The Bells of San Juan by Jackson Gregory

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THE BELLS OF SAN JUAN

A Novel

by

JACKSON GREGORY

Author of _Judith of Blue Lake Ranch_, _The Joyous Trouble Maker_,
_Man to Man_, etc.

Illustrated by Frank Tenney Johnson

New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers

1919

[Frontispiece: Having come closer he reined in his horse, stared at her
a moment in surprised wonderment. . .]

TO

RODERICK NORTON GREGORY

CONTENTS

FOREWORD--THE BELLS

CHAPTER

I. THE BELLS RING
II. THE SHERIFF OF SAN JUAN
III. A MAN'S BOOTS
IV. AT THE BANKER'S HOME
V. IN THE DARKNESS OF THE PATIO
VI. A RIDE THROUGH THE NIGHT
VII. IN THE HOME OF CLIFF-DWELLERS
VIII. JIM GALLOWAY'S GAME
IX. YOUNG PAGE COMES TO TOWN
X. A BRIBE AND A THREAT
XI. THE FIGHT AT LA CASA BLANCA
XII. WAVERING IN THE BALANCE
XIII. CONCEALMENT
XIV. A FREE MAN
XV. THE KING'S PALACE
XVI. THE MEXICAN FROM MEXICO
XVII. A STACK OF GOLD PIECES
XVIII. DESIRE OUTWEIGHS DISCRETION
XIX. DEADLOCK
XX. FLUFF AND BLACK BILL
XXI. A CRISIS
XXII. THE BEGINNING OF THE END
XXIII. THE STRONG HAND OF GALLOWAY
XXIV. IN THE OPEN
XXV. THE BATTLE IN THE ARROYO
XXVI. THE BELLS RING

ILLUSTRATIONS

Having come closer he reined in his horse, stared at her a moment in
surprised wonderment . . . . Frontispiece

Then came the second meeting with Jim Galloway

"Come, and I'll share my secret with you"

On through the bright moonlight came the sheriff's posse

FOREWORD

THE BELLS

He who has not heard the bells of San Juan has a journey yet to make.
He who has not set foot upon the dusty road which is the one street of
San Juan, at times the most silent and deserted of thoroughfares, at
other times a mad and turbulent lane between sun-dried adobe walls, may
yet learn something of man and his hopes, desires, fears and ruder
passions from a pin-point upon the great southwestern map.

The street runs due north and south, pointing like a compass to the
flat gray desert in the one direction, and in the other to the broken
hills swept up into the San Juan mountains. At the northern end, that
is toward the more inviting mountains, is the old Mission. To right
and left of the whitewashed corridors in a straggling garden of
pear-trees and olives and yellow roses are two rude arches made of
seasoned cedar. From the top cross-beam of each hang three bells.

They have their history, these bells of San Juan, and the biggest with
its deep, mellow voice, the smallest with its golden chimes, seem to be
chanting it when they ring. Each swinging tongue has its tale to tell,
a tale of old Spain, of Spanish galleons and Spanish gentlemen
adventurers, of gentle-voiced priests and sombre-eyed Indians, of
conquest, revolt, intrigue, and sudden death. When a baby is born in
San Juan, a rarer occurrence than a strong man's death, the littlest of
the bells upon the western arch laughs while it calls to all to
hearken; when a man is killed, the angry-toned bell pendant from the
eastern arch shouts out the word to go billowing across the stretches
of sage and greasewood and gama-grass; if one of the later-day frame
buildings bursts into flame, Ignacio Chavez warns the town with a
strident clamor, tugging frantically; be it wedding or discovery of
gold or returns from the county elections, the bell-ringer cunningly
makes the bells talk.

Out on the desert a man might stop and listen, forming his surmise as
the sounds surged to meet him through the heat and silence. He might
smile, if he knew San Juan, as he caught the jubilant message tapped
swiftly out of the bronze bell which had come, men said, with Coronado;
he might sigh at the lugubrious, slow-swelling voice of the big bell
which had come hitherward long ago with the retinue of Marco de Niza,
wondering what old friend or enemy, perchance, had at last closed his
ears to all of Ignacio Chavez's music. Or, at a sudden fury of
clanging, the man far out on the desert might hurry on, goading his
burro impatiently, to know what great event had occurred in the old
adobe town of San Juan.

It is three hundred and fifty years and more since the six bells of San
Juan came into the new world to toll across that land of quiet mystery
which is the southwest. It is a hundred years since an
all-but-forgotten priest, Francisco Calderon, found them in various
devastated mission churches, assembled them, and set them chiming in
the old garden. There, among the pear-trees and olives and yellow
roses, they still cast their shadows in sun and moonlight, in silence,
and in echoing chimes.

CHAPTER I

THE BELLS RING

Ignacio Chavez, Mexican that he styled himself, Indian that the
community deemed him, or "breed" of badly mixed blood that he probably
was, made his loitering way along the street toward the Mission. A
thin, yellowish-brown _cigarita_ dangling from his lips, his wide,
dilapidated conical hat tilted to the left side of his head in a
listless sort of concession to the westering sun, he was, as was
customary with him, utterly at peace. Ten minutes ago he had had
twenty cents; two minutes after the acquisition of his elusive wealth
he had exchanged the two dimes for whiskey at the Casa Blanca; the
remaining eight minutes of the ten he required to make his way, as he
naively put it, "between hell and heaven."

For from a corner of the peaceful old Mission garden at one end of the
long street one might catch a glimpse of the Casa Blanca at the other
end sprawling in the sun; between the two sturdy walled buildings had
the town strung itself as it grew. As old a relic as the church itself
was La Casa Blanca, and since San Juan could remember, in all matters
antipodal to the religious calm of the padres' monument. Deep-shaded
doorways let into the three-feet-thick earthen walls, waxed floors,
green tables, and bar and cool looking-glasses . . . a place which
invited, lured, held, and frequently enough finally damned.

San Juan, in the languid philosophy of Ignacio Chavez, was what you
will. It epitomized the universe. You had everything here which the
soul of man might covet. Never having dwelt elsewhere since his mother
bore him here upon the rim of the desert and with the San Juan
mountains so near that, Ignacio Chavez pridefully knew, a man standing
upon the Mesa Alta might hear the ringing of his bells, he experienced
a pitying contempt for all those other spots in the world which were so
plainly less favored. What do you wish, senor? Fine warm days? You
have them here. Nice cool nights for sound slumber? Right here in San
Juan, _amigo mio_. A desert across which the eye may run without
stopping until it be tired, a wonderful desert whereon at dawn and dusk
God weaves all of the alluring soft mists of mystery? Shaded canons at
noonday with water and birds and flowers? Behold the mountains.
Everything desirable, in short. That there might be men who desired
the splash of waves, the sheen of wet beaches, the boom of surf, did
not suggest itself to one who had never seen the ocean. So, then, San
Juan was "what you will." A man may fix his eye upon the little
Mission cross which is always pointing to heaven and God; or he may
pass through the shaded doors of the Casa Blanca, which, men say, give
pathway into hell the shortest way.

Ignacio, having meditatively enjoyed his whiskey and listened smilingly
to the tinkle of a mandolin in the _patio_ under a grape-vine arbor,
had rolled his cigarette and turned his back square upon the
devil . . . of whom he had no longer anything to ask. As he went out
he stopped in the doorway long enough to rub his back against a corner
of the wall and to strike a match. Then, almost inaudibly humming the
mandolin air, he slouched out into the burning street.

For twenty years he had striven with the weeds in the Mission garden,
and no man during that time dared say which had had the best of it,
Ignacio Chavez or the interloping alfileria and purslane. In the
matters of a vast leisureliness and tumbling along the easiest way they
resembled each other, these two avowed enemies. For twenty years he
had looked upon the bells as his own, had filled his eye with them day
after day, had thought the first thing in the morning to see that they
were there, regarding them as solicitously in the rare rainy weather as
his old mother regarded her few mongrel chicks. Twenty full years, and
yet Ignacio Chavez was not more than thirty years old, or thirty-five,
perhaps. He did not know, no one cared.

He was on his way to attack with his bare brown hands some of the weeds
which were spilling over into the walk which led through the garden and
to the priest's house. As a matter of fact he had awakened with this
purpose in mind, had gone his lazy way all day fully purposing to give
it his attention, and had at last arrived upon the scene. The front
gate had finally broken, the upper hinge worn out; Ignacio carefully
set the ramshackly wooden affair back against the fence, thinking how
one of these days he would repair it. Then he went between the bigger
pear-tree and the _lluvia de oro_ which his own hands had planted
here, and stood with legs well apart considering the three bells upon
the easterly arch.

"_Que hay, amigos_?" he greeted them. "Do you know what I am going to
do for you some fine day? I will build a little roof over you that
runs down both ways to shut out the water when it rains. It will make
you hoarse, too much wet."

That was one of the few dreams of Ignacio's life; one day he was going
to make a little roof over each arch. But to-day he merely regarded
affectionately the Captain . . . that was the biggest of the
bells . . . the Dancer, second in size, and Lolita, the smallest upon
this arch. Then he sighed and turned toward the other arch across the
garden to see how it was with the Little One, La Golondrina, and
Ignacio Chavez. For it was only fair that at least one of the six
should bear his name.

Changing his direction thus, moving directly toward the dropping sun,
he shifted his hat well over his eyes and so was constrained to note
how the weeds were asserting themselves with renewed insolence. He
muttered a soft "_maldito_!" at them which might have been mistaken
for a caress and determined upon a merciless campaign of extermination
just as soon as he could have fitted a new handle to his hoe. Then he
paused in front of the Mission steps and lifted his hat, made an
elegant bow, and smiled in his own inimitable, remarkably fascinating
way. For, under the ragged brim, his eyes had caught a glimpse of a
pretty pair of patent-leather slippers, a prettier pair of
black-stockinged ankles, and the hem of a white starched skirt.

Nowhere are there eyes like the eyes of old Mexico. Deep and soft and
soulful, though the man himself may have a soul like a bit of charred
leather; velvety and tender, though they may belong to an out-and-out
cutthroat; expressive, eloquent even, though they are the eyes of a
peon with no mind to speak of; night-black, and like the night filled
with mystery. Ignacio Chavez lifted such eyes to the eyes of the girl
who had been watching him and spontaneously gave her the last iota of
his ready admiration.

"It is a fine day, senorita," he told her, displaying two glistening
rows of superb teeth friendliwise. "And the garden . . . _Ah, que hay
mas bonito en todo el mundo_? You like it, no?"

It was slow music when Ignacio Chavez spoke, all liquid sounds and
tender cadences. When he had cursed the weeds it was like love-making.
A _d_ in his mouth became a softened _th_; from the lips of such as
the bell-ringer of San Juan the snapping Gringo oath comes
metamorphosed into a gentle "Gah-tham!" The girl, to whom the speech
of Chavez was something as new and strange as the face of the earth
about her, regarded him with grave, curious eyes.

She was seated against the Mission wall upon the little bench which no
one but Ignacio guessed was to be painted green one of these fine days,
a bronze-haired, gray-eyed girl in white skirt and waist, and with a
wide panama hat caught between her clasped hands and her knee. For a
moment she was perhaps wondering how to take him; then with a
suddenness that had been all unheralded in her former gravity, she
smiled. With lips and eyes together as though she accepted his
friendship. Ignacio's own smile broadened and he nodded his delight.

"It is truly beautiful here," she admitted, and had Ignacio possessed a
tithe of that sympathetic comprehension which his eyes lied about he
would have detected a little note of eagerness in her voice, would have
guessed that she was lonely and craved human companionship. "I have
been sitting here an hour or two. You are not going to send me away,
are you?"

Ignacio looked properly horrified.

"If I saw an angel here in the garden, senorita," he exclaimed, "would
I say _zape_ to it? No, no, senorita; here you shall stay a thousand
years if you wish. I swear it."

He was all sincerity; Ignacio Chavez would no sooner think of being
rude to a beautiful young woman than of crying "Scat!" to an angel.
But as to staying here a thousand years . . . she glanced through the
tangle of the garden to the tiny graveyard and shook her head.

"You have just come to San Juan?" he asked. "To-day?"

"Yes," she told him. "On the stage at noon."

"You have friends here?"

Again she shook her head.

"Ah," said Ignacio. He straightened for a brief instant and she could
see how the chest under his shirt inflated. "A tourist. You have
heard of this garden, maybe? And the bells? So you travelled across
the desert to see?"

The third time she shook her head.

"I have come to live here," she returned quietly.

"But not all alone, senorita!"

"Yes." She smiled at him again. "All alone."

"Mother of God!" he said within himself. And presently to her: "I did
not see the stage come to-day; in San Juan one takes his siesta at that
hour. And it is not often that the stage brings new people from the
railroad."

In some subtle way he had made of his explanation an apology. While
his slow brown fingers rolled a cigarette he stared away through the
garden and across the desert with an expression half melancholy, half
merely meditative, which made the girl wonder what his thoughts were.
When she came to know him better she would know too that at times like
this he was not thinking at all.

"I believe this is the most profoundly peaceful place in the world,"
she said quietly, half listlessly setting into words the impression
which had clung about her throughout the long, still day. "It is like
a strange dream-town, one sees no one moving about, hears nothing. It
is just a little sad, isn't it?"

He had followed her until the end, comprehending. But sad? How that?
It was just as it should be; to ears which had never been filled with
the noises or rushing trains and cars and all of the traffic of a city,
what sadness could there be in the very natural calm of the rim of the
desert? Having no satisfactory reply to make, Ignacio merely muttered,
"Si, senorita," somewhat helplessly and let it go with that.

"Tell me," she continued, sitting up a little and seeming to throw off
the oppressively heavy spell of her environment, "who are the important
people hereabouts?"

_La gente_? Oh, Ignacio knew them well, all of them! There was Senor
Engle, to begin with. The banker of whom no doubt she had heard? He
owned a big _residencia_ just yonder; you could catch the gleam of its
white walls through a clump of cottonwoods, withdrawn aloofly from San
Juan's street. Many men worked for him; he had big cattle and sheep
ranches throughout the county; he paid well and loaned out much money.
Also he had a beautiful wife and a truly marvellously beautiful
daughter. And horses such as one could not look upon elsewhere. Then
there was Senor Nortone, as Ignacio pronounced him; a sincere friend of
Ignacio Chavez and a man fearless and true and extravagantly to be
admired, who, it appeared, was the sheriff. Not a family man; he was
too young yet. But soon; oh, one could see! It would be Ignacio who
would ring the bells for the wedding when Roderico Nortone married
himself with the daughter of the banker.

"He is what you call a gunman, isn't he?" asked the girl, interested.
"I heard two of the men on the stage talking of him. They called him
Roddy Norton; he is the one, isn't he?"

_Seguro_; sure, he was the one. A gunman? Ignacio shrugged. He was
sheriff, and what must a sheriff be if not a gunman?

"On the stage," continued the girl, "was a man they called Doc; and
another named Galloway. They are San Juan men, are they not?"

Ignacio lifted his brows a shade disdainfully. They were both San Juan
citizens, but obviously not to his liking. Jim Galloway was a big man,
yes; but of _la gente_, never! The senorita should look the other way
when he passed. He owned the Casa Blanca; that was enough to ticket
him, and Ignacio passed quickly to _el senor doctor_. Oh, he was
smart and did much good to the sick; but the poor Mexican who called
him for a bedridden wife must first sell something and show the money.

Beyond these it appeared that the enviable class of San Juan consisted
of the padre Jose, who was at present and much of the time away
visiting the poor and sick throughout the countryside; Julius Struve,
who owned and operated the local hotel, one of the lesser luminaries,
though a portly gentleman with an amiable wife; the Porters, who had a
farm off to the northwest and whose connection to San Juan lay in the
fact that an old maid daughter taught the school here; various other
individuals and family groups to be disposed of with a word and a
careless wave of a cigarette. Already for the fair stranger Ignacio
had skimmed the cream of the cream.

The girl sighed, as though her question had been no idle one and his
reply had disappointed her. For a moment her brows gathered slightly
into a frown that was like a faint shadow; then she smiled again
brightly, a quick smile which seemed more at home in her eyes than the
frown had been.

Ignacio glanced from her to the weeds, then, squinting his eyes, at the
sun. There was ample time, it would be cooler presently. So,
describing a respectful arc about her, he approached the Mission wall,
slipped into the shade, and eased himself in characteristic indolence
against the white-washed adobe. She appeared willing to talk with him;
well, then, what pleasanter way to spend an afternoon? She sought to
learn this and that of a land new to her; who to explain more knowingly
than Ignacio Chavez? After a little he would pluck some of the newly
opened yellow rosebuds for her, making her a little speech about
herself and budding flowers. He would even, perhaps, show her his
bells, let her hear just the suspicion of a note from each. . . .

A sharp sound came to her abruptly out of the utter stillness but meant
nothing to her. She saw a flock of pigeons rise above the roofs of the
more distant houses, circle, swerve, and disappear beyond the
cottonwoods. She noted that Ignacio was no longer leaning lazily
against the wall; he had stiffened, his mouth was a little open,
breathless, his attitude that of one listening expectantly, his eyes
squinting as they had been just now when he fronted the sun. Then came
the second sound, a repetition of the first, sharp, in some way
sinister. Then another and another and another, until she lost count;
a man's voice crying out strangely, muffled. Indistinct, seeming to
come from afar.

It was an incongruous, almost a humorous, thing to see the sun-warmed
passivity of Ignacio Chavez metamorphosed in a flash into activity. He
muttered something, leaped away from the Mission wall, dashed through
the tangle of the garden, and raced like a madman to the eastern arch.
With both hands he grasped the dangling bell-ropes, with all of his
might he set them clanging and shouting and clamoring until the
reverberation smote her ears and set the blood tingling strangely
through her. She had seen the look upon his face. . . .

Suddenly she knew that those little sharp sounds had been the rattle of
pistol-shots. She sprang to her feet, her eyes widening. Now all was
quiet save for the boom and roar of the bells. The pigeons were
circling high in the clear sky, were coming back. . . . She went
quickly the way Ignacio had gone, calling out to him:

"What is it?"

He seemed all unmoved now as he made his bells cry out for him; it was
for him to be calm while they trembled with the event which surely they
must understand.

"It is a man dead," he told her as his right hand called upon the
Captain for a volume of sound from his bronze throat. "You will see.
And there will be more work for Roderico Nortone!" He sighed and shook
his head, and for a moment spoke softly with his jangling bells. "And
some day," he continued quietly, "it will be Roderico's time, _no_?
And I will ring the bells for him, and the Captain and the Dancer and
Lolita, they will all put tears into men's eyes. But first, Santa
Maria! let it be that I ring the others for him when he marries himself
with the banker's daughter."

"A man dead?" the girl repeated, unwilling to grasp fully.

"You will see," returned Ignacio.

CHAPTER II

THE SHERIFF OF SAN JUAN

The girl in the old Mission garden stood staring at Ignacio Chavez a
long time, seeming compelled by a force greater than her own to watch
him tugging and jerking at his bells. Plainly enough she understood
that this was an alarm being sounded; a man dead through violence, and
the bell-ringer stirring the town with it. But when presently he let
two of the ropes slip out of his hands and began a slow, mournful
tolling of the Captain alone, she shuddered a little and withdrew.

That it might be merely a case of a man wounded, even badly, did not
once suggest itself to her. Ignacio had spoken as one who knew, in
full confidence and with finality. She should see! She returned to
the little bench which one day was to be a bright green, and sat down.
She could see that again the pigeons were circling excitedly; that from
the baking street little puffs of dust arose to hang idly in the still
air as though they were painted upon the clear canvas of the sky. She
heard the voices of men, faint, quick sounds against the tolling of the
bell. Then suddenly all was very still once more; Ignacio had allowed
the Captain to resume his silent brooding, and came to her.

"I must go to see who it is," he apologized. "Then I will know better
how to ring for him. The sheepman from Las Palmas, I bet you. For did
I not see when just now I passed the Casa Blanca that he was a little
drunk with Senor Galloway's whiskey? And does not every one know he
sold many sheep and that means much money these days? Si, senorita; it
will be the sheepman from Las Palmas."

He was gone, slouching along again and in no haste now that he had
fulfilled his first duty. What haste could there possibly be since,
sheepman from Las Palmas or another, he was dead and therefore must
wait upon Ignacio Chavez's pleasure? Somehow she gleaned this thought
from his manner and therefore did not speak as she watched him depart.

That portion of the street which she could see from her bench was
empty, the dust settling, thinning, disappearing. Farther down toward
the Casa Blanca she could imagine the little knots of men asking one
another what had happened and how; the chief actor in this fragment of
human drama she could picture lying inert, uncaring that it was for him
that a bell had tolled and would toll again, that men congregated
curiously.

In a little while Ignacio would return, shuffling, smoking a dangling
cigarette, his hat cocked against the sun; he would give her full
particulars and then return to his bell. . . . She had come to San
Juan to make a home here, to become a part of it, to make it a portion
of her. To arrive upon a day like this was no pleasant omen; it was
too dreadfully like taking a room in a house only to hear the life
rattling out of a man beyond a partition. She was suddenly averse to
hearing Ignacio's details; there came a quick desire to set her back to
the town whose silence on the heels of uproar crushed her. Rising
hastily, she hurried down the weed-bordered walk, out at the broken
gate, and turned toward the mountains. One glance down the street as
she crossed it showed her what she had expected: a knot of men at the
door of the Casa Blanca, another small group at a window, evidently
taking stock of a broken window-pane.

The sun, angry and red, was hanging low over a distant line of hills,
the flat lands were already drawing about them a thin, faintly colorful
haze. She had put on her hat and, like Ignacio, had set it a little to
the side of her head, feeling her cheeks burning when the direct rays
found them. The fine, loose soil was sifting into her low slippers
before she had gone a score of paces. When she came back she would
unpack her trunk and get out a sensible pair of boots. No doubt she
was dressed ridiculously, but then the heat had tempted her. . . .

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