Don Jose rose, and, taking a buckskin purse from his saddle-bag, counted out four slugs[1] and handed them to the stupefied Jenkinson.
The next moment, however, his host recovered himself, and casting the slugs back on the little table, brought his fist down with an emphasis that made them dance.
"But, look yer--suppose I want this thing stopped--you hear me--STOPPED--now."
"That would be interfering with the liberty of the subject, my good Jenkinson--which G.o.d forbid!" said Don Jose calmly. "Moreover, it is the custom of the Americanos--a habit of my friend Roberto--a necessity of his existence--and so recognized of his friends. Patience and courage, Senor Jenkinson. Stay--ah, I comprehend! you have--of a possibility--a wife?"
"No, I"m a widower," said Jenkinson sharply.
"Then I congratulate you. My friend Roberto would have kissed her. It is also of his habit. Truly you have escaped much. I embrace you, Jenkinson."
He threw his arms gravely around Jenkinson, in whose astounded face at last an expression of dry humor faintly dawned. After a moment"s survey of Don Jose"s impenetrable gravity, he coolly gathered up the gold coins, and saying that he would a.s.sess the damages and return the difference, he left the room as abruptly as he had entered it.
But Don Jose was not destined to remain long in peaceful study of the American Const.i.tution. He had barely taken up the book again and renewed his serious contemplation of its excellences when there was another knock at his door. This time, in obedience to his invitation to enter, the new visitor approached with more deliberation and a certain formality.
He was a young man of apparently the same age as Don Jose, handsomely dressed, and of a quiet self-possession and gravity almost equal to his host"s.
"I believe I am addressing Don Jose Sepulvida," he said with a familiar yet courteous inclination of his handsome head. Don Jose, who had risen in marked contrast to his reception of his former guest, answered,--
"You are truly making to him a great honor."
"Well, you"re going it blind as far as I"M concerned certainly," said the young man, with a slight smile, "for you don"t know ME."
"Pardon, my friend," said Don Jose gently, "in this book, this great Testament of your glorious nation, I have read that you are all equal, one not above, one not below the other. I salute in you the Nation!
It is enough!"
"Thank you," returned the stranger, with a face that, saving the faintest twinkle in the corner of his dark eyes, was as immovable as his host"s, "but for the purposes of my business I had better say I am Jack Hamlin, a gambler, and am just now dealing faro in the Florida saloon round the corner."
He paused carelessly, as if to allow Don Jose the protest he did not make, and then continued,--
"The matter is this. One of your vaqueros, who is, however, an American, was round there an hour ago bucking against faro, and put up and LOST, not only the mare he was riding, but a horse which I have just learned is yours. Now we reckon, over there, that we can make enough money playing a square game, without being obliged to take property from a howling drunkard, to say nothing of it not belonging to him, and I"ve come here, Don Jose, to say that if you"ll send over and bring away your man and your horse, you can have "em both."
"If I have comprehended, honest Hamlin," said Don Jose slowly, "this Roberto, who was my vaquero and is my brother, has approached this faro game by himself unsolicited?"
"He certainly didn"t seem shy of it," said Mr. Hamlin with equal gravity. "To the best of my knowledge he looked as if he"d been there before."
"And if he had won, excellent Hamlin, you would have given him the equal of his mare and horse?"
"A hundred dollars for each, yes, certainly."
"Then I see not why I should send for the property which is truly no longer mine, nor for my brother who will amuse himself after the fashion of his country in the company of so honorable a caballero as yourself? Stay! oh imbecile that I am. I have not remembered. You would possibly say that he has no longer of horses! Play him; play him, admirable yet prudent Hamlin. I have two thousand horses! Of a surety he cannot exhaust them in four hours. Therefore play him, trust to me for recompensa, and have no fear."
A quick flush covered the stranger"s cheek, and his eyebrows momentarily contracted. He walked carelessly to the window, however, glanced out, and then turned to Don Jose.
"May I ask, then," he said with almost sepulchral gravity, "is anybody taking care of you?"
"Truly," returned Don Jose cautiously, "there is my brother and friend Roberto."
"Ah! Roberto, certainly," said Mr. Hamlin profoundly.
"Why do you ask, considerate friend?"
"Oh! I only thought, with your kind of opinions, you must often feel lonely in California. Good-bye." He shook Don Jose"s hand heartily, took up his hat, inclined his head with graceful seriousness, and pa.s.sed out of the room. In the hall he met the landlord.
"Well," said Jenkinson, with a smile half anxious, half insinuating, "you saw him? What do you think of him?"
Mr. Hamlin paused and regarded Jenkinson with a calmly contemplative air, as if he were trying to remember first who he was, and secondly why he should speak to him at all. "Think of whom?" he repeated carelessly.
"Why him--you know--Don Jose."
"I did not see anything the matter with him," returned Hamlin with frigid simplicity.
"What? nothing queer?"
"Well, no--except that he"s a guest in YOUR house," said Hamlin with great cheerfulness. "But then, as you keep a hotel, you can"t help occasionally admitting a--gentleman."
Mr. Jenkinson smiled the uneasy smile of a man who knew that his interlocutor"s playfulness occasionally extended to the use of a derringer, in which he was singularly prompt and proficient, and Mr.
Hamlin, equally conscious of that knowledge on the part of his companion, descended the staircase composedly.
But the day had darkened gradually into night, and Don Jose was at last compelled to put aside his volume. The sound of a large bell rung violently along the hall and pa.s.sages admonished him that the American dinner was ready, and although the viands and the mode of cooking were not entirely to his fancy, he had, in his grave enthusiasm for the national habits, attended the table d"hote regularly with Roberto. On reaching the lower hall he was informed that his henchman had early succ.u.mbed to the potency of his libations, and had already been carried by two men to bed. Receiving this information with his usual stoical composure, he entered the dining-room, but was surprised to find that a separate table had been prepared for him by the landlord, and that a rude attempt had been made to serve him with his own native dishes.
"Senores y Senoritas," said Don Jose, turning from it and with grave politeness addressing the a.s.sembled company, "if I seem to-day to partake alone and in a reserved fashion of certain viands that have been prepared for me, it is truly from no lack of courtesy to your distinguished company, but rather, I protest, to avoid the appearance of greater discourtesy to our excellent Jenkinson, who has taken some pains and trouble to comport his establishment to what he conceives to be my desires. Wherefore, my friends, in G.o.d"s name fall to, the same as if I were not present, and grace be with you."
A few stared at the tall, gentle, melancholy figure with some astonishment; a few whispered to their neighbors; but when, at the conclusion of his repast, Don Jose arose and again saluted the company, one or two stood up and smilingly returned the courtesy, and Polly Jenkinson, the landlord"s youngest daughter, to the great delight of her companions, blew him a kiss.
After visiting the vaquero in his room, and with his own hand applying some native ointment to the various contusions and scratches which recorded the late engagements of the unconscious Roberto, Don Jose placed a gold coin in the hands of the Irish chamber-maid, and bidding her look after the sleeper, he threw his serape over his shoulders and pa.s.sed into the road. The loungers on the veranda gazed at him curiously, yet half acknowledged his usual serious salutation, and made way for him with a certain respect. Avoiding the few narrow streets of the little town, he pursued his way meditatively along the highroad, returning to the hotel after an hour"s ramble, as the evening stage-coach had deposited its pa.s.sengers and departed.
"There"s a lady waiting to see you upstairs," said the landlord with a peculiar smile. "She rather allowed it wasn"t the proper thing to see you alone, or she wasn"t quite ekal to it, I reckon, for she got my Polly to stand by her."
"Your Polly, good Jenkinson?" said Don Jose interrogatively.
"My darter, Don Jose."
"Ah, truly! I am twice blessed," said Don Jose, gravely ascending the staircase.
On entering the room he perceived a tall, large-featured woman with an extraordinary quant.i.ty of blond hair parted on one side of her broad forehead, sitting upon the sofa. Beside her sat Polly Jenkinson, her fresh, honest, and rather pretty face beaming with delighted expectation and mischief. Don Jose saluted them with a formal courtesy, which, however, had no trace of the fact that he really did not remember anything of them.
"I called," said the large-featured woman with a voice equally p.r.o.nounced, "in reference to a request from you, which, though perhaps unconventional in the extreme, I have been able to meet by the intervention of this young lady"s company. My name on this card may not be familiar to you--but I am "Dorothy Dewdrop.""
A slight movement of abstraction and surprise pa.s.sed over Don Jose"s face, but as quickly vanished as he advanced towards her and gracefully raised the tips of her fingers to his lips. "Have I then, at last, the privilege of beholding that most distressed and deeply injured of women! Or is it but a dream!"
It certainly was not, as far as concerned the substantial person of the woman before him, who, however, seemed somewhat uneasy under his words as well as the demure scrutiny of Miss Jenkinson. "I thought you might have forgotten," she said with slight acerbity, "that you desired an interview with the auth.o.r.ess of"--
"Pardon," interrupted Don Jose, standing before her in an att.i.tude of the deepest sympathizing dejection, "I had not forgotten. It is now three weeks since I have read in the journal "Golden Gate" the eloquent and touching poem of your sufferings, and your aspirations, and your miscomprehensions by those you love. I remember as yesterday that you have said, that cruel fate have linked you to a soulless state--that--but I speak not well your own beautiful language--you are in tears at evenfall "because that you are not understood of others, and that your soul recoiled from iron bonds, until, as in a dream, you sought succor and release in some true Knight of equal plight.""
"I am told," said the large-featured woman with some satisfaction, "that the poem to which you allude has been generally admired."
"Admired! Senora," said Don Jose, with still darker sympathy, "it is not the word; it is FELT. I have felt it. When I read those words of distress, I am touched of compa.s.sion! I have said, This woman, so disconsolate, so oppressed, must be relieved, protected! I have wrote to you, at the "Golden Gate," to see me here."
"And I have come, as you perceive," said the poetess, rising with a slight smile of constraint; "and emboldened by your appreciation, I have brought a few trifles thrown off"--