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Bells of San Juan, The

<h3> CHAPTER XI </h3> <h4> THE FIGHT AT LA CASA BLANCA </h4> It was something after six o'clock when Jim Galloway rode into San Juan. Leaving his sweat-wet horse in his own stable at the rear of the Casa Blanca he passed through the patio and into a little room whose door he unlocked with a key from his pocket. For ten minutes he sat before a typewriting machine, one big forefinger slowly picking out the letters of a brief note. The address, also typed, bore the name of a town below the border. Without signing his communication he sealed it into its envelope and, relocking the door as he went out, walked thoughtfully down the street to the post-office. As he passed Struve's hotel he lifted his hat; upon the veranda at the cooler, shaded end, Virginia was entertaining Florence Engle. Florrie nodded brightly to Galloway, turning quickly to Virginia as the big man went on. "Do you actually believe, Virginia dear," she whispered, "that that man is as wicked as they say he is? Did you watch him going by? Did you see the way he took off his hat? Did you ever know a man to smile quite as he does?" "I don't believe," returned Virginia, "that I ever had him smile at me, Florrie." "His eyes are not bad eyes, are they?" Florrie ran on. "Oh, I know what papa thinks and what Rod thinks about him; but I just don't believe it! How could a man be the sort they say he is and still be as pleasant and agreeable and downright good-looking as Mr. Galloway? Why," and she achieved a quick little shudder, "if I had done all the terrible deeds they accuse him of I'd go around looking as black as a cloud all the time, savage and glum and remembering every minute how wicked I was." Virginia laughed, failing to picture Florrie grown murderous. But Florrie merely pursed her lips as her eyes followed Galloway down the street. "I just ask you, Virginia Page," she said at last, sinking back into the wide arms of her chair with a sigh, "if a man with murder and all kinds of sin on his soul could make love prettily?" Virginia started. "You don't mean . . ." she began quickly. Florrie laughed, but the other girl noted wonderingly a fresher tint of color in her cool cheeks. "Goosey!" Florrie tossed her head, drew her skirts down modestly over her white-stockinged ankles and laughed again. "He never held my hand and all that. But with his eyes. Is there any law against a man saying nice things with his eyes? And how is a girl going to stop him?" Virginia might have replied that here was a matter which depended very largely upon the girl herself; but instead, estimating that there was little serious love-making on Galloway's part to be apprehended and taking Florrie as lightly as Florrie took the rest of the world, she was merely further amused. And already she had learned to welcome amusement of any sort in San Juan town. But again here was Galloway, stopping now in front of Struve's, drawing another quick, bright smile from the banker's daughter, accepting its invitation and coming into the little yard and down the veranda. Only when he fairly towered over the two girls did he push back the hat which already he had touched to them, standing with his hands on his hips, his heavy features bespeaking a deep inward serenity and quiet good humor. It would have required a blinder man than Jim Galloway not to have marked the cool dislike and distrust in Virginia's eyes. But, though he turned from them to the pink-and-white girl at her side, he gave no sign of sensing that he was in any way unwelcome here. He had greeted Virginia casually; she, observing him keenly, understood what Florrie had meant by a man's making love with his eyes. His look, directed downward into the face smiling up at him, was alive with what was obviously a very genuine admiration. While Florrie allowed her flattered soul to drink deep and thirstily of the wine of adulation Virginia, only half understanding the writing in Galloway's eyes, shivered a little and, leaning forward suddenly, put her hand on Florrie's arm; the gesture, quick and spontaneous, meant nothing to Florrie, nothing to Galloway, and a very great deal to Virginia Page. For it was essentially protective; it served to emphasize in her own mind a fear which until now had been a mere formless mist, a fear for her frivolous little friend. Galloway's whole being was so expressive of conscious power, Florrie's of vacillating impulsiveness, that it required no considerable burden laid upon the imagination to picture the girl coming if he called . . . if he called with the look in his eyes now, with the tone he knew to put into his voice. Social lines are none too clearly drawn in towns like San Juan; often enough they have long ago failed to exist. A John Engle, though six days of the seven he sat behind his desk in a bank, was only a man, his daughter only the daughter of a mere man; a Jim Galloway, though he owned the Casa Blanca and upon occasion stood behind his own bar, might be a man and look with level eyes upon all other men, their wives, and their daughters. Here, with conditions what they always had been, there could stand but one barrier between Galloway and Florrie Engle, the barrier of character. And already the girl had cried: "His eyes are not bad eyes, are they?" A barrier is a silent command to pause; what is the spontaneous answer of a spoiled child to any command? Galloway spoke lightly of this and that, managing in a dozen little ways to compliment Florrie who chattered with a gayety which partook of excitement. In ten minutes he went his way, drawing her musing eyes after him. Until he had reached his own door and turned it at the Casa Blanca the two girls on Struve's veranda were silent. Florrie's thoughts were flitting hither and yon, bright-winged, inconsequential, fluttering about Jim Galloway, deserting him for Roderick Norton, darting off to Elmer Page, coming home to Florrie herself. As for Virginia, conscious of a sort of dread, she was oppressed with the stubbornly insistent thought that if Jim Galloway cared to amuse himself with Florrie he was strong and she was weak; if he called to her she would follow. . . . Virginia was not the only one whom Galloway had set pondering; certain of his words spoken to the sheriff when the two faced each other on the Tecolote trail gave Norton food for thought. For the first time Jim Galloway had openly offered a bribe, one of no insignificant proportions, prefacing his offer with the remark: "I have just begun to imagine lately that I have doped you up wrong all the time." If Galloway had gone on to add: "Time was when I didn't believe I could buy you, but I have changed my mind about that," his meaning could have been no plainer. Now he held out a bribe in one hand, a threat in the other, and Norton riding on to Tecolote mused long over them both. In Tecolote, a straggling village of many dogs and swarthy, grimy-faced children, he tarried until well after dark, making his meal of coffee, frijoles, and chili con carne, thereafter smoking a contemplative pipe. Abandoning the little lunch-room to the flies and silence he crossed the road to the saloon kept by Pete Nu�ez, the brother of the man whom it was Norton's present business to make answer for a crime committed. Pete, a law-abiding citizen nowadays, principally for the reason that he had lost a leg in his younger, gayer days, swept up his crutch and swung across the room from the table where he was sitting to the bar, saying a careless "Que hay?" by way of greeting. "Hello, Pete," Norton returned quietly. "Haven't seen Vidal lately, have you?" Besides Vidal's brother there were a half dozen men in the room playing cards or merely idling in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp swung from the ceiling, men of the saloon-keeper's breed to the last man of them. Their eyes, the slumbrous, mystery-filled orbs of their kind, had lifted under their long lashes to regard the sheriff with seeming indifference. Pete shrugged. "Me, I ain't seen Vidal for a mont'," he answered briefly. "I see Jim Galloway though. Galloway say," and Pete ran his towel idly back and forth along the bar, "Vidal come to la Casa Blanca to-night. I dunno," and again he shrugged. Norton allowed himself the luxury of a mystifying smile as Pete Nu�ez lifted probing eyes to his face. "Jim Galloway has been known to lie before now, like other men," was all of the information he gave to the questioning look. "And," his face suddenly as expressionless as Pete's own, "it wouldn't be a bad bet to look for Vidal in Tres Robles, would it? Eh, Pete?" With that he went out. Quite willing that Pete and his crowd should think what they pleased, Tres Robles lay twenty miles northeast of Tecolote, and if Pete cared to send word to Galloway that the sheriff had ridden on that way, well and good. Half an hour later, with the deeper dark of the night settling thick and sultry over the surface of the desert lands, he rode out of town following the Tres Robles trail. He knew that Pete had come to his door and was watching; he had the vague suspicion that it was quite possible that Vidal was watching, too, with eyes smouldering with hatred. That was only a guess, not even for a man to hazard a bet upon. But the feeling that the fugitive was somewhere in Tecolote or in the mesquite thickets near abouts had been strong enough to send him travelling this way in the afternoon, would have been strong enough for him to have acted upon, searching through shack after shack, were it not that deep down in his heart he did not believe that Jim Galloway had lied. Here, while he came in at one door Vidal might slip out at another, safe among friends. But in the Casa Blanca Norton meant that matters should be different. For an hour he rode toward the northeast. Then, turning out of the trail and reining his horse into the utter blackness offered by the narrow mouth or an arroyo, he sat still for a long time, listening, staring back through the night toward Tecolote. At last, confident that he had not been followed, he cut across the low-lying lomas marking the western horizon and in a swinging gallop rode straight toward San Juan. He had had ample time for the shaping of his simple plans long before catching the first winking glimpse of the lights of the Casa Blanca. He left his horse under the cottonwoods, hung his spurs over the horn of the saddle, and went silently to the back of Struve's hotel. Certain that no one had seen him, he half-circled the building, came to the window which he had counted upon finding open, slipped in, and passed down the hall to Struve's room. At his light tap Struve called, "Come in," and turned toward him as the door opened. Norton closed it behind him. "I am taking a chance that Vidal Nu�ez is at Galloway's right now," he told the hotel keeper. "I am going to get him if he is. I want you to watch the back end of the Casa Blanca and see that he doesn't slip out that way. A shotgun is what you want. Blow the head off any man who doesn't stop when you tell him to. Is Tom Cutter in his room yet?" While Struve, wasting neither time nor words, went to see, Norton unbuttoned his shirt, removed the thirty-eight-caliber revolver from the holster slung under his left arm, whirled the cylinder, and kept the gun in his left hand. In a moment Struve had returned, the deputy at his heels. "What's this about Vidal being here?" Cutter asked sharply. Norton explained briefly and as briefly gave Tom Cutter his orders. While Struve mounted guard at the rear, Cutter was to look out for the front of the building. "Going in alone, are you, Rod?" Cutter shook his head. "If Vidal is in there, and Galloway and the Kid and Antone are all on the job, the chances are there's going to be something happen. Better let me come in along with you." But Norton, his mouth grown set and grim and chary of words, shook his head. Followed by Struve and Cutter he was outside in the darkness five minutes after he had entered the hotel. Struve, a shotgun in his hands, took his place twenty steps from the back door of the Casa Blanca, his restless eyes sweeping back and forth continually, taking stock of door and window; a lamp burning in a rear room cast its light out through a window whose shade was less than half drawn. Tom Cutter, accustomed to acting swiftly upon his superior's suggestions, listened wordlessly to the few whispered instructions, nodded, and did as he was told, effacing himself in the shadows at the corner of the building, prepared when the time came to spring out into the street whence he could command the front and one side of the Casa Blanca. Norton, before leaving Cutter, had drawn the heavy gun from the holster swinging at his belt. "It's some time since we've had any two-handed shooting to do, Tommy," he said as his lean fingers curved to the familiar grip of the Colt 45. "But I guess we haven't forgotten how. Now, stick tight until you hear things wake up." He was gone, turning back to the rear of the house, passing close to Struve, going on to the northeast corner, slipping quietly about it, moving like a shadow along the eastern wall. Here were two windows, both looking into the long barroom, both with their shades drawn down tight. At the first window Norton paused, listening. From within came a man's voice, the Kid's, in his ugly snarl of a laugh, evil and reckless and defiant, that and the clink of a bottle-neck against a glass. Norton, his body pressed against the wall, stood still, waiting for other voices, for Galloway's, for Vidal Nu�ez's. But after Kid Rickard's jarring mirth it was strangely still in the Casa Blanca; no noise of clicking chips bespeaking a poker game, no loud-voiced babble, no sound of a man walking across the bare floor. "They're waiting for me," was Norton's quick thought. "Galloway knew I'd come." He passed on, came to the second window and paused again. The brief, almost breathless silence within, which had followed the Kid's laugh, had already been dissipated by the customary Casa Blanca sounds; a guitar was strumming, chips clicked, a bottle was set heavily upon the bar, a chair scraped. Norton frowned; a moment ago something happened in there to still men's tongues. What was it? It was Galloway who gave him his answer. "So you came, did you, Vidal?" There was a jeer in the heavy voice. "Scared to come, eh? And scared worse to stay away!" Galloway's short laugh was as unpleasant as ever Rickard's had been. "Si; I am here," the voice of Vidal Nu�ez was answering, quick, eager, sibilant with its unmistakable nervous excitement. "Pete tell me what you say an' I come." He lifted his voice abruptly, breaking into a soft Southern oath. "Like a cat, to jump through the little window an' roll on the floor an' by God, jus' in time. There is one man at the back with a gun an' one man in front an' another man . . ." "Let 'em come," cried Galloway loudly, a heavy hand smiting a table top so that a glass jumped and fell breaking to the floor. "Only," and he sent his voice booming out warningly, "any man who chips in unasked and starts trouble in my house can take what's coming to him." So then Vidal had just arrived, it had been his sudden entrance which had invoked the silence in the barroom. Norton merely shrugged; there had been a chance of taking Vidal alone, intercepting him. But that chance had not been one to wait for; now it was past, negligible, not to be regretted. At last he knew where Vidal Nu�ez was and it was his business to make an arrest and not to wait upon further chance. The man who is not ready to go into a crowd to get his law-breaker is not the man to stand for sheriff in the southwest country. "Coming, Galloway!" Norton's ringing shout came back in answer. Suddenly the steady pulse of his blood had been stirred, the hot hope stood high in his heart again that he and Jim Galloway were going to look into each other's eyes with guns talking and an end of a long devious trail in sight. For the moment he half forgot Vidal Nu�ez whom he could fancy cowering in a corner. Then when he knew that every man in the Casa Blanca had turned sharply at his voice he ran from the window to the street, turned the corner of the building and in at the wide front doorway. A short hall, a closed door confronting him . . . then that had been flung open and on its threshold, a gun in each hand, his hat far back on his head, his eyes on fire, he stood looking in on a half dozen men and three glinting steel barrels which, describing quick arcs, were whipped from the window toward him. A gun in Galloway's hand, one in the hand of Vidal Nu�ez, the third already spitting fire as Kid Rickard's narrowed eyes shone above it. The other men had fallen back precipitately to right and left; Norton noted that Elmer Page was among them, a pace or two from Rickard's side. The Kid, being young, had something of youth's impatience, perhaps the only reminiscence of youth left in a calloused soul. So it was that he had shot a second too soon. Norton, as both hands rose in front of him, answered Kid Rickard with the smaller-caliber gun while the Colt in his right hand was concerned impartially with Galloway and Vidal Nu�ez, standing close together. The Kid cursed, his voice rose in a shriek of anger rather than pain, and he spun about and fell backward, tripping over an overturned chair. "Shoot, Galloway!" cried Norton. "Shoot, damn you, shoot!" Now, as for the second time that day the two men confronted each other, naked, hot hatred glaring out of their eyes, each man knew that he stood balancing a crucial second, midway between death and triumph. Jim Galloway, who never until now had come out into the open in defiance of the law, must swallow his words under the eyes of his own gang, or once and for all forsake the semi-security behind his ambush. Again issues were clear cut. He answered the sheriff with a curse and a stream of lead. As he fired he threw himself to the side, the old trick, his gun little higher than his hip, and fired again. And shot for shot Norton answered him. Though but half the length of a room lay between them, as yet, neither man was hurt. For no longer were they in the rich light of the swinging coal-oil lamp; the room was gathered in pitch darkness; their guns spat long tongues of vivid flame. For, just as Kid Ricard was falling, while Jim Galloway's finger was crooked to the trigger, while Antone was whipping up his gun behind the bar, there had come a shot from the card-room door shattering the lamp. Neither Norton nor Galloway, Rickard nor Vidal Nu�ez, nor Antone nor any of the other men in the room saw who had fired the shot. As the light went out Norton leaped away from the door, having little wish to stand silhouetted against the rectangle of pale light from the outer night; and, leaping, he poured in his fourth and fifth and sixth shots in the quarter where he hoped to find Galloway. But always he remembered where he had seen Elmer Page standing, and always he remembered Antone behind the bar, and Vidal Nu�ez drawn back into a corner. His forty-five emptied, he jammed it back into its holster and stood rigid, staring into the blackness about him, every sense on the qui vive. Galloway had given over shooting; he might be dead or merely waiting. Vidal had held his fire, seeming frightened, uncertain, half stunned. Antone would be leaning forward, peering with frowning eyes, trying to locate him. It swept into Norton's mind suddenly that thus, in utter and unexpected darkness, he had the upper hand. He could shoot, the law riding upon each flying pellet of lead, and be it Jim Galloway or Antone or Vidal, or any other of Galloway's crowd who fell, it would be a man who richly deserved what his fate was bringing him. They, on the other hand, being many against one, must be careful which way they shot. He had come for Vidal Nu�ez. The man he wanted was yonder, but a few feet from him. Duty and desire pointed across the room to the obscure corner. He moved a cautious foot. The floor complained under his shifting weight and from Galloway's quarter came a spit of fire. Twin with it came a shot from behind the bar. That was Antone talking. And now at last came the other shot from Vidal himself. Rod Norton's was that type of man which finds caution less to his liking than headlong action; furthermore, in the present crisis, caution had seemed the acme of foolhardiness. There are times when true wisdom lies in taking one's chance boldly, flying half-way to meet it. Now, as three bullets sang by him, he gathered himself; then, before the sharp reports had died in his ears, he sprang forward, hurling himself across the room, striking with his lifted gun as he went, missing, striking again and experiencing that grinding, crunching sensation transmitted along the metal barrel as it struck a man fair upon the head. The man went down heavily and Norton stood over him, praying that it was Vidal Nu�ez. Then it was that Julius Struve, having deserted his post at the rear, smashed through a window with the muzzle of his shotgun, sending the shade flipping up, springing back from the square of faint light as he cried out sharply: "All right, Nort?" "All right!" cried Norton. "I'm against the north wall; rake the other side and the bar with your shotgun if they don't step out. You and Cutter together. I've got Rickard and Nu�ez out of it. Drop your gun, Galloway; lively, while you've got the chance. Antone, Struve's got a shotgun!" Antone cursed, and with the snarl of his voice came the clatter of a revolver slammed down on the bar. Galloway cursed and fired, emptying his second gun, crazed with hatred and blind anger. Again, shot for shot Norton answered him. And again it grew very silent in the Casa Blanca. "Out through the window, one by one, with your hands up and your guns down," shouted Struve; "or I start in. Which is it, boys?" There was a scramble to obey, the several men who had taken no part leading the way. As they went out their forms were for a moment clearly outlined, then swallowed up in the outer darkness. At Struve's command they lined up against the wall, watched over by the muzzle of his shotgun. Antone, crying out that he was coming, followed. Elmer Page, sick and dizzy, was at Antone's heels. Tom Cutter had gathered up some dry grass, and with that and a chance-found bit of wood started a blaze near the second window; in its wavering, uncertain light the faces of the men stood out whitely. "Galloway is not here yet," he snapped. And, lifting his voice: "Come on, Galloway." A crowd had gathered in the street, asking questions that went unanswered. Other hands added fuel to Cutter's fire. The increasing light at last penetrated the blackness filling the barroom. "Come out, Galloway," said Struve coldly. "I've got you covered." Since things were bad enough as they were, and he had no desire to make them worse and saw no opportunity to better them, Jim Galloway, his hand nursing a bleeding shoulder, stumbled awkwardly through the opening. "Is that all of 'em, Roddy?" called Cutter. Norton didn't answer. The deputy called again. Then, while the crowd surged about door and window. Cutter came in, a revolver in his right hand, a torch of a burning fagot in his left, held high. Vidal Nu�ez was dead; not from a blow upon the head, but from a chance bullet through the heart after he had fallen. Kid Rickard, his sullen eyes wide with their pain, lay half under a poker table. Lying across the body of Nu�ez, as though still guarding his prisoner, was the quiet form of Rod Norton, his face bloodlessly white save for the smear of blood which had run from the wound hidden by the close-cropped, black hair. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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