Crossroads (14 page)

T
wo days before he would have flung her from him in a sullen rage. Now he merely snarled and drew in his breath—his rage lasted no longer than that. “You shall have the
mantilla
,” he promised, “oh, little, heartless one!”

He passed his hand slowly over her hair. It made him think of patting the terrible black head of a panther. She left his arms, having received his promise, with a movement so subtle and graceful that he could not follow it. All he knew was that one moment she was close to him and the next moment far away on the other side of the table, pouring him another glass of tequila.

“Will I ever know if you truly love me, child?” he asked, watching her with lazy content.

She considered the question with those hazy eyes that focused just behind his chair and always filled him with the same uneasiness. Then she used his own word. “Dolores is a
child
. How can she know?”

“Why?” asked the sheriff.

“You are fat,” said the girl, “and old.”

“Still,” he argued, keeping back his anger from his voice, “you do not leave me, and you are free to go.”

“I am not ready,” she said, “but, when I am rich with your money and have many fine clothes, I will go.”

“So?” said Oñate.

“I have spoken,” she answered, and yawned so that he saw the flash of her white teeth.

“What will you do when you leave me, Dolores? Will you ever again find a master as gentle as I am?”

Her eyes misted with content as she considered a pleasant prospect. “I will go in my fine clothes to the dance hall,” she said, “and look at the men. When I find the one I want, I will smile at him, and he will come to me…a white man.”

“So?” snarled Oñate.

“It is true. He will come to me…a big man with a straight, thin mouth…a lean man with very hard muscles. He will tell me to follow him, and I will go to his house.”

“So?”

“It is true. I will follow him and give him my jewels that you have bought me. I will give them all to the
Americano
.” “He will get drunk,” commented Oñate, “and, when he comes home, he will beat you for pleasure.”

“It is true,” said the girl, and yawned again so that her small, gleaming teeth showed. “I will know that the man who beats me is my master. I will be his woman.”

“She-devil!” he broke out. “What keeps me from lashing you?”

“Fear,” said Dolores instantly.

“Fear?” he echoed, with a rising passion. “Fear? If I put a knife between your ribs, beautiful fiend, beautiful Dolores, what man would question me for it. Fear?”

“Fear,” she repeated. “You are fat and old and as slow as a snake after it has swallowed a rabbit. I could kill you in many places before you struck me once.”

“So?” said Oñate, and having gathered up the whip stealthily, he leaned suddenly forward and struck at her viciously.

She swerved from her chair as the falling leaf is jerked aside from its straight descent by a gust of wind. The whirling lash brushed the flying end of her
rebozo
. The next instant her knife point was at the throat of Oñate.

“Grunt, pig!” said Dolores.

His eyes were green with fear, but he managed to pant. “It was only play, dearest.”

She touched his throat with the point of her knife—so lightly that it only tickled the skin. “It is pleasant,” said Dolores, “to play. But
Señor
Oñate is too fat to make a game.” She put back the knife under her scarf and stepped backward to her chair.

“How long will it be,” said Oñate, “before I take you as you sleep and wring your neck?”

“It is hard to tell,” said Dolores and yawned again, stretching her supple limbs with infinitely slow pleasure. “Now I am tired. Will the master let me go to sleep?”

“No,” he said surly.

She had risen as she spoke. Now she slipped back into the chair. It was always that way. She obeyed him implicitly at the very moment when he thought her revolt was hopeless. The sense of mastery made his blood warm.

“No,” he repeated again, “you will sit there till I am tired of looking at you. So you will leave me, Dolores?”

“I have spoken,
señor
.”

“Leave me forever,” he mused.

It made him prize that instant of possession the more. She knew it, and he knew she knew.

“Not for always,” said Dolores. “In two years…three years…I will be no longer beautiful. I am not like white women. They are lovely forever. Two years…then I will begin to get fat…like you…my skin will wrinkle like paper that has been many times folded and cannot be smoothed out. Then the
Americano
will beat me again and throw me from his door.”

“So?” grinned Oñate. “You know that, little devil of mine?”

“I have spoken. Then I shall come back to you.”

“Good!” grunted Oñate. “I will beat you with this same whip and put you in the kitchen to work. I will marry you to Pedro and teach him to beat you twice a day.”

“No,” said the girl calmly, “when I come back, you will take me in your arms and speak many small, foolish words to me.”

“I?” repeated Oñate furiously. “I take you back when you are fat and wrinkled and…a hag?”

“It is true,” she smiled imperturbably, “for I will always be beautiful to you.”

“Bah! You are crazy as a horse that has not had water for two days in the desert.”

“No. I will always be beautiful to you because you need me.”

He stared at her, his little eyes widening to a strange degree. He had always feared her supple strength, but this was the first time that he had come to fear her mind. He peered at her as though he were seeing her for the first time.

“Because I love you?” he queried huskily.

“Yes.”

“Child, I am not a fool. I use you, but I do not love you.”

“You are a fool,” she answered, “and, when I am gone, you will love me. A horse loves his master even in spite of the spurs.”

“And you,” echoed Oñate, “are my master?”

“Is it not true?” she asked indifferently. “Have you not felt my spurs?”

He spluttered a tremendous curse and stared at her with what amounted almost to superstitious fear.

She took his glass of tequila and raised it to his lips. “Drink,
señor
.”

“She-devil…she-devil!” he stammered.

“Drink, my master.”

“Dolores, when you smile at me, I know that you have been telling me cruel lies.”

“Yes. I cannot help the lies,
señor
.”

“I believe you, Dolores mine.”

She held the glass and tilted it when he drank. Afterward he leaned back in his chair, breathing heavily. He was trembling like a man who had been talking for his life, pleading with a cruel and inexorable judge. She touched her cool hand against his forehead and trailed the soft fingers across his eyes.

“My master,” she murmured, “is weary. He must sleep.”

“Not till I’m drunk, Dolores. What you have said has started a fire in me.”

“Then Dolores will put it out again.”

“You cannot put out the fire of suspicion, Dolores.”

“No? We will see!”

“Can you open my eyes and then close them?”

“Perhaps?”

He whispered something.

“What was that?” she asked rather sharply, and bent her ear to his lips.

“Nothing,” said the sheriff.

“I thought it was a prayer,” she said.

He opened his eyes again and grinned suddenly up at her. “Sometimes I think that, if I make the sign of the cross, you will vanish into thin air.”

“Dolores did not understand.”

“Perhaps not,” muttered Oñate, “but then the devil does not understand his own deviltry. Another drink, Dolores.”

But she stiffened suddenly and stepped away. Her face had grown as blank as though a mask had dropped over it. The sheriff knew that El Tigre was behind him.

H
e turned swiftly in his chair, and in the shadow of the arched doorway to the left he caught an impression of movement. Not the actual figure of a man stepping out of sight, but a feeling that something had at that moment disappeared from the passage.

“Tell me,” he demanded, turning back to the Yaqui girl, “was that El Tigre?”

“El Tigre?” she queried in surprise.

“What did you see?” he asked suspiciously.

“The shadow of the house on the bricks. The yellow flowers against the wall.”

“Only that?”

“If there was anything else, Dolores has forgotten.”

He knew she was lying. As he lay brooding, for the first time he wondered if the Indian held a grudge against him and concealed it. He decided that it would be well to get rid of El Tigre and all his company. But, before the decision was clearly formed in his brain, Manuel shuffled to his side.

The servant brought word that the telephone had rung, and someone was asking for the master of the house. When he had the receiver to his ear, a moment later, a voice came faintly from the distance over the hum of the wires: “This is Mitchell.”

“This is Oñate,” he answered.

“The pardon was stopped on the way,” called Mitchell.

“Ah,” said Oñate.

“But not destroyed,” went on the big boss. “It is only delayed until sunset tomorrow. At that time the messenger will start again with the pardon. If you want to act, act quickly. I can’t get the pardon destroyed. I have tried. Does this give you enough time?”

“Plenty,” answered Oñate. “I’ll have things ready by dark tomorrow. Good bye.”

He hung up the receiver and called Manuel, giving him instructions to bring García at once to the house. Then he went back to the patio and sat silently, oblivious of Dolores. He was thinking hard, and the half hour that elapsed before the coming of García flew on wings for the sheriff.

The jingle of silver spurs made him glance up out of his reverie at last, and he saw García, a tall, thin man with shoulders stooped, as if from too much labor over a desk. His black hair bushed out behind. His forehead was heavily wrinkled. If his eyes had not been so close together, he would have given the impression of a close and continual student of weighty affairs. As it was, he looked a good deal like a professional musician. One would not have been surprised to find him wearing Windsor ties and loosely cut clothes. He bowed silently to Oñate, accepted in silence the chair to which the sheriff waved, and sitting down, fixed his melancholy eyes on the great man.

“García,” said Oñate without waste of formality, “I am in trouble. I need you, and you, I know, need money.”

“Yes,” nodded García.

“How much?” asked the sheriff.

The eyes of García turned slowly to Dolores.

“It is nothing,” said Oñate carelessly. “We can speak safely before her. She sees nothing, when I tell her to be blind. She hears nothing, when I tell her to be deaf. Dolores?”

“It is true,
señor
,” she answered in her soft voice.

The glance of García dwelt on her for another blank moment and then swung back to Oñate. “I have lost at faro,” he said, “but I have the system at last. With a hundred dollars I can break the bank to night and pay you back tomorrow.”

“Good!” said Oñate, and, covering a smile by bending his head, he thrust his hand into his trousers pocket and drew out five twenty-dollar gold pieces.

García pocketed the amount without comment or thanks, saying only: “Money grows on trees for
Señor
Oñate.”

“There is a man,” began Oñate sharply, “in prison here.”

“Aye,” said García, “the
gringo
who killed Vincente.”

“You have seen him?”

“I know of him.”

“I had him put in the jail. I had the price put on his head. García, tomorrow by midnight the pardon of
Señor
Van Dyck will arrive.” He waited for a moment, but García would give him no suggestion—no help. “Before that time he must die.”

“It would be well,” said the gambler.

“It
must
be well, García.”

“Ah?”

“You have the gift of speech.”

“So?”

“Words come easily to you. You brought me a dozen votes every time you spoke before the last election.”

“More,
señor
.”

“More, perhaps. García, our friends in Double Bend think much of you…all except the
Americanos
.”

“Yes,
señor
.”

“You see what I mean?”

“Alas,
señor
, I am a child in the dark.”

“Van Dyck must die.”

“That is very true.”

“The law will not kill him before tomorrow at midnight, and by that time he will be free.”

“Then he must be killed before?”

“Yes.”

“Teach me how to reach him in the prison.”

“Not you alone but many must reach him.”

“Many?”

“You are blind today, my friend.”

“I try to see, but the light is dim.”

“Go to the house of a friend. Speak to him. Tell him of the deeds of
Señor
Van Dyck. Tell him how the
gringo
has killed our countrymen. Tell how he lies helpless in the jail. Teach our friends that now is the time we must cut the head of the snake.”

“And then?”

“García, you are a fool. Do you not see? A mob must rise. You must talk many words among them. Teach them to think of Dix Van Dyck as a killer of men. Tell them that, unless they act by dark tomorrow, he will escape from them. Then he will rage among them like a mountain lion among sheep. He will kill them like dogs wherever they meet him. He will be worse than a devil among them. Then put words in the mouth of Dix Van Dyck. Tell our friends what he has said of them. Make him seem to threaten some of them by name. Trust me, García, you will not talk long before those men you name will be talking in turn. They will ask for blood. They will talk of attacking the jail.”

“This may be done,” mused García, “with very few words.”

“True,” exclaimed Oñate, “and, when they are ripe, explain how easy it will be to take the jail in one rush. The men who guard the jail are our friends also. A dollar here and a dollar spent there will be enough. They will fire
their rifles in the air. They will allow themselves to be bound hand and foot…and the jailer will point out the key to Van Dyck’s cell. Do you see now, my brother?”

“The light comes to me,
señor
,” said García.

“While you are talking to our friends, do not let them be thirsty. A dry throat makes a weak hand. That is plain. Here is more money. I will give you Manuel and Pedro. As you talk, they will carry the liquor you buy through the crowd. Let them all drink. Not beer but strong mescal. It will turn their blood to fire. You will feel the flames rise and fan hot in your face while you talk to them. For see, they are like children, and they only need to be led. Is it clear, García?”

“It shall be done!”

“Heart of gold! García, you are a worthy friend. It is well to have such friends as you. But listen to me closely. It must not seem that I have anything to do with the work. I am sheriff!”

The solemn face of García loosened for an instant into a smile. It came and went quickly, as the sharp bark of a coyote that quavered that same second in the distant hills.

“True. You are sheriff, and a sheriff should put down a mob by force.”

“You are right. I should save prisoners for the fangs of the law. Ha, ha, ha, ha!” The laughter of Oñate was inextinguishable. “But,” he went on at last, wiping the tears of pleasure from his eyes, “I will not be here when the mob rises. I shall wait till the early afternoon to see how your work is proceeding. Then I shall take my horse and ride slowly away. You understand,
señor?
”

“Perfectly.”

“One thing more. It is not necessary that
Señor
Van Dyck should die quickly.”

“No?”

“Let him die slowly, García, for the sake of our long friendship. Let him die very slowly. Whisper it through the crowd. Carry him with you into a cañon near the town. Carry him where there is silence…and the dark of the night…and much mesquite. Mesquite will make a fire, and with a fire many things may be done,
señor
. Is it not true?”

Señor
García regarded the sheriff with narrow eyes. “It is true again,” he said slowly, “that many things may be done with fire.”

“And when the crowd is drunken?”

“Yes, they will think of those things to do.”

“But you, García, you will not drink, and therefore, when the time comes, if they forget things that might be done, you will be there to help them think. Here, for instance, is a pleasant thing.”

He leaned close to the ear of García and whispered for a long moment. As he did so, the face of the slender man changed by degrees. It grew a sickly olive-drab. The wrinkles of his forehead grew deep as if they had been traced in the hollows with a thick pencil. At last, when Oñate leaned back again, García stood up and shook himself like a dog getting water out of his fur.

“I thank the dear God for one thing, Oñate.”

“Yes?”

“That you are not my enemy.”

With that, he left the patio.

Señor
Oñate leaned back in his chair and rubbed his fat palms together. His eyes gleamed so brightly that, if it had been dark, they would have shone by their own light.

“Is it not well done, Dolores?” he asked. “Could even your cruel Indian heart think of better things? Eh?”

There was no answer. He turned around and found that she was gone and for how long he could not tell. He began to call aloud to her and mutter to himself.

“Dolores! The she-devil has stolen away from me…Dolores
mia
! I shall tie her to night while she sleeps and teach her a lesson with a whip…Dolores! But if I did that, she would knife me tomorrow…Dolores!”