The Argonauts of North Liberty

A quick flush crossed Blandford’s face, and left it glowing like a boy’s.

“Is SHE there?”

“Wa’al, I reckon she’s visitin’ Joan,” said Ezekiel, narrowly attentive of Blandford’s strange excitement; “but wot of it?”

But Blandford had utterly forgotten Ezekiel’s presence. He had remained speechless and flushed. And then, as if suddenly dazzled by an inspiration, he abruptly dashed from the room. Ezekiel heard him call to his passive host with a Spanish oath, but before he could follow, they had both hurriedly left the house.

Ezekiel glanced around him and contemplatively ran his fingers through his beard. “It ain’t Joan Salisbury nor Dick Demorest ez giv’ him that start! Humph! Wa’al—I wanter know!”

CHAPTER IV

Mrs. Demorest was so fascinated by the company of Dona Rosita Pico and her romantic memories, that she prevailed upon that heart-broken but scarcely attenuated young lady to prolong her visit beyond the fortnight she had allotted to communion with the past. For a day or two following her singular experience in the garden, Mrs. Demorest plied her with questions regarding the apparition she had seen, and finally extorted from her the admission that she could not positively swear to its being the real Johnson, or even a perfectly consistent shade of that faithless man. When Joan pointed out to her that such masculine perfections as curling raven locks, long silken mustachios, and dark eyes, were attributes by no means exclusive to her lover, but were occasionally seen among other less favored and even equally dangerous Americans, Dona Rosita assented with less objection than Joan anticipated. “Besides, dear,” said Joan, eying her with feline watchfulness, “it is four years since you’ve seen him, and surely the man has either shaved since, or else he took a ridiculous vow never to do it, and then he would be more fully bearded.”

But Dona Rosita only shook her pretty head. “Ah, but he have an air—a something I know not what you call—so.” She threw her shawl over her left shoulder, and as far as a pair of soft blue eyes and comfortably pacific features would admit, endeavored to convey an idea of wicked and gloomy abstraction.

“You child,” said Joan,—“that’s nothing; they all of them do that. Why, there was a stranger at the Oriental Hotel whom I met twice when I was there—just as mysterious, romantic, and wicked-looking. And in fact they hinted terrible things about him. Well! so much so, that Mr. Demorest was quite foolish about my being barely civil to him—you understand—and—” She stopped suddenly, with a heightened color under the fire of Rosita’s laughing eyes.

“Ah—so—Dona Discretion! Tell to me all. Did our hoosband eat him?”

Joan’s features suddenly tightened to their old puritan rigidity. “Mr. Demorest has reasons—abundant reasons—to thoroughly understand and trust me,” she replied in an austere voice.

Rosita looked at her a moment in mystification and then shrugged her shoulders. The conversation dropped. Nevertheless, it is worthy of being recorded that from that moment the usual familiar allusions, playful and serious, to Rosita’s mysterious visitor began to diminish in frequency and finally ceased. Even the news brought by Demorest of some vague rumor in the pueblo that an intended attack on the stage-coach had been frustrated by the authorities, and that the vicinity had been haunted by incognitos of both parties, failed to revive the discussion.

Meantime the slight excitement that had stirred the sluggish life of the pueblo of San Buenaventura had subsided. The posada of Senor Mateo had lost its feverish and perplexing dual life; the alley behind it no longer was congested by lounging cigarette smokers; the compartment looking upon the silent patio was unoccupied, and its chairs and tables were empty. The two deputy sheriffs, of whom Senor Mateo presumably knew very little, had fled; and the mysterious Senor Johnson, of whom he—still presumably—knew still less, had also disappeared. For Senor Mateo’s knowledge of what transpired in and about his posada, and of the character and purposes of those who frequented it, was tinctured by grave and philosophical doubts. This courteous and dignified scepticism generally took the formula of quien sabe to all frivolous and mundane inquiry. He would affirm with strict verity that his omelettes were unapproachable, his beds miraculous, his aguardiente supreme, his house was even as your own. Beyond these were questions with which the simply finite and always discreet human intellect declined to grapple.

The disturbing effect of Senor Corwin upon a mind thus gravely constituted may be easily imagined. Besides Ezekiel’s inordinate capacity for useless or indiscreet information, it was undeniable that his patent medicines had effected a certain peaceful revolutionary movement in San Buenaventura. A simple and superstitious community that had steadily resisted the practical domestic and agricultural American improvements, succumbed to the occult healing influences of the Panacea and Jones’s Bitters. The virtues of a mysterious balsam, more or less illuminated with a colored mythological label, deeply impressed them; and the exhibition of a circular, whereon a celestial visitant was represented as descending with a gross of Rogers’ Pills to a suffering but admiring multitude, touched their religious sympathies to such an extent that the good Padre Jose was obliged to warn them from the pulpit of the diabolical character of their heresies of healing—with the natural result of yet more dangerously advertising Ezekiel. There were those too who spoke under their breath of the miraculous efficacy of these nostrums. Had not Don Victor Arguello, whose respectable digestion, exhausted by continuous pepper and garlic, failed him suddenly, received an unexpected and pleasurable stimulus from the New England rum, which was the basis of the Jones Bitters? Had not the baker, tremulous from excessive aguardiente, been soothed and sustained by the invisible morphia, judiciously hidden in Blogg’s Nerve Tonic? Nor had the wily Ezekiel forgotten the weaker sex in their maiden and maternal requirements. Unguents, that made silken their black but somewhat coarsely fibrous tresses, opened charming possibilities to the Senoritas; while soothing syrups lent a peaceful repose to many a distracted mother’s household. The success of Ezekiel was so marked as to justify his return at the end of three weeks with a fresh assortment and an undiminished audacity.

It was on his second visit that the sceptical, non-committal policy of Senor Mateo was sorely tried. Arriving at the posada one night, Ezekiel became aware that his host was engaged in some mysterious conference with a visitor who had entered through the ordinary public room. The view which the acute Ezekiel managed to get of the stranger, however, was productive of no further discovery than that he bore a faint and disreputable resemblance to Blandford, and was handsome after a conscious, reckless fashion, with an air of mingled bravado and conceit. But an hour later, as Corwin was taking the cooler air of the veranda before retiring to one of the miraculous beds of the posada, he was amazed at seeing what was apparently Blandford himself emerge on horseback from the alley, and after a quick glance towards the veranda, canter rapidly up the street. Ezekiel’s first impression was to call to him, but the sudden recollection that he parted from his old master on confidential terms only three days before in San Francisco, and that it was impossible for him to be in the pueblo, stopped him with his fingers meditatively in his beard. Then he turned in to the posada, and hastily summoned Mateo.

The gentleman presented himself in a state of such profound scepticism that it seemed to have already communicated itself to his shoulders, and gave him the appearance of having shrugged himself into the room.

“Ha’ow long ago did Mr. Johnson get here?” asked Corwin, lazily.

“Ah—possibly—then there has been a Mr. Johnson?” This is a polite doubt of his own perceptions and a courteous acceptance of his questioner’s.

“Wa’al, I guess so. Considerin’ I jest saw him with my own eyes,” returned Ezekiel.

“Ah!” Mateo was relieved. Might he congratulate the Senor Corwin, who must be also relieved, and shake his respected hand. Bueno. And then he had met this Senor Johnson? doubtless a friend? And he was well? and all were happy?

“Look yer, Mattayo! What I wanter know ez THIS. When did that man, who has just ridden out of your alley, come here? Sabe that—it’s a plain question.”

Ah surely, of the clearest comprehension. Bueno. It may have been last week—or even this week—or perhaps yesterday—or of a possibility to-day. The Senor Corwin, who was wise and omniscient, would comprehend that the difficulty lay in deciding WHO was that man. Perhaps a friend of the Senor Corwin—perhaps only one who LOOKED like him. There existed—might Mateo point out—a doubt.

Ezekiel regarded Mateo with a certain grim appreciation. “Wa’al, is there anybody here who looks like Johnson?”

Again there were the difficulty of ascertaining perfectly how the Senor Johnson looked. If the Senor Johnson was Americano, doubtless there were other Americanos who had resembled him. It was possible. The Senor Corwin had doubtless observed for a little space a caballero who was here, as it were, in the instant of the appearance of Senor Johnson? Possibly there was a resemblance, and yet—

Corwin had certainly noticed this resemblance, but it did not suit his cautious intellect to fall in with any prevailing scepticism of his host. Satisfied in his mind that Mateo was concealing something from him, and equally satisfied that he would sooner or later find it out, he grinned diabolically in the face of that worthy man, and sought the meditation of his miraculous couch. When he had departed, the sceptic turned to his wife:

“This animal has been sniffing at the trail.”

“Truly—but Mother of God—where is the discretion of our friend. If he will continue to haunt the pueblo like a lovesick chicken, he will get his neck wrung yet.”

Following out an ingenious idea of his own, Ezekiel called the next day on the Demorests, and in some occult fashion obtained an invitation to stay under their hospitable roof during his sojourn in Buenaventura. Perfectly aware that he owed this courtesy more to Joan than to her husband, it is probable that his grim enjoyment was not diminished by the fact; while Joan, for reasons of her own, preferred the constraint which the presence of another visitor put upon Demorest’s uxoriousness. Of late, too, there were times when Dona Rosita’s naive intelligence, which was not unlike the embarrassing perceptions of a bright and half-spoiled child, was in her way, and she would willingly have shared the young lady’s company with her husband had Demorest shown any sympathy for the girl. It was in the faint hope that Ezekiel might in some way beguile Rosita’s wandering attention that she had invited him. The only difficulty lay in his uncouthness, and in presenting to the heiress of the Picos a man who had been formerly her own servant. Had she attempted to conceal that fact she was satisfied that Ezekiel’s independence and natural predilection for embarrassing situations would have inevitably revealed it. She had even gone so far as to consider the propriety of investing him with a poor relationship to her family, when Dona Rosita herself happily stopped all further trouble. On her very first introduction to him, that charming young lady at once accepted him as a lunatic whose brains were turned by occult, scientific, and medical study! Ah! she, Rosita, had heard of such cases before. Had not a paternal ancestor of hers, one Don Diego Castro, believed he had discovered the elixir of youth. Had he not to that end refused even to wash him the hand, to cut him the nail of the finger and the hair of the head! Exalted by that discovery, had he not been unsparingly uncomplimentary to all humanity, especially to the weaker sex? Even as the Senor Corwin!

Far from being offended at this ingenious interpretation of his character, Ezekiel exhibited a dry gratification over it, and even conceived an unwholesome admiration of the fair critic; he haunted her presence and preoccupied her society far beyond Joan’s most sanguine expectations. He sat in open-mouthed enjoyment of her at the table, he waylaid her in the garden, he attempted to teach her English. Dona Rosita received these extraordinary advances in a no less extraordinary manner. In the scant masculine atmosphere of the house, and the somewhat rigid New England reserve that still pervaded it, perhaps she languished a little, and was not averse to a slight flirtation, even with a madman. Besides, she assumed the attitude of exercising a wholesome restraint over him. “If we are not found dead in our bed one morning, and extracted of our blood for a cordial, you shall thank to me for it,” she said to Joan. “Also for the not empoisoning of the coffee!”

So she permitted him to carry a chair or hammock for her into the garden, to fetch the various articles which she was continually losing, and which he found with his usual penetration; and to supply her with information, in which, however, he exercised an unwonted caution. On the other hand, certain naive recollections and admissions, which in the quality of a voluble child she occasionally imparted to this “madman” in return, were in the proportion of three to one.

It had been a hot day, and even the usual sunset breeze had failed that evening to rock the tops of the outlying pine-trees or cool the heated tiles of the pueblo roofs. There was a hush and latent expectancy in the air that reacted upon the people with feverish unrest and uneasiness; even a lull in the faintly whispering garden around the Demorests’ casa had affected the spirits of its inmates, causing them to wander about in vague restlessness. Joan had disappeared; Dona Rosita, under an olive-tree in one of the deserted paths, and attended by the faithful Ezekiel, had said it was “earthquake weather,” and recalled, with a sign of the cross, a certain dreadful day of her childhood, when el temblor had shaken down one of the Mission towers. “You shall see it now, as he have left it so it has remain always,” she added with superstitious gravity.

“That’s just the lazy shiftlessness of your folks,” responded Ezekiel with prompt ungallantry. “It ain’t no wonder the Lord Almighty hez to stir you up now and then to keep you goin’.”

Dona Rosita gazed at him with simple childish pity. “Poor man; it have affect you also in the head, this weather. So! It was even so with the uncle of my father. Hush up yourself, and bring to me the box of chocolates of my table. I will gif to you one. You shall for one time have something pleasant on the end of your tongue, even if you must swallow him after.”

Ezekiel grinned. “Ye ain’t afraid o’ bein’ left alone with the ghost that haunts the garden, Miss Rosita?”

“After YOU—never-r-r.”

“I’ll find Mrs. Demorest and send her to ye,” said Ezekiel, hesitatingly.

“Eh, to attract here the ghost? Thank you, no, very mooch.”

Ezekiel’s face contracted until nothing but his bright peering gray eyes could be seen. “Attract the ghost!” he echoed. “Then you kalkilate that it’s—” he stopped, insinuatingly.

Rosita brought her fan sharply over his knuckles, and immediately opened it again over her half-embarrassed face. “I comprehend not anything to ‘ekalkilate.’ WILL you go, Don Fantastico; or is it for me to bring to you?”

Ezekiel flew. He quickly found the chocolates and returned, but was disconcerted on arriving under the olive-tree to find Dona Rosita no longer in the hammock. He turned into a by-path, where an extraordinary circumstance attracted his attention. The air was perfectly still, but the leaves of a manzanita bush near the misshapen cactus were slightly agitated. Presently Ezekiel saw the stealthy figure of a man emerge from behind it and approach the cactus. Reaching his hand cautiously towards the plant, the stranger detached something from one of its thorns, and instantly disappeared. The quick eyes of Ezekiel had seen that it was a letter, his unerring perception of faces recognized at the same moment that the intruder was none other than the handsome, reckless-looking man he had seen the other day in conference with Mateo.

But Ezekiel was not the only witness of this strange intrusion. A few paces from him, Dona Rosita, unconscious of his return, was gazing in a half-frightened, breathless absorption in the direction of the stranger’s flight.

“Wa’al!” drawled Ezekiel lazily.

She started and turned towards him. Her face was pale and alarmed, and yet to the critical eye of Ezekiel it seemed to wear an expression of gratified relief. She laughed faintly.

“Ef that’s the kind o’ ghost you hev about yer, it’s a healthy one,” drawled Ezekiel. He turned and fixed his keen eyes on Rosita’s face. “I wonder what kind o’ fruit grows on the cactus that he’s so fond of?”

Either she had not seen the abstraction of the letter, or his acting was perfect, for she returned his look unwaveringly. “The fruit, eh? I have not comprehend.”

“Wa’al, I reckon I will,” said Ezekiel. He walked towards the cactus; there was nothing to be seen but its thorny spikes. He was confronted, however, by the sudden apparition of Joan from behind the manzanita at its side. She looked up and glanced from Ezekiel to Dona Rosita with an agitated air.

“Oh, you saw him too?” she said eagerly.

“I reckon,” answered Ezekiel, with his eyes still on Rosita. “I was wondering what on airth he was so taken with that air cactus for.”

Rosita had become slightly pale again in the presence of her friend. Joan quietly pushed Ezekiel aside and put her arm around her. “Are you frightened again?” she asked, in a low whisper.

“Not mooch,” returned Rosita, without lifting her eyes.