He brushed aside her impudence with a laugh. "Your boss is looking this way. I think he"s getting ready to fire you."
"He"s more likely to be fired himself. I"m under civil service and he isn"t. Will you take your shoes off when you go into the holy of holies?"
"What happens to little girls when they ask too many questions? Go "way.
I"m busy."
CHAPTER XIII
AMBUSHED
On her return from luncheon that same afternoon Miss Underwood brought d.i.c.k a bundle of letters tied with a ribbon. She tossed them down upon the desk in front of him.
"I haven"t read them myself. Of course they"re in Spanish. I did try to get through one of them, but it was too much like work and I gave it up.
But since they"re written by _her_ grandfather they"ll interest you more than they did me," Miss Kate told him, with the saucy tilt to her chin that usually accompanied her impudence.
He had lived in Chihuahua three years as a mining engineer, so that he spoke and read Spanish readily. The old Don wrote a stiff angular hand, but as soon as he became accustomed to it d.i.c.k found little difficulty.
Some of the letters were written from the ranch, but most of them carried the Santa Fe date line at the time the old gentleman was governor of the royal province. They were addressed to his son Alvaro, at that time a schoolboy in Mexico City. Clearly Don Bartolome intended his son to be informed as to the affairs of the province, for the letters were a mine of information in regard to political and social conditions. They discussed at length, too, the business interests of the family and the welfare of the peons dependent upon it.
All afternoon Gordon pored over these fascinating pages torn from a dead and buried past. They were more interesting than any novel he had ever read, for they gave him a photograph, as it were projected by his imagination upon a moving picture canvas, of the old regime that had been swept into the ash heap by modern civilization. The letters revealed the old Don frankly. He was proud, imperious, heady, and intrepid. To his inferiors he was curt but kind. They flocked to him with their troubles and their quarrels. The judgment of their overlord was final with his tenants. Clearly he had a strong sense of his responsibilities to them and to the state. A quaint flavor of old-world courtesy ran through the letters like a thread of gold.
It was a paragraph from one of the last letters that riveted d.i.c.k"s attention. Translated into English, it ran as follows:
"You ask, my dear son, whether I have relinquished the great grant made us by Facundo Megares. In effect I have. During the past two years I have twice, acting as governor, conveyed to settlers small tracts from this grant. The conditions under which such a grant must be held are too onerous. Moreover, neither I nor you, nor your son, nor his son will live to see the day when there is not range enough for all the cattle that can be brought into the province.
Just now time presses, but in a later letter I shall set forth my reasons in detail."
A second and a third time d.i.c.k read the paragraph to make sure that he had not misunderstood it. The meaning was plain. There could be no doubt about it. In black and white he had a statement from old Don Bartolome himself that he considered the grant no longer valid, that he had given it up because he did not think it worth holding. He had but to prove the handwriting in court--a thing easy enough to do, since the Don"s bold, stiff writing could be found on a hundred doc.u.ments--and the Valdes claimants would be thrown out of possession.
Gordon looked in vain for the "later letter" to which Bartolome referred. Either it had never been written or it had been destroyed. But without it he had enough to go on.
Before he left the State House he made a proposal to Miss Underwood to buy the letters from her.
"What do you want with a bunch of old letters?" she asked.
"One of them helps my case. The Don refers to the grant and says he has relinquished his claim."
She nodded at him with brisk approval. "It"s fair of you to tell me that." The girl stood for a moment considering, a pencil pressed against her lips. "I suppose the letters are not mine to give. They belong to father. Better see him."
"Where?"
"At the office of the _New Mexican_. Or you can come to the house to-night."
"Believe I"ll see him right away."
Within half an hour d.i.c.k had bought the bundle of letters for five hundred dollars. He returned to the State House with an order to Kate Underwood to deliver them to him upon demand.
"Dad make a good bargain?" asked Miss Underwood, with a laugh.
Gordon told her the price he had paid.
"If I had telephoned to him what you wanted them for they would have cost you three times as much," she told him, nodding sagely.
"Then I"m glad you didn"t. Point of fact you haven"t the slightest idea what I want with them."
"To help your suit. Isn"t that what you"re going to use them for?"
Mildly he answered "Yes," but he did not tell her which suit they were to help.
As he was leaving she spoke to him without looking up from her writing.
"Mother and I will be at home this evening, if you"d like to look the house over."
"Thanks. I"d be delighted to come. I"m really awfully interested."
"I see you are," she answered dryly.
Followed by his brown shadows at a respectful distance, d.i.c.k walked back to the hotel whistling gaily.
"Some one die and leave you a million dollars, son?" inquired the old miner, with amiable sarcasm.
"Me, I"m just happy because I"m not a c.h.i.n.k," explained his friend, and pa.s.sed to the hotel writing-room.
He sat down, equipped himself with stationery, and selected a new point for a pen. Half a dozen times he made a start and as often threw a crumpled sheet into the waste-paper basket. It took him nearly an hour to compose an epistle that suited him. What he had finally to content himself with was as follows:
"DEAR MADAM:--Please find inclosed a bundle of letters that apparently belong to you. They have just come into my possession. I therefore send them to you without delay. Your attention is particularly called to the one marked "Exhibit A."
"Very truly yours, RICHARD MUIR GORDON."
He wrapped up the letters, including his own, sealed the package carefully, and walked downtown to the post office. Here he wrote upon the cover the name and address of Miss Valencia Valdes, then registered the little parcel with a request for a signed receipt after delivery at its destination.
Davis noticed that at dinner his friend was more gay than usual.
"You ce"tainly must have come into that million I mentioned, judging by your actions," he insisted, with a smile.
"Wrong guess, Steve. I"ve just been giving away a million. That"s why I"m hilarious."
"You"ll have to give me an easier one, son. Didn"t know you had a million."
"Oh, well! A million, or a half, or a quarter, whatever the Moreno claim is worth. I"m not counting nickels. An hour ago I had it in my fist.
I"ve just mailed it, very respectfully yours, to my friend the enemy."
"Suppose you talk simple American that your Uncle Steve can understand, boy. What have you been up to?"
d.i.c.k told him exultantly.
"But, good Lord, why for did you make such a play? You had "em where the wool was short. Now you"ve let loose and you"ll have to wait "steen years while the courts eat up all the profits. Of all the mule-headed chumps----"