The sand of the desert is sodden red;Red with the wreck of a square that broke;The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,And the regiment blind with dust and smoke:The River of Death has brimmed his banks;And England's far and Honor's a name,But the voice of a school boy rallies the ranks—Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
The sand of the desert is sodden red;Red with the wreck of a square that broke;The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,And the regiment blind with dust and smoke:The River of Death has brimmed his banks;And England's far and Honor's a name,But the voice of a school boy rallies the ranks—Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
The sand of the desert is sodden red;
Red with the wreck of a square that broke;
The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke:
The River of Death has brimmed his banks;
And England's far and Honor's a name,
But the voice of a school boy rallies the ranks—
Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!
Honor sat still at the piano. She did not mean to lift her eyes until she could be sure they would not run over. Why did that song always sweep her away so?—from the first moment Stepper had read her the words in the old house on South Figueroa Street, all those years ago? Why had she always the feeling that it had a special meaning for her and for Jimsy—a warning, a challenge? Jimsy came over to stand beside her, comfortably silent, and then, surprisingly, the personage came to stand beside Jimsy.
"I've been wondering," he said, "if you hadn't better come in to see me one day, when we're all back in Los Angeles? You haven't any definite plans for your future, have you?"
"No, sir," said Jimsy. "Only that I've got to get something—quick!" He looked at Honor, listening star-eyed.
The great man smiled. "I see. Well, I think I can interest you. I've watched you play football, King. I played football, forty years ago. I like the breed. My boys are all girls, worse luck—though they're the finest in the world——"
"Oh,yes," said Honor, warmly.
"But I like boys. And I like you, Jimsy King." He held out his hand. "You come to me, and if you're the lad I think you are, you'll stay."
"Oh, I'll come!" Jimsy stammered, flushed and incoherent. "I'll come! I'll—I'll sweep out or scrub floors—or—or anything! But—I'm afraid you don't——" he looked unhappily at Honor.
"Yes, Jimsy. He's got to know."
Jimsy King stood up very straight and tall. "You've got to know that I was kicked out of college two months ago, for marching in a parade against——"
"For telling the truth," cried Honor, hot cheeked, "when a cowardly lie would have saved him!"
"But just the same, I was kicked out of college, and——"
"Lord bless you, boy," said the personage, and it was the first time they had heard him laugh aloud, "I know you were! And that's one reason why I want you.So was I!"
There were telegrams from Stephen Lorimer and the doctor; James King's condition remained unchanged. Honor and Jimsy decided to return at once, but Richard King flatly refused to let them go. The next train after Honor's had been held up just beyond Córdoba by a band of brigands, supposed to be a section of Villistas, the passengers robbed and mistreated and three of the train men killed.
"Not a step without an escort," said Jimsy's uncle.
Then Jimsy's new friend came to the rescue. He was eager to get home but cannily aware of his own especial risk,—two wealthy Americans having been recently taken and held for ransom. He had influence at the Capital; he wrote and telegraphed and the replies were suave and reassuring; reliable escort would be furnished as soon as possible,—within the week, it was hoped. Meanwhile, there was nothing for it but to wait. He went back to thehaciendawhere he had been visiting, and life—the merry, lyrical life ofEl Pozo, moved forward. Jimsy's only woe was that he was condemned by her own decision to share Honor lavishly with his uncle and aunt and their friends and Carter. "Skipper, after all these years, leaving me for a darn' tea!"
"Jimsy, dear," she scolded him, "you know that it's the very least I can do, now isn't it—honestly? Think how lovely she's been to us, and how much it means to her, having people here. And we've got all our lives ahead of us, Jimsy! Be good! And besides"—she colored a little and hesitated—"it's—not kind to Cartie." Then, at the sobering of his face, "You know he—cares for me, Jimsy, and I don't believe it's just cricket for us to—to sort of wave our happiness in his face all the time."
He sighed crossly. "But—good Lord, Skipper,—he's got to get used to it!"
"Of course,—but need we—rub it in, just now?" The fact was that Honor was anxious. Carter was pallid, haggard, morose. The brief flare of composure with which he had greeted her was gone; he showed visibly and unpleasantly what he was suffering at the sight of their vivid and hearty happiness. Mrs. King had commented pityingly on it to Honor and it was simply not in the girl to go on adding to hismisery. She began to be very firm with Jimsy about their long walks or rides alone; she accepted all Mrs. King's invitations and plans for them; she included Carter whenever it was possible. These restrictions had naturally the result of making Jimsy the more ardent in their scant privacy, and Honor, amazingly free from coquetry though she was, must have sensed it. Perhaps the truth was that she had in her, after all, something of Mildred Lorimer's feeling for values and conventions; having flown from Florence to Córdoba to her lover she was reclaiming a little of her aloofness and cool ladyhood by this discipline. But she was entirely honest in her wish to spare Carter so far as possible. Once, when Jimsy was briefly away with his Yaqui henchman she asked Carter to walk with her, but he decided for the dimsala;the heat which seemed to invigorate and vitalize Jimsy left him limp and spent.
He brushed her generalities roughly aside. "Are you happy, Honor?"
She lifted her candid eyes to his bleak young face. "Yes, Cartie. Happier than ever before—and I've been happy all my life."
He was silent for a moment as if sorting out and considering the things he might say to her. "Well,you have a marvelous effect on Jimsy. I don't believe he's taken a drop since you've been here."
"He hasn't touched a drop since he came to Mexico, Carter,—Mr. King told me that, and Jimsy told me himself!" Honor was a little declamatory in her pride and he raised his eyebrows.
"Really?" He limped over to the table where the smoking things were and the decanter of whiskey and siphon of soda. "Let me have a look...." He picked up the decanter and held it to the light. "The last time I looked at it, it came just to the top of the design here,—and it does yet. Yes, it's just where it was."
"Carter! I call that spying!"
He turned back to her without temper. "I call it looking after my friend," he said gently. "I don't suppose you've let him tell you very much about what happened at college?"
"No, Carter. What's the use of it, now? He wrote it all to me, but the letter must have passed me. It's a closed chapter now."
"I hope to God it will stay closed," he said, haggardly. "But I'm afraid, Honor; I'm horribly afraid for you."
"I'm not afraid, Carter,—for myself or for Jimsy." She got up and walked to the window; shewas aware that she hated the dimness of thesala; she wanted the honest heat of the sun. "Look!" she said, gladly. Carter limped slowly to join her. Jimsy King was swinging toward them through the brazen three o'clock glare, his Yaqui Juan by his side. They were a sightly and eye-filling pair. They might have been done in bronze for studies of Yesterday and To-day. "Look!" said Honor again. "Oh, Carter, do you think any—any horrible dead trait—any clammy dead hand—can reach up out of the grave to pull him down?"
Carter was silent.
A high and cleanly anger rose in the girl. "Carter, I don't want to hurt you,—oh, I know I hurt you all the time, in one way, and I can't help that,—I don't want to be unkind, but—are you sure it isn't because you—care—for me that you have this hopeless feeling about Jimsy?" She faced him squarely and made him meet her eyes. "Carter! Tell me."
His unhappy gaze struggled with her level look and slipped away. "Of course I want you myself, Honor. I want you—horribly, unbearably, but I do honestly feel it's wrong for you to marry Jimsy King."
"But, Carter—see how nearly his father won out! Every one says that if his mother had lived—And hisUncle Richard! He's absolutely free from it, now. And the very look of Jimsy is enough to show you——"
But Carter had turned and was staring moodily at the decanter. "It comes so suddenly, Honor ... with such frightful unexpectedness. Remember, when we were youngsters, the World's Biggest Snake, 'Samson,'—exhibited in a vacant store on Main Street, and how keen we all were about him?"
Honor kindled to the memory. "I adored him. He had a head like a nice setter's and he wasn't cold or slimy a bit!"
"Remember what the man told us about his hunger? How he'd go three months without anything, and then devour twenty live rabbits and chickens and cats?"
She nodded, frowning. "I know. It was awful."
"But the point was the suddenness. They never knew when the hunger would seize him. The fellow said that it came like a flash. He was gentle as a lamb for weeks on end—and then it came. He'd pounce on the keeper's pet rabbit—his dog—the man himself if he were within reach. He was an utterly changed creature; he was just—anappetite." He stood staring somberly at the decanter. "That's the way it comes, Honor."
It seemed to be getting dimmer and dimmer in thesala. Honor found herself wishing with all her heart for her stepfather. Stephen Lorimer would know how to answer; how to parry,—to combat this thing. She felt her own weapons clumsy and blunt, but such as they were she would use them.
"But it isn't coming ever again, Carter! I tell you it isn't coming! And I want you to stop saying and thinking that it is! Now I'm going to Jimsy!"
In the wide out-of-doors, under the unbelievably blue sky and the stinging sun, with Jimsy and Yaqui Juan, life was sound and whole again. The Indian, tall as a pine, looked at her with eyes of respectful adoration and smiled his slow, melancholy smile, as she swung off with the boy, down the path which led to the old well.
"Juan approves of me, doesn't he?" said Honor, contentedly.
"Of course; you're my woman!" She loved his happy impudence. "Aren't you, Skipper?" They had passed the twist in the path—the path which was like a moist green tunnel through the tropic jungle—which hid them from the house and she halted and went swiftly into his arms.
"Yes, Jimsy!Yes!And—I've been stingy andmean to you but I won't be, any more. Carter must just—stand things."
"Skipper!" He wasn't facile with words, Jimsy King, but he was able to make himself clear.
"Jimsy, isn't it wonderful—the all-rightness of everything? Being together again, and——"
"Going to be together always! And my job waiting! Isn't the old boy a wonder? I saw him, just now. He says he's heard from Mexico City and it's O. K. to start Thursday. They're going to send the escort."
"In two days," said Honor, blissfully, "we'll be on our way home! Jimsy, in two days!"
But in two days dizzyingly, terrifyingly much had happened. The pleasant little comedy of life atEl Pozohad changed to melodrama, crude and strident. They had been attacked by a band ofinsurrectos, a wing of Villa's hectic army, presumably; thepeóns, with the exception of the house servants and Yaqui Juan, had gone gleefully over to the enemy; Richard King had been wounded in his hot-headed defense of hishacienda, shot through the shoulder, and was running a temperature; the telephone wires were cut; infinitely worse than all, the besiegers had taken possession of the well and they were entirely without water.
There had been, of course, the usual supply in the house at the time of the attack and it had been made to last as long as was humanly possible, the lion's share going to the wounded man, but they had arrived, now, at the point of actual suffering. His rôle of helpless inaction was an intolerable one for Jimsy King to play. To know that—less than a quarter of a mile away, down the moist green path through the tropic verdure—was the well; to see Honor's dry lips and strained eyes, Carter's deathly pallor, to hear his uncle, out of his head, mercifully, most of the time, begging for water, meant a constant battle with himself not to rush out, to make one frantic try at least, but he knew that the deeper courage of patient waiting was required of him. They could only conjecture what the invaders meant to do,—whether they intended to have them die of thirst, whether they meant to rush the house when it suited their pleasure—raggedly fortified and guarded by Jimsy and Carter and the half dozen of the faithful. Jimsy had talked the latter probability over steadily with Honor and she understood.
"Jimsy," she managed not to let her teeth chatter, "it's like a play or—or a Wild West tale, isn't it? Like a 'Frank Merriwell'—remember when you used to adore those things?"
"No, Skipper, it's not like a 'Frank Merriwell'; he could alwaysdosomething...." Jimsy's strong teeth ground together.
"Yes—'Blooey, blooey! Fifteen more redskins bit the dust!'"
"Skipper, youwonder! You brick!"
"Jimsy, I—there's no use talking about things that may never happen, becauseof coursehelp will get here, but if it should not—if they should rush us, and we couldn't keep them out"—her hoarse voice faltered but her eyes held his—"you won't—you wouldn't let them—take me, Jimsy?"
"No, Skipper."
"Promise, Jimsy?"
"Promise, Skipper. 'Cross my heart!'" The old good foolish words of the old safe days, here, now, in this hideous and garish present!
With that pledge she was visibly able to give herself to a livelier hope. "But of course Yaqui Juan got through to the Grants'hacienda! Can you imagine him failing us, Jimsy?"
He shook his head. "He'll make it if any man living could." The Indian had slipped through theinsurrectosin the first hour, as soon as it had been known that the wires were cut. Unless the Grants, too, were besieged, they would be able to telephonefor help forEl Pozo, and if they were likewise in duress, Yaqui Juan would go on to the nextrancho,—on and on until he could set the wheels of rescue in motion. "I wish to God I had his job.Doing something——"
Carter came into thesala. He was terrifyingly white but with an admirable composure. "Steady, old boy," he said, putting his frail hand on Jimsy's shoulder. "Sit tight! We depend on you. And you're doing"—he looked at the decanter, as if measuring its contents with his eye—"gloriously, splendidly, old son! I know the strain you're under. You're a bigger man even than I thought you were, Jimsy."
Honor went away to sit with Mrs. King and the sick man and both boys stared unhappily after her. "If Skipper were only out of this——" Jimsy groaned.
"And whose fault is it that she's in it?" Carter snarled. Two red spots sprang into his white cheeks.
"Why—Cart'!" Jimsy backed away from him, staring.
"Whose fault is it, I say?" Carter followed him. "If she hadn't been terrified over you, if she hadn't the insane idea of duty and loyalty to you, would she have come? Would she?"
Jimsy King sat down and looked at him, aghast. "Good Lord, Cart'—that's the truth! That shows what a mutt I am. It hasn't struck me before. It's all my fault."
"Whatever happens to Honor—whatever happens to her—and death wouldn't be the worst thing, would it?—it's your fault. Do you hear what I say? It's all your fault!" In all the years since he had known him Jimsy had never seen Carter Van Meter like this,—cool Carter, with his little elegancies of dress and manner, his studied detachment. This was a different person altogether,—hot-eyed, white-lipped, snarling. "Your fault if she dies here, dies of thirst; your fault if they get in here and carry her off, those filthy brutes out there."
"They'll never ... get her," said Jimsy King. His face was scarlet and he was breathing hard and clenching and unclenching his hands.
"Yes," Carter sneered, "yes! I know what you mean! You feel very heroic about it. You feel like a hero in a movie, don't you? Noble of you, isn't it? Slay the heroine with your own hands rather than let her——"
"Oh, for God's sake, Cart'!" Jimsy got up and came toward him. "Cut it out! What's the good of talking like that? We're in it now, all of us, andwe've got to stick it out. I know it's harder on you because you're not strong, but——"
"Damn you! 'Not strong—' Not built like an ox—muscles in my brain instead of my legs! Because I cared for something else besides rolling around in the mud with a leather ball in my arms——"
"Key down, old boy." Jimsy was cool now, unresentful; he understood. Poor old Cart' ... he couldn't stand much suffering.
"That's how you got Honor, when she was a child, with no sense of values, but you haven't held her! You can't hold her."
"Cart', I'm not going to get sore at you. I know you're about all in. You don't know what you're saying."
"Don't I? Don't I? You listen to me. Honor Carmody never really loved you; it was a silly boy-and-girl, calf love affair, and when she realized it she stood by, of course,—she's that sort. She kept the letter of her promise, but she couldn't keep the spirit."
"Key down, old top," said Jimsy King again, grinning. "I'm not going to get sore, but I don't want to use up my breath laughing at you.Skipper—going back on me!" He did laugh, ringingly.
"She hasn't gone back on you; except in her heart. Good God, Jimsy King, what do you think you are to hold a girl like that—with her talent and her success and her future? She's only stuck by you because it was her creed, that's all."
"Look here, Cart', I'm not going to argue with you. It's not on the square to Skipper even to talk about it, but don't be a crazy fool. Would she have come to me here—from Italy, if she didn't——"
"Yes. Yes, she would! She's pledged to see it through—to stand by you as all the other miserable women have stood by the men of your family,—if you're cad enough to let her."
That caught and stuck. "If I'm—cad enough to let her," said Jimsy in a curiously flat voice. But the mood passed in a flash. "It's no use talking like that, Carter. Of course I know I'm not good enough or brainy enough—oranythingenough for Skipper, but she thinks I am, and——"
"You poor fool, she doesn't think so. I tell you she's only standing by because she said she would. I tell you she cares for some one else."
"That's a lie," said Jimsy King with emphasis but without passion. The statement was too grotesque for any feeling over it.
Carter stopped raving and snarling and becamevery cool and coherent. "I think I can prove it to you," he said, quietly.
"You can't," said Jimsy, turning and walking toward the door.
"Are you afraid to listen?" He asked it very quietly.
"No," said Jimsy King, wheeling. "I'm not afraid. Go ahead. Get it off your chest."
"Well, in the first place,—hasn't she kept you at arm's length here? Hasn't she insisted on being with other people all the time,—on having me with you?"
"Cart', I hate to say it, but that's because she's sorry for you."
"And for herself."
The murky dimness of thesalawas pressing in on Jimsy as it had on the girl, that other day. He was worn with vigil and torn with thirst, sick with dread of what might any moment come to them,—with remorse for bringing Honor there, tormented with his helplessness to save her. Even at his best he was no match for the other's cleverness and now he was in the dust, blaming and hating himself. He stood there in silence, listening, and Carter's hoarse voice, Carter's plausible words, went on and on. "But I don't believe it," Jimsy would say at intervals. "Shedoesn't care for you, Cart'. She's all mine, Skipper is. She doesn't care for you."
"Wait!" Carter took out his wallet of limp leather with his initials on it in delicately wrought gold letters and opened it. "I didn't mean to show you this, but I see that I must. It was last summer. I—I lost my head the night before we sailed, and let Honor see.... Then I asked her.... I didn't say, 'Will you marry me?' because I knew there was no hope of that so long as she thought there was a chance of saving you by standing by you. I asked her—something else. And she sent me this wire to the boat at Naples."
Jimsy did not put out his hand to take the slip of paper which Carter unfolded and smoothed and held toward him. It was utterly still in thesalabut from an upper room came the sound of Richard King's voice, faint, thick, begging for water, and from somewhere in the distance a muffled shot ... three shots.
Carter held the message up before Jimsy's eyes:
Carter Van Meter care Purser S. S.Canopic NaplesYes.Honor.
Carter Van Meter care Purser S. S.Canopic Naples
Yes.
Honor.
If Stephen Lorimer, far to the north in the safe serenity of the old house of South Figueroa Street, could have envisaged the three of them that day his chief concern would not have been for their bodily danger. It would have seemed to him that the intangible cloud settling down over them was a more tragic and sinister thing than theinsurrectosbesieging them, than the thirst which was cracking their lips and swelling and blackening their tongues.
He was to remember and marvel, long afterward, that his thought on that date had tugged uneasily toward them all day and evening. Conditions, so far as he knew, were favorable; the escort for the personage would be a stout one and under his wing the boy and girl would be safe, and James King was waiting for them, spinning out his thread of life until they should come to him. Nevertheless, he found himself acutely unhappy regarding them, aware of an urgent and instant need of being with them.
They had never, in all their blithe young lives,needed him so cruelly. He could not have driven back the bandits, but he could have driven back the clouds of doubt and misery and misunderstanding; he could not have given them water for their parched throats but he could have given them to drink of the waters of understanding; he could have relieved the drought in their wrung young hearts. He would have seen, as only a looker-on could see, what was happening to them. He would have yearned over Honor, fronting the bright face of danger so gallantly but stunned and crushed by the change in Jimsy, over Jimsy himself, setting out to do an incredibly stupid, incredibly noble deed, absolutely convinced by the sight of her one-word telegram that she loved Carter (and humbly realizing that she might well love Carter, the brilliant Carter, better than his unilluminated self), seeing the thing simply and objectively as he would be sure to do, deciding on his course and pursuing it as definitely as he would take a football over the line for a touchdown. He would even have yearned over Carter, at the very moment when the youth fulfilled his ancient distrust of him. He would have understood as even Carter himself did not, by what gradual and destructive processes he had arrived at the point of his outbreak to Jimsy; would have realized in how far his physical suffering—infinitely harder for himthan for the others—had broken down his moral fiber; how utterly his very real love for Honor had engulfed every other thought and feeling. And he would have seen, in the last analysis, that Carter was sincere; he had come at last to believe his own fabrications; he honestly believed that Honor's betrothed would go the way of all the "Wild Kings"; that Honor would be ruining her life in marrying him.
But Stephen Lorimer was hundreds and thousands of miles away from them that day of their bitter need, making tentative notes for a chapter on young love for his unborn book, listening to the inevitable mocking-bird in the Japanese garden, waiting for Mildred Lorimer to give him his tea ... wearing the latest of his favorites among her gowns....
Madeline King was spent with her vigil and Honor had coaxed her to lie down for an hour and let her take the chair beside Richard King's bed.
"Very well, my dear. I'll rest for an hour. I'll do it because I know I may want my strength more, later on." She seemed to have aged ten years since the day Honor had come toEl Pozo, but she came of fighting blood, this English wife of Jimsy's uncle. "I'm frightfully sorry you're let in for this, Honor, but it's no end of a comfort, having you. Call me if he rouses. I daresay I shan't really sleep."
Honor sat on beside him, fanning him until her arm ached, resting it until he stirred again, trying to wet her dry lips with her thickened tongue. She wasn't thinking; she was merely waiting, standing it. It was a relief not to talk, but she must talk when she was with the boys again; it helped to keep them up, to keep an air of normality about things.
Jimsy King had read the message Carter held up to him and gone away without comment, and Carter had stayed on in thesala. It was almost an hour before Jimsy came back. Honor's stepfather would have marked and marveled at the change so brief a little space of time had been able to register in the bonny boy's face. The flesh seemed to have paled and receded and the bones seemed more sharply modeled; more insistent; and the eyes looked very old and at the same time pitifully young. He was very quiet and sure of himself.
"Jimsy," said Carter, "I shouldn't have told you,now, but I went off my head."
Jimsy nodded. "The time doesn't matter, Cart'. I just want to ask you one thing, straight from the shoulder. I've been thinking and thinking ... trying to take it in. Sometimes I seem to get it for a minute, that Skipper cares for you instead of me, and then it's gone again. All I can seem to hang onto is that telegram." The painful calm of his face flickered and broke up for an instant and there was an answering disturbance in Carter's own. "I keep seeing that ... all the time. But there's no use talking about it. What I want to ask you is this, Cart'"—he went on slowly in his hoarse and roughened voice—"you honestly think Skipper is sticking to me only because she thinks it's the thing to do? Because she thinks she must keep her word?"
Carter swallowed hard and tried to moisten his aching throat, and he did not look at his friend.
"Is that what you honestly believe, Cart'?"
Carter brought his eyes back with an effort and his heart contracted. Jimsy King—Jimsy King—the boy he had envied and hated and loved by turns all these years; Jimsy King, idolized, adored in the old safe days—the old story book days—
King! King! King!K-I-N-G, KING!G-I-N-K, GINK!He's the King Gink!He's the King Gink!He's the King Gink!K-I-N-G, King! KING!
King! King! King!K-I-N-G, KING!G-I-N-K, GINK!He's the King Gink!He's the King Gink!He's the King Gink!K-I-N-G, King! KING!
King! King! King!
K-I-N-G, KING!
G-I-N-K, GINK!
He's the King Gink!
He's the King Gink!
He's the King Gink!
K-I-N-G, King! KING!
The Jimsy King, the young prince who had hadeverything that all the wealth of Ali Baba's cave couldn't compass for Carter Van Meter ... standing here before him now, his face drained of its color and joy, begging him for a hope. There was a long moment when he hesitated, when the forces within him fought breathlessly and without quarter, but—long ago Stephen Lorimer had said of him—"there's nothing frail about his disposition ... his will doesn't limp." He wrenched his gaze away before he answered, but he answered steadily.
"That is what I believe."
Jimsy was visibly and laboriously working it out. "Then, she's only sticking to me because she thinks I'm worth saving. If she thought I was a regular 'Wild King,' if she believed what her mother and a lot of other people have always believed, she'd let go of me."
"I believe she would," said Carter.
"Then," said Jimsy King, "it's really pretty simple. She's only got to realize—tosee—that I'm not worth hanging on to; that it's too late. That's all."
"What do you mean?"
He walked over to the little table and picked up the decanter of whisky and looked at it, and the scorn and loathing in his ravaged young face were thingsto marvel at, but Honor Carmody, coming into the room at that moment, could not see his expression. His back was toward her and she saw the decanter in his hand.
"Jimsy!" She said it very low, catching her breath.
His first motion was to put it down but instead he held it up to the fast fading light at the window and grinned. "It's makin' faces at me, Skipper!"
"Jimsy," she said again, and this time he put it down.
Honor began hastily to talk. "Do you think Juan will try to come back, or will he wait and come with the soldiers?"
"He'll come back," said Jimsy with conviction. "He must have found the wires down at the first place he tried, or he'd have been here before this. Yes—as soon as he's got his message through, he'll come back to us. I hope to God he brings water."
"But did he realize about the well? He got away at the very first, you know, and they weren't holding the well, then."
"He'll have his own canteen, won't he?" said Jimsy crossly.
Honor's eyes mothered him. "Mrs. King really slept," she said cheerfully. "She said she had a goodnap, and dreamed!" She sat down in a low chair and made herself relax comfortably; only her eyes were tense. She never did fussy things with her hands, Honor Carmody; no one had ever seen her with a needle or a crochet hook. She was either doing things, vital, definite things which required motion, or she was still, and she rested people who were near her. "Well, he'll be here soon then," she said contentedly. "And so will the soldiers. Our Big Boss will have us on his mind, Jimsy. He'll figure out some way to help us. Just think—in another day—perhaps in another hour, this will all be over, like a nightmare, and we'll be back to regular living again. Andwon'twe be glad that we all stood it so decently?" It was a stiff, small smile with her cracked lips but a stout one. "You know, I'm pretty proud of all of us! And won't Stepper be proud of us? And your dad, Jimsy, and your mother, Cartie!" Her kind eyes warmed. "I'm glad she hasn't had to know about it until we're all safe again." She was so hoarse that she had to stop and rest and she looked hopefully from one to the other, clearly expecting them to take up the burden of talk. But they were silent and presently she went on again. "You know, boys, it's like being in a book or a play, isn't it? We're—characters—now, not justplain people! I suppose I'm the leading lady (though Mrs. King's the realheroine) and we've got two heroes and no villain. Theinsurrectosare the villain—the villain in bunches." Suddenly she sat forward in her chair, her eyes brightening and a little color flooding her face. "Boys, it's our song come true! Now I know why I always got so thrilled over that second verse,—even the first time Stepper read it to us,—remember how it just bowled me over? And it seemed so remote from anything that could touch our lives,—yet here we are, in just such a tight place." They were listening now. "There isn't any desert or regiment or gatling, and Mr. King isn't dead, only dreadfully hurt, but it fits, just the same! We've got this thirst to stand ... and it's a good deal, isn't it? Thoseinsurrectosdown there,—planning we don't know what, perhaps to rush the house any moment—
The River of Death has brimmed his banks;And England's far, and Honor's a name—
The River of Death has brimmed his banks;And England's far, and Honor's a name—
The River of Death has brimmed his banks;
And England's far, and Honor's a name—
That means to us that L. A. is far, and South Figueroa Street ... all the safe happy things that didn't seem wonderful then...."
"'Honor's a name,'" said Jimsy under his breath.
"Oh," said the girl, "I never noticed that before! Isn't that funny? Well—
The voice of a school boy rallies the ranks!
The voice of a school boy rallies the ranks!
The voice of a school boy rallies the ranks!
That fits! And won't we be thankful all our lives—all our snug, safe, prosy lives—that we were sporting now?— That we all played the game?" Her eyes were on Jimsy, reassuring him, staying him. "When this is all over——"
He cut roughly into her sentence. "Oh, for God's sake, Skipper, let's not talk!"
Again he had to bear the mothering of her understanding eyes. "All right, Jimsy. We won't talk, then. We'll sit here together"—she changed to the chair nearest his and put her hand on his arm—"and wait for Juan and——"
He sprang to his feet. "I wish you'd leave me alone!" he said. "I wish you'd go upstairs and stay with Aunt Maddy and Uncle Rich'. I want to be by myself."
She did not stir. "I think I'll stay with you, Jimsy."
His voice was ugly now. "When I don't want you? When I tell you I'd rather be alone?"
Honor was still for a long moment. She rose andwent to the door but she turned to look at him, a steady, intent scrutiny. "All right, Jimsy. I'll go. I'll leave you alone. I'll leave you alone because—I know Icanleave you alone." She seemed to have forgotten Carter's presence. She held up the hand which wore the old Italian ring with the hidden blue stone of constancy. "I'm 'holding hard,' Jimsy."
Soon after dark Yaqui Juan came. He had been waiting for three hours, trying to get past the sentries; it had been impossible while there was any light. He was footsore and weary and had only a little water in his canteen, but he had found the telephone wires still up at the secondhacienda, the owner had got the message off for him, and help was assuredly on the way to them. There was the off chance, of course, that the soldiers might be held up by another wing of theinsurrectos, but there was every reason to hope for their arrival next day. Jimsy King sent the Yaqui up to Honor with the canteen, and the Indian returned to say that the Señorita had not touched one drop but had given it to the master.
Carter dragged himself away to his room and Jimsy and Yaqui Juan talked long together in the quietsala. It was a cramped and halting conversation with the Indian's scant English and the American's halting Spanish; sometimes they were unable tounderstand each other, but they came at last to some sort of agreement, though Juan shook his head mutinously again and again, murmuring—"No, no! Señor Don Diego! No!"
It was almost midnight when Jimsy called them all down into thesala. They came, wondering, one by one, Carter, Mrs. King,—Richard King had fallen asleep after his half dozen swallows of water—and Honor, and Josita, her head muffled in herrebozo, her brown fingers busy with her beads.
Jimsy King was standing in the middle of the room, standing insecurely, his legs far apart, the decanter in his hand, the decanter which had been more than half full when Honor left the room and had now less than an inch of liquor in it. Yaqui Juan, his face sullen, his eyes black and bitter, crouched on the floor, his arms about his knees.
Honor did not speak at all. She just stood still, looking at Jimsy until it seemed as if she were all eyes."It comes so suddenly,"—Carter had told her—"like the boa constrictor's hunger ...and then he was just—an appetite."
"Ladies'n gem'mum," said Jimsy, thickly, "goin' shing you lil' song!" Then, in his hoarse and baffled voice he sang Stanford's giddy old saga, "The Son of a Gambolier."
They all stiffened with horror and disgust. Mrs. King wept and Josita mumbled a frightened prayer, and Carter, red and vehement, went to him and tried to take the decanter away from him. Only Honor Carmody made no sign.
I'm a son of a son of a son of a gun of a son of a Gambolier,
I'm a son of a son of a son of a gun of a son of a Gambolier,
I'm a son of a son of a son of a gun of a son of a Gambolier,
sang Jimsy King. He looked at every one but Honor.
Like every honest fellow, I love my lager beer——
Like every honest fellow, I love my lager beer——
Like every honest fellow, I love my lager beer——
—"And my 'skee!" he patted the decanter.
Madeline King put her arms about Honor. "Come away, my dear," she said. "Come upstairs."
"No," Jimsy protested. "Don' go 'way. Got somep'n tell you. Shee this fool Injun here? Know wha' he's goin' do? Goin' slide out'n creep down to ol' well. Saysinsur—insur-rectosall pretty drunk now ... pretty sleepy.... Fool Injun's goin' take three—four—'leven canteens ... bring water back for you. Not f' me!Igot somep'n better. 'Sides, he'll get killed ... nice'n dead ...fancydead ... cut ears off ... cut tongue out firs'! Not f' me!I'mgoin' sleep pret' soon. Firs' I'llshing you lil' more!" Again the rasping travesty of melody:
Some die of drinkin' whisky,Some die of drinkin' beer!Some die of diabetes,An' some——
Some die of drinkin' whisky,Some die of drinkin' beer!Some die of diabetes,An' some——
Some die of drinkin' whisky,
Some die of drinkin' beer!
Some die of diabetes,
An' some——
"Shut up, you drunken fool!" said Carter, furiously.
"Oh," said Jimsy, blinking his eyes rapidly, bowing deeply. "Ladies present. I shee. My mishtake. My mishtake, ladies! Well, guesh I go sleep now. Come on. Yac', put me to bed 'fore you go. Give you lil' treat. All work'n no play makes Yac' a dull boy!" He roared over his own wit. The Indian, his face impassive, had risen to his feet and now Jimsy cast himself into his arms and insisted on kissing him good-night, clinging all the while to the decanter with its half inch of whisky.
Carter wrenched it away from him. "You'll kill yourself," he said, in cold disgust.
"Well," said his friend, reasonably, "ishn't that the big idea? Wouldn' you razzer drink yourself to death'n die of thirst?"
They were making for the door now in a zigzag course, and when they passed Honor, Jimsy stayedtheir progress. He held out his hand and spoke to her, but he did not meet her eyes. "Gimme ring," he said, crossly.
"What do you mean?" said Honor.
"Gimme back ring ... busted word ... busted engagement ... want ringanyway... maybe nozzer girl ...youcan't tell!" His hoarse voice rose querulously. "Gimme ring, I shay!"
Honor shrank back from him against Mrs. King. "Jimsy," she said, "when the boy that gave me this ring comes and asks me for it, he can have it.Youcan't!"
His legs seemed to give way beneath him, at that, and Yaqui Juan half led, half dragged him out of the room.
Mrs. King wept again but Honor's eyes were dry. Carter started to speak to her but she stopped him. "Please, Carter ... I can't ... talk. I think I'd like to be alone."
"Oh, my dear, please come up with me," Mrs. King begged, "it's so cold here, and——"
"I have to be alone," said Honor in her worn voice.
"Then you must have this," said the older woman, finding comfort in wrapping her in her ownserape. It was a gay thing, striped in red and white andgreen, the Mexican colors; it looked as if it had been made to wear in happy days.
They went away and left her alone in thesala. She didn't know how long she had sat there when she saw a muffled figure crawling across the veranda. She opened the door and stepped out, nodding to thepeónon guard there, leaning on his gun. "Juan?" she called softly.
The crouching, cringing figure hesitated. "Si," came the soft whisper. He kept his head shrouded. She knew that he was sick with shame for the lad he had worshiped; he did not want to meet her gaze. She could understand that. It did not seem to her that she could ever meet any one's eyes again—kind Mrs. King's, Carter's—her dear Stepper's. Suddenly it came to her with a positive sense of relief and escape that perhaps there would be no need for facing any one after to-night.... Perhaps this was to be the last night of all nights. It might well be, when Jimsy King slept in a drunken stupor and a Yaqui Indian slave went out with his life in his hands to help them. She crossed the veranda and leaned down and laid her hand on the covered head. Her throat was so swollen now that she could hardly make herself heard. "Tu es amigo leal, Juan," shesaid. "Good friend; good friend!" Then in her careful Spanish—"Go with God!"
He had been always an impassive creature, Yaqui Juan, his own personal sufferings added to the native stoicism of his race, but he made an odd, smothered sound now, and caught up the trailing end of her brightserapeand pressed his face against it for an instant. Then he crept away into the soft blackness of the tropic night and Honor went back into the emptysala. She wished that she had seen his face; she was mournfully sure she would never see it again. It did not seem humanly possible for any one to go into the very midst of their besiegers encamped about the well, fill the canteens and return alive, but it was a gallant and splendid try, and she would have liked a memory of his grave face. It would have blotted out the look of Jimsy King's face, singing his tipsy song. She thought she would keep on seeing that as long as she lived, and that made it less terrible to think that she might not live many more hours.
They would not leave her alone. Carter came to stay with her and she sent him away, and then Madeline King came, her very blue eyes red rimmed and deep with understanding, but Honor could not talk with her nor listen to her. She went away, shaking her head, and Josita came in her place. Honor did not mind the little Mexican serving woman. She did not try to talk to her. She just crouched on the floor at her feet and prayers slipped from her tongue and her fingers: