_ CHAPTER XV. ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD
The night of his disappearance Dick had sauntered forth from the hotel with the jaunty assurance to Davis that he was going to call on a young lady. He offered no further details, and his friend asked for none, though he wondered a little what young woman in Santa Fe had induced Gordon to change his habits. The old miner had known him from boyhood. His partner had never found much time for the society of eligible maidens. He had been too busy living to find tea-cup discussions about life interesting. The call of adventure had absorbed his youth, and he had given his few mature years ardently to the great American game of money-making. It was not that he loved gold. What Richard Gordon cared for was the battle, the struggle against both honorable and unscrupulous foe-men for success. He fought in the business world only because it was the test of strength. Money meant power. So he had made money.
It was not until Dick failed to appear for breakfast next morning that Davis began to get uneasy. He sent a bellboy to awaken Gordon, and presently the lad came back with word that he could get no answer to his knocks. Instantly Steve pushed back his chair and walked out of the room to the desk in the lobby.
"Got a skeleton key to Mr. Gordon's room--317, I think it is?" he demanded.
"Yes. We keep duplicate keys. You see, Mr. Davis, guests go away and carry the keys----"
"Then I want it. Afraid something's wrong with my friend. He's always up early and on hand for breakfast. He hasn't showed up this mo'ning. The bell hop can't waken him. I tell you something's wrong."
"Oh, I reckon he'll turn up all right." The clerk turned to the key rack. "Here's the key to Room 317. Mr. Gordon must have left it here. Likely he's gone for a walk."
Davis shook his head obstinately. "Don't believe it. I'm going up to see, anyhow."
Within five minutes he discovered that the bed in Room 317 had not been slept in the previous night. He was thoroughly alarmed. Gordon had no friends in the town likely to put him up for the night. Nor was he the sort of rounder to dissipate his energies in all-night debauchery. Dick had come to Santa Fe for a definite purpose. The old miner knew from long experience that he would not be diverted from it for the sake of the futile foolish diversions known by some as pleasure. Therefore the mind of Davis jumped at once to the conclusion of foul play.
And if foul play, then the Valdes claimants to the Rio Chamo Valley were the guilty parties. He blamed himself bitterly for having let Dick venture out alone, for having taken no precautions whatever to guard him against the Mexicans who had already once attempted his life.
"I'm a fine friend. Didn't even find out who he was going out to call on. Fact is, I didn't figure he was in any danger so long as he was in town here," he explained to the sheriff.
He learned nothing either at the police headquarters or at the newspaper offices that threw light on the disappearance of Gordon. No murder had been reported during the night. No unusual disturbance of any kind had occurred, so far as could be learned.
Before noon he had the town plastered with posters in English and in Spanish offering a reward of five hundred dollars for news leading to the recovery of Richard Gordon or for evidence leading to the conviction of his murderers in case he was dead. This brought two callers to the hotel almost at once. One was the attorney Fitt, the other a young woman who gave her name as Kate Underwood. Fitt used an hour of the old miner's time to no purpose, but the young woman brought with her one piece of news.
"I want to know when Mr. Gordon was last seen," she explained, "because he was calling on my mother and me last night and left about ten o'clock."
The little man got to his feet in great excitement. "My dear young woman, you're the very person I've been wanting to see. He told me he was going calling, but I'm such a darned chump I didn't think to ask where. Is Dick a friend of your family?"
"No, hardly that. I met him when he came to our office in the State House to look up the land grant papers. We became friendly and I asked him to call because we own the old Valdes house, and I thought he would like to see it." She added, rather dryly: "You haven't answered my question."
"I'll say that so far as I know you are the last person who ever saw Dick alive except his murderers," Davis replied, a gleam of tears in his eyes.
"Oh, it can't be as bad as that," she cried. "They wouldn't go that far."
"Wouldn't they? He was shot at from ambush while we were out riding one day in the Chama Valley."
"By whom?"
"By a young Mexican--one of Miss Valdes servants."
"You don't mean that Valencia----?"
She stopped, unwilling to put her horrified thought into words. He answered her meaning.
"No, I reckon not. She wanted Dick to tell her who it was, so she could punish the man. But that doesn't alter the facts any. He was shot at. That time the murderer missed, but maybe this time----"
Miss Underwood broke in sharply. "Do you know that he has been followed ever since he came to town, that men have dogged his steps everywhere?"
Davis leaned across the table where he was sitting. "How do you know?" he questioned eagerly.
"I saw them and warned him. He laughed about it and said he knew already. He didn't seem at all worried."
"Worried! He's just kid enough to be tickled to death about it," snapped the miner, masking his anxiety with irritation. "He hadn't sense enough to tell me for fear it would disturb me--and I hadn't the sense to find out in several days what you did in five minutes."
Davis and Miss Underwood went together over every foot of the road between her home and the hotel. One ray of hope they got from their examination of the ground he must have traversed to reach the El Tovar, as the hotel was named. At one spot--where a double row of cottonwoods lined the road--a fence had been knocked down and many feet had trampled the sandy pasture within. Steve picked up a torn piece of cloth about six inches by twelve in dimension. It had evidently been a part of a coat sleeve. He recognized the pattern as that of the suit his friend had been wearing.
"A part of his coat all right," he said. "They must have bushwhacked him here. By the foot-prints there were a good many of them."
"I'm glad there were."
"Why?"
"For two reasons," the girl explained. "In the first place, if they had wanted to kill him, one or two would have been enough. They wouldn't take any more than was necessary into their confidence."
"That's right. Your head's level there."
"And, in the second place, two men can keep a secret, but six or eight can't. Some one of them is bound to talk to his sweetheart or wife or friend."
"True enough. That five hundred dollars might get one of 'em, too."
"Somehow I believe he is alive. His enemies have taken him away somewhere--probably up into the hills."
"But why?"
"You ought to know that better than I do. What could they gain by it?"
He scratched his gray head. "Search me. They couldn't aim to hold him till after the trial. That would be a kid's play."
"Couldn't they get him to sign some paper--something saying that he would give up his claim--or that he would sell out cheap?"
"No, they couldn't," the old man answered grimly. "But they might think they could. I expect that's the play. Dick never in the world would come through, though. He's game, that boy is. The point is, what will they do when they find he stands the acid?"
Miss Underwood looked quickly at him, then looked quickly away. She knew what they would do. So did Davis.
"No, that's not the point. We must find him--just as soon as we can. Stir this whole town up and rake it with a fine-tooth comb. See if any of Miss Valdes' peons are in town. If they are have them shadowed."
They separated presently, she to go to the State House, he to return to the El Tovar. There he found the telegram from Miss Valdes awaiting him. Immediately he dictated an answer.
Before nightfall a second supply of posters decorated walls and billboards. The reward was raised to one thousand dollars for information that would lead to the finding of Richard Gordon alive and the same sum for evidence sufficient to convict his murderers in case he was dead. It seemed impossible that in so small a place, with everybody discussing the mysterious disappearance, the affair could long remain a secret. Davis did not doubt that Miss Underwood was correct in her assumption that the assailants of Gordon had carried him with them into some hidden pocket of the hills, in which case it might take longer to run them to earth. The great danger that he feared was panic on the part of the abductors. To cover their tracks they might kill him and leave this part of the country. The closer pursuit pressed on them the more likely this was to happen. It behooved him to move with the greatest care. _