_ CHAPTER XXI. BOCA DULZURA
Just before dawn Pete became conscious that some one was sitting near him and occasionally bathing his head with cool water. He tried to sit up. A slender hand pushed him gently back. "It is good that you rest," said a voice. The room was dark--he could not see--but he knew that Boca was there and he felt uncomfortable. He was not accustomed to being waited upon, especially by a woman.
"Where's Malvey?" he asked.
"I do not know. He is gone."
Again Pete tried to sit up, but sank back as a shower of fiery dots whirled before his eyes. He realized that he had been hit pretty hard--that he could do nothing but keep still just then. The hot pain subsided as the wet cloth again touched his forehead and he drifted to sleep. When he awakened at midday he was alone.
He rose, and steadying himself along the wall, finally reached the doorway. Old Flores was working in the distant garden-patch. Beyond him, Boca and her mother were pulling beans. Pete stepped out dizzily and glanced toward the corral. His horse was not there.
Pete was a bit hasty in concluding that the squalid drama of the previous evening (the cringing girl, the drunkenly indifferent father, and the malevolent Malvey) had been staged entirely for his benefit. The fact was that Malvey had been only too sincere in his boorishness toward Boca; Flores equally sincere in his indifference, and Boca herself actually frightened by the turn Malvey's drink had taken. That old Flores had knocked Pete out with a bottle was the one and extravagant act that even Malvey himself could hardly have anticipated had the whole miserable affair been prearranged. In his drunken stupidity Flores blindly imagined that the young stranger was the cause of the quarrel.
Pete, however, saw in it a frame-up to knock him out and make away with his horse. And back of it all he saw The Spider's craftily flung web that held him prisoner, afoot and among strangers. "They worked it slick," he muttered.
Boca happened to glance up. Pete was standing bareheaded in the noon sunlight. With an exclamation Boca rose and hastened to him. Young Pete's eyes were sullen as she begged him to seek the shade of the portal.
"Where's my horse?" he challenged, ignoring her solicitude.
She shook her head. "I do not know. Malvey is gone."
"That's a cinch! You sure worked it slick."
"I do not understand."
"Well, I do."
Pete studied her face. Despite his natural distrust, he realized that the girl was innocent of plotting against him. He decided to confide in her--even play the lover if necessary--and he hated pretense--to win her sympathy and help; for he knew that if he ever needed a friend it was now.
Boca steadied him to the bench just outside the doorway, and fetched water. He drank and felt better. Then she carefully unrolled the bandage, washed the clotted blood from the wound and bound it up again.
"It is bad that you come here," she told him.
"Well, I got one friend, anyhow," said Pete.
"Si, I am your friend," she murmured.
"I ain't what you'd call hungry--but I reckon some coffee would kind of stop my head from swimmin' round," suggested Pete.
"Si, I will get it."
Pete wondered how far he could trust the girl--whether she would really help him or whether her kindness were such as any human being would extend to one injured or in distress--"same as a dog with his leg broke," thought Pete. But after he drank the coffee he ceased worrying about the future and decided to take things an they came and make the best of them.
"Perhaps it is that you have killed a man?" ventured Boca, curious to know why he was there.
Pete hesitated, as he eyed her sharply. There seemed to be no motive behind her question other than simple curiosity. "I've put better men than Malvey out of business," he asserted.
Boca eyed him with a new interest. She had thought that perhaps this young senor had but stolen a horse or two--a most natural inference in view of his recent associate. So this young vaquero was a boy in years only?--and outlawed! No doubt there was a reward for his capture. Boca had lightly fancied Young Pete the evening before; but now she felt a much deeper interest. She quickly cautioned him to say nothing to her father about the real reason for his being there. Rather Pete was to say, if questioned, that he had stolen a horse about which Malvey and he had quarreled.
Pete scowled. "I'm no low-down hoss-thief!" he flared.
Boca smiled. "Now it is that I know you have killed a man!"
Pete was surprised that the idea seemed to please her.
"But my father"--she continued--"he would sell you--for money. So it is that you will say that you have stolen a horse."
"I reckon he would,"--and Pete gently felt the back of his head. "So I'll tell him like you say. I'm dependin' a whole lot on you--to git me out of this," he added.
"You will rest," she told him, and turned to go back to her work. "I am your friend," she whispered, pausing with her finger to her lips.
Pete understood and nodded.
So far he had done pretty well, he argued. Later, when he felt able to ride, he would ask Boca to find a horse for him. He knew that there must be saddle-stock somewhere in the canon. Men like Flores always kept several good horses handy for an emergency. Meanwhile Pete determined to rest and gain strength, even while he pretended that he was unfit to ride. When he
did leave, he would leave in a hurry and before old Flores could play him another trick.
For a while Pete watched the three figures puttering about the bean-patch. Presently he got up and stepped into the house, drank some coffee, and came out again. He sat down on the bench and took mental stock of his own belongings. He had a few dollars in silver, his erratic watch, and his gun. Suddenly he bethought him of his saddle. The sun made his head swim as he stepped out toward the corral. Yes, his saddle and bridle hung on the corral bars, just where he had left them. He was about to return to the shade of the portal when he noticed the tracks of unshod horses in the dust. So old Flores had other horses in the canon? Well, in a day or so Pete would show the Mexican a trick with a large round hole in it--the hole representing the space recently occupied by one of his ponies. Incidentally Pete realized that he was getting deeper and deeper into the meshes of The Spider's web--and the thought spurred him to a keener vigilance. So far he had killed three men actually in self-defense. But when he met up with Malvey--and Pete promised himself that pleasure--he would not wait for Malvey to open the argument. "Got to kill to live," he told himself. "Well, I got the name--and I might as well have the game. It's nobody's funeral but mine, anyhow." He felt, mistakenly, that his friends had all gone back on him--a condition of mind occasioned by his misfortunes rather than by any logical thought, for at that very moment Jim Bailey was searching high and low for Pete in order to tell him that Gary was not dead--but had been taken to the railroad hospital at Enright, operated on, and now lay, minus the fragments of three or four ribs, as malevolent as ever, and slowly recovering from a wound that had at first been considered fatal.
Young Pete was not to know of this until long after the knowledge could have had any value in shaping his career. Bailey, with two of his men, traced Pete as far as Showdown, where the trail went blind, ending with The Spider's apparently sincere assertion that he knew nothing whatever of Peters whereabouts.
Paradoxically, those very qualities which won him friends now kept Pete from those friends. The last place toward which he would have chosen to ride would have been the Concho--and the last man he would have asked for help would have been Jim Bailey. Pete felt that he was doing pretty well at creating trouble for himself without entangling his best friends.
"Got to kill to live," he reiterated.
"Como 'sta, senor?" Old Flores had just stepped from behind the crumbling 'dobe wall of the stable.
"Well, it ain't your fault I ain't a-furnishin' a argument for the coyotes."
"The senor would insult Boca. He was drunk," said Flores.
"Hold on there! Don't you go cantelopin' off with any little ole idea like that sewed up in your hat.
Which senor was drunk?"
Flores shrugged his shoulders. "Who may say?" he half-whined.
"Well, I can, for one," asserted Pete. "
You was drunk and
Malvey was drunk, and the two of you dam' near fixed me. But that don't count--now. Where's my hoss?"
"Quien sabe?"
"You make me sick," said Pete in English. Flores caught the word "sick" and thought Pete was complaining of his physical condition.
"The senor is welcome to rest and get well. What is done is done, and cannot be mended. But when the senor would ride, I can find a horse--a good horse and not a very great price."
"I'm willin' to pay," said Pete, who thought that he had already pretty well paid for anything he might need.
"And a good saddle," continued Flores.
"I'm usin' my own rig," stated Pete.
"It is the saddle, there, that I would sell to the senor." The old Mexican gestured toward Pete's own saddle.
Pete was about to retort hastily when he reconsidered. The only way to meet trickery was with trickery. "All right," he said indifferently. "You'll sure get all that is comin' to you." _