Part 26 (2/2)
”You've saved yourself, Mr. Gordon. This is _the sacred room_. Here the Princess of the Rio Chama was born. This was her room when she was a girl until she went away to school. She slept in that very bed. Down on your knees, sir, and wors.h.i.+p at the shrine.”
He met with a laugh the cool, light scorn of her banter. Yet something in him warmed to his environment. He had the feeling of having come into more intimate touch with her past than he had yet done. The sight of that plain little bed went to the source of his emotions. How many times had his love knelt beside it in her night-gown and offered up her pure prayers to the G.o.d she wors.h.i.+ped!
He made his good-byes soon after their return to Mrs. Underwood. d.i.c.k was a long way from a sentimentalist, but he wanted to be alone and adjust his mind to the new conception of his sweetheart brought by her childhood home. It was a night of little moonlight. As he walked toward the hotel he could see nothing of the escort that had been his during the past few days. He wondered if perhaps they had got tired of shadowing his movements.
The road along which he was pa.s.sing had on both sides of it a row of big cottonwoods, whose branches met in an arch above. d.i.c.k, with that instinct for safety which every man-hunter has learned, walked down the middle of the street, eyes and ears alert for the least sign of an ambush.
Two men approached on the plank sidewalk. They were quarreling. Suddenly a knife flashed, and one of the men went with an oath to the ground.
d.i.c.k reached for his gun and plunged straight for the a.s.sailant, who had stooped as if to strike again the prostrate man. The rescuer stumbled over a taut rope and at the same moment a swarm of men fell upon him.
Even as he rose and shook off the clutching hands Gordon knew that he was the victim of a ruse.
He had lost his revolver in the fall. With clenched fists he struck hard and sure. They swarmed upon him, so many that they got in each other's way. Now he was down, now up again. They swayed to and fro in a huddle, as does a black bear surrounded by a pack of dogs. Still the man at the heart of the melee struck--and struck--and struck again. Men went down and were trodden under foot, but he reeled on, stumbling as he went, turning, twisting, hitting hard and sure with all the strength that many good clean years in the open had stored within him. Blows fell upon his curly head as it rose now and again out of the storm--blows of guns, of knives, of bony knuckles. Yet he staggered forward, bleeding, exhausted, feeling nothing of the blows, seeing only the distorted faces that snarled on every side of him.
He knew that when he went down it would be to stay. Even as he flung them aside and hammered at the brown faces he felt sure he was lost. The coat was torn from his back. The blood from his bruised and cut face and scalp blinded him. Heavy weights dragged at his arms as they struck wildly and feebly. Iron b.a.l.l.s seemed to chain his feet. He plowed doggedly forward, dragging the pack with him. Furiously they beat him, striking themselves as often as they did him. His shoulders began to sway forward. Men leaped upon him from behind. Two he dragged down with him as he went. The sky was blotted out. He was tired--deadly tired. In a great weariness he felt himself sinking together.
The consciousness drained out of him as an ebbing wave does from the sands of the sh.o.r.e.
CHAPTER XIV
MANUEL TO THE RESCUE
Valencia Valdes did not conform closely to the ideal her preceptress at the Was.h.i.+ngton finis.h.i.+ng school had held as to what const.i.tutes a perfect lady. Occasionally her activities shocked Manuel, who held to the ancient view that maidens should come to matrimony with the innocence born of conventual ignorance. He would have preferred his wife to be a clinging vine, but in the case of Valencia this would be impossible.
No woman in New Mexico could ride better than the heiress of the Rio Chama. She could throw a rope as well as some of her _vaqueros_. At least one bearskin lay on the floor of her study as a witness to her prowess as a Diana. Many a time she had fished the river in waders and brought back with her to the ranch a creel full of trout. Years in the untempered sun and wind of the southwest had given her a st.u.r.diness of body unusual in a girl so slenderly fas.h.i.+oned. The responsibility of large affairs had added to this an independence of judgment that would have annoyed Don Manuel if he had been less in love.
Against the advice of both Pesquiera and her foreman she had about a year before this time largely increased her holdings in cattle, at the same time investing heavily in improved breeding stock. Her justification had been that the cost of beef, based on the law of supply and demand, was bound to continue on the rise.
”But how do you know, _Dona_?” her perplexed major domo had asked.
”Twenty--fifteen years ago everybody had cattle and lost money. Prices are high to-day, but _manana_----”
”To-morrow they will be higher. It's just a matter of arithmetic, Fernando. There are seventeen million less cattle in the country than there were eight years ago. The government reports say so. Our population is steadily increasing. The people must eat. Since there are fewer cattle they must pay more for their meat. We shall have meat to sell. Is that not simple?”
”_Si, Dona_, but----”
”But in the main we have always been sheep-herders, so we ought always to be? We'll run cattle and sheep, too, Fernando. We'll make this ranch pay as it never has before.”
”But the feed--the winter feed, _Senorita_?”
”We'll have to raise our feed. I'm going to send for engineers and find what it will cost to impound, water in the _cordilleras_ and run ditches into the valley. We ought to be watering thousands of acres for alfalfa and grain that now are dry.”
”It never has been done--not in the time of Don Alvaro or even in that of Don Bartolome.”
”And so you think it never can?” she asked, with a smile.
”The Rio Chama Valley is grazing land. It is not for agriculture.
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