José Mertos was no stranger to the blood-madness. It had been upon him plenty of times in his own land, and he had shivered and exulted with it beneath far southern stars. Yet it never grew old to him. Its rapture seemed ever greater. But unfortunately, when it died, it left disquieting pictures in his brain. They always took the fine edge from his satisfaction after a particularly skilful affair such as this had been. He was a tried hand in such work, innured to wickedness, yet he still retained the same troublesome tendency toward afterimages that had spoiled his sleep, one night and another, in the past.
At present he couldn’t forget the ludicrous look of bewilderment with which Dan the herder had received the rifle shot. It was only a thing to laugh at, to tell as a good joke when he sat with his employer, yet he found no pleasure in thinking of it now. The herder had simply looked amazed—not afraid, not awed by the Gates of Darkness that had rushed up to him, nothing at all but deeply bewildered and unbelieving. He hadn’t seemed to realize that José had shot him, that even as the blank expression of astonishment had come upon his face the lead ball had forced a passage through his breast. Perhaps he died too quickly for any sort of realization. And José could not forget the queer swaying and staggering with which he fell back upon his tree-bough pallet—just as if he were drunk and falling into bed.
The pictures came in a series, one after another. First this falling, then the glimpse of the still form on the fir boughs. The black shepherd dog had come bounding toward him, and José had drawn his pistol for this work. It was just as good at close range. And he remembered with amazing clearness how the light had died, slowly and unmistakably, in the dog’s eyes. He had watched the sheep for the last time.
Even now José didn’t understand how he had missed the other, larger shepherd dog. He had shot, the animal had rocked down, he had looked back once to the dead herder in the tent (perhaps to see how he was taking this slaughter of his pets) and when he had turned his eyes again, the animal had risen and was fleeing from him about the flank of the flock. The cur was wounded, anyway: perhaps the injury was severe enough to end his life before the morning. His watch of the sheep was surely done. And Landy Fargo—the man who even now waited for his report—would find the whole matter to his satisfaction.
A few minutes later José came to the thicket where he had left his horse; then he headed on down the trail. Through the night hours he rode. Not in one chance out of a thousand would the murder be discovered before Alice Crowson returned, three days later, but he didn’t care to take that thousandth chance. It might be embarrassing—considering his past record—to explain his presence near the murder. “If you can’t buy him over and things do get to the shooting stage,” Landy Fargo had said, “no one will find the stiff for three days. You’ll be miles away by then, the flock’ll be torn to pieces, and we’ll be settin’ pretty. It’s the safest deal you were ever in.”
The destruction of the flock, José considered, was not his business. His work was done and the sooner he got out of the immediate vicinity the better it would be for him. He spurred the horse into a slow, easy gallop.
The moon came up, falling dimly upon his burnished skin. It would be no longer possible to mistake his race. He was even darker than Pete, the Indian, his eyes were like jet, his lips were thin and dark and cruel. But he rode well. He seemed to hang almost limp in the saddle, utterly without effort, and the long miles sped beneath him.
But the night was almost done when he came to Landy Fargo’s house on the lower waters of Silver Creek. Fargo himself was dozing in a great chair in his stuffy living room, waiting for his envoy to return.
There were several noticeable features about this room. The principal one was its dirt. The floors were stained, the carpets soiled, the corners cluttered with rubbish of all kinds; the window glass was so spotted that it did not let the moonlight in, and the soft light lingered—like an unwelcome ghost—against the windowpane. The effect that wise interior decorators try to obtain in furnishing—that in which the pieces, not holding the eye in themselves, give an atmosphere, a sense of unity—was quite lacking here. The mantel was clustered with gaudy ornaments, the chairs were tawdry, cheap pictures covered the walls. But yet the room reflected the individuality of the man in the chair. He was just as cheaply gaudy, just as unclean as the room itself.
He got up, and it was to be seen that he had a rather formidable physique. He had imposing muscles, stocky legs, and it was wholly possible that before prosperity had come upon him he had been an agile, muscular cattleman. But the gaze left his heavy frame and was held by the unmistakable brutality of his face. There was none of the fine-edged cruelty—that with which a puma pats and plays his prey to death—that was to be seen in the swarthy face of José. He was blunt, dull; his savagery was that of the bulldog—heavy lips closed over strong teeth, little lurid eyes looking out from under heavy brows.
José rolled a cigarette, lighted it, drew its smoke into his vitals, then lolled in one of the chairs. Fargo watched him with hard eyes, not a little admiring. Most of his understrappers did not
