“Who can it be?” the manager repeated, to himself, but still loud enough for the other to hear. “It must be Delafield!” he exclaimed. José’s ear caught the words, and he listened as his employer went on: “He knows I’m after him, and he’s trying to kill me first. If I could only make this coyote greaser tell me who his patron is, I’d know who Delafield is. I’d like to choke it out of you, you son of perdition!” He looked so fiercely at Gonzalez that the Mexican took a threatening step forward.
“You needn’t worry,” Conrad exclaimed contemptuously. “I know you wouldn’t tell, even if I choked the life out of you trying to make you peach. It’s your patron I’m after.” José stooped to hitch the traces, and Curtis broke out impulsively: “I say, José, what makes you do this sort of thing? You’re as square as they make ’em in most things; why do you go into this damned rattlesnake business?”
Gonzalez looked up with a confiding smile.
“The patron wishes it; and why not? If I kill a man he gets me off if he can, and then that is all right. If he can’t, I pay for it in prison—and that is fair.”
“Huh!” grunted the superintendent as he walked away. “So you think you are going to pay for me that way, do you? Well, I guess not!”
The same train that carried Conrad northward to Santa Fe carried also a brief and hurried letter to Dellmey Baxter which José Gonzalez had found time to write before he and the rest started for Adobe Springs, mailing it as they passed White Rock station.
“You will see Señor Conrad in Santa Fe,” the Congressman read in his office the next morning, “but you need not be anxious. I have sworn to him that it is not you who desires his death, and he believes me. I heard him speak to himself, and he said it must be Delafeel who wishes him dead. He said he would like to choke out of me who my patron is, for then he would know who Delafeel is. Don Curtis is a very brave man. I like him much.”
Baxter chuckled over the closing sentences as he tore the letter into bits. Poking them musingly with a fat forefinger he thought: “It’s a sure bet that his patron just now is Aleck Bancroft; and that makes it look as if Aleck might be this mysterious Delafeel—I’ll have to find out who Delafeel is and what he’s done some time or other; then I sure reckon I’ll have a cinch on Aleck that will keep him from trying to step into my shoes as long as I want him to keep out.” He looked out of his window into the little tree-filled plaza, cool and green in the morning sunlight, and saw Curtis Conrad walking across it from the hotel on the other side. He took a six-shooter from his pocket, made sure of its cartridges, and replaced it. From a drawer in his desk he took another, examined its chambers, and laid it on his desk, under an open newspaper. A moment later he was rising from his chair with outstretched hand and beaming smile.
“Why, how do you do, Mr. Conrad! I’m sure glad to see you. How did you leave things down in old Silverside? That was a high old time we had at the barbecue, wasn’t it? Have the Castletons gone yet? A fine figure of a woman is Mrs. Turner Castleton! And I tell you right now it was a great shave she gave me!” The Honorable Dellmey Baxter rubbed his cheek, and chuckled. But his right hand rested on his desk, close beside the newspaper which he had apparently just thrown down.
“Mr. Baxter,” said Conrad, ignoring the stream of questions and remarks, “some weeks ago I wrote you, saying frankly that I believed you responsible for attempts against my life, made by a Mexican who had come from you to me. I find myself mistaken, and I have come to apologize to you for my suspicions.”