"'All right,' said I, 'I expected as much. I didn't bring this six-shooter to argue with you.'
"He kind of laughed at that. 'Then what the h----l did you bring it here for?' says he.
"'To protect myself on the street,' says I; 'to protect myself from footpads as I go back to my hotel with my money.'
"'What money's that you're talking about?' says he.
"'My money,' says I, 'that you've won off my pardner last night, six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars in greenbacks. That'll need protecting.'
"He gave a kind of a grin. 'It's protected by them thirty-two buckshot at the present moment,' he says, 'and I guess they're good enough to guarantee it.'
"'I'm not denying it,' says I. 'I've come here, as a gentleman, to appeal to you as a gentleman, to restore me my money that my pardner's wrongly handed over to you.'
"He looked amused. 'I notice you don't speak as if you upheld the game wasn't square,--as if he'd been robbed of it here,' says he.
"'I don't know nothing at all about that,' says I. 'I don't gamble myself, but I don't doubt your game's a square game enough, as things go. People say it is. I don't complain of the game; that's Rocky's business, if it's anybody's. It's my money that I'm talking about, whether it was a skin game that he lost it over or not. It's those greenbacks that Colonel Starr paid me that I'm here for.'
"Then he fairly laughed out. 'Why, you galoot,' says he, 'you talk like a tenderfoot, yet you've been around this Western country long enough to cut your eye-teeth. When did you ever hear of a professional gambler giving up the stakes after he'd won 'em?'
"'I don't know as I ever did,' says I; 'but if not, here's the place for it to begin to happen, right here and now. I tell you I've got to have that money. I tell you I'm tired. I've prospected in every range of mountains there is in three Territories to find that Last Lap Lode.
I've been eight years sweating and starving and freezing and wrastling round. Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I got my stake, and I've got to have it. I tell you again I'm tired. I won't go through it all again for nothing. I'm either going out of this room with my money in my pocket, or I'm going out of it feet first, with a hole in my head you could put your fist through. I don't threaten nobody, but I'll have my money or I'll die right here.'
"'You say you don't threaten,' says he suspiciously. 'Aint that what you're saying now--something darned like a bluff?'
"'No,' says I, 'it aint. I don't threaten,' and I turned my right hip round towards him where I had my pistol slung. 'I'll hold up my hands and you can take away this pistol if you like,' and I threw up both my arms over my head.
"'Put down your hands,' says he quietly, 'I don't want to take your pistol.' There were mirrors all round the room, and as I turned I caught sight of my face, and though I felt red-hot I could see I was as white as a sheet, and my eyes like coals of fire. Truth to tell, I was mad.
'Don't take things too hard,' says he, 'it'll come right. I know just how you feel. I've been busted myself more nor once. Look here, young man, I've rather taken a liking to you. I'm going to set you going again. I'll give you a thousand dollars out of my own pocket, and that'll start you, and all I'll ask is----'
"'You'll give h----l!' I burst out. 'I'm not a beggar! I don't want no man's charity. I want my money--six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars in greenbacks--neither more nor less. That's all.'"
Stephens paused. The vividness of his own recollections, excited by the recital of the incident, had flushed his face and quickened his breathing. His pipe had gone out, and he signalled to the boy for another coal to relight it. Manuelita sprang up, ran to the kitchen hearth, snatched a coal from it, and gave it to the boy to carry in.
Don Nepomuceno, keenly interested, leaned forward with his hands on his knees. "Yes," he said, "yes. Gambling makes much trouble. I know it, for I was a great gambler myself. There were four years that I gambled a great deal, when I was sowing my wild oats." He nodded with the sententiousness of a reformed character, who yet relished the reminiscence. "It's a bad thing, very bad. But young men will be young men. Now, there's my son Andres, he gambled a great deal too much last winter. But, look you, I am keeping that young man now out in camp with the sheep herd, to see after the peons. The lambing season is just coming on, and they are going off up the Valle Grande, where there is much green grass. That is far away from the settlements; he can't get into much trouble up there, can he?" and the father chuckled with self-satisfaction over his ingenious little manoeuvre. "But here, I am interrupting you, Don Estevan, and I want to hear the rest of your story. Please excuse me, and continue."
"Well," resumed Stephens, "the upshot of it was he saw I was in earnest.
So I was. I expected to die right there. If he'd attempted to leave that room, I'd have jumped him, and then they'd have killed me. I didn't mind, I was so wound up. He turns to me, and says he, 'I believe I'm going to do a thing that I never did before, young man. I'm going to give you back that money that your partner lost of yours.' He went to a safe he had in the corner, unlocks it, takes out a roll of notes and brings 'em to the table. 'Jake,' he sung out to his man through the wall, 'you can put away that shot-gun, it aint needed.'
"He counts out to me the full amount and hands it over.
"'Mr. Frenchy,' says I, 'you're a gentleman. I'll never forget this the longest day I live.'
"'No more'll I,' says he, with a dry grin on his face. 'The laugh's on me this time, I think,' he says, 'and I can tell you that aint the case very often.'
"'I think likely,' says I, getting up to go. 'Good morning, mister; will you shake hands?'
"'That I will,' says he; and we shook.
"'Look here,' says he, holding me by the hand, 'I want to ask you one thing more. If you thought you had the best right to this money why didn't you go to a lawyer and enter suit for it?'
"'Go to a lawyer!' said I; 'what would I do that for? The law in Montana's a thief; you know it, and everyone knows it.' So it was, Don Nepomuceno. The head of the ladrones there was the regular, lawful, elected sheriff of Helena; the road-agents ran the country in fact.
"'No,' says I to Mr. Frenchy, 'I didn't want no lawyer. I heard say you were a gentleman, and I thought I'd give you a chance to prove it, and I'm glad I did.'"
Stephens took a few draws at his pipe; the excitement into which he had worked himself over his story was passing off now the climax was over.
"Well," he resumed, "I went back to my hotel and I woke Rocky. I told him we must part, and I offered to divide. He wouldn't quite do that, but he took a thousand dollars off me. He was mighty penitent, but I told him I'd no use for such a pard any more. I was sick of Montana altogether, and concluded to skip. I paid my hotel bill, went over to Frenchy's and made him a present of my cayuse, and I donated over to him my share in every claim I had located in Montana to compensate him for what he had lost by giving up the half of Rocky's losings. I believe he's made a pot of money out of some of those claims since. I took the stage for Green River City, and then for Denver, and I got through safe without being held up. I salted down most of my money into Denver real estate, which pays me a fair interest, and part I've used in paying my way while I've been prospecting in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. And that's how I come to be here."
"Thank you, Don Estevan, thank you," said the Mexican. "It is most interesting; but I wonder you can think of going back to such a _companero_. It is a very perilous idea."
"Oh, well," answered Stephens carelessly, as he rose to take his departure, "meeting him isn't the same thing as going and doubling up with him again. I'll be apt to know more about that when I see him."
But Manuelita's heart gave a little painful throb at the discovery that this man, in whom she was fast learning to take an interest too great for her own peace of mind, could return so lightly to a life that had already brought him into such dangers, and could depart apparently without thinking of her, or of what his loss might mean to her. He did indeed belong to another world.
His mule was brought out and saddled, and his belt once more buckled on, with the revolver hanging low on his right hip. He warmly grasped Don Nepomuceno's hand at parting, and with a smile and a bow and his hat doffed to the ladies, he swung himself into the saddle and rode away.
Don Nepomuceno and his sister stood in the great doorway at the entrance to the courtyard, looking after his retreating form. He rode with the long stirrup and erect military seat of one who had seen service in a United States cavalry regiment, no bad school for horsemanship; his fine figure and his athletic frame showed off to great advantage. A hundred yards away, at the bend of the road, he turned in his saddle to wave his hat once more in a final adieu, and the warm sunlight kissed his profusion of golden curls. Manuelita ran back into the house that her aunt might not detect the emotion betrayed by her quivering lip. But the elder lady had her gaze steadily directed towards the parting guest.
"_Ah, que hombres tan aventureros, si, son estos!_" she said--"What bold adventurers they are, those men!"
"True indeed," answered her brother, "'tis most true. For myself, I hate the Americans, most of them, but admire this one, and I like him too.
But he is set on this life of adventure. I sounded him on the matter; I even hinted to him that it was full time for him to marry and settle down. But he would none of it."
"_Es hombre muy frio_"--"He is a very cold man"--said the Mexican woman, and there was a spice of scorn as well as regret in her tone. She despised a man who was a laggard in love, and her spoken judgment had coincided with Manuelita's thought.
"It is true, it is most true," assented her brother. "He is cold. These Americans are not impassioned in the love of women as we are. The chill of their frozen North is in the very marrow of their bones. They are not like unto us of Mexico and the South."
Those who know them best will bear witness that, whether they are descended from Spanish _conquistadores_, from the devoted warriors of Montezuma, the passionate hearts of the sons and daughters of Mexico prove them in very truth to be Children of the Sun.
CHAPTER IX
A SQUAW FOR A FEE
All day Felipe remained in the wheat patch. At noon he ate his lunch of bread and dried flesh down by the river instead of going back to the pueblo. At intervals during the day he came to the edge of the bank in order to see that the mare and the remaining mule were all right, and not trying to get up the bank into the crops. He might have gone off to talk, for a change to other Indians, who were working in their fields, but he did not care to. His heart was too sore; he wanted to be alone.
He thought and he thought, but all to no purpose. He ended by saying to himself, "Well, there's one day more. I'll see Josefa to-night, and we'll talk it over."
A wild idea floated through his brain of taking one of Don Estevan's animals without his leave, but he knew it was wild. He believed Don Estevan would shoot anyone that did so, and he did not mean to incur that penalty. The only rational scheme he could think of was to run off in the night to the sierra, find the horse herd next day, get his father's horse and start back with it, but instead of coming straight to the pueblo, to lie hid in the foothills of the sierra till night time, and then slip down and get Josefa to come. But he knew that on the morrow, when his father missed him, there would be a noise made and he might be followed, in which case his plan might miscarry, the more so that his disappearance would cause a doubly sharp watch to be kept on Josefa. With melancholy eyes he watched the sun sink lower and lower in the west. Precious time was passing, and he was doing nothing and could do nothing to bring his will to pass. He burned with desire to act, and he was helpless.
Before sunset he caught the mare and mule, and took them up to the pueblo in order to put them in the corral for the night. This was the time of day when Josefa was likely to be fetching water from the ditch, which had been empty all the morning on account of the blasting, and in the hope of meeting her Felipe led them through the street on which her father's house faced.
And where had Josefa been all this time? She had been hard at work at home, under the vigilant eye of her step-mother. Grinding corn meal was the labour which she was set to do, a good steady task to give to a young person of rebellious disposition. The Indian hand-mill is a large, smooth stone, something like a flagstone, set sloping in a box on the floor. The grinding is always done by a woman, who kneels on the ground, and bending over the mill rubs the corn up and down with a smaller stone held in both her hands. Hard work it is indeed for back and arms, but the Pueblo women keep it up for hours. Their good health and fine physique are largely due to this vigorous exercise.
Josefa worked away over the mill till her back ached, while her step-mother, at the other end of the room sat at a hand-loom, on which she was slowly weaving a gorgeous blanket of many colours for the cacique's next official appearance. Josefa thought as she toiled at her work; and her mind reviewed over and over again different alternatives.
From the bottom of her heart she hoped that Felipe would be successful in getting a horse from the American. If he didn't, she did not know what she should do. One thing only was certain in her mind. Have Ignacio she would not. They might starve her, and they might beat her, but they should not force her to be his wife. What was the use of being a woman of Santiago if she mightn't have some say in the matter? Why should she be treated as a slave, as the savage Utes treated their women? "I don't care," she said to herself, and as she said it she stiffened her back, and rubbed away at the refractory corn harder than ever. "I won't. He's old, and he's ugly, and I hate him. I know he beat his first wife--he did. I won't have him."
She glowed with the heat of her scorn and indignation; but all the time a little unbelieving spirit in the recesses of her mind kept asking in a sort of undertone, "How will you like being beaten if you disobey? How will you like it; how will you like it?" And as she cooled off from her glow, and thought of another side to the picture,--an intercepted flight, rough seizure, angry words, and furious blows,--she quaked. She had not been beaten since she was a child, and not much then, for the Pueblo Indians are good to their little ones; but she knew that her father was within his rights in giving her to whom he chose, and that those who broke the laws of the community were liable to the lash. She had never seen it done severely. All she had seen was two or three cuts with a whip, administered publicly in the street after a severe scolding by the marshal of the village, to some misdemeanant who had let his ass trespass among the standing corn, or who had otherwise broken some of their simple rules; but she knew with what severity, in private, serious offences were treated, and in the depths of her brave little heart she quaked.