Port O' Gold Part 7

"Let me go!" she demanded.

"I have brought the parson," said McTurpin. "We can be married at once."

"I--I--let us wait a little," stammered Inez.

"Why?" the gambler asked suspiciously. "Where were you going?"

"Nowhere," she evaded, "for a walk--"

"Well, you can walk back to the hotel, my lady," said McTurpin. "I have little time to waste. And there's Benito to consider," he concluded.

Suddenly he put an arm about her waist and kissed her. Inez thought of her brother and tried to submit. But she could not repress a little cry of aversion, of fear. The bearded man stepped forward. "Hold up a bit, partner," he drawled. "This doesn't look quite regular. Don't you wish to marry him, young lady?"

"Of course she does," McTurpin bl.u.s.tered. "She rode all the way in from her mother's ranch to be my wife." He glared at Inez. "Isn't it true?"

he flung at her. "Tell him."

She nodded her head miserably. But the stranger was not satisfied. "Let go of her," he said, and when McTurpin tailed to heed the order, sinewy fingers on the gambler's wrist enforced it.

"Now, tell me, Miss, what's wrong?" the bearded one invited. "Has this fellow some hold on you? Is he forcing you into this marriage?"

Again the girl nodded dumbly.

"She lies," said McTurpin, venomously, but the words were scarcely out of his mouth before the stranger's fist drove them back. McTurpin staggered. "d.a.m.n you!" he shouted, "I teach you to meddle between a man and his woman."

Inez saw something gleam in his hand as the two men sprang upon each other. She heard another blow, a groan. Screaming, she fled uphill toward the custom house.

CHAPTER X

HULL "CAPITULATES"

Like a startled deer, Inez Windham fled from McTurpin and the stranger, her little, high-heeled slippers sinking unheeded into the horse-trodden mire of Portsmouth Square, her silk skirt spattered and soiled; her hair, freed from the protecting mantilla, blowing in the searching trade wind. Thus, as Commander Hull sat upon the custom house veranda, reading the latest dispatch from Captain Ward, she burst upon him--a flushed, disheveled, lovely vision with fear-stricken eyes.

"Senor," she panted, "Senor Commandante ... I must speak with you at once!"

Hull rose. "My dear young lady"--he regarded her with patent consternation--"my dear young lady ... w-what is wrong?"

She was painfully aware of her bedraggled state, the whirlwind lack of ceremony with which she had propelled herself into his presence.

Suddenly words failed her, she was conscious that an arm stretched toward her as she swayed. Next she lay upon a couch in an inner chamber, the commander, in his blue-and-gold-braid stiffness bending over her, gravely anxious.

She rose at once, ignoring his protesting gesture.

"I--I fainted?" she asked perplexedly. Hull nodded. "Something excited you. A fight in the street below. A man was stabbed--"

"Oh!" The white face of the bearded stranger sprang into her memory, "Is he dead?"

"No, but badly hurt, I fancy," said the Commander. "They have taken him to the City Hotel."

Desperately, she forced herself to speak. "I have come, senor, to ask a pardon for my brother. He is very dear to me--and to my mother"--she clasped her hands and held them toward him supplicatingly. "Senor, if Benito should be captured--you will have mercy?"

The commander regarded her with puzzled interest. "Who is Benito, little one?"

"His name is Windham. My father was a gring--Americano, Commandante."

Hull frowned. "An American ... fighting against his country?" he said sharply.

"Ah, sir"--the girl came closer in her earnestness--"he does not fight against the United States ... only against robbers who would hide behind its flag." In her tone there was the outraged indignation of a suffering people. "Horse thieves, cattle robbers."

"Hush," said Hull, "you must not speak thus of American officials. Their seizures, I am told, were unavoidable--for military needs alone."

"You have never heard our side," the girl spoke bitterly. "Was it military need that filched two hundred of our blooded horses from the ranches? Was it military need that robbed my ailing mother of her pet, the mare Diablo? Was it military need that gave our finest steeds to your Alcalde for his pleasure, that enabled half a dozen false officials to recruit their stables from our caponeras and sell horses in the open market?" Her eyes blazed. "Senor, it was tyranny and theft, no less. Had I been a man, like Benito, I, too, should have ridden with Sanchez."

"Can you prove these things?" asked the Commander, sternly.

"Si, senor," said Inez quickly. "It is well known hereabouts. Do not take my word," she smiled, "I am a woman--a Spaniard, on my mother's side. Ask your own countrymen--Samuel Brannan, Nathan Spear, William Leidesdorff."

Hull pulled at his chin reflectively. "Something of this sort I have already heard," he said, "but I believed it idle gossip.... If your brother had come to me, instead of riding with the enemy--"

"He is a youth, hot-blooded and impulsive, Senor Commandante." Swiftly, and to Hull's intense embarra.s.sment, she knelt before him. "We love him so: my mother, who is ill, and I," she pleaded. "He is all we have....

Ah, senor, you will spare him--our Benito!"

"Get up," said Hull a trifle brusquely. His tone, too, shook a little.

"Confound it, girl, I'm not a murderer." He forced a smile. "If my men haven't shot the young scoundrel you may have him back."

"And that," he added, as the girl rose with a shining rapture in her eyes, "may be tomorrow." He picked up a paper from the desk and regarded it thoughtfully. "There is truce at present. Sanchez will surrender if I give my word that there shall be no further raids."

"And--you will do this, Commandante?" the girl asked, breathlessly.

"I--will consult with Brannan, Leidesdorff and Spear, as you suggested,"

Hull replied. But his eyes were kind. The Senorita Inez had her answer.

Impetuously, her arms went around his neck. An instant later, dazed, a little red, a moist spot on his cheek and a lingering fragrance clinging subtly like the touch of vanished arms, Hull watched her flying heels upon the muddy square.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!" he said, explosively.

In the room which had been Inez' whilom prison--and which proved to be the only one available in the City Hotel, Adrian Stanley lay tossing and muttering. The woman who sat at his bedside watched anxiously each movement of his lips, listening eagerly to catch the incoherent, whispered words. For a time she could make of them no intelligent meaning. But now, after a long and quiet interval, he began to ask questions, though his eyes were still closed. "Am I going to die?"

"No," said Inez, for it was she, "you've lost a lot of blood, but the doctor says there's small danger."

The bearded face looked up half quizzically. "Are you glad?"

"Oh ... yes," said Inez, with a quick-taken respiration.

"Then it's all right," the patient murmured sleepily. His eyes closed.

Inez' color heightened as she watched him. What had he meant, she wondered, and decided that his brain was not quite clear. But, somehow, this was not the explanation she desired.

Presently Dr. Elbert Jones came in, cheering her with his breezy, jovial drawl.