Chapter III

Steve Bordereau was a showman of sorts; else he’d never have made the Stag Horn so widely publicized across hundreds of Southwestern miles. He knew values and how to emphasize them.

A murmur went up when all eyes were drawn to Sally Dawn. She was pale, with no rouge on her cheeks, and her lips were scarlet. She wore long ruby-red earrings--ruby-red but not rubies. No others of Bordereau’s glass gems adorned her. Her gown was exquisite, costly and in marked contrast to La Florinda’s flashy one, a beautifully simple thing of white satin. She carried a large black ostrich-feather fan in her left hand. Her eyes looked enormous.

“My friends!” sang out a triumphant Bordereau, “I have a new surprise for you, and here she is! It is Miss Sally Dawn Cannon, and I guess some of you already know her, the daughter of the late cattle king, Big Bill Cannon. She has consented to come here to be still another hostess, like the Señorita Florinda de Valdez y Verdugo, and to be friendly with all my friends. And to start with, she asks everyone here to drink her a little toast! Nothing in the house is too good for tonight, and it comes to you with Steve Bordereau’s compliments.”

Sally Dawn smiled upon them. It was a lovely smile, thought Jim Torrance, and he thought also, “Well, money can buy most things.” Bordereau’s announcement was greeted with cheers and hand clappings. Torrance went on with his faro, playing as though he did not care whether he won or lost, and so he started winning. He saw Sally Dawn go straight to the Mexican girl; Florinda showed her beautiful white teeth in what went for a glad smile of greeting. The two girls spoke together a moment, Sally Dawn eagerly, Florinda appearing more reserved; perhaps she was striving for a hauteur to match the proud names Verdugo and Valdez.

Then men began surging forward, flocking for the most part about the new girl; in champagne of Bordereau’s providing or their own choice of liquor they drank her health and happiness. And to Jim Torrance, still at his faro table, it seemed that she was the gayest of the gay ones; he thought that he had never seen eyes sparkle and glimmer as hers did.

Then she was swept away by a small party who wanted her at their table, and La Florinda went her own way with her own friends, hovering with them over a roulette wheel, and Torrance finished his game, pocketed his winnings and moved farther down the long room. He stood there at the end of the bar, his glass twirling slowly between lean brown fingers, his eyes, always low-lidded, looking lazy, yet secretly watchful.

He marked the face of every man and woman in the place; he took stock of winners and losers, of hard drinkers and hard players. When any newcomer arrived--and men were coming in all the time, the room filling and overflowing--he saw them. When some went out from time to time, he took note.

A very few departed early through the front doors, going down the front stairs and about their business, homeward bound perhaps. Several went out through one of the three doors set in the wall toward the rear end of the room. He gathered, without asking, that these were off to play poker in private rooms. He spotted the men, two of them, who would play for the house. Perhaps later Steve Bordereau would play for himself.

Again the new girl caught his attention, and his eyes still further narrowed until they were mere light-flickering slits. She seemed gayer than ever, eager, electric; he thought he had never heard such bright laughter. The warmth of color now staining her cheeks might have resulted, along with the exhilaration gripping her, from the wine that had flowed so generously.

And then he saw her eyes, and knew instantly that he had her all wrong. They chanced to meet his across the room--frightened, panicky, desperate eyes. Whatever reason the girl might have to bring her here, she was scared half to death.

She had just risen swiftly from a table where she was being made much of by four men. Steve Bordereau, who had never lost sight of her, hastened to her side; his hand, firm and agile and powerful, came to rest on her arm. As the men at the table rose, too, one of them drunk and leering, Bordereau said cheerfully:

“Go on ahead, boys; we’ll be back with you in two shakes.”

The four went out at one of the rear doors. Bordereau, with his hand still on the girl’s arm, stooped closer, his face close to hers. His words, so softly spoken were they, did not carry any farther than he meant them to carry. Then, though the girl for a moment stood very stiff, she turned to go with him, out of the room at the rear. The two passed quite near where Jim Torrance stood at the end of the bar.

The girl said, “That man is a beast, the one who wants to pay me to be his mascot--”

Bordereau said: “Shut up, you little fool! You’ll do what I tell you!”

She answered, in a queer, strained voice, “You can’t make me do a thing like that.”

She had pulled back, but they were passing on again.

Bordereau said angrily, “You know I can make you do anything!”

She said, scarcely above a whisper: “I won’t. I’d kill you!”

They went on then. A door opened and closed after them.

* * * * *

“Know a man around here named Jim Torrance?” Jim Torrance asked the nearest bartender.

“No. Never heard of him.”

Jim Torrance paid for his drink with a silver dollar. As things happened, he did not wait for his change. Above the noise in the room, he heard the shot, not loud but clear and eloquent enough. Nor did he wait to note whether any others heard and marked it too. Two or three swift, long strides brought him to the door through which the gambler and the girl had just passed. There was a hallway with another set of doors on the farther side; a couple of shaded lamps gave their dim, colorful light. He saw Bordereau and Sally Dawn.

Bordereau had not yet fallen, but had his back against the wall and appeared to be sliding slowly sideways. The girl had dropped her big black fan; the only thing she held was a small pistol. There was a look of horror on Bordereau’s face, a look of horror, almost twin with it, on hers. Her fingers opened slowly and the pistol clattered to the floor.

“I have killed him! I am glad! He--”

From her, Jim Torrance looked swiftly at Bordereau again. The man was down now; he had flung up an arm as he lurched; a hand brushed his face; Torrance saw the bloodstain there. He started to shrug; what affair was it of his?

Then he heard a clamor as a door was thrown open against a wall and men called out and came running. At the same moment he saw the head of the back staircase.

“Get out of here, quick; on the run!” he commanded. “They’re all Bordereau’s friends, not yours.”

She didn’t move; she didn’t appear to have heard. He stooped to pick up the fallen pistol and her black fan; he caught her by the arm and ran with her to the stairs. They plunged downward together, the girl half falling, half carried by the strong hand that bore her along. Together they darted out at the rear of the house.

His one thought was to get her clear until she could have her own friends at her back, until the Bordereau pack had cooled a bit. He ran with her to the front of the building where horses were. He meant to throw her onto a horse, to pile onto another and be off with her that way. Then he saw the one wheeled rig, a buckboard as lean and light as a greyhound, with a pole team.

“Yours?” he demanded, seeing that there was but the one team here, knowing that most men came on horseback, and arguing that she, if she had dressed at home, would have mussed her dress on a saddle and hence had come in the buckboard.

She gasped out something, he couldn’t make it out. Well, it didn’t matter. He swung her up bodily over a wheel to the seat; he ran and untied the horses; he slipped the reins into her hand.

“Get going, on the run,” he commanded. “I’ll grab my horse and follow.”

His horse was tied only a few feet away. He jerked the tie rope free, swung up into the saddle--and saw that she had not stirred; there she sat, a slim, white, rigid figure on the seat. He rapped out again, “Get going!” and lashed the horses over their rumps with the end of his tie rope. The horses were off at a run, frightened; the girl began to sway, then to lean sideways, reminding him of Bordereau settling to the floor.

With the horses running, he spilled out of his saddle to the tail end of the buckboard, keeping the tie rope still in one hand, leading his own horse. As he came to the back of her seat he saw that the girl’s hand lay loosely at her sides; she had dropped the reins and they were about to vanish over the dashboard. He made a wild grab for them, caught them just in time--and just in time caught her, too. She had fainted dead away.

“Here’s hell to pay,” he growled. Never had he had his hands so filled--with the reins of the runaway team, his own horse’s lead rope, and now an unconscious Sally Dawn.

He managed to ease her down on the seat, her head and shoulders on his knee; he gave the lead rope a couple of turns about the guard rail at the back of the seat, thrust the free end under him, anchoring it against any but a severe tug by sitting on it while he used both hands for a fighting second or two, getting the runaway team under control. Then he looked back through the starlit dark of the night to see whether they were followed and made out that they were not as yet. He looked ahead and briefly wondered where he and the girl were headed. There had been no time, no chance to choose a direction.

They were speeding north, and his ranch lay to the north of Sundown, so, at the first side road, a wavering, little-used lane through the pines, he swung homeward. If the confounded girl hadn’t slumped into a faint on him she could tell him where she lived, where she wanted to go now; he himself hadn’t the least idea. Now the only thing he saw to do was carry her to his place; they might not look for her there--and even a Sam Pepper couldn’t see in the dark.

He kept the horses on the run on the down grades, saving them on the pulls, letting them blow a time or two. When he pulled up at the side of the gray and ghostly road where the old dead pine leaned over the big white rock, the girl stirred and moaned sobbingly and sat up. He got down, tied the horses in the dark under the pines, put up his hands to her, and said curtly, “Better hop down.”

“Where are you taking me?” she asked then.

“My place. It’s only a step beyond the gate there. Then I’ll come back and get rid of this team somehow; they won’t be able to follow the tracks tonight, but tomorrow they will. By that time I can get you home.”

She did not stir to get down.

“Why not now?” she asked.

“Suit yourself. But if Bordereau’s dead-- Well, where will they look first of all for you?”

She put her face down into the shelter of her hands; he stood close enough to see how she shuddered.

Once again he tried to shrug away all responsibility, yet somehow he couldn’t quite make a go of it. He didn’t like Steve Bordereau and he didn’t care much for the gambler’s crowd of friends; further, he remembered two things--how the gambler had gripped her by the arm, and how a strange terror had dilated her eyes. He stood a moment looking up at her uncertainly; then he simply reached up and lifted her down in his arms.

“Come along with me; I won’t hurt you any. Whatever you do now, you had better take time to think.”

She slipped out of his arms and answered quickly, “Yes.”

He led the way, opened the gate and showed her the house; it was dark but the dull gray adobe walls were revealed by the glimmer of the stars. He waited for her at the open door; he heard her teeth begin to chatter.

“Step in and I’ll light a lamp; we’ll have no light until the door is shut.”

With the door shut and a smoky-chimneyed coal oil lamp burning wanly on a box that served as table, she did not look about her to see what this bare room was like but lifted her eyes straightway to his; they were no longer sullen but were bright with burning anguish.

“I killed him,” she said. “I wanted to kill him--and I did.”

“Maybe not,” he told her. “A man doesn’t die every time a bullet from a small caliber gun hits him.”

“If I did kill him, I can only hope that I won’t live long. If I didn’t-- Well, I might as well be dead.” And then she demanded: “Why did you step in? Why are you trying to help me? You don’t even know me.”

“I meant to take you straight to your folks, but you toppled over and we had to start on the jump, and I don’t know where you live. That’s why I brought you here--”

“I can’t get his face out of my mind--how he looked when he slumped down. He-- Oh, God!”

“Look out!” said Jim Torrance sharply. “Don’t you start going to pieces!”

There was not a chair in the room, so she dropped down in a corner, her face hidden in her hands as it had been in the buckboard, as though she were fighting desperately thus to shut out something she could not bear to look at.

“How far from here,” he asked her, “to your home?”

“It’s not far, just across the hills, but there’s no road.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’d have to go back the way we came, almost to Sundown; the road turns off there. And I’d be sure to meet them--”

“Just across the hills? We could make it on horseback.”

“Yes.” She stood up. “I’ll go now, right away. My mother is desperately ill.”

“And you left her to go to the Stag Horn!” His tone was as good as a slap in her face. He softened it somewhat, however, when he saw the anguish seeming to burn higher and higher in her eyes, and said: “Well, your folks will be taking care of her. But about going right now--”

“I haven’t any other folks. There is just Mother, and I think she is dying. I left her alone with an ignorant, shiftless and pretty nearly heartless Indian woman. That’s why I must hurry.”

He realized that there was a lot he did not know about this girl. He asked: “What about your team? It is yours, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” She looked down at her gleaming white gown, soiled and rumpled now, and set her hands to it as though she wanted to rip it off her body. “I drove over, so as not to muss this thing! The team? What do I care--”

“I’m going to ride along with you,” said Torrance, “anyhow until you sight your house. Now you just wait here while I go saddle a horse for you; it’s in the pasture, so it’ll be a few minutes.”

“Hurry!” she begged him.

He went first of all to where he had left the buckboard. He swung the team back into the road, still leading his own horse, and drove on at a run for a good mile. Where there was a possible though roadless way down into the dark, timbered canyon, he drove down into it, a winding way among the trees. There he left the buckboard; the horses, hastily unhitched and unharnessed, he turned loose, trusting that they’d return home in the course of time but not in any great haste. After that he hunted in the buckboard against the mere chance that the girl’s fan or the gun he had dropped there had stayed with them on their rapid flight from Sundown; he found neither.

He met Sally Dawn, a slim white satin shape, at the gate.

“Where have you been? I thought you had gone away!”

He told her briefly, then at last went for a horse for her, cinched on his spare saddle, wondering how the devil she was going to manage with that dress on, and returned to her.

She managed all right. As a matter of fact she had thought of the problem before he did and had solved it after a fashion. While he was away with the team she had found a sharp knife and some string in his kitchen. With a sort of savage delight she ripped that satin gown fore and aft so that it hung in two panels like a divided skirt. With the string she bound the two separate divisions about her legs from ankle to thigh. When he saw her mount it was like seeing a young page from some old court.

The way they rode, the girl leading along dim, dark trails, it was but four or five miles to the old King Cannon Ranch. The first winking light which she was first to glimpse was, she told him, home. He spurred to her side and put his hand on her horse’s reins.

“Listen! You said you left your mother alone with the Indian woman. Well, listen!”

The night was still, and sounds carried far and clearly. There were men’s voices; there were drumming hoofbeats, still in the distance. That meant that already there were several men here, others soon to arrive.

“I don’t care! I’ve got to go to her. They won’t dare--”

“Wouldn’t Steve Bordereau have dared a pretty good deal?”

“He can’t now!” Her voice was brittle. “I’m glad! Now, let me go.”

“No. Keep your hair on. Wait here for me. I’ll ride down, find out how things stand, and be back before you know it. You wait here!”

He dipped forward in the saddle and shot away, and what he had commanded her to do she did. There was a quality in his voice which as much as said, “When I say you’ve got to do a thing, you’ve got to do it.”

A thin little night breeze blew around her and she shivered, not so much with cold as with nervous dread. She listened to the hammering of his horse’s hoofs, and they sounded like far, sinister drumbeats. She lost sight of him down in a hollow brimming with black night, and for a little while she stared into the utter dark down there and felt its symbolism sweep over her like a palpable, drowning tide. When she raised her eyes and looked straight up at the millions of twinkling lights bespangling the wide sweep of cloudless sky, they seemed infinitely farther away than ever before, and as chill as a wintry morning glinting on frost.

She began to listen for his return long before she heard it. The thing that put a new dread into her was the slowness with which he was riding. She told herself: “He’s just saving his horse. He has ridden it hard tonight. And it’s uphill.”

But when he returned to her and didn’t speak out immediately, she understood that something terrible had happened. He came very close; this time, instead of putting his hand on her reins, he put it on her hand.

“We’ve got to take things the way they come, youngster. In this life, we don’t deal ourselves all the cards we’ve got to play.”

“It’s my mother!” she gasped.

His hand closed, hard and firm on hers.

“Yes.”

“She is dead!”

“Yes.”

“And I wasn’t there! Let me go now; let me go! Quick!”

“Hold it. Hold it, youngster.” It was he who held her. “You can’t go now, not right now. There’s a bunch of roughnecks down there that-- Well, I’d rather deal with coyotes. They’re a lot of low-lifes of the Bordereau crowd. They’re half drunk and mean, and they say-- Well, they’re talking wild. They won’t stay all night. Let them go first.”

“I don’t care, I don’t care!” She wrenched furiously to break his grip. “I’m going--”

“Steve Bordereau’s dead,” he said bluntly. “They were talking about it down at the house.”

“I tell you I don’t care about anything now! She wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for Steve Bordereau--he ought to have been killed long ago. Let me go. You can’t stop me--”

“Can’t I?”

He removed his hand only to scoop her out of her saddle and onto his own. Then he swung his horse about and turned back along the way they had come.