Chapter XLIII: Paul Mitchell

Westy thanked him and the man walked on and disappeared in one of the picturesque adobes.

The young Señor Mitchell bid his companion adieu also and they went in opposite directions, so Westy hurried after him.

As he got near him he walked slow on purpose and passed in front of him leisurely. He could feel the close scrutiny that young Mitchell gave him as he passed.

“Hello, Scout!”

Westy turned and smiled.

“Hello!”

“Stranger?”

“Sure. Martin, Bridgeboro, N. J.”

“Go on! Mitchell--I go to Crestwood.”

“N. J.?”

“Betcha.”

“What luck!” said Westy. “Crestwood Boys’ School isn’t far from my house.”

“I’m hardly ever home,” said Mitchell.

Westy could tell it by his New Jersey accent. It was true his manner was a trifle snobbish, but Westy rather liked him.

“What you doing in town, Martin?”

He told him and they walked on through the streets. They exchanged views on scout matters and after a while they came to a curio shop and Westy stopped a minute to look in the show window. Navajo blankets and silver jewelry, Pueblo pottery and moccasins and all the other little fascinating things one sees in the Santa Fe shops. He remarked about the skill of the Indians in making those things.

“Yes, they are!” Mitchell agreed. “Still, none of my family have ever had much use for Indians and yet we’ve lived with them around us all our lives.”

Getting warmer, Westy thought.

“How’s that, Mitchell?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Guess they don’t know themselves.”

They reached the hotel and Westy invited him up to his room. He accepted. He seemed to want to hear all about the adventures Rip and he had had with the members of Educational Films.

Westy related to him about the hold-up and how he and Rip had kept it so quiet. In the middle of his recital he jumped up out of the chair in which he was sitting and whipped out his watch.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Martin. ’S almost dinner time and Dad’s a terrible fusser when we’re late. Come up to the house to-morrow afternoon and let’s hear the rest.” He shook hands with Westy and was gone.

The next afternoon Westy was on the job and admitted into the Mitchell home by a Mexican butler with an expressionless face.

Young Mitchell came forward to meet him and greeted him cordially, leading Westy out into a spacious plazita and introduced him to his father and mother. They actually seemed to unbend from their assumed mental stiffness as he smiled in his naive way.

Westy was the kind of a boy that made people act natural. He had that genuineness of spirit and character that forced them to drop the artificialities and smile at the realities.

Indeed, the Mitchells were so taken with Westy’s boyish charm and ruggedness that they insisted on his staying to dinner.

After the dinner hour was over and they sat out in the plazita again, Westy watched the setting sun throwing its rose-colored shadows through the trees and hollyhocks along the yonder wall.

It was a quaint, charming place, this Santa Fe, with its Spanish atmosphere and alluring traditions. It all made him think of two lonely people in a little mountain shack who had put their entire trust in a boy.

He was wondering if they, too, were thinking and watching the sunset shadows against the mountain walls while they stood amongst the charred embers that had been their home. He was startled out of his reveries by Mr. Mitchell’s voice.

“I hear you’ve had some thrilling experiences in the mountains, Westy! Tell us about them!”

Westy thought a moment and wondered if the occasion was propitious. He hadn’t much time! Nothing like getting it over with, he reasoned, as Mrs. Mitchell laid down the book she was reading to listen to him.

He told them of their strange meeting with Lola and the charming little ivy-covered cottage with its flower garden and related her story of Lone Star with its touch of sweet romance. He was careful not to divulge the names of either young men in the story whom the Indian Princess had aided.

And he went on to tell of those two lonely creatures who were living in poverty now, a lady approaching old age and a girl who had all the charming quaintness of the old world.

He didn’t omit a detail even down to old Mitchell’s prejudice, having kept them from having what was rightfully theirs.

Their own terrible ordeal in the forest Westy told him, but skimming it over lightly and laying more stress on the plight of Lola and her grandmother.

When he came to the part in this real-life narrative of the cottage burning and all their homely possessions going, Westy actually saw a tear fall on Mrs. Mitchell’s cheek.

“They have been shamefully treated,” Mr. Mitchell finally said. “Who are these people?”

“Their name is Redmond,” Westy answered, and waited to see the effect it had. But he was disappointed, for the name meant nothing to them.

“Who did you say the man was who so misused the confidence of the first John Redmond?”

“It’s quite coincidental,” Westy said, feeling his way over thin ice, “but it is said his descendants also live in Santa Fe.”

“And his name?”

“Paul Mitchell!”