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Page 51
"I know it also," he said, "because I have before me here the
girl's certificate of birth and Ordez's certificate of marriage."
He opened the silk envelope and took out some faded papers. He
unfolded them and spread them out under his hand.
"I think Ordez feared for his child," he said, "and stored these
papers against the day of danger to her, because they are copies
taken from the records in Havana."
He looked up at the astonished Morrow.
"Ordez married the daughter of Pedro de Hernando. I find, by a
note to these papers, that she is dead. I conclude that this
great Spanish family objected to the adventurer, and he fled with
his infant daughter to New Orleans." he paused.
"The intrigue with the octoroon woman, Suzanne, came after that."
Then he added:
"You must renew your negotiations, Sir, in, a somewhat different
manner before a Spanish Grandee in Havana!"
Mr. Lucian Morrow did not reply. He stood in a sort of wonder.
But Zindorf, his face like iron, addressed my father:
"Where did you get these papers, Pendleton?" he said.
"I got them from Ordez," replied my father.
"When did you see Ordez?"
"I saw him to-day," replied my father.
Zindorf did not move, but his big jaw worked and a faint spray of
moisture came out on his face. Then, finally, with no change or
quaver in his voice, he put his query.
"Where is Ordez?"
"Where?" echoed my father, and he rose. "Why, Zindorf, he is on
his way here." And he extended his arm toward the open window.
The big man lifted his head and looked out at the men and horses
now clearly visible on the distant road.
"Who are these people," he said, "and why do they come?" He
spoke as though he addressed some present but invisible
authority.
My father answered him
"They are the people of Virginia," he said, "and they come,
Zindorf, in the purpose of events that you have turned terribly
backward!"
The man was in some desperate perplexity, but he had steel nerves
and the devil's courage.
He looked my father calmly in the face.
"What does all this mean?" he said.
"It means, Zindorf," cried my father, "it means that the very
things, the very particular things, that you ought to have used
for the glory of God, God has used for your damnation!"
And again, in the clear April air, there entered through the open
window the faint tolling of a bell.
"Listen, Zindorf! I will tell you. In the old abandoned church
yonder, when they came to toll the bell for Duncan, the rope fell
to pieces; I came along then, and Jacob Lance climbed into the
steeple to toll the bell by hand. At the first crash of sound a
wolf ran out of a thicket in the ravine below him, and fled away
toward the mountains. Lance, from his elevated point, could see
the wolf's muzzle was bloody. That would mean, that a lost horse
had been killed or an estray steer. He called down and we went
in to see what thing this scavenger had got hold of."
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