Her clasped hands tightened, she put her head of fluffy hair to one side and looked at Virginia with such frank wonder in her eyes that Virginia colored under them.

"And," ran on Florrie, forestalling a possible interruption, "I was ready to poke fun at you last night just for being something capable and . . . and splendid. There was my jealousy again, I suppose. You ought to have heard papa on that score; 'Look here, my fine miss; if you could just be something worth while in the world, if you could do as much good in all of your silly life as Virginia Page does every day of hers,' . . . and so forth until he was ready to burst and mama was ready to cry, and I was ready to bite him!" She trilled off in a burst of laughter which was eloquent of the fact that Florence Engle, be her faults what they might, was not the one to hold a grudge.

"I am sorry," said Virginia, smiling a little, "if on my account . . ."

"You were just going to get cleaned up, weren't you?" asked Florrie contritely. "You look as hot and dusty as anything. My, what pretty hair you have; I'll bet it comes down to your waist, doesn't it? You ought to see mine when I take it down; it's like the pictures of the bush-whackers . . . you know what I mean, from South Africa or somewhere, you know . . . only, of course, mine's a prettier color.

Sometime I'll come and comb yours for you, when you're tired out from curing sick Indians. But now," and she jumped to her feet, "I'll go out on the porch while you get dressed and then you come out, will you?

It's cool there under the awning, and I'll have Mr. Struve bring us out some cold lemonade. But first, you do forgive me, don't you?"

Virginia's prompt a.s.surance was incomplete when Florrie flitted out, banging the door after her, headed toward the lounging-chairs on the veranda.

"You pretty thing!" exclaimed Miss Florrie as Virginia joined her as coolly and femininely dressed, if not quite as fluffily, as the banker's daughter. "Oh, but you are quite the most stunning creature that ever came into San Juan! Oh, I know all about myself; don't you suppose I've stood in front of a gla.s.s by the long hours . . . wishing it was a wishing-gla.s.s all the time and that I could turn a pug-nose into a Grecian. I'm pretty; you're simply beautiful!"

"Look here, my dear," laughed Virginia, taking the chair which Florrie had drawn close up to her own in the shade against the adobe wall, "you have already made amends. It isn't necessary to . . ."

"I haven't half finished," cried Florrie emphatically. "You see it's a way of mine to do things just by halves and quit there. But to-day it is different; to-day I am going to square myself. That's one reason why I treated you so cattishly last night; because you were so maddeningly good to look upon. Through a man's eyes, you know; and that's about all that counts anyway, isn't it? And the other reason was that you came in with Roddy and he looked so contented. . . . Do you wonder that I am just wild about him? Isn't he a perfect dear?"

Florrie's utter frankness disconcerted Virginia. The confession of "wildness" about San Juan's sheriff, followed by the a.s.severation of his perfect dearness was made in bright frankness, Florrie's voice lowered no whit though Julius Struve at the moment was coming down the veranda bearing a tray and gla.s.ses. Virginia was not without grat.i.tude that Struve lingered a moment and bantered with Florrie; when he departed she sought to switch the talk in another direction. But Florrie, sipping her tall gla.s.s and setting it aside, was before her.

"You see it was double-barrelled jealousy; so I did rather well not to fly at you and tear your eyes out, didn't I? Just because you and he came in together . . . as if every time a man and girl walk down the street together it means that they are going to get married! But you see, Roddy and I have known each other ever since before I can remember, and I have asked myself a million times if some day we are going to be Mr. and Mrs. Roderick Norton . . . and there are times when I think we are!"

"You have a long time ahead of you yet, haven't you, Florence, before you have to answer a question like that?" asked Virginia amusedly.

"Because I am so young?" cried Florrie. "Oh, I don't know; girls marry young here. Now there is t.i.ta . . . she is our cook's sister . . . she has two babies already and she is only four months older than I am.

And . . . Look, Virgie; there is the most terrible creature in the world. It is Kid Rickard; he killed the Las Palmas man, you know. I am not going even to look at him; I hate him worse that Caleb Patten . . . and that's like saying I hate strychnine worse than a.r.s.enic, isn't it? But who in the name of all that is wonderful is the man with him? Isn't he the handsome thing? I never saw him before.

He is from the outside, Virgie; you can tell by the fashionable cut of his clothes and by the way he walks and . . . Isn't he distinguished!"

"It is Elmer!" exclaimed Virginia, staring at the two figures which were slowly approaching from the southern end of the street. "When did he get here? I didn't expect him. . . ."

Then she chose to forget all save the essential fact that her "baby brother" was here and ran out to the sidewalk, calling to him.

"h.e.l.lo, Sis," returned Elmer nonchalantly. He was a thin, anaemic-looking young fellow a couple of years younger than Virginia who affected a swagger and gloves and who had a cough which was insistent, but which he strove to disguise. And yet Florrie's hyperbole had not been entirely without warrant. He had something of Virginia's fine profile, a look of her in his eyes, the stamp of good blood upon him. He suffered his sister to kiss him, meantime turning his eyes with a faint sign of interest to the fair girl on the veranda.

Florrie smiled.

"Sis," said Elmer, "this is Mr. Rickard. Mr. Rickard, shake hands with my sister, Miss Page."

A feeling of pure loathing swept over the girl as she turned to look into Kid Rickard's sullen eyes and degenerate, cruel face. But, since the Kid was a couple of paces removed and was slow about coming forward, not so much as raising his hand to his wide hat, she nodded at him and managed to say a quiet, non-committal, "How do you do?" Then she slipped her arm through Elmer's.

"Come, Elmer," she said hastily. "I want you to know Miss Florence Engle; she is a sort of cousin of ours."

"Sure," said Elmer off-handedly. "Come on, Rickard."

But the Kid, standing upon no ceremony, had drawn his hat a trifle lower over his eyes and turned his shoulder upon them, continuing along the street in his slouching walk. Elmer, summoning youth's supreme weapon of an affected boredom, yawned, stifled his little cough and went with Virginia to meet Florence.

Florence giggled over the introduction, then grew abruptly as grave as a matron of seventy and tactlessly observed that Mr. Page had a very bad cold; how could one have a cold in weather like this? Whereupon Mr. Page glared at her belligerently, noted her little row of curls, revised his first opinion of her, set her down not only as a cousin, but as a crazy kid besides, and removed half a dozen steps to a chair.

"I don't think much of your friends," remarked Florrie, sensing sudden opposition and flying half-way to meet it.

Elmer Page produced a very new, unsullied pipe from his pocket and filled it with an air, while Virginia looked on curiously. Having done so and having drawn up one trouser's leg to save the crease, crossed the leg and at last put the pipe stem into his mouth, he regarded Florrie from the cool and serene height of his superior age.

"If you refer to Mr. Rickard," he said aloofly, "I may say that he is not a friend . . . yet. I just met him this afternoon. But, although he hasn't had the social advantages, perhaps, still he is a man of parts."

Florrie sniffed and tossed her head. Virginia bit her lips and watched them.

"Been smoking too many cigs, I guess, Sis," Elmer remarked apropos of the initial observation of Miss Engle which still rankled. "Got a regular cigarette fiend's cough. Gave 'em up. Hitting the pipe now."

"If you knew," said Florrie spitefully, "that Mr. Rickard as you call him had just murdered a man yesterday, what would you say then, I wonder?"

There was a sparkle of excitement in Elmer's eyes as he swung about to answer.

"Murdered!" he challenged. "You've heard just one side of it, of course. Bisbee got drunk and insulted Mr. Rickard. They call him the Kid, you know. Say, Sis, he's had a life for you! Full of adventure, all kinds of sport. And Bisbee shot first, too. But the Kid got him!"

he concluded triumphantly. "Galloway told me all about it . . . and what a blundering rummy the fool sheriff is."

"Galloway?" queried Virginia uneasily. "You know him too, already?"

"Sure," replied Elmer. "He's a good sort, too, You'll like him. I asked him around."

"For goodness' sake, Elmer, when did you get to San Juan? Have you been here a week or just a few hours?"

"Got in on the stage at noon, of course. But it doesn't take a man all year to get acquainted in a town this size."

"A man!" giggled Florrie.

"I can see," laughed Virginia, "that you two are going to be more kin than kind to each other; you'll be quarrelling in another moment."

Florrie looked delighted at the prospect; Elmer yawned and brooded over his pipe. But out of the tail of his eye he took stock again of her blonde prettiness, and she, ready from the beginning to make fun of him, repeated to herself the words she had used to Virginia:

"But he is handsome . . . and distinguished looking!"

CHAPTER X

A BRIBE AND A THREAT

Virginia Page found time pa.s.sing swiftly in San Juan. Within two weeks she came almost to forget how she had heard a rattle of pistol-shots, how the slow sobbing of a bell in the Mission garden had bemoaned a life gone and a fresh crime upon a man's soul; at the end of a month it seemed to her that she had dreamed that ride through the night with Roderick Norton, climbing the cliffs, ministering to a stricken man in the forsaken abode of ancient cliff-dwellers. She was like one marooned upon a tiny island in an immense sea who has experienced the crisis of shipwreck and now finds existence suddenly resolved into a quiet struggle for the maintenance of life . . . that and a placid expectation. As another might have waited through the long, quiet hours for the sign of a white sail or a black plume of smoke, so did she wait for the end of a tale whose beginning had included her.

That the long days did not drag was due not so much to that which happened about her, as to that which occurred within her. She carried responsibility upon each shoulder; her life was in the shaping and she and none other must make it what it would be; her brother's character was at that unstable stage when it was ready to run into the mould.

She had brought him here, from the city to the rim of the desert--the step had been her doing, n.o.body's but hers. And she had come here far less for the sake of Elmer Page's cough than for the sake of his manhood. She wanted him to grow to be a man one could be proud of; there were times when his eyes evaded her and she feared the outcome.

"He is just a boy," she told herself, seeking courage. It seemed such a brief time ago that she had blown his nose for him and washed his face. She made excuses for him, but did not close her eyes to the truth. The good old saw that boys will be boys failed to make of Elmer all that she would have him.

Further to this consideration was another matter which filled the hours for her. The few dollars with which she had established herself in San Juan marched in steady procession out of her purse and fewer other dollars came to take their places. The Indian Ramorez whose stomach trouble she had mitigated came full of grat.i.tude and Casa Blanca whiskey and paid La Senorita Doctor as handsomely as he could; he gave her his unlimited and eternal thanks and a very beautiful hair rope.

Neither helped her very greatly to pay for room and board. Another Indian offered her a pair of chickens; a third paid her seventy-five cents on account and promised the rest soon. When she came to know his type better she realized that he had done exceptionally well by her.

She went often to the Engles', growing to love all three of them, each in a different way. Florrie she found vain, spoiled, selfish, but all in so frank a fashion that in return for an admittedly half-jealous admiration she gave a genuine affection. And she was glad to see how Elmer made friends with them, always appearing at his best in their home. He and Florrie were already as intimate as though they had grown up with a back-yard fence separating their two homes; they criticised each other with terrible outspokenness, they made fun of each other, they very frequently "hated and despised" each other and, utterly unknown to either Florrie Engle or Elmer Page, were the best of friends.