I’ll bet he’s eating his heart out because Grace is going away; and he can’t go, just because he’s thinking more of someone else’s happiness than his own.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“He wants to go to the city. He wants to get into some business there; but he won’t go because he knows your father wants him here.”
“Do you really think that?”
“I know it,” he said.
They walked on in silence along the winding pathways among the flower-bordered pools to stop at last beside the lower one. This had originally been a shallow wading pool for the children when they were small, but it was now given over to water hyacinth and brilliant fantails.
“There!” said the girl, presently. “I have seen fish in each pool.”
“And you can go to bed with a clear conscience tonight,” he laughed.
To the west of the lower pool, there were no trees to obstruct their view of the hills that rolled down from the mountains to form the western wall of the cañon in which the ranch buildings and cultivated fields lay. As the two stood there, hand in hand, the boy’s eyes wandered lovingly over the soft, undulating lines of these lower hills with their parklike beauty of greensward dotted with wild walnut trees. As he looked, he saw, for a brief moment, the figure of a man on horseback passing over the hollow of a saddle before disappearing upon the southern side.
Small though the distant figure was and visible but for a moment, the boy recognized the military carriage of the rider. He glanced quickly at the girl to note if she had seen, but it was evident that she had not.
“Well, Ev,” he said, “I guess I’ll be toddling.”
“So early?” she demanded.
“You see, I’ve got to get busy if I’m going to get the price of that teeny, weeny bungalow,” he explained. “Now that we’re engaged, you might kiss me goodbye — eh?”
“We’re not engaged, and I’ll not kiss you goodbye or good anything else. I don’t believe in people kissing until they’re married.”
“Then why are you always raving about the wonderful kisses Antonio Moreno, or Milton Sills, or some other poor prune gives the heroine at the end of the last reel?” he demanded.
“Oh, that’s different,” she explained. “Anyway, they’re just going to get married. When we are just going to get married, I’ll let you kiss me — once a week, maybe!”
“Thanks!” he cried.
A moment later, he swung into the saddle, and, with a wave of his hand, cantered off up the cañon.
“Now what,” said the girl to herself, “is he going up there for? He can’t make any money back there in the hills. He ought to be headed straight for home and his typewriter!”
CHAPTER VII
ACROSS THE RUSTIC BRIDGE, and once behind the sycamores at the lower end of the cow pasture, Guy Evans let his horse out into a rapid gallop. A few minutes later, he overtook a horseman who was moving at a slow walk farther up the cañon. At the sound of the pounding hoofbeats behind him, the latter turned in his saddle, reined about, and stopped. The boy rode up and drew in his blowing mount beside the other.
“Hello, Allen!” he said.
The man nodded.
“What’s eatin’ you?” he inquired.
“I’ve been thinking over that proposition of yours,” explained Evans.
“Yes?”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking maybe I might swing it; but are you sure it’s safe? How do I know you won’t double-cross me?”
“You don’t know,” replied the other. “All you know is that I got enough on you to send you to San Quentin. You wouldn’t get nothing’ worse if you handled the rest of it, an’ you stand to clean up between twelve and fifteen thousand bucks on the deal. You needn’t worry about me double-crossin’ you. What good would it do me? I ain’t got nothin’ against you, kid. If you don’t double-cross me, I won’t double-cross you; but look out for that cracker-fed dude your sister’s goin’ to hitch to. If he ever butts in on this, I’ll croak him an’ send you to San Quentin, if I swing for it. Do you get me?”
Evans nodded.
“I’ll go in on it,” he said, “because I need the money; but don’t you bother Custer Pennington — get that straight. I’d go to San Quentin and I’d swing myself before I’d stand for that. Another thing, and then we’ll drop that line of chatter — you couldn’t send me to San Quentin or anywhere else. I bought a few bottles of hooch from you, and there isn’t any judge or jury going to send me to San Quentin for that.”
“You don’t know what you done,” said Allen, with a grin. “There’s a thousand cases of bonded whisky hid back there in the hills, an’ you engineered the whole deal at this end. Maybe you didn’t have nothin’ to do with stealin’ it from a government bonded warehouse in New York; but you must ‘a’ knowed all about it, an’ it was you that hired me and the other three to smuggle it off the ship and into the hills.”
Evans was staring at the man in wide-eyed incredulity.
“How do you get that way?” he asked derisively.
“They’s four of us to swear to it,” said Allen; “an’ how many you got to swear you didn’t do it?”
“Why, it’s a rotten frame-up!” exclaimed Evans.
“Sure, it’s a frame-up,” agreed Allen; “but we won’t use it if you behave yourself properly.”
Evans looked at the man for a long minute — dislike and contempt unconcealed upon his face.
“I guess,” he said presently, “that I don’t need any twelve thousand dollars that bad, Allen. We’ll call this thing off as far as I am concerned. I’m through, right now. Goodbye!”
He wheeled his horse to ride away.
“Hold on there, young feller!” said Allen. “Not so quick! You may think you’re through, but you’re not. We need you, and, anyway, you know too damned much for your health. You’re goin’ through with this. We got some other junk up there that there’s more profit in than what there is in booze, and it’s easier to handle. We know where to get rid of it; but the booze we can’t handle as easy as you can, and so you’re goin’ to handle it.”
“Who says I am?”
“I do,” returned Allen with an ugly snarl. “You’ll handle it, or I’ll do just what I said I’d do, and I’ll do it pronto. How’d you like your mother and that Pennington girl to hear all I’d have to say?”
The boy sat with scowling, thoughtful brows for a long minute. From beneath a live oak on the summit of a low bluff, a man discovered them. He had been sitting there talking with a girl. Suddenly he looked up.
“Why, there’s Guy,” he said. “Who’s that with — why, it’s that fellow Allen! What’s he doing up here?” He rose to his feet. “You stay here a minute, Grace. I’m going down to see what that fellow wants. I can’t understand Guy.”
He untied the Apache and mounted, while below, just beyond the pasture fence, the boy turned sullenly toward Allen.
“I’ll go through with it this once,” he said. “You’ll bring it down on burros at night?”
The other nodded affirmatively.
“Where do you want it?” he asked.
“Bring it to the west side of the old hay barn — the one that stands on our west line. When will you come?”
“Today’s