"Arthur," said Perez, "to me you need never justify, need never explain; if you say so, that is all, the rest is wasted time."

"Here, too," says I.

It would stagger anybody to see how poor Saxton wanted us to believe him. I began to see how he had poisoned his life. He looked at us very thankfully, but tears came into his eyes. He tried to go on in the calm way, but his throat was husky. Then he swore out free and felt better.

"To save time, I believe you in turn," he said. "Another of my tricks is to wish to be believed in myself, and yet always doubt other people.

Well, I lost my grip; I cannot remember all I said to Mary, but I can easily remember that it was all unpleasant. I simply improved on the Almighty's handiwork by making a longer-eared jacka.s.s of myself than I was intended to be, winding up as a masterstroke by attacking Belknap.

It was only two days before, Perez, that Orinez had told me the other side of Belknap's Great Work; of how he was undoing all that you and Orinez had done for the salvation of this unlucky country, by starting up a revolution in order that a lot of poor devils might be killed for his private benefit. I laid it on hard in my fury, and Mary told me to leave. She said she didn't want to be a witness of my descending so low as to attack an honorable man behind his back,--and then I came away.

The Lord knows I have no memory of that walk home; everything that was bad in my blood came out. Honest, I fought--that is to say, I had lucid intervals of an hour or so, but every day my sense wore blunt under the grind of despair. It was a disease; it would come on me in waves like an ague fit. I really suffered physically; I lost every bit of decency that ever was in me; I became a G.o.d-forsaken, devil-ridden brute; a quart of French brandy a day did me no especial good, and yet I loved the stuff for the time. Well, the disease, like any disease, had to reach its climax. It came when I started to strike you, Henry--that was the limit of meanness for any living man. Then old Bill here took hold of me, and squeezed what was left of the obsession out of me with the first hug of his arms. For the expulsion of devils, I recommend your long flippers, Bill, my boy....

"I am not going to apologize to you, Henry, nor to Bill. If I didn't feel something more than any apology could make good, I wouldn't be worth your trouble. But right here I shift."

We sat still. Seldom you see a man take out his soul: when that happens, it is usually a kind of indecent exposure. A man must shake every glimmer of vanity out.

Old Saxton stood out naked and unashamed like a statue. n.o.body felt embarra.s.sed. I was too young to appreciate it fully, although I did in a measure. I saw that all he wanted was to be honest. Not a word altered to win either sympathy or approval for himself. I suppose that is the way the woman he spoke of attracted him.

Perez spoke very gently and cautiously.

"This is all strange to me, Arthur," he said; "I am trying to understand. You seem so strong, of the head so remarkably clear and capable, that it is a difficulty to understand this trouble. I ask now, if you put a restraint upon yourself, will not--pardon, you know I only ask for good--"

Sax threw both arms in the air. "For G.o.d's sake, and for both our sakes, Henry, don't quiddle with courtesy--slam out with it! I've lost all right to consideration--you can only give me self-respect by showing you believe me man enough to hear what you have to say."

That slow smile lit up Perez's eyes. "Quite right, Arthur," he said.

"'_Me he equivocado_'--this, then: If you restrain yourself, like the volcano, will you not break out somewhere new?"

"Not so long as I keep my grip on facts: I'm safe when I can say, 'I'm getting crazy again.' The saying restores my sanity. Having no one to say it to, I run amuck."

"You have that friend," said Perez. He stopped a minute. "I would not have you hold yourself, if that would do you harm, Arthur; but now I say, take yourself in the hand strong, for of my life the bitterest time was when you raised your arm at me."

Saxton's face jerked and then grew still. "Come, boys!" he said, rolling a handful of cigars on the table. "Smoke."

I never saw any one who could get himself and friends in and out of trouble like Saxton. In five minutes we were laughing and talking as though nothing unusual had occurred. That's what I call strength of mind. It wasn't that Sax couldn't feel if he let himself, Heaven knows.

It was that he could shut down so tight, when roused to it, that he _wouldn't_ feel, nor you, neither.

At the same time there was a pity for him aching at the bottom of my heart, and when Perez and I left him to walk home together a remark Perez made started the Great Scheme into operation.

"The girl _must_ care for him," said Perez. "His erraticality! Bah! What woman cares for that, so long that the strangeness is in the way of feeling, and not in the way of non-feeling? Women desire that their admirer shall be of some romance. And with that beautiful poet face; the fine manner; the grace of body and of mind--that unusual beautiful which is he and no other--you tell me that any woman shall see that lay at her feet and not be moved? _Tonteria!_ I believe it not. When the story of that other woman arrived to Senorita Maria's ear what is it she feel?

The religious abhorrence? The violation of taste? Perhaps, but much more a thing she does not know herself, that monster of the green eye, called Jealousy--believe me, Senor Saunders, the man who look sees more of the play. It is so. Mees Mary may feel bad in many way, but when she will listen to the explanation not at all, her worst feel bad is jealousy."

I don't want to lay claim for myself as a great student of mankind, yet ideas to that effect had begun to peek around the corner of my skull. It seemed to me that Mary felt altogether too _hot_ sorry and not enough resigned sorry for it to be a case of friendly interest.

"I guess you're right, Mr. Perez," said I, "and if we could only get Sax to bust through her ideas, as I busted through his to-day--"

"_Perfectamente!_" cried Perez, slapping me on the back. "It is the same; obsession, Arthur called it. It is that and no other. This Belknap has so played upon her mind that it is not her mind; it is a meexture of some ideas she has, and what he wishes her to be. If she could have an arm of that rude strength like your own--but," he shrugged his shoulders, "it is a lady, and there is nothing."

"I'm not so darned sure about that," says I, little particles of a plan slowly settling in the mud-puddle I call my mind. "I'm not so hunky-dory positive.... If I could get holt of something against that cussed Belknap,--something that would look bad to a woman,--I'd risk it."

Perez brightened right up. "You have something thought about?" he asked, eager. "Do not go to the hotel to-night. Let me be your host--we are right at the door--_Su casa_, Senor--let me offer my little entertainment, and we shall to talk further--will you not let it be so?"

I liked Perez and I wanted to talk as much as he did. "Much obliged,"

says I; "I hate a hotel, anyhow." So in we went.

XII

BILL MEETS A RELATIVE

Perez had a fine house, a revelation to me; big halls, big rooms, the walls covered with pictures, Injun relics, armor, swords, guns, and what not; many servants to fetch and carry, and an ease and comfort over it for which delicious is the only word.

We had a bully little dinner out in the cool garden, which I got through all right by playing second to Perez. The finger-bowls had me off the trail a little, but I waited and discovered their purpose. You can find out everything if you wait long enough.

Then with coffee and cigars we began to talk.

"Now for the plan of Senor Saunders," says Perez, opening the bottom of his well-supported vest. He looked so respectable and ordinary sitting there, that my plan lost its light. I forgot the other side of him.

"Well," I begun, lamely, "Saxton wants to marry Mary."

Perez politely acknowledged that such was the fact.

"Then," says I, "why don't he just do it?"

Perez looked his disappointment.

"That would be well, surely," says he in the tone one uses to a harmless fool.

"Here," says I. "First, I want to break into Mr. Belknap. You say he's got some kind of political game on?"

Perez renewed his interest. "_Si_," says he. "This is what he makes. He is now going to and fro, putting those that have come to his church against those of the old religion. Against the Catholic Church he lays the blame of everything wrong. It will be a revolution, he says, to annihilate that enemy of man, the old church, and in its place put that wonder of virtue, the church of Mr. Belknap. What _will_ happen is that many poor men shall be killed, and the wolf-rascals get fat, as usual.

With Belknap are the few in earnest, who think; the many who neither care nor think, but are led; those that fight for love of it; those who are hypocrites, and those who look for profit. On our side, the same.

There is no advantage to either by comparison in that. In here comes the difference. Such men as Orinez and myself know that this unhappy land must have peace, before any notion of right can grow. When it is all fight, fight, fight, one cannot think evenly--has your brother been killed? Your wife and sisters murdered? And then you will think calmly of the issue? Time is needed to heal these old wounds, that more can work together. So Orinez and I fight for time--I with my money and my counsel, he with the terror of his name. Once I did Orinez a favor; he never forgets. So when I called to help me in this, the tiger sheathed his claws; the man of blood turned shepherd; the robber, honest; but,"--and here Perez's voice took a bitterness worse than curses,--"but Mr. Belknap, that respected man of G.o.d, will have it that the need of the State is the drawing of blood--once more, fire, slaughter, rape, till the land stinks with corpses, lays black in the sunlight and rings with the cries of injured women--a great work...."

Perez stood up, gripping the table. "I am a little, peaceful man," he said, "but there are times when I could drive a knife through that man and shout with joy for every blow." He sat down quickly and smiled a faint smile. "_My_ obsession," said he, wiping his forehead; "I, too, preach peace through the letting of blood. Belknap may be as much in earnest as myself--Bah! This foolish pretense of candor! He is _not_; he is a scoundrel--whether he knows it or not, a scoundrel."

"Well, that's good news," said I. "It won't be hard for me to pick a quarrel with him, which is precisely what I intend to do. I'll meet his schemes with some of my own, Mary likes me, and it will be at least a stand-off in her mind if Brother Belknap and I fall out. Then the next thing is for Arthur to get a party of men, capture Mary, take her off and marry her."

Perez threw up his hands in horror. "Senor Saunders!" he cried; "for you to say this! I am astonished! Abstract the lady without her wish? Surely I have not heard you rightly--_chanzas aparte_, you play with me--you wish to see me look?"

"Not I," says I, stout; "I mean every word of it. As Sax said this afternoon, there's times when it's wicked to twiddle with courtesy. That girl will ruin her whole life if Belknap has the making of it. Her friends oughtn't to stand by and see it done--d.a.m.n it, man! Suppose she dropped her handkerchief as she was falling over a cliff--what would you do first: save her life or pick up the handkerchief?"

Perez puffed and thought a moment. "_Tiene V. razon_," he says, "there is more here than a ball-room. I knew her as a girl, I know her now.

Belknap I know too. My life I stake on it that for Belknap to win her, means her life wrecked, and yet I stop--from habit. I stake my life--I mean it--on my judgment, yet dare not stake an action to make that judgment good."

He waited again, while the minutes slipped by; drumming on the table; shifting things in his mind. The whole air of long, long use to the handsome, nice things I saw about me struck me strong in the man. He was born to it, and his forebears centuries before him. Yet instead of breeding out the man in him, it had only taken off the sc.u.m.

At last he spoke. "Give me more time, _campanero_. I shall consider this further. To meddle with other lives is always a dangerous business, just as not to meddle may be a shameful one. As it stands, if he gets not the lady for a wife, Saxton is a lost man--I know him. On his word, on your word and on my word, she is not indifferent to him. We know Belknap is a rascal, and for her unfit. And so, action--yet I am a man of peace."