Crossroads (13 page)

T
he bullet from the wobbling gun of Oñate flew wide past the head of Dix Van Dyck. He sat with his head back, still laughing, and his mockery maddened the sheriff. He raised the gun to poise it for a careful shot, but the messenger struck down his hand.

“There is another way,” he whispered. “I know the mind of the governor. Read the rest of the letter. There is another way…a safer way. The governor….”

“Damn him!” groaned Oñate. “I shall break him in little pieces…I shall make him laughed at by the state…. I shall…!”

“Too much talk,” warned the messenger. “The big boss is behind this.”

“He is!” cried Oñate and was silent, staring with wild eyes at the messenger.

“Yes,” nodded the other.

“Mitchell?” repeated Oñate incredulously.

“Mitchell,” said the messenger. “Best read the rest of the letter. Come. Upstairs after me!”

The sheriff followed him obediently with bowed head, like a man whose spirit is nearly broken. His breath was coming heavily, almost like so many soft sobs. In the light of the basement above, unable to wait longer, he shook out the letter again and read:

This in haste: I have pardoned Dix Van Dyck. The pardon is now on the way to Double Bend. You may be sure that
the most extreme compulsion was used before I would sign the paper. A scoundrel entered my office under a lying pretext and shoved a revolver under my nose. He was desperate and meant business. I had to write the pardon. The man escaped. I have reason to think that a woman is carrying the pardon on horse back to Double Bend.

But do not give up hope. I have arranged to have her stopped on the way at any cost. She will, perhaps, be shot. At any rate, the pardon will be taken from her and destroyed. If this letter is in your hands before she has reached Double Bend with the pardon, you will know that she has fallen into our hands somewhere on the way, near Godfrey.

But in any case, lose no time. There seem to be many friends of this Van Dyck. Do not wait for the case to be brought to trial. It may be that men with money will back him. To show you that my sympathy and interest are behind you, I have labored hard to work out a plan by which you may have your revenge even more thoroughly than the law could give it to you, and a great deal quicker.

As soon as you have finished this letter, go out among your Mexican friends. Rouse them against Dix Van Dyck. It should be easily done. Paint him as the murderer of your countrymen. Make his fame black. Your friends will surely follow you. Attack the jail. Let your mob capture Dix Van Dyck and carry him away into the hills. Or, if you wish merely to kill him, you can finish him as soon as you reach him in the jail. That should be plain to you. I’m surprised that you have not thought of this before. Certainly it will not be hard to overpower the officers of the jail.

As soon as you have read this, burn it at once and do not let a scrap of it remain.

Oñate folded the paper carefully.

“Give it to me,” said the messenger. “I was instructed to see that it was destroyed.”

Oñate smiled slowly and broadly upon his countryman. “You fool!” said he. “You
have
seen it destroyed.”

“I am his trusted man,” said the messenger darkly. “Give me the letter,
señor
.”

“Bah,” answered Ornate scornfully, and he drew out several pieces of gold from his pocket—as an incontestable proof of his affluence he always carried his money in this way—and dropped them, jingling, into the hand of the messenger. “Have you not seen the letter destroyed?”

The messenger smiled in return. The smile made him so like Oñate in expression that for the instant he might have passed as the man’s brother. “I myself,” he said, “burned the letter to a crisp and crushed the crisp into ashes. i
Adiós, señor
!”

In place of answering
Señor
Oñate watched the fellow pass out of the room, and he followed him with the unchanging smile. Peace was coming slowly back over his soul. As he paced with careful step out of the jail, he paused for a moment in the yellow, hot sunlight to let the full sense of the new idea flood through his brain. His smile persisted, and it went out only long enough for him to curse himself for not having thought of the idea before. It was simple; it was perfect. Its perfection lay in its simplicity. His smile persisted all the way to his house. The letter of the governor crinkled comfortably in his pocket. He would not have exchanged the possession of that letter for a fortune paid to him in cash.

Hitherto the governor had served him—for a price. Hereafter the governor would be his abject dog—for nothing. In the fullness of his soul he burst into song as he trotted his horse softly down the path to his house. The title of his song was “The Dove.”

Señor
Oñate had a house in both Guadalupe and Double Bend. To be sure, the house at Double Bend could not compare with the broad grounds and the roomy
mansion at Guadalupe. Nevertheless, it was probably the finest building in the town and worthy of the affluence of Oñate. The garden was small but perfect of its kind, and in the patio bloomed the choice blossoms that he prized the most. He maintained two servants in this place, and at every meal, three times a day, the servants prepared a repast worthy of Oñate’s tastes and set a place for him at the table. One servant stood stiffly behind the chair during all the dinner hour. It pleased Oñate to think of that servility even when he was absent. Moreover, this extravagance was more talked of among his countrymen and more admired than any other of his attributes. It showed more than wealth; it showed almost omnipotence.

To this dwelling in Double Bend, only the day before, he had sent El Tigre and the girl, Dolores. Usually he dropped in on his servants without warning to make sure that they were following the adamantine rules he had laid down for them. But this time, since he expected to stay some days in Double Bend, he had sent El Tigre and his daughter to prepare every detail of the house for his reception. Dolores would attend to his comfort. El Tigre would guard his safety like a watchdog. What is there more for the soul to desire when one may purchase both safety and comfort? If
Señor
Oñate was at peace with the world, surely there was a reason for it.

For some time after the return of El Tigre from the manhunt, he had been worried about the attitude the Yaqui would adopt toward him since his affair with Dolores had begun. His worries, however, were not long lived. He knew, to be sure, just what the attitude of the average Indian would be toward such an affair, but in El Tigre, apparently, love for his benefactor overruled all pride. Naturally the Yaqui often saw his master and Dolores together, but on such occasions he assumed a blindness absolute and satisfying to the soul of Oñate, no matter
how suspicious the soul of the Mexican might be. When her father was near, the girl would fall suddenly into silence and formality, but the moment they were alone again, her little caressing manners returned. She was not the first girl to enter his life, but none had grown upon him so completely and so swiftly as Dolores.

From that first evening when he repeated her name and found it beautiful, the very thought of her had been sufficient to paralyze his reason and his judgment in a delicious sense of pleasure and possession. He did not stop to ask if she loved him. It was quite enough for him that he owned her.

Sometimes, indeed, when he turned suddenly and unexpectedly upon her, he would find her eyes dwelling upon his with a cold and dangerous solemnity. He only prized her the more for this. Who would content himself with a common house cat if it were possible to reduce to subjection, utter servility to eye and voice, a beautiful, wild panther, or the spotted, terrible cheetah? Not Oñate, to be sure! He loved the caress and whisper of her voice because the hiss of the snake was not far hidden behind the sound. He loved the soft touch of her hand because the same soft fingers were so apt to curl suddenly around the hilt of a knife. A little more subservience and she would have become as dull to him as any bought thing. As it was, no matter how he showered her with gifts of jewels and silks and robes and beautiful toys, the danger from her was only postponed, not destroyed.

He had never won her completely and that was the stimulus that made him woo her continually. Possession is nine points of the law. It is also nine points of boredom.
Señor
Oñate was never bored. He needed her as he needed tequila. She returned to him like thirst, many times a day.

S
eñor
Oñate did three things when he reached his house. He called for a table to be set in the patio.

He called for tequila. And he called for Dolores. The three things were done. The table was set instantly. The house servants trotted in their haste. The tequila was brought also on the run in a silver bucket of ice. Two glasses were placed on the table. The house servants stood anxiously, awaiting acceptance or dismissal.

“Tell Dolores that I am hurried,” he commanded, having surveyed the preparations and found them good. “Tell her to come at once. Go!”

They disappeared on hasty, padding feet. The thought of the continued presence of their great master seemed to weigh upon them like the dread of fire and famine and drought. They did all things together, as if one brain were not enough to comprehend the orders of Oñate.

Oñate let the smile grow out again upon his lips when they were gone. He waited. He had come to lose all taste for food and drink unless it were served to him by the slender hands of Dolores. He waited. His thirst grew into a hollow fire. It became illimitable and went, hot and tingling, through his veins. Still Dolores did not come. He smote the bell till it jangled again. The servants leaped into view, breathless.

“Dolores!” commanded the master, scowling.

“She says,” they stammered in one voice, “that she is
sleepy…that she will not arise until the sun is setting. We begged her on our knees to come in haste. We told her that
Señor
Oñate was hurried. But the spirit of a devil….”

“Fools…dogs!” bellowed Oñate, smashing his fat hand against the top of the table. “Go again…run…drag the girl-demon to me by the hair of the head. Go!”

They fled, wild-eyed.

The pause began again. Oñate, with one eye upon the iced tequila and the other upon the absent vision of Dolores, leaned back in his chair with eyes closed, and waited. Any one knows that when one closes his eyes without sleeping, every second is prolonged. But Oñate did not think of this. Presently he began to pant. He struck the bell again and this time so furiously that it rolled from the table and fell with musical clatter on the brick pavement of the patio.

Once more the servants came. They stood at a distance from his hand and abased their eyes before his red stare.

“What can we do?” said one of them, almost sobbing in terror and rage, and he showed a long rent in his loose jacket. “I gave the girl your message. I would have laid hands upon her. But she drew a knife with the speed of light and struck at me. By an inch only,
señor
, I escaped with my life. The ass, Pedro, who stands here beside me…coward and pig!…he would not move to help me. Then from outside the door we spoke soft words to her. She laughed, and we heard her lying down again just as the bell rang.”

Oñate stooped to snatch up his whip that he had carried idly with him, also because he had found through long habit that the lash was of use in many ways. Swift though his stroke the servants were even swifter. They vanished again through the door. In a little time he heard their raised, pleading voices at the door of Dolores.

A small, cruel smile came on the lips of
Señor
Oñate. He began to draw the lash of the whip slowly through his hands. It was stained in places. It was these stains that made him smile.

His anger all the while grew apace. It was no longer hot. It had grown cold. He wanted to kill. He had almost forgotten the tequila. And then, different from the padding haste of the servants, he heard a step. His hand closed hard on the handle of the whip, locking tighter and tighter. He would strike her across the throat; he would leave her marked as his slave. It was time…good time…that she had learned the hand of Oñate and his mark.

The servants scurried before him.

“She is coming,” they stammered. “Dolores will be here at once,
señor!
”

He stared at them. They were beyond the reach of his whip, so his eyes wandered past them. The blood was beginning to pound in his forehead, and he wanted to take a deep breath of cold air for he felt as if his rage would stifle him.

The slow, regular, soft step came closer. Then he knew that she was standing beside him, for he caught the faint, faint rustle of silk stirred by the wind against silk. A delicate perfume reached him, something to be guessed at rather than known. He could almost hear her breath. It was marvelous how acute his senses had become where the girl was concerned. In another instant he would turn his head and whirl the lash. Then he heard a faint, light click of ice against crystal-thin glass. It arrested his thought. It charmed him, in a way, as the eye of a snake is said to fascinate the bird.

“
¿Señor?
”

He opened his eyes slowly, his smile beginning. There she stood, as he had known she would stand, with two
fingers of the dark-skinned, perfect hand holding the slender glass. Her dark eyes, as was her way, looked just past him. They never seemed to focus directly on his face. Sometimes he felt as though she were speaking to someone behind him. He had even turned, once or twice, when he knew that there was no one near them. He took the glass.

“Dolores,” he said, making his voice hard, “there is a devil in you.”

“Yes,
señor
.”

He let his eyes rest on her, irritated by her calm. She was dressed,
rebozo
and all, in dark red, the color of blood just after it has stained the skin and congealed. It glowed only where the slant sun of the afternoon struck it, and then it seemed like hot blood itself. Low on her forehead, hanging just below the edge of the
rebozo
, was a large emerald pendant from a slender golden chain. It was his latest gift.

“I must drive out the devil in you, Dolores,” he said.

“Yes,” she repeated with monotonous regularity. “Yes,
señor
.”

“With the whip,” he said, and the word brought a terrible fury on him. The lash of the whip would bite through that thin silk and leave welts on the flesh. Every time he touched those welts she would flinch and remember that he was absolute lord. “With the whip,” he repeated hoarsely.

Her eyes focused on him at that, slowly. She smiled and that maddened him.

“I would not whip you, but the devil in you,” he said.

“The devil,” she said, “should be whipped.”

“But?” He waited, for he saw a glint in her eyes as cold as the light of the emerald.

“But it would be dangerous. Devils are dangerous,
señor
.”

“Ah?” he queried, and a strange pleasure came to mingle with, rather than abate, his rage. “What would the devil do?” he asked.

“Dolores cannot tell,” she answered. “She has not asked the devil what he would do, but she knows that he has teeth.” She touched the wide scarf that was knotted at her waist, and beneath the knot he made out the gleaming handle of a knife.

“It is well,” said Oñate quietly. “Some day I shall kill you, Dolores.”

“Yes,
señor
.”

“But now, fill your glass.”

“I am not thirsty.”

“Fill your glass.”

She obeyed. The servant, Pedro, who stood nearby with widely staring eyes, chuckled harshly.

“I drink to the devil in your eyes, Dolores.”

“To the devil in
your
eyes,” she echoed. But she only touched the glass against her lips and set it down untasted.

“Dolores!”

“
¿Señor?
”

“You did not drink?”

“I am not thirsty,
señor
.”

“Dolores, empty your glass!”

She turned and flung the contents in the face of Pedro. He fled, cursing, stamping, crying out to Manuel, his companion. The tequila was like burning fire against his eyes. But Dolores turned back to Oñate. As she trailed her fingers across his forehead slowly, cool fingers, soft as silk, she said: “I have waited for you,
señor
. You have been long away.”

“Dolores, you are lying to me.”

“Indeed,
señor
, I am not.”

“Dolores, you do not care for my coming or my going. Is it not true?”

“Surely it is not true.”

He turned, half incredulous, half eager. “If you lie to me now, Dolores, I will take your own knife and cut your tongue in two. I will split it and give you two tongues. You need them both, you little demon!”

“I do not lie,” she persisted calmly.

“Will you swear it?”

To his astonishment she raised the cross at her throat.

“Dolores!” he cried, astonished and delighted.

“
¿Señor?
”

“Swear to me.”

“What shall I swear?”

“That…let me see…that you have truly missed me while I was gone.”

“I swear it,
señor
.”

“Ah, Dolores! Swear still more. Swear that you have yearned for me to come again?”

“I swear that I have yearned for you to come again.”

“My love!” whispered the sheriff, and held out his pudgy arms to her. She merely flicked the tips of his fingers with a careless hand. He dropped his arm scowling. “Why did you yearn for my coming?” he asked sharply.

“Because,
señor
, I have seen a
mantilla
of lace…fine lace that is yellow with age. I wish one.”

“Devil…cold-hearted devil!” said Oñate between his teeth.

She chose that moment of rage to slip into his arms. They closed around her, fiercely and then tenderly.

“Dearest!” whispered the sheriff.

“The
mantilla?
” murmured Dolores.