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Page 20
"And in the end," smiled Engle, "there are no bells with the sweet tone
of old Mission bells, or with their soft eloquence."
While he was talking Ignacio Chavez had allowed the dangling rope to
slip from his hands so that the Captain rested quiet in the starshine.
Roderick and Florence were coming in through the wide patio door;
Norton was just saying that Florrie had promised to play something for
him when the front door knocker announced another visitor. Florence
made a little disdainful face as though she guessed who it was; Engle
went to the door.
Even Virginia Page in this land of strangers knew who the man was. For
she had seen enough of him to-day, on the stage across the weary miles
of desert, to remember him and to dislike him. He was the man whom
Galloway and the stage-driver had called "Doc," the sole representative
of the medical fraternity in San Juan until her coming. She disliked
him first vaguely and with purely feminine instinct; secondly because
of an air which he never laid aside of a serene consciousness of
self-superiority. He had established himself in what he was pleased to
consider a community of nobodies, his inferiors intellectually and
culturally. He was of that type of man-animal that lends itself to
fairly accurate cataloguing at the end of the first five minutes'
acquaintance. The most striking of the physical attributes about his
person as he entered were his little mustache and neatly trimmed beard
and the diamond stick-pin in his tie. Remove these articles and it
would have been difficult to distinguish him from countless thousands
of other inefficient and opinionated individuals.
Virginia noted that both Mr. and Mrs. Engle shook hands with him if not
very cordially at least with good-humored toleration; that Florence
treated him to a stiff little nod; that Roderick Norton from across the
room greeted him coolly.
"Dr. Patten," Engle was saying, "this is our cousin, Virginia Page."
Dr. Patten acknowledged the introduction and sat down, turning to ask
"how Florrie was today?" Virginia smiled, sensing a rebuke to herself
in his manner; to-day on the stage she had made it obvious even to him
that if she must speak with a stranger she would vastly prefer the talk
of the stage-driver than that of Dr. Caleb Patten. When Florence,
replying briefly, turned to the piano Patten addressed Norton.
"What was our good sheriff doing to-day?" he asked banteringly, as
though the subject he chose were the most apt one imaginable for jest.
"Another man killed in broad daylight and no one to answer for it! Why
don't you go get 'em, Roddy?"
Norton stared at him steadily and finally said soberly:
"When a disease has fastened itself upon the body of a community it
takes time to work a cure, Dr. Patten."
"But not much time to let the life out of a man like the chap from Las
Palmas! Why, the man who did the shooting couldn't have done a nicer
job if he'd been a surgeon. One bullet square through the carotid
artery . . . That leads from the heart to the head," he explained as
though his listeners were children athirst for knowledge which he and
none other could impart. "The cerebrum penetrated by a second. . . ."
What other technical elucidation might have followed was lost in a
thunderous crashing of the piano keys as Florence Engle strove to drown
the man's utterance and succeeded so well that for an instant he sat
gaping at her.
"I can't stand that man!" Florence said sharply to Norton, and though
the words did not travel across the room, Virginia was surprised that
even an individual so completely armored as Caleb Patten could fail to
grasp the girl's meaning.
When Florence had pounded her way through a noisy bit of "jazz," Caleb
Patten, with one of his host's cigars lighted, was leaning a little
forward in his chair, alert to seize the first opportunity of snatching
conversation by the throat.
"Kid Rickard admits killing Bisbee," he said to Norton. "What are you
going to do about it? The first thing I heard when I got in from a
professional call a little while ago was that Rickard was swaggering
around town, saying that you wouldn't gather him in because you were
afraid to."
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