Jessica Trent: Her Life on a Ranch

“I get them all right; but–patience! Atlantic!”

The old man sighed. It was weary work for him, the hardest he had ever done, to lie so motionless while he was so anxious to be active. He really suffered little and he had the best of care. Still, he sighed again, and, unfortunately, Jessica echoed the sigh. Then he looked at her keenly and spoke the thought which had been in his mind for a long time:

“Captain, you must go home. There’s twenty to need bossing there and only one poor old carcass here.”

Poor Lady Jess! She tried to answer brightly as was her habit, but that day homesickness was strong upon her, and at mention of Sobrante her courage failed. She forgot that she was a “nurse”; forgot the good “behavior,” forgot everything, indeed, but her mother’s face and Ned’s mischievous affection. She dropped to her knees and buried her face in the old man’s pillow while she sobbed aloud:

“Oh, ‘Forty-niner,’ shall we ever see that home again?”

Weak and unstrung, the patient moaned in sympathy, while tears fell from his own eyes; and it was upon this dismal tableau that Mr. Hale walked in, unannounced.

“Hurrah, here! What’s amiss? Been quarreling? Just when I’ve come to bring you good news, too.”

“Quarreling, indeed! Ephraim and I could never quarrel. Never. But–but–this isn’t Sobrante, and we’re–I guess we’re awful homesick.”

“That’s a disease can be cured, you know. One of you, at least, can go home. If you wish, Jessica, I will put you on a train and arrange for one of your ‘boys’ to meet you at the railway terminus. But–”

“Hello, everybody!” called a cheery voice, and there in the doorway was Ninian Sharp, smiling, nodding, and embracing all three with one inspiring look. “What’s that I overheard about ‘home’? Been telling state secrets, Hale? My plan beats yours, altogether. We’re all going ‘home’ to Sobrante, in a bunch, one of these fine days. The Lancet never fails!”

Jessica sprang to him and caught his hand to kiss it. He had not been to see them for some days and she had missed him sadly. Far more than Mr. Hale he made her feel that the mystery surrounding “that missing New York money,” as she called it, would certainly be explained. It was he who, by questions innumerable, had recalled to her and to Ephraim the names of persons with whom Mr. Trent had ever done business. Incidents which to her seemed trifling had been of moment in his judgment. With the slight clews they had given him, as the first link in the chain, he had gone on unraveling the knots which followed with infinite patience and perseverance. He kept Mrs. Trent informed of the welfare of her daughter, and, without neglecting his legitimate business, did the thousand and one things which only the busiest of persons can have time to do. For it’s always the indolent who are overcrowded.

“Oh! Mr. Sharp! Have you found it all out?”

“Not I. Hale, here, has found out some things, himself. But he’s a lawyer, which means, a–beg pardon–a snail. If newspapers were as slow as the law–h-m-m–we might all take a nap. Look here, Miss Sunshine, you’ve been crying.”

Jessica blushed as guiltily as if she had been accused of some crime.

“I know it. I’m sorry.”

“So am I. I know why. Because you’re shut up here like a dormouse when you’ve lived like a lark. On with your little red Tam and come with me. Our work is getting on famously, famously. If I could get hold of one person that I’ve hunted this and every other city near for I’d have the matter in a nut shell and the guilty man in–a prison. I’ve found–three or four more of those links I mentioned, Hale, and every man of them is another witness to the uprightness of one, Cassius Trent, late of Sobrante. I began this job for little Jess, but I confess I’m finishing it for the sake of a man I never saw. He was a trump, that fellow. One of the great-hearted, impracticable creatures that keep my faith in humanity. If we could only find that Antonio!”

“Yes. If! But when he rode away from Sobrante that day he seems to have ridden out of the world, so far as any trace he left behind. I’m getting discouraged, for without him all the rest falls to the ground.”

“Well, discouraged? We’ll just step out and find him, won’t we, Lady Jess?”

She had hastened to ask permission to go out with her friend and had come back radiant, now, at prospect even of so brief an outing. It was quite as the reporter had judged; the close confinement of the hospital, after the out-of-door life at Sobrante, was half the cause of Jessica’s depression, and she was ready now to fall in with the gay mood of Ninian Sharp and answered, promptly:

“Oh, yes. We’ll find ‘him,’ since you wish it. But I don’t happen to know which ‘him’ you want?”

“Why, our fine Senor Bernal. Who else?”

“Then let us go to the old Spanish quarter.”

“I’ve been, many times. Sent others also. No. He’s a wise chap and if he is in this town frequents no haunt where he’ll be looked for so surely. No matter. It’s a picturesque corner of the town and maybe a sight of some old adobes would do your homesick eyes good.”

“Or harm,” suggested Mr. Hale.

But they did not stop to hear his objections and were speedily on the car which would take them nearest to the district Jessica had heard of, both from Antonio at home and now from others here. A relic of the old California, whose history she loved to hear from the lips of Pedro, Fra Mateo, or even “Forty-niner” himself.

But once arrived there she was disappointed. They were old adobes, true enough, and the people who lived in them had the same dark, Spanish cast of face which she remembered of Antonio. Yet there the resemblance ended. This was the home of squalor, of poverty that was not self-respecting enough to be clean, and of an indolence which had brought about a wretched state of affairs.

“Oh! is this it? But it can’t be. Antonio’s ‘quarter’ was a splendid place. The old grandees lived there, keeping up a sort of court and all the customs of a hundred years ago. It was ‘a picture, a romance, a dream,’ he said. Of an evening he would describe it all to us at home till I felt as if it were the one spot in the world I most wished to see. But–this!”

“Turn not up your pretty nose, for ‘this,’ my dear little unenlightened maiden, is also a dream–a nightmare. Nevertheless, the very ground your lost hero boasted and embellished with his fancy. The more I hear of this versatile Antonio the greater becomes my longing to behold him. In any case, since we’re here, we must not go away without entering some of these shops. You shall buy a trinket or two and present one of them as a keepsake to this fine senor, when you find him. Oh! that I had your familiar knowledge of his features, this absent ‘grandee,’ that if by accident I met him I might know him on the instant. See. This ‘bazaar’ is somewhat tidier than its neighbors, as well as larger, and there are some really beautiful Navajo blankets in the window. Unfortunately the pocketbook of a reporter isn’t quite equal to more than a dozen of these, at fifty dollars apiece. Something more modest, Lady Jess, and I’ll oblige you!”

She looked up to protest and saw that he was teasing, and exclaimed, with an air of mock injury:

“Those or nothing! But when shall I learn to understand your jest from earnest?”

“When you produce me your Antonio!”

“Upon the instant, then,” she retorted, gayly.

Upon the instant, indeed, there were hurrying footsteps behind them, the sound of some one breathing rapidly and of angrily muttered sentences, that were a jumble of Spanish and English, and in a voice which made Jessica Trent start and turn aside, clutching her companion’s hand.

He turned, also, throwing his arm about her shoulders, lest the rush of the man approaching should force her from the narrow sidewalk. But she darted from him, straight into the path of this wild-looking person and seized him with both hands, while she cried out:

“It’s he! It is Antonio! I’ve found him–Antonio Bernal!”

“Whew! A case of the ‘unexpected,’ indeed! The merest jest and the absolute fact. Hi! I’d rather this than–than be struck by lightning, and it’s on about the same order of things, for it is he, as she claimed. He’s more staggered than I am,” considered this lively newspaper man. Then he thought it time to step forward, and remark:

“Please present me to your friend, Miss Trent,” and lifted his hat, courteously.

Antonio bowed, after his own exaggerated fashion, and with his hand upon his heart; but though his eyes rested keenly on Ninian’s face he kept tight hold of Jessica’s hand and his torrent of words did not cease for an instant. Now and then he lifted the little hand and kissed it, whereupon Lady Jess would snatch it away and coolly wipe it on her skirt, only to have it recaptured and caressed; till, seeing he would neither give over the hateful action nor stop talking, she folded her arms behind her and interrupted with:

“That’s enough, Senor Bernal. This isn’t Sobrante, but I’m your captain here, same as there. You come tell your story to Mr. Hale and this gentleman. See Ephraim Marsh, too. He’s here in hospital with a broken leg. I’m in Los Angeles, also, as you see; and likely to find the same man you say has cheated you. That’s what he’s telling, Mr. Sharp,” she exclaimed.

Antonio hesitated. He had frowned at her tone of command, but now, to the reporter’s amazement, seemed eager to obey it.

“As the senorita will. That gentleman, who came last to Sobrante, was one lawyer, no? So the senora said. Fool! fool! that I was that I did not then and at that moment so disclose the secrets of my heart as was moved, yes. Let the senorita and the handsome friend lead on. I follow. I, Antonio.”

Five minutes earlier, had Ninian Sharp been asked what he should do if he did find this strange person, he would have promptly answered:

“Put him under lock and key, where he can do no harm and be handy to get at.”

Now he found himself as certain that the fellow needed no restraint of the law, at present. That he was dreadfully unhappy and had become as humble as he had before been arrogant. What could so have altered him? And was it thus that the Lady Jess had all her “boys” in leading strings?

“I must look out for myself or I’ll fall under a like spell,” he laughed, as with the air of one who knows it all, though she had been over that way but once, Jessica explained to her late manager:

“This car will take us straight back to the hospital. We’ve not been away long and I think Mr. Hale will still be there. He’ll be glad to see you. Very glad. He and Mr. Sharp have been looking for you. I think you can tell them something they’re anxious to know. Ephraim is there, anyhow. He, poor fellow, can’t go away, even if he wishes–yet.”

Mr. Hale was still in “Forty-niner’s” room and recognized Antonio with such an outburst of surprise that Ephraim opened his eyes, for he had been dozing, and fixed them on the newcomer, inquiringly.

“What! You, you snake! you here?”

“But certainly, yes. I, I, Antonio, at your service. Hast the broken leer? This is bad. Old bones are slow to heal. You will not shoot again at dear Sobrante, you.”

“Won’t? Well, I rather guess it’ll take somebody stronger ’n you to stop it.”

Antonio shrugged his shoulders in a manner deemed offensive by the patient, who struggled to rise, but was prevented by Jessica’s quick movement.

“Ephraim! Antonio! Don’t quarrel, this very first minute. One of you is sick and the other half frantic with some trouble. Please, Antonio, go away now with Mr. Hale and Mr. Sharp. One must never make a noise in a hospital,” said this wise maiden of eleven.

“Ah! so? But it is the lawyer I want, yet. The lawyer who will make a villain return the great money I have given. Caramba! If I had him in my hands this minute!”

Jessica lifted a warning finger and the manager lowered his voice. He even made an attempt at soothing Ephraim, but chose an unfortunate argument.

“Take peace to yourself, ‘Forty-niner.’ All must be told some day. Adios.”

“Adios, you foreign serpent! Old? Old! he calls me–me–old! Why, I’m a babe in arms to Pedro, or Fra Mateo, or even fat Brigida, who washes for us ‘boys.’ Old! A man but just turned eighty! Snake, I’ll outlive you yet. I’ll get well, to spite you; and I’ll be on hand, when they let you out the lockup, to give you the neatest horsewhippin’ you ever see. Old! Get out!”

Fearful of further excitement, the gentlemen hurried Antonio away, yet kept a keen watch upon his movements for, at that word “lockup,” the man’s dark face had turned to an ashen hue.

As they left the hospital the every-busy ambulance rolled past them toward the accident ward. The others averted their eyes, but the Spaniard peered curiously within, and, instantly a shuddering groan burst from his lips. Inside that van lay the solution to all their difficulties; though Antonio alone had comprehended it.

CHAPTER XVIII

APPREHENDED

The pleasantest task which fell to Jessica’s hands, during her hospital life, was the distributing of flowers and fruits, almost daily sent by the charitable for the comfort of the patients.

The nurses received and apportioned these gifts; and, carrying her big, tray-like basket, Lady Jess visited each ward and room in turn, adding to the pretty offering some bright word of her own. For she now had the freedom of the house and knew the occupant of each white bed better, even, than his or her attendant nurse. The quiet manner which she had gained here, her ready help and loving sympathy, made her coming looked for eagerly; but the happiness she thus bestowed was more than returned upon her own heart. Could her “boys” have seen her they would have been proud, but not surprised, for to the appreciative words his own attendant gave his darling, Ephraim would instantly reply?

“’Course. What else could you expect? Didn’t she have the finest man in the world for her father? and isn’t her mother a lady? Isn’t she, herself, the sweetest, lovingest, most unselfish child that ever lived? But it’ll be meat to feed the ‘boys’ with, all these stories you’re telling me. They most worship her now, and after they listen to such talk a spell–h-m-m. The whole secret is just–love. That’s what our captain is made of; pure love. ’Twas a good thing for this old earth when she was born.”

“But you’ll spoil her among you, I fear.”

“Well, you needn’t. Little Jessica Trent can’t be spoiled. ’Cause them same ‘boys’ would be the first ones to take any nonsense out of her, at the first symptoms. She couldn’t stand ridicule. It would break her heart; but they’d give her ridicule and plenty of it if she put on silly airs. You needn’t be afraid for Lady Jess.”

On that very day, after Antonio had left the hospital with his friends, or captors, as the case might prove. Jessica went through the building with her tray of roses, and in the wing adjoining the accident ward saw a man lying in one of the hitherto empty rooms.

“A new patient. He must have been brought in to-day. I’ve never been to the new ones till I was told, but I hate to pass him by. I wonder if it would be wrong to ask him if he wished a flower! And how still he stays. Yet his eyes are very wide open and so round! He looks like somebody I’ve seen–why, little Luis Garcia! ’Tis Luis himself, grown old and thin. For Luis’ sake, then I’ll try.”

A nurse was sitting silent at the patient’s bedside and toward her the child turned an inquiring glance. The answer was a slight, affirmative nod. The attendant’s thought was that it would please Lady Jess to give the rose and could do the patient no harm to receive it. Indeed, nothing earthly could harm him any more.

So Jessica stepped softly in and paused beside the cot. Her face was full of pity and of a growing astonishment, for the nearer she beheld it the more startling was the sick man’s likeness to a childish face hundreds of miles away.

Her stare brought the patient’s own vacant gaze back to a consciousness of things about him. He saw a yellow-haired girl looking curiously upon him and extending toward him a half-blown rose. A fair and unexpected vision in that place of pain, and he asked, half querulously:

“Who are you? An angel come to upbraid me before my time?”

“I’m Jessica Trent, of Sobrante ranch, in Paraiso d’Oro valley.”

“W-h-a-t!”

The nurse bent forward, but he motioned her aside.

“Say that again.”

“I’m just little Jessica Trent. That’s all.”

“All! Trent–Trent. Ah!”

“And you? Are you Luis Garcia’s missing father?”

“Luis–Luis Garcia. Was it Luis, Ysandra called him?”

“Yes, yes. That was the name on the paper my father found pinned to the baby’s dress. The letter told that the baby’s father had gone away promising to come back, but had never come. The mother had heard of my dear father’s goodness to all who needed help, and she was on her way to him when her strength gave out. So she died there in the canyon, and she said the baby’s name was like the father’s. I remember it all, because to us the ‘Maria’ seems like a girl’s name, too. Luis Maria Manuel Alessandro Garcia.”

The man’s round eyes opened wider and wider. It seemed as if his glare pierced the child’s very heart, and she drew back frightened. The nurse motioned her to go, but at her first movement toward the door the patient extended his hands imploring:

“No. Not yet. My time is spent. Let me hear all–all. The child your father found–ah! me! Your father of all men! Did–did it live?”

“Of course it lived. He is a darling little fellow and he looks–he looks so like you that I knew you in a moment. He has the same wide brown eyes, the same black curls, his eyebrows slant so, like yours, he is your image. But he is the cutest little chap you ever saw. He is my own brother’s age and they have grown up together, like twins, I guess. It would break Ned’s heart to have you take him away from us. You won’t now, will you?”

A pitiful smile spread over the pain-racked features, and the man glanced significantly toward the nurse. She smiled encouragingly upon him, but he was not misled. After a moment of silence, during which Jessica anxiously watched his drawn face, he spoke.

“Go, child. Your mission is done. Send a lawyer, quick. Quick. The man I wronged–the savior of my son! A lawyer, quick. Bring the suit case–the case! Let none open it but the child. Quick. Quick!”

Higher authority even than her own convinced the nurse that obedience to his urgency was the only way now to allay the patient’s rising excitement. The accident which had crushed the lower part of his body, so that his life was but a question of hours, had left his head clear for the present; and here, indeed, seemed a case for more than surgical treatment.

Fortunately, the needed “lawyer” was close at hand, waiting with the reporter and the half-distraught Antonio whose shriek of recognition had been Luis Garcia’s welcome to the hospital. Unceasingly, the manager had declared that this was the man all three of them were seeking; had insisted upon returning to the ante-room of the hospital, and avowed that he would never leave the spot until the “villain” had been apprehended.

“He has misled and cheated me. I, Antonio! He has all my money. He has the savings of my life, yes. He has all that I did not yet pay, of the crops so good, to the Senora Trent. More, more. That money–which, ah, me! He told me, yes, a thousand million times, that I, and not that New York company, to me alone was the inheritance of Paraiso d’Oro. My money was to prove it, that inheritance, yes. To me was the power of attorney, was it not? of Cassius Trent, who was the so good man and the so poor fool at business.”

“Look out, there, neighbor! Speaking of fools and business, you don’t appear to have been so brilliant yourself,” corrected Ninian, promptly.

Antonio continued, heedless of the interruption:

“He was the great banker, Garcia, no? What then? Who would so safe keep the money from that far New York? With the master’s wish I gave it to that bank. And the letters–Caramba! So high, to one’s knees, to one’s waist I pile them, the letters! All wrote of his own hand. All say by-and-by, manana, he give me the perfect title and send back that which belongs, after all expenses, no? To them in New York.”

“A pretty scheme. You don’t seem to have profited by it greatly, as yet.”

“I, profit? But I am now the beggar, I, poor Antonio. This day I come from resting in the houses of my friends and I find–what do I find? The bank is not. The banker is not, yes. His house where he lived more plain than our adobes at Sobrante, that house is closed. His man tell me this: ‘He has gone away. One little, little trip, a journey. Across the sea. He will come back. Have patience, Antonio.’ But my money? my papers? my inheritance so all but proved? Tush. He told me not that. ‘When he comes back you can ask him, himself.’ So. Good. He has come back. Here. I see him, sure. I–”

A summons to Mr. Hale cut short this fierce harangue, which had been repeated till their ears were tired.

The banker had come back, indeed, poor creature. By the very train on which he was to depart with his plunder–all rendered into the solid cash which would tell no tales, as he fancied–by this swift-moving juggernaut he was overtaken and crushed down. A moment earlier he would have been in time. But in haste and by a misstep he had ended all his earthly journeyings.

When the lawyer was called the reporter followed his friend and Antonio followed him, and when these three approached the little room in which the dying man lay, the nurse would have sent them back; but Garcia himself pleaded: “Let them be. What matters it how many hear or see? The dress-suit case. Bring it, and bring the child.”

They obeyed and he bade them place the key in Jessica’s small hand.

“Open it, little one.”

But her fingers shook so that the nurse, in pity, pushed them from the lock and herself unfastened the heavily laden case. It contained no clothing, such as might have been looked for within; but rolls and packets neatly tied.

“Open them, child.”

“Oh! please! I do not want to; I am afraid!”

“Afraid, Jessica Trent? Do you not yet understand? That is money, money–of which your father stood accused before the world as having stolen. Afraid to prove your father what you know him–an honest man!” cried Ninian in anger.

She understood him then, and in frantic haste obeyed. Roll after roll, till Mr. Hale said:

“Enough. His strength is failing. This scene is too much for him.”

At that she pushed the gold away and, falling on her knees beside the bed, caught Luis Garcia’s hand and covered it with kisses.

“Oh! thank you, Luis’ father! God bless you, God take care of you!”

“Oh! the divine pity of childhood,” murmured Ninian, huskily. “She forgets that it was he who wronged her in the fact that he has now set her right.”

The sick man’s face brightened, nor did he withdraw his hand.

“You forgive me?”

“Yes, yes.”

“The little Luis. The son I never saw. What shall you tell him of his father?”

“That he was good to me, and that he suffered.”

“More. Tell the boy this: I never knew he lived. I should have known, I should have searched. I did not. Ask him, too, to forgive me. And because of me, turn him not away.”

The nurse motioned all the others to go out, and they went, Ninian Sharp himself standing guard over the dress-suit case the attendant had relocked until it was once more safely deposited in the strong box of the hospital, where even Antonio’s greedy eyes could see it no longer.

But Jessica knelt on, awed and silent, yet now quite unafraid. And Luis Garcia still clasped her hand and fixed his fading gaze upon her pitying face.

“The mother–Ysandra. Where lies she now? Little one, do you know that?”

“Do I not? In the consecrated ground of the old mission itself. With all the good dead priests sleeping about her. Rose vines cover her grave and my own mother tends them herself. Little Luis is made to water it, sometimes, though, for that is a good way to keep her memory green, my mother says. Near by is where my father rests. Would–would you wish to sleep there, too, beside them both, and where Luis could bring flowers to you as to her?”

“I may? You–are–willing? Would–your mother–so kind–little Luis–”