“No, for the noose of the riata was perhaps large,—who knows? It might have slipped down his arms, pinioned him, and pulled him off. Truly!—such has been known before. Then on the ground it slipped again, or he perhaps worked it off to his feet where it caught on his spur, and then he was dragged until the boot came off, and behold! he was dead.”

This had been Clarence’s own theory of the murder, but he had only half confided it to Incarnacion. He silently examined the spur with the accusing horse-hair, and placed it in his desk. Incarnacion continued:—

“There is not a vacquero in the whole rancho who has a horse-hair riata. We use the braided cowhide; it is heavier and stronger; it is for the bull and not the man. The horse-hair riata comes from over the range—south.”

There was a dead silence, broken only by the drumming of the rain upon the roof of the veranda. Incarnacion slightly shrugged his shoulders.

“Don Clarencio does not know the southern county? Francisco Robles, cousin of the ‘Sisters,’—he they call ‘Pancho,’—comes from the south. Surely when Don Clarencio bought the title he saw Francisco, for he was the steward?”

“I dealt only with the actual owners and through my bankers in San Francisco,” returned Clarence abstractedly.

Incarnacion looked through the yellow corners of his murky eyes at his master.

“Pedro Valdez, who was sent away by Senor Peyton, is the foster-brother of Francisco. They were much together. Now that Francisco is rich from the gold Don Clarencio paid for the title, they come not much together. But Pedro is rich, too. Mother of God! He gambles and is a fine gentleman. He holds his head high,—even over the Americanos he gambles with. Truly, they say he can shoot with the best of them. He boasts and swells himself, this Pedro! He says if all the old families were like him, they would drive those western swine back over the mountains again.”

Clarence raised his eyes, caught a subtle yellow flash from Incarnacion’s, gazed at him suddenly, and rose.

“I don’t think I have ever seen him,” he said quietly. “Thank you for bringing me the spur. But keep the knowledge of it to yourself, good Nascio, for the present.”

Nascio nevertheless still lingered. Perceiving which, Clarence handed him a cigarette and proceeded to light one himself. He knew that the vacquero would reroll his, and that that always deliberate occupation would cover and be an excuse for further confidence.

“The Senora Peyton does not perhaps meet this Pedro in the society of San Francisco?”

“Surely not. The senora is in mourning and goes not out in society, nor would she probably go anywhere where she would meet a dismissed servant of her husband.”

Incarnacion slowly lit his cigarette, and said between the puffs, “And the senorita—she would not meet him?”

“Assuredly not.”

“And,” continued Incarnacion, throwing down the match and putting his foot on it, “if this boaster, this turkey-cock, says she did, you could put him out like that?”

“Certainly,” said Clarence, with an easy confidence he was, however, far from feeling, “if he really SAID it—which I doubt.”

“Ah, truly,” said Incarnacion; “who knows? It may be another Senorita Silsbee.”

“The senora’s adopted daughter is called MISS PEYTON, friend Nascio. You forget yourself,” said Clarence quietly.

“Ah, pardon!” said Incarnacion with effusive apology; “but she was born Silsbee. Everybody knows it; she herself has told it to Pepita. The Senor Peyton bequeathed his estate to the Senora Peyton. He named not the senorita! Eh, what would you? It is the common cackle of the barnyard. But I say ‘Mees Silsbee.’ For look you. There is a Silsbee of Sacramento, the daughter of her aunt, who writes letters to her. Pepita has seen them! And possibly it is only that Mees of whom the brigand Pedro boasts.”

“Possibly,” said Clarence, “but as far as this rancho is concerned, friend Nascio, thou wilt understand—and I look to thee to make the others understand—that there is no Senorita SILSBEE here, only the Senorita PEYTON, the respected daughter of the senora thy mistress!” He spoke with the quaint mingling of familiarity and paternal gravity of the Spanish master—a faculty he had acquired at El Refugio in a like vicarious position, and which never failed as a sign of authority. “And now,” he added gravely, “get out of this, friend, with God’s blessing, and see that thou rememberest what I told thee.”

The retainer, with equal gravity, stepped backwards, saluted with his sombrero until the stiff brim scraped the floor, and then solemnly withdrew.

Left to himself, Clarence remained for an instant silent and thoughtful before the oven-like hearth. So! everybody knew Susy’s real relations to the Peytons, and everybody but Mrs. Peyton, perhaps, knew that she was secretly corresponding with some one of her own family. In other circumstances he might have found some excuse for this assertion of her independence and love of her kindred, but in her attitude towards Mrs. Peyton it seemed monstrous. It appeared impossible that Mrs. Peyton should not have heard of it, or suspected the young girl’s disaffection. Perhaps she had,—it was another burden laid upon her shoulders,—but the proud woman had kept it to herself. A film of moisture came across his eyes. I fear he thought less of the suggestion of Susy’s secret meeting with Pedro, or Incarnacion’s implied suspicions that Pedro was concerned in Peyton’s death, than of this sentimental possibility. He knew that Pedro had been hated by the others on account of his position; he knew the instinctive jealousies of the race and their predisposition to extravagant misconstruction. From what he had gathered, and particularly from the voices he had overheard on the Fair Plains Road, it seemed to him that Pedro was more capable of mercenary intrigue than physical revenge. He was not aware of the irrevocable affront put upon Pedro by Peyton, and he had consequently attached no importance to Peyton’s own half-scornful intimation of the only kind of retaliation that Pedro would be likely to take. The unsuccessful attempt upon himself he had always thought might have been an accident, or if it was really a premeditated assault, it might have been intended actually for HIMSELF and not Peyton, as he had first thought, and his old friend had suffered for HIM, through some mistake of the assailant. The purpose, which alone seemed wanting, might have been to remove Clarence as a possible witness who had overheard their conspiracy—how much of it they did not know—on the Fair Plains Road that night. The only clue he held to the murderer in the spur locked in his desk, merely led him beyond the confines of the rancho, but definitely nowhere else. It was, however, some relief to know that the crime was not committed by one of Peyton’s retainers, nor the outcome of domestic treachery.

After some consideration he resolved to seek Jim Hooker, who might be possessed of some information respecting Susy’s relations, either from the young girl’s own confidences or from Jim’s personal knowledge of the old frontier families. From a sense of loyalty to Susy and Mrs. Peyton, he had never alluded to the subject before him, but since the young girl’s own indiscretion had made it a matter of common report, however distasteful it was to his own feelings, he felt he could not plead the sense of delicacy for her. He had great hopes in what he had always believed was only her exaggeration of fact as well as feeling. And he had an instinctive reliance on her fellow poseur’s ability to detect it. A few days later, when he found he could safely leave the rancho alone, he rode to Fair Plains.

The floods were out along the turnpike road, and even seemed to have increased since his last journey. The face of the landscape had changed again. One of the lower terraces had become a wild mere of sedge and reeds. The dry and dusty bed of a forgotten brook had reappeared, a full-banked river, crossing the turnpike and compelling a long detour before the traveler could ford it. But as he approached the Hopkins farm and the opposite clearing and cabin of Jim Hooker, he was quite unprepared for a still more remarkable transformation. The cabin, a three-roomed structure, and its cattle-shed had entirely disappeared! There were no traces or signs of inundation. The land lay on a gentle acclivity above the farm and secure from the effects of the flood, and a part of the ploughed and cleared land around the site of the cabin showed no evidence of overflow on its black, upturned soil. But the house was gone! Only a few timbers too heavy to be removed, the blighting erasions of a few months of occupation, and the dull, blackened area of the site itself were to be seen. The fence alone was intact.

Clarence halted before it, perplexed and astonished. Scarcely two weeks had elapsed since he had last visited it and sat beneath its roof with Jim, and already its few ruins had taken upon themselves the look of years of abandonment and decay. The wild land seemed to have thrown off its yoke of cultivation in a night, and nature rioted again with all its primal forces over the freed soil. Wild oats and mustard were springing already in the broken furrows, and lank vines were slimily spreading over a few scattered but still unseasoned and sappy shingles. Some battered tin cans and fragments of old clothing looked as remote as if they had been relics of the earliest immigration.

Clarence turned inquiringly towards the Hopkins farmhouse across the road. His arrival, however, had already been noticed, as the door of the kitchen opened in an anticipatory fashion, and he could see the slight figure of Phoebe Hopkins in the doorway, backed by the overlooking heads and shoulders of her parents. The face of the young girl was pale and drawn with anxiety, at which Clarence’s simple astonishment took a shade of concern.

“I am looking for Mr. Hooker,” he said uneasily. “And I don’t seem to be able to find either him or his house.”

“And you don’t know what’s gone of him?” said the girl quickly.

“No; I haven’t seen him for two weeks.”

“There, I told you so!” said the girl, turning nervously to her parents. “I knew it. He hasn’t seen him for two weeks.” Then, looking almost tearfully at Clarence’s face, she said, “No more have we.”

“But,” said Clarence impatiently, “something must have happened. Where is his house?”

“Taken away by them jumpers,” interrupted the old farmer; “a lot of roughs that pulled it down and carted it off in a jiffy before our very eyes without answerin’ a civil question to me or her. But he wasn’t there, nor before, nor since.”

“No,” added the old woman, with flashing eyes, “or he’d let ‘em have what ther’ was in his six-shooters.”

“No, he wouldn’t, mother,” said the girl impatiently, “he’d CHANGED, and was agin all them ideas of force and riotin’. He was for peace and law all the time. Why, the day before we missed him he was tellin’ me California never would be decent until people obeyed the laws and the titles were settled. And for that reason, because he wouldn’t fight agin the law, or without the consent of the law, they’ve killed him, or kidnapped him away.”

The girl’s lips quivered, and her small brown hands twisted the edges of her blue checked apron. Although this new picture of Jim’s peacefulness was as astounding and unsatisfactory as his own disappearance, there was no doubt of the sincerity of poor Phoebe’s impression.

In vain did Clarence point out to them there must be some mistake; that the trespassers—the so-called jumpers—really belonged to the same party as Hooker, and would have no reason to dispossess him; that, in fact, they were all HIS, Clarence’s, tenants. In vain he assured them of Hooker’s perfect security in possession; that he could have driven the intruders away by the simple exhibition of his lease, or that he could have even called a constable from the town of Fair Plains to protect him from mere lawlessness. In vain did he assure them of his intention to find his missing friend, and reinstate him at any cost. The conviction that the unfortunate young man had been foully dealt with was fixed in the minds of the two women. For a moment Clarence himself was staggered by it.

“You see,” said the young girl, with a kindling face, “the day before he came back from Robles, ther’ were some queer men hangin’ round his cabin, but as they were the same kind that went off with him the day the Sisters’ title was confirmed, we thought nothing of it. But when he came back from you he seemed worried and anxious, and wasn’t a bit like himself. We thought perhaps he’d got into some trouble there, or been disappointed. He hadn’t, had he, Mr. Brant?” continued Phoebe, with an appealing look.

“By no means,” said Clarence warmly. “On the contrary, he was able to do his friends good service there, and was successful in what he attempted. Mrs. Peyton was very grateful. Of course he told you what had happened, and what he did for us,” continued Clarence, with a smile.

He had already amused himself on the way with a fanciful conception of the exaggerated account Jim had given of his exploits. But the bewildered girl shook her head.

“No, he didn’t tell us ANYTHING.”

Clarence was really alarmed. This unprecedented abstention of Hooker’s was portentous.

“He didn’t say anything but what I told you about law and order,” she went on; “but that same night we heard a good deal of talking and shouting in the cabin and around it. And the next day he was talking with father, and wanting to know how HE kept his land without trouble from outsiders.”

“And I said,” broke in Hopkins, “that I guessed folks didn’t bother a man with women folks around, and that I kalkilated that I wasn’t quite as notorious for fightin’ as he was.”

“And he said,” also interrupted Mrs. Hopkins, “and quite in his nat’ral way, too,—gloomy like, you remember, Cyrus,” appealingly to her husband,—“that that was his curse.”

The smile that flickered around Clarence’s mouth faded, however, as he caught sight of Phoebe’s pleading, interrogating eyes. It was really too bad. Whatever change had come over the rascal it was too evident that his previous belligerent personality had had its full effect upon the simple girl, and that, hereafter, one pair of honest eyes would be wistfully following him.

Perplexed and indignant, Clarence again closely questioned her as to the personnel of the trespassing party who had been seen once or twice since passing over the field. He had at last elicited enough information to identify one of them as Gilroy, the leader of the party that had invaded Robles rancho. His cheek flushed. Even if they had wished to take a theatrical and momentary revenge on Hooker for the passing treachery to them which they had just discovered, although such retaliation was only transitory, and they could not hold the land, it was an insult to Clarence himself, whose tenant Jim was, and subversive of all their legally acquired rights. He would confront this Gilroy at once; his half-wild encampment was only a few miles away, just over the boundaries of the Robles estate. Without stating his intention, he took leave of the Hopkins family with the cheerful assurance that he would probably return with some news of Hooker, and rode away.

The trail became more indistinct and unfrequented as it diverged from the main road, and presently lost itself in the slope towards the east. The horizon grew larger: there were faint bluish lines upon it which he knew were distant mountains; beyond this a still fainter white line—the Sierran snows. Presently he intersected a trail running south, and remarked that it crossed the highway behind him, where he had once met the two mysterious horsemen. They had evidently reached the terrace through the wild oats by that trail. A little farther on were a few groups of sheds and canvas tents in a bare and open space, with scattered cattle and horsemen, exactly like an encampment, or the gathering of a country fair. As Clarence rode down towards them he could see that his approach was instantly observed, and that a simultaneous movement was made as if to anticipate him. For the first time he realized the possible consequences of his visit, single-handed, but it was too late to retrace his steps. With a glance at his holster, he rode boldly forward to the nearest shed. A dozen men hovered near him, but something in his quiet, determined manner held them aloof. Gilroy was on the threshold in his shirtsleeves. A single look showed him that Clarence was alone, and with a careless gesture of his hand he warned away his own followers.

“You’ve got a sort of easy way of droppin’ in whar you ain’t invited, Brant,” he said with a grim smile, which was not, however, without a certain air of approval. “Got it from your father, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t believe HE ever thought it necessary to warn twenty men of the approach of ONE,” replied Clarence, in the same tone. “I had no time to stand on ceremony, for I have just come from Hooker’s quarter section at Fair Plains.”

Gilroy smiled again, and gazed abstractedly at the sky.

“You know as well as I do,” said Clarence, controlling his voice with an effort, “that what you have done there will have to be undone, if you wish to hold even those lawless men of yours together, or keep yourself and them from being run into the brush like highwaymen. I’ve no fear for that. Neither do I care to know what was your motive in doing it; but I can only tell you that if it was retaliation, I alone was and still am responsible for Hooker’s action at the rancho. I came here to know just what you have done with him, and, if necessary, to take his place.”

“You’re just a little too previous in your talk, I reckon, Brant,” returned Gilroy lazily, “and as to legality, I reckon we stand on the same level with yourself, just here. Beginnin’ with what you came for: as we don’t know where your Jim Hooker is, and as we ain’t done anythin’ to HIM, we don’t exackly see what we could do with YOU in his place. Ez to our motives,—well, we’ve got a good deal to say about THAT. We reckoned that he wasn’t exackly the kind of man we wanted for a neighbor. His pow’ful fightin’ style didn’t suit us peaceful folks, and we thought it rather worked agin this new ‘law and order’ racket to have such a man about, to say nuthin’ of it prejudicin’ quiet settlers. He had too many revolvers for one man to keep his eye on, and was altogether too much steeped in blood, so to speak, for ordinary washin’ and domestic purposes! His hull get up was too deathlike and clammy; so we persuaded him to leave. We just went there, all of us, and exhorted him. We stayed round there two days and nights, takin’ turns, talkin’ with him, nuthin’ more, only selecting subjects in his own style to please him, until he left! And then, as we didn’t see any use for his house there, we took it away. Them’s the cold facts, Brant,” he added, with a certain convincing indifference that left no room for doubt, “and you can stand by ‘em. Now, workin’ back to the first principle you laid down,—that we’ll have to UNDO what we’ve DONE,—we don’t agree with you, for we’ve taken a leaf outer your own book. We’ve got it here in black and white. We’ve got a bill o’ sale of Hooker’s house and possession, and we’re on the land in place of him,—AS YOUR TENANTS.” He reentered the shanty, took a piece of paper from a soap-box on the shell, and held it out to Clarence. “Here it is. It’s a fair and square deal, Brant. We gave him, as it says here, a hundred dollars for it! No humbuggin’, but the hard cash, by Jiminy! AND HE TOOK THE MONEY.”

The ring of truth in the man’s voice was as unmistakable as the signature in Jim’s own hand. Hooker had sold out! Clarence turned hastily away.

“We don’t know where he went,” continued Gilroy grimly, “but I reckon you ain’t over anxious to see him NOW. And I kin tell ye something to ease your mind,—he didn’t require much persuadin’. And I kin tell ye another, if ye ain’t above takin’ advice from folks that don’t pertend to give it,” he added, with the same curious look of interest in his face. “You’ve done well to get shut of him, and if you got shut of a few more of his kind that you trust to, you’d do better.”

As if to avoid noticing any angry reply from the young man, he reentered the cabin and shut the door behind him. Clarence felt the uselessness of further parley, and rode away.

But Gilroy’s Parthian arrow rankled as he rode. He was not greatly shocked at Jim’s defection, for he was always fully conscious of his vanity and weakness; but he was by no means certain that Jim’s extravagance and braggadocio, which he had found only amusing and, perhaps, even pathetic, might not be as provocative and prejudicial to others as Gilroy had said. But, like all sympathetic and unselfish natures, he sought to find some excuse for his old companion’s weakness in his own mistaken judgment. He had no business to bring poor Jim on the land, to subject his singular temperament to the temptations of such a life and such surroundings; he should never have made use of his services at the rancho. He had done him harm rather than good in his ill-advised, and, perhaps, SELFISH attempts to help him. I have said that Gilroy’s parting warning rankled in his breast, but not ignobly. It wounded the surface of his sensitive nature, but could not taint or corrupt the pure, wholesome blood of the gentleman beneath it. For in Gilroy’s warning he saw only his own shortcomings. A strange fatality had marked his friendships. He had been no help to Jim; he had brought no happiness to Susy or Mrs. Peyton, whose disagreement his visit seemed to have accented. Thinking over the mysterious attack upon himself, it now seemed to him possible that, in some obscure way, his presence at the rancho had precipitated the more serious attack on Peyton. If, as it had been said, there was some curse upon his inheritance from his father, he seemed to have made others share it with him. He was riding onward abstractedly, with his head sunk on his breast and his eyes fixed upon some vague point between his horse’s sensitive ears, when a sudden, intelligent, forward pricking of them startled him, and an apparition arose from the plain before him that seemed to sweep all other sense away.

It was the figure of a handsome young horseman as abstracted as himself, but evidently on better terms with his own personality. He was dark haired, sallow cheeked, and blue eyed,—the type of the old Spanish Californian. A burnt-out cigarette was in his mouth, and he was riding a roan mustang with the lazy grace of his race. But what arrested Clarence’s attention more than his picturesque person was the narrow, flexible, long coil of gray horse-hair riata which hung from his saddle-bow, but whose knotted and silver-beaded terminating lash he was swirling idly in his narrow brown hand. Clarence knew and instantly recognized it as the ordinary fanciful appendage of a gentleman rider, used for tethering his horse on lonely plains, and always made the object of the most lavish expenditure of decoration and artistic skill. But he was as suddenly filled with a blind, unreasoning sense of repulsion and fury, and lifted his eyes to the man as he approached. What the stranger saw in Clarence’s blazing eyes no one but himself knew, for his own became fixed and staring; his sallow cheeks grew lanker and livid; his careless, jaunty bearing stiffened into rigidity, and swerving his horse to one side he suddenly passed Clarence at a furious gallop. The young American wheeled quickly, and for an instant his knees convulsively gripped the flanks of his horse to follow. But the next moment he recalled himself, and with an effort began to collect his thoughts. What was he intending to do, and for what reason! He had met hundreds of such horsemen before, and caparisoned and accoutred like this, even to the riata. And he certainly was not dressed like either of the mysterious horsemen whom he had overheard that moonlight evening. He looked back; the stranger had already slackened his pace, and was slowly disappearing. Clarence turned and rode on his way.