"I show dislike of Dona Rosita?" stammered Demorest, in surprise. "Come, Joan," he added, with a forgiving smile, "you don't mean to imply that I dislike her because I couldn't get up a thrilling interest in an old story I've heard from every gossip in the pueblo since I can remember."

"It's not an old story to HER," said Joan, dryly, "and even if it were, you might reflect that all people are not as anxious to forget the past as you are."

Demorest drew back to let the shaft glance by. "The story is old enough, at least for her to have had a dozen flirtations, as you know, since then," he returned gently, "and I don't think she herself seriously believes in it. But let that pa.s.s. I am sorry I offended her. I had no idea of doing so. As a rule, I think she is not so easily offended. But I shall apologize to her." He stopped and approached nearer his wife in a half-timid, half-tentative affection. "As to my forgetfulness of the past, Joan, even if it were true, I have had little cause to forget it lately. Your friend, Corwin--"

"I must insist upon your not calling him MY friend, Richard,"

interrupted Joan, sharply, "considering that it was through YOUR indiscretion in coming to us for the buggy that night, that he suspected--"

She stopped suddenly, for at that moment a startled little shriek, quickly subdued, rang through the garden. Demorest ran hurriedly down the steps in the direction of the outcry. Joan followed more cautiously.

At the first turning of the path Dona Rosita almost fell into his arms.

She was breathless and trembling, but broke into a hysterical laugh.

"I have such a fear come to me--I cry out! I think I have seen a man; but it was nothing--nothing! I am a fool. It is no one here."

"But where did you see anything?" said Joan, coming up.

Rosita flew to her side. "Where? Oh, here!--everywhere! Ah, I am a fool!" She was laughing now, albeit there were tears glistening on her lashes when she laid her head on Joan's shoulder.

"It was some fancy--some resemblance you saw in that queer cactus," said Demorest, gently. "It is quite natural, I was myself deceived the other night. But I'll look around to satisfy you. Take Dona Rosita back to the veranda, Joan. But don't be alarmed, dear--it was only an illusion."

He turned away. When his figure was lost in the entwining foliage, Dona Rosita seized Joan's shoulder and dragged her face down to a level with her own.

"It was something!" she whispered quickly.

"Who?"

"It was--HIM!"

"Nonsense," groaned Joan, nevertheless casting a hurried glance around her.

"Have no fear," said Dona Rosita quickly, "he is gone--I saw him pa.s.s away--so! But it was HE--Huanson. I recognize him. I forget him never."

"Are you sure?"

"Have I the eyes? the memory? Madre de Dios! Am I a lunatico too? Look!

He have stood there--so."

"Then you think he knew you were here?"

"Quien sabe?"

"And that he came here to see you?"

Dona Rosita caught her again by the shoulders, and with her lips to Joan's ear, said with the intensest and most deliberate of emphasis:

"NO!"

"What in Heaven's name brought him here then?"

"You!"

"Are you crazy?"

"You! you! YOU!" repeated Dona Rosita, with crescendo energy. "I have come upon him here; where he stood and look at the veranda, absorrrb of YOU. You move--he fly."

"Hush!"

"Ah, yes! I have said I give him to you. And he came, Bueno," murmured Dona Rosita, with a half-resigned, half-superst.i.tious gesture.

"WILL you be quiet!"

It was the sound of Demorest's feet on the gravel path, returning from his fruitless search. He had seen nothing. It must have been Dona Rosita's fancy.

"She was just saying she thought she had been mistaken," said Joan, quietly. "Let us go in--it is rather chilly here, and I begin to feel creepy too."

Nevertheless, as they entered the house again, and the light of the hall lantern fell upon her face, Demorest thought he had never but once before seen her look so nervously and animatedly beautiful.

CHAPTER III

The following day, when Mr. Ezekiel Corwin had delivered his letters of introduction, and thoroughly canva.s.sed the scant mercantile community of San Buenaventura with considerable success, he deposited his carpet-bag at the stage office in the posada, and found to his chagrin that he had still two hours to wait before the coach arrived. After a vain attempt to impart cheerful but disparaging criticism of the pueblo and its people to Senor Mateo and his wife--whose external courtesy had been visibly increased by a line from Demorest, but whose confidence towards the stranger had not been extended in the same proportion--he gave it up, and threw himself lazily on a wooden bench in the veranda, already hacked with the initials of his countrymen, and drawing a jack-knife from his pocket, he began to add to that emblazonry the trade-mark of the Panacea--as a casual advertis.e.m.e.nt. During its progress, however, he was struck by the fact that while no one seemed to enter the posada through the stage office, the number of voices in the adjoining room seemed to increase, and the ministrations of Mateo and his wife became more feverishly occupied with their invisible guests. It seemed to Ezekiel that consequently there must be a second entrance which he had not seen, and this added to the circ.u.mstance that one or two lounging figures who had been approaching unaccountably disappeared before reaching the veranda, induced him to rise and examine the locality. A few paces beyond was an alley, but it appeared to be already blocked by several cigarette-smoking, short-jacketed men who were leaning against its walls, and showed no inclination to make way for him. Checked, but not daunted, Ezekiel coolly returned to the stage office, and taking the first opportunity when Mateo pa.s.sed through the rear door, followed him.

As he expected, the innkeeper turned to the left and entered a large room filled with tobacco smoke and the local habitues of the posada.

But Ezekiel, shrewdly surmising that the private entrance must be in the opposite direction, turned to the right along the pa.s.sage until he came unexpectedly upon the corridor of the usual courtyard, or patio, of every Mexican hostelry, closed at one end by a low adobe wall, in which there was a door. The free pa.s.sage around the corridor was interrupted by wide part.i.tions, fitted up with tables and benches, like stalls, opening upon the courtyard where a few stunted fig and orange trees still grew. As the courtyard seemed to be the only communication between the pa.s.sage he had left and the door in the wall, he was about to cross it, when the voices of two men in the compartment struck his ears.

Although one was evidently an American's, Ezekiel was instinctively convinced that they were speaking in English only for greater security against being understood by the frequenters of the posada. It is unnecessary to say that this was an innocent challenge to the curiosity of Ezekiel that he instantly accepted. He drew back carefully into the shadow of the part.i.tion as one of the voices asked--

"Wasn't that Johnson just come in?"

There was a movement as if some one had risen to look over the compartment, but the gathering twilight completely hid Ezekiel.

"No!"

"He's late. Suppose he don't come--or back out?"

The other man broke into a grim laugh. "I reckon you don't know Johnson yet, or you'd understand this yer little game o' his is just the one idea o' his life. He's been two years on that man's track, and he ain't goin' to back out now that he's got a dead sure thing on him."

"But why is he so keen about it, anyway? It don't seem nat'ral for a business man built after Johnson's style, and a rich man to boot, to go into this detective business. It ain't the reward, we know that. Is it an old grudge?"

"You bet!" The speaker paused, and then in a lower voice, which taxed Ezekial's keen ear to the uttermost, resumed: "It's said up in Frisco that Cherokee Bob knew suthin' agin Johnson way back in the States; anyhow, I believe it's understood that they came across the plains together in '50--and Bob hounded Johnson and blackmailed him here where he was livin', even to the point of makin' him help him on the road or give information, until one day Johnson bucked against it--kicked over the traces--and swore he'd be revenged on Bob, and then just settled himself down to that business. Wotever he'd been and done himself he made it all right with the sheriff here; and I've heard ez it wasn't anything criminal or that sort, but that it was o' some private trouble that he'd confided to that hound Bob, and Bob had threatened to tell agen him. That's the grudge they say Johnson has, and that's why he's allowed to be the head devil in this yer affair. It's an understood thing, too, that the sheriff and the police ain't goin' to interfere if Johnson accidentally blows the top of Bob's head off in the scrimmage of a capter."

"And I reckon Bob wouldn't hesitate to do the same thing to him when he finds out that Johnson has given him away?"

"I reckon," said the other, sententiously, "for it's Johnson's knowledge of the country and the hoss-stealers that are in with Bob's gang of road agents that made it easy for him to buy up and win over Bob's friends here, so that they'd help to trap him."

"It's pretty rough on Bob to be sold out in that way," said the second speaker, sympathizingly.