The Song of the Wolf Part 13

"And it wants to retain you, Mr. Brewster, as counsel in event of my failure to accomplish the rest.i.tution of Mr. Carter's property,"

supplemented Dougla.s.s quickly. "You see, I've got to fight the devil with fire. If I lose out you have full authority to thrash it out in your own way. But I play my hand first."

"That's what," said Red laconically. "An' I'll keep cases on thu game."

At the request of Dougla.s.s the attorney drew up the correct form of a bill of sale with notorial attest; he refused the fee tendered him, saying: "I am glad to be of service to Bob Carter's boy. And if at any time you need my aid, professional or otherwise, command me without hesitation."

"Ken," said McVey oracularly, as they mounted their horses. "We're goin'

to win out. We've seed a honest law-sharp an' our systems hev stood thu shock; an' we ain't been parted from our wealth none. I think thu Lawd took thet way o' breakin' thu news to us, gentle like, thet Fawtune is goin' to smile on us. Betcha we have pie an' ice cream feh suppah."

He was still more optimistic when he came in, an hour or so after supper was over, to where Dougla.s.s sat thoughtfully smoking a cigar. His manner was even jubilant as he struck a match and sucked vivaciously at the proffered weed. "Matlock will be in town to-morrow; he was here yiste'day an' him an' Bart has gone out huntin'; so they say; like as not up ter sum lowdown meanness er 'tother; an' they're aixpected back to-morrer evenin'. Luck is suttinly comin' ouah way.

"I thought I'd go projeckin' around a leetle so as to kinda size up thu layout," he explained, "an' get a line on thu fo'thcomin' festivities.

So I nacherally draps in to thu Palace an' thu barkeep gits loquacious.

Was yuh thinkin' o' drinkin' a sarsaperiller with me?"

Time hanging heavy on their hands, the two cowpunchers strolled up the street in the search of diversion; at the Shoo Fly dance-hall the revelry seemed most promising and they went in to investigate. The usual quota of frowsy, bedraggled women were in evidence, wearily swinging in the eccentric mazes of a putative waltz or plying their blowsy victims with the stuff that had already stolen their souls and later would steal away what besotted senses they still held in precarious possession. It was an old experience to both of them and they looked listlessly about with the disinterestedness of bored familiarity.

Time was when these young men would have entered into the orgies with a certain reckless aplomb; there were a few girls among the throng who had not yet lost all their pristine comeliness, who still retained some few pitiful shreds of the femininity that should have made of them the loving wives and good mothers that Nature's G.o.d creatively intended; but to-night none of them looked good to these two not usually over-discriminative animals, intrepidly fresh as they were from pasture.

The whole thing jarred unaccountably upon both of them; Dougla.s.s looking disgustedly at the tawdry surroundings, at the flushed faces and professionally displayed charms, felt a great irritation at himself for coming here. Unconsciously he was comparing this sickening meretriciousness with the delightful reserve and dignity of another environment, and he felt the quick shame of a schoolboy detected in his first illicit adventure.

Red grunted telepathically: "Gawd, Ken, this yeah's a punk layout. Let's go out wheah it's clean." They settled their score and were in the act of rising when, McVey touched Dougla.s.s on the arm. A woman had just entered by a side door and was looking at them with a strange intentness.

"That's Coogan's woman," said Red, in a low voice; "Stunner, ain't she!

Wonder he stands fer her comin' here."

The woman came forward with a curious snake-like quickness and seated herself at the adjoining table. She was a very striking creature, evidently one of the higher cla.s.s Mexicans occasionally still to be met with on the Colorado frontier. She was not more than twenty-four or five years old, with all the color and voluptuousness of the younger women of her race. Her hair and eyes were of a peculiar blue-black color, her complexion ordinarily very light olive with carmine cheek tints but now exhibiting a pallor that only intensified the gleam in her big eyes. She was neither painted nor powdered, as both men noted approvingly, and was finely gowned in a modest, though expensive style. The only inharmonious thing in her entourage was the blaze of the diamonds with which she was lavishly bedecked.

She ordered brandy, and when it was brought drank it with reckless haste and called for more. Twice was her gla.s.s refilled, and the fiery stimulant flushed her face. At the third serving she paid the waiter and shudderingly pushed the gla.s.s away with every evidence of disgust.

To Dougla.s.s, watching her out of the corner of his eye, for somehow, her manner did not invite the leer customary on such occasions, she turned suddenly:

"You are the Senor Dougla.s.s of Rancho C Bar?"

Her voice, though very musical and low-pitched, was tensely strained. As it was apparent that her English, though correct, was labored, he answered, hat in hand, in her own tongue:

"_A las pies de usted, Senorita._" (At your feet, Miss.)

She smiled gratefully, as much at his courteous consideration as in her relief at his knowledge of her tongue and its social ethics.

"_Bese usted las manos, Senor._" (My hands for your kisses, Sir.)

Red looked his appreciation of her favor; they were very pretty hands, and while he was not "up" in the flowery etiquette of sunny Spain, he understood its language indifferently well. "Ken's sh.o.r.e thu luckiest devil on yearth!" he muttered under his breath, enviously. It soon developed, however, that his hastily-formed conclusions were at fault.

As he in duty bound slowly rose to his feet with a studious, "Well, I must be goin'--see you lateh," she protestingly laid her hand on his arm.

"But no, Senor. It is that I wish to have the speech wis you bot'--but not here." She looked around in sudden alarm. "Can you to my room graciously come? I live in the ho-tel." Her manner was pleading and eager.

The eyes of the men met inquiringly. Red unostentatiously flecked a speck of dust from a slight bulge in his coat under the left armpit.

Dougla.s.s tentatively placed his hand in the side pocket of his reefer.

Then as one man they both answered. "Why, certainly, Senorita."

"In an hour, then. Come carefully. Numero 9, the one mos' far in the hall. I go first, now." And without further look at them she went out as un.o.btrusively as she had entered. Red calmly confiscated her rejected gla.s.s of brandy.

"Shame to waste good likker, 'specially when it's paid fer. What's yuh ijea, Ken, a plant?"

"Damfino! She's all worked up over something, that's sure. Well, it's all in the game." Then, with an inscrutable and not altogether pleasant flicker in his eyes, "Not a bad looker, eh, Red?"

McVey emptied the gla.s.s. "Brandy's h.e.l.l foh a woman," was his enigmatical reply.

An hour later they gained her apartments un.o.bserved, the hotel corridors being deserted at that hour. She had changed her gown and received them in a charming half-neglige of some filmy white stuff that set off her dark beauty ravishingly. Her eyes were out-gleaming her diamonds but her manner was quiet and composed.

They sat down and respectfully awaited her pleasure; but every article in that room could have been accurately catalogued by either man. There was only one door in the room besides the one through which they had entered and that stood partly ajar, revealing beyond a luxuriously furnished bedroom. A large double window gave down on the main street; one-half of it was closely curtained, but the hangings of the other was looped aside, and for a time she stood beside it looking down into the squalid street. Suddenly she drew the curtains close and with a strength hardly to be looked for in that slender wrist, whirled a heavy Morris chair directly before them and seated herself.

For a full minute she regarded them intently through half-closed eyes and then, addressing herself to Dougla.s.s, but keeping her eyes for the greater part of the time on McVey, she said slowly in her soft mother tongue:

"Your friend understands Spanish?"

"Sufficiently, Senorita," a.s.sured Red, "to follow your conversation."

"It is well," she said quietly, "but your address flatters me. I am Senora, not Senorita." She held out her left hand with a curiously proud gesture; on the third finger was a heavy plain band of dull gold.

"I am desolated--madame," said Red, instantly. Dougla.s.s bowed his polite acceptance of the correction.

"Yes," she went on wearily, "I am a married woman, no matter what the world, what _you_ may think. The ceremony was performed by the Jefe Politico of Ameca, my natal town, though not solemnized by the church.

There was a witness, but he is dead now. It was Pedro Rodriguez, the man you killed the night he and Senor Matlock burned the hay on your rancho."

In the tense silence which followed, the ticking of Dougla.s.s's watch was distinctly audible. Red's hand, fumbling with his watch chain, went up swiftly to his armpit; but Dougla.s.s, interpreting her even intonation more correctly, never moved a muscle. She smiled rea.s.suringly at McVey:

"Nay, Senor. There is nothing to--to regret. He was a dog--and I love you for it." The hand sank to his knee and he flushed slightly.

"I was only a young girl," she went on rapidly, "and he was as big and as fair as his words. My mother was dead, my father engrossed with business cares: he was owner of the 'San Christobal' mine. I met him at night, for my father liked him not and forbade me. It was my first affair, and I thought I loved him." She laughed, a mirthless sibilance that was marvelously like a snake's hissing, her eyes hard and dry.

"I had a brother, an only one, Rafael. He was very dear to me and loved me greatly. He was, of the mine--what do you name it, the one who holds and pays the monies? Ah, mil gracias! the 'treasurer.' He was of the lively the liveliest and played much at the cards. And Don Bartholomew was of his friends the most esteemed. We knew not then that he made his living so: he had come to buy lands, he said, and he had letters, many from great men; they were not written by those whose names they bore as I know now, but we of Mejico know little of such things and trusted him fully.

"Then, one night, mi padre discovered me in his arms and there was much sorrow. I was to the casa confined and to him was said that we should see him no more. But you know our adage: '_No ay cerradura si es de oro la ganzua_' (there is no lock but that will open to a golden key), and Pedro Rodriguez, our servidor, was very poor. Like Eve, I listened to the serpent's voice; I was very young."

She covered her face with her hands and again the silence fell; Red licked his lips nervously: "The d.a.m.ned caterpillar!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. She roused at that and her manner changed. She seemed to speak mechanically and her words fell like drops of ice:

"One night he came in great haste and said that we must fly at once; a great trouble had come to him and his life was in peril. I had to marry him, you understand, and I had no other choice. We went to the magistrate--he swore that we would be remarried by a priest of my faith when we reached his land, and so I consented. My father was absent and my brother--Oh! Rafael!" She broke down and sobbed bitterly. Red cursed aloud.

Of a sudden she calmed; her eyes were hot but her voice was cold and emotionless. "Not until yesterday did I know that on that very night he had robbed my brother at cards and treacherously shot him dead when his guilt was discovered. My father, thinking I knew all--G.o.d, give me vengeance on this man--died two weeks ago, cursing me with his last breath. I had it from an old acquaintance whom I met here all unexpectedly yesterday morn. They never answered my letters you know, and I dared not return. The child was dead born.

"The life with him has been h.e.l.l. I had to live, and he was liberal in his brutal way. Long ago I learned from Pedro that he was robbing you, but for that I cared nothing. The men of your race have given me blood and gall to drink, and the thought of your wrongs was bitterly sweet to me; it would have been sweeter had your lives gone with it."

They looked at her entirely without resentment; this was something they could understand. Dougla.s.s felt a great sympathy for her, but Red was revolving something in his mind that made his eyes gleam evilly.

"Yesterday I upbraided him with the truth. G.o.d knows what I said, for my heart was hot and I think I was mad. He was devil enough to admit all, and taunt me with my helplessness. We are of a pa.s.sionate blood, we people of the South, and I tried--. Enough! He beat me--me, Dolores Ysobel de Tejada! May his soul writhe in h.e.l.l until I lave his accursed lips!" Her venomous fury was not shrill and vociferous; instead, it was cold and low-voiced, but Dougla.s.s breathed hard and Red clenched his lips, watching it. She sprang impulsively to her feet and tore violently at her bodice. As the thin silk ripped away they saw that arms, neck and b.r.e.a.s.t.s were purple.

She came closer, thrusting her shame into their very faces. "See!" she hissed, "the chivalry of the American gringo! Do you Yanquis treat all your women so tenderly, caballeros?"