CHAPTER XXIII

THE STRONG HAND OF GALLOWAY

“Oh, you will all dance and shout together very soon,” said Ignacio wisely to his six bells in the old Mission garden.  “You will see!  Captain and the Dancer and Lolita, the Little One, La Golondrina, and Ignacio Chavez, all of you together until far out across the desert men hear.  For it is in the air that things will happen.  And then, when it is all done . . .  Why then, amigos, who but me is going to build a little roof over you that runs down both ways, to save you from the hot sun and the rains? . . .  Oh, one knows.  It is in the air.  You will see!”

For Jim Galloway had returned, a new Galloway, a Galloway who carried himself up and down the street with bright, victorious eyes, and the stride of full confidence, who, at least in the eyes of Ignacio Chavez, was like a blood-lusting lion “screwing up his muscles” to spring.  Galloway’s return brought to Roderick Norton a fresh vigilance, to Virginia a sleepless anxiety, to Florence Engle unrest, uncertainty, very nearly pure panic.  During the first few days of his absence she had allowed herself the romantic joy of floating unchecked upon the tide of a girlish fancy, dreaming dreams after the approved fashion which is youth’s, dancing lightly upon foamy crests, seeing only blue water and no rocks under her.  Then, with the potency of the man’s character removed with the removal of his physical being, she grew to see the shoals and to draw back from them, shuddering somewhat pleasurably.  Now that he was again in San Juan and that her eyes had been held by his in the first meeting upon the street, her heart fluttered, her vision clouded, she wondered what she would do.

There was to be no lost action in Galloway’s campaign now.  Within half a dozen hours of his arrival there was a gathering of various of his henchmen at the Casa Blanca.  Just what passed was not to be known; it was significant, however, that among those who had come to his call were the Mexican, del Rio, Antone, Kid Rickard, and a handful of the other most restless spirits of the county.  Norton accepted the act in all that it implied to his suspicions and sent out word to Cutter, Brocky Lane, and those of his own and Brocky’s cowboys whom he counted on.

Galloway’s second step, known only to himself and Florrie, was a private meeting with the banker’s daughter.  It occurred upon the second evening following his return, just after dark among the cottonwoods, but a hundred yards from her home.  He had made the opportunity with the despatch which marked him now; he had watched for her during the day, had appeared merely to pass her by chance on the street, and had paused just long enough to ask her to meet him.

“I have done all that I planned to do,” he announced triumphantly, his eyes holding hers, forcing upon her spirit the mastery of his own.  “The power in Mexico is going to be Francisco Villa.  I have seen him.  Let me talk with you to-night, Florence.  History is in the making; it may be you and I together who shape the destiny of a people.”