Play the Game! Part 24

"_Juan!_" They sprang at him, galvanized into life and vigor at the sight of him. But he stood still, staring at them with a look of scorn and dislike, his arms folded across his chest.

"_Juan_," Mrs. King faltered,--"_no agua_?" It was incredible. He was back, safely back, untouched, not even breathing hard. Where was the water he had risked his life to bring them? The Englishwoman began to cry, childishly, whimpering. "I can't bear it ... I can't bear it ... I wanted it for Rich' ... for Rich'!"

The Indian did not speak, but his scornful, accusing eyes, raking them all, came to rest on Honor, fixing her with pitiless intensity.

The girl was shaking so that she could hardly stand; she caught hold of the back of a tall chair to steady herself. "Juan,--you came out of Senor Don Diego's room?" she whispered.

"_Si, Senorita._" He was watching the dawning light in her face, but the sternness of his own did not soften.

"You didn't go at all," wept Mrs. King, rocking to and fro and wringing her hands. "You didn't go at all!"

"_No, Senora._"

Honor Carmody screamed, a hoa.r.s.e, exultant shout. It was as she had screamed in the old good days when Jimsy King, the ball clutched to his side, tore down the field and went over the line for a touchdown. "Jimsy went! Jimsy went! _Jimsy went!_ It was Jimsy! _Jimsy!_" She flung her arms over her head, swaying unsteadily on her feet. Tears streamed from her eyes and ran down over her white cheeks and into her parched mouth.

In that instant there was room for no fear, no terror; they would come later, frantic, unbearable. Now there was only pride, pride and faith and clean joy. "Jimsy! _Jimsy!_" Her legs gave way beneath her and she slipped to the floor, but she did not cease her hoa.r.s.e and pitiful shouting.

"How could he?" said Carter Van Meter. "It was impossible--in that condition! Honor, he couldn't----"

But Yaqui Juan strode to the little table where the empty decanter stood, stooped, picked up a rough jug of decorative Mexican pottery from an under shelf. Then, pausing until he saw that all their eyes were upon him, he slowly poured its contents back into the decanter. The liquor rose and rose until it reached the exact spot which Carter had pointed out to Honor--the top of the design engraved on the gla.s.s. "_Mira_!"

said the Indian, sternly.

"_G.o.d_," said Carter Van Meter.

"He was acting! He was acting!" wept Mrs. King.

But Jimsy's Skipper sat on the floor, waving her arms, swaying her body like a yell leader, still shouting his name in her cracked voice, and then, crazily, her eyes wide as if she visualized a field, far away, a game, a gallant figure speeding to victory, she sang:

_You can't beat L. A. High!_ _You can't beat L. A. High!_ _Use your team to get up steam_ _But you cant beat L. A. High!_

CHAPTER XVI

The Indian looked at Honor and the bitterness in his eyes melted a little. "_Esta una loca_," he said.

It was quite true. She was a madwoman for the moment. They tried to control her, to calm her, but she did not see or hear them. "Let her alone," said Mrs. King. "At least she is happy, Carter. She'll realize his danger in a minute, poor thing." She turned to Yaqui Juan at the sound of his voice. He told her that he was going out after his young lord. He was going to find Senor Don Diego, alive or dead. He had promised him not to leave the locked room for two hours; he had kept his word as long as he could endure it. Senor Don Diego had had time to come back unless he had been captured. Now he, Yaqui Juan, whom the young master had once saved, would go to him, to bring him back, or to die with him. The solemn, grandiloquent words had nothing of melodrama in them, falling from his grave lips. He took no pains to conceal his deep scorn for them all.

Madeline King thought of her husband, wounded, helpless. "Oh, Juan--must you leave us? If--if something has happened to him it only means your life, too!"

"_Voy_!" said the Indian, "_I go_!" He turned and looked again at Honor, this time with a warming pity in his bronze face. "_I will bring back your man, Senorita_," he said in Spanish. "And this great strong one"--he pierced Carter through with his black gaze--"shall guard you till I come again." Then he smiled and flung at him that stinging Spanish proverb which runs, "In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king!" Then he went out of the house, dropping to his hands and knees, hugging the shadows, creeping along the tunnel of tropic green which led to the ancient well.

Honor stopped her wild singing and shouting then, but she still sat on the floor, striking her hands softly together, her dry lips parted in a smile of utter peace.

"Come, Honor, take this chair!" Carter urged her, bending over her.

"I don't want a chair, Cartie," she said, gently. "I'm just waiting for Jimsy." She looked up and caught the expression on Madeline King's face.

"Oh, you mustn't worry," she said, contentedly. "He'll bring him back.

Yaqui Juan will. He'll bring him back _safe_. Why, what kind of a G.o.d would that be?--To let anything happen to him, _now_?" Her defense was impregnable.

"Let her alone," said Mrs. King again. "She'll realize, soon enough, poor child. Stay with her, Carter. I must go back to my husband." She went away with a backward, pitying glance which yet held understanding.

She knew that danger and death and thirst were smaller things than shame, this wife of a King who had held hard in her day.

Carter sat down and watched her drearily. He wasn't thinking now. He was nothing at all but one burning, choking thirst, one aching resentment ... Jimsy King, who had won, after all ... who had won alive or dead.

Honor was silent for the most part but she was wholly serene. Sometimes she spoke and her speech was harder to hear than her happy stillness.

"You know, Cartie, I can be glad it happened." She seemed to speak more easily now, almost as if her thirst had been slaked; her voice was clearer, steadier. "I should never have known how much I cared. It was easy enough, wasn't it, to look at my ring and talk about 'holding hard'

when there wasn't really anything to hold _for_? I really found out about caring to-night ... what it means. I guess I never really loved him before to-night, Carter." She was not looking at him, hardly talking to him; she seemed rather to be thinking aloud. Even if she had looked him full in the face she would not have realized what she was doing to him; there was only one realization for her now. "I guess I just loved what he _was_--his glorious body and his eyes and the way his hair _will_ wave--and what he could _do_--the winning, the people cheering him. But to-night, when I thought--when I believed the very worst thing in the world of him--when I thought he had failed me--then I found out.

Then I knew I loved--_him_." She leaned her head back against the arm of the chair, and her hands rested, palm upward, in her lap. "It's worth everything that's happened, to know that." She was mercifully still again. Carter thought once that she must be asleep, she was breathing so softly and evenly, but after a long pause she asked, with a shade of difference in her tone, "How long has Juan been gone, Carter?"

He looked at his watch. "Twenty minutes. Perhaps half an hour."

Honor rose to her feet. "Well, then," she said with conviction, "they'll be here soon! Any minute, now."

"They may not come." He could not help saying it.

"Oh, they'll come! They'll come very--" she stopped short at the sound of a shot. "What was that?" she asked, childishly.

"That was a shot," said Carter, watching her face.

"But it wouldn't hurt Jimsy or Juan. They're nearly here! That was far away, wasn't it, Carter?" Still her bright serenity held fear at bay.

"Not very far, Honor." He wanted to see that calm of hers broken up; he wanted cruelly to make her sense the danger.

"But, Cartie," she explained to him, patiently, "you know nothing is going to happen to Jimsy now, when I've just begun really to care for him!" She opened the door and stepped out on the veranda, and he followed her. "See--it's almost morning!" The east was gray and there was a drowsy twittering of birds.

"It's the false dawn," said Carter stubbornly. "Listen--" another shot rang out, then three in quick succession. "I believe they're chasing Juan!"

The Mexican who was on guard held up a hand, commanding them to listen.

They held their breath. Through the soft silence they began to get the sound of running feet, stumbling feet, running with difficulty, and in another moment, up the green lane came Yaqui Juan, bent almost double with the weight of Jimsy King across his back.

"Honor!" Carter tried to catch her. "Come back! You mustn't--Are you crazy?"

But Honor and the Mexican who had been on guard at the steps were running, side by side, to meet them. Yaqui Juan flung a word to the _peon_ and he stood with his gun leveled, covering the path.

"_Mira_!" said the Indian, proudly. "_Senorita_, I have brought back your man!"

"Skipper," cried Jimsy King in a strong voice, "get in the house! Get _in_! I'm all right!"

Then, unaccountably, inconsistently, all the terror she had not suffered before laid hold on her. "Jimsy! You're hurt! You're wounded!"

"Just a cut on the leg, Skipper! That's why I was so slow. It's nothing, I tell you,--get in the house!"

But Honor, running beside them, trying to carry a part of him, kept pace beside them until Yaqui Juan had carried Jimsy into the house and up the stairs and laid him on his own bed.

"There are five canteens," said Jimsy. "Here--one's for you, Skipper.

Take the rest to Mrs. King, Juan. Skipper, drink it. Just a little at first, you know--careful! Don't you hear what I'm saying to you?