"My, no!" cried Mrs. Gallito. "It wouldn't be safe."

"I should think it would be as safe here as in the mountains."

"He don't keep 'em there long, if they're wanted bad," whispered Mrs.

Gallito. "He knows more than one secret trail over the mountains."

Hanson was beginning to show a more genuine interest now and, spurred on by this flattering appreciation of her revelations, Mrs. Gallito went on.

"If you won't ever tell," she bent toward him after glancing about her cautiously, "I'll tell you something. Of course, I'd never mention it if I didn't feel that you're as safe as a church and one of our very best friends."

"You haven't got a better in the world," he fervently a.s.sured her, his curiosity really aroused now.

"Well," glowing with the importance of her news, "did you ever hear of Crop-eared Jose?"

It was with difficulty that Hanson repressed a long, low whistle. "I should say," he answered. "He's been wanted by the police of several States for some time, and since that last big robbery they've had sheriffs and their parties scouring the mountains."

For once Mrs. Gallito really had a piece of news which was sure to command the most flattering attention.

Crop-eared Jose was a famous and slippery bandit, and his latest exploit had been the robbery of an express car and subsequent vanishing with a sum approximating thirty thousand dollars. It was supposed that he had jumped the train while it was making its slow progress across the mountains at night and had lain on the top of the car until what he regarded as the proper moment for action had arrived. He had then slipped down, forced the lock on the door, held up both messengers, making one tie and gag the other, under his direction, and then himself performed that office for the first with his own skillful hands. After that, to open the safe, take the money and drop from the train was mere child's play to so accomplished a professional as Jose.

"Gallito's got him." Mrs. Gallito enjoyed to the full the sensation she had created, and then a sudden revulsion of fright shook her. "But, for goodness' sake, Mr. Hanson, don't let on I told you. I--I wish I hadn't spoke," she whispered.

"Trust me," comfortingly. "Now don't give it another thought. I'll forget it on the spot, if you say so."

"Gallito'd kill me"--she still shook and looked at him fearfully.

"Oh, come now," his tone was infinitely rea.s.suring, "forget it; I have already. Such things don't interest me."

"Love me to-day, Love me an hour;"

sang Lolita, and his eyes turned to the two at the gate, still chaperoned by the faithful parrot. In them was a flash like fire on steel, as they rested on Bob Flick. Then he turned again to Mrs.

Gallito. "Forget it," he said again, as he rose to take his leave; "and believe that I have, too."

But his musings on his way back to the hotel would certainly not have proved calming to that lady could she have but known them.

"Gosh!" he muttered, "and I thought it had broke, this blessed blind luck of mine, when I heard 'em mention Colina; but it's holding after all, it's holding. I guess what I know now about the whereabouts of Crop-eared Jose just about offsets anything Pop Gallito may know about me and anything that Mr. Bob Flick can discover."

CHAPTER III

Pearl's father came the next day, an older man than Hanson had imagined and of a different type. There was no smack of the circus ring about him, no swagger of the footlights; nor any hint of the emotional, gay temperament supposed to be the inheritance of southern blood. He was a saturnine, gnarled old Spaniard with lean jaws and beetling brows. His skin was like parchment. It clung to his bones and fell in heavy wrinkles in the hollows of his cheeks and about his mouth; and his dark eyes, fierce as a wild hawk's, were as brilliant and piercing as in youth.

Little resemblance between him, gaunt and stark and seamed as a desert rock, and his tropical blossom of a daughter, and yet, indubitably, Pearl was the child of her father. The secretiveness, the concentrated will, the unfettered individuality of spirit, which protected its own defiant isolation at all costs, the subtlety, the ability to seek sanctuary in indefinitely maintained silence, these were their traits in common.

Hanson, Gallito met with grave and impersonal courtesy which, the former was relieved to feel, held a real indifference. There were many moths ever circling about this glowing flame of a daughter. Gallito accepted that, met them, observed them, and a.s.sumed those introspective meditations in which he seemed ever absorbed.

There was evidently an understanding between Pearl and himself, but no show of affection, and what small tenderness of nature the Spaniard possessed appeared to be bestowed upon Hugh.

Grim and silent, sipping a little cognac from a gla.s.s on a table by his side, the old man would sit on the porch for an hour at a time listening to the boy playing the piano in the room within.

Flick and himself also seemed on fair terms of friendship and would hold apparently endless discussions concerning various mining properties. It was understood that Gallito had come down now to give his opinion on some claim that Flick had recently staked, and they two, usually accompanied by Hughie, would ride off over the desert and be gone two or three days at a time.

Hanson, finding that the theatrical tie, "we be brothers of one blood,"

had not that potency for Mr. Gallito that it exercised for his wife, and that it was not for him as for her the open sesame to confidence and friendship, speedily ceased to strike this note and approached him on the ground of pure business. The offer he had made to Pearl he repeated to her father.

And Gallito had gazed out over the desert and considered the matter with due deliberation. "Sweeney's been writing to me considerable," he said at last. "He's made a good deal better proposition that he did last year."

"I told your daughter I'd double any offer Sweeney made," Hanson said, and then expatiated on the advantage of the wider circuit and increased advertising that he proposed to give.

Gallito nodded without comment. Again he seemed to turn the matter over in his mind. "I'll write to Sweeney," he said finally, "and get him to give me a statement in writing of just what he proposes to do, a complete outline of his plans down."

The manager could not restrain the question which rose to his lips: "But your daughter, is she willing that you should make all these arrangements?"

Gallito looked at him sharply from under his beetling brows. There was surprise in his glance and a touch of cynical scorn: "She knows that I look out for her interests."

Another query crossed Hanson's mind, one he had no disposition to voice.

Was the understanding between father and daughter, and this apparent and most uncharacteristic submission to his judgment on her part, based on a common pa.s.sion, acquisitiveness? He thought of Pearl's jewels. More than once he had seen her lift her fingers and caress the gems on her hand, just as the Spaniard sat and shook his b.u.t.tons and nuggets of gold together, pouring them from one palm to another, his frowning gaze fixed on the ground before him.

"Yes, I'll write to Sweeney," continued Gallito. "It'll take a few days, though, before I can get his answer." He looked at the other man questioningly. "It might be a week in all. I don't want to keep you here that time. I could write you."

"Nothing to do just now," said Rudolf easily. "Left things in good hands, business running easily. Came down here to stay a while, needed a vacation. And, Lord! This air makes a man feel like he never wanted to leave."

To this Gallito made no comment and, as there was nothing further to say, the subject was, for the time, dropped between them.

Hanson had made known his reasons, obvious reasons, for his presence in Paloma, so, as he would have expressed it, he let it go at that and left the observer to draw any conclusions he pleased as to his almost constant presence at the Gallito home, and yet, after all, his visits were only a little more frequent than those of a number of others, and no more so at all than those of Bob Flick.

There were long evenings when Hughie played the piano, and when Pearl, now and then, touched the guitar, when Mrs. Gallito indulged in her querulous monotonous reminiscences, while Gallito and various men sat and smoked cigarettes about the card table; but always, no matter who came or went, there was Flick, silent, impa.s.sive, polite, but, as Hanson realized with growing irritation, ever watchful.

Gallito sat down to his cards in the evening as regularly as he went to bed exactly at twelve o'clock; and not cards alone. When he came "inside" there were brought forth from various nooks of obscurity in his dwelling other gambling devices, among them a faro layout, a keno goose, and a roulette wheel.

Undoubtedly, the play ran high in the Gallito cabin, but although Hanson sometimes sat in at this or that game, more often he sat talking to Pearl in the soft shadow of the porch. To her he made no secret of his infatuation, but it seemed to him that when with her they were ever more constantly and more irritatingly interrupted. Either Mrs. Gallito, or Hughie, or some of the visitors would join them and Hanson realized that his opportunities for speech with Pearl were becoming increasingly rare.

The only times when he could really see her alone were on the occasions of some morning rides together, which they had begun to take.

As for her, she was still repelling, still alluring, still drawing him on, but how much of it was a game which she played both by nature and practice with consummate skill, or how much he might have caught her fancy or touched her heart, he had no way of determining, and this tormented him and yet daily, hourly, heightened his infatuation.

And he was still further goaded by the knowledge that he was, in a measure, under surveillance, which he was sure was inst.i.tuted by Gallito and Flick and connived at by Hughie; a watchfulness so subtle that it convinced him even while he doubted. He felt often as if he were stalked by some stealthy and implacable animal. This situation, imaginary or real, began to affect his nerves and he would undoubtedly have left had it not been for his mounting pa.s.sion for Pearl, a pa.s.sion fanned always to a more ardent flame by her tantalizing coquetries.

Then, too, he felt that, although Bob Flick and Gallito had probably acquired some information about himself which he would gladly have withheld, still they did not hold all the winning cards. The ace of trumps, as he exultantly told himself, is bound to take any trick, and the ace of trumps he felt that he possessed in the information which Mrs. Gallito had so obligingly furnished him. In other words, his ace was Crop-eared Jose, and his ace was not destined to be unsupported by other trump cards.

Only the evening before, he and Mrs. Gallito had sat alone for a few moments on the porch gazing out over the wonder and glory of the desert flooded in moonlight, and the patient, flattering interest with which he invariably received her confidences had gained its reward, for she had leaned toward him and whispered with many cautious backward glances:

"He's up there in the mountains yet."

"Who?" asked Hanson, attempting to conceal his eagerness under an air of mystification.