Jean of the Lazy A Part 20

But it just shows how great minds run in the same channel; and how, without suspecting one another, these two started at the same time upon the same quest.

Jean stared out over the barrenness that was not like the barrenness of Montana, and tried not to think that perhaps Art Osgood had by this time drifted on into obscurity. Still, if he had drifted on, surely she could trace him, since he had been serving on the staff of a general and should therefore be pretty well known. What she really hated most to think of was the possibility that he might have been killed. They did get killed, sometimes, down there where there was so much fighting going on all the time.

When the shadows of the giant cactus stretched mutilated hands across the desert sand, and she believed that Nogales was near, Jean carried her suit-case to the cramped dressing-room and took out her six-shooter and buckled it around her. Then she pulled her coat down over it with a good deal of twisting and turning before the dirty mirror to see that it looked all right, and not in the least as though a perfect lady was packing a gun.

She went back and dipped fastidious fingers into the box of chocolates, and settled herself to nibble candy and wait for what might come. She felt very calm and self-possessed and sure of herself. Her only fear was that Art Osgood might have been killed, and his lips closed for all time. So they rattled away through the barrenness and drew near to Nogales.

Casa del Sonora, whither she went, was an old, two-story structure of the truly Spanish type, and it was kept by a huge, blubbery creature with piggish eyes and a bloated, purple countenance and the palsy. As much of him as appeared to be human appeared to be Irish; and Jean, after the first qualm of repulsion, when she faced him over the hotel register, detected a certain kindly solicitude in his manner, and was rea.s.sured.

So far, everything had run smoothly, like a well-staged play. Absurdly simple, utterly devoid of any element of danger, any vexatious obstacle to the immediate achievement of her purpose! But Jean was not thrown off her guard because of the smoothness of the trail.

The trip from Tucson had been terribly tiresome; she was weary in every fibre, it seemed to her. But for all that she intended, sometime that evening, to meet Art Osgood if he were in town. She intended to take him with her on the train that left the next morning. She thought it would be a good idea to rest now, and to proceed deliberately, lest she frustrate all her plans by over-eagerness.

Perhaps she slept a little while she lay upon the bed and schooled herself to calmness. A band, somewhere, playing a pulsing Spanish air, brought her to her feet. She went to the window and looked out, and saw that the street lay cool and sunless with the coming of dusk.

From the American customhouse just on the opposite corner came Lite Avery, stalking leisurely along in his high-heeled riding-boots. Jean drew back with a little flutter of the pulse and watched him, wondering how he came to be in Nogales. She had last seen him boarding a car that would take him out to the Great Western Studio; and now, here he was, sauntering across the street as if he lived here. It was like finding his bed up in the loft and knowing all at once that he had been keeping watch all the while, thinking of her welfare and never giving her the least hint of it. That at least was understandable. But to her there was something uncanny about his being here in Nogales. When he was gone, she stepped out through the open window to the veranda that ran the whole length of the hotel, and looked across the street into Mexico.

She was, she decided critically, about fifteen feet from the boundary line. Just across the street fluttered the Mexican flag from the Mexican customhouse. A Mexican guard lounged against the wall, his swarthy face mask-like in its calm. While she leaned over the railing and stared curiously at that part of the street which was another country, from the hills away to the west, where were camped soldiers,--the American soldiers,--who prevented the war from slopping over the line now and then into Arizona, came the clear notes of a bugle held close-pressed against the lips of a United States soldier in snug-fitting khaki. The boom of the sundown salute followed immediately after. In the street below her, Mexicans and Americans mingled amiably and sauntered here and there, killing time during that bored interval between eating and the evening's amus.e.m.e.nt.

Just beyond the Mexican boundary, the door of a long, adobe cantina was flung open, and a group of men came out and paused as if they were wondering what they should do next, and where they should go. Jean looked them over curiously. Mexicans they were not, though they had some of the dress which belonged on that side of the boundary.

Americans they were; one knew by the set of their shoulders, by the little traits of race which have nothing to do with complexion or speech.

Jean caught her breath and leaned forward. There was Art Osgood, standing with his back toward her and with one palm spread upon his hip in the att.i.tude she knew so well. If only he would turn! Should she run down the stairs and go over there and march him across the line at the muzzle of her revolver? The idea repelled her, now that she had actually come to the point of action.

Jean, now that the crisis had arrived, used her woman's wile, rather than the harsher but perhaps less effective weapons of a man.

"Oh, Art!" she called, just exactly as she would have called to him on the range, in Montana "h.e.l.lo, Art!"

Art Osgood wheeled and sent a startled, seeking glance up at the veranda; saw her and knew who it was that had called him, and lifted his hat in the gesture that she knew so well. Jean's fingers were close to her gun, though she was not conscious of it, or of the strained, tense muscles that waited the next move.

Art, contrary to her expectations, did the most natural thing in the world. He grinned and came hurrying toward her with the long, eager steps of one who goes to greet a friend after an absence that makes of that meeting an event. Jean watched him cross the street. She waited, dazed by the instant success of her ruse, while he disappeared under the veranda. She heard his feet upon the stairs. She heard him come striding down the hall to the gla.s.s-paneled door. She saw him coming toward her, still grinning in his joy at the meeting.

"Jean Douglas! By all that's lucky!" he was exclaiming. "Where in the world did you light down from?" He came to a stop directly in front of her, and held out his hand in unsuspecting friendship.

CHAPTER XXII

JEAN MEETS ONE CRISIS AND CONFRONTS ANOTHER

"Well, say! This is like seeing you walk out of that picture that's running at the Teatro Palacia. You sure are making a hit with those moving-pictures; made me feel like I'd met somebody from home to stroll in there and see you and Lite come riding up, large as life. How is Lite, anyway?"

If Art Osgood felt any embarra.s.sment over meeting her, he certainly gave no sign of it. He sat down on the railing, pushed back his hat, and looked as though he was preparing for a real soul-feast of reminiscent gossip. "Just get in?" he asked, by way of opening wider the channel of talk. He lighted a cigarette and flipped the match down into the street. "I've been here three or four months. I'm part of the Mexican revolution, though I don't reckon I look it. We been keeping things pretty well stirred up, down this way. You looking for picture dope? Lubin folks are copping all kinds of good stuff here.

You ain't with them, are you?"

Jean braced herself against slipping into easy conversation with this man who seemed so friendly and unsuspicious and so conscience-free.

Killing a man, she thought, evidently did not seem to him a matter of any moment; perhaps because he had since then become a professional killer of men. After planning exactly how she should meet any contingency that might arise, she found herself baffled. She had not expected to meet this att.i.tude. She was not prepared to meet it. She had taken it for granted that Art Osgood would shun a meeting; that she would have to force him to face her. And here he was, sitting on the porch rail and swinging one spurred and booted foot, smiling at her and talking, in high spirits over the meeting--or a genius at acting. She eyed him uncertainly, trying to adjust herself to this emergency.

Art came to a pause and looked at her inquiringly. "What's the matter?"

he demanded. "You called me up here--and I sure was tickled to death to come, all right!--and now you stand there looking like I was a kid that had been caught whispering, and must be kept after school. I know the symptoms, believe me! You're sore about something I've said. What, don't you like to have anybody talk about you being a movie-queen? You sure are all of that. You've got a license to be proud of yourself.

Or maybe you didn't know you was speaking to a Mexican soldier, or something like that." He made a move to rise. "Ex-cuse ME, if I've said something I hadn't ought. I'll beat it, while the beating's good."

"No, you won't. You'll stay right where you are." His frank acceptance of her hostile att.i.tude steadied Jean. "Do you think I came all the way down here just to say h.e.l.lo?"

"Search me." Art studied her curiously. "I never could keep track of what you thought and what you meant, and I guess you haven't grown any easier to read since I saw you last. I'll be darned if I know what you came for; but it's a cinch you didn't come just to be riding on the cars."

"No," drawled Jean, watching him. "I didn't. I came after you."

Art Osgood stared, while his cheeks darkened with the flush of confusion. He laughed a little. "I sure wish that was the truth," he said. "Jean, you never would have to go very far after any man with two eyes in his head. Don't rub it in."

"I did," said Jean calmly. "I came after you. I'd have found you if I had to hunt all through Mexico and fight both armies for you."

"Jean!" There was a queer, pleading note in Art's voice. "I wish I could believe that, but I can't. I ain't a fool."

"Yes, you are." Jean contradicted him pitilessly. "You were a fool when you thought you could go away and no one think you knew anything at all about--Johnny Croft."

Art's fingers had been picking at a loose splinter on the wooden rail whereon he sat. He looked down at it, jerked it loose with a sharp twist, and began snapping off little bits with his thumb and forefinger. In a minute he looked up at Jean, and his eyes were different. They were not hostile; they were merely cold and watchful and questioning.

"Well?"

"Well, somebody did think so. I've thought so for three years, and so I'm here." Jean found that her breath was coming fast, and that as she leaned back against a post and gripped the rail on either side, her arms were quivering like the legs of a frightened horse. Still, her voice had sounded calm enough.

Art Osgood sat with his shoulders drooped forward a little, and painstakingly snipped off tiny bits of the splinter. After a short silence, he turned his head and looked at her again.

"I shouldn't think you'd want to stir up that trouble after all this while," he said. "But women are queer. I can't see, myself, why you'd want to bother hunting me up on account of--that."

Jean weighed his words, his look, his manner, and got no clue at all to what was going on back of his eyes. On the surface, he was just a tanned, fairly good-looking young man who has been reluctantly drawn into an unpleasant subject.

"Well, I did consider it worth while bothering to hunt you up," she told him flatly. "If you don't think it's important, you at least won't object to going back with me?"

Again his glance went to her face, plainly startled. "Go back with you?" he repeated. "What for?"

"Well--" Jean still had some trouble with her breath and to keep her quiet, smooth drawl, "let's make it a woman's reason. Because."

Art's face settled to a certain hardness that still was not hostile.

"Becauses don't go," he said. "Not with a girl like you; they might with some. What do you want me to go back for?"

"Well, I want you to go because I want to clear things up, about Johnny Croft. It's time--it was cleared up."

Art regarded her fixedly. "Well, I don't see yet what's back of that first BECAUSE," he sparred. "There's nothing I can do to clear up anything."

"Art, don't lie to me about it. I know--"

"What do you know?" Art's eyes never left her face, now. They seemed to be boring into her brain. Jean began to feel a certain confusion.

To be sure, she had never had any experience whatever with fugitive murderers; but no one would ever expect one to act like this. A little more, she thought resentfully, and he would be making her feel as if she were the guilty person. She straightened herself and stared back at him.

"I know you left because you--you didn't want to stay and face-things.

I--I have felt as if I could kill you, almost, for what you have done.