"That hombre of yours--didn't look right to me," he said, finally.

Laying his cheek against Bessie Belle's neck, as a woman snuggles close to the man of her choice, he addressed the mare: "I reckon n.o.body is going to steal you, eh? Not if I know it. No, sir; that hombre wasn't any good, was he?"

Alaire wet her lips. "Then you--shot him?"

Law laughed grimly, almost mockingly. "Say! He must be a favorite of yours?"

"N-no! I hardly knew the fellow. But--did you?"

"I didn't say I shot him," he told her, gruffly. "I warned him first, and he turned on me--blew smoke in my face. Then he took to the brush, afoot, and--I cut down on him once more to help him along."

"He got away?"

"I reckon so."

"Oh, oh!" Alaire's tone left no doubt of her relief. "He was always a good man--"

"Good? Didn't he steal my horse? Didn't he aim to get me at the first chance and free his compadre? That's why he wanted his Winchester. Say!

I reckon he--needs killin' about as much as anybody I know."

"I can't understand it." Alaire sat down weakly. "One of my men, too."

"This fellow behaved himself while I was gone, eh?" Law jerked his head in Anto's direction. "I was afraid he--he'd try something. If he had--"

Such a possibility, oddly enough, seemed to choke the speaker, and the ferocity of his unfinished threat caused Mrs. Austin to look up at him curiously. There was a moment of silence, then he said, shortly: "Well, we've got a horse apiece now. Let's go."

The stars had thickened and brightened, rounding the night sky into a glittering dome. Anto, the murderer, with his ankles lashed beneath his horse's belly, rode first; next, in a sullen silence, came the Ranger, his chin upon his breast; and in the rear followed Alaire Austin.

In spite of her release from a trying predicament, the woman was scarcely more eager to go home than was the prisoner, for while Anto's trail led to a jail, hers led to Las Palmas, and there was little difference. These last two days in the open had been like a glimpse of freedom; for a time Alaire had almost lost the taste of bitter memories. It had required an effort of will to drug remembrance, but she had succeeded, and had proven her ability to forget. But now--Las Palmas! It meant the usual thing, the same endless battle between her duty and her desire. She was tired of the fight that resulted neither in victory nor defeat; she longed now, more than ever, to give up and let things take their course. Why could not women, as well as men, yield to their inclinations--drift with the current instead of breasting it until they were exhausted? There was David Law, for instance; he was utterly carefree, no duties shackled him. He had his horse, his gun, and his blanket, and they were enough; Alaire, like him, was young, her mind was eager, her body ripe, and her veins full of fire. Life must be sweet to those who were free and happy.

But the object of her envy was not so completely at peace with himself as she supposed. Even yet his mind was in a black turmoil from his recent anger, and of late, be it said, these spells of temper had given him cause for uneasiness. Then, too, there was a lie upon his lips.

Under the stars, at the break of the arroyo, three hundred yards below the water-hole, a coyote was slinking in a wide circle around the body of Panfilo Sanchez.

IV

AN EVENING AT LAS PALMAS

Although the lower counties of southwest Texas are flat and badly watered, they possess a rich soil. They are favored, too, by a kindly climate, subtropic in its mildness. The days are long and bright and breezy, while night brings a drenching dew that keeps the gra.s.ses green. Of late years there have been few of those distressing droughts that gave this part of the state an evil reputation, and there has been a corresponding increase in prosperity. The Rio Grande, jaundiced, erratic as an invalid, wrings its saffron blood from the clay bluffs and gravel canons of the hill country, but near its estuary winds quietly through a low coastal plain which the very impurities of that blood have richened. Here the river's banks are smothered in thickets of huisache, ebony, mesquite, oak, and alamo.

Railroads, those vitalizing nerve-fibers of commerce, are so scarce along this division of the border that even in this day when we boast, or lament, that we no longer have a frontier, there remain in Texas sections larger than some of our Eastern states which hear the sound of iron wheels only on their boundaries. To travel from Brownsville north along the international line one must, for several hundred miles, avail oneself of horses, mules, or motor-cars, since rail transportation is almost lacking. And on his way the traveler will traverse whole counties where the houses are jacals, where English is a foreign tongue, and where peons plow their fields with crooked sticks as did the ancient Egyptians.

That part of the state which lies below the Nueces River was for a time disputed territory, and long after Texans had given their lives to drive the Eagle of Mexico across the Rio Grande much of it remained a forbidden land. Even to-day it is alien. It is a part of our Southland, but a South different to any other that we have. Within it there are no blacks, and yet the whites number but one in twenty. The rest are swarthy, black-haired men who speak the Spanish tongue and whose citizenship is mostly a matter of form.

The stockmen, pushing ahead of the nesters and the tillers of the soil, were the first to invade the lower Rio Grande, and among these "Old Ed"

Austin was a pioneer. Out of the unmapped prairie he had hewed a foothold, and there, among surroundings as Mexican as Mexico, he had laid the beginnings of his fortune.

Of "Old Ed's" early life strange stories are told; like the other cattle barons, he was hungry for land and took it where or how he could. There are tales of fertile sections bought for ten cents an acre, tales of Mexican ranchers dispossessed by mortgage, by monte, or by any means that came to hand; stories even of some, more stubborn than the rest, who refused to feed the Austin greed for land, and who remained on their farms to feed the buzzards instead. Those were crude old days; the pioneers who pushed their herds into the far pastures were lawless fellows, ruthless, acquisitive, mastered by the empire-builder's urge for acres and still more acres. They were the Reclaimers, the men who seized and held, and then seized more, concerning themselves little or not at all with the moral law as applicable to both Mexican and white, and leaving it to the second generation to justify their acts, if ever justification were required.

As other ranches grew under the hands of such unregenerate owners, so also under "Old Ed" Austin's management did Las Palmas increase and prosper. The estate took its name from a natural grove of palms in which the house was built; it comprised an expanse of rich river-land backed by miles of range where "Box A" cattle lived and bred. In his later years the old man sold much land, and some he leased; but when he handed Las Palmas to his son, "Young Ed," as a wedding gift, the ranch still remained a property to be proud of, and one that was known far and wide for its size and richness. Leaving his boy to work out of it a fortune for himself and his bride, the father retired to San Antonio, whither the friends and cronies of his early days were drifting. There he settled down and proceeded to finish his allotted span exactly as suited him best. The rancher's ideal of an agreeable old age comprised three important items--to wit, complete leisure, unlimited freedom of speech, and two pints of rye whisky daily. He enjoyed them all impartially, until, about a year before this story opens, he died profanely and comfortably. He had a big funeral, and was sincerely mourned by a coterie of gouty old Indian-fighters.

Las Palmas had changed greatly since Austin, senior, painfully scrawled his slanting signature to the deed. It was a different ranch now to what the old man had known; indeed, it was doubtful if he would have recognized it, for even the house was new.

Alaire had some such thought in mind as she rode up to the gate on the afternoon following her departure from the water-hole, and she felt a thrill of pride at the acres of sprouting corn, the dense green fields of alfalfa so nicely fitted between their fences. They were like clean, green squares of matting spread for the feet of summer.

A Mexican boy came running to care for her horse, a Mexican woman greeted her as she entered the wide, cool hall and went to her room.

Alaire had ridden far. Part of the night had been spent at the Balli goat-ranch, the remainder of the journey had been hot and dusty, and even yet she was not wholly recovered from her experience of the outward trip.

The house servants at Las Palmas were, on the whole, well trained, and Mrs. Austin's periodic absences excited no comment; in the present instance, Dolores fixed a bath and laid out clean clothes with no more than a running accompaniment of chatter concerned with household affairs. Dolores, indeed, was superior to the ordinary servant; she was a woman of some managerial ability, and she combined the duties of personal maid with those of housekeeper. She was a great gossip, and possessed such a talent for gaining information that through her husband, Benito, the range boss, she was able to keep her mistress in fairly intimate touch with ranch matters.

Alaire, however, was at this moment in no mood to resume the tiresome details of management; she quickly dismissed her servitor and proceeded to revel in the luxury of a cool bath, after which she took a nap.

Later, as she leisurely dressed herself, she acknowledged that it was good to feel the physical comforts of her own house, even though her home-coming gave her no especial joy. She made it a religious practice to dress for dinner, regardless of Ed's presence, though often for weeks at a time she sat in solitary state, presiding over an empty table. Nevertheless, she kept to her custom, for not only did the formality help her to retain her own self-respect, but it had its influence upon the servants. Without companionship one needs to be ever upon guard to retain the nice refinements of gentle breeding, and any one who has exercised authority in savage countries soon learns the importance of leaving unbridged the gulf of color and of cla.s.s.

But Alaire looked forward to no lonely dinner to-night, for Ed was at home. It was with a grave preoccupation that she made herself ready to meet him.

Dolores bustled in for a second time and straightway launched herself into a tirade against Juan, the horse-boy.

"Devil take me if there was ever such a shameless fellow," she cried, angrily. "He delights in tormenting me, and--Dios!--he is lazier than a snake. Work? Bah! He abhors it. All day long he snaps his revolver and pretends to be a bandido, and when he is not risking h.e.l.l's fire in that way he is whirling his riata and jumping through it. Useless capers! He ropes the dog, he ropes the rose-bushes, he ropes fat Victoria, the cook, carrying a huge bowl of hot water to scald the ants' nest. Victoria's stomach is boiled red altogether, and so painful that when she comes near the stove she curses in a way to chill your blood. What does he do this morning but fling his wicked loop over a calf's head and break off one of its little horns. It was terrible; but Senor Austin only laughed and told him he was a fine vaquero."

"Has Mr. Austin been here all the time?"

"Yes."

"Has he--drunk much?"

"Um-m. No more than common. He is on the gallery now with his c.o.c.ktails."

"He knows I am at home?"

"I told him."

Alaire went on dressing. After a little she asked: "Has Benito finished branding the calves in the south pasture?"

"He finished yesterday and sent the remuda to the Six Mile. Jose Sanchez will have completed the rodeo by this afternoon. Benito rode in last night to see you."

"By the way, you know Jose's cousin, Panfilo?"

"Si."

"Why did he leave Las Palmas?"

Dolores hesitated so long that her mistress turned upon her with a look of sharp inquiry.

"He went to La Feria, senora." Then, in a lowered tone: "Mr. Austin ordered it. Suddenly, without warning, he sent him away, though Panfilo did not wish to go, Benito told me all about it."

"Why was he transferred? Come! What ails your tongue, Dolores?"