CHAPTER XV
THE KING'S PALACE
Not only was Galloway back in San Juan but, as Norton had predicted of him, he appeared to have every assurance that he stood in no unusual danger. There had been a fight in a dark room and one man had been killed, certain others wounded. The dead man was Galloway's friend, hence it was not to be thought that Galloway had killed him. Kid Rickard was another friend. As for the wound Rod Norton had received, who could swear that this man or that had given it to him?
"The chances are," Galloway had already said in many quarters, "that Tom Cutter, getting excited, popped over his own sheriff."
True, it was quite obvious that a charge lay at Galloway's door, that of harboring a fugitive from justice and of resisting an officer. But with Galloway's money and influence, with the shrewdest technical lawyer in the State retained, with ample perjured testimony to be had as desired, the law-breaker saw no reason for present uneasiness. Perhaps more than anything else he regretted the death of Vidal Nuñez and the wounding of Kid Rickard. For these matters vitally touched Jim Galloway and his swollen prestige among his henchmen; he had thrown the cloak of his protection about Vidal, had summoned him, promised him all safety . . . and Vidal was dead. He knew that men spoke of this over and over and hushed when he came upon them; that Vidal's brother, Pete, grumbled and muttered that Galloway was losing his grip, that soon or late he would fall, that falling he would drag others down with him. More than ever before the whole county watched for the final duello between Galloway and Norton. In half a dozen small towns and mining-camps men laid bets upon the result.
For the first time, also, there was much barbed comment and criticism of the sheriff. He had gotten this man and that, it was true. And yet, after all this time, he seemed to be no nearer than at the beginning to getting the man who counted. There were those who recalled the killing of Bisbee of Las Palmas, and reminded others that there had been no attempt at prosecution. Now there had come forth from the Casa Blanca fresh defiance and lawlessness and still Jim Galloway came and went as he pleased. Those who criticised said that Norton was losing his nerve, or else that he was merely incompetent when measured by the yardstick of swift, incisive action wedded to capability.
"If he can't get Jim Galloway, let him step out of the way and give the chance to a man who can," was said many times and in many ways. Even John Engle, Julius Struve, Tom Cutter, and Brocky Lane came to Norton at one time or another, telling him what they had heard, urging him to give some heed to popular clamor, and to begin legal action.
"Put the skids under him, Roddy," pleaded Brocky Lane. "We can't slide him far the first trip, maybe. But a year or so in jail will break his grip here."
But Norton shook his head. He was playing the game his way.
"The rifles are still in the cache," he told Brocky. "He is getting ready, as we know; further, just as my friends are beginning to find fault with me, so are his hangers-on beginning to wonder if they haven't tied to the wrong man. Just to save his own face he'll have to start something pretty pronto. And we know about where he is going to strike. It's up to us to hold our horses, Brocky."
Brocky growled a bit, but went away more than half-persuaded. He called at the hotel, paid his respects to Virginia, and affording her a satisfaction which it was hard for her to conceal, also paid her for her services rendered him in the cliff-dweller's cave.
Often enough the man who tilts with the law is in most things not unlike his fellows, different alone perhaps in the one essential that he is born a few hundreds of years late in the advance of civilization. Going about that part of his business which has its claims to legitimacy, mingling freely with his fellows, he fails to stand out distinctly from them as a monster. Given the slow passing of uneventful time, and it becomes hard and harder to consider him as a social menace. When the man is of the Jim Galloway type, his plans large, his patience long, he may even pass out from the shadow of a gallows-tree and return to occupy his former place in the quiet community life, while his neighbors are prone to forget or condone.
As other days came and slipped by and the weeks grew out of them, Galloway's was a pleasant, untroubled face to be seen on the street, at the post-office, behind his own bar, on the country roads. He ignored any animosity which San Juan might feel for him. If a man looked at him stonily, Galloway did not care to let it be seen that he saw; if a woman turned out to avoid him, no evidence that he understood darkened his eyes. He had a good-humored word to speak always; he lifted his hat to the banker's wife, as he had always done; he mingled with the crowd when there were "exercises" at the little schoolhouse; he warmly congratulated Miss Porter, the crabbed old-maid teacher, on the work she had accomplished and made her wonder fleetingly if there wasn't a bit of good in the man, after all. Perhaps there was; there is in most men. And Florrie Engle was beginning to wonder the same thing. For Rod Norton, recovered and about his duties, was not quite the same touchingly heroic figure he had been while lying unconscious and in danger of his life. Nor was it any part of Florrie Engle's nature to remain long either upon the heights or in the depths of an emotion. The night of the shooting she had cried out passionately against Galloway; as days went their placid way and she saw Galloway upon each one of them . . . and did not see a great deal of Norton, who was either away or monopolizing Virginia, . . . she took the first step in the gambler's direction by beginning to be sorry for him. First, it was too bad that Mr. Galloway did the sort of things which he did; no doubt he had had no mother to teach him when he was very young. Next, it was a shame that he was blamed for everything that had to happen; maybe he was a . . . a bad man, but Florrie simply didn't believe he was responsible for half of the deeds laid at his door. Finally, through a long and intricate chain of considerations, the girl reached the point where she nodded when Galloway lifted his hat. The smile in the man's eyes was one of pure triumph.
"Oh, my dear!" Florrie burst into Virginia's room, flushed and palpitant with her latest emotion. "He has told me all about it, and do you know, I don't believe that we have the right to blame him? Doesn't it say in the Bible or . . . or somewhere, that greater praise or something shall no man have than he who gives his life for a friend? It's something like that, anyway. Aren't people just horrid, always blaming other people, never stopping to consider their reasons and impulses and looking at it from their side? Vidal Nuñez was a friend of Mr. Galloway's; he was in Mr. Galloway's house. Of course . . ."
"I thought that you didn't speak to him any more."
"I didn't for a long time. But if you could have only seen the way he always looks at me when I bump into him. Virgie, I believe he is sad and lonely and that he would like to be good if people would only give him the chance. Why, he is human, after all, you know."
Virginia began to ask herself if Galloway were merely amusing himself with Florrie or if the man were really interested in her. It did not seem likely that a girl like Florrie would appeal to a man like him; and yet, why not? There is at least a grain of truth, if no more, in the old saw of the attraction of opposites. And it was scarcely more improbable that he should be interested in her than that she should allow herself to be ever so slightly moved by him. Furthermore, in its final analysis, emotion is not always to be explained.
Virginia set herself the task of watching for any slightest development of the man's influence over the girl. She saw Florrie almost daily, either at the hotel to which Florrie had acquired the habit of coming in the cool of the afternoons or at the Engle home. And for the sake of her little friend, and at the same time for Elmer's sake, she threw the two youngsters together as much as possible. They quarrelled rather a good deal, criticised each other with startling frankness, and grew to be better friends than either realized. Elmer was a vaquero now, as he explained whenever need be or opportunity arose, wore chaps, a knotted handkerchief about a throat which daily grew more brown, spurs as large and noisy as were to be encountered on San Juan's street, and his right hip pocket bulged. None of the details escaped Florrie's eyes . . . he called her "Fluff" now and she nicknamed him "Black Bill" . . . and she never failed to refer to them mockingly.
"They tell me, Black Bill," she said innocently, "that you fell off your horse yesterday. I was so sorry."
She had offered her sympathy during a lull in the conversation, drawing the attention of her father, mother, and Virginia to Elmer, whose face reddened promptly.
"Florrie!" chided Mrs. Engle, hiding the twinkle in her own eyes.
"Oh, her," said Elmer with a wave of the hand. "I don't mind what Fluff says. She's just trying to kid me."
Toward the end of the evening, having been thoughtful for ten minutes, Elmer adopted Florrie's tactics and remarked suddenly and in a voice to be heard much farther than his needed to carry:
"Say, Fluff. Saw an old friend of yours the other day." And when Florrie, "gun-shy" as Elmer called her, was too wise to ask any questions, he hastened on: "Juanito Miranda it was. Sent his best. So did Mrs. Juanito."
Whereupon it was Florrie's turn to turn a scarlet of mortification and anger. For Juanito had soft black eyes and almost equally soft black mustaches, with probably a heart to match, and only a year ago Florrie had been busied making a hero of him when he, the blind one, took unto himself an Indian bride and in all innocence heaped shame high upon the blonde head. How Elmer unearthed such ancient history was a mystery to Florrie; but none the less she "hated" him for it. They saw a very great deal of each other, each serving as a sort of balance-wheel to the other's self-centred complacency. Perhaps the one subject upon which they could agree was Jim Galloway; Elmer still liked to look upon the gambler as a colossal figure standing serene among wolves, while Florrie could admit to him, with no fear of a chiding, that she thought Mr. Galloway "simply splendid!"
When one evening, after having failed to show himself for a full month, Rod Norton came to the Engles', found Elmer and Virginia there, and suggested the ride to the King's Palace, he awakened no end of enthusiasm. Elmer had a day off, thanks to the generosity of his employer, Mr. Engle, and had just secretly purchased a fresh outfit consisting of a silver-mounted Spanish bit, a new pair of white and unspeakably shaggy, draggy chaps, a wide hat with a band of snake hide, and boots that were the final whisper in high-heeled discomfort. Florrie disappeared into her room to make her own little riding-costume as irresistible as possible. They were to start with the first streaks of dawn to-morrow, just the four of them, since the banker and his wife, lukewarmly invited, had no desire for a forty-mile ride between morning and night.
It was Rod Norton's privilege to lead his merry party into what for them was wonderland. Even Florrie, though so much other life had been passed in San Juan, had never before visited the King's Palace. Clattering through the street while most folk were asleep, they took advantage of the cool of the dawn and rode swiftly. Elmer and Florrie racing on ahead laid aside their accustomed weapons and were, for the once, utterly flattering to each other. Each wishing to be admired, admired the other, and was paid back in the coveted coin. Norton and Virginia, at first a little inclined toward silence, soon grew as noisily merry as the others, drawing deep enjoyment from the moment.
And at the portals of the King's Palace, reached after four hours in the saddle, followed by thirty minutes on foot, they stood hushed with wonder. High upon the southern slope of Mt. Temple they had come abruptly into the unexpected. Here a rugged plateau had caught and held through the ages the soil which had weathered down from the cliffs above; here were trees to replace the weary gray brush, shade instead of glare, birds as welcome substitutes for droning insects, water and flowers to make the cañons doubly cool and fragrant for him who had ascended from the dry reaches of sand below the talus.
"It's just like fairy-land!" cried the ecstatic Florrie. "Roddy Norton, I think you're real mean not to have brought me here ages ago!"
"Ages ago, my dear miss," laughed Norton, "you were too little to appreciate it. You should thank me for bringing you now."
Down through the middle of the plateau from its hidden source ran the purling stream which was destined to yield to sun and thirsty earth long before it twisted down the lower slopes of the hills. Along its edges the grass was thick and rich, shot through everywhere with little blue blossoms and the golden gleam of the starflowers. Further promise of yellow beauty was given by the stalks of the evening-primrose scattered on every hand, the flowers furled now, sleeping. In the groves were pines, small cedars, and a sprinkling of sturdy dwarf oaks. And from their shelter came the welcome sound of a bird's twitter.
"It's always about as you see it," Norton explained. "Too hard to get to, too small when one makes the climb to afford enough pasturage for sheep. And now the Palace itself."
Straight ahead the cliffs overhung the farther rim of the plateau. And there, under the out-jutting roof of rock, an ancient people had fashioned themselves a home which stood now as when their hands laboriously set it there. The protected ledge which afforded eternal foundation was slightly above the plateau's level, to be reached by a series of "steps" in the rock, steps which were holes worn deep, perhaps five hundred years ago. The climb was steep, hazardous unless one went with due precaution, but the four holiday-makers hurried to begin it.
So close to the edge of the rock ledge did the walls of the ruin stand that there was barely room to edge along it to come to the narrow doorway. Holding hands, Norton in the lead, Elmer in the rear, they made their breathless way. And then they were in the hushed, shaded anteroom.
The dust of untroubled ages lay upon the surprisingly smooth floor. Walls of cemented rock rose intact on two sides, broken here and there on a third, while the cliff itself made the fourth at the rear. And unusually spacious, wide, and high-ceiled was this room, which may have had its use when time was younger as a council-chamber. At one end was another door, small and dark and forbidding, leading to another room. Beyond lay other quarters, a long line of them, which might have housed scores in their time.
While Florrie, letting out little shrieks now and then interspersed with gay cries of delight, led a half-timorous way and Elmer went with her upon the tour of discovery, Virginia and Norton stood a moment at the front entrance looking down upon the fertile plateau and across it to the level miles running out to San Juan and beyond.
"Who were they?" asked Virginia, unconscious of a half-sigh as she withdrew abstracted eyes from the wide panorama which had filled the vision of so many other men and women and little children before the white man came to claim the New World. "They who builded here and lived and died here. What has become of them? Where did they go?"
"All questions asked a thousand times and never answered. I don't know. But they were good builders, good engineers, good pottery-makers, good farmers and hunters and fighters; rather a goodly crowd, I take it. Come, and I'll share my secret with you while Florrie and Elmer discover the skeleton a little farther on and stop to exclaim over it."
[Illustration: "Come, and I'll share my secret with you.">[
Norton's secret was a hidden room of the King's Palace. While many men knew of the Palace itself, he believed that none other than himself had ever ferreted out this particular chamber which he called the Treasure Chamber. It was to be reached by clambering through an orifice of the eastern wall, over a clutter of fallen blocks of stone and a score of feet along the narrowing ledge. Just before they came to the point where the encroaching wall of cliff denied farther foothold they found a fissure in the rock itself wide enough to allow them to slip into it. Again they climbed, coming presently to a ledge smaller than the one below and hidden by an outthrust boulder. Here was the last of the rooms of the King's Palace, cunningly masked, to be found only by accident, even the cramped door concealed by the branches of a tortured cedar. Norton pushed them aside and they entered.
"I have cached a few of my things here," he told her as they confronted each other in the gloom of the room's interior. "And the joke of it is that my hiding-place is almost if not quite directly below the caves where Galloway's rifles are. This is a secret, mind you! . . . If you'll look around, you'll find some of the articles our friends the cliff-dwellers left behind them when they made their getaway."
In a dark corner she found a blackened coffee-pot and a frying-pan, proclaiming anachronistically that here was the twentieth century interloping upon the fifteenth, articles which Norton had hidden here. In another corner were jumbled the things which the ancient people had left to mark their passing, an earthenware water-jar, half a dozen spear and arrow points of stone, a clumsy-looking axe still fitted to its handle of century-seasoned cedar, bound with thongs.
"But," exclaimed the girl, "the wood, the raw-hide . . . they would have disintegrated long ago. They must belong to the age of your coffee-pot and frying-pan!"
"The air is bone-dry," he reminded her. "What little rain there is never gets in here. Nothing decays; look yonder."
He showed her a basket made of withes, a graceful thing skilfully made, small, frail-looking, and as perfect as the day it had come from a pair of quick brown hands under a pair of quick black eyes. She took it almost with a sense of awe upon her.
"Keep it, will you?" he asked lightly. "As a memento. Presented by a caveman through your friend the sheriff. Now let's get back before they miss us. I may have need of this place some time and I'd rather no one else knew of it."
They made their way back as they had come and in silence, Virginia treasuring the token and with it the sense that her friend the sheriff had cared to share his secret with her.
They made of the day an occasion to be remembered, to be considered wistfully in retrospect during the troubled hours so soon to come to each one of the four of them. While Elmer and Florrie gathered fire-wood, Norton showed Virginia how simple a matter it was here in this seldom-visited mountain-stream to take a trout. Cool, shaded pools under overhanging, gouged-out banks, tiny falls, and shimmering riffles all housed the quick speckled beauties. Then, as Norton had predicted, the fish were fried, crisp and brown, in sizzling bacon-grease, while the thin wafers of bacon garnished the tin plate bedded in hot ashes. They nooned in the shady grove, sipping their coffee that had the taste of some rare, black nectar. And throughout the long lazy afternoon they loitered as it pleased them, picked flowers, wandered anew through the ruins of the King's Palace, lay by the singing water, and were quietly content. It was only when the shadows had thickened over the world and the promise of the primroses was fulfilled that they made ready for the return ride. Before they had gone down to their horses the moths were coming to the yellow flowers, tumbling about them, filling the air with the frail beating of their wings.
At Struve's hotel . . . Elmer and Virginia had ridden on to Engle's home . . . Virginia told Norton good night, thanking him for a perfect day. As their hands met for a little she saw a new, deeply probing look in his eyes, a look to be understood. He towered over her, physically superb. As she had felt it before, so now did she experience that odd little thrill born from nearness to him go singing through her. She withdrew her hand hastily and went in. In her own room she stood a long time before her glass, seeking to read what lay in her own eyes.
Tom Cutter was waiting for Norton--merely to tell him that a stranger had come to San Juan, a Mexican with all the earmarks of a gentleman and a man of means. The Mexican's name was Enrique del Rio. He evidently came from below the border. He had lost no time in finding Jim Galloway, with whom he had been all afternoon.