Engle went again to look in upon Norton.  The sheriff lay as before, on his back, his limbs lax, his face deathly white, a bandage about his head.  A lump came into the banker’s throat and he turned away.  For he remembered that just so had Billy Norton lain, that Billy Norton had never regained consciousness . . . and that the blow then as now had been struck by Galloway or Galloway’s man.  The sudden fear was upon him that Rod Norton was even more badly hurt than Caleb Patten admitted.  The fear did not lessen as the night drew on and finally brightened into another day.  When the sun flared up out of the flatlands lying beyond Tecolote the wounded man at Struve’s hotel lay as he had done all night giving no sign to tell whether he was life’s or death’s.

CHAPTER XIII

CONCEALMENT

The eyes of San Juan were upon Caleb Patten throughout the night and during the long hours of the following day.  Under them his inflated ego grew further distended while, waxing more technical than ever, he explained how a man in Rod Norton’s condition could live and yet lie like a man dead.  So prolific and involved were his medical phrases that men like John Engle and Struve began to ask themselves if Patten understood his case.  When, after twelve hours, the wounded man awoke to a troubled consciousness Patten’s relief was scarcely less visible than that of Norton’s friends.  Patten felt his prestige taking unto itself new wings and immediately grew more wisely verbose than ever.  It was a rare privilege to have the most talked of and generally liked man of the community under his hands; it was wine to Patten’s soul to have that man show signs of recovering under his skill.

So he drove well-wishers from the room, drew the shades, commanded quiet and came and went eternally, doing nothing whatever and appearing to be fighting, sleeves rolled up, for a threatened life.  Long before noon there were those who had laughed at Patten before, but who now accused themselves of having failed to do him justice.

Virginia Page had remained all night with her patient in Las Estrellas.  The first rumor she had of the fight in the Casa Blanca was borne to her ears by Ignacio’s bell as she rode back toward San Juan.  Only a few hours ago she had talked with Galloway, watching him banter with Florrie Engle; but a little before that, earlier in the same day, she had seen Rod Norton.  Before she galloped up to the old Mission garden her heart was beating excitedly, and she was asking herself, a little fearfully:  “Is it Galloway or is it Rod Norton?” For she was so sure that in the end Ignacio would ring the Captain for one of them.

Ignacio told her the story.  Norton was lying in the hotel, unconscious, Patten working over him; Jim Galloway and Antone were in the little jail and soon would be taken to the county-seat; Kid Rickard was shot through the lung but would live, Patten said; Vidal Nunez, over whom the whole thing had started, was dead.