A Daughter of the Dons Part 23

Mr. Fitt smiled blandly. He had satisfied himself that his client was good pay and he did not intend to take offense. "It pleases you to be facetious, Mr. Gordon. But we all know that what this country needs--what such a valley as the Rio Chama ought to have--is up to date American development. People and conditions are in a primitive state.

When men like you get possession of the Moreno and similar tracts New Mexico will move forward with giant strides to its great destiny. Time does not stand still. The day of the indolent semi-feudal Spanish system of occupancy has pa.s.sed away. New Mexico will no longer remain _manana_ land. You--and men like you--of broad ideas, progressive, energetic----"

"Quite a philanthropist, ain't I?" interrupted Gordon, smiling lazily.

"Well, let's hear the yarn, Mr. Fitt."

The attorney gave up his oration regretfully. He subsided into a chair and resumed the conversational tone.

"You've got to understand how things were here in the old Spanish days, gentlemen. Don Bartolome for instance was not merely a cattleman. He was a grandee, a feudal lord, a military chief to all his tenants and employees. His word was law. The power of life and death lay in him."

d.i.c.k nodded. "Get you."

"The old Don was pasturing his sheep in the Rio Chama valley and he had started a little village there--called the place Torreon, I think, from a high tower house he had built to overlook the valley so that Indians could be seen if they attempted an attack. Well, he takes a notion that he'd better get legal t.i.tle to the land he was using, though in those days he might have had half of New Mexico for his cattle and sheep as a range. So he asks Facundo Megares, governor of the royal province, for a grant of land. The governor, anxious to please him, orders the const.i.tutional alcalde, a person named Jose Garcia de la Mora, to execute the act of possession to Valdes of a tract described as follows, to wit----"

"I've heard the description," cut in the young man. "Well, did the Don take possession?"

"We claim that he never did. He visited there, and his shepherds undoubtedly ran sheep on the range covered by the grant. But Valdes and his family never actually resided on the estate. Other points that militate against the claim of his descendants may be noted. First, that minor grants of land, taken from within the original Valdes grant, were made by the governor without any protest on the part of the Don. Second, that Don Bartolome himself, subsequently Governor and Captain-General of the province of New Mexico, did, in his official capacity as President of the Council, endorse at least two other small grants of land cut out from the heart of the Valdes estate. This goes to show that he did not himself consider that he owned the land, or perhaps he felt that he had forfeited his claim."

"Or maybe it just showed that the old gentleman was no hog," suggested Gordon.

"I guess the law will construe it as a waiver of his claim. It doesn't make any allowances for altruism."

"I've noticed that," Gordon admitted dryly.

"A new crowd of politicians got in after Mexico became independent of Spain. The plums had to be handed out to the friends of the party in power. So Manuel Armijo, the last Mexican Governor of the province, being a favorite of the President of that country because he had defeated some Texas Rangers in a battle, and on that account endowed with extraordinary powers, carved a fat half million acres out of the Valdes grant and made a present of it to Jose Moreno for 'services to the government of Mexico.' That's where you come in as heir to your grandfather, who purchased for a song the claim of Moreno's son."

"My right has been lying dormant twenty-five years. Won't that affect its legality?"

"No. If we knock out the Valdes' grant, all we have to do is to prove the legality of the Moreno one. It happens we have evidence to show that he satisfied all legal requirements by living on the land more than four years. This gave him patent in perpetuity subject to taxes. By the payment of these we can claim t.i.tle." Fitt rubbed his hands and walked backward and forward briskly. "We've got them sewed up tight, Mr.

Gordon. The Supreme Court has sustained our contention in the almost parallel Baca case."

"Fine," said d.i.c.k moodily. He knew it was unreasonable for him to be annoyed at his counsel because the latter happened to be an alert and competent lawyer. But somehow all his sympathies were with Valencia Valdes and her dependents.

"If you'd like to look at the original doc.u.ments in the case, Mr.

Gordon----"

"I would."

"I'll take you up to the State House this afternoon. You can look over them at your leisure."

Davis laughed at his friend as they walked back to the hotel.

"I don't believe you know yourself what you want. You act as if you'd rather lose than win the suit."

"Sometimes I'm a white man, Steve. I don't want to grab other people's property just because some one can dig up a piece of paper that says it's mine. We sit back and roast the trusts to a fare-you-well for hogging all there is in sight. That's what Fitt and his tribe expect me to do. I'm d.a.m.ned if I will."

CHAPTER XII

"I BELIEVE YOU'RE IN LOVE WITH HER, TOO"

It was characteristic of d.i.c.k Gordon that he established at once a little relation of friendliness between him and the young woman at the State House who waited upon him with the doc.u.ments in the Valdes grant case. She was a tall, slight girl with amazingly vivid eyes set in a face scarcely pretty. In her manner to the world at large there was an indifference amounting almost to insolence. She had a way of looking at people as if they were bits of the stage setting instead of individuals.

A flare of interest had sparkled in her eyes when Gordon's fussy little attorney had mentioned the name of his client, but it had been d.i.c.k's genial manner of boyish comrades.h.i.+p that had really warmed Miss Underwood to him. She did not like many people, but when she gave her heart to a friend it was without stipulations. d.i.c.k was a man's man.

Essentially he was masculine, virile, dominant. But the force of him was usually masked either by his gay impudence or his sunny friendliness.

Women were drawn to his flas.h.i.+ng smile because they sensed the strength behind it.

Kate Underwood could have given a dozen reasons why she liked him. There were for instance the superficial ones. She liked the way he tossed back the tawny sun-kissed hair from his eyes, the easy pantherish stride with which he covered ground so lightly, the set of his fine shoulders, the peculiar tint of his lean, bronzed cheeks. His laugh was joyous as the song of a bird in early spring. It made one want to shout with him.

Then, too, she tremendously admired his efficiency. To look at the hard, clear eye, at the clean, well-packed build of the man, told the story.

The movements of his strong, brown hands were sure and economical. They dissipated no energy. Every detail of his personality expressed a mind that did its own thinking swiftly and incisively.

"It's curious about these doc.u.ments of the old Valdes and Moreno claims.

They have lain here in the vaults--that is, here and at the old Governor's Palace--for twenty years and more untouched. Then all at once twenty people get interested in them. Scarce a day pa.s.ses that lawyers are not up to look over some of the copies. You have certainly stirred things up with your suit, Mr. Gordon."

d.i.c.k looked out of the window at the white adobe-lined streets resting in a placid coma of sun-beat.

"Don't you reckon Santa Fe can stand a little stirring up, Miss Underwood?"

"Goodness, yes. We all get to be three hundred years old if we live in this atmosphere long enough."

The man's gaze s.h.i.+fted. "You'd have to live here a right long time, I reckon."

A quick slant of her gay eyes reproached him. "You don't have to be so gallant, Mr. Gordon. The State pays me fifteen hundred dollars a year to wait on you, anyhow."

"You don't say. As much as that? My, we're liable to go bankrupt in New Mexico, ain't we? And, if you want to know, I don't say nice things to you because I have to, but because I want to."

She laughed with a pretense at incredulity. "In another day or two I'll find out just what special favor I'm able to do Mr. Gordon. The regular thing is to bring flowers or candy, you know. Generally they say, too, that there never has been a clerk holding this job as fit for it as I am."

"You're some clerk, all right. Say, where can I find the original of this _Agua Caliente_ grant, Miss Kate?"

She smiled to herself as she went to get him a certified copy. "Only two days, and he's using my first name. Inside of a week he'll be calling me 'Dearie,'" she thought. But she knew very well there was no danger. This young fellow was the kind of man that could be informal without the slightest idea of flirting or making love.

Kate Underwood's interest in the fight between the claimants for the Valdes and Moreno grants was not based entirely upon her liking for d.i.c.k. He learned this the fourth day of his stay in Santa Fe.

"Do you know that you were followed to the hotel last night, Mr.

Gordon?" she asked him, as soon as he arrived at the State House.

His eyes met hers instantly. "Was I? How do you know?"

"I left the building just after you did. Two Mexicans followed you. I don't know when I first suspected it, but I trailed along to make sure.

There can be no doubt about it."

"Not a bit of doubt. Found it out the first day when I left the hotel,"

he told her cheerfully.

"You knew it all the time," she cried, amazed.