The Lure of the Lamp
HE made a detour toward the little cluster of Mexican huts. This meant careful work, for the children were out playing in the dark, their half-naked bodies flashing again and again across the shafts of golden lamp-light, and they had a troop of mongrel dogs with them, leaping and scurrying here and there.
He moved like a snake around the house and came to the wash line which he had noted. It made an important link in the chain that he had planned for action, for he thought that he had seen some white shirts and cotton trousers in the lot.
He was right. He stripped, trusting the dark stain on his body to keep it from being visible by the starlight, and, in fact, no human eye would have been able to locate him.
He dressed rapidly in the clothes that he had found. The shirt was small. The trousers came hardly half the distance between his knees and ankles, so he rolled them up above the knees. Shoes he would have to do without, but for that matter the Mexicans he had seen at work were either barefooted or simply in huarachos.
The shirt and trousers would have to serve him. They were still very damp, but that would have to be a point of minor importance.
His discarded clothes he rolled into a compact bundle and put them into the center of a little shrub not far from the hotel of Tom Higgins. Then he began to close on the place in circles, as a beast of prey closes in on its quarry. It was partly that he wanted to find out the best means of getting up to the house unseen, and it was partly that he wanted to examine all the lay of the land around the place in case he had to flee for his life at any moment, and from any part of the hotel.
In this manner he came around and around the hotel, and finally saw that the obvious place of approach was from the rear, through a big open court that, in turn, opened upon a patio on one side, and exposed one of the outer walls of the building on the other.
The trouble with this avenue was that it was already occupied.
The night was windless, except for small gusts that stirred up wisps of dust, and the heat of the desert, therefore, was not rolled in upon the oasis. The grass and the trees began to give out their coolness.
The windmills were silent. The big wheels were no longer purring, and the gears had stopped their rattling and clanking. Instead — since water had to be flowing night and day on the plantation — a team of three mustangs labored constantly around and around an open-mouthed well, lifting an endless chain of buckets that dumped into a trough. Steadily the drawbeam moaned against the central shaft, and the water, with continual white pulses, gushed away down the trough. The driver sat on the drawbeam itself, feeding a black snake into his three horses from time to time, for the gait was not a walk, but a shuffling trot.
The next relay of horses for the work was held by another driver near by.
Silver saw these things as he moved from bush to bush, stalking forward. Now a third man came out of the darkness and spoke to the driver, who waited with his relief team. Silver could hear them clearly.
“Tonio,” said the newcomer, “they are playing dice in Alfredo’s house. I myself have won five dollars. Luck is in the air. And this is the time for you to have your revenge.”
“You see where I am!” said Tonio. “I must be here with my horses!”
“Your boy can drive the team.”
“A scorpion stung his foot this afternoon. He is lying groaning. You ought to know that! And how can he drive my team? But will you take them for an hour only?”
“I know what your hour would be if you started winning,” said the other. “No, no! Drive your own horses. I was only telling you that the game has started.”
“I thank you for nothing, then,” said Tonio angrily.
Silver appeared, drifting slowly toward them through the night.
“Well,” said Silver, “I would drive the team for twenty-five cents. I haven’t even money for tobacco.”
They both turned on him. They stared a moment. The light was dim, but by the bigness of his outline they knew him to be a formidable fellow. Perhaps there was something in the drawling nature of his Spanish that made them suspicious.
“Men who work are men with money in the pocket,” said Tonio. “And who are you?”
“I am José Calderon. This very day I have walked forty miles — and not on green grass all the way. Is it work, my friends, to walk forty miles just in the hope of finding a job?”
“There is no work for you here,” said Tonio stiffly. “The master wants no strangers.”
“Curse him!” said Silver with apparent emotion. “I talked to him; I begged him; I crouched before him, but he would give me no hope of work.”
“Where did you see him?” asked the suspicious Tonio.
“In the saloon.”
“Well?”
“He cursed me like a brute because there was dust on my bare feet; he would have no dust marks on his floor, he said. I took the bandanna from my neck and got down on my hands and knees and wiped up the marks that I had made. I stood in the doorway and begged him to give me work. I said that I would work day and night for my food and no money — for my food and tobacco, until I could prove to him that I am a good man. But he would not take me!”
“Well, if he took everybody,” said Tonio coldly, “the place would soon be crowded.”
“Will you give me one pinch of tobacco?” he begged. “I have a paper to roll the cigarette!”
“You’re a beggar,” answered Tonio. “I tell by the whine in your voice. You spoke of twenty-five cents. You don’t need more than five cents to buy tobacco for cigarettes. And that I’ll give you if you drive these horses around and around the well until I please to come back.”
“Ah, señor!” said Silver. “You are very hard, but I am very poor.”
“Honest men,” said Tonio, “are never as poor as all this. I make you my offer. Will you take it?”
“You are a hard man,” said Silver. “But I crave for tobacco from the pit of my stomach.”
“I know how that can be, too,” said Tonio more kindly. “Perhaps after all I shall give more than five cents to you. That depends on how well you handle the horses, and whether or not you have them all in the same degree of sweating when I come back. Here — now let me see you hitch them to the drawbeam!”
The driver of the team that had been working till this moment now stopped, stepped down from his place, and commenced unhooking the singletree chains from the traces. So Silver took the three mustangs of the team of Tonio around to the proper place. He held them with a grip close to the bits. They laid their ears down and tossed their heads as he compelled them to back into place.
“Well,” said Tonio, “you know something, and you have strong hands.”
Silver hooked up the chains rapidly to the traces.
He sat on the drawbeam, picked up the black snake, and called to the horses. They lurched into their collars. The drawbeam began to groan once more against the shaft; the endless chain of buckets began to disgorge the white pulses of water into the big trough, along which it ran swiftly and was received into a large-throated pipe, where it went swishing away, unseen.
Tonio came in behind the drawbeam and began to talk.
“Watch the gray mare,” he said. “She keeps her traces taut, but she is not pulling unless her head is down.”
“Ah-ha! A cheat!” said Silver, and flicked the mare with the black snake.
She shook her head and began to pull hard. Tonio laughed.
“You understand,” he said. “You will do a good job if you keep your eyes open. Remember, if they are not all sweating in the same way, you get nothing from me! But if the gray mare sweats a little more than the rest, I shall be just as pleased. Now, there’s another thing. You see the window there, with the lamp shining in it?”
“I see,” said Silver.
“That lamp must continue to shine.”
“If God wills that it shall,” said Silver.
“The moment that it stops shining, the moment that it is put out of place, you must sound an alarm. You hear?”
“What shall I do?”
“Yell at the top of your voice. Yell for Señor Santos!”
“Yes. And then?”
“Then he will come, fool. And then you tell him that some one has disturbed the lamp. That is all. Look up at the lamp once in every round, or twice.”
Silver stared up at the bright light. A great climbing vine with a trunk twisted like a rope, and thick as the stem of a tree, wound up the side of the house and cast its branches to either side of the window, where the lamp burned.
“Is there some one in that room who prays by that light?” asked Silver.
“There is a poor girl who wishes it were out, perhaps,” said Tonio. “How does it come that you wear wrinkled clothes?”
“If you walked forty miles through the desert, your sweat would wrinkle your clothes,” said Silver.
“There is no sweat caking that cloth,” said Tonio sharply.
“No, because when I reached this place I poured water over myself,” said Silver. “I was so hot that the water hissed against my hide.”
Tonio laughed again softly.
“Well,” he said, “now you are working honestly, and you are going to earn money — perhaps. Be diligent. Watch the window, and I shall be back here after a time.”
Now that he was alone at last, Silver sighed with relief to have the sharp eyes of Tonio removed from him. As the horses made round after round of the well, the drawbeam still droning its steady song, he kept his eyes fixed on the light that flooded from the casement in the second-story window above him.
Since there was a girl kept there, one who wished that the lamp might be darkened, would she not be the one about whom Murcio had talked that evening? Was it not she that had the fortune of which Christian so much wanted a share?
But he had come here to find traces of Rap Brender, who had saved his life. All other things must wait upon that necessity.
Yet for all he knew, Brender might be many a mile from this place, riding contentedly farther and farther from the danger that he feared from Barry Christian.
If only Silver could penetrate to the meaning of Hig-gins’s start and downward look and confused words — if only he could have heard the respectful words which had been addressed by Higgins to the pale-faced man who was Barry Christian himself.
In the meantime, the lamp shone from the casement above with a steady, insistent light. And it began to draw on Silver as with a hand.
He felt the pull of the temptation like an imp of the perverse working upon him.
The sense of duty which had brought him to this place forbade him interfering now in the affairs of that unknown girl, and still the ferment worked in Silver, until, with a stifled groan, he knew that he must yield to the temptation.
He gave the three mustangs a slashing blow with the black snake in the hope that this encouragement would keep them at their work for a considerable time, and then ran in his bare feet toward the huge trunk of the climbing vine. The bareness of his feet would help him now. And the lightness of his clothes was an advantage, also. The only excess weight was that of the revolver which he carried strapped under the pit of his left arm, inside the open shirt. But that weight was not enough to keep him from mounting the twisted trunk of the vine like a wild cat.
As he came to the casement above he paused. The shaken branches gave off a rustling sound as though a wind were blowing through them. Below him he still heard the droning of the drawbeam as the horses pulled it on their rounds. And there was no human being in view.
He sat in the Casement and peered inside past the lamp. It was a big room, quite emptily furnished. He saw the sheen of a goatskin rug on the floor, and then the body of a woman stretched face down on the bed, with her arms thrown out crookedly. So she might lie in death. Some of her hair had escaped and streamed in disorder to the side, glistening black. So she would lie, in fact, if she had been slain after a struggle and thrown down by brutal hands, to lie as she fell.
The window rose silently and easily at the touch of Silver. After what he had seen, he could not have been stayed from entering that room even if there had been armed men in it.
He lifted the lamp, put it to one side, and slithered through. Then he drew down the window, replaced the lamp, and turned, breathing more easily.
His absence from the horses might be marked before long, but the droning noise of the water wheel gave proof that the team was still at labor. Yet even when his absence was marked, who could guess, unless his ascent had been seen, that he was here in this room where the light shone from the window.
“Señorita!” he whispered.
She was not asleep. Even that lightly spoken word made her spring up from the bed and face him. And at the sight of her face, he was glad that he had come. He laid a finger on his lips and gestured behind him toward the lamp, as though it were significant of the danger in which he stood.
She had not spoken, but, stepping back toward the wall a little, she caught up her loosened hair with an instinctive gesture and wound it into place. Understanding suddenly came into her dark eyes.
“You’ve come through the window? Then you’ve been seen, and unless they sent you, you’re trapped here!”
“I was not seen,” said Silver, trying her with English. “The horses still pull at the water wheel. You can hear ’em. But there’s no one on the driver’s seat.”
“Who are you? And why have you come?” she asked, in English.
“Because I knew that some one was here with her back against the wall. No one sent me. It was chiefly guesswork. But if you want to leave, there’s an open chance by climbing down that vine that runs up the face of the house. Can you manage that?”
“You’re not a Mexican,” she said. “It’s stain that’s on your skin, not the real color.”
“You have eyes,” said Silver. “But will you come?”
“If you’re American,” she said, “don’t think of me, but do something for one of your own people. He’s held here. They’re guarding him in the loft of the barn. Forget me. It’s not my life that they want, but they’ll surely murder him in the end!”
“Do you know his name?” asked Silver.
“Brender. But his name doesn’t matter. He’s young. He’s thrown himself away trying to help me. If he dies — ”
“Rap Brender?” exclaimed Silver. “And these devils are holding him? Rap Brender? I’ll find him! Is there a way through the house to the stable?”
“There is. But the house is filled with men. You couldn’t pass through. Go back the way you came — ”
“Hush!” said Silver, holding up a hand.
For a change had come, and a vibrant sound had left the air. He knew what it meant. The horses were no longer dragging at the water wheel, and in a moment their idleness would be known; men would surely come to inquire into the silence, and the way of retreat down the climbing vine would be under observation.
He sprang into the casement to make sure, and as he had suspected, two men were coming out of the, inner patio, pointing out the stationary team to one another.
Poor Tonio would have to sweat for this. He would have a chance to wish that he had promised not pennies, but dollars, for the honest tending of his team. But now the first way of retreat was thoroughly blocked.
Silver turned back to the girl.
“They’re on guard again at the water wheel,” he said. “We can’t go back by that way. There must be some chance of getting through the house.”
“There’s none.” She shook her head. “Unless you can get across the hall and into a room that opens onto the patio — and even the inner patio is guarded now. There’s no way for you! Heaven help you! Who are you, and why have you come?”
He leaned his big shoulders against the wall and turned his eyes slowly about the room.
These seconds were counting against him, he knew, but it would be worse to make a blind move than none at all. All the interior of the house was a sealed book to him. He would be stepping into darkness.
“My name is Silver,” he told her. “If I drop my life here — well, it’s a thing that Rap Brender saved for me not long ago. They’ll have to pay something before they conclude the bargain, however.”
He touched the gun under his arm, but did not draw it.
“Is the door locked?” he asked.
“From the outside. Think of something to do! You can’t stay here. And there’s no way for you to retreat. You’re lost! One more life to them. Señor Silver — ”
“Say it in English,” said Silver. “Just now the Spanish hurts my ears.”
A footfall came down the hall rapidly and paused at the door. The girl dared not speak. Wildly she gestured toward the big clothespress that stood at the side of the room, while she threw herself as before, face downward on the bed.
One door of the clothespress was open. Silver was instantly inside it, and hidden behind the long, shimmering folds of a yellow slicker. Over the shoulder of that coat he could see the door opened by that same Alonso Santos, that same big fellow of the mustaches and the militant carriage that Silver had seen in the saloon this day.
The Mexican tossed the door shut behind him, and the careless gesture sent a cannon-shot report through the room. The girl started up from the bed and stared wildly all about her, fixing her glance on Santos at last.
“What has happened?” she asked.
Santos shaped his mustache for a moment with one hand before he answered.
“Something odd has happened in the outer patio. It seems that a rascal of a peon called Tonio left his team at the water wheel. He was fetched out of a shed close by and swore that he left the team in the hands of another fellow all in rags, who swore that he had crossed the desert to-day in search of work from Señor Higgins. Tonio let the man drive the team while he went off to play at dice, and presently the water wheel stopped turning — the stranger was gone. And it seemed to Tom Higgins that perhaps the man might have gotten into the house. How? Well, by climbing up the big vine and disappearing through your window. Come, my dear. Have you seen the man here?”
“Is it likely?” she asked.
“I’m not talking of likelihood,” said Santos. “Answer me yes or no. Have you seen him?”
Silver waited for her to lie.
Instead she fixed her glance steadily, calmly, on Santos.
“I’ve seen several sorts of men in this room,” she said. “What manner of man was this?”
“A big, ragged peon,” said Santos.
She shook her head. “I haven’t seen a Mexican in this room since supper was carried in for me.”
“Which you sent out without tasting, eh?” said Santos. “Do you worry so much about the gringo, my dear?”
Her eyes closed, or almost closed.
“What have they done with him?” she asked.
“Nothing, Rosa,” said Santos. “And they will do nothing. That is, until they’ve used him as a bait. It appears that he has a friend, a certain famous vagabond called Silver. And there is such a devotion between the two gringos, that since this Brender is caught and held, the other one, the important one, is sure to put his head into the trap. So they’ll hold Brender until Silver appears, and then they may have the pleasure of dying together. That, I think, is the design of Mr. Christian.”
“And who is Mr. Christian?” asked the girl calmly, as though the rest of the speech had meant nothing to her.
“He is a tall fellow with a pale face, and a soft voice, and the soul of a tiger, and the brain of a bloodless fiend,” said Santos. “But now I must look at the casement and open the window to make sure that there are no traces on the sill.”
He crossed the room out of Silver’s sight, and presently there was a slight sound as the sash of the window was raised. Silver stepped instantly from his concealment.
He carried a revolver in his hand, and it was well for Santos that at that moment he was sprawling far out onto the deep casement, pushing the lamp to one side as he looked down at the upper branches and the foliage of the climbing vine.
So Silver went sidling to the door, his step soundless, his eyes flashing from the girl to the form in the window.
And she, her chin still in her hand, did not stir. She hardly seemed to glance at Silver, and the only sign she gave of emotion was the sudden tightening of the grip of the hand that clasped her chin.
The door yielded soundlessly to Silver’s touch. He slid the revolver back beneath his armpit and stepped out into the hall, drawing the door shut behind him. As he closed it without a word, he heard Santos saying:
“On my word, I think that two of the twigs have been broken. The wind may have done it, perhaps. But if you — ”
The closing of the door shut out the rest of that speech, and Silver found himself standing in a long corridor, lighted faintly from one end by a hanging lamp.
He came to the head of a flight of steps and ran lightly down the windings to the floor below.
Here again a hanging lamp gave light to the corridor and showed him a door ajar. Through it he peered. It was a bedroom, and vacant, so far as he could see. But all was dim before his eyes, since what light entered the chamber came from lanterns in the outer patio, which was just beyond this wall.
He entered, closing the door, and remained for a moment drawing his breath. Then he passed to the window.
Beyond it he saw that the team at the well had again commenced its rounds, and the dull snoring sound, and the pulsing gush of the water from the chain of buckets, was passing softly into the night, almost overcome by the rattling of active voices.
Another man, not poor Tonio, sat on the drawbeam, for Tonio himself was held by either hand by a stout peon, and the shirt had been pulled from his brown back. A crowd stood around him, some holding lanterns that might have helped Silver to see the scene, but there were too many shifting figures that continually stepped between him and the picture that he wanted to make out.
If he could not see Tonio clearly, he could make out the man who was master of ceremonies. He was an old Mexican with a head of pure white, and he stood now with a black snake in his hand, tucking up the sleeve over his right arm.
As he prepared to flog Tonio, he made a little speech.
“Now, my children,” he said, “you will see a lesson. The señor is too kind. He is too gentle. Only now and then his great heart is moved with anger, and this is one of the few times. A wretched rascal like this Tonio must make us all have trouble. What? Would it be very much for the señor to grow disgusted with us all and march us off from our homes on this green island, this happy place? A few more lazy gamblers, dice lovers, like Tonio, and we are all ruined. For our own sakes, I am going to lay on the lash. And for the good of your lazy soul, Tonio. Stand still. Don’t struggle. There are ten strokes to fall, unless you howl. And that will cost you ten more. The señor will not wish to hear you yelling like a dog under the whip!”
And the lash swung in the air like a thin shadow and fell with a spat as of two open palms striking together.
There was no cry from Tonio. And Silver, realizing that hardly any power in the world could draw the attention of the crowd from the beating, determined to use this opportunity for leaving the house. If he could get out of the outer patio and around to the stable, he could try his best to reach Brender. As for the girl — they would then have two pairs of hands to help her!
He slid through the window and dropped to the ground as the fourth blow fell. And then a sudden howl, beginning loudly, wailing away to a drone, burst from the lips of the tortured Tonio.