Читать книгу Port O' Gold - Louis J. Stellman - Страница 27

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Like a startled deer, Inez Windham fled from McTurpin and the stranger, her little, high-heeled slippers sinking unheeded into the horse-trodden mire of Portsmouth Square, her silk skirt spattered and soiled; her hair, freed from the protecting mantilla, blowing in the searching trade wind. Thus, as Commander Hull sat upon the custom house veranda, reading the latest dispatch from Captain Ward, she burst upon him--a flushed, disheveled, lovely vision with fear-stricken eyes.

"Senor," she panted, "Senor Commandante … I must speak with you at once!"

Hull rose. "My dear young lady"--he regarded her with patent consternation--"my dear young lady … w-what is wrong?"

She was painfully aware of her bedraggled state, the whirlwind lack of ceremony with which she had propelled herself into his presence. Suddenly words failed her, she was conscious that an arm stretched toward her as she swayed. Next she lay upon a couch in an inner chamber, the commander, in his blue-and-gold-braid stiffness bending over her, gravely anxious.

She rose at once, ignoring his protesting gesture.

"I--I fainted?" she asked perplexedly. Hull nodded. "Something excited you. A fight in the street below. A man was stabbed--"

"Oh!" The white face of the bearded stranger sprang into her memory, "Is he dead?"

"No, but badly hurt, I fancy," said the Commander. "They have taken him to the City Hotel."

Desperately, she forced herself to speak. "I have come, senor, to ask a pardon for my brother. He is very dear to me--and to my mother"--she clasped her hands and held them toward him supplicatingly. "Senor, if Benito should be captured--you will have mercy?"

The commander regarded her with puzzled interest. "Who is Benito, little one?"

"His name is Windham. My father was a gring--Americano, Commandante."

Hull frowned. "An American … fighting against his country?" he said sharply.

"Ah, sir"--the girl came closer in her earnestness--"he does not fight against the United States … only against robbers who would hide behind its flag." In her tone there was the outraged indignation of a suffering people. "Horse thieves, cattle robbers."

"Hush," said Hull, "you must not speak thus of American officials. Their seizures, I am told, were unavoidable--for military needs alone."

"You have never heard our side," the girl spoke bitterly. "Was it military need that filched two hundred of our blooded horses from the ranches? Was it military need that robbed my ailing mother of her pet, the mare Diablo? Was it military need that gave our finest steeds to your Alcalde for his pleasure, that enabled half a dozen false officials to recruit their stables from our caponeras and sell horses in the open market?" Her eyes blazed. "Senor, it was tyranny and theft, no less. Had I been a man, like Benito, I, too, should have ridden with Sanchez."

"Can you prove these things?" asked the Commander, sternly.

"Si, senor," said Inez quickly. "It is well known hereabouts. Do not take my word," she smiled, "I am a woman--a Spaniard, on my mother's side. Ask your own countrymen--Samuel Brannan, Nathan Spear, William Leidesdorff."

Hull pulled at his chin reflectively. "Something of this sort I have already heard," he said, "but I believed it idle gossip. … If your brother had come to me, instead of riding with the enemy--"

"He is a youth, hot-blooded and impulsive, Senor Commandante." Swiftly, and to Hull's intense embarrassment, she knelt before him. "We love him so: my mother, who is ill, and I," she pleaded. "He is all we have. … Ah, senor, you will spare him--our Benito!"

"Get up," said Hull a trifle brusquely. His tone, too, shook a little. "Confound it, girl, I'm not a murderer." He forced a smile. "If my men haven't shot the young scoundrel you may have him back."

"And that," he added, as the girl rose with a shining rapture in her eyes, "may be tomorrow." He picked up a paper from the desk and regarded it thoughtfully. "There is truce at present. Sanchez will surrender if I give my word that there shall be no further raids."

"And--you will do this, Commandante?" the girl asked, breathlessly.

"I--will consult with Brannan, Leidesdorff and Spear, as you suggested," Hull replied. But his eyes were kind. The Senorita Inez had her answer. Impetuously, her arms went around his neck. An instant later, dazed, a little red, a moist spot on his cheek and a lingering fragrance clinging subtly like the touch of vanished arms, Hull watched her flying heels upon the muddy square.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he said, explosively.

In the room which had been Inez' whilom prison--and which proved to be the only one available in the City Hotel, Adrian Stanley lay tossing and muttering. The woman who sat at his bedside watched anxiously each movement of his lips, listening eagerly to catch the incoherent, whispered words. For a time she could make of them no intelligent meaning. But now, after a long and quiet interval, he began to ask questions, though his eyes were still closed. "Am I going to die?"

"No," said Inez, for it was she, "you've lost a lot of blood, but the doctor says there's small danger."

The bearded face looked up half quizzically. "Are you glad?"

"Oh … yes," said Inez, with a quick-taken respiration.

"Then it's all right," the patient murmured sleepily. His eyes closed.

Inez' color heightened as she watched him. What had he meant, she wondered, and decided that his brain was not quite clear. But, somehow, this was not the explanation she desired.

Presently Dr. Elbert Jones came in, cheering her with his breezy, jovial drawl.

"Getting tired of your task?" he questioned. But Inez shook her head. "He protected me," she said. "It was while defending me that he was wounded." Her eyes searched the physician's face. "Where," she questioned fearfully, "is--"

"McTurpin?" returned the doctor. "Lord knows. He vamoosed, absquatulated. You'll hear no more of him, I think, Miss Windham."

For a moment the dark lashes of the patient rose as if something in the doctor's words had caught his attention; then they fell again over weary eyes and he appeared to sleep. But when Doctor Jones was gone, Inez found him regarding her with unusual interest.

"Did I hear him call you Windham?" he inquired, "Inez Windham?"

"Yes, that is my name," she answered.

"And your father's?"

"He is Don Roberto Windham of the Engineers," Inez leaned forward. "Oh!" her eyes shone with a hope she dared not trust. "Tell me, quickly, have you news of him?"

"Yes," said Stanley. "He is ill, but will recover. He will soon return." His eyes dwelt on the girl in silence, musingly.

"Tell me more!" she pleaded. "We believed him lost. Ah, how my mother's health will mend when she hears this. We have waited so long. … "

"I was with him in the North," said Stanley. "Often, sitting at the camp-fire, while the others slept, he told me of his wife, his daughter, and his son, Benito. In my coat," he pointed to a garment hanging near the door, "you will find a letter--" He followed her swift, searching fingers, saw her press the envelope impulsively against her heart. While she read his eyes were on her dreamily, until at last he closed them with a little sigh.