignant, Clarence again closely questioned her as to the
personnel of the trespassing party who had been seen once or twice since
passing over the field. He had at last elicited enough information to
identify one of them as Gilroy, the leader of the party that had invaded
Robles rancho. His cheek flushed. Even if they had wished to take a
theatrical and momentary revenge on Hooker for the passing treachery to
them which they had just discovered, although such retaliation was
only transitory, and they could not hold the land, it was an insult
to Clarence himself, whose tenant Jim was, and subversive of all their
legally acquired rights. He would confront this Gilroy at once; his
half-wild encampment was only a few miles away, just over the boundaries
of the Robles estate. Without stating his intention, he took leave of
the Hopkins family with the cheerful assurance that he would probably
return with some news of Hooker, and rode away.
The trail became more indistinct and unfrequented as it diverged from
the main road, and presently lost itself in the slope towards the east.
The horizon grew larger: there were faint bluish lines upon it which he
knew were distant mountains; beyond this a still fainter white line--the
Sierran snows. Presently he intersected a trail running south, and
remarked that it crossed the highway behind him, where he had once met
the two mysterious horsemen. They had evidently reached the terrace
through the wild oats by that trail. A little farther on were a
few groups of sheds and canvas tents in a bare and open space, with
scattered cattle and horsemen, exactly like an encampment, or the
gathering of a country fair. As Clarence rode down towards them he could
see that his approach was instantly observed, and that a simultaneous
movement was made as if to anticipate him. For the first time he
realized the possible consequences of his visit, single-handed, but it
was too late to retrace his steps. With a glance at his holster, he rode
boldly forward to the nearest shed. A dozen men hovered near him, but
something in his quiet, determined manner held them aloof. Gilroy was
on the threshold in his shirtsleeves. A single look showed him that
Clarence was alone, and with a careless gesture of his hand he warned
away his own followers.
“You've got a sort of easy way of droppin' in whar you ain't invited,
Brant,” he said with a grim smile, which was not, however, without a
certain air of approval. “Got it from your father, didn't you?”
“I don't know, but I don't believe HE ever thought it necessary to warn
twenty men of the approach of ONE,” replied Clarence, in the same tone.
“I had no time to stand on ceremony, for I have just come from Hooker's
quarter section at Fair Plains.”
Gilroy smiled again, and gazed abstractedly at the sky.
“You know as well as I do,” said Clarence, controlling his voice with
an effort, “that what you have done there will have to be undone, if you
wish to hold even those lawless men of yours together, or keep yourself
and them from being run into the brush like highwaymen. I've no fear for
that. Neither do I care to know what was your motive in doing it; but I
can only tell you that if it was retaliation, I alone was and still am
responsible for Hooker's action at the rancho. I came here to know just
what you have done with him, and, if necessary, to take his place.”
“You're just a little too previous in your talk, I reckon, Brant,”
returned Gilroy lazily, “and as to legality, I reckon we stand on the
same level with yourself, just here. Beginnin' with what you came for:
as we don't know where your Jim Hooker is, and as we ain't done anythin'
to HIM, we don't exackly see what we could do with YOU in his place.
Ez to our motives,--well, we've got a good deal to say about THAT.
We reckoned that he wasn't exackly the kind of man we wanted for a
neighbor. His pow'ful fightin' style didn't suit us peaceful folks, and
we thought it rather worked agin this new 'law and order' racket to have
such a man about, to say nuthin' of it prejudicin' quiet settlers.
He had too many revolvers for one man to keep his eye on, and was
altogether too much steeped in blood, so to speak, for ordinary washin'
and domestic purposes! His hull get up was too deathlike and clammy; so
we persuaded him to leave. We just went there, all of us, and exhorted
him. We stayed round there two days and nights, takin' turns, talkin'
with him, nuthin' more, only selecting subjects in his own style to
please him, until he left! And then, as we didn't see any use for his
house there, we took it away. Them's the cold facts, Brant,” he added,
with a certain convincing indifference that left no room for doubt, “and
you can stand by 'em. Now, workin' back to the first principle you laid
down,--that we'll have to UNDO what we've DONE,--we don't agree with
you, for we've taken a leaf outer your own book. We've got it here
in black and white. We've got a bill o' sale of Hooker's house and
possession, and we're on the land in place of him,--AS YOUR TENANTS.”
He reentered the shanty, took a piece of paper from a soap-box on the
shell, and held it out to Clarence. “Here it is. It's a fair and square
deal, Brant. We gave him, as it says here, a hundred dollars for it! No
humbuggin', but the hard cash, by Jiminy! AND HE TOOK THE MONEY.”
The ring of truth in the man's voice was as unmistakable as the
signature in Jim's own hand. Hooker had sold out! Clarence turned
hastily away.
“We don't know where he went,” continued Gilroy grimly, “but I reckon
you ain't over anxious to see him NOW. And I kin tell ye something to
ease your mind,--he didn't require much persuadin'. And I kin tell ye
another, if ye ain't above takin' advice from folks that don't pertend
to give it,” he added, with the same curious look of interest in his
face. “You've done well to get shut of him, and if you got shut of a few
more of his kind that you trust to, you'd do better.”
As if to avoid noticing any angry reply from the young man, he reentered
the cabin and shut the door behind him. Clarence felt the uselessness of
further parley, and rode away.
But Gilroy's Parthian arrow rankled as he rode. He was not greatly
shocked at Jim's defection, for he was always fully conscious of
his vanity and weakness; but he was by no means certain that Jim's
extravagance and braggadocio, which he had found only amusing and,
perhaps, even pathetic, might not be as provocative and prejudicial
to others as Gilroy had said. But, like all sympathetic and unselfish
natures, he sought to find some excuse for his old companion's weakness
in his own mistaken judgment. He had no business to bring poor Jim on
the land, to subject his singular temperament to the temptations of
such a life and such surroundings; he should never have made use of his
services at the rancho. He had done him harm rather than good in his
ill-advised, and, perhaps, SELFISH attempts to help him. I have said
that Gilroy's parting warning rankled in his breast, but not ignobly.
It wounded the surface of his sensitive nature, but could not taint or
corrupt the pure, wholesome blood of the gentleman beneath it. For in
Gilroy's warning he saw only his own shortcomings. A strange fatality
had marked his friendships. He had been no help to Jim; he had brought
no happiness to Susy or Mrs. Peyton, whose disagreement his visit seemed
to have accented. Thinking over the mysterious attack upon himself, it
now seemed to him possible that, in some obscure way, his presence at
the rancho had precipitated the more serious attack on Peyton. If, as
it had been said, there was some curse upon his inheritance from his
father, he seemed to have made others share it with him. He was riding
onward abstractedly, with his head sunk on his breast and his eyes fixed
upon some vague point between his horse's sensitive ears, when a sudden,
intelligent, forward pricking of them startled him, and an apparition
arose from the plain before him that seemed to sweep all other sense
away.
It was the figure of a handsome young horseman as abstracted as himself,
but evidently on better terms with his own personality. He was dark
haired, sallow cheeked, and blue eyed,--the type of the old Spanish
Californian. A burnt-out cigarette was in his mouth, and he was riding
a roan mustang with the lazy grace of his race. But what arrested
Clarence's attention more than his picturesque person was the narrow,
flexible, long coil of gray horse-hair riata which hung from his
saddle-bow, but whose knotted and silver-beaded terminating lash he
was swirling idly in his narrow brown hand. Clarence knew and instantly
recognized it as the ordinary fanciful appendage of a gentleman rider,
used for tethering his horse on lonely plains, and always made the
object of the most lavish expenditure of decoration and artistic
skill. But he was as suddenly filled with a blind, unreasoning sense
of repulsion and fury, and lifted his eyes to the man as he approached.
What the stranger saw in Clarence's blazing eyes no one but himself
knew, for his own became fixed and staring; his sallow cheeks grew
lanker and livid; his careless, jaunty bearing stiffened into rigidity,
and swerving his horse to one side he suddenly passed Clarence at a
furious gallop. The young American wheeled quickly, and for an instant
his knees convulsively gripped the flanks of his horse to follow. But
the next moment he recalled himself, and with an effort began to collect
his thoughts. What was he intending to do, and for what reason! He had
met hundreds of such horsemen before, and caparisoned and accoutred like
this, even to the riata. And he certainly was not dressed like either of
the mysterious horsemen whom he had overheard that moonlight evening. He
looked back; the stranger had already slackened his pace, and was slowly
disappearing. Clarence turned and rode on his way.