It was supper-time at the Sylvania Palace Grille. Sylvania was an outfitting town for prospectors and cow-punchers, and the occupants of the little oilcloth-covered tables in the “Grille” were almost exclusively of these two classes. The telephone operator and the express-agent had already taken their meal, and their departure, and this was not the day for the tri-weekly stage, the driver of which sometimes patronized Mrs. Hallard’s rotisserie.
Sing Fat and Sing Gong, the two Chinese waiters, slipped about attending to the demands of patrons, and Mrs. Hallard herself, from behind a counter, kept tabs on the room and set out the liquid refreshments that the various customers called for.
The place was full of noise and bustle. The rattle of heavy crockery, the clink of steel knives and forks, the raking of boots and spurs over the plank floor, the clamor of voices and the monotonous sing-song of the two Chinese calling orders to the cook, made up a medley in which, Mrs. Hallard was wont to declare, she could hardly hear herself think.
Despite this handicap, however, very little escaped her. She managed to hear, with no apparent difficulty, Steve Salton’s gently preferred request that she “chalk up” the amount of his bill, and to catch his mumbled replies to her swift interrogatories as to his prospects for paying.
“It’s all right if you’re going to have it,” she said, with business-like crispness. “But I ain’t here for my health, you know. I want to see the color of your dust before too long.”
“That’s reasonable,” was Steve’s reply. “You’ll see yer pay O. K. soon ’s I locate, an’ I’m bound to when—”
“Cut it out!” Mrs. Hallard was already pushing change across the counter to another customer. “It’s chalked up, Steve.”
“Kate! oh, Kate!” The voice of an old habitué came across the bedlam of sound: “Tell one o’ them pigtailed lumps o’ sin,” it went on, “to fetch me another pony o’ that white pizen o’ your’n, quicker!”
“Gong,” the presiding genius of the place said calmly to one of the China boys, “Go tell Tombstone he don’t need no more gin. Tell ’im I said so.”
Gong carried the message, delivering it over his shoulder as he set another customer’s order of “ham and” before him. Tombstone’s face, when he received it, was worthy of his name.
“Hell!” he ejaculated to anyone who might listen, “That’s what comes o’ hashin’ off ’n a woman.”
He was still muttering gloomily when he went up to the desk to pay his score.
“Kate,” he said with drunken gravity, as he swayed before her, “The love o’ tyranny’s a bad thing in a man. It’s plumb perilous fer a female.”
Mrs. Hallard glanced from his money to him.
“What’s eatin’ you, Tombstone?” she demanded, ringing up the cash-register.
“’T ain’t me. It’s you, The love o’ power air devourin’ you to that extent you can’t serve a man his rations without cuttin’ ’em short. It were plumb tyrannical in you to send me that there message about the gin.”
Mrs. Hallard’s handsome black eyes surveyed him coldly.
“When a gent’s that far in he goes howlin’ a lady’s Christian name in public like you done just now,” she said, “it’s a sign he don’t need no more at present. There’s your change, Tombstone. Now vâmose!”
“Jake Lowrey!” she sent her voice level across the reeking room to where a big, shaggy miner was disputing with one of the Chinamen, “This here’s an eatin’-house. ’T ain’t a cussin’ bee. If you don’t like the victuals served you, you know what you kin do. But while you’re in here you quit swearin’.”
“I ain’t a cussin’ fer cussin’s sake,” the big miner pleaded, above the laughter of the others. “I’m only inquirin’ into the nature o’ this here sunny-side Fat’s fetched me with my hash.”
“What color is it?” the proprietor of the eating-house asked, and the egg on Jake’s plate immediately became the center of all attention.
“It’s yeller,” its owner called, surveying it critically.
“Naw ’t ain’t neither; it’s red,” another observer decided.
“It’s a lie. It’s just the color of an orange, an’ oranges is yeller, ain’t they?” This from a third critic.
“If it’s yeller it’s a new-laid egg,” Mrs. Hallard pronounced, judicially. “If it’s red, it’s a fresh egg. Any other hen-fruit in this place is ranch eggs, unless it’s chickens, an’ we don’t serve them on the half-shell.”
During the silence that followed this elucidation of the egg question the outside door of the place opened hesitatingly, and a young Mexican girl looked in. Mrs. Hallard nodded, and she entered, leading by the hand a blind countryman who carried a guitar. The pair were evidently well known to Mrs. Hallard’s patrons, and through the thick cloud of tobacco smoke that filled the room a number of the men shouted their greetings.
“Buenos noches, Conchita.”
“Howdy, Buttercup.”
“Put her here, ’Chita!”
The girl responded to each greeting with a flash of white teeth. A number of new-comers flocked in after her, finding seats and shouting their orders to the China-boys.
“Come on, ’Chita, hit ’er up!” some one called.
The girl had guided her companion to a chair, and the latter now twanged a few notes upon his guitar. Presently Conchita began to dance, slowly, at first, gradually quickening the pace, as she flitted back and forth in the little open space before the counter.
By degrees this space became too confined for her movements, and she drifted, like a bit of thistledown, along the aisles between the tables.
When she came opposite Jake Lowrey she gave a quick little leap and sprang upon the table before him, where she pirouetted among the bottles of condiments, and the tall glass of beer over which he was lingering. She skirted them all, daintily, her twinkling feet never still.
Suddenly she paused, balancing marvelously upon one toe, the other outstretched before the man. Lowrey’s hand was already in his pocket, now it came out holding a silver coin which he placed upon the outstretched toe. In an instant it was snapped into the air and caught by the whirling dancer as it came down. A chorus went up from the assembly.
“Here y’ are, Conchita!” “You know me, ’Chita.” “Put ’er here, little gal!” The men bid openly for the dancer’s favor, making haste to clear their tables as an inducement for her to notice them.
She sprang from Jake’s table to another, across the aisle, and repeated her graceful, agile performance, weaving in and out among the dishes, kissing her fingers and smiling. Thus she wandered from table to table, picking her favorites and taking toll of each, going wilfully, it seemed, from silver lure held plainly in sight, to tables where much less was offered.
In and out she flashed, now here, now there, until it became apparent to all that she was working, step by step, toward the one table whose occupant had extended no invitation.
This one was in a corner of the room, and at it sat a young man who was to all appearances neither a prospector nor a cowboy, though he wore a certain indefinable air of the plain. It showed in the bronze of his face, where it was not covered by a crisp brown beard, of a cut not worn by the usual desert-dweller; in his big, strong, tanned hands, that were supple and deft, despite the marks of hard work upon them, and in the steady, farseeing gaze of his brown eyes.
The little dancer was close to the stranger’s table now, and bending low to avoid a hanging lamp, she sprang upon it, and calling something to the guitar-player, set her feet a-twinkle through a bewildering maze of perfectly calculated steps.
She glided about the edge of her tiny stage; she blew lightly across it; she whirled madly in the centre of it. Everyone in the room gazed, spell-bound, realizing that their pet dancer was outdoing herself on this occasion.
Through it all the girl’s eyes never left the face that was upturned to her gaze, the brown eyes regarding her with a sort of consideration that no others in the room had shown. Admiration, challenge, desire, those other eyes had betrayed, but these were different. Their quiet questioning held no reproach; they were full of friendliness, and of interest, and the coin that was presently laid upon her out-thrust toe was cheerfully, even gaily proffered, but the girl suddenly felt that both the interest and the gaiety were different from her own.
She tossed the silver dollar in air and caught it, with a nod of thanks. Then she sprang to the floor and ran up the aisle to where the blind Mexican still strummed his guitar strings.
“Este bestante!” she cried, pouring her earnings into his deep-crowned hat. “No mas.”
She kissed her fingers gaily to the applauding men and turned toward the door. Only Kate Hallard’s keen eyes noted, without seeming to see, that she had knotted one silver coin into a corner of her kerchief, and slipped it into her bosom.
No more visitors came into the Palace Grille. Sylvania had supped, and the men at the tables one by one came forward when the girl had gone, to pay their bills and slip out into the street. In the shortest of five minutes all were gone save the stranger in the corner, and the two Chinese, who padded softly about, putting the place to rights.
Kate Hallard had seen the stranger throughout mealtime. She noted, moreover, that he had more than one glance for her, the while he sat taking his supper in a deft, dainty way that some men get from much eating out of doors.
She was accustomed to being watched. More than one habitué of the place had taken his turn at gazing at her, during the year that she had been running the Palace Grille. She was not unpleasant to look at, if a man were not over-sensitive about some things. She had an abundance of fair hair that was not bleached, despite the contrast of her black, long-lashed eyes. They were handsome eyes, if bolder and harder than they might have been if life itself had been less hard and bold for this woman of the desert.
That it had been hard was told by the cold, steady gaze of the dark eyes; by the worn line of the cheek, and by the half contemptuous, half tolerant set of thin lips that ought still to be full, and curved, and red.
As she glanced over at the stranger, when both the boys were out of the room, he left his seat and came down to the counter. He was taller than she had thought, she noted, and very slender. Despite this latter fact, however, he gave an impression of more than usual strength and activity. “He’d be one blame hard man to down,” she thought, in the instant before he was leaning upon the counter, tendering the price of his meal.
“This must be a mighty uncomfortable life for a woman,” he said in a matter of fact way, watching her register the payment.
“Mebby,” she answered, shortly. He spoke again, with a sort of gentle persistence.
“I shouldn’t think you’d care much about it?” There was a questioning quality in his voice, that Mrs. Hallard felt would presently win an answer, whether she would or no. She went on “ridding up” the counter, and set a bottle of “square-face” back on the shelf behind her, with rather unnecessary energy.
“Don’t know as my caring about it would make any difference,” she finally said. “Leastways it never made none to me, an’ I guess it needn’t to nobody else.” This last was said with some significance of emphasis.
“I know,” the stranger spoke half absently. “But I’d have thought,” he continued, looking up, “that you would have preferred to keep to the range.”
A startled look came into the hard black eyes.
“What do you mean?” Kate Hallard cried. “What do you know about the range? Who be you, anyway?”
“Did you sell it?” the stranger persisted, ignoring her questions.
“Sell it!” she burst out, shrilly. “If you know anything about it, you know I never got a chance to sell it. It melted; it never got to be mine.”
Her voice had risen until the sound brought Sing Fat in from the kitchen to observe. Seeing this, she lowered it.
“Look a’ here, Mister,” she said, sharply, “If you’re as wise as you’re tryin’ to make out, you know how I got done outer the range.”
“I honestly don’t know,” was the reply. “I found your deed, and I’ve been hunting you up to give it to you.”
She stared at him, in a sort of awe.
“You found that deed?” she whispered.
“Yes; I have it. But how did you lose the property?”
She left off her desultory arranging of bottles, and leaned toward him, across the counter.
“Hallard bought the range off’n an Easterner named Oliphant,” she began. “He was goin’ to stock it, an’ then you’d never a’ seen me here. He’s got the deed all square, an’ he leaves it with me till he goes down to Phoenix to record it. Then he goes and gits killed bustin’ an outlaw horse fer Hod Granger, and leaves me to manage fer myself.”
The stranger uttered a little murmur of sympathy.
“But you had the deed,” he suggested, as Mrs. Hallard seemed lost in thought.
“Oh, yes! I had it all right. But I give it to Frank Arnold to record fer me. He was goin’ down to Phoenix, an’ I guess they was some hoodoo onto it; fer Frank, he got killed too—got killed in a cloudburst—an’ when they found his body every bone in it was broke an’ they was hardly a rag onto it. So the deed was lost.”
“But surely this man Oliphant would have made it right for you?”
“Would he though? That’s where you ain’t guessin’ right.” Mrs. Hallard’s laugh had no mirth in it.
“That’s what they told me,” she said. “An’ so I see a lawyer, an’ he undertakes to write Oliphant, that’s gone back east. But after a spell he comes an’ tells me the sneakin’ thief’s gone an’ sold that prop’ty twice, an’ cleared out. Think o’ that, will you, an’ him a old, old man.... Out here fer his health, he was. Lord! if he don’t need a hotter climate ’n even this is.”
“Was the second deed recorded?”
“You bet your life it was. The man that’d bought it saw to that, an’ he didn’t have the luck to git killed, neither.”
“I must say he tried to act decent, though,” Mrs. Hallard added, “but o’ course he’d paid his money fer the prop’ty, same ’s Ed Hallard did, an’ Ed, he paid twelve thousand.”
“Yes, I know.” The stranger had the deed in his hand. “What did the man do for you?” he asked.
“Well: not much, but mebby he wouldn’t a’ done that if it hadn’t bin fer Mr. Westcott—”
“Who did you say?” The stranger’s gentle voice suddenly sharpened to keen interest.
“Ash Westcott. He was my lawyer,” Mrs. Hallard explained.
“It was he who told you about the second sale?”
“Sure! How else ’d I know?”
“I see.” He stood pondering her story until at last she took up the tale again.
“Mr. Westcott—he talked it over with the man that bought it. I didn’t have nothin’ but my word to back me; an’ as he told me, I really couldn’t make a claim, an’ I didn’t have no case to go after Oliphant with. But the other feller he give me three hundred dollars fer a quit claim, an’ that set me up here.”
“You gave a quit claim?”
“Just to make the man feel easy. Westcott said it’d be the best way. He was mighty kind about raisin’ the money fer me. I hadn’t a red after I’d settled up Ed’s debts an’ small matters.”
“Here’s your deed.”
She took it, eagerly, and they pored over it together. The stranger pointed to a signature at the end of the acknowledgment.
“Do you know that man?” he asked.
She studied the name. “Never hearn of him,” she said, “What’s he got to do with it?”
“He was the notary before whom the deed was acknowledged,” was the reply. “If we could get hold of him we might learn something, and I think it would pay you to try to find out something from Oliphant.”
“I don’t know where he is,” was the bitter response, “an’ if I did, I tell you I ain’t got a cent to do anything with. I ain’t more ’n makin’ a livin’ here.”
“I guess that could be fixed,” the stranger said. “I’ve got some.”
She looked him over, fixedly, with her black eyes.
“An’ where do you come in?” she demanded.
He laughed, ever so gently.
“I’m not figuring about that,” he answered. “But if I were you, and could get hold of the money to do it, I’d try and see this thing through; and,” he added, significantly, “I guess I’d hunt up some other lawyer than this Mr. Westcott.”
He met her gaze without hesitation.
“There’s some folks does say Westcott’s sharp,” she said, slowly. “Be you one of ’em?”
The man smiled, without speaking.
“I don’t believe it,” Kate Hallard mused. “He wouldn’t dare. Besides,” she added, after a little thought, “he’d a known he was fair skinnin’ me, and he was the one tried to see to it I had a little money out’n it. He wouldn’t a’ taken my last nickel.”
A strange look came into the man’s face. “Maybe he didn’t spend much time reflecting on that,” he said, slowly. “Anyway, if I were you I’d see about it, and I guess the money can be found.”
“You ain’t told me yet who you be,” Kate Hallard remarked, studying him narrowly.
“My name is Gabriel Gard.”
“Well, Mister Gabriel Gard,” she said, “I never hearn of you before, an’ I ain’t sure I understand as well ’s I wanter before I make any deals.”
“You can trust me,” Gard said, simply, meeting her eyes.
“And this Westcott,” she exclaimed, sharply, “If he’s done me so! If he has—”
She gripped the counter, her teeth showing, savagely.
“Easy!” said Gard quietly, “Better keep cool. The man ain’t worth riling yourself up over. Besides, I believe we can do something, with this.”
He touched the deed, and she picked it up again.
“I want to try to get hold of Oliphant,” he began, outlining his plan, “and this notary, Arthur Sawyer.”
Kate Hallard regarded him with an unwonted expression of mingled helplessness and perplexity.
“Oliphant’s gone back east as I said,” she answered, “An’ this here Sawyer ’s new to me. I never knew nothing about him.”
Gard stood considering, a long sequence of unexpected difficulties developing itself before his mind. He had found the Hallard deed among the deputy’s papers, and had kept it carefully, against such time as he could restore it to the owner. His first act after leaving Broome, when the pair reached the railroad track, had been to go to Yuma. Here he acquired the habiliments of civilization, and found a temporary home for Jinny. He had stopped in Tucson long enough to file his claim there, and then set about finding the Edward Hallard to whom the deed referred. It was a matter of a fortnight before his inquiries revealed the fact of Ed Hallard’s death, and the whereabouts of his widow. Now he had no way of judging how long it might be before he could strike the trail of this unknown Arthur Sawyer who had taken the acknowledgment of the deed.
In any event, he realized that the delay meant postponement of certain cherished plans of his own; perhaps danger to them. He had met a man at Yuma, and another in Tucson, who had known him as Barker, and though they had not recognized him, so greatly was he changed, still he could not ignore the possibility that any day someone might remember him. Until his plans were perfected, the territory was perilous ground for him.
He frowned a moment, lost in thought; then he squared his shoulders and met Mrs. Hallard’s gaze with eyes that were full of steady peace. He had made up his mind. His own matters must wait until he had straightened out this woman’s tangle of wrong.
“We’ve got to find this man Sawyer,” he repeated, “And I hardly know where to begin trailing him. We’ve got to get hold of Westcott, too; you say he’s at Tucson?”
“He lives there,” was the reply; “or did last I knew. I ain’t heard from him in a long time now. No need to.”
“Well: I guess the best thing to do first, is to write to him. You tell him you’ve found your deed: no need to say how. We’ll see what he’s got to say, and—” There was the least perceptible hesitation, “if he comes up here, and you want me to,” he continued evenly, “I’ll talk with him for you.”
Mrs. Hallard looked relieved.
“You’re mighty good,” she cried, “Fact is I’m afraid ... you see, I....”
The outer door was pushed open and a big Mexican vaquero put in his head.
“What’s up, Manuel?” Mrs. Hallard asked.
The vaquero hesitated: “No mas supper?” he said, tentatively.
“Supper all right,” was the reply. “You’re late, Manuel. What you doin’ off the range?”
The Mexican made a laughing gesture, crooking up his elbow. Mrs. Hallard frowned, noting his condition.
“You don’t git no booze here,” she said, “You’ve had enough. Fat’ll bring you some coffee an’ you eat a meal an’ git back on the range. You had trouble enough last time, I should think.”
The fellow sat down, shamefacedly, and Sing Fat came in to serve him. A moment later another customer entered.
“That’s always the way it goes,” Kate Hallard commented, “One straggler always brings another. They’ll come dribblin’ in now, one at a time, till closin’-time.... But I say, Mr. Gabriel Gard, don’t you go thinkin’ I don’t appreciate what you’ve done. I’ll write Westcott like you say, an’ mebby it’ll come out all right; but I ain’t much hopeful of it. Things don’t, much, outside o’ story books.”
The hard look was in her face again. Gard met it with his steady smile.
“You watch this one come out right,” said he. “I guess things mostly are right, if we could see ’em straight.” He was turning toward the door.
“We’re liable sometimes to pick ’em up by the wrong end,” he added. “We’ll find out which is the right end of this before we lift it, and then—” the smile deepened, and included the dark eyes—“Then we’ll lift,” he called back as he closed the door behind him.
Sylvania’s one business street was lighted only by the stars, and the feebler rays that shone from a few illuminated windows. In the yellow glare from one of these a group of cowboys were dismounting by the rail of Jim Bracton’s Happy Family Saloon.
“Howdy, Stranger,” one of them called, as he stumbled against Gard on reaching the ground, “Excuse me.”
He glanced a second time at Gard’s face and smiled, genially. “Thinkin’ o’ minglin’ up in this mad whirl?” he asked, “Come on.” And together they entered the precincts of the Happy Family.