第66章 JEAN BELIEVES THAT SHE TAKES MATTERS INTO HER OWN

When the shadows of the giant cactus stretched mutilated hands across the desert sand,and she believed that Nogales was near,Jean carried her suit-case to the cramped dressing-room and took out her six-shooter and buckled it around her.Then she pulled her coat down over it with a good deal of twisting and turning before the dirty mirror to see that it looked all right,and not in the least as though a perfect lady was packing a gun.

She went back and dipped fastidious fingers into the box of chocolates,and settled herself to nibble candy and wait for what might come.She felt very calm and self-possessed and sure of herself.Her only fear was that Art Osgood might have been killed,and his lips closed for all time.So they rattled away through the barrenness and drew near to Nogales.

Casa del Sonora,whither she went,was an old,two-story structure of the truly Spanish type,and it was kept by a huge,blubbery creature with piggish eyes and a bloated,purple countenance and the palsy.As much of him as appeared to be human appeared to be Irish;and Jean,after the first qualm of repulsion,when she faced him over the hotel register,detected a certain kindly solicitude in his manner,and was reassured.

So far,everything had run smoothly,like a well-staged play.Absurdly simple,utterly devoid of any element of danger,any vexatious obstacle to the immediate achievement of her purpose!But Jean was not thrown off her guard because of the smoothness of the trail.

The trip from Tucson had been terribly tiresome;she was weary in every fibre,it seemed to her.But for all that she intended,sometime that evening,to meet Art Osgood if he were in town.She intended to take him with her on the train that left the next morning.She thought it would be a good idea to rest now,and to proceed deliberately,lest she frustrate all her plans by over-eagerness.

Perhaps she slept a little while she lay upon the bed and schooled herself to calmness.A band,somewhere,playing a pulsing Spanish air,brought her to her feet.

She went to the window and looked out,and saw that the street lay cool and sunless with the coming of dusk.

From the American customhouse just on the opposite corner came Lite Avery,stalking leisurely along in his high-heeled riding-boots.Jean drew back with a little flutter of the pulse and watched him,wondering how he came to be in Nogales.She had last seen him boarding a car that would take him out to the Great Western Studio;and now,here he was,sauntering across the street as if he lived here.It was like finding his bed up in the loft and knowing all at once that he had been keeping watch all the while,thinking of her welfare and never giving her the least hint of it.That at least was understandable.But to her there was something uncanny about his being here in Nogales.When he was gone,she stepped out through the open window to the veranda that ran the whole length of the hotel,and looked across the street into Mexico.

She was,she decided critically,about fifteen feet from the boundary line.Just across the street fluttered the Mexican flag from the Mexican customhouse.AMexican guard lounged against the wall,his swarthy face mask-like in its calm.While she leaned over the railing and stared curiously at that part of the street which was another country,from the hills away to the west,where were camped soldiers,--the American soldiers,--who prevented the war from slopping over the line now and then into Arizona,came the clear notes of a bugle held close-pressed against the lips of a United States soldier in snug-fitting khaki.The boom of the sundown salute followed immediately after.In the street below her,Mexicans and Americans mingled amiably and sauntered here and there,killing time during that bored interval between eating and the evening's amusement.

Just beyond the Mexican boundary,the door of a long,adobe cantina was flung open,and a group of men came out and paused as if they were wondering what they should do next,and where they should go.Jean looked them over curiously.Mexicans they were not,though they had some of the dress which belonged on that side of the boundary.

Americans they were;one knew by the set of their shoulders,by the little traits of race which have nothing to do with complexion or speech.

Jean caught her breath and leaned forward.There was Art Osgood,standing with his back toward her and with one palm spread upon his hip in the attitude she knew so well.If only he would turn!Should she run down the stairs and go over there and march him across the line at the muzzle of her revolver?The idea repelled her,now that she had actually come to the point of action.

Jean,now that the crisis had arrived,used her woman's wile,rather than the harsher but perhaps less effective weapons of a man.

"Oh,Art!"she called,just exactly as she would have called to him on the range,in Montana "Hello,Art!"Art Osgood wheeled and sent a startled,seeking glance up at the veranda;saw her and knew who it was that had called him,and lifted his hat in the gesture that she knew so well.Jean's fingers were close to her gun,though she was not conscious of it,or of the strained,tense muscles that waited the next move.

Art,contrary to her expectations,did the most natural thing in the world.He grinned and came hurrying toward her with the long,eager steps of one who goes to greet a friend after an absence that makes of that meeting an event.Jean watched him cross the street.She waited,dazed by the instant success of her ruse,while he disappeared under the veranda.She heard his feet upon the stairs.She heard him come striding down the hall to the glass-paneled door.She saw him coming toward her,still grinning in his joy at the meeting.

"Jean Douglas!By all that's lucky!"he was exclaiming."Where in the world did you light down from?"He came to a stop directly in front of her,and held out his hand in unsuspecting friendship.