The following day, when Mr. Ezekiel Corwin had delivered his letters of
introduction, and thoroughly canvassed the scant mercantile community of
San Buenaventura with considerable success, he deposited his carpet-bag
at the stage office in the posada, and found to his chagrin that he had
still two hours to wait before the coach arrived. After a vain attempt
to impart cheerful but disparaging criticism of the pueblo and its
people to Senor Mateo and his wife--whose external courtesy had been
visibly increased by a line from Demorest, but whose confidence towards
the stranger had not been extended in the same proportion--he gave it
up, and threw himself lazily on a wooden bench in the veranda, already
hacked with the initials of his countrymen, and drawing a jack-knife
from his pocket, he began to add to that emblazonry the trade-mark of
the Panacea--as a casual advertisement. During its progress, however,
he was struck by the fact that while no one seemed to enter the posada
through the stage office, the number of voices in the adjoining room
seemed to increase, and the ministrations of Mateo and his wife became
more feverishly occupied with their invisible guests. It seemed to
Ezekiel that consequently there must be a second entrance which he had
not seen, and this added to the circumstance that one or two lounging
figures who had been approaching unaccountably disappeared before
reaching the veranda, induced him to rise and examine the locality. A
few paces beyond was an alley, but it appeared to be already blocked by
several cigarette-smoking, short-jacketed men who were leaning against
its walls, and showed no inclination to make way for him. Checked, but
not daunted, Ezekiel coolly returned to the stage office, and taking the
first opportunity when Mateo passed through the rear door, followed him.
As he expected, the innkeeper turned to the left and entered a large
room filled with tobacco smoke and the local habitues of the posada.
But Ezekiel, shrewdly surmising that the private entrance must be in the
opposite direction, turned to the right along the passage until he came
unexpectedly upon the corridor of the usual courtyard, or patio, of
every Mexican hostelry, closed at one end by a low adobe wall, in which
there was a door. The free passage around the corridor was interrupted
by wide partitions, fitted up with tables and benches, like stalls,
opening upon the courtyard where a few stunted fig and orange trees
still grew. As the courtyard seemed to be the only communication between
the passage he had left and the door in the wall, he was about to cross
it, when the voices of two men in the compartment struck his ears.
Although one was evidently an American's, Ezekiel was instinctively
convinced that they were speaking in English only for greater security
against being understood by the frequenters of the posada. It is
unnecessary to say that this was an innocent challenge to the curiosity
of Ezekiel that he instantly accepted. He drew back carefully into the
shadow of the partition as one of the voices asked--
“Wasn't that Johnson just come in?”
There was a movement as if some one had risen to look over the
compartment, but the gathering twilight completely hid Ezekiel.
“No!”
“He's late. Suppose he don't come--or back out?”
The other man broke into a grim laugh. “I reckon you don't know Johnson
yet, or you'd understand this yer little game o' his is just the one
idea o' his life. He's been two years on that man's track, and he ain't
goin' to back out now that he's got a dead sure thing on him.”
“But why is he so keen about it, anyway? It don't seem nat'ral for a
business man built after Johnson's style, and a rich man to boot, to go
into this detective business. It ain't the reward, we know that. Is it
an old grudge?”
“You bet!” The speaker paused, and then in a lower voice, which taxed
Ezekial's keen ear to the uttermost, resumed: “It's said up in Frisco
that Cherokee Bob knew suthin' agin Johnson way back in the States;
anyhow, I believe it's understood that they came across the plains
together in '50--and Bob hounded Johnson and blackmailed him here where
he was livin', even to the point of makin' him help him on the road or
give information, until one day Johnson bucked against it--kicked over
the traces--and swore he'd be revenged on Bob, and then just settled
himself down to that business. Wotever he'd been and done himself he
made it all right with the sheriff here; and I've heard ez it wasn't
anything criminal or that sort, but that it was o' some private trouble
that he'd confided to that hound Bob, and Bob had threatened to tell
agen him. That's the grudge they say Johnson has, and that's why he's
allowed to be the head devil in this yer affair. It's an understood
thing, too, that the sheriff and the police ain't goin' to interfere if
Johnson accidentally blows the top of Bob's head off in the scrimmage of
a capter.”
“And I reckon Bob wouldn't hesitate to do the same thing to him when he
finds out that Johnson has given him away?”
“I reckon,” said the other, sententiously, “for it's Johnson's knowledge
of the country and the hoss-stealers that are in with Bob's gang of road
agents that made it easy for him to buy up and win over Bob's friends
here, so that they'd help to trap him.”
“It's pretty rough on Bob to be sold out in that way,” said the second
speaker, sympathizingly.
“If they were white men, p'rhaps,” returned his companion,
contemptuously, “but this yer's a case of Injin agen Injin, ez the men
are Mexican half-breeds just as Bob's a half Cherokee. The sooner that
kind o' cross cattle exterminate each other the better it'll be for the
country. It takes a white man like Johnson to set 'em by the ears.”
A silence followed. Ezekiel, beginning to be slightly bored with his
cheaply acquired but rather impractical information, was about to slip
back into the passage again when he was arrested by a laugh from the
first speaker.
“What's the matter?” growled the other. “Do you want to bring the whole
posada out here?”
“I was only thinkin' what a skeer them innocent greenhorn passengers
will get just ez they're snoozing off for the night, ten miles from
here,” responded his friend, with a chuckle. “Wonder ef anybody's goin'
up from here besides that patent medicine softy.”
Ezekiel stopped as if petrified.
“Ef the ---- fools keep quiet they won't be hurt, for our men will be
ready to chip in the moment of the attack. But we've got to let the
attack be made for the sake of the evidence. And if we warn off the
passengers from going this trip, and let the stage go up empty, Bob
would suspect something and vamose. But here's Johnson!”
The door in the adobe wall had suddenly opened, and a figure in a serape
entered the patio. Ezekiel, whose curiosity was whetted with indignation
at the ignominious part assigned to him in this comedy, forgot even
his risk of detection by the newcomer, who advanced quickly towards the
compartment. When he had reached it he said, in a tone of bitterness:
“The game is up, gentlemen, and the whole thing is blown. The scoundrel
has got some confederate here--for he's been seen openly on the road
near Demorest's ranch, and the band have had warning and dispersed. We
must find out the traitor, and take our precautions for the next time.
Who is that there? I don't know him.”
He was pointing to Ezekiel, who had started eagerly forward at the first
sound of his voice. The two occupants of the compartment rose at
the same moment, leaped into the courtyard, and confronted Ezekiel.
Surrounded by the three menacing figures he did not quail, but remained
intently gazing upon the newcomer. Then his mouth opened, and he drawled
lazily:
“Wa'al, ef it ain't Squire Blandford, of North Liberty, Connecticut, I'm
a treed coon. Squire Blandford, how DO you do?”
The stranger drew back in undisguised amazement; the two men glanced
hurriedly at each other; Ezekiel alone remained cool, smiling,
imperturbable, and triumphant.
“Who are YOU, sir? I do not know you,” demanded the newcomer, roughly.
“Like ez not,” said Corwin dryly, “it's a matter o' four year sense I
lived in your house. Even Dick Demorest--you knew Dick?--didn't know me;
but I reckon that Mrs. Blandford as used to be--”
“That's enough,” said Blandford--for it was he--suddenly mastering both
himself and Corwin by a supreme emphasis of will and gesture. “Wait!”
Then turning to the two others who were discreetly regarding the
blank adobe wall before them, he said: “Excuse me for a few minutes,
gentlemen. There is no hurry now. I will see you later;” and with an
imperative wave of his hand motioned Ezekiel to precede him into the
passage, and followed him.
He did not speak until they entered the stage office, when, passing
through it, he said peremptorily: “Follow me.” The few loungers, who
seemed to recognize him, made way for him with a singular deference that
impressed Ezekiel, already dominated by his manner. The first perception
in his mind was that Blandford had in some strange way succeeded to
Demorest's former imperious character. There was no trace left of the
old, gentle subjection to Joan's prim precision. Ezekiel followed him
out of the office as unresistingly as he had followed Demorest into the
stables on that eventful night. They passed down the narrow street until
Blandford suddenly stopped short and turned into the crumbling doorway
of one of the low adobe buildings and entered an apartment. It seemed
to be the ordinary living-room of the house, made more domestic by
the presence of a silk counterpaned bed in one corner, a prie Dieu and
crucifix, and one or two articles of bedchamber furniture. A woman
was sitting in deshabille by the window; a man was smoking on a lounge
against the wall. Blandford, in the same peremptory manner, addressed
a command in Spanish to the inmates, who immediately abandoned the
apartment to the seeming trespasser.
Motioning his companion to a seat on the lounge just vacated, Blandford
folded his arms and stood erect before him.
“Well,” he said, with quick, business conciseness, “what do you want?”
Ezekiel was staggered out of his complacency.
“Wa'al,” he stammered, “I only reckoned to ask the news, ez we are old
friends--I--”
“How much do you want?” repeated Blandford, impatiently.
Ezekiel was mystified, yet expectant. “I can't say ez I exakly
understand,” he began.
“How--much--money--do--you--want,” continued Blandford, with frigid
accuracy, “to get up and get out of this place?”
“Wa'al, consideren ez I'm travellin' here ez the only authorized agent
of a first-class Frisco Drug House,” said Ezekiel, with a mingling of
mortification, pride, and hopefulness, “unless you're travellin' in the
opposition business, I don't see what's that to you.”
Blandford regarded him searchingly for an instant. “Who sent you here?”
“Dilworth & Dusenberry, Battery Street, San Francisco. Hev their card?”
said Ezekiel, taking one from his waistcoat pocket.
“Corwin,” said Blandford, sternly, “whatever your business is here
you'll find it will pay you better, a ---- sight, to be frank with
me and stop this Yankee shuffling. You say you have been with
Demorest--what has HE got to do with your business here?”
“Nothin',” said Ezekiel. “I reckon he wos ez astonished to see me ez you
are.”
“And didn't he send you here to seek me?” said Blandford, impatiently.
“Considerin' he believes you a dead man, I reckon not.”
Blandford gave a hard, constrained laugh. After a pause, still keeping
his eyes fixed on Ezekiel, he said:
“Then your recognition of me was accidental?”
“Wa'al, yes. And ez I never took much stock in the stories that you were
washed off the Warensboro Bridge, I ain't much astonished at finding you
agin.”
“What did you believe happened to me?” said Blandford, less brusquely.
Ezekiel noticed the softening; he felt his own turn coming. “I
kalkilated you had reasons for going off, leaving no address behind
you,” he drawled.
“What reasons?” asked Blandford, with a sudden relapse of his former
harshness.
“Wa'al, Squire Blandford, sens you wanter know--I reckon your business
wasn't payin', and there was a matter of two hundred and fifty dollars
ye took with ye, that your creditors would hev liked to hev back.”
“Who dare say that?” demanded Blandford, angrily.
“Your wife that was--Mrs. Demorest ez is--told it to her mother,”
returned Ezekiel, lazily.
The blow struck deeper than even Ezekiel's dry malice imagined. For an
instant, Blandford remained stupefied. In the five years' retrospect of
his resolution on that fatal night, whatever doubt of its wisdom might
have obtruded itself upon him, he had never thought of THIS. He had been
willing to believe that his wife had quietly forgotten him as well as
her treachery to him, he had passively acquiesced in the results of that
forgetfulness and his own silence; he had been conscious that his
wound had healed sooner than he expected, but if this consciousness
had enabled him to extend a certain passive forgiveness to his wife
and Demorest, it was always with the conviction that his mysterious
effacement had left an inexplicable shadow upon them which their
consciences alone could explain. But for this unjust, vulgar, and
degrading interpretation of his own act of expiation, he was totally
unprepared. It completely crushed whatever sentiment remained of that
act in the horrible irony of finding himself put upon his defence before
the world, without being able now to offer the real cause. The anguish
of that night had gone forever; but the ridiculous interpretation of it
had survived, and would survive it. In the eyes of the man before him
he was not a wronged husband, but an absconding petty defaulter, whom he
had just detected!
His mind was quickly made up. In that instant he had resolved upon a
step as fateful as his former one, and a fitting climax to its results.
For five years he had clearly misunderstood his attitude towards his
treacherous wife and perjured friend. Thanks to this practical, selfish
machine before him, he knew it now.
“Look here, Corwin,” he said, turning upon Ezekiel a colorless face,
but a steady, merciless eye. “I can guess, without your telling me, what
lies may be circulated about me by the man and woman who know that I
have only to declare myself alive to convict them of infamy--perhaps
even of criminality before the law. You are not MY friend, or you would
not have believed them; if you are THEIRS, you have two courses open to
you now. Keep this meeting to yourself and trust to my mercy to keep it
a secret also; or, tell Mrs. Demorest that you have seen Mr. Johnson,
who is not afraid to come forward at any moment and proclaim that he
is Edward Blandford, her only lawful husband. Choose which course you
like--it is nothing more to me.”
“Wa'al, I reckon that, as far as I know Mrs. Demorest,” said Ezekiel,
dryly, “it don't make the least difference to her either; but if you
want to know my opinion o' this matter, it is that neither you nor
Demorest exactly understand that woman. I've known Joan Salisbury since
she was so high, but if ye expected me to tell you wot she was goin' to
do next, I'd be able to tell ye where the next flash o' lightnin' would
strike. It's wot you don't expect of Joan Salisbury that she does. And
the best proof of it is that she filed papers for a divorce agin you
in Chicago and got it by default a few weeks afore she married
Demorest--and you don't know it.”
Blandford recoiled. “Impossible,” he said, but his voice too plainly
showed how clearly its possibility struck him now.
“It's so, but it was kept secret by Deacon Salisbury. I overheerd it.
Wa'al, that's a proof that you don't understand Joan, I reckon. And
considerin' that Demorest HIMSELF don't know it, ez I found out only the
other day in talking to him, I kalkilate I'm safe in sayin' that
you're neither o' you quite up to Deacon Salisbury's darter in nat'ral
cuteness. I don't like to obtrude my opinion, Squire Blandford, ez we're
old friends, but I do say, that wot with Demorest's prematooriness and
yer own hangfiredness, it's a good thing that you two worldly men hev
got Joan Salisbury to stand up for North Liberty and keep it from bein'
scandalized by the ungodly. Ef it hadn't been for her smartness, whar
y'd both be landed now? There's a heap in Christian bringin' up, and a
power in grace, Squire Blandford.”
His hard, dry face was for an instant transfigured by a grim fealty and
the dull glow of some sectarian clannishness. Or was it possible that
this woman's personality had in some mysterious way disturbed his rooted
selfishness?
During his speech Blandford had walked to the window. When Corwin had
ceased speaking, Blandford turned towards him with an equally changed
face and cold imperturbability that astonished him, and held out his
hand. “Let bygones be bygones, Corwin--whether we ever meet again or
not. Yet if I can do anything for you for the sake of old times, I
am ready to do it. I have some power here and in San Francisco,” he
continued, with a slight touch of pride, “that isn't dependent upon the
mere name I may travel under. I have a purpose in coming here.”
“I know it,” said Ezekiel, dryly. “I heard it all from your two friends.
You're huntin' some man that did you an injury.”
“I'm hunting down a dog who, suspecting I had some secret in emigrating
here, tried to blackmail and ruin me,” said Blandford, with a sudden
expression of hatred that seemed inconsistent with anything that Ezekiel
had ever known of his old master's character--“a scoundrel who tried to
break up my new life as another had broken up the old.” He stopped and
recovered himself with a short laugh. “Well, Ezekiel, I don't know as
his opinion of me was any worse than yours or HERS. And until I catch
HIM to clear my name again, I let the other slanderers go.”
“Wa'al, I reckon you might lay hands on that devil yet, and not far
away, either. I was up at Demorest's to-day, and I heard Joan and a
skittish sort o' Mexican young lady talkin' about some tramp that had
frightened her. And Miss Pico said--”
“What! Who did you say?” demanded Blandford, with a violent start.
“Wa'al, I reckoned I heerd the first name too--Rosita.”
A quick flush crossed Blandford's face, and left it glowing like a
boy's.
“Is SHE there?”
“Wa'al, I reckon she's visitin' Joan,” said Ezekiel, narrowly attentive
of Blandford's strange excitement; “but wot of it?”
But Blandford had utterly forgotten Ezekiel's presence. He had
remained speechless and flushed. And then, as if suddenly dazzled by an
inspiration, he abruptly dashed from the room. Ezekiel heard him call to
his passive host with a Spanish oath, but before he could follow, they
had both hurriedly left the house.
Ezekiel glanced around him and contemplatively ran his fingers through
his beard. “It ain't Joan Salisbury nor Dick Demorest ez giv' him that
start! Humph! Wa'al--I wanter know!”