Mr.Patterson did not inform his wife of the lawyer's personal threat to himself.But he managed, after Poindexter had left, to make her conscious that Mrs.Tucker might be a power to be placated and feared."You've shot off your mouth at her," he said argumentatively, "and whether you've hit the mark or not you've had your say.Ef you think it's worth a possible five thousand dollars and interest to keep on, heave ahead.Ef you rather have the chance of getting the rest in cash, you'll let up on her." "You don't suppose," returned Mrs.Patterson contemptuously, "that she's got anything but what that man of hers--Poindexter--lets her have?""The sheriff says," retorted Patterson surlily, "that she's notified him that she claims the rancho as a gift from her husband three years ago, and she's in POSSESSION now, and was so when the execution was out.It don't make no matter," he added, with gloomy philosophy, "who's got a full hand as long as WE ain't got the cards to chip in.I wouldn't 'a' minded it," he continued meditatively, "ef Spence Tucker had dropped a hint to me afore he put out." "And I suppose," said Mrs.Patterson angrily, "you'd have put out too?" "I reckon," said Patterson simply.
Twice or thrice during the evening he referred, more or less directly, to this lack of confidence shown by his late debtor and employer, and seemed to feel it more keenly than the loss of property.He confided his sentiments quite openly to the sheriff in possession, over the whiskey and euchre with which these gentlemen avoided the difficulties of their delicate relations.He brooded over it as he handed the keys of the shop to the sheriff when they parted for the night, and was still thinking of it when the house was closed, everybody gone to bed, and he was fetching a fresh jug of water from the well.The moon was at times obscured by flying clouds, the avant-couriers of the regular evening shower.
He was stooping over the well, when he sprang suddenly to his feet again."Who's there?" he demanded sharply.
"Hush!" said a voice so low and faint it might have been a whisper of the wind in the palisades of the corral.But, indistinct as it was, it was the voice of the man he was thinking of as far away, and it sent a thrill of alternate awe and pleasure through his pulses.
He glanced quickly around.The moon was hidden by a passing cloud, and only the faint outlines of the house he had just quitted were visible."Is that you, Spence?" he said tremulously.
"Yes," replied the voice, and a figure dimly emerged from the corner of the corral.
"Lay low, lay low, for God's sake," said Patterson, hurriedly throwing himself upon the apparition."The sheriff and his posse are in there.""But I must speak to you a moment," said the figure.
"Wait," said Patterson, glancing towards the building.Its blank, shutterless windows revealed no inner light; a profound silence encompassed it."Come quick," he whispered.Letting his grasp slip down to the unresisting hand of the stranger, he half-dragged, half-led him, brushing against the wall, into the open door of the deserted bar-room he had just quitted, locked the inner door, poured a glass of whiskey from a decanter, gave it to him, and then watched him drain it at a single draught.The moon came out, and, falling through the bare windows full upon the stranger's face, revealed the artistic but slightly disheveled curls and moustache of the fugitive, Spencer Tucker.
Whatever may have been the real influence of this unfortunate man upon his fellows, it seemed to find expression in a singular unanimity of criticism.Patterson looked at him with a half-dismal, half-welcoming smile."Well, you are a h-ll of a fellow, ain't you?"Spencer Tucker passed his hand through his hair and lifted it from his forehead, with a gesture at once emotional and theatrical."Iam a man with a price on me!" he said bitterly."Give me up to the sheriff, and you'll get five thousand dollars.Help me, and you'll get nothing.That's my d----d luck, and yours too, I suppose.""I reckon you're right there," said Patterson gloomily."But Ithought you got clean away.Went off in a ship--""Went off in a boat to a ship," interrupted Tucker savagely; "went off to a ship that had all my things on board--everything.The cursed boat capsized in a squall just off the Heads.The ship, d--n her, sailed away, the men thinking I was drowned, likely, and that they'd make a good thing off my goods, I reckon.""But the girl, Inez, who was with you, didn't she make a row?""Quien sabe?" returned Tucker, with a reckless laugh."Well, Ihung on like grim death to that boat's keel until one of those Chinese fishermen, in a 'dug-out,' hauled me in opposite Saucelito.
I chartered him and his dug-out to bring me down here.""Why here?" asked Patterson, with a certain ostentatious caution that ill-concealed his pensive satisfaction.
"You may well ask," returned Tucker, with an equal ostentation of bitterness, as he slightly waved his companion away."But Ireckoned I could trust a white man that I'd been kind to, and who wouldn't go back on me.No, no, let me go! Hand me over to the sheriff!"Patterson had suddenly grasped both the hands of the picturesque scamp before him, with an affection that for an instant almost shamed the man who had ruined him.But Tucker's egotism whispered that this affection was only a recognition of his own superiority, and felt flattered.He was beginning to believe that he was really the injured party.
