第25章

The following day, when Mr.Ezekiel Corwin had delivered his letters of introduction, and thoroughly canvassed the scant mercantile community of San Buenaventura with considerable success, he deposited his carpet-bag at the stage office in the posada, and found to his chagrin that he had still two hours to wait before the coach arrived.After a vain attempt to impart cheerful but disparaging criticism of the pueblo and its people to Senor Mateo and his wife--whose external courtesy had been visibly increased by a line from Demorest, but whose confidence towards the stranger had not been extended in the same proportion--he gave it up, and threw himself lazily on a wooden bench in the veranda, already hacked with the initials of his countrymen, and drawing a jack-knife from his pocket, he began to add to that emblazonry the trade-mark of the Panacea--as a casual advertisement.During its progress, however, he was struck by the fact that while no one seemed to enter the posada through the stage office, the number of voices in the adjoining room seemed to increase, and the ministrations of Mateo and his wife became more feverishly occupied with their invisible guests.It seemed to Ezekiel that consequently there must be a second entrance which he had not seen, and this added to the circumstance that one or two lounging figures who had been approaching unaccountably disappeared before reaching the veranda, induced him to rise and examine the locality.A few paces beyond was an alley, but it appeared to be already blocked by several cigarette-smoking, short-jacketed men who were leaning against its walls, and showed no inclination to make way for him.Checked, but not daunted, Ezekiel coolly returned to the stage office, and taking the first opportunity when Mateo passed through the rear door, followed him.As he expected, the innkeeper turned to the left and entered a large room filled with tobacco smoke and the local habitues of the posada.But Ezekiel, shrewdly surmising that the private entrance must be in the opposite direction, turned to the right along the passage until he came unexpectedly upon the corridor of the usual courtyard, or patio, of every Mexican hostelry, closed at one end by a low adobe wall, in which there was a door.The free passage around the corridor was interrupted by wide partitions, fitted up with tables and benches, like stalls, opening upon the courtyard where a few stunted fig and orange trees still grew.As the courtyard seemed to be the only communication between the passage he had left and the door in the wall, he was about to cross it, when the voices of two men in the compartment struck his ears.Although one was evidently an American's, Ezekiel was instinctively convinced that they were speaking in English only for greater security against being understood by the frequenters of the posada.It is unnecessary to say that this was an innocent challenge to the curiosity of Ezekiel that he instantly accepted.

He drew back carefully into the shadow of the partition as one of the voices asked--"Wasn't that Johnson just come in?"

There was a movement as if some one had risen to look over the compartment, but the gathering twilight completely hid Ezekiel.

"No!"

"He's late.Suppose he don't come--or back out?"The other man broke into a grim laugh."I reckon you don't know Johnson yet, or you'd understand this yer little game o' his is just the one idea o' his life.He's been two years on that man's track, and he ain't goin' to back out now that he's got a dead sure thing on him.""But why is he so keen about it, anyway? It don't seem nat'ral for a business man built after Johnson's style, and a rich man to boot, to go into this detective business.It ain't the reward, we know that.Is it an old grudge?""You bet!" The speaker paused, and then in a lower voice, which taxed Ezekial's keen ear to the uttermost, resumed: "It's said up in Frisco that Cherokee Bob knew suthin' agin Johnson way back in the States; anyhow, I believe it's understood that they came across the plains together in '50--and Bob hounded Johnson and blackmailed him here where he was livin', even to the point of makin' him help him on the road or give information, until one day Johnson bucked against it--kicked over the traces--and swore he'd be revenged on Bob, and then just settled himself down to that business.Wotever he'd been and done himself he made it all right with the sheriff here; and I've heard ez it wasn't anything criminal or that sort, but that it was o' some private trouble that he'd confided to that hound Bob, and Bob had threatened to tell agen him.That's the grudge they say Johnson has, and that's why he's allowed to be the head devil in this yer affair.It's an understood thing, too, that the sheriff and the police ain't goin' to interfere if Johnson accidentally blows the top of Bob's head off in the scrimmage of a capter.""And I reckon Bob wouldn't hesitate to do the same thing to him when he finds out that Johnson has given him away?""I reckon," said the other, sententiously, "for it's Johnson's knowledge of the country and the hoss-stealers that are in with Bob's gang of road agents that made it easy for him to buy up and win over Bob's friends here, so that they'd help to trap him.""It's pretty rough on Bob to be sold out in that way," said the second speaker, sympathizingly.

"If they were white men, p'rhaps," returned his companion, contemptuously, "but this yer's a case of Injin agen Injin, ez the men are Mexican half-breeds just as Bob's a half Cherokee.The sooner that kind o' cross cattle exterminate each other the better it'll be for the country.It takes a white man like Johnson to set 'em by the ears."A silence followed.Ezekiel, beginning to be slightly bored with his cheaply acquired but rather impractical information, was about to slip back into the passage again when he was arrested by a laugh from the first speaker.