The pock-marked Mexican stepped close to Shannon
and took hold of her bridle reins.
“You think,” he said in broken English, “we are damn
fool? If you do not come from Allen, you come for
no good to us. You tell us the truth, damn quick, or you
never go back to tell where you find us and bring policemen
here!”
His tone was ugly and his manner threatening.
There was no harm in telling these men the truth,
though it was doubtful whether they would believe her.
She realized that she was in a predicament from which
it might not be easy to extricate herself. She had told
them that she was alone, and if they suspected her motives
they might easily do away with her. She knew
how lightly the criminal Mexican esteems life—especially
the life of the hated gringo.
“I have come to warn you because a friend of mine is
going to watch for you next Friday night. He does not
know who you are, or what you bring out of the hills.
I do, and so I know that rather than be caught you
might kill him, and I do not want him killed. That is all.”
“How do you know what we bring out of the hills?”
“Allen told me.”
“Allen told you? I do not believe you. Do you know
where Allen is?”
“He is in jail in Los Angeles. I heard him telling a
man in Los Angeles last July.”
“Who is the friend of yours that is going to watch for
us?”
“Mr. Pennington.”
“You have told him about us?”
“I have told you that he knows nothing about you.
All he knows is that some one comes down with burros
from the hills, and that they cut his fence last Friday
night. He wants to catch you and find out what you are
doing.”
“Why have you not told him?”
She hesitated.
“That can make no difference,” she said presently.
“It makes a difference to us. I told you to tell the
truth, or——”
The Mexican raised his rifle that she might guess the
rest.
“I did not want to have to explain how I knew about
you. I did not want Mr. Pennington to know that I knew
such men as Allen.”
“How did you know Allen?”
“That has nothing to do with it at all. I have warned
you so that you can take steps to avoid discovery and
capture. I shall tell no one else about you. Now let me
go.”
She gathered Baldy and tried to rein him about, but
the man clung to her bridle.
“Not so much of a hurry, señorita! Unless I know
how Allen told you so much, I cannot believe that he told
you anything. The police have many ways of learning
things—sometimes they use women. If you are a friend
to Allen, all right. It you are not, you know too damn
much for to be very good for your health. You had
better tell me all the truth, or you shall not ride away
from here—ever!”
“Very well,” she said. “I met Allen in a house in
Hollywood where he sold his ‘snow,’ and I heard him
telling the man there how you disposed of the whisky
that was stolen in New York, brought here to the coast
in a ship, and hidden in the mountains.”
“What is the name of the man in whose house you
met Allen?”
“Crumb.”
The man raised his heavy brows.
“How long since you been there—in that house in
Hollywood?”
“Not since the last of July. I left the house the
same time Allen did.”
“You know how Allen he get in jail?” the Mexican
asked.
The girl saw that a new suspicion had been aroused
in the man, and she judged that the safer plan was to
be perfectly frank.
“I do not know, for I have seen neither Crumb nor
Allen since; but when I read in the paper that he had
been arrested that night, I guessed that Crumb had done
it. I heard Crumb ask him to deliver some snow to a
man in Hollywood. I know that Crumb is a bad man,
and that he was trying to steal your share of the money
from Allen.”
The man thought in silence for several minutes, the
lines of his heavy face evidencing the travail with which
some new idea was being born. Presently he looked
up, the light of cunning gleaming in his evil eyes.
“You go now,” he said. “I know you! Allen tell
me about you a long time ago. You Crumb’s woman,
and your name is Gaza. You will not tell anything about
us to your rich friends the Penningtons—you bet you
won’t!”
The Mexican laughed loudly, winking at his
companions.
Shannon could feel the burning flush that suffused her
face. She closed her eyes in what was almost physical
pain, so terrible did the humiliation torture her pride,
and then came the nausea of disgust. The man had
dropped her reins, and she wheeled Baldy about.
“You will not come Friday night?” she asked, wishing
some assurance that her sacrifice had not been entirely
unavailing.
“Mr. Pennington will not find us Friday night, and
so he will not be shot.”
She rode away then; but there was a vague suspicion
lurking in her mind that there had been a double meaning
in the man’s final words.
Custer Pennington, occupied in the office for a couple
of hours after lunch, had just come from the house, and
was standing on the brow of the hill looking out over
the ranch toward the mountains. His gaze, wandering
idly at first, was suddenly riveted upon a tiny speck
moving downward from the mouth of a distant ravine—a
moving speck which he recognized, even at that distance,
to be a horseman, where no horseman should have been.
For a moment he watched it, and then, returning to the
house, he brought out a pair of binoculars.
Now the speck had disappeared; but he knew that it
was down in the bottom of the basin, hidden by the ridge
above Jackknife Cañon, and he waited for the time when
it would reappear on the crest. For five, ten, fifteen
minutes he watched the spot where the rider should
come into view once more. Then he saw a movement in
the brush and leveled his glasses upon the spot, following
the half seen figure until it emerged into a space clear
of chaparral. Now they were clearly revealed by the
powerful lenses, the horse and its rider—Baldy and
Shannon!
Pennington dropped the glasses at his side, a puzzled
expression on his face, as he tried to find some explanation
of the fact that the binoculars had revealed. From
time to time he caught glimpses of her again as she rode
down the cañon; but when, after a considerable time, she
did not emerge upon the road leading to the house, he
guessed that she had crossed over El Camino Corto. Why
she should do this he could not even conjecture. It was
entirely out of her way, and a hilly trail, while the other
was a wagon road leading almost directly from Sycamore
to her house.
Presently he walked around the house to the north
side of the hill, where he had a view of the valley spreading
to the east and the west and the north. Toward
the west he could see the road that ran above the Evanses’
house all the way to Horse Camp Cañon.
He did not know why he stood there watching for
Shannon. It was none of his affair where she rode, or
when. It seemed strange, though, that she should have
ridden alone into the hills after having refused to ride
with him. It surprised him, and troubled him, too, for
it was the first suggestion that Shannon could commit
even the most trivial act of underhandedness.
After a while he saw her emerge from Horse Camp
Cañon and follow the road to her own place. Custer
ran his fingers through his hair in perplexity. He was
troubled not only because Shannon had ridden without
him, after telling him that she could not ride that afternoon,
but also because of the direction in which she
had ridden—the trail of which he had told her that he
thought it led to the solution of the mystery of the nocturnal
traffic. He had told her that he would not ride it
before Saturday, for fear of arousing the suspicions of
the men he wished to surprise in whatever activity they
might be engaged upon; and within a few hours she
had ridden deliberately up into the mountains on that
very trail.
The more Custer considered the matter, the more perplexed
he became. At last he gave it up in sheer disgust.
Doubtless Shannon would tell him all about it
when he called for her later in the afternoon. He tried
to forget it; but the thing would not be forgotten.
Several times he realized, with surprise, that he was
hurt because she had ridden without him. He tried to
argue that he was not hurt, that it made no difference
to him, that she had a perfect right to ride with or without
him as she saw fit, and that he did not care a straw
one way or the other.
No, it was not that that was troubling him—it was
something else. He didn’t know what it was, but a drink
would straighten it out; so he took a drink. He realized
that it was the first he had had in a week, and almost
decided not to take it; but he changed his mind. After
that he took several more without bothering his conscience
to any appreciable extent. When his conscience
showed signs of life, he reasoned it back to innocuous
desuetude by that unanswerable argument:
“What’s the use?”
By the time he left to call for Shannon he was miserably
happy and happily miserable; yet he showed no
outward sign that he had been drinking, unless it was
that he swung the roadster around the curves of the
driveway leading down the hill a bit more rapidly than
usual.
Shannon was ready and waiting for him. She came
out to the car with a smile—a smile that hid a sad and
frightened heart; and he greeted her with another that
equally belied his inward feelings. As they rode up to
the castle on the hill, he gave her every opportunity to
mention and explain her ride, principally by long silences,
though never by any outward indication that he thought
she had aught to explain. If she did not care to have
him know about it, she should never know from him that
he already knew; but the canker of suspicion was already
gnawing at his heart, and he was realizing, perhaps for
the first time, how very desirable this new friendship
had grown to be.
Again and again he insisted to himself that what she
had done made no difference—that she must have had
some excellent reason. Perhaps she had just wanted
to be alone. He often had experienced a similar longing.
Even when Grace had been there, he had occasionally
wanted to ride off into the hills with nothing but his own
thoughts for company.
Yet, argue as he would, the fact remained that it had
made a difference, and that he was considering Shannon
now in a new light. Just what the change meant he probably
could not have satisfactorily explained, had he tried;
but he did not try. He knew that there was a difference,
and that his heart ached when it should not ache. It made
him angry with himself, with the result that he went to his
room and had another drink.
Shannon, too, felt the difference. She thought that it
was her own guilty conscience, though why she should
feel guilt for having risked so much for his sake she did
not know. Instinctively she was honest, and so to deceive
one whom she loved, even for a good purpose, troubled
her.
Something else troubled her, too. She knew that Custer
had been drinking again, and she recalled what he had said
to her, that morning, of the help she had been to him in
getting away from his habit. She knew too well herself
what it meant to fight for freedom from a settled vice,
and she had been glad to have been instrumental in aiding
him. She had had to fight her own battle alone; she did
not want him to face a similar ordeal.
She wondered why he had been drinking that afternoon.
Could it have been because she had not been able to ride
with him, and thus left alone he had reverted to the old
habit? The girl reproached herself, even though she felt,
after her interview with the Mexicans, that she had undoubtedly
saved Custer’s life.
The Evanses, mother and son, were also at the Penningtons’
for dinner that night. Shannon had noticed that
it was with decreasing frequency that Grace’s name was
mentioned of late. She knew the reason. Letters had
become fewer and fewer from the absent girl. She had
practically ceased writing to Custer. Her letters to Mrs.
Evans were no longer read to the Penningtons, for there
had crept into them a new and unpleasant note that was as
foreign as possible to the girl who had gone away months
before. They showed a certain carelessness and lack of
consideration that had pained them all.
They always asked after the absent girl, but her present
life and her career were no longer discussed, since the
subject brought nothing but sorrow to them all. That she
had been disappointed and disillusioned seemed probable,
since she had obtained only a few minor parts in mediocre
pictures; and now she no longer mentioned her ambition,
and scarcely ever wrote of her work.
At dinner that night Eva was unusually quiet until the
colonel, noticing it, asked if she was ill.
“There!” she cried. “You all make life miserable for
me because I talk too much, and then, when I give you a
rest, you ask if I am ill. What shall I do? If I talk,
I pain you. If I fail to talk, I pain you; but if you must
know, I am too thrilled to talk just now—I am going to be
married!”
“All alone?” inquired Custer.
A sickly purplish hue, threatening crimson complications,
crept from beneath Guy’s collar and enveloped
his entire head. He reached for his water goblet and ran
the handle of his fork up his sleeve. The ensuing disentanglement
added nothing to his equanimity, though it all
but overturned the goblet. Custer was eying him with a
seraphic expression that boded ill.
“What’s the matter, Guy—measles?” he asked with a
beatific smile.
Guy grinned sheepishly, and was about to venture an
explanation when Eva interrupted him. The others at the
table were watching the two with amused smiles.
“You see, momsy,” said Eva, addressing her mother,
“Guy has sold a story. He got a thousand dollars for it—a
thousand!”
“Oh, not a thousand!” expostulated Guy.
“Well, it was nearly a thousand—if it had been three
hundred dollars more it would have been—and so now
that our future is assured we are going to be married. I
hadn’t intended to mention it until Guy had talked with
popsy, but this will be very much nicer, and easier for
Guy.”
Guy looked up appealingly at the colonel.
“You see, sir, I was summing to key you—I mean I
was——”
“You see what it is going to mean to have an author
in the family,” said Custer. “He’s going to talk away
above our heads. We won’t know what he’s talking about
half the time. I don’t know. Do you, Guy?”
“For pity’s sake, Custer, leave the boy alone!” laughed
Mrs. Pennington. “You’re enough to rattle a stone image.
And now, Guy, you know you don’t have to feel embarrassed.
We have all grown accustomed to the idea
that you and Eva would marry, so it is no surprise. It
makes us very happy.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Pennington,” said the boy. “It
wasn’t that it was hard to tell you. It was the way Eva
wanted me to do it—like a book. I was supposed to come
and ask the colonel for her hand in a very formal manner,
and it made me feel foolish, the more I thought of it—and
I have been thinking about it all day. So, you see,
when Eva blurted it out, I thought of my silly speech
and I——”
“It wasn’t a silly speech,” interrupted Eva. “It was
simplimetic gorgeristic. You thought so yourself when
you made Bruce Bellinghame ask Hortense’s father for
her. ‘Mr. Le Claire,’ he said, squaring his manly shoulders,
‘it is with emotions of deepest solemnity and a full
realization of my unworthiness that I approach you upon
this beautiful day in May——’”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Eva, please!” begged Guy.
They were all laughing now, including Eva and Guy.
The tears were rolling down Custer’s cheeks.
“That editor was guilty of grand larceny when he
offered you seven hundred berries for the story. Why,
the gem alone is easily worth a thousand. Adieu, Mark
Twain! Farewell, Bill Nye! You’ve got ’em all nailed
to the post, Guy Thackeray!”
The colonel wiped his eyes.
“I gather,” he said, “that you two children wish to get
married. Do I surmise correctly?”
“Oh, popsy, you’re just wonderful!” exclaimed Eva.
“Yes, how did you guess it, father?” asked Custer.
“Marvelous deductive faculties for an old gentleman,
I’ll say!”
“That will be about all from you, Custer,” admonished
the colonel.
“Any time that I let a chance like this slip!” returned
young Pennington. “Do you think I have forgotten how
those two imps pestered the life out of Grace and me
a few short years ago? Nay, nay!”
“I don’t blame Custer a bit,” said Mrs. Evans. “Guy
and Eva certainly did make life miserable for him and
Grace.”
“That part of it is all right—it is Guy’s affair and
Eva’s; but did you hear him refer to me as an old gentleman?”
They all laughed.
“But you are a gentleman,” insisted Custer.
The colonel, his eyes twinkling, turned to Mrs. Evans.
“Times have changed, Mae, since we were children.
Imagine speaking thus to our fathers!”
“I’m glad they have changed, Custer. It’s terrible to
see children afraid of their parents. It has driven so
many of them away from home.”
“No danger of that here,” said the colonel.
“It is more likely to be the other way around,” suggested
Mrs. Pennington. “In the future we may hear
of parents leaving home because of the exacting tyranny
of their children.”
“My children shall be brought up properly,” announced
Eva, “with proper respect for their elders.”
“Guided by the shining example of their mother,”
said Custer.
“And their Uncle Cutie,” she retorted.
“Come, now,” interrupted the colonel, “let’s hear something
about your plans. When are you going to be
married?”
“Yes,” offered Custer. “Now that the seven hundred
dollars has assured their future, there is no reason why
they shouldn’t be married at once and take a suite at the
Ambassador. I understand they’re as low as thirty-five
hundred a month.”
“Aw, I have more than the seven hundred,” said Guy.
“I’ve been saving up for a long time. We’ll have plenty
to start with.”
Shannon noticed that he flushed just a little as he
made the statement, and she alone knew why he flushed.
It was too bad that Custer’s little sister should start her
married life on money of that sort!
Shannon felt that at heart Guy was a good boy—that
he must have been led into this traffic originally without
any adequate realization of its criminality. Her own misfortune
had made her generously ready to seek excuses
for wrong-doing in others; but she dreaded to think what
it was going to mean to Eva and the other Penningtons if
ever the truth became known. From her knowledge of
the sort of men with whom Guy was involved, she was
inclined to believe that the menace of exposure or blackmail
would hang over him for many years, even if the
former did not materialize in the near future; for she
was confident that if his confederates were discovered
by the authorities, they would immediately involve him,
and would try to put the full burden of responsibility
upon his shoulders.
“I don’t want the financial end of matrimony to worry
either of you,” the colonel was saying. “Guy has chosen
a profession in which it may require years of effort to
produce substantial returns. All I shall ask of my
daughter’s husband is that he shall honestly apply himself
to his work. If you do your best, Guy, you will
succeed, and in the meantime I’ll take care of the
finances.”
“But we don’t want it that way,” said Eva. “We don’t
want to live on charity.”
“Do you think that what I give to my little girl would
be given in a spirit of charity?” the colonel asked.
“Oh, popsy, I know you wouldn’t feel that it was;
but can’t you see how Guy would feel? I want him to be
independent. I’d rather get along with a little, and feel
that he had earned it all.”
“It may take a long time, Eva,” said Custer; “and in
the meantime the best part of your lives would be spent
in worry and scrimping. I know how you feel; but
there’s a way around it that has the backing of established
business methods. Let father finance Guy’s writing
ability, just as inventive genius is sometimes financed.
When Guy succeeds, he can pay back with interest.”
“What a dapper little thought!” exclaimed the girl.
“That would fix everything, wouldn’t it? You radiant
man!”
