DICK LIGHTS A CIGARETTE
Gordon met Miss Valdés in the El Tovar dining-room next morning. He was
trying at the same time to tell Davis the story of his kidnaping and to
eat a large rare steak with French-fried potatoes. The young man had
chosen a seat that faced the door. The instant his eyes fell upon her he
gave up both the story and the steak. Putting aside his napkin, he rose
to meet her.
She had fallen asleep thinking of him, her dreams had been full of his
vivid personality, and she had wakened to an eager longing for the sight
of his gay, mocking eyes. But she had herself under such good control
that nobody could have guessed how fast her heart was beating as her
fingers touched his.
"We are glad your adventure is ended, Mr. Gordon, and that it has turned
out no worse. Probably Mr. Davis has told you that he and I got our
heads together a great many times a day," she said, a little formally.
"You were mighty good to take so much interest in such a scalawag," he
answered warmly.
The color deepened ever so little in her face. "I couldn't let my men
commit murder under the impression they were doing me a service," she
explained lightly. "There are several things I want to talk over with
you. Can you call on me this morning, Mr. Gordon?"
"Can I?"
He put the question so forcefully that she smiled and dashed a bucket of
cold water over his enthusiasm.
"If you'll be so good then. And bring Mr. Davis along with you, please.
He'll keep us from quarreling too much."
"I'll throw him out of the window if he don't behave right," Davis
promised joyfully. He was happy to-day, and he did not care who knew it.
Valencia passed on to her table, and Dick resumed his seat. He had a
strong interest in this young woman, but even the prospect of a talk
with her could not make him indifferent to the rare steak and
French-fried potatoes before him. He was a healthy normal American in
his late twenties, and after several days of starvation well-cooked food
looked very good to him.
"There's some mail waiting for you upstairs--one of the letters is a
registered one, mailed at Corbett's," his friend told him as they rose
to leave. He was like a hen with one chick in his eagerness to supply
Dick's wants and in his reluctance to let Gordon out of his sight.
The registered letter was the one Valencia had sent him, inclosing the
one written by her grandfather to her father. Her contrite little note
went straight to his emotions. If not in words, at least in spirit, it
pleaded for pardon. Even the telegram she had wired implied an
undeniable interest in him. Dick went with a light heart to the
interview she had appointed him.
He slipped an arm through that of Davis. "Come on, you old bald-headed
chaperone. Didn't you hear the lady give you a bid to her party this
mo'ning? Get a move on you."
"Ain't you going to let her invite get cold before you butt in?"
retorted Steve amiably.
Valencia took away from the dining-room a heart at war with itself. The
sight of his gaunt face, carrying the scars of many wounds and the lines
marked by hunger, stirred insurgent impulses. The throb of passion and
of the sweet protective love that is at the bottom of every woman's
tenderness suffused her cheeks with warm life and made her eyes
wonderful. Out of the grave he had come back to her, this indomitable
foe who played the game with such gay courage. It was useless to tell
herself that she was plighted to a better man, a worthier one. Scamp he
might be, but Dick Gordon held her heart in the hollow of his strong
brown hand.
Some impulse of shyness, perhaps of reluctance, had restrained her from
wearing Manuel's ring at breakfast. But when she returned to her room
she went straight to the desk where she had locked it and put the
solitaire on her finger. The fear of disloyalty drove her back to her
betrothed from the enticement of forbidden thoughts. She must put
Richard Gordon out of her mind. It was worse than madness to be dreaming
of him now that she was plighted to another.
Gordon, coming eagerly to meet her, found a young woman more reserved,
more distant. He was conscious of this even before his eyes stopped at
the engagement ring sparkling on her finger, the visible evidence that
his rival had won.
"You have been treated cruelly, Mr. Gordon. Tell me that you are again
all right," she said, the color flooding her face at the searching
question of his eyes.
"Right as a rivet, thanks. It is to you I owe my freedom, I suppose."
"To Manuel," she corrected. "His judgment was better than mine."
"I can believe that. He didn't ride all night across dangerous mountain
roads to save me."
"Oh, that!" She tossed off his thanks with a little shrug. "They are so
impulsive, my boys ... like children, you know.... I was a little afraid
they might----"
"I was a little afraid myself they might," he agreed dryly. "But when
you say children--well, don't you think wolves is a more accurate term
for them?"
"Oh, no--no!" Her protest was quick, eager, imperative. "You don't know
how loyal they can be--how faithful. They are really just like children,
so impulsive--so unreasoning."
"Afraid I can't enthuse with you on that subject for a day or two yet,"
he answered with a laugh. "Truth is I found their childlike impulses
both painful and annoying. Next time you see them you might mention that
I'm liable to have an impulse of my own they won't enjoy."
"That's one of the things I want to talk with you about. Manuel says you
mean to prosecute. I hope you won't. They're friends of mine. They
thought they were helping me. Of course I have no claim on you, but----"
"You have a claim, Miss Valdés. We'll take that up presently. Just now
we're talking about a couple of criminals due for a term in the
penitentiary. I offered them terms. They wouldn't accept. Good enough.
They'll have to stand the gaff, I reckon."
She realized at once there was no use arguing with him. The steel in his
eyes told her he had made up his mind and was not to be moved. But she
could not desert her foolish dependents.
"I know. What you say is quite true, but--I'll have to come to some
agreement with you. I can't let them be punished for their loyalty to
me."
Her direct, unflinching look, its fearlessness, won his admiration. In
her slim suppleness, vibrant, feminine to the finger tips, alluring with
the unconscious appeal of sex, there was a fine courage to face frankly
essential facts. But he was a hard man to move once he had made up his
mind. For all his frivolous impudence and his boyish good nature, he
knew his own mind, and held to it with the stiffness characteristic of
outdoor Westerners.
"You're not in this, Miss Valdés. I'll settle my own accounts with your
friends Sebastian and Pablo."
"But even for your own sake----" She stopped, intuitively aware that
this was not the ground upon which to treat with him. He would never
drop the charges against the Mexicans merely because there was danger in
pressing them.
"I reckon I'll have to try to look out for myself. Maybe next time I
won't be so easy a mark," he answered with an almost insolent laugh.
Valencia was a little puzzled. Things were not going right, and she did
not quite know the reason. There was just a touch of bitterness in his
voice, of aloofness in his manner. She did not know that the sight of
the solitaire sparkling on her left hand stirred in him the impulse to
hurt her, to refuse rather than concede her requests.
"You're not going to push the cases against Pablo and Sebastian and
still try to live in the valley, are you?" she asked, beginning to feel
a little irritation at him.
"That's just what I'm going to do."
"You mustn't. I won't have it. Don't you see what my people will think,
that because Pablo and Sebastian were loyal to me----"
His acrid smile cut her sentence in two. "That's about the third time
you've mentioned their loyalty. Me, I don't see it. Sebastian owns land
under the Valdés grant. He didn't want me to take it from him. Mr. Pablo
Menendez--well, he had private reasons of his own, too."
The resentment flamed in her heart. If he was shameless enough to refer
to the affair with Juanita she would let him know that she knew.
"What were his reasons, Mr. Gordon--that is, if they are not a private
affair between you and him?"
"Not at all." The steel-blue eyes met hers, steadily. Dick was yielding
to a desire to hurt himself as well as her, to defy her judgment if she
had no better sense than to condemn him. "The idiot is jealous."
"Jealous--why?" The angry color beat its way to the surface above her
cheek bones. Her disdain was regal.
"About Juanita."
"What about Juanita?"
"The usual thing, Miss Valdés. He was afraid she had the bad taste to
prefer another man to himself."
Davis broke in. "Now, don't you be a goat, Dick. Miss Valdés, he----"
"If you please, Mr. Davis. I'm quite sure Mr. Gordon is able to defend
himself," she replied scornfully.
"Didn't know I _was_ defending myself. What's the charge against me?"
asked the young miner with a touch of quiet insolence.
"There isn't any--if you don't see what it is. And you're quite right,
Mr. Gordon. Your difficulties with Pablo are none of my business. You'll
have to settle them yourselves--with Juanita's help. May I ask whether
you received the registered letter I sent you, Mr. Gordon?"
Dick was angry. Her cool contempt told him that he had been condemned.
He knew that he was acting like an irresponsible schoolboy, but he would
not justify himself. She might think what she liked.
"Found it waiting for me this morning, Miss Valdés."
"It was very fair and generous of you to send me the letter, I recognize
that fully. But of course I can't accept such a sacrifice," she told him
stiffly.
"Not necessary you should. Object if I smoke here?"
Valencia was a little surprised. He had never before offered to smoke in
the house except at her suggestion. "As you please, Mr. Gordon. Why
should I object?"
From his coat pocket Dick took the letter Don Bartolomé had written to
his son, and from his vest pocket a match. He twisted the envelope into
a spill, lit one end, and found a cigarette. Very deliberately he puffed
the cigarette to a glow, holding the letter in his fingers until it had
burned to a black flake. This he dropped in the fireplace, and along
with it the unsmoked cigarette.
[Illustration: Holding the letter in his fingers until it had burned to
a black flake]
"Easiest way to settle that little matter," he said negligently.
"I judge you're a little impulsive, too, sometimes, Mr. Gordon,"
Valencia replied coldly.
"I never rode all night over the mountains to save a man who was trying
to rob me of my land," he retorted.
This brought a sparkle to her eyes. "I had to think of my foolish men
who were getting into trouble."
"Was that why you offered a hundred dollars' reward for the arrest of
these same men?" came his indolent, satiric reply.
"Don Manuel offered the reward," she told him haughtily.
An impish smile was in his eyes. "At your suggestion, he tells me. And I
understand you insisted on paying the bill, Miss Valdés."
"Why should he pay it? The men worked for me. They were brought up on my
father's place. They are my responsibility, not his," she claimed with
visible irritation.
"And now they're my responsibility, too--until I land them in the
penitentiary," he added cheerfully.
From his pocket he took a billbook and selected two fifty-dollar bills.
These he offered to Valencia.
She stood very straight. "You owe me nothing, sir."
"I owe you the hundred dollars you paid to get hold of Sebastian. And
I'm going to pay it."
"I don't acknowledge the debt. I wanted Sebastian for his sake, not
yours. Certainly I shall not accept the money."
"Just as you say. It isn't mine. Care if I smoke again?" he asked
genially.
She caught his meaning in a flash. "Not at all. Burn them if you like."
"Now, see here," interrupted Davis amiably. "You're both acting like a
pair of kids. I'm not going to stand for any hundred-dollar smokes,
Dick. Gimme those bills." He snatched them from his friend and put them
in his pocket. "When you two get reasonable again we'll decide whose
money it is. Till then I expect I'll draw the interest on it."
"And now, since our business is ended, I think I'll not detain you any
longer, Mr. Gordon, except to warn you that it will be foolhardy to
return to the Rio Chama Valley with intentions such as you have."
"Good of you to warn me, Miss Valdés. It's not the first time, either,
is it? But I'm _that_ bull-headed. Steve will give me a recommend as the
most sot chump in New Mexico. Won't you Steve?"
"I sure will--before a notary if you like. You've got a government mule
backed off the map."
"I've done my duty, anyhow." Miss Valdés turned to the older man, and
somehow the way she did it seemed to wipe Gordon out of the picture.
"There is something I want to talk over with you, Mr. Davis. Can you
wait a few moments?"
"Sure I can--all day if you like."
Dick retired with his best bow. "Steve, you always was popular with the
ladies."
Valencia, uncompromising, waited until he had gone. Then, swiftly, with
a little leap of impulse as it were, she appealed to Davis.
"Don't let him go back to the valley. Don't let him push the cases
against Sebastian and Pablo."
The old miner shook his head "Sorry, Miss Valencia. Wish I could stop
him, but I can't. He'll go his own way--always would."
"But don't you see they'll kill him. It's madness to go back there while
he's pushing the criminal case. Before it was bad enough, but now----"
She threw up her hands with a gesture of despair.
"I reckon you're right. But I can't help it."
"Then look out for him. Don't let him ride around in the hills. Don't
let him leave the house at night. Never let him go alone. Remember that
he is in danger every hour while he remains in the valley."
"I'll remember, Miss Valencia," Davis promised.
He wondered as he walked away why the talk between Dick and Miss Valdés
had gone so badly. He knew his friend had come jubilantly, prepared to
do anything she asked of him. The fear and anxiety that had leaped to
her face the instant Gordon had gone showed him that the girl had a deep
interest in the young man. She, too, had meant to meet him half way in
wiping out the gulf between them. Instead, they had only increased it.