“Upon my word, Kate! Upon my word: this is the biggest surprise I’ve had since I came down with the mumps last New Year’s!”
The Governor of Arizona sprang up from his big desk chair and crossed the room as Mrs. Hallard came into his private office. His manner was cordial, the more so, perhaps, that it was tinged with a nervousness of which he was uneasily aware. If Mrs. Hallard was aware of this nervousness, she made no sign. Her own manner was strangely quiet.
“It’s the biggest kind of a surprise,” the Governor said, again. “I could hardly believe it when they brought in your name.”
He established his visitor in a big arm-chair, and seated himself opposite her, his face a little in the shadow.
“Why,” said he, “I haven’t seen you, Kate, since—” He paused, abruptly.
“It’s a long time since you seen me, Dave; that ’s straight,” Mrs. Hallard said, “But I’m mighty glad you ain’t fergot me.”
“Forgotten you!” Governor Marden’s tone was reproachful.
“Do you think ten years is enough to forget friends in?” he demanded. “Why—” with a laugh,—“even a political memory’s longer than that, Kate.”
There was silence for a moment, and silence was the last thing the Governor desired at that time.
“I never heard where you went after Ed’s death,” he said, tentatively.
“You wouldn’t a’ bin likely to,” was the reply. “I moved round considerable after that.”
“So? How’s the world used you, on the whole? Pretty prosperous?”
“Up an’ down. I ain’t so awful prosperous; but I ain’t complainin’ neither. I’m alive, an’ what I am, workin’ fer my livin’ an’ neither better nor worse ’n some other folks.” Mrs. Hallard spoke lightly, and her tone was non-committal.
“I’ll bet you aren’t any worse than other folks,” the Governor said, with bluff good-will. “You were always better than ninety-nine hundredths of the men, Kate,” he added, “while as for the women—”
Kate Hallard interrupted him.
“Don’t you bother about them, Dave,” said she, “I ain’t matchin’ myself up with no women. It don’t pay.”
She laughed, a hard little sound, and a dull flush went up to the Governor’s hair.
“You might, for a fact, though, my girl,” he persisted, half sullenly. “There’s lots of women with straight-laced ideas that I wouldn’t trust half so quick. Unlace their ideas a little and they’d go to the devil so quick you’d never catch ’em. The lacing’s all that holds them.”
Mrs. Hallard made no reply; her companion sat regarding her, but seeing, instead of the woman before him, the quick, handsome girl of a dozen years earlier. Old “Soaker” Lally’s daughter had been in her teens when first he knew her, handsome as they made ’em, he thought, now, remembering. And he had been a young fool—and worse—but not wholly a villain; not that.
“I—I’d have made things right, Kate, if you hadn’t sent me off,” he said, lamely, speaking out of old memories.
“Yes,” the woman flashed, “an’ we’d a’ had a nice little hell all to ourselves, after.”
The man demurred.
“Yes we would!” she went on, “I know. First place, Dave—I didn’t sense it then, but I have since—we didn’t neither of us really care. We was only hot-blooded young fools that thought we did.... Anyhow: it’s sleepin’ dogs now,” she added, conclusively. “Best let ’em lie. You done more ’n most men would, I’ll say that much, when you wanted to marry me—but I saved you that, anyhow,” with another laugh; “I’d a’ looked sweet, wouldn’t I? tryin’ to make good as Governor’s lady?”
“You’d make good at anything you undertook, Kate,” Marden insisted, sturdily.
“Maybe so: but thank my stars I know, yet, when I ain’t got the hand to stack up on. What a man wants in a wife, Dave, is a woman ’t can chaperon his daughter when he gits one.”
Mrs. Hallard hesitated a moment, her voice softening. “I never had no watchin’ over, myself,” she said, “I wouldn’t a’ stood fer’t from the old man, an’ my mother died when I was a kid; but a girl needs it: an’ it takes the right sort o’ woman to give it.”
“That’s nothing here nor there, though,” she went on, in her wonted tone; “Ed Hallard married me with his eyes open, an’ I was a good straight wife to ’im.”
“That’s just what I say,” Marden repeated. “I’d back you to be a good straight anything you undertook. That’s your nature. I’m not passing you any bouquets, my girl. You were always as straight as a man.”
Mrs. Hallard laughed, with cynical good humor.
“Lord, sonny!” she cried. “If them ain’t bouquets, be a little easy with whatever ’t is you do call ’em. Admirin’ the men as I do, such is some overpowerin’.”
Governor Marden flushed again, and edged away from ground that he felt to be precarious.
“Look here,” he said, “What do you mean by saying you’re working for your living? Is that a figure of speech? Ed Hallard ought to have left you well fixed. I heard he sold that claim of his for a good round sum. Didn’t he do right by you, Kate?”
“He meant to. He thought he did. I’ll tell you about that later.” Mrs. Hallard waved a hand in careless dismissal of her own matters.
“Dave,” she began, earnestly, “I want a favor off you.”
Governor Marden was alert in an instant.
“Anything I can do for you, ‘for old sake’s sake,’” he answered.
“This ain’t any old sake’s sake,” was her answer. “It’s just fair play an’ justice.”
“Ah! That’s different. Fair play and justice are complicated things to meddle with.” The governor shook his head.
“You bet I’m learnin’ that,” was Mrs. Hallard’s reply. “But they ain’t nothin’ much complicated about this business. It oughter be plain cuttin’ out an’ ridin’ off.”
“Were n’t you District Attorney when Dan Lundy was killed, Dave?” she asked, suddenly.
The governor started, glancing quickly at his interrogator. Then he was silent for a moment, staring thoughtfully at a map of Arizona on the wall back of Mrs. Hallard’s chair.
“Lord; that’s what I was!” he finally said with a sigh. “I don’t like to talk about it,” he added.
“Why not?”
“From your bringing the matter up I guess you know why not,” Marden frowned, as over some painful memory. “I reckon you’ve got some idea how it was,” he continued. “I did my duty as I saw it; but we bagged the wrong man, and I’ve never been able to feel happy about it.”
“Then it was true about Jim Texas confessin’?”
“Yes. He confessed when he was dying, but it didn’t do the other poor fellow any good. He was dead already.” The governor sighed again.... “I told you justice and fair play were ticklish things to handle,” he said.
“But he ain’t dead.”
“Who ain’t?”
“The other fellow. He wasn’t killed when Frank Arnold was.”
Governor Marden sat silent, his eyes questioning his visitor. Kate Hallard explained, briefly. The governor touched a bell, and his secretary appeared. The latter had been Marden’s clerk in his district attorney days.
“Seth,” the official said, in a voice that rang with suppressed excitement. “You remember the Lundy case, don’t you? Whatever became of Barker, who went up for it?”
The secretary considered.
“Why, yes,” he began, “he broke jail.” His auditors nodded.
“I remember about it,” he went on, “because of Jim Texas, and what came after. He got away to some place in the mountains, and then he was re-arrested. A deputy-sheriff went down on information from Ash Westcott—”
“What’s that?” Mrs. Hallard’s tone was explosive.
“Who d’you say?” she demanded.
“Ashley Westcott,” the secretary repeated. “He’s—”
Kate Hallard interrupted again, her eyes blazing.
“I know who he is,” she flashed. “He’s the same cur-dog that’s tryin’ to down ’im again. He’s the same—oh, D—Governor Marden, you was askin’ why Ed Hallard didn’t leave me better fixed. Well: here’s why—”
The story came pouring out at white heat, while the two men listened, now and then exchanging significant glances.
“In the name of heaven, Kate,” the governor said, when Mrs. Hallard paused for breath, “why didn’t you come and tell me of this deviltry? We’d have stopped Westcott’s game so quick he’d never have known he chipped into it.”
“I didn’t know any better,” the woman said, bitterly. “I don’t know as I’d a’ come here with it; but if I hadn’t bin an ignorant fool I’d a’ knowed I could do something; but I never did till Mr. Gard told me.”
“You say this chap calls himself Gard? Is that his real name, or Barker? What makes you think he’s the same man?”
“Only what Westcott said—that Sandy Larch heard. He must a’ found something that put ’im wise.”
“It looks that way,” the governor said. “Westcott’s no fool, knave though he is. And do you know, Kate—he’s laying his lines to be the next District Attorney! It looked, till you came in and told us this, as if he’d led his line clean to Washington. Didn’t it, Seth?”
The secretary gave a grunt. Governor Marden turned again to Mrs. Hallard. “We’ll meet his game this time,” he said. “See him and go him about a thousand better. You’ve done me a big favor, Kate. What’s the one you want done?”
“I want Mr. Gard’s pardon fixed up,” his visitor said, promptly. “That’s what I come for. I want the papers fixed up right, an’ then I wanter know if they ain’t some way to put a cinch on that there claim.”
“Sure there is,” was the reply. “The pardon’s dead easy; only it’ll have to be Barker’s pardon. Seth, you fix up the papers will you, and I’ll sign right off.
“Glory be!” The governor heaved a mighty sigh as the secretary went back to his own room. He got up and took a turn about the office, throwing back his shoulders with an air of relief.
“That thing’s weighed on me,” he exclaimed. “You don’t know what mistakes like that mean to a man. It’s been a dead weight, sometimes.”
He turned, quickly, and took down a volume of mining-law.
“I suppose,” he said, after pouring over its pages for some moments, “yes, I guess Westcott could do something about that. I don’t know as he’d dare try, when he finds out the truth, but it’s best not to take any risks with a ‘sarpint’ like that, and I’m going to have Unricht go down to Tucson with you, Kate, and fix the whole matter right. There’s time enough to get a night train if you want to—” He looked at his watch.
“That’s just what I do,” she replied, promptly.
“All right, then.” The governor turned. Unricht had come in with a document ready for the official signature.
“I wasn’t sure,” the secretary said, “so I stopped to look it up in the testimony. Maybe you remember, Governor,” he went on, “that Barker claimed at the trial that he had retained Westcott and paid him a big fee. He hadn’t any more money to pay a lawyer; so the court appointed him one.”
The governor was signing the paper.
“By gum!” he exclaimed, looking up, “I do seem to remember. Sounded like a cock-and-bull story then. Westcott had left town, you know.
“But say, friends:” he straightened up and looked from one to the other of his auditors,—“the desert’s got a beauteous lot of poison citizens,” he said, “what with tarantulas, and sidewinders, and ground-rattlers, and Gila monsters, and hydrophobia skunks; but it don’t breed anything more poisonous than a man, when he is poison.”
He threw down his pen and handed the paper he had signed to Mrs. Hallard.
“That’s done,” he said, gleefully. “Unricht, can you fix it to go down to Tucson to-night, and do a little business for me to-morrow?”
The secretary consulted his calendar and decided that he could arrange for the expedition. It was agreed that Mrs. Hallard and he should meet at the station in time for the evening train. “About that matter of your own, Kate,” the governor said, as Mrs. Hallard was leaving, “I shouldn’t wonder if your Mr. Barker-Gard was equal to fixing Westcott; but if either of you need any help you call on David Marden. Now don’t you forget!”
Unricht and Mrs. Hallard went straight to the proper office, on their arrival in Tucson next morning, and the secretary saw to it that Gard’s claim was correctly refiled, and the matter put in unassailable shape. This done, they sought the St. Augustine, where Kate was to wait for the forenoon train to Bonesta.
“I’ll have to leave you a little while before it goes,” Unricht was saying, as they stood in what had been the vestibule of the old church. “My own train is earlier—”
“Sh—hush—”
Mrs. Hallard drew her companion back into the slender shelter of a great pillar. “Look over there,” she whispered, and Unricht glanced in the direction indicated.
Westcott had just come into the building and stepped up to the desk. He was making some inquiry about the next train south, and the watchers had a good look at him.
His face was livid, and drawn into an expression of concentrated rage. He looked like a venomous creature of the desert, and as he crossed the office and ascended the two or three steps to the great dining-room, his step was wavering and uncertain.
“And he don’t drink,” Unricht whispered to Mrs. Hallard. “I know that. He’s just drunk with rage.”
“But I don’t wanter go down on the same train with him,” Mrs. Hallard whispered back. “I should be scared o’ my life.”
Unricht reassured her. “He wouldn’t really hurt you,” he said, “but I don’t blame you for wanting to dodge him. I shouldn’t wonder if he was going down to see you, though. He must know he’s in a pretty pickle if he can’t make terms with you. Maybe you’d better see him now, while I’m along,” he suggested.
Mrs. Hallard demurred. “I’d rather get home,” she said. “Mr. Gard may be there.”
“All right,” was the reply. “I’ll telephone Larch you’re getting the afternoon train.”
They slipped out and went to another hotel, thereby missing Gard, who presently came in from up the territory, eager to get back to Sylvania, and report to Mrs. Hallard.