The Argonauts of North Liberty Part 8

"If they were white men, p'rhaps," returned his companion, contemptuously, "but this yer's a case of Injin agen Injin, ez the men are Mexican half-breeds just as Bob's a half Cherokee. The sooner that kind o' cross cattle exterminate each other the better it'll be for the country. It takes a white man like Johnson to set 'em by the ears."

A silence followed. Ezekiel, beginning to be slightly bored with his cheaply acquired but rather impractical information, was about to slip back into the pa.s.sage again when he was arrested by a laugh from the first speaker.

"What's the matter?" growled the other. "Do you want to bring the whole posada out here?"

"I was only thinkin' what a skeer them innocent greenhorn pa.s.sengers will get just ez they're snoozing off for the night, ten miles from here," responded his friend, with a chuckle. "Wonder ef anybody's goin'

up from here besides that patent medicine softy."

Ezekiel stopped as if petrified.

"Ef the ---- fools keep quiet they won't be hurt, for our men will be ready to chip in the moment of the attack. But we've got to let the attack be made for the sake of the evidence. And if we warn off the pa.s.sengers from going this trip, and let the stage go up empty, Bob would suspect something and vamose. But here's Johnson!"

The door in the adobe wall had suddenly opened, and a figure in a serape entered the patio. Ezekiel, whose curiosity was whetted with indignation at the ignominious part a.s.signed to him in this comedy, forgot even his risk of detection by the newcomer, who advanced quickly towards the compartment. When he had reached it he said, in a tone of bitterness:

"The game is up, gentlemen, and the whole thing is blown. The scoundrel has got some confederate here--for he's been seen openly on the road near Demorest's ranch, and the band have had warning and dispersed. We must find out the traitor, and take our precautions for the next time.

Who is that there? I don't know him."

He was pointing to Ezekiel, who had started eagerly forward at the first sound of his voice. The two occupants of the compartment rose at the same moment, leaped into the courtyard, and confronted Ezekiel.

Surrounded by the three menacing figures he did not quail, but remained intently gazing upon the newcomer. Then his mouth opened, and he drawled lazily:

"Wa'al, ef it ain't Squire Blandford, of North Liberty, Connecticut, I'm a treed c.o.o.n. Squire Blandford, how DO you do?"

The stranger drew back in undisguised amazement; the two men glanced hurriedly at each other; Ezekiel alone remained cool, smiling, imperturbable, and triumphant.

"Who are YOU, sir? I do not know you," demanded the newcomer, roughly.

"Like ez not," said Corwin dryly, "it's a matter o' four year sense I lived in your house. Even d.i.c.k Demorest--you knew d.i.c.k?--didn't know me; but I reckon that Mrs. Blandford as used to be--"

"That's enough," said Blandford--for it was he--suddenly mastering both himself and Corwin by a supreme emphasis of will and gesture. "Wait!"

Then turning to the two others who were discreetly regarding the blank adobe wall before them, he said: "Excuse me for a few minutes, gentlemen. There is no hurry now. I will see you later;" and with an imperative wave of his hand motioned Ezekiel to precede him into the pa.s.sage, and followed him.

He did not speak until they entered the stage office, when, pa.s.sing through it, he said peremptorily: "Follow me." The few loungers, who seemed to recognize him, made way for him with a singular deference that impressed Ezekiel, already dominated by his manner. The first perception in his mind was that Blandford had in some strange way succeeded to Demorest's former imperious character. There was no trace left of the old, gentle subjection to Joan's prim precision. Ezekiel followed him out of the office as unresistingly as he had followed Demorest into the stables on that eventful night. They pa.s.sed down the narrow street until Blandford suddenly stopped short and turned into the crumbling doorway of one of the low adobe buildings and entered an apartment. It seemed to be the ordinary living-room of the house, made more domestic by the presence of a silk counterpaned bed in one corner, a prie Dieu and crucifix, and one or two articles of bedchamber furniture. A woman was sitting in deshabille by the window; a man was smoking on a lounge against the wall. Blandford, in the same peremptory manner, addressed a command in Spanish to the inmates, who immediately abandoned the apartment to the seeming trespa.s.ser.

Motioning his companion to a seat on the lounge just vacated, Blandford folded his arms and stood erect before him.

"Well," he said, with quick, business conciseness, "what do you want?"

Ezekiel was staggered out of his complacency.

"Wa'al," he stammered, "I only reckoned to ask the news, ez we are old friends--I--"

"How much do you want?" repeated Blandford, impatiently.

Ezekiel was mystified, yet expectant. "I can't say ez I exakly understand," he began.

"How--much--money--do--you--want," continued Blandford, with frigid accuracy, "to get up and get out of this place?"

"Wa'al, consideren ez I'm travellin' here ez the only authorized agent of a first-cla.s.s Frisco Drug House," said Ezekiel, with a mingling of mortification, pride, and hopefulness, "unless you're travellin' in the opposition business, I don't see what's that to you."

Blandford regarded him searchingly for an instant. "Who sent you here?"

"Dilworth & Dusenberry, Battery Street, San Francisco. Hev their card?"

said Ezekiel, taking one from his waistcoat pocket.

"Corwin," said Blandford, sternly, "whatever your business is here you'll find it will pay you better, a ---- sight, to be frank with me and stop this Yankee shuffling. You say you have been with Demorest--what has HE got to do with your business here?"

"Nothin'," said Ezekiel. "I reckon he wos ez astonished to see me ez you are."

"And didn't he send you here to seek me?" said Blandford, impatiently.

"Considerin' he believes you a dead man, I reckon not."

Blandford gave a hard, constrained laugh. After a pause, still keeping his eyes fixed on Ezekiel, he said:

"Then your recognition of me was accidental?"

"Wa'al, yes. And ez I never took much stock in the stories that you were washed off the Warensboro Bridge, I ain't much astonished at finding you agin."

"What did you believe happened to me?" said Blandford, less brusquely.

Ezekiel noticed the softening; he felt his own turn coming. "I kalkilated you had reasons for going off, leaving no address behind you," he drawled.

"What reasons?" asked Blandford, with a sudden relapse of his former harshness.

"Wa'al, Squire Blandford, sens you wanter know--I reckon your business wasn't payin', and there was a matter of two hundred and fifty dollars ye took with ye, that your creditors would hev liked to hev back."

"Who dare say that?" demanded Blandford, angrily.

"Your wife that was--Mrs. Demorest ez is--told it to her mother,"

returned Ezekiel, lazily.

The blow struck deeper than even Ezekiel's dry malice imagined. For an instant, Blandford remained stupefied. In the five years' retrospect of his resolution on that fatal night, whatever doubt of its wisdom might have obtruded itself upon him, he had never thought of THIS. He had been willing to believe that his wife had quietly forgotten him as well as her treachery to him, he had pa.s.sively acquiesced in the results of that forgetfulness and his own silence; he had been conscious that his wound had healed sooner than he expected, but if this consciousness had enabled him to extend a certain pa.s.sive forgiveness to his wife and Demorest, it was always with the conviction that his mysterious effacement had left an inexplicable shadow upon them which their consciences alone could explain. But for this unjust, vulgar, and degrading interpretation of his own act of expiation, he was totally unprepared. It completely crushed whatever sentiment remained of that act in the horrible irony of finding himself put upon his defence before the world, without being able now to offer the real cause. The anguish of that night had gone forever; but the ridiculous interpretation of it had survived, and would survive it. In the eyes of the man before him he was not a wronged husband, but an absconding petty defaulter, whom he had just detected!

His mind was quickly made up. In that instant he had resolved upon a step as fateful as his former one, and a fitting climax to its results.

For five years he had clearly misunderstood his att.i.tude towards his treacherous wife and perjured friend. Thanks to this practical, selfish machine before him, he knew it now.

"Look here, Corwin," he said, turning upon Ezekiel a colorless face, but a steady, merciless eye. "I can guess, without your telling me, what lies may be circulated about me by the man and woman who know that I have only to declare myself alive to convict them of infamy--perhaps even of criminality before the law. You are not MY friend, or you would not have believed them; if you are THEIRS, you have two courses open to you now. Keep this meeting to yourself and trust to my mercy to keep it a secret also; or, tell Mrs. Demorest that you have seen Mr. Johnson, who is not afraid to come forward at any moment and proclaim that he is Edward Blandford, her only lawful husband. Choose which course you like--it is nothing more to me."

"Wa'al, I reckon that, as far as I know Mrs. Demorest," said Ezekiel, dryly, "it don't make the least difference to her either; but if you want to know my opinion o' this matter, it is that neither you nor Demorest exactly understand that woman. I've known Joan Salisbury since she was so high, but if ye expected me to tell you wot she was goin' to do next, I'd be able to tell ye where the next flash o' lightnin' would strike. It's wot you don't expect of Joan Salisbury that she does. And the best proof of it is that she filed papers for a divorce agin you in Chicago and got it by default a few weeks afore she married Demorest--and you don't know it."

Blandford recoiled. "Impossible," he said, but his voice too plainly showed how clearly its possibility struck him now.

"It's so, but it was kept secret by Deacon Salisbury. I overheerd it.

Wa'al, that's a proof that you don't understand Joan, I reckon. And considerin' that Demorest HIMSELF don't know it, ez I found out only the other day in talking to him, I kalkilate I'm safe in sayin' that you're neither o' you quite up to Deacon Salisbury's darter in nat'ral cuteness. I don't like to obtrude my opinion, Squire Blandford, ez we're old friends, but I do say, that wot with Demorest's prematooriness and yer own hangfiredness, it's a good thing that you two worldly men hev got Joan Salisbury to stand up for North Liberty and keep it from bein'

scandalized by the unG.o.dly. Ef it hadn't been for her smartness, whar y'd both be landed now? There's a heap in Christian bringin' up, and a power in grace, Squire Blandford."

His hard, dry face was for an instant transfigured by a grim fealty and the dull glow of some sectarian clannishness. Or was it possible that this woman's personality had in some mysterious way disturbed his rooted selfishness?

During his speech Blandford had walked to the window. When Corwin had ceased speaking, Blandford turned towards him with an equally changed face and cold imperturbability that astonished him, and held out his hand. "Let bygones be bygones, Corwin--whether we ever meet again or not. Yet if I can do anything for you for the sake of old times, I am ready to do it. I have some power here and in San Francisco," he continued, with a slight touch of pride, "that isn't dependent upon the mere name I may travel under. I have a purpose in coming here."