The Bells of San Juan Page 16

  CHAPTER XV

  THE KING'S PALACE

  Not only was Galloway back in San Juan but, as Norton had predicted ofhim, he appeared to have every assurance that he stood in no unusualdanger. There had been a fight in a dark room and one man had beenkilled, certain others wounded. The dead man was Galloway's friend,hence it was not to be thought that Galloway had killed him. KidRickard was another friend. As for the wound Rod Norton had received,who could swear that this man or that had given it to him?

  "The chances are," Galloway had already said in many quarters, "thatTom Cutter, getting excited, popped over his own sheriff."

  True, it was quite obvious that a charge lay at Galloway's door, thatof harboring a fugitive from justice and of resisting an officer. Butwith Galloway's money and influence, with the shrewdest technicallawyer in the State retained, with ample perjured testimony to be hadas desired, the law-breaker saw no reason for present uneasiness.Perhaps more than anything else he regretted the death of Vidal Nunezand the wounding of Kid Rickard. For these matters vitally touched JimGalloway and his swollen prestige among his henchmen; he had thrown thecloak of his protection about Vidal, had summoned him, promised him allsafety . . . and Vidal was dead. He knew that men spoke of this overand over and hushed when he came upon them; that Vidal's brother, Pete,grumbled and muttered that Galloway was losing his grip, that soon orlate he would fall, that falling he would drag others down with him.More than ever before the whole county watched for the final duellobetween Galloway and Norton. In half a dozen small towns andmining-camps men laid bets upon the result.

  For the first time, also, there was much barbed comment and criticismof the sheriff. He had gotten this man and that, it was true. Andyet, after all this time, he seemed to be no nearer than at thebeginning to getting the man who counted. There were those whorecalled the killing of Bisbee of Las Palmas, and reminded others thatthere had been no attempt at prosecution. Now there had come forthfrom the Casa Blanca fresh defiance and lawlessness and still JimGalloway came and went as he pleased. Those who criticised said thatNorton was losing his nerve, or else that he was merely incompetentwhen measured by the yardstick of swift, incisive action wedded tocapability.

  "If he can't get Jim Galloway, let him step out of the way and give thechance to a man who can," was said many times and in many ways. EvenJohn Engle, Julius Struve, Tom Cutter, and Brocky Lane came to Nortonat one time or another, telling him what they had heard, urging him togive some heed to popular clamor, and to begin legal action.

  "Put the skids under him, Roddy," pleaded Brocky Lane. "We can't slidehim far the first trip, maybe. But a year or so in jail will break hisgrip here."

  But Norton shook his head. He was playing the game his way.

  "The rifles are still in the cache," he told Brocky. "He is gettingready, as we know; further, just as my friends are beginning to findfault with me, so are his hangers-on beginning to wonder if theyhaven't tied to the wrong man. Just to save his own face he'll have tostart something pretty pronto. And we know about where he is going tostrike. It's up to us to hold our horses, Brocky."

  Brocky growled a bit, but went away more than half-persuaded. Hecalled at the hotel, paid his respects to Virginia, and affording her asatisfaction which it was hard for her to conceal, also paid her forher services rendered him in the cliff-dweller's cave.

  Often enough the man who tilts with the law is in most things notunlike his fellows, different alone perhaps in the one essential thathe is born a few hundreds of years late in the advance of civilization.Going about that part of his business which has its claims tolegitimacy, mingling freely with his fellows, he fails to stand outdistinctly from them as a monster. Given the slow passing ofuneventful time, and it becomes hard and harder to consider him as asocial menace. When the man is of the Jim Galloway type, his planslarge, his patience long, he may even pass out from the shadow of agallows-tree and return to occupy his former place in the quietcommunity life, while his neighbors are prone to forget or condone.

  As other days came and slipped by and the weeks grew out of them,Galloway's was a pleasant, untroubled face to be seen on the street, atthe post-office, behind his own bar, on the country roads. He ignoredany animosity which San Juan might feel for him. If a man looked athim stonily, Galloway did not care to let it be seen that he saw; if awoman turned out to avoid him, no evidence that he understood darkenedhis eyes. He had a good-humored word to speak always; he lifted hishat to the banker's wife, as he had always done; he mingled with thecrowd when there were "exercises" at the little schoolhouse; he warmlycongratulated Miss Porter, the crabbed old-maid teacher, on the workshe had accomplished and made her wonder fleetingly if there wasn't abit of good in the man, after all. Perhaps there was; there is in mostmen. And Florrie Engle was beginning to wonder the same thing. ForRod Norton, recovered and about his duties, was not quite the sametouchingly heroic figure he had been while lying unconscious and indanger of his life. Nor was it any part of Florrie Engle's nature toremain long either upon the heights or in the depths of an emotion.The night of the shooting she had cried out passionately againstGalloway; as days went their placid way and she saw Galloway upon eachone of them . . . and did not see a great deal of Norton, who waseither away or monopolizing Virginia, . . . she took the first step inthe gambler's direction by beginning to be sorry for him. First, itwas too bad that Mr. Galloway did the sort of things which he did; nodoubt he had had no mother to teach him when he was very young. Next,it was a shame that he was blamed for everything that had to happen;maybe he was a . . . a bad man, but Florrie simply didn't believe hewas responsible for half of the deeds laid at his door. Finally,through a long and intricate chain of considerations, the girl reachedthe point where she nodded when Galloway lifted his hat. The smile inthe man's eyes was one of pure triumph.

  "Oh, my dear!" Florrie burst into Virginia's room, flushed andpalpitant with her latest emotion. "He has told me all about it, anddo you know, I don't believe that we have the right to blame him?Doesn't it say in the Bible or . . . or somewhere, that greater praiseor something shall no man have than he who gives his life for a friend?It's something like that, anyway. Aren't people just horrid, alwaysblaming other people, never stopping to consider their reasons andimpulses and looking at it from their side? Vidal Nunez was a friendof Mr. Galloway's; he was in Mr. Galloway's house. Of course . . ."

  "I thought that you didn't speak to him any more."

  "I didn't for a long time. But if you could have only seen the way healways looks at me when I bump into him. Virgie, I believe he is sadand lonely and that he would like to be good if people would only givehim the chance. Why, he is human, after all, you know."

  Virginia began to ask herself if Galloway were merely amusing himselfwith Florrie or if the man were really interested in her. It did notseem likely that a girl like Florrie would appeal to a man like him;and yet, why not? There is at least a grain of truth, if no more, inthe old saw of the attraction of opposites. And it was scarcely moreimprobable that he should be interested in her than that she shouldallow herself to be ever so slightly moved by him. Furthermore, in itsfinal analysis, emotion is not always to be explained.

  Virginia set herself the task of watching for any slightest developmentof the man's influence over the girl. She saw Florrie almost daily,either at the hotel to which Florrie had acquired the habit of comingin the cool of the afternoons or at the Engle home. And for the sakeof her little friend, and at the same time for Elmer's sake, she threwthe two youngsters together as much as possible. They quarrelledrather a good deal, criticised each other with startling frankness, andgrew to be better friends than either realized. Elmer was a vaqueronow, as he explained whenever need be or opportunity arose, wore chaps,a knotted handkerchief about a throat which daily grew more brown,spurs as large and noisy as were to be encountered on San Juan'sstreet, and his right hip pocket bulged. None of the details escapedFlorrie's eyes . . . he called her "Fluff" now
and she nicknamed him"Black Bill" . . . and she never failed to refer to them mockingly.

  "They tell me, Black Bill," she said innocently, "that you fell offyour horse yesterday. I was so _sorry_."

  She had offered her sympathy during a lull in the conversation, drawingthe attention of her father, mother, and Virginia to Elmer, whose facereddened promptly.

  "Florrie!" chided Mrs. Engle, hiding the twinkle in her own eyes.

  "Oh, her," said Elmer with a wave of the hand. "I don't mind whatFluff says. She's just trying to kid me."

  Toward the end of the evening, having been thoughtful for ten minutes,Elmer adopted Florrie's tactics and remarked suddenly and in a voice tobe heard much farther than his needed to carry:

  "Say, Fluff. Saw an old friend of yours the other day." And whenFlorrie, "gun-shy" as Elmer called her, was too wise to ask anyquestions, he hastened on: "Juanito Miranda it was. Sent his best. Sodid Mrs. Juanito."

  Whereupon it was Florrie's turn to turn a scarlet of mortification andanger. For Juanito had soft black eyes and almost equally soft blackmustaches, with probably a heart to match, and only a year ago Florriehad been busied making a hero of him when he, the blind one, took untohimself an Indian bride and in all innocence heaped shame high upon theblonde head. How Elmer unearthed such ancient history was a mystery toFlorrie; but none the less she "hated" him for it. They saw a verygreat deal of each other, each serving as a sort of balance-wheel tothe other's self-centred complacency. Perhaps the one subject uponwhich they could agree was Jim Galloway; Elmer still liked to look uponthe gambler as a colossal figure standing serene among wolves, whileFlorrie could admit to him, with no fear of a chiding, that she thoughtMr. Galloway "simply splendid!"

  When one evening, after having failed to show himself for a full month,Rod Norton came to the Engles', found Elmer and Virginia there, andsuggested the ride to the King's Palace, he awakened no end ofenthusiasm. Elmer had a day off, thanks to the generosity of hisemployer, Mr. Engle, and had just secretly purchased a fresh outfitconsisting of a silver-mounted Spanish bit, a new pair of white andunspeakably shaggy, draggy chaps, a wide hat with a band of snake hide,and boots that were the final whisper in high-heeled discomfort.Florrie disappeared into her room to make her own little riding-costumeas irresistible as possible. They were to start with the first streaksof dawn to-morrow, just the four of them, since the banker and hiswife, lukewarmly invited, had no desire for a forty-mile ride betweenmorning and night.

  It was Rod Norton's privilege to lead his merry party into what forthem was wonderland. Even Florrie, though so much other life had beenpassed in San Juan, had never before visited the King's Palace.Clattering through the street while most folk were asleep, they tookadvantage of the cool of the dawn and rode swiftly. Elmer and Florrieracing on ahead laid aside their accustomed weapons and were, for theonce, utterly flattering to each other. Each wishing to be admired,admired the other, and was paid back in the coveted coin. Norton andVirginia, at first a little inclined toward silence, soon grew asnoisily merry as the others, drawing deep enjoyment from the moment.

  And at the portals of the King's Palace, reached after four hours inthe saddle, followed by thirty minutes on foot, they stood hushed withwonder. High upon the southern slope of Mt. Temple they had comeabruptly into the unexpected. Here a rugged plateau had caught andheld through the ages the soil which had weathered down from the cliffsabove; here were trees to replace the weary gray brush, shade insteadof glare, birds as welcome substitutes for droning insects, water andflowers to make the canons doubly cool and fragrant for him who hadascended from the dry reaches of sand below the talus.

  "It's just like fairy-land!" cried the ecstatic Florrie. "RoddyNorton, I think you're real mean not to have brought me here ages ago!"

  "Ages ago, my dear miss," laughed Norton, "you were too little toappreciate it. You should thank me for bringing you now."

  Down through the middle of the plateau from its hidden source ran thepurling stream which was destined to yield to sun and thirsty earthlong before it twisted down the lower slopes of the hills. Along itsedges the grass was thick and rich, shot through everywhere with littleblue blossoms and the golden gleam of the starflowers. Further promiseof yellow beauty was given by the stalks of the evening-primrosescattered on every hand, the flowers furled now, sleeping. In thegroves were pines, small cedars, and a sprinkling of sturdy dwarf oaks.And from their shelter came the welcome sound of a bird's twitter.

  "It's always about as you see it," Norton explained. "Too hard to getto, too small when one makes the climb to afford enough pasturage forsheep. And now the Palace itself."

  Straight ahead the cliffs overhung the farther rim of the plateau. Andthere, under the out-jutting roof of rock, an ancient people hadfashioned themselves a home which stood now as when their handslaboriously set it there. The protected ledge which afforded eternalfoundation was slightly above the plateau's level, to be reached by aseries of "steps" in the rock, steps which were holes worn deep,perhaps five hundred years ago. The climb was steep, hazardous unlessone went with due precaution, but the four holiday-makers hurried tobegin it.

  So close to the edge of the rock ledge did the walls of the ruin standthat there was barely room to edge along it to come to the narrowdoorway. Holding hands, Norton in the lead, Elmer in the rear, theymade their breathless way. And then they were in the hushed, shadedanteroom.

  The dust of untroubled ages lay upon the surprisingly smooth floor.Walls of cemented rock rose intact on two sides, broken here and thereon a third, while the cliff itself made the fourth at the rear. Andunusually spacious, wide, and high-ceiled was this room, which may havehad its use when time was younger as a council-chamber. At one end wasanother door, small and dark and forbidding, leading to another room.Beyond lay other quarters, a long line of them, which might have housedscores in their time.

  While Florrie, letting out little shrieks now and then interspersedwith gay cries of delight, led a half-timorous way and Elmer went withher upon the tour of discovery, Virginia and Norton stood a moment atthe front entrance looking down upon the fertile plateau and across itto the level miles running out to San Juan and beyond.

  "Who were they?" asked Virginia, unconscious of a half-sigh as shewithdrew abstracted eyes from the wide panorama which had filled thevision of so many other men and women and little children before thewhite man came to claim the New World. "They who builded here andlived and died here. What has become of them? Where did they go?"

  "All questions asked a thousand times and never answered. I don'tknow. But they were good builders, good engineers, goodpottery-makers, good farmers and hunters and fighters; rather a goodlycrowd, I take it. Come, and I'll share my secret with you whileFlorrie and Elmer discover the skeleton a little farther on and stop toexclaim over it."

  "Come, and I'll share my secret with you."]

  Norton's secret was a hidden room of the King's Palace. While many menknew of the Palace itself, he believed that none other than himself hadever ferreted out this particular chamber which he called the TreasureChamber. It was to be reached by clambering through an orifice of theeastern wall, over a clutter of fallen blocks of stone and a score offeet along the narrowing ledge. Just before they came to the pointwhere the encroaching wall of cliff denied farther foothold they founda fissure in the rock itself wide enough to allow them to slip into it.Again they climbed, coming presently to a ledge smaller than the onebelow and hidden by an outthrust boulder. Here was the last of therooms of the King's Palace, cunningly masked, to be found only byaccident, even the cramped door concealed by the branches of a torturedcedar. Norton pushed them aside and they entered.

  "I have cached a few of my things here," he told her as they confrontedeach other in the gloom of the room's interior. "And the joke of it isthat my hiding-place is almost if not quite directly below the caveswhere Galloway's rifles are. This is a secret, mind you! . . . Ifyou'll look around, you'll find some of the
articles our friends thecliff-dwellers left behind them when they made their getaway."

  In a dark corner she found a blackened coffee-pot and a frying-pan,proclaiming anachronistically that here was the twentieth centuryinterloping upon the fifteenth, articles which Norton had hidden here.In another corner were jumbled the things which the ancient people hadleft to mark their passing, an earthenware water-jar, half a dozenspear and arrow points of stone, a clumsy-looking axe still fitted toits handle of century-seasoned cedar, bound with thongs.

  "But," exclaimed the girl, "the wood, the raw-hide . . . they wouldhave disintegrated long ago. They must belong to the age of yourcoffee-pot and frying-pan!"

  "The air is bone-dry," he reminded her. "What little rain there isnever gets in here. Nothing decays; look yonder."

  He showed her a basket made of withes, a graceful thing skilfully made,small, frail-looking, and as perfect as the day it had come from a pairof quick brown hands under a pair of quick black eyes. She took italmost with a sense of awe upon her.

  "Keep it, will you?" he asked lightly. "As a memento. Presented by acaveman through your friend the sheriff. Now let's get back beforethey miss us. I may have need of this place some time and I'd ratherno one else knew of it."

  They made their way back as they had come and in silence, Virginiatreasuring the token and with it the sense that her friend the sheriffhad cared to share his secret with her.

  They made of the day an occasion to be remembered, to be consideredwistfully in retrospect during the troubled hours so soon to come toeach one of the four of them. While Elmer and Florrie gatheredfire-wood, Norton showed Virginia how simple a matter it was here inthis seldom-visited mountain-stream to take a trout. Cool, shadedpools under overhanging, gouged-out banks, tiny falls, and shimmeringriffles all housed the quick speckled beauties. Then, as Norton hadpredicted, the fish were fried, crisp and brown, in sizzlingbacon-grease, while the thin wafers of bacon garnished the tin platebedded in hot ashes. They nooned in the shady grove, sipping theircoffee that had the taste of some rare, black nectar. And throughoutthe long lazy afternoon they loitered as it pleased them, pickedflowers, wandered anew through the ruins of the King's Palace, lay bythe singing water, and were quietly content. It was only when theshadows had thickened over the world and the promise of the primroseswas fulfilled that they made ready for the return ride. Before theyhad gone down to their horses the moths were coming to the yellowflowers, tumbling about them, filling the air with the frail beating oftheir wings.

  At Struve's hotel . . . Elmer and Virginia had ridden on to Engle'shome . . . Virginia told Norton good night, thanking him for a perfectday. As their hands met for a little she saw a new, deeply probinglook in his eyes, a look to be understood. He towered over her,physically superb. As she had felt it before, so now did sheexperience that odd little thrill born from nearness to him go singingthrough her. She withdrew her hand hastily and went in. In her ownroom she stood a long time before her glass, seeking to read what layin her own eyes.

  Tom Cutter was waiting for Norton--merely to tell him that a strangerhad come to San Juan, a Mexican with all the earmarks of a gentlemanand a man of means. The Mexican's name was Enrique del Rio. Heevidently came from below the border. He had lost no time in findingJim Galloway, with whom he had been all afternoon.