Crossroads (9 page)

S
traight from the home of
Señor
Oñate to his own adobe hut went El Tigre with a swift, cat-like stride. Not the gait of the white man, who strikes heavily with his heels, but a movement that left him poised at every instant so that he could have leaped back or to the side without the loss of a fraction of a second. No white man can learn that gait. It is the heritage of some thousands of years of a hunting ancestry. In El Tigre it was peculiarly accentuated so that he seemed always stalking. This, as much as his fighting propensities, had earned him his name.

At the door of his hut he was aware of Dolores, standing at the window in the full glare of the sun. She was dressed in a Chinese kimono of dark green, flowered with gold. She held a small hand mirror before her and by that image brushed the black, silken length of her hair. The heart of El Tigre bounded with admiration first and then with wonder.

Coming behind her, noiseless as a shadow, he stretched out a hand and touched the silken fabric. He grunted with admiration, and that grunt was the first warning of his presence to Dolores. She started around with a sharp little cry, and at sight of her father hid the mirror and the brush behind her. Recovering, or seeming to recover, from her fright at once, she laughed softly at her own fear and slipped mirror and brush onto a shelf behind her.

“It is good,” said El Tigre in their own familiar dialect, “to have soft cloth on a soft skin. Was the dress bought or stolen?”

“Stolen,” murmured Dolores.

“Stolen?” said El Tigre, as if he had hardly caught the answer.

“It is a gift,” said Dolores.

“A gift from what woman?” asked El Tigre.

“No woman.
Señor
Oñate.”

“So!” grunted El Tigre. “Give!”

She slipped obediently out of the garment and handed it to him. He threw it carelessly on the beaten, ground floor. Next he stepped to the shelf. Both the mirror and the brush were backed with silver. These in turn he threw toward the kimono.

“Why?” asked El Tigre.

Her smile had come and gone even as her eyes flashed back at the rich presents in the dirt and then up at the grim face of El Tigre. “Our father was sad for Dolores who was alone. He gave these things to make her happy.”

“Listen!” said the Indian, and raised a long, callused forefinger. Many a time it had pulled the trigger on a dead bead over the heart. He seemed now like a mother lessoning a child. “A man may have many fathers.
Señor
Oñate is my father, but a woman has only one father. Dolores, I am your father, no other.”

“Dolores did not know,” she answered.

“These things,” he went on, “I shall carry back to
Señor
Oñate.”

“No, no!” she cried.

“So?” grunted El Tigre.

“I will carry them myself,” she answered, “and explain to
Señor
Oñate that I did not understand.”

“That is good,” said El Tigre, “for your tongue makes a music as swift as the raindrop running down the leaf of
the dagger. But my tongue angers men. You shall carry them back yourself.”

She folded a grass mat and pointed to the place for him to sit down, but he shook his head. “I have no time to sit down,” he said. “I go on a long journey into the hills, and you must go with me. Make ready.”

“A long journey?” she repeated in dismay.

“Quickly,” said El Tigre.

Without answer but moving reluctantly, she set about the preparations. Now and again her dark eyes glanced with brilliant, bitter meaning toward the unconscious face of her father. He explained while she worked.

“Two prices have been paid for my life. One man I have repaid with the life of the other. There was no other way. His was the earlier debt. That was the price he asked. Now El Tigre is cold inside. He would go alone into the hills, build a fire, and talk with the spirits, but, because I have paid this price, I am not clean. I cannot speak. The spirits would come to me in bad dreams. They would lie to me. They would not tell me what I must do. Therefore you, Dolores, must come with me.” The music of the name from his tongue was marvelous, and every time, just before uttering it, he made a little pause. It was as if he appreciated the sound himself—a little oasis in the harsh desert of his gutturals. “You, Dolores, shall go with me, and the spirits will come to you in dreams and tell you what I must do. For you are clean.” His head went back. He half closed his eyes, and his grimly set lips softened to a smile. The girl stood stiffly as if she were seeing a sight of horror. Her eyes widened ceaselessly. “Come,” he said and led her to the window.

He pointed far away. It was unusually clear, even for the crystal atmosphere of the Southwest, and far off beyond the deep blues and purples of the nearer ranges they could see the highest summits of the farthest ranges,
topped with bluish-white of the snows that had fallen in the same storm that had swelled Blood River.

“It is for a time like this,” said the Yaqui, “that I have kept you clean. I have saved you from men. Not a trace of the dust of their breath of desire has touched you. You are clean as the snows, Dolores. As clean as the snows and as cold in your purity. There is no stain on you. Even your thoughts are clean. The spirits will come to you quickly in your dreams. They will speak clearly to you. They will show you with words or with signs what I must do. For the weight of two debts was on me, Dolores, and one of them is still on my heart. Yet I am glad, for now you will help me.

“Dolores, my daughter, when the heart of a woman is pure as snow, it is richer than gold. Your mother, Dolores, was not clean. She was not like the snow. She was like muddy water, I saw this and made her speak the truth with her lips. Then I killed her, and since then no man has been my friend. I killed her and carried you away and made you grow straight in your mind like a pine tree that points at the stars. Now is the time. You shall pay me for all I have done.”

As he spoke, his head lifted high, his face changed and exalted. She stole close behind him. Her hand went out stealthily, and inch by inch she drew out the shining length of his hunting knife. And the face of El Tigre himself was not more demoniac than the face of his daughter as she raised the knife. It hung poised above his back—her hand wavering like a leaf buoyed up by a gust of wind. Then the strength ran suddenly from her. The knife slipped from her hand and fell with a shiver of steel against the hard earth. She slipped in a shapeless heap against the floor.

El Tigre turned. He saw the naked knife. He listened to the deep sobbing of Dolores. His eyes traveled past her and lingered on the brush, the mirror, and the silken dress.
He understood. All the meaning of his name leaped into the Indian’s face. He stooped as swiftly as a dropping hawk. One hand raised the knife. The other wound in the thick, black hair of Dolores, jerked her to her knees, and twisted back her head. There lay the soft expanse of throat and bosom, inviting the keen point of the knife. Its own weight almost would suffice to drive home the blade.

“You are about to die,” said El Tigre. “Like your mother before you, you are about to die.”

Her sobbing stopped. The great, grave, dark eyes stared up to him.

“Before you die,” said El Tigre, “tell me the truth, as your mother told me. Who is the man?”

“
Señor
Oñate,” said the girl.

“My father!” said the Indian, and drew in his breath.

“What could I do?” she pleaded, but not in a panic though the knife glittered beneath her chin. “You were far from me. In all things I was to please our father. He came to me in the night. He called me out to show me a yellow moon.”

“Yet your eyes,” said the Indian with a deep and childlike wonder, “are as clear now as they were when I left you. They are as clear as they were before you told me lies. You have not withered since the hand of Oñate touched you. But I have grown old. I have no strength to strike home. My eyes cannot see. I am as blind as an owl in midday.”

His hand fell away from her tangled hair, and the knife went back into its sheath with a hiss like a striking snake.

“We cannot go into the hills,” he concluded softly, sadly. “The spirits now would only lie to you.”

Dolores turned her head and clenched her hands. It is not well that a Yaqui maiden should see tears in the eyes of her father.

T
he course that the Indians took across the hills toward Double Bend with Dix Van Dyck in their midst had been straight as the flight of a crow from point to point. Yet it was no straighter than the course of Jacqueline Boone as she rode up the cañon. She rode straight, and she rode hard, pressing the white stallion to his uttermost speed, for she carried a purpose with her. It led her at a heart-breaking pace over the first slopes and then swooping down to the plains below.

The Indians were born with a thousand senses of direction that the whites can never acquire, but, as far as those things can be learned, Jack Boone possessed them. She had been born in the mountains. She had been raised with a gun in her hand. Men had been her companions, the law a stranger, comfort unknown. She had lived for adventure—as men live. So her course was straight—her sleeps short—and her days of riding long as she made for the capital of the state where Governor Boardman grew more corpulent from day to day.

A sense of guilt oppressed her, and a sense of coming loss. Guilt, because she felt that she had led Dix Van Dyck into the trap and that he would have fought his way out again if it had not been for her. Loss, because their savage partnership had been dissolved in the very moment of its beginning. Like El Tigre, she felt a debt. Like El Tigre, and with a soul as natural, as keen-purposed, and a will
as tireless as the Indian’s, she was resolved to discharge that debt.

There was nothing complex in the plan that she evolved. Naturally there was only one source from which relief for Dix Van Dyck could come. The source was the governor who could pardon the criminal. To Governor Boardman, accordingly, she was determined to go. She framed her plan accordingly. It was, as I have said, simple. Therein also lay its strength. It was so simple, so commonplace, so much to be expected in the Southwest that for these very reasons it was fairly sure of success. It is played with a money belt in one hand and a gun in the other.

With the money belt she went directly to Madame Sarah’s shop. Madame Sarah had a French accent and Irish blue eyes. As a matter of fact she came from Brooklyn, but this made little difference in the Southwest. No one cared as long as her styles were a trifle more elegant and her prices double those of any other fashion shop in the little capital. Mothers were careful that their daughters should not go to Madame Sarah’s, but they were somewhat prone to go there themselves. As for Jack Boone, she had not the slightest idea of the widespread reputation of Madame Sarah’s place. But, when she picked up the paper, the first thing she saw was the broad advertisement of Madame Sarah’s Parisian shop.

At the door the first doubt struck her. It was opened by a liveried gentleman of astounding height and a stomach line that made a perfect crescent. The model who trailed a flimsy creation of some sort of black net across the floor, stared at by two pudgy, overdressed women of the town, was Jack’s second doubt. Her third doubt centered on the person of the little saleslady who came to meet her. She had acquired madame’s French accent, which was not hard to do, for it consisted chiefly of a contraction of “the”
to “ze,” but she had not given up her habit of chewing gum. Meeting Jack, she took in the short, dusty riding skirt with a glance, shifted her gum, and inquired indifferently: “Madame wishes to make a purchase, or just to look over ze gowns?”

Jacqueline bestowed on the saleslady a glance of careful contempt that began at her slippers and ended on the well-trained lock that curled on the girl’s cheek. “Send me the boss,” she said.

The saleslady threw up her hands. “Ze which?” she inquired in a horrified whisper.

“The boss,” said Jacqueline patiently. “Send me the foreman. If he isn’t in, maybe I can get along with one of the straw bosses.”

“Madame Sarah,” answered the girl angrily, “ain’t able to see you.”

“You slipped on your lingo, friend,” answered Jack, “but I got an idea that madame is in.”

“I,” said the girl reddening, “am ze saleslady.”

“Go on,” grinned Jack, “you got to let your skirts grow before you could sell me a hairpin. Who’s the old girl with the glassware in her hair? Ain’t that the boss?”

It was, in fact, Madame Sarah herself—the “glassware” was her diamond comb, the wonder of the capital. She was trailing a customer downstairs, her hands lifted in mute admiration of the latter’s newly purchased gown. Jacqueline met her at the foot of the stairs.

“Ma’am,” said Jacqueline, “I got more money than time. Can we get together?”

If the ear of madame was offended by this abruptness, her heart was not. She had seen women more strangely dressed than this spend fabulous sums on their clothes. Her sales, in fact, followed very largely the price of meat.

“We can!” she said with instant decision. “Pauline, will
you finish Missus Cary’s business? Missus Cary, excuse? Ze gown, eet ees adorable!”

The accent in “adorable” came one syllable later than Mrs. Cary was accustomed to hearing it, and for the sake of that she would have forgiven anything. She felt as if the pavement of Paris were beneath her cramped, crowded feet. For the moment she forgot her corns. Madame Sarah turned the full battery of her smile upon Jacqueline.

“I want to get togged out,” said Jack, “from head to foot, and I got forty minutes for the job. Am I in the right church?”

Madame Sarah bit her lip. She recovered in time to wave her rather plump and very bare arms in her most graceful gesture. “Ze Engleesh, it is ze str-range…what you call…?”

“Ma’am,” sighed Jack, “I’d like to stay and listen to you. It’s a funny line of talk you carry, all right, and, if I had the time, I’d stay and enjoy it. But, if you can’t talk plain English, I’m done. Split the pot and we’ll call for a new deal.”

Childhood memories surged through the brain of Madame Sarah. A glimpse of noisy, chattering streets flashed before her.
Split the pot
…
call for a new
deal
…. “Honey,” she said, and something like a cloak dropped from her, “I got you the first time. You
are
in the right church.”

Jacqueline sighed and smiled. She extended her strong right hand. “Shake, partner. Say, that funny lingo acted on my brain like rust on a cylinder. I couldn’t think. Now we’ll make it snappy.”

“Snappy’s right,” said Madame Sarah, squeezing the hand of Jack. “Maybe this ain’t professional…but thank Gaw-wd I can be human once in a while. Now, deary, tell me what you want.”

“Shoes,” said Jack, “hat, and everything that goes in between clear down to the skin. I’ll tell you what I want to do, and you tell me how to do it. I want a rig that’ll catch the eye of a man and hold it. I want a rig that’ll rope his attention and hold it while I brand him. Can you fix me up?”

A gleam came into the eye of Madame Sarah. Such a gleam had come in the eye of the Iroquois warrior when he heard the scalp yell. “Listen to me, deary,” she said, “you don’t need an outfit to rope the attention of any man in this one horse town they call a city. You could wear overalls and do the work with your eyes. But, if you want style, leave it to me. For the sake of talking English and canning that lingo, I’ll cut my price in two. For a hundred and fifty iron men I’ll make you a world-beater…everything from the skin out. Is it too steep, honey?”

“You could hit me again just as hard,” said Jack, “and I wouldn’t holler.”

“Come upstairs,” said Madame Sarah, a little downhearted at the thought of the hundred and fifty she had thrown away, “and we’ll get a dressing room where I won’t be overheard. I’ve got to watch my tongue around this shop the way a bulldog watches his chain. But
you
won’t blow the news.”

“I haven’t heard a thing,” said Jack. “Let’s start the roundup.”

It required, however, a good deal more than forty minutes. For there was a full-length mirror in the dressing room, and both of them called it into use many times. But in the end Jacqueline walked from the shop in a street dress only just startling enough to catch the eye of the capital. “For,” as Madame Sarah had said, “it won’t do to pile on the colors, deary. All you need is a background for that color in your cheeks and a shadow for your eyes. You’ll
do
!”

This also was the opinion of Jacqueline. She hardly recognized herself when the “roundup” was finished. On the way out, she could not resist the temptation of lingering for a moment near the door and enjoying the fallen jaw of the saleslady with the forgetful accent. Then she went out to conquer.