The Bells of San Juan Page 3

  CHAPTER II

  THE SHERIFF OF SAN JUAN

  The girl in the old Mission garden stood staring at Ignacio Chavez along time, seeming compelled by a force greater than her own to watchhim tugging and jerking at his bells. Plainly enough she understoodthat this was an alarm being sounded; a man dead through violence, andthe bell-ringer stirring the town with it. But when presently he lettwo of the ropes slip out of his hands and began a slow, mournfultolling of the Captain alone, she shuddered a little and withdrew.

  That it might be merely a case of a man wounded, even badly, did notonce suggest itself to her. Ignacio had spoken as one who knew, infull confidence and with finality. She should see! She returned tothe little bench which one day was to be a bright green, and sat down.She could see that again the pigeons were circling excitedly; that fromthe baking street little puffs of dust arose to hang idly in the stillair as though they were painted upon the clear canvas of the sky. Sheheard the voices of men, faint, quick sounds against the tolling of thebell. Then suddenly all was very still once more; Ignacio had allowedthe Captain to resume his silent brooding, and came to her.

  "I must go to see who it is," he apologized. "Then I will know betterhow to ring for him. The sheepman from Las Palmas, I bet you. For didI not see when just now I passed the Casa Blanca that he was a littledrunk with Senor Galloway's whiskey? And does not every one know hesold many sheep and that means much money these days? Si, senorita; itwill be the sheepman from Las Palmas."

  He was gone, slouching along again and in no haste now that he hadfulfilled his first duty. What haste could there possibly be since,sheepman from Las Palmas or another, he was dead and therefore mustwait upon Ignacio Chavez's pleasure? Somehow she gleaned this thoughtfrom his manner and therefore did not speak as she watched him depart.

  That portion of the street which she could see from her bench wasempty, the dust settling, thinning, disappearing. Farther down towardthe Casa Blanca she could imagine the little knots of men asking oneanother what had happened and how; the chief actor in this fragment ofhuman drama she could picture lying inert, uncaring that it was for himthat a bell had tolled and would toll again, that men congregatedcuriously.

  In a little while Ignacio would return, shuffling, smoking a danglingcigarette, his hat cocked against the sun; he would give her fullparticulars and then return to his bell. . . . She had come to SanJuan to make a home here, to become a part of it, to make it a portionof her. To arrive upon a day like this was no pleasant omen; it wastoo dreadfully like taking a room in a house only to hear the liferattling out of a man beyond a partition. She was suddenly averse tohearing Ignacio's details; there came a quick desire to set her back tothe town whose silence on the heels of uproar crushed her. Risinghastily, she hurried down the weed-bordered walk, out at the brokengate, and turned toward the mountains. One glance down the street asshe crossed it showed her what she had expected: a knot of men at thedoor of the Casa Blanca, another small group at a window, evidentlytaking stock of a broken window-pane.

  The sun, angry and red, was hanging low over a distant line of hills,the flat lands were already drawing about them a thin, faintly colorfulhaze. She had put on her hat and, like Ignacio, had set it a little tothe side of her head, feeling her cheeks burning when the direct raysfound them. The fine, loose soil was sifting into her low slippersbefore she had gone a score of paces. When she came back she wouldunpack her trunk and get out a sensible pair of boots. No doubt shewas dressed ridiculously, but then the heat had tempted her. . . .

  A curious matter presented itself to her. In the little groups uponthe street she had not seen a single woman. Were there none in SanJuan? Was this some strange, altogether masculine, community intowhich she had stumbled? Then she remembered how the bell-ringer hadmentioned Mrs. Engle, the banker's wife, and his daughter and Mrs.Struve and others. Besides all this she had a letter to Mrs. Englewhich she was going to present this evening. . . .

  She was thinking of anything in the world but of a tragedy not yetgrown cold, so near her that for a little it had seemed to embrace her.Now it was almost as though it had not occurred. The world was allunchanged about her, the town somnolent. She had shuddered as Ignacioplayed upon his bell; but the shudder was rather from the bell'sresonant eloquence than from any more vital cause. A man she had neverseen, whose name even she did not know, had been shot by another manunknown to her; she had heard only the shots, she had seen nothing.True, she had heard also a voice crying out, but she sensed that it hadbeen the voice of an onlooker. She felt ashamed that the episode didnot move her more.

  As, earlier in the afternoon, she had been drawn from the heat of herroom at Struve's hotel by the shade to be found in the Mission garden,so now did a long, wavering line of cottonwoods beckon to her. Infiles which turned eastward or westward here and there only to comeback to the general northerly trend, they indicated where an arroyowrithed down, tortured serpent-wise, from the mountains. Through theirfoliage she had glimpsed the Engle home. She expected to find runningwater under their shade, that and an attendant coolness.

  But the arroyo proved to be dry and hot, a gash in the dry bosom of theearth, its bottom strewn with smooth pebbles and sand and a verysparse, unattractive vegetation, stunted and harsh. And it was almostas hot here as on San Juan's street; into the shade crept theheat-waves of the dry, scorched air.

  Led by the line of cottonwoods she found a little path and followed it,experiencing a vague relief to have the town at her back. She knewthat distances deceived the eye in this bleak land, and yet she thoughtthat before dark she could reach the hills, where perhaps there were afew languid flowers and pools, and return just tired enough to eat andgo to sleep. She rather thought that she would postpone her call onthe Engles until to-morrow.

  "It's manana-land, after all," she told herself with a quick smile.

  Half an hour later she found a spot where the trees stood in a densergrowth, looking greener, more vigorous . . . less thirsty. She couldfancy the great roots, questing far downward through the layers of drysoil, thrusting themselves almost with a human, passionate eagernessinto the water they had found. Here she threw herself down, lying uponher back, gazing up through the branches and leaves.

  Never until now had she known the meaning of utter stillness. She sawa bird, a poor brown, unkempt little being; it had no song to offer thesilence, and in a little flew away listlessly. She had seen a rabbit,a big, gaunt, uncomely wretch, disappearing silently among the clumpsof brush.

  Her spirit, essentially bright and happy, had striven hard with a newform of weariness all day. Not only was she coming into another landthan that which she knew and understood, she was entering another phaseof her life. She had chosen voluntarily, without advice or suggestion;she had had her reasons and they had seemed sufficient; they were stillsufficient. She had chosen wisely; she held to that, her judgmentuntroubled. But that stubbornly recurrent sense that with the oldlandmarks she had abandoned the old life, that both in physical factand in spiritual and mental actuality she was at the threshold of anunguessed, essentially different life, was disquieting. There is nogetting away from an old basic truth that a man's life is so stronglyinfluenced as almost to be moulded by his environment; there wasuneasiness in the thought that here one's existence might grow toresemble his habitat, taking on the gray tone and monotony and bleakbarrenness of this sun-smitten land.

  Yielding a little already to the command laid upon breathing naturehereabouts, she was lying still, her hands lax, her thoughts takingunto themselves something of the character of the listless, songlessbrown bird's flight. She had come here to-day following in thefootsteps of other men and a few women. Her own selection of San Juanwas explicable; the thing to wonder at was what had given the hardihoodto the first men to stop here and make houses and then homes? Latershe would know; the one magic word of the desert lands: water. For SanJuan, standing midway between the railroad and the more tempting landsbeyond the mountai
ns, had found birth because here was a mud-hole forcradle; down under the sand were fortuitous layers of impervious claycupping to hold much sweet water.

  The slow tolling of a bell came billowing out through the silence. Thegirl sat up. It was the Captain. Never, it seemed to her, had sheheard anything so mournful. Ignacio had informed himself concerningall details and had returned to the garden at the Mission. The man wasdead, then. There could be no doubt as one listened to the measuredsorrowing of the big bell.

  She got to her feet and, walking swiftly, moved on, still farther fromSan Juan. The act was without premeditation; her whole being wasinsistent upon it. She wondered if it was the sheepman from LasPalmas; if he had, perhaps, a wife and children. Then she stoppedsuddenly; a new thought had come to her. Strange, inexplicable even,it had not suggested itself before. She wondered who the other manwas, the man who had done the killing. And what had happened to him?Had he fled? Had other men grappled with him, disarmed him, made ofhim a prisoner to answer for what he had done? What had been hismotive, what passion had actuated him Surely not just the greed forgold which the bell-ringer had suggested! What sort of creature was hewho, in cold, calculating blood could murder a man for a handful ofmoney?

  There was nothing to answer unless she could catch the thought ofIgnacio Chavez in the ringing of his bell. She moved on again,hurrying.

  Following the arroyo, she had come to the first of the little, smoothhills, the lomas as the men on the stage had named them. Through themthe dry watercourse wriggled, carrying its green pennons along itsmarge. She went up gentle slopes mantled with bleached grass whichdirectly under her eyes was white in the glare of the sun. But the sunwas very low now, very fierce and red, an angry god going down intemporary defeat, but defiant to the last, filled with threat forto-morrow; at a little distance he tinged the world with his own fieryhue. The far western uplands cut the great disk squarely in two; downslipped the half wafer until it seemed that just a bright signal-firewas kindled upon the ridge. And as that faded from her eyes the slowsobbing of the swinging bell was like a wail for the death of the day.

  She had removed her hat, fancying that already the earth was throwingoff its heat, that a little coolness and freshness was coming down tomeet her from the mountains. She turned her eyes toward them and itwas then, just after the sunset, that she saw a man riding toward her.He was still far off when she first glimpsed him, just cresting one ofthe higher hills, so that for him the sun had not yet set. For shecaught the glint of light flaming back from the silver chasings of hisbridle and from the barrel of the gun across the hollow of his leftarm. She did not believe that he had seen her in the shadow of thecottonwoods.

  If she went on she must meet him presently. She glanced back over hershoulder, noting how far she had come from the town. It was very stillagain; the bell had ceased its complaint; the hoofs of the approachinghorse seemed shod with felt, falling upon felt. She swung about andwalked back toward San Juan.

  A little later she heard the man's voice, calling. Clearly to her,since there was no one else. Why should he call to her? She gave nosign of having heard, but walked on a trifle faster. She sensed thathe was galloping down upon her; still in the loose sand the hoof-beatswere muffled. Then when he called a second time she stopped and turnedand waited.

  A splendid big fellow he was, she noted as he came on, riding asplendid big horse. Man and beast seemed to belong to the desert; hadit not been for the glint of the sun she realized now, she probablywould not have distinguished their distant forms from the land acrosswhich they had moved. The horse was a darkish, dull gray; the man,boots, corduroy breeches, soft shirt, and hat, was garbed in gray or socovered with the dust of travel as to seem so.

  "What in the world are you doing way out here?" he called to her. Andthen having come closer he reined in his horse, stared at her a momentin surprised wonderment, swept off his hat and said, a shade awkwardly:"I beg pardon. I thought you were some one else."

  For her wide hat was again drooping about her face, and he had had justthe form of her and the white skirt and waist to judge by.

  "It is all right," she said lightly. "I imagined that you had made amistake."

  It was something of a victory over herself to have succeeded inspeaking thus carelessly. For there had been the impulse, a temptationalmost, just to stare back at the man as he had stared at her and insilence. Not only was the type physically magnificent; to her it was,like everything about her, new. And that which had held her at firstwas his eyes. For it is not the part of youth to be stern-eyed; andwhile this man could not be more than midway between twenty and thirty,his eyes had already acquired the trick of being hard, steely,suggesting relentlessness, stern and quick. Tall, lean-bodied, withbig calloused hands, as brown as an Indian, hair and eyes wereuncompromisingly black. He belonged to the southwestern wastes.

  These things she noted, and that his face was drawn and weary, thatabout his left hand was tied a handkerchief, hinting at a minor cut,that his horse looked as travel-worn as himself.

  "One doesn't see strangers often around San Juan," he explained. "Asfor a girl . . . Well, I never made a mistake like this before. I'llhave to look out." The muscles of the tired face softened a little,into his eyes came a quick light that was good to see, for an instantmasking their habitual sternness. "If you'll excuse me again, and ifyou don't know a whole lot about this country . . ." He paused tomeasure her sweepingly, seemed satisfied, and concluded: "I wouldn'tgo out all alone like this; especially after sundown. We're a rathertough lot, you know. Good-by."

  He lifted his hat again, loosened his horse's reins, and passed by her.Just as she had expected, just as she had desired. And yet, with hisdusty back turned upon her, she experienced a sudden return of herloneliness. Would she ever look into the eyes of a friend again?Could she ever actually accomplish what she had set out to accomplish;make San Juan a home?

  Her eyes followed him, frankly admiring now; so she might have lookedat any other of nature's triumphant creations. Then, before he hadgone a score of yards, she saw how a little tightening of his horse'sreins had brought the big brute down from a swinging gallop to a deadstandstill. The bell was tolling again.

  Again he was calling to her, again, swinging about, he had ridden toher side. Now his voice like his eyes, was ominously stern.

  "Who is it?" he demanded.

  "I don't know," she told him, marvelling at the look on his face. Hisemotion was purely one of anger, mounting anger that a man was dead?"The man who rings the bells told me that he thought it must be asheepman from Las Palmas. He went to see. . . . I didn't wait. . . ."

  Nor did this man wait now. Again he had wheeled; now he was racingalong the arroyo, urging a tired horse that he might lose nounnecessary handful of moments. And as he went she heard him cursesavagely under his breath and knew that he had forgotten her in thethoughts which had been released by the dull booming of a bell.