There came a knock at the outer office door. Eddie sprang back into the front room, closing and locking the door after him, just as Barbara entered.
“Eddie,” she asked, “may I see the prisoner? I want to talk to him.”
“You want to talk with a bank robber?” exclaimed Eddie. “Why you ain’t crazy are you, Miss Barbara?”
“No, I’m not crazy; but I want to speak with him alone for just a moment, Eddie—please.”
Eddie hesitated. He knew that Grayson would be angry if he let the boss’s daughter into that back room alone with an outlaw and a robber, and the boss himself would probably be inclined to have Eddie drawn and quartered; but it was hard to refuse Miss Barbara anything.
“Where is he?” she asked.
Eddie jerked a thumb in the direction of the door. The key still was in the lock.
“Go to the window and look at the moon, Eddie,” suggested the girl. “It’s perfectly gorgeous tonight. Please, Eddie,” as he still hesitated.
Eddie shook his head and moved slowly toward the window.
“There can’t nobody refuse you nothin’, miss,” he said; “ ’specially when you got your heart set on it.”
“That’s a dear, Eddie,” purred the girl, and moved swiftly across the room to the locked door.
As she turned the key in the lock she felt a little shiver of nervous excitement run through her. “What sort of man would he be—this hardened outlaw and robber—this renegade American who had cast his lot with the avowed enemies of his own people?” she wondered.
Only her desire to learn of Bridge’s fate urged her to attempt so distasteful an interview; but she dared not ask another to put the question for her, since should her complicity in Bridge’s escape—provided of course that he had escaped—become known to Villa the fate of the Americans at El Orobo would be definitely sealed.
She turned the knob and pushed the door open, slowly. A man was sitting in a chair in the center of the room. His back was toward her. He was a big man. His broad shoulders loomed immense above the back of the rude chair. A shock of black hair, rumpled and tousled, covered a well-shaped head.
At the sound of the door creaking upon its hinges he turned his face in her direction, and as his eyes met hers all four went wide in surprise and incredulity.
“Billy!” she cried.
“Barbara!—you?” and Billy rose to his feet, his bound hands struggling to be free.
The girl closed the door behind her and crossed to him.
“You robbed the bank, Billy?” she asked. “It was you, after the promises you made me to live straight always—for my sake?” Her voice trembled with emotion. The man could see that she suffered, and yet he felt his own anguish, too.
“But you are married,” he said. “I saw it in the papers. What do you care, now, Barbara? I’m nothing to you.”
“I’m not married, Billy,” she cried. “I couldn’t marry Mr. Mallory. I tried to make myself believe that I could; but at last I knew that I did not love him and never could, and I wouldn’t marry a man I didn’t love.
“I never dreamed that it was you here, Billy,” she went on. “I came to ask you about Mr. Bridge. I wanted to know if he escaped, or if—if—oh, this awful country! They think no more of human life here than a butcher thinks of the life of the animal he dresses.”
A sudden light illumined Billy’s mind. Why had it not occurred to him before? This was Bridge’s Penelope! The woman he loved was loved by his best friend. And she had sent a messenger to him, to Billy, to save her lover. She had come here to the office tonight to question a stranger—a man she thought an outlaw and a robber—because she could not rest without word from the man she loved. Billy stiffened. He was hurt to the bottom of his heart; but he did not blame Bridge—it was fate. Nor did he blame Barbara because she loved Bridge. Bridge was more her kind anyway. He was a college guy. Billy was only a mucker.
“Bridge got away all right,” he said. “And say, he didn’t have nothin’ to do with pullin’ off that safe crackin’. I done it myself. He didn’t know I was in town an’ I didn’t know he was there. He’s the squarest guy in the world, Bridge is. He follered me that night an’ took a shot at me, thinkin’ I was the robber all right but not knowin’ I was me. He got my horse, an’ when he found it was me, he made me take your pony an’ make my getaway, fer he knew Villa’s men would croak me sure if they caught me. You can’t blame him fer that, can you? Him an’ I were good pals—he couldn’t do nothin’ else. It was him that made me bring your pony back to you. It’s in the corral now, I reckon. I was a-bringin’ it back when they got me. Now you better go. This ain’t no place fer you, an’ I ain’t had no sleep fer so long I’m most dead.” His tones were cool. He appeared bored by her company; though as a matter of fact his heart was breaking with love for her—love that he believed unrequited—and he yearned to tear loose his bonds and crush her in his arms.
It was Barbara’s turn now to be hurt. She drew herself up.
“I am sorry that I have disturbed your rest,” she said, and walked away, her head in the air; but all the way back to the ranchhouse she kept repeating over and over to herself: “Tomorrow they will shoot him! Tomorrow they will shoot him! Tomorrow they will shoot him!”
XIV
’Twixt Love and Duty
For an hour Barbara Harding paced the veranda of
