"Have your lawyers told you yet that you have no chance?"
"Would it be wise for me to admit I have none, before I go to discuss the terms of the treaty?" she asked, and put it so innocently that he acknowledged the hit with a grin.
"I thought that, if you knew you were going to lose, you might be easier to deal with. I"m such a fellow to want the whole thing in my bargains."
"If that"s how you feel, I don"t think I"ll compromise."
"Well, I didn"t really expect you would. I just mentioned it."
"It was very good of you. Now I think I"ll go back to my cousin."
"If you must I"m coming over to his room as soon as the doc will let me, and as soon as he"ll see me."
She gave him a sudden flash of happy eyes. "I hope you will. There must be no more trouble between him and you. There couldn"t be after this, could there?"
He shook his head.
"Not if it takes two to make a quarrel. He can say what he wants to, make a door-mat out of me, go gunning after me till the cows come home, and I won"t do a thing but be a delegate to a peace conference. No, ma"am. I"m through."
"You don"t know how glad I am to hear it."
"Are you as anxious I should make up my quarrel with you as the ones with your friends?" he asked boldly.
The effrontery of this lean, stalwart young American--if effrontery it was, and no other name seemed to define it--surprised another dash of roses into the olive.
"The way to make up your quarrel with me is to make up those with my friends," she answered.
"All right. Suits me. I"ll call those deputies off and send them home.
Pablo and Sebastian will never go to the pen on my evidence. They"re in the clear so far as I"m concerned."
She gave him both her hands. "Thank you. Thank you. I"m _so_ glad."
The tears rose to her eyes. She bit her lip, turned and left the room.
He called after her:
"Please don"t forget my tin box."
"I"ll remember your precious box," she called back with a pretense of scorn.
He laughed to himself softly. There was sunshine in his eyes.
She had resolved to leave him to Mrs. Corbett in future, but within the hour she was back.
"I came about your tin box. n.o.body seems to know where it is. Everybody remembers having seen it in your hands. I suppose we left it on the ground when we brought you to the house, but I can"t find anybody that removed it. Perhaps some of my people have seen it. I"ll send and ask them."
He smiled disconsolately.
"I may as well say good-bye to it."
"If you mean that my boys are thieves," she retorted hotly.
"I didn"t say that, ma"am; but mebbe I did imply they wouldn"t return that particular box, when they found what was in it. I shouldn"t blame them if they didn"t."
"I should. Very much. This merely shows you don"t understand us at all, Mr. Gordon."
"I wish I had that box. It ce"tainly disarranges my plans to have it gone," he said irritably.
"I a.s.sure you I didn"t take it."
"I don"t lay it to you, though it would ce"tainly be to your advantage to take it," he laughed, already mollified.
"Will you please explain that?"
"All my claims of t.i.tle to this land grant are in that box, Miss Valdes," he remarked placidly, as if it were a matter of no consequence.
She went white at his words.
"And it is lost--probably in the hands of my people. We must get it back."
"But you"re on the other side of the fence," he reminded her gaily.
With dignity she turned on him.
"Do you think I want to beat you that way? Do you think I am a highwayman, or that I shall let my people be?"
"You make them draw the line between murder and robbery," he suggested pleasantly.
"I couldn"t stop them from attacking you, but I can see they don"t keep your papers--all the more, that it is to their interest and mine to keep them."
She said it with such fine girlish pride, her head thrown a little back, her eyes gleaming, scorn of his implied distrust in her very carriage.
For long he joyfully carried the memory of it.
Surely, she was the rarest creature it had ever been his fortune to meet. Small wonder the gallant Spaniard Don Manuel loved her. Small wonder her people fed on her laughter, and were despondent at her frowns.
d.i.c.k Gordon was awake a good deal that night, for the pain and the fever were still with him; but the hours were short to him, full of joy and also of gloom. Shifting pictures of her filled the darkness. His imagination saw her in many moods, in many manners. And when from time to time he dropped into light sleep, it was to carry her into his dreams.
CHAPTER XXIV
d.i.c.k GORDON APOLOGIZES
Don Manuel was at first too spent a man even to wish to get well. As his cousin"s nursing dragged him farther and farther back into this world from which he had so nearly slipped, he was content to lie still and take the goods the G.o.ds provided.
She was with him for the present. That sufficed. Whether he lived or died he did not care a hand"s turn; but the while Fate flipped a coin to determine whether it should be life or death for him, he had Valencia"s love as he feared he would never have it in case he recovered.