Chapter XXI

Florinda, though as nervous as a cat and all hot impatience, awaited her chance to slip out of the Stag Horn gambling room without drawing any curious attention to herself. She found the hallway empty and darted across it like a vivid flash; she caught up her skirts and ran down the back stairs.

At the rear of the Stag Horn was a long low shed where riders left their horses; between the shed and the main building was a dark, narrow alley. She sped along this, turned the corner of the house and came around to the front of the saloon where the continuation of the alley, making a right angle, gave upon Sundown’s main street. There, lurking in the shadows, glancing eagerly up and down, she forced herself to wait another impatient moment.

She was looking for someone, anyone whom she knew well and could depend on, someone to carry a message in all haste. She saw a man coming along the plank sidewalk, a young fellow on high heels with their spurs still on them and jangling like small iron bells at every stride. She started to speak to him; she hesitated, frowning; she even put her hand out as though to stop him and draw him into the shadows with her.

But she drew back and let him pass on without seeing her. That was because of a sudden she had heard the measured clop of a horse’s hoof beats and made out who, of all people, was riding this way. When the rider was just opposite and but a few feet away, she darted out, catching the bridle rein.

“Oh, Señorita!” she gasped. “For the love of God!”

A startled Sally Dawn stiffened in the saddle, and said coldly:

“You? What do you want with me?” She stiffened still further, saying, “Will you please take your hand--”

“But, Señorita! Quick! I must hide, but you must talk to me for one minute. Quick! Ride here where it is dark.”

“Are you crazy! Or do you think I am?”

“It is maybe life and death! I swear it!”

“Whose?” said a suspicious, utterly incredulous Sally Dawn. “Yours or mine?”

“But neither! Of Señor Jim Torrance. I have to send word to him. I can’t go because they would miss me and pretty soon they would guess where I am. So it must be you!”

Sally Dawn was still inclined to be stand-offish and suspicious. She didn’t like the Mexican girl; she didn’t trust her--and somehow or other she didn’t enthuse at the thought of messages passing between her and Jim Torrance.

But Florinda was too insistent to be altogether gainsaid.

“Quick, I tell you!” she exclaimed, and began to sound angry. “Ride your horse here where it’s dark; let me tell you what it is all about.”

“Tell me now. Where you are!”

Then Florinda flamed out: “Don’t you care if they kill him? Don’t you love him?”

Sally Dawn pretended to scoff with soft cool laughter at loving any man, but suddenly shot back, “Maybe it’s you who love him!”

“I do! Yes, with all my heart. I always have since the time I saw him first. But that is nothing; he does not love me. It is you he loves! He loved you that first night, when he ran away with you. And now you do not want to help him? Well then, little crazy fool, go away! I will find some man--”

Sally Dawn at last rode into the dark mouth of the alley.

“Tell me! What is it all about?”

“It’s about Steve Bordereau. He’s in town! It’s about Clark Murdo; he’s here, too, with Steve. They’ve got a gang with them-- Oh, I don’t know how many men; maybe ten, maybe twenty. They’re out for trouble; then they’re off on the run for the other side of the Mexico border. But what Steve wants most of all, and what I guess Murdo wants just the same, is to kill Jim Torrance.”

“But--but,” stammered Sally Dawn, beginning to believe, yet not sure, and finding it hard to understand, “how do you know all these things?”

Florinda lifted her clenched hands above her head, her rings glowing in what faint light there was, and shook them and came near screaming. But she contained herself and said in a hushed voice:

“I can’t talk all night. Well, then, a man told me some of this; he is one of Steve’s men, he is young and a little bit drunk and he loves me and wants me to go with them, back to the border. And I have told you all I know. And if you will ride out to Jim’s ranch--if you’ll ride like the devil--before they finish up here and then go out to get him--”

“I’m going!” said Sally Dawn breathlessly. “And I’ll tell him you sent me.”

She whirled her horse and raced away. And Florinda, catching up her skirts again, ran back down the alley and to the rear of the house--and then crept softly up the back stairs.

* * * * *

While the two girls were talking, while Sally Dawn thereafter was racing on her errand, Jim Torrance was riding toward Sundown from the King Cannon ranch; and some minutes before he came within sight of the few lights of the little town, Sally Dawn had struck off into the north road which led to his place.

He had quitted the Cannon bunk house so sharply on the heels of LeSarge’s precipitate departure that when he came out into the county road and rose to the crest of the first low-lying hill he not only heard the beat of flying hoofs somewhere ahead but, a moment later, caught a glimpse of the dark, hurrying silhouette of horse and rider. There went LeSarge straight back toward Sundown as fast as he could go. Torrance dipped his spurs as he shot down the hill; from the next rise he again saw and heard the horse and rider ahead of him, hammering straight along the road.

Torrance didn’t try to overtake the other; he merely meant to keep him in sight for a while. LeSarge might turn to look back; not likely, though, since he’d ridden off in such rage, in such haste and without having any inkling that he might be followed.

Torrance saw him come to the crossroads and pass on, then swing into the main street, clattering straight on into town. He saw him with the dim street lights making him a more distinct figure, lights above and below the swing doors of saloons, when at last he made a swerve. LeSarge had come to the alley flanking the Stag Horn and had swung into it. He had had his warning to keep away from Sundown and was ignoring it. It might be that he had important business here tonight--

After that for a few minutes Torrance proceeded leisurely, jogging slowly along the street, watching for some sign of Sally Dawn or of her horse. She might have dropped in at the general store, at the post office, at the drug store. He saw nothing of her anywhere, for the good and sufficient reason that she was already out on the north road, hurrying to his place.

He thought, not exactly anxious yet: “Where in thunder did she go? Just out for a ride maybe? Maybe over to drop in on the Sam Peppers? Well, as long as she keeps to the county road I guess she’s all right.” So he dismounted in front of the Stag Horn, tied his horse, hitched up his guns and stepped around the corner into the darkness of the alley which had swallowed up Jake LeSarge.

At the rear of the building he saw that in the long shed there were several horses, a dozen or so. They were fidgety and kept stamping and blowing. He put his hand on three of them and discovered they were still hot and wet. That made his brows cock up. Something like a dozen men just arrived--and all together! And Jake LeSarge, though warned, had come hurrying, and LeSarge was a Bordereau man--

Torrance returned to the front entrance. He went into the downstairs bar, pausing just within the door, looking things over. The place was quiet; there were only eight or ten men there, all peacefully minding their business, which had to do with putting raw, red likker down where it would do the most good--not a man in the place whom he had anything against.

He went upstairs.

He came into the gambling room just on time.

It was a Saturday night and the place was jammed, and games were running high even for the Stag Horn. And every man there who had been playing or drinking stood with both arms stretched straight up in the air. Six or eight other men, all wearing bandanas for masks over their faces, were busy cleaning till and tables and pockets down to the last dime.

The instant Jim Torrance came to the threshold a voice shouted, “Stick ’em up!” It was a voice Torrance didn’t recognize. But before the three crisp words were finished, another voice boomed out, and Torrance did know whose it was; and this voice yelled joyously, “You! Take this, you--!”

That was Steve Bordereau. His shout and his act precipitated turmoil. His bullet cut through Torrance’s coat. Torrance, not being sure which of the masked men was Bordereau, yet making his guess without worrying, had both guns in his hands and blazing before they came up waist high. With this diversion created, men who had been taken by surprise by the raid and who had paid to the high card in jerking their hands up, now went for their guns, and the room was filled with the thunder of shots and the acrid bite of powder smoke.

Then some one of the raiders yelled, “Let’s go! We’ve finished here,” and he or someone else started shooting the lights out. There were six coal oil lamps in the room; as fast as six bullets could go streaking out of the barrel of a quick six gun, the six lights were out, with glass tinkling and the smell of oil mingling with burnt powder. Then there was a concerted rush for the rear door.

That way, Torrance knew, Bordereau and his men were departing. He whipped about and ran back to the front stairs. He hadn’t seen Florinda until then; even now he didn’t see her immediately, but heard her voice. From the top of the stairs when he was half way down she was calling him, and in her words, and most of all in the tone of her voice, there was something that checked him almost in mid-air.

“Jim! Señor Jim! For the love of God!-- Oh, one little minute, Jim!”

“Quick! What?” he called back.

She started down the stairs; he could see her dimly because of the light in the room below, flowing out into the lower hall. She balanced strangely, then plunged down toward him headlong, falling like a dead weight. She struck against him; he gathered her up in his arms, at first impatient and angry, thinking, “The fool girl has fainted.” But his hand, touching her breast, was wet; wet and hot with Florinda’s blood. A convulsive shudder shook her; she tried to speak coherently and gasped out:

“He shot me. I saw. It was Steve. I don’t care. I want to be dead. I love you, Jim Torrance.” Only she said it all in Spanish, and it was “Jeem,” and the “Tor-r-r-ance” still was softly running water, very faint yet softly musical. “And, Señor Jim--”

“Listen, Florinda.” He stood there on the stairs holding her in his arms; her own arms, with a spasmodic effort, their last, went up about his neck. “Listen,” he told her. “You’re not going to die; you’re too young and beautiful and gay. I’ll have a doctor--”

“I am not gay any more, Señor Jim. And in a few minutes I am not going to be young and beautiful any longer. So now I can tell you without shame what you know already in your heart. _Yo te amo con toda mi corazon._-- But there are other things; they won’t matter to me, but to you who will go on living. Steve is here to kill you. He sent some of his men to rob the bank while he and the others robbed the place here. Next, they were going to ride to your ranch, to kill you--”

“But I’m here, Florinda. And now I am going to carry you--”

“So I saw your Sally Dawn. And she rode to your ranch to warn you. Oh, only a few minutes ago. And if Steve and Murdo and all the rest go there they will find her--or meet her coming back--and Steve hates her like he hates you. And then they are riding to Mexico.--And--Jim-- Oh, Jim, kiss me just the one time! And hold me tight--tighter--very much tighter, Jim--and say, ‘_Hasta la vista, Florinda mia!_’--That would be funny, no?”

Then she tried to laugh, but when her head dropped down against his chest he knew that Florinda was dead.

He carried her the few steps down to the room below; the best he could do for her was to lay her slim, still body on the bar. Men, already excited from the shots they had heard upstairs, looked at him and his burden with bulging eyes. He spoke briefly to the bartender.

“She is dead,” he said. “Steve Bordereau shot her. Get some women to take care of her--women who will treat her tenderly--or I’ll come back and kill you, so help me God.”

Then he ran out of the room.