Valencia was not a deceitful young man, as deceit goes; but he wanted very much to be sent in haste to the ranch, for he was itching with curiosity to know the truth of this matter and if he were indeed right.

If Manuel had gone bearing a challenge from Jose to the Senor Jack, then he wanted to know the answer as soon as possible. Also there was Felice, the daughter of Carlos, whose lips lured him with their sweetness.

Truly, Valencia would promise any miracle of speed.

The pool lay calm as the face of a dead child. Dade stooped and tossed a pebble into it as if that stillness troubled him. He took his cigarette from his lips, looked at the glowing tip, and over it at the eager face of Valencia.

"We mustn't let them fight. Take Noches and ride like the devil was at your heels. Get there ahead of Manuel and tell Jack--" He stopped there and bit his lips to hurry his slow thoughts. "Tell Jack he must go to town right away, because--well, tell him Bill Wilson--"

Valencia's face had been lengthening comically, but hope began to live again in his eyes. "If the senor would write what he wishes to say while I am making ready for the start, he will then have more time to think of what is best. The moon will ride clear to-night; and the sun will find me at the rancho, Senor. Me, I have ridden Noches one hundred miles without rest, before now; these sixty will be play for us both."

"Gracias, Valencia." Dade dropped a hand gratefully upon the shoulder of the other. "I'll write a note, but you must do your part also. You know your people, and I know Jack; if those two fight, the trouble will spread like fire in the gra.s.s; for Don Jose has many friends to take up the quarrel. You've had a long day in the saddle, amigo, and the sixty miles will not be play. I would not ask it if the need were less urgent--but you must beat Manuel. If you don't, Jack will accept the challenge; and once he does that--" he flung out both hands in his characteristic gesture of impatience or helplessness.

"Si, Senor. If the saints permit, Manuel shall not see him first." It was like Valencia to shift the responsibility from his own conscience to the shoulders of the saints, for now he could ride with a lighter heart.

Perhaps he was even sincere when he made the promise; but there were sixty miles of moonlight in which his desire could ride with him and tempt him; and of a truth, Valencia did greatly desire to see those two come together in combat!

The saints were kind to Valencia, but they were also grimly just.

Because he so greatly desired an excuse for delay, they tricked Noches with a broken willow branch that in the deceptive moonlight appeared to be but the shadow of the branch above it. It caught him just under an outflung knee as he galloped and flipped him neatly, heels to the stars.

He did not struggle to his feet even when Valencia himself, a bit dazed by the fall, pulled upon the reins and called to him to rise. The horse lay inert, a steaming, black ma.s.s in the road. The moon was sliding down behind the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the chill breeze whispered that dawn was coming fast upon the trail of the moonbeams.

Valencia, when he saw that Noches would never gallop again, because he had managed to break his sweat-lathered neck in the fall, sat down beside the trail and rolled a corn-husk cigarette. His mood swung from regret over the pa.s.sing of as fleet and true a horse as ever he bestrode, to grat.i.tude to the saints for their timely hindrance of his prompt delivery of the note. Truly it was now no fault of his that he could never reach the hacienda before Manuel! He would have to walk and carry his saddle, heavy with silver and wide skirts of stamped leather; and he was a long way from the end of his journey, when he must cover the distance with his own feet. Eight or ten miles, he estimated it roughly; for he had pa.s.sed Jose's hacienda some time before, and had resisted the temptation to turn aside and find out if Manuel were there or had gone on. He had not pa.s.sed Manuel in the trail as he had boasted that he would do, and not once had he glimpsed him anywhere, though there had been places where the road lay straight, and he could see it clear in the moonlight for a mile or more.

When he had finished the cigarette and his thanks to Fate--or whatever power had delayed him--he removed his saddle and bridle from the horse and went on; and it was then that he began to understand that he must do a penance for desiring war rather than peace amongst his fellows.

Valencia, after the first hour of tramping with his saddle on his shoulders, had lost a good deal of his enthusiasm for the duel he felt sure was already a certainty.

When he left the road for a straight cut to the hacienda, the wild range cattle hindered him with their curiosity, so that, using all the methods known to a seasoned vaquero for driving them back, his progress had been slow. But he finally came out into the road again and was plodding along the stone wall within half a mile of the house, his face very disconsolate because of his protesting feet and the emptiness in his stomach, when Manuel himself confronted him suddenly coming from the house.

Manuel was looking well pleased with himself, in spite of his night ride. He pulled up and stared wide-eyed at Valencia, who had no smile with which to greet him but swore instead a pensive oath.

"Dios! Is it for a wager that you travel thus?" grinned Manuel, abominably comfortable upon a great, sorrel horse that pranced all round Valencia in its anxiety to be upon its way home. "Look you, Valencia!

Since you are travelling, you had best go and tell the padres to make ready the sacrament for your gringo friend, that blue-eyed one; for truly his time on earth is short!"

Valencia, at that, looked up into Manuel's face and smiled in spite of the pain in his feet and the emptiness in his stomach.

"Does it please you, then, Valencia? All night I rode to bear a message to that blue-eyed one who thinks himself supremo in all things; a challenge from Don Jose, to fight a duelo if he is not a coward; so did Jose write. 'Unless you are afraid to meet me'--and the vanity of that blue-eyed one is great, Valencia. Of a truth, the man is loco. What think you, Valencia? He had the right to choose the weapons--and Jose believed that he would choose those pistols of which you make so much talk. Madre de Dios! What says the blue-eyed one, then?--and laughed in my face while he spoke the words! 'Go tell Don Jose I will fight him whenever and wherever he likes; and for weapons I choose riatas.' Heard you anything--"

"Riatas!" Valencia's jaw dropped an inch before he remembered that Manuel's eyes were sharp and eager to read the thoughts of a man in the twitching muscles of his face.

"Si, riatas!" Manuel's whole fat body shook with laughter. "Even you, who are wholly bewitched by those gringos, even you are dismayed! Tell me, Valencia, have you seen him la.s.so anything?"

But Valencia, having pulled himself together, merely lifted his shoulders and smiled wisely, so that even Manuel was almost deceived into believing that Valencia's faith was great because it was built upon a secret knowledge of what the blue-eyed one could do.

"Me, I heard you boasting to those San Vincente vaqueros," Manuel accused, shifting the talk to generalities. "And the Senor Hunter boasts also that the blue-eyed one is supremo with the riata, as he is with everything else!" The tone of Manuel was exceeding bitter. "Well, he will have the chance to prove what he can do. No gringo can come among us Californians and flap the wings and crow upon the tule thatch for naught. There has been overmuch crowing, Valencia. Me, I am glad that boaster must do something more than crow upon the thatch, Valencia!"

"Si, there has been overmuch crowing," Valencia retorted, giving to his smile the lift that made it a sneer, "but the thatch has not been of Picardo tules. Me, I think they grew within hearing of the mission bells of Santa Clara! And the gallo [rooster] which crows is old and fat, and feeds too much upon the grapes that are sour! Adios! I must haste to give congratulations to the Senor Jack, that he will have opportunity to wring the necks of those loud-crowing gallos of the Pacheco thatches."

Whereupon he picked up his saddle and walked on, very straight in the back and patently unashamed of the injustice of his charge; for it was the crowing of Valencia himself beside the San Vincente camp-fire that had brought Manuel with the message, and Valencia knew that perfectly well.

The family of Don Andres had been breakfasting upon the wide veranda when Manuel strode grimly across the patio and confronted them. They were still seated there when Valencia, having deposited his riding gear at the saddle-hut, limped to the steps and stood with his sunny smile upon his face and his sombrero brim trailing the dust. It seemed to Valencia that the don was displeased; he read it in the set of his head, in the hardness that was in his glance, in a certain inflexible quality of his voice.

"Ah, Valencia," he said, rising as if the interruption was to put an end to his lingering there, "you also seem to have ridden in haste from the rodeo. Truly, I think that same rodeo has been but the breeding-ground of gossip and ill-feeling, and is like to bear bitter fruit. Well, you have a message, I'll warrant. What is it?"

Valencia's mien was respectful almost to the point of humility. "The majordomo sent me with a letter, which I was to deliver into the hands of the Senor Allen," he said simply. "My hope was that I might arrive before Manuel"--he caught a flicker of wrath in the eyes of the don at the name and smiled inwardly--"but the moonlight played tricks upon the trail, and my caballo tripped upon a willow-branch and fell upon his head so that his neck was twisted. I was forced to walk and carry the saddle, and there were times when the cattle interrupted with their foolish curiosity, and I must stop and set the riata hissing to frighten them back, else they would perchance have trampled me. So I fear that I arrive too late, Don Andres. But truly I did my best; a full hour behind Manuel I started, and have walked ten miles of the sixty. The saints know well--"

Don Andres checked his apologies with a wave of the hand, and sat down somewhat heavily in his favorite chair, as if he were tired, though the day was but fairly begun.

"We do not doubt your zeal," he observed dryly. "Give the letter to the senor and begone to your breakfast. And," he added impressively, "wait you and rest well until the answer is ready; for perchance there will be further need to test the kindness of the saints--and the speed of a horse."

Valencia fumbled within his sash and brought forth the small, folded square of paper, went up two steps and placed it in Jack's upturned palm, gave Jack also a glance more kindly and loyal than ever he had received from that minx, Teresita, and went away to the vaqueros'

quarters. Valencia had learned nothing from the meeting, except that the don was in one of his rare fits of ill-temper.

"Yet I know that there will be a duelo," he comforted himself with thinking, as he limped wearily across the patio. "The face of the patron is black because of it, and a little devil-flame burns in the eyes of the senorita because for love of her men would fight--(Such is the way of women, to joy in those things which should give them, fear!)--and the senora's face is sagged with worry, and Senor Jack--ah, there is the fighting look in those eyes! Never have I seen them so dark: like the bay when a storm is riding upon the wind. And it will be riatas--for so Manuel told me. Me, I will wager my saddle upon the Senor Jack, even though riatas be the weapons. For he is wily, that blue-eyed one; never would he choose the rawhide unless he knew its hiss as he knows his own heartbeats. Let it be riatas, then, if so the senor chooses!"

CHAPTER XVII

A FIESTA WE SHALL HAVE

Jack, unfolding the crumpled paper, read twice the note from Dade, and at each reading gave a little snort. He folded the paper, unfolded it and read again:

"Dear Jack,

"If Jose wants to fight, take a fool's advice and don't. Better quit the ranch and go back to town for a while--Valencia will get there ahead of Manuel, he says, and you can pull out before Manuel shows up. A licking might do Jose good, but it would stir up a lot of trouble and raise h.e.l.l all around, so crawl into any hole you come to. I'll quit as soon as rodeo is over, and meet you in town. Now don't be bull-headed. Let your own feelings go into the discard for once, and do what's best for the whole valley.

Everything's going smooth here. Noah's dove ain't got any the best of me and Jose, and the boys are working fine.

"Dade."

"At least your majordomo agrees with you, Don Andres," he said, twisting the note unthinkingly in his fingers. "Dade wants me to sneak off to town and hide in Bill Wilson's cellar." There was more resentment in his tone than the note itself had put there; for the argument which Valencia had unwittingly interrupted had been threatening to become acrimonious.

"My majordomo," replied Don Andres, his habitual courtesy just saving the words from becoming a retort, "continues to show that rare good sense which first attracted me to him."

The senora moved uneasily in her chair and smiled deprecatingly at Jack, then imploringly at her husband. This was washing day, and those shiftless ones within would overlook half the linen unless she was on the spot to watch and direct. But these two had come to their first clash of wills, and her husband had little liking for such firm defiance of his wishes. Well she knew the little weather-signs in his face. When his eyebrows took just that tilt, and when the nostrils were drawn in and quivered with his breathing, then was it wise that she should remain by his side. The senora knew well that words are never so harsh between the male of our species when their women are beside them. So, suffering mental torment because of the careless peonas, she, nevertheless, sent Teresita after the fine, linen ap.r.o.n from which she meant to remove a whole two inches of woof for the new pattern of drawnwork which the Donna Lucia had sent her. She would remain as a buffer between these two whose eyes were too hard when they looked at each other.

"It seems a pity that young men nowadays cannot contain themselves without quarreling," sighed the senora, acting upon the theory that anger is most dangerous when it is silent, and so giving the conversational ball a push.

"Is there no way, Senor, in which you might avert this trouble? Truly it saddens me to think of it, for Jose has been as my own son. His mother and I were as twin sisters, Senor, and his mother prayed me to watch over him when she had gone. 'Si, madre mia' would he tell me, when I gave him the good counsel. And now he comes no more, and he wants to fight the duelo! Is there no way, Senor?"

The hardness left Jack's lips but not his eyes, while he looked from her to the don, smoking imperturbably his cigar beside her.

"There is no way, Senora, except for a coward. I have done what I could; I know that Jose's skill is great with riatas, and the choice was mine.

I might have said pistols," he reminded her gently, but with meaning.

The plump hands of the senora went betrayingly into the air and her earrings tinkled with the horror that shook her cushiony person. "Not pistols! No, no--for then Jose would surely be killed! Gracias, Senor!

With riatas my Jose can surely give good account of himself. Three times has he won the medalla oro in fair contest. He is a wizard with the rawhide. Myself, I have wept with pride to see him throw it at the fiestas--"

"Mother mine, Margarita would have you come at once," the senorita interrupted her. "Little Francisco has burned his legs with hot water, and Margarita thinks that your poultice--"