The scene in which Gard found himself was of a sort he had known familiarly enough in years past. The low-ceilinged shanty, rough-boarded and blackened; the sawdust-strewn floor, the painted bar with its distorting mirror and motley array of bottles, and even the faces of the men showing duskily through the smoke-veiled light of flaring coal-oil lamps, seemed to him like details of a half-forgotten dream.
The evening was fairly begun and the place was filling. A group of prospectors near the bar were listening derisively to the brand-new theory one of their number was propounding, regarding the whereabouts of the lost Peg-leg mine. At the farther end of the room the thump of a broken-down wheel-of-fortune and the monotonous calls of its manipulator, proclaimed the occupation of the crowd of Mexicans gathered there. Some cowboys at a table near the door were engaged in a game of dominoes, and beyond them three or four men were playing poker. Gard noticed with some surprise that one man of this group was an Indian, who seemed to be betting freely.
“That there’s old Joe Papago,” the cowboy who had come in with him volunteered, noting his glance. “Old Joe, he’s the best-fixed Injun ’round here. I hearn he sold ten head o’ beef cows over t’ Tucson, yesterday, an’ got his money. Must ’a’ got whiskey, too, by the looks of ’im.”
He put a foot on the bar rail and surveyed the scene tolerantly.
“There’s a mighty ornery bunch o’ human buzzards hangs out in this town o’ Sylvania,” he said, candidly. “But a feller’s gotter pass some time in social pursuits now ’n again, an’ he has to take his kind as he meets up with ’em.”
Gard was still recently enough from solitude to thrill with the sense of human companionship.
“’T ain’t always the roughest looking ones that are the worst,” he suggested, sympathetically.
“That’s where you’re shoutin’.” The cow-puncher brought a big fist down emphatically. “For all right hell,” he said, “a real polished gent can give these chaps cards an’ spades an’ beat ’em to the devil when he tries. We had one here last year, a gent that played cards—played ’em too damn well fer his own health, finally. But he was that polished in his manners as I ever went anywheres to see, an’ he could lie in five different languages.”
“Yes, sir,” he added, meditatively, “five different kinds o’ mortal human conversations that feller had a cinch onto; an’ he couldn’t behave hisself in ary one of ’em.”
“What you havin’?” he suddenly broke off to ask, as the barkeeper signified his readiness to attend to them.
“I’m drinking lemonade,” Gard said, and the cow-puncher took another look at him.
“Gimme the same,” he finally told the barkeeper, with serious politeness.
“Mebby I’d oughter beg your pardon”; he turned to Gard with a look of anxiety on his face. “I reckon I was a little careless in my talk if you happen to be a sin-buster.”
“A what?”
“Sin-buster. You sabe bronco-buster, don’t you; an’ trust-buster?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Well then, ain’t sin-buster plain United States? It’s what a preacher-feller oughter be if he’s on his job, ain’t it?”
“I guess it is,” was Gard’s reply, “but I’m not a preacher. I just haven’t been drinking much of late years, and don’t know ’s I care to.”
“Oh! that’s it? Well lemonade ’s pretty good stuff,” the cow-puncher said, cheerfully. “I can’t seem to remember when I’ve had none, but I reckon it’ll taste first rate. I ordered it thinkin’ you was maybe religious.”
He finished a little ruefully, with a questioning inflection on the last words. Gard laughed.
“I’m not, I guess,” he said, “leastways not so ’s to hurt me.”
“That’s good,” the cow-puncher nodded, approvingly, “Though religion don’t hurt a good person,” he added, meditatively.
He removed his broad-brimmed felt hat and peered into the crown. His head was thatched with close-cropped, grizzly-gray hair; his face was tanned and seamed by wind and weather, thin-lipped and stern as to the mouth, under his short moustache, with steadfast blue eyes that had the plainsman’s and the sailor’s trick of vigilance. It was a face to be trusted—shrewd, honest, capable, yet full of a simplicity that was almost childlike. Gard found himself warming to the fellow.
“I suppose you belong about here?” he suggested.
“Sure. My name’s Sandy Larch. I’m foreman out ’t the Palo Verde, below here. Know the range?”
Gard admitted that he did not. “I’m new ’round here,” he explained, as he told his name.
“I’m looking for a man,” he added, tentatively, “a notary named Sawyer: Arthur Sawyer. Ever hear of him?”
Sandy Larch reflected, repeating the name thoughtfully. “Was he a lunger?” he finally asked, “A little feller, with broken wind, an’ a cough that ’d drive you wild to hear?”
“I don’t know.” The description took Gard’s memory back to the days when he, too, had had such a cough. “I never saw him,” he explained, “But I’m mighty anxious to get hold of him.”
“There was a man up in the Navajo country,” Sandy continued, “Where the patron was runnin’ the Bar Circle G. He stayed ’round quite a considerable, doctorin’ his lungs. Then the patron sold out up there; he had this range too, in them days; an’ I ain’t never seen this Sawyer chap down this way. The patron might tell you. Know him—Morgan Anderson?”
It was a name well known in the territory. Gard had seen its owner once or twice, in the old days. He said something of the sort to the cow-puncher.
“He’s away just now,” the latter told him; “but he’ll be back in a few days, an’ you can ask him. I’d know whatever did become o’ that chap.... Look a’ there, will you?”
He glanced over to where the men were playing poker. One of them had reached over and pulled a big brown flask from the Papago’s coat-pocket.
“Time you treated us to a drink, Joe,” he said, with a half-insolent air of fellowship.
The Indian nodded, smiling vacuously, and the bottle went around the table, each man helping himself. When it came back to its owner he rose with it, and crossed to the door, going out into the street. The men at the table looked at one another with a grin and one of them examined the hand of cards that the Indian had left behind him. He had just laid it down again when the Papago came back, and the game was resumed.
“Wouldn’t that rattle your slats now?” Sandy Larch asked, disgustedly.
“Joe,” he continued, “don’t dast drink even his own lickker in here. It’s agin the law for an Indian; an’ Jim Bracton wouldn’t stand fer ’t; he goes outside to take a drink, while them buzzards swills it in here, right before him; an’ they’re gittin’ his wad, too.”
Gard made no reply. He had more than once glanced at the group, while he and the foreman were talking, and now he watched them interestedly, an intent look in his deep eyes. A moment later he had turned, and was moving toward the players.
“Thinkin’ o’ sittin’ in?” Sandy Larch asked, jestingly. “They’s sure need of an honest-notioned man to deal them cards. But it’d be ticklish business.... Good Lord!”
He was staring in earnest, now, and instinctively reached for the gun in his back-pocket, though he did not draw it. The stranger had approached the poker-players, and stood over them, his big, empty hands outspread upon the table before them.
The men whom he had interrupted looked up in surprise. The prospectors who had been discussing the Peg-leg suddenly became silent. The dominoe-players ceased the rattle of their game and stared. A hush was upon the whole room, a tense feeling of pending excitement. One or two men instinctively measured their own distance from the door, and from the center of coming activities. Jim Bracton stared open-mouthed from behind his bar.
“Who is the feller?” he demanded. “Friend o’ yourn, Larch?”
“Not that I knows,” was the foreman’s reply. “I never saw him before, but I’m sure willin’ to sit in to any game where he holds a hand.”
He started forward, ready to draw on the instant, but the stranger seemed not to see him. He had gathered the eyes of the poker-players in his own indignant gaze, and now addressed them collectively:
“Gentlemen,” he said, quietly, “you ought not to be doing this.”
“Glory be!” groaned Sandy Larch under his breath, “now wha’ d’ you think o’ that fer a simple speech?”
The astounded men to whom Gard spoke sat silent, not one of them making a move. They were held spell-bound by the gentle quality of his fearlessness.
“Somebody ’s been breaking the law, and selling this Indian whiskey,” Gard went on, in a matter-of-fact tone. “It was a mighty bad thing to do, and you are doing something a heap wickeder. He is drunk now, and he doesn’t rightly sense what he’s doing. You ought not to play cards with him. You’re drinking his liquor and helping him to get drunker; and—you’re cheating him, out of his money.”
The big wheel-of-fortune had ceased to whirr now, and the silence of the room was broken only by a snarling question from one of the men Gard had addressed.
“What in hell o’ your business is it?”
“It’s every man’s business when another man breaks the law,” was the quiet reply. “You’d better quit playing now, friend,” Gard continued, turning to the Papago. “You’d better quit right off, while you’ve got something left, and go home.”
“You stay where you be, Joe,” growled the man who had asked the question. “Don’t you climb out fer no tenderfoot. I’ll settle the—”
He stopped speaking as the stranger’s eyes blazed full upon him for an instant.
“You go now, Joe,” Gard said, in a low, even voice.
Like a man in a dream old Joe rose, slipping into his pocket the coins he had been about to put into the game when Gard interfered. The tenseness of the situation had brought him to some measure of sobriety, and he did not reel as he left the room. A moment later the patter of his pony’s unshod feet came to the listening ears within.
Gard still held the other men in a gaze that seemed to search and estimate the hidden thought of each.
“Now they’ll kill him, sure,” Sandy Larch thought, slipping nearer, but the stranger took no notice of him.
“Friends,” he said, breaking at last the tense silence that ruled the room, “There’s a law against making an Indian drunk, and there’s a law against robbing him. They’re white men’s laws; and white men ought to keep ’em.”
“It ain’t right”; he went on, still leaning upon the table, and the men listened, as if hypnotized. “There’s things a man can’t do without getting lower down than any man wants to be, and cheating a drunken Indian is one of ’em. That’s the truth of it. You ought not to do it, and when you do somebody’s got to make you stop. That’s why I interfered.... There ain’t any reason though,” he added, as if an after thought, “why you shouldn’t go on with your game, now; I’m going to say good-night.”
He straightened up, and turning his back upon the group walked quietly toward the door. Half-a-dozen men were ready, now, to draw in his defense, but there was no need. Not a man of those whom he had brought to book moved. They sat like men dazed, until the door had closed upon Gard; then, with an oath, one of them seized upon the cards.
“What th’ Almighty ’s the matter with you fools?” he growled. “Whose deal is it, anyhow? Git int’ the game, you. This ain’t no damned kindergarten!”
They resumed their playing, sullenly, and the spell upon the room was broken. Sandy Larch wiped his damp forehead upon a huge red handkerchief, and turned to the bar.
“Jim,” he said, feebly, “set down that there bottle o’ whiskey, will ye? I sure need it in my business right now.”
He measured a liberal potion and swallowed it.
“An’ he said he wa’nt no sin-buster,” he muttered. “He sure was on the job, though.”
“But wa’nt that a sweet line o’ talk to hand out to men folks, Jim? How’d it come they didn’t kill ’im?”
“Search me,” was the barkeeper’s reply. “I had my gun all limbered. I sure expected the place ’d be shot up.”
“He tells ’em it wasn’t right,” Sandy mused, absently refilling his glass. “He tells them b-a-a-d men ’twasn’t right! An’ there they sits, like they was throwed an’ hog-tied, while he turns ’round his back to ’em an’ walks out like they ain’t a thing on earth to be afraid of. Lord! He can have me!”
He drained his glass and departed, leaving the Happy Family to its own devices.
Gard, meantime, had walked out beyond the town to the open desert. His spirit was full of trouble, hot with indignation at what he had seen, oppressed with a sense of the complexity of the life into which he was so suddenly plunged. It was hard to realize that the still, bright stars above him were shining, as well, upon the clean peace that dwelt in the glade. His thoughts turned thither like homing birds, and he walked on across the cactus-dotted sands, until he could look toward the shadowy bulk of the far mountains, visible in the marvelous desert starlight. Somewhere in that direction, he knew, the glade lay, and gradually a feeling came to him of quiet, and of renewing strength. He was able to think calmly of the sudden complication in his plans, and to consider the best course to pursue.
He would see Morgan Anderson as soon as possible. In the meantime Mrs. Hallard would write to Westcott. He would probably be obliged to talk with the lawyer for her: the mere thought set his nerves tense; until this matter was settled his own affairs must wait. Of this there was no question in his mind as he directed his steps in a wide circuit back to the town.
He was nearing its outskirts when he felt a light touch upon his arm. One of his hands was seized in two small, clinging ones, and covered with soft, hot kisses. He turned quickly, freeing himself with a little shake, and looked into the upturned face of ’Chita, the dancer.
The bright stars lighted her face to a mystic, witching glow; her eyes gleamed upon him in soft summons as she leaned toward him, seeking again to possess herself of his hand.
He drew back, ever so little, and seeing this she stretched both arms out to him in a wide, pleading gesture, her smiling lips parted in mute supplement to the invitation of her gleaming eyes.
Still as a graven man he stood, regarding her steadily, and she came no nearer. Instead, she shrank a little, her hands dropping to her sides, her dark eyes fastened upon his. Gard’s stern eyes softened and he came a step closer, brooding over the trembling girl without touching her.
“Child,” he said, “haven’t you any mother? Isn’t there anybody to take care of you?”
Only her heaving shoulders answered him.
“Don’t cry,” Gard said, his voice full of pity. “I—I don’t like to hear little girls cry.”
She shivered toward him again, and reaching quickly, her arm stole round his neck, the other hand seeking his face. “I love you,” she whispered. Her fingers pressed his lips, and he put her back, firmly.
“Don’t,” he said sharply. “You don’t understand. Why—you’re only a little girl. Where is your home, child? I am going to take you there.” She sprang back with a cry, and her anger flashed out upon him.
“Oh!” she stamped one foot upon the sand. “Do I not understand? Think you I do not? You miserable! You have never the heart of a caballero. You are but hombre, after all!”
She caught her breath.
“Gringo swine!” she hissed. “Hombre! It is not the heart of a caballero!”
“I haven’t got the heart to crush little girls,” he answered, “if that’s what you mean. Tell me where you live. I’m going to take you home. You must not be out here alone.”
He spoke now with protecting concern. The girl’s mood had changed again, and she was sobbing passionately.
“Do you live in the town?” Gard persisted, and she shook her head. Half unconsciously she was walking beside him as he moved forward.
“Hush!” she suddenly cried, checking her sobs.
Across the desert came the sound of a man’s voice, calling angrily. ’Chita put out a hand, arresting Gard’s steps.
“It is my father,” she whispered. “He is blind; but he has ears of the coyote. If he hears you—if he knows—he will beat me!”
She was but a child, now, in her terror, and Gard reassured her.
“He’ll never know,” he said. “No one will ever know. You go back, now, like a good girl. And remember: you must never do a silly thing like this again. Will you promise me?”
She lifted a pale face toward his, in the starlight. Her eyes were luminous, now, with new, strange emotion.
“Señor,” she whispered, “it is the heart of a caballero. Señor—you are good.”
“You will promise?” Gard persisted.
Again that summoning voice rang across the desert. The girl called in Spanish that she was coming.
“I promise,” she cried, with a sobbing catch of the breath. “Buenos noches, Señor.”
She caught Gard’s hand again, for an instant, resting her cheek against it, the fraction of a second.
“Buenos noches,” she whispered again, and sped away into the soft, starry gloom.