The Bells of San Juan Page 15

  CHAPTER XIV

  A FREE MAN

  "I am a free man, if you please." The sheriff stood in the hoteldoorway, looking down upon her as she sat in her favorite verandachair. "I have given my keeper his fee and sent him away. May I watchyou while you read?"

  Virginia closed her book upon her knee and gave him a smile by way ofwelcome. He looked unusually tall as he stood in the broad, lowentrance; his ten days of sickness and inactivity had made him gauntand haggard.

  "I shouldn't be reading in this light, anyway," she said. "I hadn'tnoticed that the sun was down. It is good to be what you call freeagain, isn't it?"

  He laughed softly, put back his head, filled his lungs. Then he cameon to her and stood leaning against the wall, his hat cocked to oneside to hide the bandage.

  "The world is good," he announced with gay positiveness. "Especiallywhen you've been away from it for a spell and weren't quite sure whatwas next. And especially, too, when you've had time to think. Did youever take off a week and just do nothing but think?"

  "One doesn't have time for that sort of thing as a rule," she admitted."There's a chair standing empty if you care to let me in on yourdeductions."

  "I don't want to sit down or lie down until I'm ready to drop," hegrinned down at her. "A bed makes me sick at my stomach and a chair ispretty nearly as bad. I'd like almighty well to get a horse between myknees . . . and _ride_! Suppose I'd fall to pieces if I tried itright now?"

  "Sure of it. And not so sure that you haven't discharged your keeperprematurely. You mustn't think of such things."

  "There you go. Forbidding me to think again! . . . Believe I will sitdown; would you believe that a full-grown man like me could get as weakas a cat this quick?"

  He took the chair just beyond her, tilted it back against the wall, hisbooted heels caught under its elevated legs, and glanced away from herto the colorful sky above San Juan's scattered houses in the west.

  "Yes, sir," he continued his train of thought, "I'd like a horsebetween my knees; I'd like to ride out yonder into the sunset, to meetthe night as it comes down; I'd like the feeling of nothing but thestars over me instead of the smothery roof of a house. Doesn't itappeal to you, too?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "You on Persis, with me on my big roan, riding not as we rode thatother night, but just for the fun of it. I'd like to ride like thedevil. . . . You don't mind my saying what I mean, do you? . . . to goscooting across the sage-brush letting out a yell at every jump, boringholes in the night with my gun, making all of the racket and dust thatone man can make. Ever feel that way? just like getting outside andmaking a noise? Let me talk! I'm the one who has been shut up for solong my tongue has started to grow fast to the roof of my mouth. Atfirst I could do nothing but lie flat on my back in a sort of fog,seeing nothing clearly, thinking not at all. Then came the hours inwhich I could do nothing but think, under orders to keep still. Think?Why, I thought about everything that ever happened, most things thatmight happen, and a whole lot that never will. Now comes the thirdstage; I can talk better than I can walk. . . . Do you mind listeningwhile a man raves?"

  "Not in the least." She found his mood contagious and, smiling in thatquick, bright way natural to her, showed for a moment the twin dimplesof which together with a host of other things he had had ample time tothink during his bedroom imprisonment. "Please rave on."

  "In due course," he mused, "the fourth stage will arrive and I can bedoing something besides talk, can't I? Now let me tell you about theKing's Palace."

  "You begin well."

  "The King's Palace is where we are going on our first outing. That wasdecided three days ago at four minutes after 6 A.M. You and I and, ifyou like, Florrie and your kid brother. We'll ride out there in thevery early morning, in the saddle before the stars are gone. We'lllunch and loaf there all day. For lunch we will have bacon and coffee,cooked over a fire in one of the Palace anterooms. We will have sometrout, fried in the bacon-grease, trout whipped out of the likeliestmountain-stream you ever saw or heard about. We will have cheese,perhaps, and maybe a box of candy for dessert. We'll ride home in thedusk and the dark."

  "The King's Palace?" she asked curiously. "I never heard of such aplace. Are you making it all up?"

  "Not a bit of it. It's all that's left of some of the old ruins of thesame folk who lived in the caves up on the cliffs. . . . Do you knowwhy I am bound to get Jim Galloway's tag soon or late?"

  Her mind with his had touched upon the hidden rifles, and the abruptdigression was no digression to her, reached by the span of suggestion.

  "Because he is in the wrong and you are in the right; or, in otherwords, because he opposes the law and you represent it."

  "Because he plays the game wrong! Some more results of a long week ofnothing to do but think things out. There is just one way for alaw-breaker to operate if he means to get away with it."

  "You mean that a man can get away with it? Surely not for good?"

  But he nodded thoughtfully at the slowly fading strata of shaded colorssplashed across the sky.

  "A man can get away with it for keeps . . . if he plays the game right.Jim Galloway isn't that man and so I'll get him. He has ignored thefirst necessary principle, which is the lone hand."

  "You mean he takes men into his confidence?"

  "And he goes on and ignores the second necessary principle; a man muststop short of murder. If he turns gangman and killer, he ties his ownrope around his neck. If a man like Galloway, a man with brains,power, without fear, without scruple, should decide to loot this cornerof the world or any other corner, and set about it right, playing thelone hand invariably, he would be a man I couldn't bring in in athousand years. But Galloway has slipped up; he has too many Moragasand Antones and Vidals at his heels; he has been the cause, directly orindirectly, of too many killings. . . . A theft will be forgotten intime, the hue and cry die down; spilled blood cries to heaven after tenyears."

  "Galloway is back in San Juan."

  "I know. I wanted him back. I wanted him free and unhampered. He'llbe bolder than ever now, won't he, if this case is dropped? He's comeout a little into the open already, he'll be tempted out a littlefarther. There'll be more of his work soon, a robbery here or there,and he will grow so sure of himself that he'll get careless. Then I'llget him."

  "But have you the right?" she asked quickly. "Knowing him alawbreaker, have you the right to allow him to go farther and farther,just because in the end you hope to get him?"

  He met her look with a smile which puzzled her.

  "I'll answer your question when you define right and wrong for me," hesaid quietly.

  They grew silent together, watching the gradual sinking of day intotwilight and early dusk. Norton, for all his vaunted ravings, hadgrown thoughtful; Virginia turning her eyes toward him while his werestaring out beyond the house-tops saw in them a look of deep, frowningspeculation. And through this look, like a little fire gleamingthrough a fog, was another look whose meaning baffled her.

  "What do you think of Patten?" he asked.

  Startled by his abruptness, characteristic of him though it was to-day,she asked in puzzled fashion:

  "What do you mean?"

  "Not as a man," he said, withdrawing his gaze from the sunset andbestowing it gravely upon her. "As a physician. Do you size him up ascapable or as something of a quack?"

  She hesitated. But finally she made the only reply possible.

  "Of course you don't expect any answer, knowing that you should notcome to one member of a profession for an estimate of another. And,besides, you realize that I know nothing whatever of Dr. Patten, eitheras a man or as a physician."

  He laughed softly.

  "Hedging, pure, unadulterated hedging! I didn't look for that fromyou. Shall I tell you what we both think of him? He is a farce and afake, and I rather think that I am going to run him out of the Statepretty soon. . . . What would you say of a doctor who couldn't
tellthe difference between a wound made by a man bumping his head when hefell and by a smashing blow with a gun-barrel? Patten doesn't guessyet that it was the blow Moraga gave me the other night which came soclose to ringing down the sable curtains for me."

  "Moraga?" she asked with quickened interest. "Not the same Moraga whoshot Brocky Lane?"

  "The same little old Moraga," he assured her lightly. "You needn'tmention it abroad, of course; I don't think Galloway got a chance totalk with him and we are not sure yet that he even knows Moraga washere. But I know somebody put me out in the dark by hammering me overthe head; and Tom Cutter found blood on Moraga's revolver. But wewander far afield. Coming back to Patten, do we agree that he issomething of a dub?"

  "I'd rather not discuss him."

  "Exactly. And I, being in the talkative way, am going to tell you thathe has made blunders before now; that at least one man died under hisnice little fat hands who shouldn't have died outside of jail; thatlong ago I had my suspicions and began instituting inquiries; that nowI am fully prepared to learn that Caleb Patten has no more right to anM.D. after his name than I have."

  "You must be mistaken. I hope you are. Men used to do that sort ofthing, but under existing laws . . ."

  "Under existing laws men do a good many things in and about San Juanwhich they shouldn't do. I have found out that there was a CalebPatten who was a young doctor; that there was a Charles Patten, hisbrother, who was a young scamp; that they both lived in Baltimore a fewyears ago; that from Baltimore they both went hastily no man knowswhere. This gentleman whom we have with us might be either one ofthem. . . . Here comes Ignacio. _Que hay_, Ignacio!"

  "_Que hay_, Roderico?" responded Ignacio, coming to lean languidlyagainst the veranda post. He removed his hat elaborately, his liquideyes doing justice to Virginia's dainty charm. "_Buenos tardes,senorita_," he greeted her.

  "What is new, Ignacio?" queried Norton, "No bells for you to ring forthe last ten days! You grow fat in idleness, _amigo mio_."

  Ignacio sighed and rolled his cigarette.

  "What is new, you ask? No? _Bueno_, this is new!" He lifted hiseyes suddenly and they were sparkling as with suppressed excitement."The Devil himself has made a visit to San Juan. _Si, senor; si,senorita_. It is so."

  Virginia smiled; Norton gravely asked the explanation. Why should hissatanic majesty come to San Juan?

  "Why? _Quien sabe_?" Ignacio shrugged all responsibility from hislazy shoulders. "But he came and more bad will come from his visit,more and more of evil things. One knows. _Seguro que si_; one knows.But I will tell you and the senorita; no one else knows of it. It waswhile in the Casa Blanca men are shooting, while Roderico Nortone willmake his arrest of poor Vidal who is dead now." He crossed himself anddrew a thoughtful puff from his cigarette. "I run fast to ring thebells. I come into the garden and it is dark. I come under the bells.And while my hand cannot find the rope . . . _Si, senor ysenorita_! . . . before I touch the rope the Captain begins to ring!Just a little; not long; low and quiet and . . . angry! And then hestop and I shiver. It is hard not to run out of the garden. But Icross myself and find the ropes and make all the bells dance. But Iknow; it was the Devil who was before me."