Crossroads (15 page)

I
t was mid-morning of the next day when Noony trotted his horse to the door of the shanty where Bill Lawton sat with Jacqueline and swung from the saddle. He found the girl sitting on a box in a corner of the shanty with her hands folded calmly in her lap and staring placidly into the distance. Bill Lawton himself sat cross-legged on the hard packed floor and laid out some greasy cards on a plank in a game of Chinese solitaire. Neither of them showed the slightest excitement when he entered. He came carrying his saddle which he flung down in the corner.

“I telephoned to big boss,” said Noony. “I told him we was done with the game and didn’t want the coin. He was mad. He raised hell. He said the girl had bribed us. I told him she hadn’t, and we’d do everything we could…except stop the pardon. He said: “Delay her until tomorrow at sunset, and I don’t care if you send her on. Let her bring the pardon to Double Bend then.” So I said we would. When the sun goes down to night, ma’am, you’re free to beat it. That is, if it’s agreeable to Bill Lawton.”

“It sure is,” said Bill, “that’s only fair to the big boss.”

“If we keep her till then,” went on Noony, “we get the coin just the same.”

“The hell we do!”

“Sure.”

“Then there ain’t no doubt about us keepin’ her.”

“D’you know what it means?” asked the girl very quietly.

“What means?”

“Your big boss sayin’ that it was all right if you kept me here till sunset?”

“What d’you see in it?”

“They’ll kill Dix van Dyck at sunset. That’s what it means.”

“It ain’t possible!” said Lawton.

“Ain’t it?” she asked contemptuously. “I tell you, Lawton, I
know
they’re going to bump him off. The big boss holds me here. Then he telephones to the cur Oñate at Double Bend and tells him how much time he’s got.”

Lawton stirred a little uneasily. “Don’t be imaginin’ too much,” he grumbled. “It don’t do no good.”

“Easy thing, too,” went on the girl. “All they have to do is walk down and shoot Van Dyck through the bars of his cell. They unlock his door. They stick a club in his dead hand. They tell the judge the next day that they done it in self-defense. Ain’t that simple, Lawton?”

The big man stared at her in silent horror. “Simple?” he echoed. “It’s hell!”

“Is it?” responded Jack. “But maybe that’s what’ll happen to you the next time they get you in the pen, Lawton. You ain’t got many friends among them runnin’ the jails in these parts. Am I right?”

“The next time they get me,” said Lawton, “they’ll carry me in feet first in a wooden box. That’s me! Besides, if this Dix Van Dyck was half the man you call him, he’d never let himself be taken that way.”

“D’you know how he was taken?” asked the girl, a slight tremor coming in her voice.

“Spill it,” said Noony, “but don’t you pull no sob stuff. My nerves don’t like it none.”

“El Tigre got me first…El Tigre and his gang.”

“The Yaqui, eh?”

“Yep. He got me, and then he tackled Van Dyck. Dix let ’em take him without a fight, so’s I could get away. That’s
the only way they could ever have landed him, partners. I ask you, ain’t that the sort of a pal you’d like to have when you’re in a hole?”

They were both silent, scowling at the floor.

“I ask you,” she continued, “are you goin’ to let ’em shoot Dix Van Dyck full of holes while he’s lyin’ helpless in the jail? Tell it to me straight, strangers!”

“By God…,” began Bill Lawton.

But the cold-blooded half breed cut in: “Come clean, Bill. Are we goin’ to throw off the big boss and get him on our trail for the sake of a man we never seen? This here girl’s in love with him. I can see that. Are we going to take all she says for gospel? If he’s in jail, there’s a reason for it. I say, let him rot there if he’s going to start rotting at sunset today. That’s me!”

“Noony,” said Lawton, though a little reluctantly, “I guess you’re talkin’ reason. Here’s your coin, Jack. You and me not bein’ particular kindly just now, I ain’t going to take a loan from a woman that’s hating me in her heart. You got to stay here till sunset, and Dix Van Dyck’s got to take his chance along with the rest of us.”

She knew it was final. Her eyes blinked, as though a light of blinding intensity had been thrown across her face, and she swayed back against the wall. The two men stared at her in concern.

“It ain’t easy,” said Noony.

“It’s hell,” said Lawton. “Here, girl. Here’s your coin.”

He tossed the money belt she had given them to her feet. The jingle of the money seemed to rouse her. Her eyes opened, and she stared first at the money and then at Lawton with a growing comprehension.

“She’s hard hit,” whispered Noony to Lawton, “but she don’t make no holler. She’s a woman in a thousand, Bill.”

“Nope,” said Lawton, “there ain’t another woman like her in the world. Look at her set her teeth and straighten
her face. But there’s all hell breakin’ loose inside her.”

The eyes of the girl were resting, with a growing light, on the pack of cards that Bill Lawton was shuffling over and over again—merely to employ his fingers while he thought.

She said with sudden gravity, and a hint of eagerness behind her eyes: “Partners, I’ve lost. I see that. Me and Dix was partners, but he’s a cold trail now, and I ain’t followed a cold trail twice in my life. He’s dead. All right, I ain’t going to waste time mourning for him. There’s other things in the world. So, let’s forget him. In the meantime we got to kill a pile of hours from here to sunset. Lawton, how about some stud poker?”

“Poker!” repeated Lawton, with his eyes on the money belt whose weight he had tested in his fingers only the moment before. “That’s my middle name, partner. How about you, Noony?”

“I’m in,” said Noony, and immediately took his position cross-legged beside the board where Lawton sat.

The girl followed his example. They cut for the deal, which fell to Lawton, and he tossed out the first cards with a careless flip of one hand—an act that looks easy but that takes long practice. It insured, however, honesty in the deal, for the bottom card showed at every turn of the dealer’s hand, and it would have been almost impossible for him to bury cards on the bottom of the deck.

Fortune fluctuated very little at the beginning of the game. The girl lost steadily to both Noony and Lawton, but she paid no attention to her losses. If she had been a man and ten years older, they would have looked upon her as an experienced gambler and therefore confident in her ability to win in the long run. She lost stakes large and small without betraying the slightest gloom. They watched her with admiration. Next to speed and endurance in a horse, there is nothing so much admired in the Southwest as the ability to lose money gracefully.
That is because it is an art hard to acquire. When a man works for forty dollars a month and works hard and long hours every day for his money, he is not apt to lose it with a smile. The hearts of Lawton and Noony warmed, therefore, as she lost stake after stake to them, large and small.

They eyed her with wonder. She seemed, indeed, to be merely playing to kill time, as she had at first suggested. Now and then she cast a covert glance through the door and toward the mesquite bush from which the shadow was growing shorter and shorter as the hour approached noon. Otherwise she showed no uneasiness. She seemed to have accepted the fate of Dix Van Dyck with equanimity and to have cast the thought of him away from her. A cold trail, indeed.

However, her manner changed sharply after a time. Until half her money was gone, she played with careless indifference, and Noony and Lawton accumulated each a comfortable stake. At this point she began to play with more attention. She slipped her left hand, now and then, into the bosom of her shirt near the throat, and seemed to be fumbling something there.

In spite of her closer attention to the game she still lost, and now a sort of angry incredulity possessed her, like that of one who has bet his money on a sure thing at the races and refuses to believe his eyes when the “sure thing” trails farther behind at every post while the flying leaders enter the home stretch. Now she played with her left hand continually clenched inside her shirt—a singular position. Her wagers grew larger and larger. Still she lost. And now she followed the game with a frenzy of silent terror. The money still continued to slip from her.

Finally there remained half a dozen gold coins in front of her. She placed them on a single hand with the air of one who takes chance by the throat, and then sat with eyes closed and her hand over her cards. At last she jerked
her hand away and exposed her buried card. Both Noony and Lawton had called her bet. Her three fives beat the two pair of Noony, and the pot was shuffled toward her.

The effect on the girl, however, was so strong that she became almost hysterical. It was relief—enormous relief. She laughed. She sang a fragment of a chorus. She hummed another tune. In the next hand, barely glancing at her cards, she wagered twenty dollars and forced the betting up, from card to card, until a hundred was staked before her. She lost again.

To the astonishment of the two men they discovered that she had wagered everything on a pair of queens. They had known that she was bluffing, but they had not dreamed that she could bluff so well. The loss did not daunt her. In the next hand she played the rest of her money, and on this occasion she won her second large wager. Thereafter, luck followed her closely. Out of every four hands she won two, and the two she won were sure to be the ones of the highest wagers. They tried bluffing her, but she would bet recklessly on a hand as low as a pair of eights. Finally Lawton halted the game and consulted Noony in a whisper outside the hut.

“She knows the cards,” he said, “and she’s reading the backs of ’em. She marked ’em all. Maybe with her fingernail.”

“Change the game, then,” suggested Noony.

“To what?”

“Draw for aces. Nobody can’t beat that game.”

“She won’t change her game. See if she will?”

But when they returned and proposed a change, she accepted eagerly.

“Are you tired of stud poker?” drawled Noony.

“No,” she said, “but drawing for aces is faster. I want action.”

They exchanged glances of wonder and commenced the draw. She won again.

U
ndoubtedly there was more of the child than the woman in the soul of Dolores. It was an impulse of childish curiosity that carried her away from the house of
Señor
Oñate while he sat talking with García. She went to her room first and wrapped herself in a dark blue cloak, and then walked straight to the jail of Double Bend. The jailer had seen her only once before, but he remembered her perfectly, for the favorite of
Señor
Oñate was not one to be lightly forgotten. He smiled at her amiably when she appeared at the door of the jail.

“I have come from
Señor
Oñate,” she said coldly to the jailer, “and I bring a message from him to
Señor
Dix Van Dyck, the man whom El Tigre captured. Let me see him at once and alone.”

If the heart of the jailer beat faster with anger at this haughty speech, he taught it to beat more calmly again at once by simply recalling the greatness of Oñate. “Alone?” he objected. “That is against the rules.”

“However,” said the girl in her faultless Spanish that she had learned from the grave vocabulary of El Tigre, “it is the will of the sheriff. Let me see
Señor
Van Dyck at once, sir.”

“If it’s an order,” said the jailer, “let me see the writing.”

“Order?” she repeated with a rising emphasis that made her voice shrill. “If you send back to
Señor
Oñate for a written order…!”

“Well?” said the jailer who could not be bullied too far.

She changed her tactics with the speed of light. Both her hands went out to him, palm up, in a graceful gesture of entreaty. She smiled upon the jailer. “If I go back and say that I have not given his message, I shall be beaten,
señor
.” Then she drew the cloak tighter about her with a little shudder, as though in fancy she already felt the lash on her soft shoulders. The jailer was a man, and being a man, as the logic book tells us, he was mortal. He looked upon Dolores and her smile. He sighed.

“If it is that,” he said at last, “I shall step past the rules with one eye closed. You shall see Dix Van Dyck.”

So he went to his safe and took his big, rusty key. With this in his hand like a truncheon, a sign of dignity and power, he led the girl down the first flight of steps in the basement, and finally unlocked the door that led down the last passage. The musty stench and the gloom rolled out to meet them. The girl recoiled with a little exclamation, a harsh guttural in her native tongue, instinct with horror. One passion possessed her—the passion for liberty that ennobles her race.

“I have asked,” she said with a gesture of dignity and repulsion, “to see a man, not the kennel of a dog.”

The jailer handed her his lantern with a grin. “Down to the bottom of those steps, my girl,” he said, “and you’ll see the kennel of Dix Van Dyck.”

“A man?” she said in the same tone of horror. “A man down…there?”

It might have been the horrors of hell that her slender forefinger indicated. The jailer was touched by the implication that he was at fault.

“It was an order, not my wish,” he said, “and we have no strong place to keep fighting men. No strong place but this one.”

“Is he dangerous?” she asked curiously.

“Is a wild mustang dangerous?” returned the jailer, perfectly willing to retain this beauty in conversation. “Is a mountain lion dangerous when she has hungry young ones in her cave?”

“So?” said the girl. “Yet El Tigre took him!”

“It is true,” nodded the jailer, “but he took him by a trick. He paid the price. For the sake of the woman Dix Van Dyck went with El Tigre.”

“Then he is a fool…an ass,” said the girl scornfully, “to have paid so much for a woman. He could buy a dozen women for a tenth of that price.”

“It is true,” said the jailer. “He is a fool.”

“And yet…,” said the girl, and paused. “He has killed men?”

“Count all your pretty fingers and all your little toes, my dear,” said the jailer, “and he has killed more men than that.”

“It is true?” she gasped, incredulous. “El Tigre is not so terrible as that.”

“He would eat three like El Tigre,” answered the jailer calmly, “and still think he had done a small day’s work. So we took no chances and put him here. Also the sheriff ordered that it be done.”

“So!” said Dolores. “I will go down to look at him.”

She raised the lantern over her head and peered down the flight of sweating steps with a shudder of disgust.

“You are not afraid?” queried the jailer in admiration.

“Bah!” she said, though her voice was hushed. “He is soft flesh, and I carry sharp steel.” She touched the hilt of her knife and began to descend the steps with sudden eagerness.

“You should have been a man,” said the jailer, calling after her. “We could use men like you in the jail.”

At the bottom of the steps, as the jailer had promised, she found the bars of steel and behind them the form of
what seemed to Dolores the largest man she had ever seen. It was shadowy at first and so huge that she stopped short and bit her lip to keep back the cry of terror. Then she made herself approach the bars more closely, holding the lantern as high as she could reach. The light fell on a large, shaggy head that turned slowly toward her. She stopped short again, awed by the glimmer of the eyes. Then she saw a rough face, unshaven for many days. But the sharp, hard line of jaw and cheekbone could not be disguised by that stubble of unkempt beard. It did not cover the high-arched, cruel nose, or the shag of eyebrows over the light of the undaunted eyes, or the straight line of the thin lips.

She gazed, fascinated. She drank in every detail of the picture again and again. Still the man stared back, unblinking. This man had thrown himself away for the sake of a woman! She would have as soon suspected that there was a heart of love in a wild wolf—a timber wolf.

“I am Dolores,” she said, “the daughter of El Tigre.”

He made no answer.

“I have not come to look at you because my father brought you here.”

Still he would not speak.

“I have come because I want to thank you for saving the life of my father, El Tigre. He is like a tiger. He speaks little, but the heart of El Tigre is very heavy because you must die.”

The man stood up and looked down at her. Standing erect, he was too tall for the ceiling, so he had to stand with his head bent forward. It gave the impression that he was peering down at her from a great height.

“Go tell El Tigre, Dolores,” he said, and there was a marvelous lack of harshness in his voice, “that Dix Van Dyck holds no grudge against him. El Tigre is a square-shooter. Tell him that Dix Van Dyck says so. If I ever get
out of this hell hole, I’ll never make a move to harm him. Is that clear?”

“Alas,
señor
, you will never leave this place alive.”

“No? Dolores, I’m a hell of a long ways from being dead.”

She shook her head.

“What d’you know?” he asked and strode forward with a single long stride to the bars.

Standing there in the keener light of the lantern, she did not think him so vast, but she found his face more terrible. She could have believed anything desperate and cruel about a man with a face such as that, but she could not dream that he would throw himself away for a woman. She felt an overmastering desire to see the face of that woman.

“What d’you know?” repeated the giant.

“I cannot tell.”

His hands shot through the bars and caught her shoulder with a tremendous power. One pressure of that hand would have crushed her throat, and she knew it. All the blood rushed to her heart, but still she did not make a move to draw her knife.

“There’s crooked work going on,” said Van Dyck, “and you know what it is. Out with it!”

She shook her head.

“By God!” he said with a sort of dull wonder. “I don’t think you’re afraid of me, Dolores.”

“Ah,
señor
,” she murmured, “shall Dolores fear a man who dies for the sake of a woman?”

“Bah!” sneered the big man, “they’ve been filling your ears with chatter. All lies, Dolores, all lies. I did nothing for the sake of a woman. Well, if you won’t tell me, go back to your father and give him my message. I’ve nothing but good will for El Tigre.”

“
Señor
,” she said, “I have been in the church. The
padre
has taught me prayers. I shall pray for you thrice every day.” She remembered with a start and caught a hand to her eyes with a moan of horror. “But tomorrow night,
señor
!”

He waited eagerly.

“It is then that you die. Many men will come.” She drew her dagger and offered it to him. He accepted the hilt and stood, staring at the long, keen blade.

“They will not kill you here. Let them take you and, when they have brought you out into the open, then spring on them with this knife. Can you use a knife,
señor
?”

“My girl,” said Dix Van Dyck softly, “it’s second nature to me. Use a knife?” His large head tilted back and he laughed softly.

The terror of the sound fascinated her, so that she still listened after the laughter died away. “
Señor, señor,
” she murmured, “you were not meant to die like a dog…in a kennel!” Then, checking herself, as one who said too much, she added: “I must leave you.”

She held out her hand, and he caught it eagerly.

“Heart of gold!” he breathed. “Dolores, I’ll be ready to welcome my executioners when they come tomorrow. This knife…it’s teeth to me! Good bye, Dolores.”

“No, no!” she cried. “Not good bye,
señor
. Only
adiós.
Adiós amigo
.”

She fled up the stairs, panting, wild-eyed, like one who was being pursued.