The Bells of San Juan Part 13

Of Roderick Norton San Juan saw little through these weeks. He came now and then, twice ate with Virginia and Elmer at Struve's, talked seriously with John Engle, teased Florrie, and went away upon the business which called him elsewhere. Upon one of these visits he told Virginia that Brocky Lane was "on the mend" and would be as good as new in a month; no other reference was made to her ride with him.

But through his visits to San Juan, brief and few though they were, Roderick Norton was enabled to a.s.sure himself with his own eyes that Kid Rickard was still to be found here if required, that Antone, as usual, was behind the Casa Blanca bar; that Jim Galloway was biding his time with no outward show of growing restless or impatient. Tom Cutter, Norton's San Juan deputy, was a man to keep both eyes open, and yet there were times when the sheriff was not content with another man's vision.

Nor did the other towns of the county, scattered widely across the desert, beyond the mountains and throughout the little valleys, see much more of him. If a man wished word with Rod Norton these days his best hope of finding him lay in going out to _el Rancho de las Flores_.

It was Norton's ranch, having been Billy Norton's before him, one of the choice spots of the county bordering Las Cruces Rancho where Brocky Lane was manager and foreman. Beyond the San Juan mountains it lay across the head of one of the most fertile of the neighboring valleys, the Big Water Creek giving it its greenness, its value, and the basis for its name. Here for days at a time the sheriff could in part lay aside the cares of his office, take the reins out of his hired foreman's hands, ride among his cattle and horses, and dream such dreams as came to him.

"One of these days I'll get you, Jim Galloway," he had grown into the habit of musing. "Then they can look for another sheriff and I can do what I want to do."

And his desire had grown very clearly defined to him; it was the old longing of a man who comes into a wilderness such as this, the longing to make two blades of gra.s.s grow where one grew before his coming.

With his water rights a man might work modern magic; far back in the hills he had found the natural site for his storage dams; slightly lower in a nest of hills there would be some day a pygmy lake whose seductive beauty to him who dwells on desert lands calls like the soft beauty of a woman; upon a knoll where now was nothing there would come to be a comfortable, roomy, hospitable ranch-house to displace forever the shacks which housed the men now farther down the slopes; and everywhere, because there was water aplenty, would there be roses and grape-vines and orange-trees. All this when he should get Jim Galloway.

From almost any knoll upon the Rancho de las Flores he could see the crests of Mt. Temple lifted in clear-cut lines against the sky. If he rode with Gaucho, his foreman, among the yearlings, he saw Mt. Temple; if he rode the fifty miles to San Juan he saw the same peaks from the other side. And a hundred times he looked up at them with eyes which were at once impatient and stern; he began to grow angry with Galloway for so long postponing the final issue.

For, though he did not go near the cliff caves, he knew that the rifles still lay there awaiting Jim Galloway's readiness. A man named Bucky Walsh was prospecting for gold upon the slopes of Mt. Temple, a silent, leather-faced little fellow, quick-eyed and resourceful. And, above the discovery of color, it was the supreme business of Bucky Walsh to know what happened upon the cliffs above him. If there were anything to report no man knew better than he how to get out of a horse all there was of speed in him.

In the end Norton called upon the reserves of his patience, saying to himself that if Jim Galloway could bide his time in calmness he could do the same. The easier since he was unshaken in his confidence that the time was coming when he and Galloway would stand face to face while guns talked. Never once did he let himself hope for another ending.

Giving what time he had free to ranch matters at Las Flores the sheriff found other things to occupy him. There was a gamblers' fight one night at the camp at Las Palmas mines, a man badly hurt, an ill-starred bystander dead, the careless gunman a fugitive, headed for the border.

Norton went out after him, shifted saddle from jaded beast to fresh again and again, rode two hundred miles with only the short stops for hastily taken food and water and got his man w.i.l.l.y-nilly a mile below the border. What was more, he made it his personal business that the man was convicted and sentenced to a long term; about San Juan there was no crime less tolerable than that of "shooting wild."

But all this brought him no closer to Jim Galloway; Galloway, meeting him shortly afterward in San Juan, laughed and thanked him for the job.

It appeared that the man whom Norton had brought back to stand trial was not only no friend of the proprietor of the Casa Blanca, but an out-spoken enemy.

"You'll be asking favors of me next, Norton," grinned the big, thick-bodied man. "I'd pay you real money for getting a few like him out of my way. Get me, don't you?" and he pa.s.sed on, his eyes turned tauntingly.

Yes, Norton "got" him. No man in the southwest harbored more bitter ill-will for the lawless than Jim Galloway . . . unless the lawless stood in with him. Aforetime many a hardy, tempestuous spirit had defied the crime-dictator; here of late they were few who hoped to slit throats or cut purses and not pay allegiance to the saloon-keeper of San Juan.

Upon the heels of this affair, however, came another which was destined to bring Roderick Norton to a crisis in his life. Word reached him at Las Flores that a lone prospector in the Red Hills had been robbed of a baking-powder tin of dust and that the prospector, recovering from the blows which had been rained on his head, had identified one of his two a.s.sailants. That one was Vidal Nunez; circ.u.mstances hinted that the other well might be Kid Rickard.

Norton promptly instructed Tom Cutter to find out what he could of Rickard's movements upon the day of the robbery, and himself set out to bring in Vidal Nunez, taking a grim joy in his task when he remembered how Nunez had been the man who, with a glance, had cautioned Antone to hold his tongue after the shooting of Bisbee at the Casa Blanca.

"Here's a man Jim Galloway won't thank me for rounding up," he told himself. "And we are going to see if his arm is long enough to keep Nunez out of the penitentiary."

He went to San Juan, learned that nothing had been seen of the Mexican there, set the machinery of the man hunt in full swing, doubled back through the settlements to the eastward, and for two weeks got nothing but disappointment for his efforts. Nunez had disappeared and none who cared to tell knew where. But Norton kept on doggedly; confident that the man had not had the opportunity to get out of the country, he was equally confident that, soon or late, he would get him. Then came the second meeting with Jim Galloway.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Then came the second meeting with Jim Galloway.]

The two men rode into each other's view on the lonely trail half-way between San Juan and Tecolote, which is to say where the little, barren hills break the monotony of the desert lands some eight or ten miles to the eastward of San Juan. It was late afternoon, and Galloway, riding back toward town, had the sun in his eyes so that he could not have known as soon as did Norton whom he was encountering. But Galloway was not the man to ride anywhere that he was not ready for whatever man he might meet; Norton's eyes, as the two drew nearer on the blistering trail, marked the way Galloway's right hand rested loosely on the cantle of his saddle and very near Galloway's right hip.

Norton, merely eying him sharply, was for pa.s.sing on without a word or a nod. The other, however, jerked in his horse, clearly of a mind for parley.

"Well?" demanded Norton.

"I was just thinking," said Galloway dryly, "what an exceptionally fitting spot we've picked! If I got you or you got me right now n.o.body in the world need ever know who did the trick. We couldn't have found a much likelier place if we'd sailed away to an island in the South Seas."

"I was thinking something of the same kind," returned Norton coolly.

"Have you any curiosity in the matter? If you think you can get your gun first . . . why, then, go to it!"

Galloway eased himself in the saddle.

"If I thought I could beat you to it," he answered tonelessly, "I'd do it. As you know. If I even thought that I'd have an even break with you," he added, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully as they took stock of the sheriff's right hand swinging free at his side and never far from the b.u.t.t of the revolver fitting loosely in his holster, "I'd take the chance. No, you're a shade too lively in the draw for me and I happen to know it."

For a little they sat staring into each other's eyes, the distance of ten steps between them, their right hands idle while their left hands upon twitching reins curbed the impatience of two mettled horses. As was usual their regard was one of equal malevolence, of br.i.m.m.i.n.g, cold hatred. But slowly a new look came into Norton's eyes, a probing, penetrating look of calculation. Galloway was again opening his lips when the sheriff spoke, saying with contemptuous lightness:

"Jim Galloway, you and I have bucked each other for a long time. I guess it's in the cards that one of us will get the other some day.

Why not right now and end the whole d.a.m.ned thing?--When I'm up against a man as I am against you I like to make it my business to know just how much sand has filtered into his make-up. You'd kill me if you had the chance and weren't afraid to do it, wouldn't you?"

"If I had the chance," returned Galloway as coolly, though a spot of color showed under the thick tan of his cheek. "And I'll get it some day."

"If you've got the sand," said Norton, "you don't have to wait!"

"What do you mean?" snapped Galloway sharply.

Norton's answer lay in a gesture. Always keeping such a rein on his horse that he faced Galloway and kept him at his right, he lifted the hand which had been hanging close to his gun. Slowly, inch by inch, his eyes hard and watchful upon Galloway's eyes, he raised his hand.

Understanding leaped into Galloway's prominent eyes; it seemed that he had stopped breathing; surely the hairy fingers upon the cantle of his saddle had separated a little, his hand growing to resemble a tarantula preparing for its brief spring.

Steadily, slowly, the sheriff's hand rose in the air, brought upward and outward in an arc as his arm was held stiff, as high as his shoulder now, now at last lifted high above his head. And all of the time his eyes rested bright and hard and watchful upon Jim Galloway's, filled at once with challenge and recklessness . . . and certainty of himself.

Galloway's right hand had stirred the slight fraction of an inch, his fingers were rigid and still stood apart. As he sat, twisted about in his saddle, his hand had about seven inches to travel to find the gun in his hip pocket. Since, when they first met, he had thrown his big body to one side, his left boot loose in its stirrup while his weight rested upon his right leg, his gun pocket was clear of the saddle, to be reached in a flash.

"You'll never get another chance like this, Galloway," said Norton crisply. "I'd say, at a guess, that my hand has about eight times as far to travel as yours. You wanted an even break; you've got more than that. But you'll never get more than one shot. Now, it's up to you."

"Before we start anything," began Galloway. But Norton cut him short.

"I am not fool enough to hold my hand up like this until the blood runs out of my fingers. You've got your chance; take it or leave it, but don't ask for half an hour's option on it."

Swift changing lights were in Galloway's eyes. But his thoughts were not to be read. That he was tempted by his opportunity was clear; that he understood the full sense underlying the words, "You'll never get more than one shot," was equally obvious. That shot, if it were not to be his last act in this world, must be the accurate result of one lightning gesture; his hand must find his gun, close about the grip, draw, and fire with the one absolutely certain movement. For the look in Rod Norton's eyes was for any man to read.

Jim Galloway was not a coward and Rod Norton knew it. He was essentially a gambler whose business in life was to take chances. But he was of that type of gambler who plays not for the love of the game but to win; who sets a cool brain to study each hand before he lays his bet; who gauges the strength of that hand not alone upon its intrinsic value but upon a shrewd guess at the value of the cards out against it.

At that moment he wanted, more than he wanted anything else in the wide scope of his unleashed desires, to kill Rod Norton; he balanced that fact with the other fact that less than anything in the world did he want to be killed himself. The issue was clear cut.

While a watch might have ticked ten times neither man moved. During that brief time Galloway's jaw muscles corded, his face went a little white with the strain put upon him. The restive horses, tossing their heads, making merry music with jingling bridle chains, might have galloped a moment ago from an old book of fairy-tales, each carrying a man bewitched, turned to stone.

"If you've got the sand!" Norton taunted him, his blood running hot with the fierce wish to have done with sidestepping and procrastination. "If you've got the sand, Jim Galloway!"

"It's better than an even break that I could get you," said Galloway at last. "And, at that, it's an even break or nearly so, that as you slipped out of the saddle you'd get me, too. . . . You take the pot this time, Norton; I'm not betting." Shifting his hand he laid it loosely upon the horn of his saddle. As he did so his chest inflated deeply to a long breath.

Norton's uplifted hand came down swiftly, his thumb catching in his belt. There was a contemptuous glitter in his eyes.

"After this," he said bluntly, "you'll always know and I'll always know that you are afraid. I make it a part of my business not to under-estimate the man I go out to get; I think I have overestimated you."

For a moment Galloway seemed not to have heard as he stared away through the gray distances. When he brought his eyes back to Norton's they were speculative.

"Men like you and me ought to understand each other and not make any mistakes," he said, speaking slowly. "I have just begun to imagine lately that I have been doping you up wrong all the time. Now I've got two propositions to make you; you can take either or neither."

"It will probably be neither; what are they? I've got a day's ride ahead of me."