Crossroads (19 page)

A
s for Dolores, certainly she was never further from thoughts of
Señor
Don Porfirio Maria Oñate. She sat at this very time, staring with her great black eyes across the sullen red embers of the camp fire toward Dix Van Dyck. It was something past midnight, but they had only traveled as far as a convenient spring in the hollow of the hills, a little to the right of the main trail that led down toward Guadalupe. By the side of this spring they built their fire and screened it by rolling big rocks on all sides of the flame.

Then, after they had cooked and eaten, Dix Van Dyck threw off his clothes and she saw the faint white glimmer of his body in the distance while he bathed and shaved in the cold water that trickled down from the spring. She marveled with her childish mind at the dexterity of a man who could handle deadly steel and shave himself in the dark. She marveled still more when he came back beside the fire. With the unkempt growth of beard and the red marks of the battle gone, his face seemed singularly pale for one who had lived all his life in the open. The leanness of that face had now become almost cadaverous and suggestive of many things.

It seemed to Dolores, as he sat there with one of her dead father’s blankets wrapped around his bare shoulders, that two men sat there confronting her in one form. When he sat with eyes lowered and staring at the
flicker of the fire, she was conscious of the man’s great weariness. He was tired, it seemed, body and soul. The thin face seemed thoughtful, sad. There was a suggestion that the straight set of the mouth inferred a repression and endurance of pain. It seemed the face of one who had borne through many bitter trials, whose trust in men and women had been burned away by hardship, who had fought the world and conquered it but found no value in his conquest. True, all these things did not come in sharp, clear words into the mind of Dolores, but the feeling was there. Yet, when the eyelids of the outlaw raised and she saw the unendurable keenness of the eyes, her own glance wavered and fell away. No matter what his body might be, his spirit was more terrible and unrelenting than ever. It was what set the fire in the eyes that made his glance something to be felt and shrunk from like the touch of a hot hand or like the drop of an acid. She understood, even more perfectly than when she had seen the big man in action against the crowd, why
Señor
Oñate had dreaded him like an incarnation of the devil. She also dreaded him fully as much, and yet the thrill of that terror was pleasant to the fierce Yaqui.

“
Señor
,” she ventured timidly at length.

He turned his head silently toward her and waited.

“
¿Señorita
?” he queried.

“No. I am only Dolores,” she answered.

“Dolores?” he repeated and almost smiled at her.

“You are thinking much and very quickly?” she suggested. “No,” said Dix Van Dyck, “I’m seeing the face of a man, Dolores, more clearly than I see yours.”

“Oñate,” she nodded.

“Oñate.” His voice fell dry and hard on the name.

“That is why you take the road to Guadalupe?”

“Yes.”

“But Oñate will remain in Double Bend.”

“Why?”

“He stayed near the town,” she answered, “to see the burning of my father’s white brother from a distance. When he knows that
Señor
Van Dyck has escaped, he will be taken with a great fear. Yes, he will be afraid to leave Double Bend, and he will sit in his room surrounded by many men.” She broke into rare laughter and hugged her knees in an ecstasy of childish, fierce delight. “He will pay many men money. He will set them about his garden and his house, and he will wait, shivering, for the coming of
Señor
Van Dyck. Pah, the dog!”

“The dog!” echoed Van Dyck. “You are sure, Dolores, that he will not try to go to Guadalupe?”

“It is true,” she said. “To night he would rather take the road to hell than the trail to Guadalupe. No, he will sit in his house and drink tequila, and for all that he will be cold in his heart. I, Dolores, can see him shiver. Pah! I, a woman, have made him tremble till his knees knocked together.”

“Aye,” said the man curiously. “You are the daughter of El Tigre. I think, Dolores, that you have teeth and claws. I watched you coming through that crowd. By heaven, that was a man’s work! I could see your eyes flash as clearly as I could see the fire of your guns. How did you have the heart for a job like that, Dolores?”

“It was not hard,” she said simply. “It was for the white brother of my father. I was riding to you,
señor
.”

“Why did you come, Dolores? Why did you come to the jail and give me the knife? Was it all because I had helped El Tigre?”

“It is true,” she said.

“Dolores, you lie to me.”

“Ah,” said the girl, delighted again, “the white brother
of my father sees to the heart of his daughter. It is true. I came because I had heard a strange story.”

“So?”

“Yes. I had heard a story that
Señor
Van Dyck gave himself to his enemies for the sake of a woman. I knew it was a lie, but still I came to look. It was a great lie, was it not,
señor
?”

“Humph,” grunted Dix Van Dyck, and he grinned broadly at the girl. “Is this to get a yarn out of me, Dolores?”

“It is true,” she said frankly. “Dolores is hungry to learn. She is hungry for wisdom.”

“Well,” said Dix Van Dyck, “the story sounds queer, but it’s straight.”

She merely gaped at him, and then the smile dawned, the smile of bright wonder. “Tell!” she cried eagerly.

“About the girl?”

“Yes, yes!”

“Why,” said the man, “she’s about your height, Dolores, and beautiful as the devil.”

“Ha!” said the Yaqui. “A beautiful woman makes great fools of men.”

“Come to think of it,” smiled Dix Van Dyck, “you’re a bit good to look at yourself, Dolores.”

“I?” she said with well-imitated surprise. “Alas,
señor
, I am a piece of ’dobe made into the shape of a woman and clothes in moldy rags. No man will look at me!” Her eyes glinted.

The white man, however, would carry the banter no further. “It wasn’t her good looks, though, Dolores,” he said, “that made me follow her.”

“Ah?”

“She had a cross of silver that she wears around her neck. Now, I ain’t superstitious, Dolores, but I got an idea that cross can do what people claim it can do. It brings
good luck to Jack Boone and bad luck to everyone near her…everyone she likes, particularly. You see, Dolores, that cross has been tried out a lot of times, and it never fails. She always wins gambling, for instance, and she generally gets what she wants. In every way.

“But the people that go with her generally get their necks broke some time or other. There’ve been plenty of cases of that. She ain’t been long in Double Bend, you see, but already two men have kicked off unexpected, sort of, just because they hung around Jack. Well, Dolores, I come to Double Bend while I was making a hurried trip north to get away from Oñate, who’s sheriff of this county, you know. In the dance hall I saw Jack Boone, and I heard the story about the cross. Dolores, the minute I heard that yarn….”

“You wanted to be with
Señorita
Jack?”

“How could you know?”

“A child,” said the Indian girl, “will always do the one thing he is told he must not do.”

“
Humph
,” grinned Dix Van Dyck, “I’m a good deal of a child, eh, Dolores? Well, let that go. Anyway, I had to stick with Jack. I did it, and I got to like her a pile more’n I’d ever liked any other woman. When the pinch came, and I couldn’t fight for my life except by throwing Jack to El Tigre and his hunting pack, I knuckled down for the sake of the girl.” He was black with the reminiscence.

The Yaqui waited, wisely.

“Maybe,” said the man, “it was a fool thing I done, because she left me in the hole and never come near me while I was in the jail. She got away with her skin safe and forgot plumb all about me, Dolores.”

“I,” said the Yaqui sternly, “would ride first on her trail and take her by the hair, so! And beat her till the blood ran and until she screamed and begged for pity. That is what Dolores would do.”

“Would you?” queried the man curiously. “Sometimes I got a hunch that the heavy hand is what women need, Dolores, but I ain’t ever had the heart to use it.”

“You have never struck a woman?” she asked eagerly.

“Me?” he asked grimly. “Tell me what man ever said I did and I’ll take him, skin him, and tan his hide for a saddle.”

“Oñate is a great liar,” she mused gently.

“Oñate again? Still spreading filthy talk about me, eh? Well, the longer the score the quicker the settling. But, when I take him, I wish I had the heart to kill him slow, the way he needs.”

“You will not need,” said the girl. “Give him to me. I will kill him, and you need not see…or hear.”

“You hate him, Dolores?”

“Ah!” she said and fingered the knife at her girdle.

“Why?”

“Why? Truly,
señor
, Dolores cannot tell. Except that he is fat, and that he has been on the trail of the white brother of my father.”

“You’re a gentle thing, Dolores,” grinned the big man, “a regular little pet lamb, you are. I’d rather meet a wildcat bare-handed than have to mix with you, my girl.”

“It is true,” she assented sadly. “I am not like your woman, Jack. I am not gentle and soft.”

“Gentle? Soft?” laughed Dix Van Dyck. “Dolores, that girl can ride any wild mustang on the range. She can fan a gun from the hip as good as I can…or better. She can throw a knife like El Tigre. There’s no wearing out to her. She can ride that white hoss of hers all day and all night. I know, because I’ve tried to catch her. Tried for days.”

“She was swifter than you?
Than you?
” asked the astonished girl.

“A whole pile,” he answered emphatically. “But let’s forget her.”

“It is good,” said Dolores with much relish. “She was a coward. She did not stay with the white brother of my father when he fell in the trap for her sake. She is a devil, not a woman.
Señor
Van Dyck hates her. It is very good. The heart of Dolores is warm!”

But he pondered this question a moment seriously. “Hate her?” he answered at length. “I can’t say that I do, Dolores. No, I got no reason to like her and a lot to dislike her, but somehow I can’t get rid of the thought of her, and I can’t say that it’s hate that keeps me thinkin’ of her. You know how some gents like whiskey? They can’t get rid of the taste of it? Well, that’s the way the thought of this Jack follows me, Dolores.”

“So?” said the girl gloomily.

“That’s straight. D’you know, after I’m through with Oñate, I s’pose I’ll make a dead line for Jack and try to get on her trail.”

The Yaqui drew her knife in a silent fury and drove it to the hilt in the dead stump on which she sat. “That is fool’s talk!” she said furiously.

“Ain’t it?” said the whimsical Van Dyck. “But it’s straight talk, too.”

Her glance narrowed, piercing the gloom of the cañon. “And this girl, she rides a white horse,
señor
?”

“Yes, why?”

“Nothing.” But far away, through the gloom, she had seen the glint of a moving object. It must have been white to show so plainly at so great a distance.

T
o the sharpest eyes of a white man that glimmering form in the night would have been invisible, but the Indian saw and fell silent. She seemed to be brooding over the fire, with fallen head, oblivious of the world. Even the keen observation of Dix Van Dyck, trained to suspect everything and everybody, failed to note the glances that she sent now and again down the valley. But, by then, she had discovered very certainly that someone on a white horse was riding toward the red eye of the camp fire. As Dolores sat there with bowed, impassive face, a thousand emotions and impulses surged within her.

To speak as frankly as the Yaqui girl thought, she had decided that this
Señor
Van Dyck should be her man. It was a calm and great conviction that she could not be happy without him. The first necessity, therefore, was to stop the rider on that white horse. If the girl, Jack, should meet the man again, she, Dolores, would be cast at once into the outer night.

At first she thought of warning Dix Van Dyck that a horse man approached—that the pursuers were hard on their trail. It might mean that he would spring to his horse and gallop with her down the next slope and away toward Guadalupe. But a second of pondering assured Dolores that Dix van Dyck would never run away from a single horse man. On the other hand, it might be that he
would attempt to stop the rider with a bullet. She herself would have ventured to bring down the night rider with a bullet, even at that distance, but here again she guessed this white man’s ethics were different from hers. This man would not shoot at random on anyone. Moreover, if he once centered his glance on the approaching form, there was great danger that he would discover by the starlight what she had already seen—that the horse was white. That would be only hastening the catastrophe.

It was the slowness of the approach of the stranger that finally gave Dolores inspiration. If it were indeed the girl, Jack, her horse must be very weary, or she herself must be advancing cautiously, to reconnoiter. Possibly both things were true. In that case, the white woman would come within view of the camp fire unseen by Dix Van Dyck and would discover the white man sitting by the campfire with an Indian girl. Now, if it had been another Indian maiden approaching, the course of Dolores would have been to steal down the slope and shoot her rival as she approached. This would have been both brief and simple, and no man but a fool would waste regret over a dead body. The great fact remained that it was
not
an Indian girl. It was a white woman, and, when a woman is killed in the Southwest, there is a penalty to pay. A thing not to be understood by Dolores but known. Into her mind came another perception of the psychology of the white man. If the girl, Jack, stealing upon the camp fire, should have reason to suppose that Dix Van Dyck had taken Dolores as his partner, nothing in the world could bribe her to break in upon the two of them. Very faintly, like a thing described half by the eyes and half by the imagination, Dolores saw the white girl’s pride in choice. On that she determined to bank.

She waited, timing her move cautiously. The rider had dismounted, for the figure of the horse was stationary
some distance down the slope. It was fainter than the shadow of a ghost, but Dolores saw and understood. The rider of the horse was now stealing upon the camp fire. What if she should be wrong? What if it were another person on another white horse? What if it were one of the scouts of Oñate sent upon this bloody trail of the destroyer? What if it were some kinsman of one of those who fell in the square before the jail? In that case the life of Dix Van Dyck was about to end and her own life with his. A grim and terrible suspense—no one would guess it who has not been in danger in the trackless heart of the desert. There was very little time to make her final choice now, for the watcher must be stealing quickly upon them. Any second the eyes of the night-rider might spy upon them through the dark. A moan formed in the throat of Dolores and came tremulously on her lips. It was not at all assumed. Her very heart was stirred by the conflict of emotions within her. She interlaced her fingers and dropped her forehead upon them. From one side her glance probed the darkness toward the side from which the spy must approach. The little moan came again.

“Well?” said the low, strong voice of Dix Van Dyck.

“I am sick,” said Dolores.

“The hell!” muttered Van Dyck and dropped instantly on his knees beside her.

To one out of earshot and not very clearly in view of his face that attitude of the man’s might have said many unintended things.

“Where are you sick?” went on the big man. “What’s the matter, Dolores?”

She raised her head slowly, with the dignity that befitted the daughter of El Tigre. The eyes she turned on Dix Van Dyck were both brightened and dimmed by tears; they flashed in the firelight. “I am sick here,” she said
and laid one of those dark, slender hands over her heart.

“Stomach?” queried the susceptible Van Dyck. “Been eating the wrong sort of chow?”

She closed her eyes, dropped her head back on her hands. It was not what she wanted to do, but she was forced to the move in order to conceal the smile that tugged suddenly at the corners of her mouth. After all, Dix Van Dyck was only some thirty years, more or less, of age. Dolores was as old as the ages.

He dropped a heavy but kindly hand on her shoulder. “I got a flask in my saddlebag,” he said. “What say to a jolt of red-eye, Dolores? It ain’t so bad for a stomach ache.”

“It is not my stomach,” said the girl, still unable to raise her head. “It is my heart,
señor
.”

“Oh,” said Van Dyck, and settled back in his former position with great unconcern. “Oh, it’s your heart, Dolores?”

He yawned widely, noisily. She had a great desire to spring to her feet and strike him across the face. Wisely she resisted the impulse. She was learning more of self-control in these few moments than she had ever dreamed in her life before.

“And what’s the matter with your heart?” asked the big man lazily.

This would never do. The eyes of the watcher were waiting, guessing with all the shrewdness and all the blindness of a woman. How well Dolores knew! It must be a woman for only a woman would crouch out there in the dark to watch this scene.

“The white girl,” said the Indian with a soft-throated sadness, “has a thousand brothers and a thousand fathers, but Dolores had only one…and he is dead.”

“Oh,” grunted Van Dyck, and then he leaned to stare into dark, steady eyes that rose to meet his glance
unfalteringly. “By heaven, Dolores, is
that
what’s riding you? I didn’t dream…I didn’t know…you see, thought you were another kind…quite another kind.”

“El Tigre,” said the girl haughtily, “was a great chief. He killed more Mexicans than I have fingers and toes. He was a great chief. He was a great warrior. He was a tiger in the fight. And he loved me…me, Dolores. And he has left me alone!”

Her voice and her glance sank. Then her eyes rose and rested piteously on the face of Dix Van Dyck. What could he do? He was a man. The girl was beautiful, and above all she was a woman in trouble, and this was the Southwest. He started up.

“By heaven, Dolores!” he said, “it makes me feel a pile rotten to see you like this. I thought you were a sort of young tigress yourself…I thought you had teeth and maybe claws, too!”

“I?” said the girl softly, and she laid her soft, small hand in the mighty fingers of Dix Van Dyck. “See,
señor
, the strength of Dolores is very little, only her heart is great. But the death of El Tigre has made it small…so small and with such a hurt in the center of it,
señor
, that I know I shall die!”

He was staring blankly down at that slender hand, scowling in bewilderment. It was all very new to him. Suddenly he felt that she was only a child and needed comforting, as he had seen fathers comfort little children. He stooped from his rock and with a single sweep of those large arms carried her to his knees.

“Why, Dolores,” he said gently, “you ain’t no more’n a child, and you got no right to have troubles of your own. Tell ’em to me and I shall help.”

“Alas,
señor
,” she said bitterly, “how shall you help? My father is dead…dead…dead! Can you bring him back to me?”

“Me? Bring back El Tigre?” He pondered this obvious difficulty. “Dolores, I can’t bring El Tigre back, but I’ll tell you what. I’ll take his place. I’ll take care of you. Will you let me, poor kid?”

“Ah,
señor
,” she said, “Dolores is only an Indian girl. Men would smile at the white brother of my father if he were seen with me.”

“Smile?” said the big man fiercely. “By heaven, the man who smiles at me because of you, Dolores, will have to eat lead damned fast!”

His voice had risen with his sudden anger. Now it boomed and rang across the desert. The heart of Dolores swelled with intolerable joy. She knew those words had rung in the ears of the white girl with a differing connotation. To hide the wild happiness that was transfiguring her face, she slipped suddenly within the arms of Dix Van Dyck, buried her face on his shoulder, and wept heavily and long with great sobs. She had seen a white woman cry like that. She had never done so herself, but the inspiration came and with it even the tears to make her eyes wet. After all, the wisdom of Dolores was very old. All the while she wept, her eyes, over the vast shoulder of Dix Van Dyck, plumbed the darkness. The big hand of Van Dyck was patting her back with a measured cadence. He was attempting to reassure her with his deep, gentle voice.

Then out of the darkness, it seemed to Dolores, she heard an answering sound, a sob of choke-lipped agony. She wept only the louder, for she wanted to cover the retreat of the girl, Jack.