Steve Yeager Part 28

"Pedro Cabenza, senor," replied the owner of that name. "It is so hot in the stable. So I bring my blankets here and sleep."

"Hmp!" Harrison took time for reflection. "Know where I put up?"

"Si, senor."

The prizefighter gave him a dollar. "Stay here. Keep an eye on that lighted window upstairs. If anything happens--if you hear a noise--if a woman screams, come and knock me up right away. Understand?"

The docile Cabenza repeated his instructions like a parrot.

"Good enough," Harrison nodded. "I'll give you another dollar when you come. But don't wake me for nothing."

"No, senor."

"And you'd better keep your mouth shut unless you want your head beat off," advised the white man as he left.

The one who had given his name as Cabenza grinned to himself. He was now Harrison's hired watcher. Both of them were in league to frustrate any deviltry on the part of Pasquale. He wondered what the prizefighter would give to know that he had his enemy so wholly in his power, that he had only to lay hands on him and cry out to doom him to a painful and a violent death.

Yeager dozed and wakened and dozed again. Always when he looked the light was still burning. Toward morning he saw the figure of Ruth in the window. When she turned away the light went out. He judged she had put her anxieties from her and given herself to sleep at last. But not until the camp began to stir with the renewal of life for another day did he leave his post and return to the stable.

During the morning he slept under a cottonwood and made up arrears of rest lost while on guard. About noon Harrison came down the street and stopped at sight of him. The man was livid with anger. Yeager could guess the reason. He had spent a stormy ten minutes with old Pasquale demanding his rights and had issued from the encounter without profit.

From the place where Steve was sitting he had heard the high, excited voices. It had occurred to him that the protest of Harrison had gone about as far as it could be safely carried, for Gabriel was both a ruthless and a hot-tempered despot.

Harrison sat down sullenly without speaking and stared straight in front of him. He was boiling with impotent fury. Pasquale had the whip hand and meant to carry things his own way. Of that he no longer had any doubt. In bringing Ruth to Noche Buena he had made a great mistake.

"Do you want to make some money, you--what's your name?" he presently rasped out.

Yeager answered with the universal formula of the land. "Si, senor. And my name is Cabenza--Pedro Cabenza."

The prizefighter glanced warily around, then lowered his voice. "I mean a lot of money--twenty dollars, maybe."

"Gold?" asked the peon, wide-eyed.

"Gold. How far would you go to earn that much?"

"A long way, senor."

Harrison caught him by the wrist with a grip that drove the blood back.

"Listen, Cabenza. _Would you go as far as the camp of Garcia Farrugia?_"

The close-gripped, salient jaw was thrust forward. Black eyes blazed from a set, snarling face.

So, after all, the man was trafficking with the Federal governor all the time just as he was with the Const.i.tutionalists. Yeager had once or twice suspected as much.

"To the camp of Governor Farrugia," gasped Cabenza. "But--what for, senor?"

"To carry him a letter. Never mind what for. You will get your pay. Is it not enough?"

"And--Pasquale?"

"Need never know. You can slip away this afternoon and be back by to-morrow night."

Cabenza shook his head regretfully. "No. I am one of the horse wranglers. My boss would miss me if I was not here. I cannot go."

The other man swore. At the same time he recognized the argument as effective. He must find a messenger who could absent himself without stirring up questions.

"Then keep your mouth clamped," ordered Harrison. "I may be able to use you here. Anyhow, I want you to be ready to help if I need you."

He slipped a dollar into the brown palm of the peon and left him.

Steve looked after him with narrowed eyes. "Mr. Harrison is liable to b.u.mp into trouble if he don't look out. He's gone crazy with the heat, looks like. First thing, he'll pick on the wrong greaser and Mr.

Messenger will take the letter to Pasquale instead of Farrugia. That's about what'll happen."

Something else happened first, however, that distracted the attention of Mr. Yeager, alias Cabenza, from this regrettable possibility. A man rode into camp, followed by a Mexican leading a pack-horse. The first rider was straight, tall, and wide-shouldered; also he was deep-chested and lean-loined, forty-five or thereabout, and had "Texan" written all over his weather-beaten face and costume. At sight of him Steve gave a silent whoop of joy. A white man had come to Noche Buena, a Texan (he was ready to swear), and he wore his big serviceable six-guns low. Also, he carried on his face and in his bearing the look of reckless competence that comes only from death faced in the open fearlessly and often.

Inside of five minutes Cabenza had gathered information as follows: Adam Holcomb was a soldier of fortune who had fought all over South America and Mexico. During the Spanish War he had been a Rough Rider in Cuba and later had been a volunteer officer in the Philippines. The army routine had no attraction for him. What he liked was actual fighting. So the outbreak of the Revolution had drawn him across the border, where he had done much to lick the Const.i.tutionalist troops into shape. Now he had come to Noche Buena to teach the artillery of the Legion how to shoot straight, after which they would all march south and take the great city with the golden gates. Personally this Gringo was a devil, of course, but Pasquale was a prince of devils whose business it was to keep all lesser ones in order. So, in the Spanish equivalent of our American slang, they should worry. Thus a comrade explained the Texan and his presence to Pedro.

Cabenza contrived to be in the way when someone was wanted to fill the water-jug of Holcomb. Ochampa, who for the moment had charge of the artillery officer, swooped down upon the peon and put him temporarily at the service of his guest to fetch and carry at his orders. So Pedro unpacked the belongings of the American officer and prepared what had to serve as the subst.i.tute for a bath. He was so adept at this that the captain privately decided to requisition him for his servant.

Having finished this and laid out towels, Cabenza brushed the boots of the captain outside while that gentleman splashed within the cabin. He chose the time while he was arranging the shaving-outfit on the table to convey a piece of information to Holcomb.

"What's that? An American woman--held captive at his house by Pasquale,"

repeated the soldier of fortune, astonished.

"A girl, not a woman. About eighteen, maybe," supplemented Cabenza, in Mexican, of course.

"A woman from the street, I reckon. And if you look into it you'll find she's here of her own free will."

Steve was now stropping a razor. His back was toward the officer, but without turning he could see him by looking in the gla.s.s.

"You've got the wrong steer, captain. She's as straight a girl as ever lived," answered Yeager in perfectly good English.

Holcomb sat up straight. "Turn round, my man," he ordered crisply.

The range-rider did as he was told. The light, blue-gray eyes of the officer bored into his.

"You're no Mexican," charged the Texan.

"No. Arizona is where I hang up my hat."

"What are you, then? A spy?"

"I reckon, maybeso." Steve admitted the thrust lightly. "Got time to hear all about it, captain?"

"Go ahead."

The range-rider told it, the whole story, so far as it could be related by him. Such details as his modesty omitted Holcomb's imagination was easily able to supply.

The Texan paced up and down the room with the long, light, military stride.

"And you say Pasquale has been with her all day--that he ate lunch with her and is riding with her now?"