"Perhaps they may help you win the land. Eh, _Dona_?"
"Perhaps. You know I offered a reward of twenty-five dollars for the box. It is yours. Buy some furniture with it when you and Juanita go to housekeeping."
"That is all past, alas, _Senorita_. Juanita looks down her nose when I am near. She does not speak to me."
"Foolish boy! That is a sign she thinks much of you. Tell her you did wrong to accuse her. Beg her to forgive you. Do not sulk, but love her and she will smile on you."
"But--this _Senor_ Gordon?"
"All nonsense, Pablo. I have talked with Juanita. It is you she loves.
Go to her and be good to her. She is back there in the milkhouse churning. But remember she is only a girl--so young, and motherless, too. It is the part of a man to be kind and generous and forbearing to a woman. He must be gentle--always gentle, if he would hold her love. Can you do that, Pablo? Or are you only a hot-headed, selfish, foolish boy?"
"I will try, _Dona_," he answered humbly. "For always have I love" her since she was such a little _muchacha_."
"Then go. Don"t tell her I sent you. She must feel you have come because you could no longer stay away."
Pablo flashed his teeth in a smile of understanding and took the path that led round the house. He followed it to the sunken cellar that had been built for a milkhouse. Noiselessly he tiptoed down the steps and into the dark room. The plop-plop of a churn dasher told him Juanita was here even before his eyes could make her out in the darkness.
Presently he saw more clearly the slender figure bent a little wearily over the churn. Softly he trod forward. His hand went out and closed on the handle above hers. In startled surprise she turned.
"You--Pablo!" she cried faintly.
"I have so longed to see you--to come to you and tell you I was wrong, _nina_---- Oh, you don"t know how I have wanted to come. But my pride--my hard, foolish pride--it held me back. But no longer, heart of my heart, can I wait. Tell me that you forgive--that you will love me again--in spite of what I said and have done. I cannot get along without my little Juanita," he cried in the soft Spanish that was native to them both.
She was in his arms, crying softly, nestling close to him so that his love might enfold her more warmly. Always Juanita had been a soft, clinging child, happy only in an atmosphere of affection. She responded to caresses as a rose does to the sunlight. Pablo had been her first lover, the most constant of them all. She had relied upon him as a child does upon its mother. When he had left her in anger and not returned she had been miserably unhappy. Now all was well again, since Pablo had come back to her.
CHAPTER XXV
THE PRINCE CONSORT
Valencia returned to Don Manuel"s room carrying a gunny sack. She found d.i.c.k Gordon sitting beside his rival"s bed amiably discussing with him the respective values of the Silver Doctor and the Jock Scott for night fishing. d.i.c.k rose at her entrance to offer a chair.
She was all fire and animation. Her eyes sparkled, reflecting light as little wavelets of a sun-kissed lake.
"Supreme Court decision just come down in your favor?" asked the other claimant to the valley with genial irony.
"No, but--guess what I"ve got here."
"A new hat," hazarded Gordon, furrowing his brow in deep thought.
"Treason!" protested Manuel. "Does the lady live who would put her new hat in a gunny sack?"
"You may have three guesses, each of you," replied Miss Valdes, dimpling.
The miner guessed two guinea pigs, a million dollars, and a pair of tango slippers. Pesquiera went straight to the mark.
"A tin box," he said.
"Right, Manuel. Pablo brought it. He had just heard I was looking for the box--says he found it the night of the fire and took it home with him. His idea was that we might use the papers to help our fight."
"Good idea," agreed the Cripple Creek man, with twinkling eyes. "What are you going to do with the papers now you have them, Miss Valdes?"
"Going to give them to their owner," she replied, and swung the sack into his lap.
He took out a bunch of keys from his pocket, fitted one to the lock of the box, and threw up the lid. Carefully he looked the papers over.
"They are all here--every last one. I"m still lord of the Rio Chama Valley--unless my lawyers are fooling me mighty bad."
"It"s a difference of opinion that makes horse races, _Senor_," retorted Manuel gaily from his pillows.
"I"ll bet one of Mrs. Corbett"s cookies there"s no difference of opinion between my lawyers and those of Miss Valdes. What do you honestly think yourself about the legal end, ma"am?"
"I think that law and justice were divorced a good many years ago," she answered promptly.
"Which is another way of saying that you expect me to win out."
"By advice of counsel we decline to make any admissions, sir."
"You don"t have to say a word. The facts do all the talking that is necessary." Gordon glanced in a business-like fashion over several papers. "This would be a fine time for friend Pablo to attack me again.
Here are several of the original papers--deed of the grant, map of it with the first survey made, letters showing that old Moreno lived several years in the valley after your people were driven out at the time of the change in government. By the way, here"s a rather interesting doc.u.ment. Like to look at it, Miss Valdes?"
He handed to her a paper done up in a blue cover after the fashion of modern legal pleadings. Valencia glanced it over. Her eye caught at a phrase which interested her and ran rapidly down the page.
"But--I don"t understand what this means--unless----"
She looked up quickly at Gordon, an eager question in her face.
"It means what it says, though it"s all wrapped up in dictionary words the way all law papers are."
Valencia pa.s.sed the doc.u.ment to Pesquiera. "Read that, and tell me what you think it means, Manuel." Her face was flushed with excitement, and in her voice there was a suggestion of tremulousness.
The Spaniard read, and as he read his eyes, too, glowed.
"It means, my cousin, that you have to do with a very knightly foe. By this paper he relinquishes all claim, t.i.tle and interest in the Moreno grant to Valencia Valdes, who he states to be in equity the rightful owner of same. Valencia, I congratulate you. But most of all I congratulate Mr. Gordon. Few men have the courage to make a gift of a half million acres of land merely because they have no moral t.i.tle to it."
"Sho! I never did want the land, anyhow. I got interested in the sc.r.a.p.
That"s all." The miner looked as embarra.s.sed as if he had been caught stealing a box of cigars.
The young woman had gone from pink to white. The voice in which she spoke was low and unsteady.
"It"s a splendid thing to do--the gift of a king. I don"t know--that I can accept it--even for the sake of my people. I know now you would be fair to them. You wouldn"t throw them out. You would give new deeds to those who have bought land, wouldn"t you?"
"How are you going to keep from accepting it, Miss Valdes? That paper is a perfectly legal doc.u.ment."
She smiled faintly. "I could light a cigarette, Mr. Gordon, as you once did."