Page:The Pacific Monthly vol. 14.djvu/82

 seemed an Artie one, and sometimes he fancied that Davidson was a new Joshua, but night fell at last and Lacey was locked up.

In the morning the marshal saddled the horses, and the two men rode out together into the silent, dream-haunted hills.

Months later the department store tried to learn what had become of its man, Richard Lacey; but it never found out. There is a rough outlaw with the Hole-in-the-Wall gang, who is said by his partners to be one of the worst men in the hills. His name is Dick Jones, though he is commonly called "Loco," and he is wanted for the murder of Davidson, and for many later and more notorious crimes. He could tell you all about Richard Lacey.

N a tropical garden, dense and sweet, Sam West lay at full length in a hammock lazily smoking a cigarette. His sensuous nature was drinking in the soft Brazilian music floating from the house, as part of the perfect moonlight night. His thoughts, if he had any, were of the comfortable present, rather than of the strenuous past or the uncertain future, and he felt a vague, indefinable resentment when the music stopped suddenly.

A girl in white appeared among the long palm-leaf shadows lying on the gravel paths.

"Why stop?" inquired Sam plaintively.

"Because I want to talk to you," she said with perfect frankness.

Sam sat up and threw away his cigarette.

"Miss Elizabeth, you alarm me. After all these days when you have so palpably ignored my devotion, something serious must have happened to make you come to me. Something serious, indeed!"

He led the way to a bench, deep in the shadow of some thick bushy plants, and sat thinking during Elizabeth's hesitating silence.

When he and Jack Hardesty, together with a certain professor from one of the lesser American colleges, all intent on coral specimens, had first arrived in Pernambuco, they found the whole country in an uproarious ferment over America's war with Spain and the apparently approaching trouble with Bolivia. Fearing trouble, they had gladly accepted the invitation of the English consul and his daughter to make his house their refuge.

During a long delay, occasioned by their inability to beg, buy or steal a boat in which to make their extended trip in and about the coral reefs, their little hostess had become very fond of the lively college graduates.

On their sudden forced return into town after fracases with the natives at every village where they stopped for provisions, the Englishman had lodged them in an outhouse in his high-walled garden, where, he thought, they would be safe. His daughter was at the same time enjoying every minute of their stay, nothing having hanpened to break the playful serenity of their intercourse, the harmless nonsense of the college men serving to hide their anxiety.

"Sam, have you and Jack quarreled?" she asked at last.

"Why, er — no. That is, we had a small difference of opinion about — er. But you couldn't call it a quarrel, you know."

Elizabeth leaned back and picked a white, heavily scented flower, and sniffed at it absently. Sam, watching her with his poetic soul in his eyes, forgot his worries again. How she fitted into the night, this transplanted English rose!

"Where's the Professor?" asked she, turning her gaze slowly upon him.