The Delafield Affair.
by Florence Finch Kelly.
CHAPTER I
VENGEANCE AVOWED
Curtis Conrad turned from superintending repairs on the adobe wall, and walked across the corral to the gate at the opposite side. As he filled his pipe he looked across the wide, greenish-gray New Mexican plateau stretching far to east and south and west. It was dotted here and there with little groups of grazing cattle, and he noted a straggling procession of the creatures, their figures wavering and distorted in the heat haze, coming down from the distant foot-hills. They were following a trail that cut across the plain in a straight line to the pond across the road from the house, beyond a grove of cottonwood trees.
"Poor devils!" he thought. "They"re tramping miles for a drink of water, and to-morrow they"ll tramp back again for their breakfast. The Castletons are going to lose big money in dead cattle this Summer, unless there"s more rain than there was last. It"s awful to see the poor brutes dropping in their tracks. I"ll begin looking for a job in a wetter country if this Summer doesn"t bring more rain." He turned his attention to his pipe, sheltering bowl and match in his hollowed hand.
"No use, in this wind," he muttered. "What a blast it"s blowing to-day!
Well, there"s no sand in it."
The plain stretched away from the ranch-house in low, rolling hills, so evenly sized that it gave the impression of a level surface. Up from one of the little valleys rose a horseman, as if he had sprung suddenly from the depths of the earth. Through the heat that wavered over the plain his horse"s legs drew out into long, k.n.o.bby sticks, and both man and steed became an absurd caricature of the sinewy pony and cowboy rider that presently cantered up to the gate with the mail for which Conrad had been waiting.
"Three cow-brutes are down on the pond trail, just where it crosses the road. One of "em"s got a calf."
"Are they dead?"
"Mighty nigh--will be by night."
"You and Red Jack go and skin them in the morning." Conrad turned toward the house, looking at his letters. His mind still lingered over the calf. "Poor little devil, it ought to have a chance," he was thinking, when his eye caught the name on one of the envelopes. He turned upon the cowboy a gaze suddenly grown preoccupied.
"No, Peters," he said; "the calf won"t go with the other cattle while its mother is alive, and I saw that gray wolf skulking along the draw this afternoon. You and Red Jack"d better go down now and put the cows out of their misery. Skin them and bring the calf into the corral till night, and then put it down by the pond with the other cow-brutes."
His eyes quickly returned to the letter that had attracted his attention. "Tremper & Townsend!" he exclaimed with eager surprise. "Why, they were Delafield"s attorneys!" He tore open the envelope with an impatient jerk and the rushing wind almost blew from his fingers the check it contained. As his eye ran quickly down the half-dozen lines of the letter his face lighted with satisfaction and amus.e.m.e.nt.
The sound of a carriage distracted his attention. It turned in at his house-gate and he hastened forward, a lean, long-legged figure of a man, hat doffed and hand outstretched.
"How are you, Bancroft? Glad to see you! And Miss Bancroft, too! Of course you"re coming in. Thirsty? I"ll bet you are! And you know we"ve got the best water in Silverside County here. How much better your daughter"s looking, Aleck! If you keep on like this, Miss Bancroft, you"ll soon forget you were ever ill."
"Oh, I"ve forgotten that already, there"s such magic in the winds you have here," the girl replied laughingly as he lifted her to the ground.
"They"re strong enough to blow the past out of your memory and make you forget even your own name!" Her father suddenly turned away and began to hitch the horses. He sent back a covert glance at her as she stood at Conrad"s side, a slender figure, her face still thin from recent illness but aglow with the pink of returning health, the breeze fluttering the short brown curls that cl.u.s.tered over her bare head.
"Oh, my hat, please!" she exclaimed, with sudden remembrance of the head-covering she had left hanging in the carriage top. Curtis took it down for her and looked on with undisguised admiration while she tied it with a big bow of ribbon under her chin. Bancroft came back, explaining that they had driven since mid-forenoon from the base of Mangan"s Peak, and asking if Conrad did not think they had made pretty good time with their new team of horses. Curtis looked them over critically, praising their good points, and approving heartily when Bancroft told him they had been bought for both riding and driving, for he wanted Lucy, now that she was growing strong again, to become an expert horsewoman.
A big cottonwood tree grew beside the gate, and a little plot of gra.s.s, enclosed on three sides by whitewashed adobe walls, made a square of welcome green. Lucy Bancroft exclaimed with delight as they entered the tiny yard, stepping mincingly across the gra.s.s with lifted gown, and smiling back at the two men, while fleeting dimples played hide-and-seek in her cheeks.
"I"m so glad, Mr. Conrad," she laughed, "that you haven"t any signs up to "keep off the gra.s.s," for I simply must walk on it. I never saw anything so lovely as this little lawn and this beautiful big green tree, after our long ride across the plain. It makes me think of that line in the Bible about "the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.""
"Yes," replied Curtis as he threw open the door. "I never knew until I came to New Mexico how much comfort and pleasure there can be in a few blades of gra.s.s. When I come in from a long ride and look at this little checker-board square of turf I feel as if I uncurled a whole yard of wrinkles and squints from around my eyes."
The Socorro Springs ranch-house was a rambling sequence of adobe rooms, so joined one to another that they formed the eastern and part of the northern side of the big square corral. It was low and flat-roofed, and struggling tufts of weeds and gra.s.s grew along the top and trailed over the edge, adding their chapter to Nature"s endless tale of the unwearied determination of Life to evade and overcome Death. The rooms opened out of one another in a long row, all with outside doors looking toward the east and some with additional doors into the corral. A bare adobe yard sloping eastward was bordered by a trickling stream of water along which grew some willows and cottonwoods. Beyond it spread a golden-green field of young alfalfa, and beyond that the greenish-gray plain stretched to the far horizon. Across the front of the house was a narrow wooden porch, and house and porch, walls and sheds, were all a dazzling white that in the vivid sunshine smote the sight like a blow across the eyeb.a.l.l.s. In the low, large room in front gayly colored Navajo rugs were spread on the floor, white muslin curtains hung at the windows, and rose-bedecked paper covered the walls and ceiling. Unpainted shelves of pine above a battered, flat-topped desk were filled with books, and the round table in the middle of the room was littered with newspapers, magazines, tobacco pouches, and pipes.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Peters, brought a pitcher of water, and Conrad explained to Lucy that the springs from which the ranch took its appellation, _Los Ojos del Socorro_, "The Springs of Succor," had been so named nearly three hundred years before by a party of Spanish explorers, because they had come unexpectedly upon the pure waters when they were almost dead from thirst. At the housekeeper"s suggestion Lucy went into the next room to lie down for a half-hour"s rest before they should start for their home in Golden, twenty miles farther westward.
The door, accidentally left ajar, swung part way open and she could hear plainly the voices of her father and Conrad as she lay with eyes closed and thoughts wandering, scarcely heeding what they said.
The two men were absorbed in a discussion of local politics. "Dan Tillinghurst is all right," said Conrad. "He"s made a good sheriff and he ought to have the office again. I shall do all I can to have him renominated and to help elect him afterwards. But Dellmey Baxter for Congress again! That"s where I buck, and buck hard, and keep a-buckin"."
"But he"s the head of the party in the Territory," objected Bancroft.
"He can bring out more votes than any other man we can put up. If we turn him down in the convention they"ll beat us at the polls."
"We"ll deserve to be beaten if we nominate him, anyway. I can"t stomach him any longer, Aleck, and I don"t see how you can."
"Oh, you"re prejudiced, Curt," said the other, good-naturedly. "You know you can never see any good in a man you dislike, and you took a dislike to Baxter the first day you set foot in the Territory."
"Maybe I am prejudiced; but in Dell Baxter"s case there"s ample reason to be, and I"d be ashamed of myself if I wasn"t. I know he"s a friend of yours, but that doesn"t prevent him from being the worst scoundrel in the whole Territory. I tell you, Aleck, there"s nothing that man wouldn"t do, unless it was something square and honest."
"Come, come, Curt, that"s rank exaggeration. I"ve been a.s.sociated with Dell Baxter financially ever since I located in this part of the country, and I"ve always found him strictly on the square."
"Then it was because it was to his interest to be square. He"ll do you up yet, if he gets the chance and thinks it worth while. He"s had his finger in every crooked scheme that"s been put through from Raton to El Paso, and his hands are as b.l.o.o.d.y as his pockets are dirty."
"Don"t you think it"s going a little too far," asked Bancroft, smiling calmly, "to accuse a man in that wholesale way when you haven"t any basis for your a.s.sertions but the merest idle gossip?"
Conrad gave an indignant snort. "Oh, I"m not saying he"s done the jobs himself. He thinks too much of that fat paunch of his to put that into any danger. But why does he keep those Mexican thugs hanging around him if it isn"t to use them for things he wouldn"t dare do himself? Why, I heard from Santa Fe only last week that he"s taken into his pay that Mexican cutthroat, Liberato Herrara, whom he saved last Winter from conviction for the Paxton murder."
"No, Aleck," he went on. "I buck when it comes to Dell Baxter for Congress again. If he gets the nomination and the other side puts up Johnny Martinez, as it"s likely they will, I"m going to support Johnny."
"But he"s a Mexican."
"I don"t care what he is as long as he"s a decent man. He won"t be a disgrace to the Territory in Washington, and that"s more than you can say of Baxter."
Bancroft"s impa.s.sive face lighted with a bantering smile. "There"s no limit to your bad opinion of a man, is there, Curt, if he once gets into your disfavor? By the way, is it true that the Castletons are behind Johnny Martinez?"
"I don"t know, and I don"t care. I"m their hired man here on the ranch, but my vote"s my own, and so"s what little influence I may have, and I"ll do with both of "em just what I d.a.m.n please. And if it came to a show-down, I"d be perfectly willing to lose my job if that would keep Dell Baxter from going back to Congress."
Bancroft laughed again. Conrad"s eye, as he turned to his desk for more cigars, fell upon the little pile of letters and papers he had just received. On the top lay the Tremper & Townsend envelope. "By the way, Aleck, you"re from Boston, ain"t you?" he exclaimed impulsively.
In the next room, Lucy, listening sleepily to the two voices, had been noting the difference in their quality. Conrad"s was high and clear, his speech rapid and incisive. Her father"s, lower and more deliberate, had in it a subtle, persuasive quality. "Dear daddy!" she whispered softly, her heart warm with affection. Then the new, sharp edge in Conrad"s tone gripped her attention and sent her eyes flying open. Wide awake on the instant, she listened for the sound of her father"s voice again. Had she been on the scene, she might have noted that he turned an instant"s keen gaze upon his companion before he answered, carelessly enough:
"Yes; originally. But I"ve come from so many other places since then that I almost forget it, unless somebody reminds me. I haven"t been back there, or known much about the old place, for years."
Conrad"s boyish smile illuminated his face and twinkled in his blue eyes. "Yes," he said; ""most everybody out here is so everlastingly on the lope that it"s no wonder some of "em lose their names every once in a while and have to pick up "most anything that comes handy. I"m no exception, though I"ve not yet forgotten "what was my name back in the States." But did you know anything about the Delafield affair in Boston, fifteen or sixteen years ago?"
"I heard of it at the time, but it was after I left the city. It was so long ago that I forget the details. Skipped, didn"t he, with a lot of funds? Or was he the one who defaulted and jumped into the Charles River?"
Conrad had an eagerness of speech and manner that in a man of less vigor would have been accounted nervousness. Voice, face, and gesture were alive with it as he responded: "Jump nothing! except to get out of reach of his creditors! He"s alive yet and making money somewhere, and I mean to find him! I"ve got a particular interest in that man, and when I come up with him he"ll have a particular interest in me. For I"m going to give him such a song-and-dance as he"s never had before."
Bancroft listened calmly, his face and manner as impa.s.sive as usual, but his eyes narrowed as they met his companion"s excited gaze. Smiling slightly, he replied, "What has he done to stir you up so? You must have been too young to be interested in financial investments then."
"So I was, directly. Nevertheless, it happens, Aleck, that the Delafield affair has influenced me and my life more than any other one thing.
My father lost everything he had in Sumner L. Delafield"s smash-up.
I was fifteen years old then, and getting ready to go to Michigan University--afterward I was to study law and be a prominent citizen. My father met Delafield first during a business trip to Boston--we lived in central Illinois, and father was well-to-do--and, just like everybody else, he gave the man his entire confidence. You remember, of course, how Delafield came to the top as a regular young Napoleon of business, and soon made a reputation as one of the big financiers. When he turned up missing one fine morning, and it was found that the bottom had dropped out of everything, most people believed he had killed himself.
But he hadn"t, I happen to know, and he"s still alive. Well, my father had been so influenced by Delafield--the fellow must have been a persuasive cuss--that he had put everything he could raise into the man"s schemes, and had even mortgaged our home. He had a weak heart, and when he read the news of Delafield"s default and disappearance he fell out of his chair dead. The sudden shock of it all prostrated my mother, and she died in giving premature birth to a child. So there was I, a fifteen-year-old boy, suddenly dropped to the bottom of poverty, with two younger sisters and a little brother to take care of.
"I tell you, I swore vengeance on that man. I promised myself I"d hunt him down if it took a lifetime. I"m on his trail now, and I"m not going to leave it until I run him into his hole. Then I"m going to stand him up and call him to his face all he deserves; and give him a gun, so he can have a fair chance for his worthless life, and take one myself; and then I"ll put a bullet through his scoundrel brain if I have to hang for it afterward!"