LITMIR.BIZ

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pointed to his mustache.

      “You’ve grown that since,” she challenged.

      He pulled up his sleeve and showed her his left arm from wrist to elbow. But she only looked her incomprehension of the meaning of his action.

      “Do you remember the scar?” he asked.

      She nodded.

      “Then find it.”

      She bent her head in swift vain search, then shook it slowly as she faltered:

      “I … I ask your forgiveness. I was terribly mistaken, and when I think of the way I … I’ve treated you …”

      “That kiss was delightful,” he naughtily disclaimed.

      She recollected more immediate passages, glanced down at her knee and stifled what he adjudged was a most adorable giggle.

      “You say you have a message from Henry,” she changed the subject abruptly. “And that he is innocent…? This is true? Oh, I do want to believe you!”

      “I am morally certain that Henry no more killed your uncle than did I – ”

      “Then say no more, at least not now,” she interrupted joyfully. “First of all I must make amends to you, though you must confess that some of the things you have done and said were abominable. You had no right to kiss me.”

      “If you will remember,” he contended, “I did it at the pistol point. How was I to know but what I would get shot if I didn’t.”

      “Oh, hush, hush,” she begged. “You must go with me now to the house. And you can tell me about Henry on the way.”

      Her eyes chanced upon the handkerchief she had flung so contemptuously aside. She ran to it and picked it up.

      “Poor, ill-treated kerchief,” she crooned to it. “To you also must I make amends. I shall myself launder you, and…” Her eyes lifted to Francis as she addressed him. “And return it to you, sir, fresh and sweet and all wrapped around my heart of gratitude…”

      “And the mark of the beast?” he queried.

      “I am so sorry,” she confessed penitently.

      “And may I be permitted to rest my shadow upon you?”

      “Do! Do!” she cried gaily. “There! I am in your shadow now. And we must start.”

      Francis tossed a peso to the grinning Indian boy, and, in high elation, turned and followed her into the tropic growth on the path that led up to the white hacienda.

      Seated on the broad piazza of the Solano Hacienda, Alvarez Torres saw through the tropic shrubs the couple approaching along the winding driveway. And he saw what made him grit his teeth and draw very erroneous conclusions. He muttered imprecations to himself and forgot his cigarette.

      What he saw was Leoncia and Francis in such deep and excited talk as to be oblivious of everything else. He saw Francis grow so urgent of speech and gesture as to cause Leoncia to stop abruptly and listen further to his pleading. Next – and Torres could scarcely believe the evidence of his eyes, he saw Francis produce a ring, and Leoncia, with averted face, extend her left hand and receive the ring upon her third finger. Engagement finger it was, and Torres could have sworn to it.

      What had really occurred was the placing of Henry’s engagement ring back on Leoncia’s hand. And Leoncia, she knew not why, had been vaguely averse to receiving it.

      Torres tossed the dead cigarette away, twisted his mustache fiercely, as if to relieve his own excitement, and advanced to meet them across the piazza. He did not return the girl’s greeting at the first. Instead, with the wrathful face of the Latin, he burst out at Francis:

      “One does not expect shame in a murderer, but at least one does expect simple decency.”

      Francis smiled whimsically.

      “There it goes again,” he said. “Another lunatic in this lunatic land. The last time, Leoncia, that I saw this gentleman was in New York. He was really anxious to do business with me. Now I meet him here and the first thing he tells me is that I am an indecent, shameless murderer.”

      “Senor Torres, you must apologize,” she declared angrily. “The house of Solano is not accustomed to having its guests insulted.”

      “The house of Solano, I then understand, is accustomed to having its men murdered by transient adventurers,” he retorted. “No sacrifice is too great when it is in the name of hospitality.”

      “Get off your foot, Senor Torres,” Francis advised him pleasantly. “You are standing on it. I know what your mistake is. You think I am Henry Morgan. I am Francis Morgan, and you and I, not long ago, transacted business together in Regan’s office in New York. There’s my hand. Your shaking of it will be sufficient apology under the circumstances.”

      Torres, overwhelmed for the moment by his mistake, took the extended hand and uttered apologies both to Francis and Leoncia.

      “And now,” she beamed through laughter, clapping her hands to call a house-servant, “I must locate Mr. Morgan, and go and get some clothes on. And after that, Senor Torres, if you will pardon us, we will tell you about Henry.”

      While she departed, and while Francis followed away to his room on the heels of a young and pretty mestiza woman, Torres, his brain resuming its functions, found he was more amazed and angry than ever. This, then, was a newcomer and stranger to Leoncia whom he had seen putting a ring on her engagement finger. He thought quickly and passionately for a moment. Leoncia, whom to himself he always named the queen of his dreams, had, on an instant’s notice, engaged herself to a strange Gringo from New York. It was unbelievable, monstrous.

      He clapped his hands, summoned his hired carriage from San Antonio, and was speeding down the drive when Francis strolled forth to have a talk with him about further details of the hiding place of old Morgan’s treasure.

      After lunch, when a land-breeze sprang up, which meant fair wind and a quick run across Chiriqui Lagoon and along the length of it to the Bull and the Calf, Francis, eager to bring to Henry the good word that his ring adorned Leoncia’s finger, resolutely declined her proffered hospitality to remain for the night and meet Enrico Solano and his tall sons. Francis had a further reason for hasty departure. He could not endure the presence of Leoncia – and this in no sense uncomplimentary to her. She charmed him, drew him, to such extent that he dared not endure her charm and draw if he were to remain man-faithful to the man in the canvas pants even then digging holes in the sands of the Bull.

      So Francis departed, a letter to Henry from Leoncia in his pocket. The last moment, ere he departed, was abrupt. With a sigh so quickly suppressed that Leoncia wondered whether or not she had imagined it, he tore himself away. She gazed after his retreating form down the driveway until it was out of sight, then stared at the ring on her finger with a vaguely troubled expression.

      From the beach, Francis signaled the Angelique, riding at anchor, to send a boat ashore for him. But before it had been swung into the water, half a dozen horsemen, revolver-belted, rifles across their pommels, rode down the beach upon him at a gallop. Two men led. The following four were hang-dog half-castes. Of the two leaders, Francis recognized Torres. Every rifle came to rest on Francis, and he could not but obey the order snarled at him by the unknown leader to throw up his hands. And Francis opined aloud:

      “To think of it! Once, only the other day – or was it a million years ago? – I thought auction bridge, at a dollar a point, was some excitement. Now, sirs, you on your horses, with your weapons threatening the violent introduction of foreign substances into my poor body, tell me what is doing now. Don’t I ever get off this beach without gunpowder complications? Is it my ears, or merely my mustache, you want?”

      “We want you,” answered the stranger leader, whose mustache bristled as magnetically as his crooked black eyes.

      “And in the name of original sin and of all lovely lizards, who might you be?”

      “He is the honorable Senor Mariano Vercara è Hijos, Jefe Politico of San Antonio,”

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