A Daughter of the Dons by William MacLeod Raine

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"Exactly. But if the sellers cannot show a good title--and my word as a
lawyer for it they can't. Prove that in court and all we'll need is a
writ of ejectment against the present holders as squatters. Then----"
Fitt snapped his finger and thumb in an airy gesture that swept the
Valdes' faction into the middle of the Pacific.

"It'll be the story of Evangeline all over again, won't it?" asked
Gordon satirically.

"Ah! You have a kind heart, Mr. Gordon. Your sympathy does you credit.
Still--business is business, of course."

"Of course," Dick picked up a pen and began to jab holes aimlessly into
a perfectly good blotter tacked to the table. "Well, let's hear the
story--just a sketch of it. Why do the rightful heirs lose out and the
villain gain possession?"

Mr. Fitt smiled blandly. He had satisfied himself that his client was
good pay and he did not intend to take offense. "It pleases you to be
facetious, Mr. Gordon. But we all know that what this country
needs--what such a valley as the Rio Chama ought to have--is up to date
American development. People and conditions are in a primitive state.
When men like you get possession of the Moreno and similar tracts New
Mexico will move forward with giant strides to its great destiny. Time
does not stand still. The day of the indolent semi-feudal Spanish system
of occupancy has passed away. New Mexico will no longer remain _manana_
land. You--and men like you--of broad ideas, progressive, energetic----"

"Quite a philanthropist, ain't I?" interrupted Gordon, smiling lazily.
"Well, let's hear the yarn, Mr. Fitt."

The attorney gave up his oration regretfully. He subsided into a chair
and resumed the conversational tone.

"You've got to understand how things were here in the old Spanish days,
gentlemen. Don Bartolome for instance was not merely a cattleman. He was
a grandee, a feudal lord, a military chief to all his tenants and
employees. His word was law. The power of life and death lay in him."

Dick nodded. "Get you."

"The old Don was pasturing his sheep in the Rio Chama valley and he had
started a little village there--called the place Torreon, I think, from
a high tower house he had built to overlook the valley so that Indians
could be seen if they attempted an attack. Well, he takes a notion that
he'd better get legal title to the land he was using, though in those
days he might have had half of New Mexico for his cattle and sheep as a
range. So he asks Facundo Megares, governor of the royal province, for a
grant of land. The governor, anxious to please him, orders the
constitutional alcalde, a person named Jose Garcia de la Mora, to
execute the act of possession to Valdes of a tract described as follows,
to wit----"

"I've heard the description," cut in the young man. "Well, did the Don
take possession?"

"We claim that he never did. He visited there, and his shepherds
undoubtedly ran sheep on the range covered by the grant. But Valdes and
his family never actually resided on the estate. Other points that
militate against the claim of his descendants may be noted. First, that
minor grants of land, taken from within the original Valdes grant, were
made by the governor without any protest on the part of the Don. Second,
that Don Bartolome himself, subsequently Governor and Captain-General of
the province of New Mexico, did, in his official capacity as President
of the Council, endorse at least two other small grants of land cut out
from the heart of the Valdes estate. This goes to show that he did not
himself consider that he owned the land, or perhaps he felt that he had
forfeited his claim."

"Or maybe it just showed that the old gentleman was no hog," suggested
Gordon.

"I guess the law will construe it as a waiver of his claim. It doesn't
make any allowances for altruism."

"I've noticed that," Gordon admitted dryly.

"A new crowd of politicians got in after Mexico became independent of
Spain. The plums had to be handed out to the friends of the party in
power. So Manuel Armijo, the last Mexican Governor of the province,
being a favorite of the President of that country because he had
defeated some Texas Rangers in a battle, and on that account endowed
with extraordinary powers, carved a fat half million acres out of the
Valdes grant and made a present of it to Jose Moreno for 'services to
the government of Mexico.' That's where you come in as heir to your
grandfather, who purchased for a song the claim of Moreno's son."

"My right has been lying dormant twenty-five years. Won't that affect
its legality?"

"No. If we knock out the Valdes' grant, all we have to do is to prove
the legality of the Moreno one. It happens we have evidence to show that
he satisfied all legal requirements by living on the land more than four
years. This gave him patent in perpetuity subject to taxes. By the
payment of these we can claim title." Fitt rubbed his hands and walked
backward and forward briskly. "We've got them sewed up tight, Mr.
Gordon. The Supreme Court has sustained our contention in the almost
parallel Baca case."

"Fine," said Dick moodily. He knew it was unreasonable for him to be
annoyed at his counsel because the latter happened to be an alert and
competent lawyer. But somehow all his sympathies were with Valencia
Valdes and her dependents.

"If you'd like to look at the original documents in the case, Mr.
Gordon----"

"I would."

"I'll take you up to the State House this afternoon. You can look over
them at your leisure."

Davis laughed at his friend as they walked back to the hotel.

"I don't believe you know yourself what you want. You act as if you'd
rather lose than win the suit."

"Sometimes I'm a white man, Steve. I don't want to grab other people's
property just because some one can dig up a piece of paper that says
it's mine. We sit back and roast the trusts to a fare-you-well for
hogging all there is in sight. That's what Fitt and his tribe expect me
to do. I'm damned if I will."

CHAPTER XII

"I BELIEVE YOU'RE IN LOVE WITH HER, TOO"

It was characteristic of Dick Gordon that he established at once a
little relation of friendliness between him and the young woman at the
State House who waited upon him with the documents in the Valdes grant
case. She was a tall, slight girl with amazingly vivid eyes set in a
face scarcely pretty. In her manner to the world at large there was an
indifference amounting almost to insolence. She had a way of looking at
people as if they were bits of the stage setting instead of individuals.

A flare of interest had sparkled in her eyes when Gordon's fussy little
attorney had mentioned the name of his client, but it had been Dick's
genial manner of boyish comradeship that had really warmed Miss
Underwood to him. She did not like many people, but when she gave her
heart to a friend it was without stipulations. Dick was a man's man.
Essentially he was masculine, virile, dominant. But the force of him was
usually masked either by his gay impudence or his sunny friendliness.
Women were drawn to his flashing smile because they sensed the strength
behind it.

Kate Underwood could have given a dozen reasons why she liked him. There
were for instance the superficial ones. She liked the way he tossed back
the tawny sun-kissed hair from his eyes, the easy pantherish stride with
which he covered ground so lightly, the set of his fine shoulders, the
peculiar tint of his lean, bronzed cheeks. His laugh was joyous as the
song of a bird in early spring. It made one want to shout with him.
Then, too, she tremendously admired his efficiency. To look at the hard,
clear eye, at the clean, well-packed build of the man, told the story.
The movements of his strong, brown hands were sure and economical. They
dissipated no energy. Every detail of his personality expressed a mind
that did its own thinking swiftly and incisively.

"It's curious about these documents of the old Valdes and Moreno claims.
They have lain here in the vaults--that is, here and at the old
Governor's Palace--for twenty years and more untouched. Then all at once
twenty people get interested in them. Scarce a day passes that lawyers
are not up to look over some of the copies. You have certainly stirred
things up with your suit, Mr. Gordon."

Dick looked out of the window at the white adobe-lined streets resting
in a placid coma of sun-beat.

"Don't you reckon Santa Fe can stand a little stirring up, Miss
Underwood?"

"Goodness, yes. We all get to be three hundred years old if we live in
this atmosphere long enough."

The man's gaze shifted. "You'd have to live here a right long time, I
reckon."

A quick slant of her gay eyes reproached him. "You don't have to be so
gallant, Mr. Gordon. The State pays me fifteen hundred dollars a year to
wait on you, anyhow."

"You don't say. As much as that? My, we're liable to go bankrupt in New
Mexico, ain't we? And, if you want to know, I don't say nice things to
you because I have to, but because I want to."

She laughed with a pretense at incredulity. "In another day or two I'll
find out just what special favor I'm able to do Mr. Gordon. The regular
thing is to bring flowers or candy, you know. Generally they say, too,
that there never has been a clerk holding this job as fit for it as I
am."

"You're some clerk, all right. Say, where can I find the original of
this _Agua Caliente_ grant, Miss Kate?"

She smiled to herself as she went to get him a certified copy. "Only two
days, and he's using my first name. Inside of a week he'll be calling me
'Dearie,'" she thought. But she knew very well there was no danger. This
young fellow was the kind of man that could be informal without the
slightest idea of flirting or making love.

Kate Underwood's interest in the fight between the claimants for the
Valdes and Moreno grants was not based entirely upon her liking for
Dick. He learned this the fourth day of his stay in Santa Fe.

"Do you know that you were followed to the hotel last night, Mr.
Gordon?" she asked him, as soon as he arrived at the State House.

His eyes met hers instantly. "Was I? How do you know?"

"I left the building just after you did. Two Mexicans followed you. I
don't know when I first suspected it, but I trailed along to make sure.
There can be no doubt about it."

"Not a bit of doubt. Found it out the first day when I left the hotel,"
he told her cheerfully.

"You knew it all the time," she cried, amazed.

"That doesn't prevent me from being properly grateful to you for your
kindness," he hastened to say.

"What are they following you for?" she wanted to know.

Dick told her something of his experiences in the Rio Chama Valley
without mentioning that part of them which had to do with Miss Valdes.
At the sound of Manuel Pesquiera's name the eyes of the girl flashed.
Dick had already noticed that his name was always to her a signal for
repression of some emotion. The eyes contracted and hardened the least
in the world. Some men would not have noticed this, but more than once
Gordon's life had hung upon the right reading of such signs.

"You think that Mr. Pesquiera has hired them to watch you?" she
suggested.

"Maybe he has and maybe he hasn't. Some of those willing lads of Miss
Valdes don't need any hiring. They want to see what I'm up to. They're
not overlooking any bets."

"But they may shoot you."

He looked at her drolly. "They may, but I'll be there at the time. I'm
not sleeping on the job, Miss Kate."

"You didn't turn around once yesterday."

"Hmp! I saw them out of the edge of my eyes. And when I turned a corner
I always saw them mighty plain. They couldn't have come very close
without my knowing it."

"Don Manuel is very anxious to have Miss Valdes win, isn't he?"

Dick observed that just below the eyes two spots were burning in the
usually pale cheeks.

"Yes," he answered simply.

"Why?"

"He's her friend and a relative."

It seemed to Gordon that there was a touch of defiance in the eyes that
held to his so steadily. She was going to find out the truth, no matter
what he thought.

"Is that all--nothing more than a friend or a relative?"

The miner's boyish laugh rippled out. "You'd ought to have been a
lawyer, Miss Kate. No, that ain't all Don Manuel doesn't make any secret
of it. I don't know why I should. He wants to be prince consort of the
Valdes kingdom."

"Because of ... the estate?"

"Lord, no! He's one man from the ground up, M. Pesquiera is. In spite of
the estates."

"You mean that he ... loves Valencia Valdes?"

"Sure he does. Manuel doesn't care much who gets the kingdom if he gets
the princess."

"Is she so ... pretty?"

Dick stopped to consider this. "Why, yes, I reckon she is pretty, though
I hadn't thought of it before. You see, pretty ain't just the word.
She's a queen. That is, she looks like a queen ought to but don't. Take
her walk for instance: she steps out like as if in another moment she
might fly."

"That doesn't mean anything. It's almost silly," replied the downright
Miss Underwood, not without a tinge of spite.

"It means something to me. I'm trying to give you a picture of her. But
you'd have to see her to understand. When she's around mean and little
things crawl out of your mind. She's on the level and square and fine--a
thoroughbred if there ever was one."

"I believe you're in love with her, too."

The young man found himself blushing. "Now don't get to imagining
foolishness. Miss Valdes hates the ground I walk on. She thinks I'm the
limit, and she hasn't forgotten to tell me so."

"Which, of course, makes you fonder of her," scoffed Miss Underwood.
"Does she hate the ground that Don Manuel walks on?"

"Now you've got me. I go to the foot of the class, because I don't
know."

"But you wish you did," she flung at him, with a swift side glance.

"Guessing again, Miss Kate. I'll sure report you if you waste the
State's time on such foolishness," he threatened gaily.

"Since you're in love with her, why don't you marry Miss Valdes and
consolidate the two claims?" demanded the girl.

Her chin was tilted impudently toward him, but Gordon guessed that there
was an undercurrent of meaning in her audacity.

"What commission do you charge for running your matrimonial bureau?" he
asked innocently.

"The service comes free to infants," she retorted sweetly.

She was called away to attend to other business. An hour later she
passed the desk where he was working.

"So you think I'm an infant at that game, do you?"

"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," was her saucy answer.

"You haven't--not a mite. What about Don Manuel? Is he an infant at it,
too?"

A sudden flame of color swept her face. The words she flung at Gordon
seemed irrelevant, but he did not think them so. "I hate him."

And with that she was gone.

Dick's eyes twinkled. He had discovered another reason for her interest
in his fortunes.

Later in the day, when the pressure of work had relaxed, the clerk
drifted his way again while searching for some papers.

"Your lawyers are paid to look up all this, aren't they? Why do you do
it, then?" she asked.

"The case interests me. I want to know all about it."

"Would you like to see the old Valdes house here in Santa Fe? My father
bought it when Alvaro Valdes built his new town house. One day I found
in the garret a bundle of old Spanish letters. They were written by old
Bartolome to his son. I saved them. Would you care to see them?"

"Very much. The old chap was a great character. I suppose he was really
the last of the great feudal barons. The French Revolution put an end to
them in Europe--that and the industrial revolution. It's rather amazing
that out here in the desert of this new land dedicated to democracy the
idea was transplanted and survived so long."

"I'll bring the letters to-morrow and you can look them over. Any time
you like I'll show you over the house. It's really rather
interesting--much more so than their new one, which is so modern that it
looks like a thousand others. Valencia was born in the old house. What
will you give me to let you into the room?"

He brushed aside her impudence with a laugh. "Your boss is looking this
way. I think he's getting ready to fire you."

"He's more likely to be fired himself. I'm under civil service and he
isn't. Will you take your shoes off when you go into the holy of
holies?"

"What happens to little girls when they ask too many questions? Go 'way.
I'm busy."

CHAPTER XIII

AMBUSHED

On her return from luncheon that same afternoon Miss Underwood brought
Dick a bundle of letters tied with a ribbon. She tossed them down upon
the desk in front of him.

"I haven't read them myself. Of course they're in Spanish. I did try to
get through one of them, but it was too much like work and I gave it up.
But since they're written by _her_ grandfather they'll interest you more
than they did me," Miss Kate told him, with the saucy tilt to her chin
that usually accompanied her impudence.

He had lived in Chihuahua three years as a mining engineer, so that he
spoke and read Spanish readily. The old Don wrote a stiff angular hand,
but as soon as he became accustomed to it Dick found little difficulty.
Some of the letters were written from the ranch, but most of them
carried the Santa Fe date line at the time the old gentleman was
governor of the royal province. They were addressed to his son Alvaro,
at that time a schoolboy in Mexico City. Clearly Don Bartolome intended
his son to be informed as to the affairs of the province, for the
letters were a mine of information in regard to political and social
conditions. They discussed at length, too, the business interests of the
family and the welfare of the peons dependent upon it.

All afternoon Gordon pored over these fascinating pages torn from a dead
and buried past. They were more interesting than any novel he had ever
read, for they gave him a photograph, as it were projected by his
imagination upon a moving picture canvas, of the old regime that had
been swept into the ash heap by modern civilization. The letters
revealed the old Don frankly. He was proud, imperious, heady, and
intrepid. To his inferiors he was curt but kind. They flocked to him
with their troubles and their quarrels. The judgment of their overlord
was final with his tenants. Clearly he had a strong sense of his
responsibilities to them and to the state. A quaint flavor of old-world
courtesy ran through the letters like a thread of gold.

It was a paragraph from one of the last letters that riveted Dick's
attention. Translated into English, it ran as follows:

"You ask, my dear son, whether I have relinquished the great grant
made us by Facundo Megares. In effect I have. During the past two
years I have twice, acting as governor, conveyed to settlers small
tracts from this grant. The conditions under which such a grant
must be held are too onerous. Moreover, neither I nor you, nor your
son, nor his son will live to see the day when there is not range
enough for all the cattle that can be brought into the province.
Just now time presses, but in a later letter I shall set forth my
reasons in detail."

A second and a third time Dick read the paragraph to make sure that he
had not misunderstood it. The meaning was plain. There could be no doubt
about it. In black and white he had a statement from old Don Bartolome
himself that he considered the grant no longer valid, that he had given
it up because he did not think it worth holding. He had but to prove the
handwriting in court--a thing easy enough to do, since the Don's bold,
stiff writing could be found on a hundred documents--and the Valdes
claimants would be thrown out of possession.

Gordon looked in vain for the "later letter" to which Bartolome
referred. Either it had never been written or it had been destroyed. But
without it he had enough to go on.

Before he left the State House he made a proposal to Miss Underwood to
buy the letters from her.

"What do you want with a bunch of old letters?" she asked.

"One of them helps my case. The Don refers to the grant and says he has
relinquished his claim."

She nodded at him with brisk approval. "It's fair of you to tell me
that." The girl stood for a moment considering, a pencil pressed against
her lips. "I suppose the letters are not mine to give. They belong to
father. Better see him."

"Where?"

"At the office of the _New Mexican_. Or you can come to the house
to-night."

"Believe I'll see him right away."

Within half an hour Dick had bought the bundle of letters for five
hundred dollars. He returned to the State House with an order to Kate
Underwood to deliver them to him upon demand.

"Dad make a good bargain?" asked Miss Underwood, with a laugh.

Gordon told her the price he had paid.

"If I had telephoned to him what you wanted them for they would have
cost you three times as much," she told him, nodding sagely.

"Then I'm glad you didn't. Point of fact you haven't the slightest idea
what I want with them."

"To help your suit. Isn't that what you're going to use them for?"

Mildly he answered "Yes," but he did not tell her which suit they were
to help.

As he was leaving she spoke to him without looking up from her writing.
"Mother and I will be at home this evening, if you'd like to look the
house over."

"Thanks. I'd be delighted to come. I'm really awfully interested."

"I see you are," she answered dryly.

Followed by his brown shadows at a respectful distance, Dick walked back
to the hotel whistling gaily.

"Some one die and leave you a million dollars, son?" inquired the old
miner, with amiable sarcasm.

"Me, I'm just happy because I'm not a Chink," explained his friend, and
passed to the hotel writing-room.

He sat down, equipped himself with stationery, and selected a new point
for a pen. Half a dozen times he made a start and as often threw a
crumpled sheet into the waste-paper basket. It took him nearly an hour
to compose an epistle that suited him. What he had finally to content
himself with was as follows:

"DEAR MADAM:--Please find inclosed a bundle of letters that
apparently belong to you. They have just come into my possession. I
therefore send them to you without delay. Your attention is
particularly called to the one marked 'Exhibit A.'

"Very truly yours, RICHARD MUIR GORDON."

He wrapped up the letters, including his own, sealed the package
carefully, and walked downtown to the post office. Here he wrote upon
the cover the name and address of Miss Valencia Valdes, then registered
the little parcel with a request for a signed receipt after delivery at
its destination.

Davis noticed that at dinner his friend was more gay than usual.

"You ce'tainly must have come into that million I mentioned, judging by
your actions," he insisted, with a smile.

"Wrong guess, Steve. I've just been giving away a million. That's why
I'm hilarious."

"You'll have to give me an easier one, son. Didn't know you had a
million."

"Oh, well! A million, or a half, or a quarter, whatever the Moreno claim
is worth. I'm not counting nickels. An hour ago I had it in my fist.
I've just mailed it, very respectfully yours, to my friend the enemy."
"Suppose you talk simple American that your Uncle Steve can understand,
boy. What have you been up to?"

Dick told him exultantly.

"But, good Lord, why for did you make such a play? You had 'em where the
wool was short. Now you've let loose and you'll have to wait 'steen
years while the courts eat up all the profits. Of all the mule-headed
chumps----"

"Hold your horses, Steve. I know what I'm doing. Said I was a spy and a
thief and a liar, didn't she? Threw the hot shot into me proper for a
cheap skate swindler, eh?" The young man laid down his knife, leaned
across the table, and wagged a forefinger at Davis. "What do you reckon
that young woman is going to think of herself when she opens that
registered package and finds the letter that would have put the rollers
under her claim _muy pronto?_"

"Think! She'll think you the biggest burro that ever brayed on the San
Jacinto range. She'll have a commission appointed to examine you for
lunacy. What in Mexico is ailin' you, anyhow? You're sick. That's what's
wrong. Love-sick, by Moses!" exploded his friend.

Dick smiled blandly. "You've got another guess coming, Steve. She's
going to eat dirt because she misjudged me so. She's going to lie awake
nights and figure what play she can make to get even again. Getting hold
of those blamed letters is the luckiest shot I've made yet. I was in
bad--darned bad. Explanations didn't go. I was just a plain ornery
skunk. Then I put over this grand-stand play and change the whole
situation. She's the one that's in bad now. Didn't she tell me right off
the bat what kind of a hairpin I was? Didn't she drive me off the ranch
with that game leg of mine all to the bad? Good enough. Now she finds
out I'm a white man she's going to be plumb sore at herself."

"What good does that do you? You're making a fight for the Rio Chama
Valley, ain't you? Or are you just having a kid quarrel with a girl?"

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