A Villon Of The Desert

: Bucky O'connor

When Alice Mackenzie looked back in after years upon the incidents

connected with that ride to the Rocking Chair, it was always with a kind

of glorified pride in her villain-hero. He had his moments, had this

twentieth-century Villon, when he represented not unworthily the

divinity in man; and this day held more than one of them. Since he was

what he was, it also held as many of his black moods.



The start was delayed, owing to a cause Leroy had not foreseen. When

York went, sleepy-eyed, to the corral to saddle the ponies, he found the

bars into the pasture let clown, and the whole remunda kicking up its

heels in a paddock large as a goodsized city. The result was that it

took two hours to run up the bunch of ponies and another half-hour to

cut out, rope, and saddle the three that were wanted. Throughout the

process Reilly sat on the fence and scowled.



Leroy, making an end of slapping on and cinching the last saddle,

wheeled suddenly on the Irishman. "What's the matter, Reilly?"



"Was I saying anything was the matter?"



"You've been looking it right hard. Ain't you man enough to say it

instead of playing dirty little three-for-a-cent tricks--like letting

down the corral-bars?"



Reilly flung a look at Neil that plainly demanded support, and then

descended with truculent defiance from the fence.



"Who says I let down the bars? You bet I am man enough to say what I

think; and if ye think I ain't got the nerve--"



His master encouraged him with ironic derision. "That's right, Reilly.

Who's afraid? Cough it up and show York you're game."



"By thunder, I AM game. I've got a kick coming, sorr."



"Yes?" Leroy rolled and lit a cigarette, his black eyes fixed intently

on the malcontent. "Well, register it on the jump. I've got to be off."



"That's the point." The curly-headed Neil had lounged up to his

comrade's support. "Why have you got to be off? We don't savvy your

game, cap."



"Perhaps you would like to be major-domo of this outfit, Neil?" scoffed

his chief, eying him scornfully.



"No, sir. I ain't aimin' for no such thing. But we don't like the

way things are shaping. What does all this here funny business mean,

anyhow?" His thumb jerked toward Collins, already mounted and waiting

for Leroy to join him. "Two days ago this world wasn't big enough to

hold him and you. Well, I git the drop on him, and then you begin to

cotton up to him right away. Big dinner last night--champagne corks

popping, I hear. What I want to know is what it means. And here's this

Miss Mackenzie. She's good for a big ransom, but I don't see it ambling

our way. It looks darned funny."



"That's the ticket, York," derided Leroy. "Come again. Turn your wolf

loose."



"Oh! I ain't afraid to say what I think."



"I see you're not. You should try stump-speaking, my friend. There's a

field fox you there."



"I'm asking you a question, Mr. Leroy."



"That's whatever," chipped in Reilly.



"Put a name to it."



"Well, I want to know what's the game, and where we come in."



"Think you're getting the double-cross?" asked Leroy pleasantly, his

vigilant eyes covering them like a weapon.



"Now you're shouting. That's what I'd like right well to know. There he

sits"--with another thumbjerk at Collins--"and I'm a Chink if he ain't

carryin' them same two guns I took offen him, one on the train and one

here the other day. I ain't sayin' it ain't all right, cap. But what I

do say is--how about it?"



Leroy did some thinking out loud. "Of course I might tell you boys to go

to the devil. That's my right, because you chose me to run this outfit

without any advice from the rest of you. But you're such infants, I

reckon I had better explain. You're always worrying those fat brains of

yours with suspicions. After we stuck up the Limited you couldn't trust

me to take care of the swag. Reilly here had to cook up a fool scheme

for us all to hide it blindfold together. I told you straight what would

happen, and it did. When Scott crossed the divide we were in a Jim Dandy

of a hole. We had to have that paper of his to find the boodle. Then

Hardman gets caught, and coughs up his little recipe for helping to find

hidden treasure. Who gets them both? Mr. Sheriff Collins, of course.

Then he comes visiting us. Not being a fool, he leaves the documents

behind in a safety-deposit vault. Unless I can fix up a deal with him,

Mr. Reilly's wise play buncoes us and himself out of thirty thousand

dollars."



"Why don't you let him send for the papers first?"



"Because he won't do it. Threaten nothing! Collins ain't that kind of a

hairpin. He'd tell us to shoot and be damned."



"So you've got it fixed with him?" demanded Neil.



"You've a head like a sheep, York," admired Leroy. "YOU don't need any

brick-wall hints to hit you. As your think-tank has guessed, I have come

to an understanding with Collins."



"But the gyurl--I allow the old major would come down with a right smart

ransom."



"Wrong guess, York. I allow he would come down with a right smart posse

and wipe us off the face of the earth. Collins tells me the major has

sent for a couple of Apache trailers from the reservation. That means

it's up to us to hike for Sonora. The only point is whether we take that

buried money with us or leave it here. If I make a deal with Collins,

we get it. If I don't, it's somebody else's gold-mine. Anything more the

committee of investigation would like to know?" concluded Leroy, as his

cold eyes raked them scornfully and came to rest on Reilly.



"Not for mine," said Neil, with an apologetic laugh. "I'm satisfied. I

just wanted to know. And I guess Cork corroborates."



Reilly growled something under his breath, and turned to hulk away.



"One moment. You'll listen to me, now. You have taken the liberty to

assume I was going to sell you out. I'll not stand that from any man

alive. To-morrow night I'll get back from Tucson. We'll dig up the loot

and divide it. And right then we quit company. You go your way and I

go mine." And with that as a parting shot, Leroy turned on his heel and

went direct to his horse.



Alice Mackenzie might have searched the West with a fine-tooth comb and

not found elsewhere two such riders for an escort as fenced her that

day. Physically they were a pair of superb animals, each perfect after

his fashion. If the fair-haired giant, with his lean, broad shoulders

and rippling flow of muscles, bulked more strikingly in a display of

sheer strength, the sinewy, tigerish grace of the dark Apollo left

nothing to be desired to the eye. Both of them had been brought up in

the saddle, and each was fit to the minute for any emergency likely to

appear.



But on this pleasant morning no test of their power seemed likely to

arise, and she could study them at her ease without hindrance. She had

never seen Leroy look more the vagabond enthroned. For dress, he wore

the common equipment of Cattleland--jingling spurs, fringed chaps,

leather cuffs, gray shirt, with kerchief knotted loosely at the neck,

and revolver ready to his hand. But he carried them with an air, an

inimitable grace, that marked him for a prince among his fellows.

Something of the kind she hinted to him in jesting paradoxical fashion,

making an attempt to win from his sardonic gloom one of his quick,

flashing smiles.



He countered by telling her what he had heard York say to Reilly of her.

"She's a princess, Cork," York had said. "Makes my Epitaph gyurl look

like a chromo beside her. Somehow, when she looks at a fellow, he feels

like a whitewashed nigger."



All of them laughed at that, but both Leroy and the sheriff tried to

banter her by insisting that they knew exactly what York meant.



"You can be very splendid when you want to give a man that whitewashed

feeling; he isn't right sure whether he's on the map or not," reproached

the train-robber.



She laughed in the slow, indolent way she had, taking the straw hat from

her dark head to catch better the faint breath of wind that was soughing

across the plains.



"I didn't know I was so terrible. I don't think you ever had any awe of



anybody, Mr. Leroy." Her soft cheek flushed in unexpected memory of that

moment when he had brushed aside all her maiden reserves and ravished

mad kisses from her. "And Mr. Collins is big enough to take care of

himself," she added hastily, to banish the unwelcome recollection.



Collins, with his eyes on the light-shot waves that crowned her vivid

face, wondered whether he was or not. If she had been a woman to desire

in the queenly, half-insolent indifference of manner with which she had

first met him, how much more of charm lay in this piquant gaiety, in the

warm sweetness of her softer and more pliant mood! It seemed to him she

had the gift of comradeship to perfection.



They unsaddled and ate lunch in the shade of the live-oaks at El Dorado

Springs, which used to be a much-frequented watering-hole in the days

when Camp Grant thrived and mule-skinners freighted supplies in to feed

Uncle Sam's pets. Two hours later they stopped again at the edge of the

Santa Cruz wash, two miles from the Rocking Chair Ranch.



It was while they were resaddling that Collins caught sight of a cloud

of dust a mile or two away. He unslung his field-glasses, and looked

long at the approaching dust-swirl. Presently he handed the binoculars

to Leroy.



"Five of them; and that round-bellied Papago pony in front belongs to

Sheriff Forbes, or I'm away wrong."



Leroy lowered the glasses, after a long, unflurried inspection. "Looks

that way to me. Expect I'd better be burning the wind."



In a few sentences he and Collins arranged a meeting for next day up in

the hills. He trailed his spurs through the dust toward Alice Mackenzie,

and offered her his brown hand and wistful smile irresistible. "Good-by.

This is where you get quit of me for good."



"Oh, I hope not," she told him impulsively. "We must always be friends."



He laughed ruefully. "Your father wouldn't indorse those unwise

sentiments, I reckon--and I'd hate to bet your husband would," he added

audaciously, with a glance at Collins. "But I love to hear you say

it, even though we never could be. You're a right game, stanch little

pardner. I'll back that opinion with the lid off."



"You should be a good judge of those qualities. I'm only sorry you don't

always use them in a good cause."



He swung himself to his saddle. "Good-by."



"Good-by--till we meet again."



"And that will be never. So-long, sheriff. Tell Forbes I've got a

particular engagement in the hills, but I'll be right glad to meet him

when he comes."



He rode up the draw and disappeared over the brow of the hillock. She

caught another glimpse of him a minute later on the summit of the hill

beyond. He waved a hand at her, half-turning in his saddle as he rode.



Presently she lost him, but faintly the wind swept back to her a

haunting snatch of uncouth song:



"Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee,

In my narrow grave just six by three,"



Were the words drifted to her by the wind. She thought it pathetically

likely he might get the wish of his song.



To Sheriff Forbes, dropping into the draw a few minutes later with his

posse, Collins was a well of misinformation literally true. Yes, he

had followed Miss Mackenzie's trail into the hills and found her at a

mountain ranch-house. She had been there a couple of days, and was about

to set out for the Rocking Chair with the owner of the place, when he

arrived and volunteered to see her as far as her uncle's ranch.



"I reckon there ain't any use asking you if you seen anything of Wolf

Leroy's outfit," said Forbes, a weather-beaten Westerner with a shrewd,

wrinkled face.



"No, I reckon there's no use asking me that," returned Collins, with a

laugh that deceptively seemed to include the older man in the joke.



"We're after them for rustling a bunch of Circle 33 cows. Well, I'll

be moving. Glad you found the lady, Val. She don't look none played out

from her little trek across the desert. Funny, ain't it, how she could

have wandered that far and her afoot?"



The Arizona sun was setting in its accustomed blaze of splendor, when

Val Collins and Alice Mackenzie put their horses again toward the ranch

and the rainbow-hued west. In his contented eyes were reflected the

sunshine and a serenity born of life in the wide, open spaces. They rode

in silence for long, the gentle evening breeze blowing in soughs.



"Did you ever meet a man of such promises gone wrong so utterly? He

might have been anything--and it has come to this, that he is hunted

like a wild beast. I never saw anything so pitiful. I would give

anything to save him."



He had no need to ask to whom she was referring. "Can't be done. Good

qualities bulge out all over him, but they don't count for anything.

'Unstable as water.' That's what's the matter with him. He is the slave

of his own whims. Hence he is only the splendid wreck of a man, full

of all kinds of rich outcropping pay-ore that pinch out when you try to

work them. They don't raise men gamer, but that only makes him a more

dangerous foe to society. Same with his loyalty and his brilliancy. He's

got a haid on him that works like they say old J. E. B. Stuart's did. He

would run into a hundred traps, but somehow he always worked his men out

of them. That's Leroy, too. If he had been an ordinary criminal he

would have been rounded up years ago. It's his audacity, his iron nerve,

his good horse-sense judgment that saves his skin. But he's certainly up

against it at last."



"You think Sheriff Forbes will capture him?"



He laughed. "I think it more likely he'll capture Forbes. But we know

now where he hangs out, and who he is. He has always been a mystery till

now. The mystery is solved, and unless he strikes out for Sonora, Leroy

is as good as a dead man."



"A dead man?"



"Does he strike you as a man likely to be taken alive? I look to see a

dramatic exit to the sound of cracking Winchesters."



"Yes, that would be like him," she confessed with shudder. "I think he

was made to lead a forlorn hope. Pity it won't be one worthy of the best

in him."



"I guess he does have more moments set to music than most of us, and

I'll bet, too, he has hidden way in him a list of 'Thou shalt nots.' I

read a book once by a man named Stevenson that was sure virgin gold. He

showed how every man, no matter how low he falls, has somewhere in him

a light that burns, some rag of honor for which he is still fighting I'd

hate to have to judge Leroy. Some men, I reckon, have to buck against so

much in themselves that even failure is a kind of success for them."



"Yet you will go out to hunt him down?" she' said, marveling at the

broad sympathy of the man.



"Sure I will. My official duty is to look out for society. If something

in the machine breaks loose and goes to ripping things to pieces, the

engineer has to stop the damage, even if he has to smash the rod that's

causing the trouble."



The ponies dropped down again into the bed of the wash, and plowed

across through the heavy sand. After they had reached the solid road,

Collins resumed conversation at a new point.



"It's a month and a day since I first met you Miss Mackenzie," he said,

apparently apropos of nothing.



She felt her blood begin to choke. "Indeed!"



"I gave you a letter to read when I was on the train."



"A letter!" she exclaimed, in well-affected surprise.



"Did you think it was a book of poems? No, ma'am, it was a letter. You

were to read it in a month. Time was up last night. I reckon you read

it."



"Could I read a letter I left at Tucson, when it was a hundred miles

away?" she smiled with sweet patronage.



"Not if you left it at Tucson," he assented, with an answering smile.



"Maybe I DID lose it." She frowned, trying to remember.



"Then I'll have to tell you what was in it."



"Any time will do. I dare say it wasn't important."



"Then we'll say THIS time."



"Don't be stupid, Mr. Collins. I want to talk about our desert Villon."



"I said in that letter--"



She put her pony to a canter, and they galloped side by side in silence

for half a mile. After she had slowed down to a walk, he continued

placidly, as if oblivious of an interruption:



"I said in that letter that I had just met the young lady I was

expecting to marry."



"Dear me, how interesting! Was she in the smoker?"



"No, she was in Section 3 of the Pullman."



"I wish I had happened to go into the other Pullman, but, of course, I

couldn't know the young lady you were interested in was riding there."



"She wasn't."



"But you've just told me--"



"That I said in the letter you took so much trouble to lose that

I expected to marry the young woman passing under the name of Miss

Wainwright."



"Sir!"



"That I expected--"



"Really, I am not deaf, Mr. Collins."



"--expected to marry her, just as soon as she was willing."



"Oh, she is to be given a voice in the matter, is she?"



"Ce'tainly, ma'am."



"And when?"



"Well, I had been thinking now was a right good time."



"It can't be too soon for me," she flashed back, sweeping him with

proud, indignant eyes.



"But I ain't so sure. I rather think I'd better wait."



"No, no! Let us have it done with once and for all."



He relapsed into a serene, abstracted silence.



"Aren't you going to speak?" she flamed.



"I've decided to wait."



"Well, I haven't. Ask me this minute, sir, to marry you."



"Ce'tainly, if you cayn't wait. Miss Mackenzie, will you--"



"No, sir, I won't--not if you were the last man on earth," she

interrupted hotly, whipping herself into a genuine rage. "I never was

so insulted in my life. It would be ridiculous if it weren't so--so

outrageous. You EXPECT, do you? And it isn't conceit, but a deep-seated

certainty you can't get away from."



He had her fairly. "Then you DID read the letter."



"Yes, sir, I read it--and for sheer, unmatched impudence I have never

seen its like."



"Now, I wish you would tell me what you REALLY think," he drawled.



Not being able, for reasons equestrian, to stamp her foot, she gave her

bronco the spur.



When Collins again found conversation practicable, the Rocking Chair, a

white adobe huddle in the moonlight, lay peacefully beneath them in the

alley.



"It's a right quaint old ranch, and it's seen a heap of rough-and-tumble

life in its day. If those old adobe bricks could tell stories, I expect

they could put some of these romances out of business." Miss Mackenzie's

covert glance questioned suspiciously what this diversion might mean.



"All this country's interesting. Take Tucson now that burg is loaded to

the roofs with live stories. It's an all-right business town, too--the

best in the territory," he continued patriotically. "She ain't so great

as Douglas on ore or as Phoenix on lungers, but when it comes, to the

git-up-and-git hustle, she's there rounding up the trade from early morn

till dine."



He was still expatiating in a monologue with grave enthusiasm on the

town of his choice, when they came to the pasture fence of the ranch.



"Some folks don't like it--call it adobe-town, and say it's full of

greasers. Everybody to his taste, I say. Little old Tucson is good

enough for me."



She gave a queer little laugh as he talked. She had put a taboo on his

love story herself, but she resented the perfectly unmoved good humor

with which he seemed to be accepting her verdict. She made up her mind

to punish him, but he gave her no chance. As he helped her to dismount,

he said:



"I'll take the horses round to the stable, Miss Mackenzie. Probably I

won't see you again before I leave, but I'm hoping to meet you again in

Tucson one of these days. Good-by."



She nodded a curt good-by and passed into the house. She was vexed and

indignant, but had too strong a sense of humor not to enjoy a joke even

when it was against herself.



"I forgot to ask him whether he loves me or Tucson more, and as one of

the subjects seems to be closed I'll probably never find out," she told

herself, but with a queer little tug of pain in her laughter.



Next moment she was in the arms of her father.