prisoner to answer for what he had done? What had been his motive, what passion had actuated him Surely not just the greed for gold which the bell-ringer had suggested! What sort of creature was he who, in cold, calculating blood could murder a man for a handful of money?
There was nothing to answer unless she could catch the thought of Ignacio Chavez in the ringing of his bell. She moved on again, hurrying.
Following the arroyo, she had come to the first of the little, smooth hills, the lomas as the men on the stage had named them. Through them the dry watercourse wriggled, carrying its green pennons along its marge. She went up gentle slopes mantled with bleached grass which directly under her eyes was white in the glare of the sun. But the sun was very low now, very fierce and red, an angry god going down in temporary defeat, but defiant to the last, filled with threat for to-morrow; at a little distance he tinged the world with his own fiery hue. The far western uplands cut the great disk squarely in two; down slipped the half wafer until it seemed that just a bright signal-fire was kindled upon the ridge. And as that faded from her eyes the slow sobbing of the swinging bell was like a wail for the death of the day.
She had removed her hat, fancying that already the earth was throwing off its heat, that a little coolness and freshness was coming down to meet her from the mountains. She turned her eyes toward them and it was then, just after the sunset, that she saw a man riding toward her. He was still far off when she first glimpsed him, just cresting one of the higher hills, so that for him the sun had not yet set. For she caught the glint of light flaming back from the silver chasings of his bridle and from the barrel of the gun across the hollow of his left arm. She did not believe that he had seen her in the shadow of the cottonwoods.
If she went on she must meet him presently. She glanced back over her shoulder, noting how far she had come from the town. It was very still again; the bell had ceased its complaint; the hoofs of the approaching horse seemed shod with felt, falling upon felt. She swung about and walked back toward San Juan.
A little later she heard the man's voice, calling. Clearly to her, since there was no one else. Why should he call to her? She gave no sign of having heard, but walked on a trifle faster. She sensed that he was galloping down upon her; still in the loose sand the hoof-beats were muffled. Then when he called a second time she stopped and turned and waited.
A splendid big fellow he was, she noted as he came on, riding a splendid big horse. Man and beast seemed to belong to the desert; had it not been for the glint of the sun she realized now, she probably would not have distinguished their distant forms from the land across which they had moved. The horse was a darkish, dull gray; the man, boots, corduroy breeches, soft shirt, and hat, was garbed in gray or so covered with the dust of travel as to seem so.
"What in the world are you doing way out here?" he called to her. And then having come closer he reined in his horse, stared at her a moment in surprised wonderment, swept off his hat and said, a shade awkwardly: "I beg pardon. I thought you were some one else."
For her wide hat was again drooping about her face, and he had had just the form of her and the white skirt and waist to judge by.
"It is all right," she said lightly. "I imagined that you had made a mistake."
It was something of a victory over herself to have succeeded in speaking thus carelessly. For there had been the impulse, a temptation almost, just to stare back at the man as he had stared at her and in silence. Not only was the type physically magnificent; to her it was, like everything about her, new. And that which had held her at first was his eyes. For it is not the part of youth to be stern-eyed; and while this man could not be more than midway between twenty and thirty, his eyes had already acquired the trick of being hard, steely, suggesting relentlessness, stern and quick. Tall, lean-bodied, with big calloused hands, as brown as an Indian, hair and eyes were uncompromisingly black. He belonged to the southwestern wastes.
These things she noted, and that his face was drawn and weary, that about his left hand was tied a handkerchief, hinting at a minor cut, that his horse looked as travel-worn as himself.
"One doesn't see strangers often around San Juan," he explained. "As for a girl … Well, I never made a mistake like this before. I'll have to look out." The muscles of the tired face softened a little, into his eyes came a quick light that was good to see, for an instant masking their habitual sternness. "If you'll excuse me again, and if you don't know a whole lot about this country … " He paused to measure her sweepingly, seemed satisfied, and concluded: "I wouldn't go out all alone like this; especially after sundown. We're a rather tough lot, you know. Good-by."
He lifted his hat again, loosened his horse's reins, and passed by her. Just as she had expected, just as she had desired. And yet, with his dusty back turned upon her, she experienced a sudden return of her loneliness. Would she ever look into the eyes of a friend again? Could she ever actually accomplish what she had set out to accomplish; make San Juan a home?
Her eyes followed him, frankly admiring now; so she might have looked at any other of nature's triumphant creations. Then, before he had gone a score of yards, she saw how a little tightening of his horse's reins had brought the big brute down from a swinging gallop to a dead standstill. The bell was tolling again.
Again he was calling to her, again, swinging about, he had ridden to her side. Now his voice like his eyes, was ominously stern.
"Who is it?" he demanded.
"I don't know," she told him, marvelling at the look on his face. His emotion was purely one of anger, mounting anger that a man was dead? "The man who rings the bells told me that he thought it must be a sheepman from Las Palmas. He went to see. … I didn't wait. … "
Nor did this man wait now. Again he had wheeled; now he was racing along the arroyo, urging a tired horse that he might lose no unnecessary handful of moments. And as he went she heard him curse savagely under his breath and knew that he had forgotten her in the thoughts which had been released by the dull booming of a bell.
CHAPTER III
A MAN'S BOOTS
In the bar at the Casa Blanca, a long, wide room, low-ceilinged and with cool, sprinkled floor, a score of men had congregated. For the most part they were silent, content to look at the signs left by the recent shooting and to have what scraps of explanation were vouchsafed them. And these were meagre enough. The man who had done the shooting was sullen and self-contained. The dead man … it was the sheepman from Las Palmas … lay in an adjoining card-room, stark under the blanket which the large hands of Jim Galloway had drawn over him.
When the clatter of hoofs rang out in the street a couple of men went to the door. Coming back, "It is the sheriff," they said.
Roderick Norton, entering swiftly, his spurs dragging and jangling, swept the faces in the room with eyes which had in them none of that human glint of good-will which the girl at the arroyo had glimpsed in them. Again they were steely, angry, bespeaking both threat and suspicion.
"Who is it this time?" he demanded sharply.
"Bisbee, from Las Palmas," they told him.
"Who did it?" came the quick question. And then, before an answer could come, his voice ringing with the anger in it: "Antone or Kid Rickard? Which one?"
He
