Why was he so keen to hunt me up at first, shadowing my friends and all that, and why has he dropped it now he knows I'm here, if he didn't know where Spencer was?""I can explain that," interrupted Mrs.Tucker, hastily, with a blush of confusion."That is--I--""Then mebbe you kin explain too," broke in Patterson with gloomy significance, "why he has bought up most of Spencer's debts himself, and perhaps you're satisfied it ISN'T to hold the whip hand of him and keep him from coming back openly.Pr'aps you know why he's movin' heaven and earth to make Don Jose Santierra sell the ranch, and why the Don don't see it all.""Don Jose sell Los Cuervos! Buy it, you mean?" said Mrs.Tucker.
"I offered to sell it to him."
Patterson arose from the chair, looked despairingly around him, passed his hand sadly across his forehead, and said: "It's come! Iknew it would.It's the warning! It's suthing betwixt jim-jams and doddering idjiocy.Here I'd hev been willin' to swear that Mrs.Baxter here told me SHE had sold this yer ranch nearly two years ago to Don Jose, and now you--""Stop!" said Mrs.Tucker, in a voice that chilled them.
She was standing upright and rigid, as if stricken to stone."Icommand you to tell me what this means!" she said, turning only her blazing eyes upon the woman.
Even the ready smile faded from Mrs.Baxter's lips as she replied hesitatingly and submissively: "I thought you knew already that Spencer had given this ranch to me.I sold it to Don Jose to get the money for us to go away with.It was Spencer's idea--""You lie!" said Mrs.Tucker.
There was a dead silence.The wrathful blood that had quickly mounted to Mrs.Baxter's cheek, to Patterson's additional bewilderment, faded as quickly.She did not lift her eyes again to Mrs.Tucker's, but, slowly raising herself from her seat, said, "Iwish to God I did lie; but it's true.And it's true that I never touched a cent of the money, but gave it all to him!" She laid her hand on Patterson's arm, and said, "Come! let us go," and led him a few steps towards the gateway.But here Patterson paused, and again passed his hand over his melancholy brow.The necessity of coherently and logically closing the conversation impressed itself upon his darkening mind."Then you don't happen to have heard anything of Spencer?" he said sadly, and vanished with Mrs.Baxter through the gate.
Left alone to herself, Mrs.Tucker raised her hands above her head with a little cry, interlocked her rigid fingers, and slowly brought her palms down upon her upturned face and eyes, pressing hard as if to crush out all light and sense of life before her.
She stood thus for a moment motionless and silent, with the rising wind whispering without and flecking her white morning dress with gusty shadows from the arbor.Then, with closed eyes, dropping her hands to her breast, still pressing hard, she slowly passed them down the shapely contours of her figure to the waist, and with another cry cast them off as if she were stripping herself of some loathsome garment.Then she walked quickly to the gateway, looked out, returned to the corridor, unloosening and taking off her wedding-ring from her finger as she walked.Here she paused, then slowly and deliberately rearranged the chairs and adjusted the gay-colored rugs that draped them, and quietly re-entered her chamber.
