"Pearl," the beads of sweat stood out on his brow, "I ain't made you out. I know you're one thing one hour and another the next. I'm no vain boy. I can't tell whether you've been drawing me on one minute and holding me back the next just because you got to annex the scalp of every man your sweet eyes fall on. That's all right, honey, I ain't blaming you; but there's been moments lately, Pearl, when I've thought that maybe you might care, moments when I been plumb crazy with joy. You ain't let 'em last very long, honey," with a strained smile, "but they most made up for the black question mark that came after 'em." He drew out his handkerchief and wiped his wet brow with a trembling hand.
She threw back her head and smiled into his eyes through her narrowed lids. She held out her hands to him; and with one step Hanson lifted her clear off the ground, gathering her up in his arms, holding her against his heart and kissing her scarlet mouth.
And she wound her arms about his neck and returned those kisses.
"Put me down," she said at last, and Hanson did so, although he still held her close to his heart with one arm.
"Pearl!" he cried aloud, and it was like some strong affirmation of life. He lifted his eyes, bold and unafraid, as an eagle's, to the sun-flooded, brazen, blue heavens. Time stood still. He had drunk at a new fountain—love, and, although his thirst was still unquenched, he was eternal youth. The heart of life breathed through him. He looked upon the sky, a man unconquered, unbeaten, undaunted by life. He was its master. Did she ask the snow peaks yonder? He would gather them as footstools for her little feet. Was it gold she desired? It should be as dust for her hands to scatter to the winds. Was it name, place, state, she asked? They should be plucked forthwith from a supine world and offered her as a nosegay.
Again, confidently now, he stooped and kissed her lips. It seemed to him that roses and stars fell about them. "You love me, Pearl," he had cried, in incredulous joy, "you love me."
For answer she smiled sweetly, ardently into his eyes: "'Love me to-day,'" she sang, nestling close to his heart.
It was almost a week before Bob Flick returned, and during that time Pearl saw Hanson almost constantly, although to do so she had continually to match her quickness and subtlety against that of her father and Hughie; but even while she and her father met each other with move and counter-move, check and checkmate, it was characteristic of both of them that Hanson's obvious infatuation and her equally obvious return of it were never mentioned between them.
With Hughie it was different, and Pearl met his petulant remonstrance, his boyish withdrawal of the usual confiding intimacy which existed between them, with laughter and caresses. As for Mrs. Gallito, she alone was unchanged, apparently quite oblivious to storm conditions in the mental atmosphere. But this was not unusual; when matters of importance were transacted in the Gallito household Mrs. Gallito did not count.
But these disturbing conditions could not daunt Pearl's high spirits; she was like flame, and the light of her eye, the glow on her cheek, the buoyancy of her step were not all due to the ardor of her loving and the joy of being ardently loved. There was also the zest of intrigue.
And, oh! what a mad and splendid game she and Hanson played together! He rose to her every soaring audacity; they took almost impossible chances as lightly as a hunter takes a hurdle. The lift of her eyelash, an imperceptibly significant gesture, a casual word spoken in conversation, these Hanson met with an incredible quickness of understanding. It was a game at which he was master, and which he had played many times before, but never had his intuitions been so keen, his always rapid comprehension been so stimulated.
Beneath the eye of another master of intrigue, Gallito, watchful as a spider, they met and loved until, it seemed to Hanson, that the whole, wide desert rang with their glorious laughter. And through it all Francisco Gallito sat and smoked and sipped his cognac imperturbably; apparently unruffled by defeat, a defeat—the Pearl with subtle femininity saw to that—which was not without its elements of ignominy.
But now Bob Flick had returned and had sat late with Gallito the night before, talking, although Mrs. Gallito, who tendered this information to her daughter, had not been able to overhear any part of their conversation, in spite of her truly persistent efforts to do so. These circumstances, and results which would probably ensue when a definite course of action had been decided upon, occupied the Pearl's thoughts as she stood at the gate gazing out on the gray wastes spread before her in the broad morning sunshine. Lolita was perched on the fence beside her, swaying back and forth, muttering to herself and occasionally dipping down perilously in a curious effort to see the garden upside down through the fence palings.
Pearl turned at last from her contemplation of the subject which absorbed her attention, and smiled as her glance fell upon the gaudy tail, the only part of Lolita now visible, although, even then, the horse-shoe frown, which showed faintly on her smooth forehead, a facsimile of the one graven deep on her father's wrinkled brow, did not disappear.
"They've got it in for us, Lolita—Rudolf and me." She laughed outright now. Pearl's laughter was ever a disagreeable surprise; low, harsh, unpleasantly vibrant, and in strange dissonance to her soft, contralto voice. "Lay you any odds you say, Lolita, that it's poor old Bob that's got to be the goat."
The parrot swung back to a normal position with surprising rapidity. "Bob, Bob," she croaked. "Mi jasmin, Pearl, mi corazon," and she gazed at her mistress with wrinkled, cynical eyes.
"Yes, Bob's got to do the telling." Pearl confided more to Lolita than she ever did in her fellow beings. "Oh, Rudolf, this is where you get knifed! They've been laying for you right from the first. When Bob's got to do a thing, he never wastes any time; he'll be along sure this morning. I guess we'll just wait right here and catch him."
Lolita hopped clumsily on to Pearl's shoulder and tweaked her ear. "Hell and damnation!" she muttered, and then sang:
"Love me to-day,Love me an hour."
Pearl shrugged impatiently. "Shut up!" she cried, and resting her chin in her cupped hands gazed over the sparkling, shimmering plain, where all unshadowed day-beams seemed to gather as pure light and then, as if fused in some magic alembic, became color. There, the ineffable command: "Let there be light!" included all. It is only in the silence and light of the desert that men may fully realize that the universe is one, that light is music and music is color and color is fragrance, undifferentiated in the eternal harmony of beauty.
Pearl's eyes drank the desert, unconsciously seeking there in its haunting enigmas and unsolved mysteries an answer to the enigma of self. Like life, like truth, like love, like all realities viewed from the angle of human vision, the desert is a paradox. Its vast emptiness is more than full; its unashamed sterility is but the simile for unmeasured fecundity.
For an hour thus she leaned and gazed, Lolita restlessly walking back and forth, singing and croaking, until, at last, as Pearl had predicted, Bob Flick appeared, a fact not unheralded by Lolita's cries; but Pearl did not alter her languid pose, nor even turn her head to greet him. She was watching a whirling column of sand, polished and white as a colossal marble pillar.
"It's kind of early for them to begin, ain't it, Bob?" she remarked casually.
"Yes." He paused by the gate, leaning one arm on it, and in the swift glance she cast at him from the corners of her eyes she could see that his expressionless face looked worn, the lines about the mouth seemed to have deepened and the eyes were heavy, as if he had not slept.
Lolita had, as usual, perched upon his shoulder, and was murmuring in his ear.
"Say, Pearl," Flick spoke again after an interval of silence, "I wish you'd take a walk with me. I—I got something on my mind that I want to talk about."
"All right," she acquiesced readily, the nicker of a smile about her lips quickly suppressed. "I'll be ready in a minute, as soon as I get my hat."
They walked through the village, the great broken wall of the mountains rising before them, deceptively near, and yet austerely remote, dazzling snow domes and spires crowning the rock-buttressed slopes and appearing sometimes to float, as unsubstantial clouds, in an atmosphere of all commingling and contrasting blues and purples. Presently they turned into a lane of mesquite trees. The growth of these trees was thick on either side and the branches arched above their heads. They had stepped in a footfall's space into a new world. It was one of those surprising, almost unbelievable contrasts in which the desert abounds.
A moment before they had gazed upon the mountains, spectacularly vivid in the clear atmosphere, white peaks and azure skies, green foothills, serrated with black shadows. Behind them the sun-flooded white glare of the great, waste place and behold! all these vanished as they set their feet in this garden inclosed, this bower as green and quiet as the lane of a distant and far softer and more fertile country.
Pearl never made any conventional attempts at conversation, and for a time they walked in silence through those fairy aisles where the light fell golden-green and the sun only filtered in tiny broken disks through the delicate lace of the mesquite leaves. Then Flick spoke:
"Pearl, I got something to say to you, and it's about the hardest thing I ever tried to do, because I know," his mouth twisted a little, "that you're not going to like me any better for it."
"What do you do it for then, Bob?" she asked, and there was more than a half impatient mockery in her tone, there was wonder.
"I got to," he said doggedly. "I guess there's no sense in it, but, whether you like it or not, I always got to do what seems the best thing for you."
It was an inflexible attitude, an ideal of conduct unfalteringly held, and uncompromisingly adhered to, and she knew it. Therefore, she shrugged her shoulders resignedly, the faint horse-shoe frown again appearing in her forehead. "Well—go on, then," her voice as resigned as her shoulders, "and get it over."
"It's this—" he hesitated and looked down at her a moment, and the tenderness his glance expressed she did not lift her eyes to see and would not have noticed if she had; "Pearl, Hanson ain't on the level."
She laughed that slightly grating, almost unpleasant, laugh of hers. "It's no secret to me, Bob, that several of you are thinking that."
"We got cause to," he answered moodily; and then, as if struck by something in her words, he looked at her quickly. "Has your Pop told you anything?" There was surprise in both glance and voice.
"Not a thing," she assured him, scornfully amused by the question, "but there are some things that don't have to be told. Do you suppose I haven't caught on to the way you've all been acting?"
Again he looked his surprise. "We all been acting?" he repeated.
"Yes. I've seen things and I've felt them. Oh, you might just as well out with it, Bob. What is it all about?"
He stared unseeing down the sun-sifted dusk of the green lane. Here the desert silence was like a benediction of peace, broken now and then by the faint, shrill note of an insect, or the occasional soft, mournful plaint of a dove.
"Pearl, you can laugh at me if you want to, and say I'm jealous. That's true, I am. I can't help it; but this time it wasn't all that. I got to size up men quick; that was my business for a good many years, and the first minute I set eyes on Hanson I knew he wasn't straight. And then, Hughie—"
"And so you stirred up Pop to watch him?" she broke in quick as a flash.
"No," he answered patiently, "no, but Hughie's feelings got so strong about him that your Pop kind of woke up and got to studying him, and then he saw what—what neither of you tried to hide," there was bitterness in his tone, "and then he kind of remembered something he'd heard up in Colina, and—"
"And so you've been up to Colina tracking round after a woman." Her verbal strokes were swift and hard as a flail. And again Flick started in surprise. His cheeks flushed faintly, his jaw set.
"What you mean, Pearl? Has he been having me trailed? I don't believe it."
"No," she drawled, taking a malicious amusement in this unwonted perturbation on his part, "he hasn't. You slipped away so quiet and easy that you didn't stop to say good-by, even to me. Were you afraid I'd put him on to it?"
She did not hesitate to plant her banderillos where they would sting most, and Flick winced at this imputation which struck so near home. "How did you know about the woman, then?" he asked quickly.
Pearl lifted her head and laughed aloud, and, at the unwonted sound breaking the desert silence, three pairs of brilliant eyes gazing through the screening mesquite branches vanished and the gray, shadowy figures of three coyotes disappeared as noiselessly as they had come.
"How did I know about the woman?" She repeated the question and considered it, still with amused scorn, as if debating whether she would enlighten him or not. "Well—" drawling aggravatingly, "I knew you and Pop had the knife ready for Ru—Mr. Hanson." Flick's mouth twisted again. "That wasn't very hard to see. So when you hit the trail, Bob, I gave him the chance to clear out. I did so, tipped him off, you know. Now I guess if he'd been wanted bad for anything that would—well, put him behind the bars, say, he'd have gotten out pretty quick. And, anyway, if he'd been wanted like that he wouldn't have stayed here so long, for they wouldn't have had any trouble in nailing a man as well known as him before, so, you see, I knew it wasn't any of the usual things. But," and here she stopped and, looking up into his face, spoke more emphatically, "I gave him the chance, too, to tell me all about himself and he didn't take it. Now, there isn't a man living that wouldn't have taken it—under the circumstances—" she spoke with a deliberately cruel emphasis, and Flick's shoulders contracted a little as the dart pricked him—"unless it was some mix-up about a woman."
"It's about a woman, all right," grimly.
"What about her?" Pearl's voice cut the air like the swift, downward stroke of a whip.
"She's his wife," returned Flick. "She's been living up near Colina. She owns a part of a mine there and has been managing it."
Pearl took this in silence; and they had walked a dozen yards or so before they spoke again.
"Well, what of it?" she said at last, carelessly, almost gaily. "Divorces are easy."
His expressionless face showed a cynical amusement, with just a hint of triumph in the lighting of his eye. He shook his head. "I talked to her," he said. "She's a good, decent woman, but she ain't quite straight in her head when it comes to Hanson. He lied to her right along about the others, even from the first; played fast and loose with her, and finally eloped with one of his burlesque head-liners. She took it. What else was there for her to do? But she spends about all of her time watching her fences to see that there's no divorce in question. He's done everything, tried to buy her off more than once, but it's no good. Every place he goes she follows him up sooner or later, and she writes him letters, too, every once in so often, offering to come back to him. And he can't get anything on her, for she lives as straight as a string. Oh, no, Pearl, Mr. Rudolf Hanson'll never marry again as long as that lady's living, or I miss my guess."
It was evidently with difficulty that Pearl had controlled herself, her brow had darkened and her upper lip had curled back from her white teeth in a particularly unpleasant and disfiguring fashion. Again they walked in one of those silences in which she was wont to entrench herself, and then she looked up at him with a faintly scornful smile. "Well, you've sure done your duty, Bob, and I guess you've got just about as much thanks as folks usually do for that."
He drew his hand across his brow and looked before him a little drearily. "I didn't expect anything else," he said simply. "I knew what I'd get. But whether you like it or not," and here he caught her shoulder, his eyes holding hers, "as I told you before, I always got to do what seems the best for you, no matter what's the cost."
Her face did not soften. She merely accepted this as she did all else that he had to give her, himself included.
They had reached the end of a long alley, and now they turned and retraced their steps, but they had traversed almost half of the distance they had come before Pearl spoke again. "Well, now you've told me, what else are you and Pop planning to do?"
He weighed his answer for a few moments. "I guess nothing," he said at last. "I guess we'll leave it to you to send him about his business."
She stopped in the path and looked at him; her blue cotton gown fell in long lines of grace about her slender figure. "If you and Pop want to know what I'm going to do," she said, "I'll tell you. I'm going to accept Rudolf's offer and go out on the road, that's what. You know by this time that I can take care of myself."
He pondered this seriously, but without a change in the expression of his face. "Would you go with him," he asked, "if Sweeney offers you as much or more money?"
"Sweeney won't offer me more money. I know Sweeney and his limits," significantly, "and you won't make up the balance of what Sweeney lacks, either, do you hear? Now you, and Pop, too, can just keep your hands off. I manage this affair myself."
Flick merely shrugged his shoulders, and they walked on without further speech on the matter. Presently Bob's keen eyes descried some one walking down the mesquite avenue toward them. "Why, it's Hughie!" he exclaimed.
Even as he spoke the boy stopped and listened intently. He stood motionless, waiting until they drew nearer, and then he lifted his head, which he had bent sidewise the better to hear their almost soundless footsteps.
Pearl, seeing that her interview with Flick was soon to be interrupted, stopped short in the path and laid one hand detainingly upon his arm. "Bob," she said, in her softest tone, "Bob, you and I have been pals for a good while; you aren't going against me now?"
He stopped, obedient to her touch, and looked at her unwillingly. He could always hold to his resolution in the face of her anger, but to withstand her when she chose to coax! That was another and more difficult matter. But if he met her gaze reluctantly there was no wavering in either his glance or his voice.
"I'm going to save you from Hanson, Pearl," he paused for the fraction of a second, "by any means I got to use."
She flashed one swift, violent glance of resentment, and then immediately controlled herself, as she could always do when she chose and when she was playing to win; so now she cast down her eyes and sighed.
The motes of the glancing sunbeams fell over her like a shower of gold, spangling the blue cotton frock until it appeared a more regal vesture than purple and ermine; her head was bent, her body drooped like a lily in the noonday heat, her whole attitude was soft, and forlorn and appealing, as if she, this wilful, untamed creature, subdued herself to accept a wounding decree, and bore it with all the pathos of unmurmuring resignation.
Flick's heart smote him, he longed to clasp her to his breast and give her everything she impossibly craved. And now it was he who sighed, and then clinched his hands as if to steel his resolution.
She heard the sigh: she saw from the quick movement of his hands, the sudden, involuntary straightening of the shoulders that the struggle was on, so she lifted her eyes half wistfully, half doubtingly to his and thus gazed a moment and then smiled her faintly crooked heart-shattering smile:
"You and I have been friends too long for us to begin to quarrel now, isn't that so, Bob?" Again she laid her hand on his arm.
He caught it in both of his and pressed it hard. "I guess you know we'll never quarrel, Pearl. I guess you know that, no matter what you say or do, it'll never make any difference to me."
"'Course I know it. And you're not going against me now, Bob, either, are you?" She lifted his hand, and with one of her rare, caressing gestures laid it against her cheek for a moment and, turning her face a little, lightly brushed his palm with her lips.
He shivered and quickly drew his hand away. There was silence between them for a few moments and then he sighed again and more heavily than ever. "Oh, Pearl," he cried, "what do you want to make things so hard for? Let that dog—" he checked himself hastily, seeing her expression. "I beg your pardon, you don't look at him that way. Let Hanson go. I know you about as well as anybody in the world, don't I?"
"Better," she nodded her head affirmatively, answering without hesitation.
"Well, won't you believe me when I tell you that you couldn't be happy with him. Won't you listen to me, Pearl?"
She looked at him a little slyly out of the corners of her eyes, a little one-sided, cynical smile on her lips. "We're always so dead sure what's going to make other people happy, ain't we, Bob? Always can see what's good for them so much better than they ever can see for themselves."
Flick looked away from her, down the long, shaded alley; once or twice he swallowed hard. "It ain't easy to say what I got to," a faint flush on his cheek, "'cause I hate to talk that-a-way to a lady, especially to you, Pearl; but I know you; and you can't be happy, you just naturally can't, with a man that's married for keeps to one woman, and that'll—God, Pearl! It hurts me to talk like this to you—that'll throw you over when he's tired of you just like he's thrown over several others."
She caught his arm and shook it violently, as if she scarcely knew what she did. "Throw me over! Me! the Black Pearl!" she cried hoarsely, and broke into a torrent of Spanish oaths. "Dios!" she paused at last, panting for breath, "you must be crazy to talk to me like that, Bob Flick."
"I told you how I hated it," he answered, with that sad, unaltered patience with which he always took her unspared blame, "but I had to do it. You got to know these things, Pearl, and it's better for me to tell you than for your Pop to try."
"He wouldn't have gotten very far," she muttered.
"That's just it. You'd both have got to scrapping and screaming at each other and nothing told."
"Better nothing told, as far as you are concerned," she flashed at him fiercely, and then lapsed into sullen silence.
"Hello! Hello!" Hughie's voice came to them from a side avenue or narrower path down which he had wandered.
"Hello, yourself," Flick answered. "We'll wait for you right here."
"Bob." Pearl's soft voice held no evidence of rancor. "Tell me something quick, before he reaches us. Tell me true, and I'll be good friends, honest, I will."
"You know I'll tell you anything I can."
"Then—then—is she—that woman in Colina—pretty? As pretty as I am?"
He smiled bitterly. "No one's as pretty as you, Pearl. No, she ain't pretty."
"Well, what does she look like?" impatiently.
"Nothing much. Why, I don't know, just looks like most every other woman you see."
"Oh, Bob, quick! Is she little or big? Is she kind of saucy and quick, or is she quiet and slow? Quick, now, Hughie's almost here."
"Why—why," he rubbed his hand across his brow, "she's kind of—kind of motherly."
Pearl threw back her head and laughed, then she took a few dancing steps up and down the road.
"It's Pearl and Bob," called Hughie. "I knew it a while back when I stopped to listen, and then I heard a bird note down yonder," with a wave of his hand toward the direction in which he had come, "and I wanted to hear it closer, so I didn't wait for you. I can always tell you two by the sound of your footsteps. Pearl walks in better rhythm than you do, Bob."
"Of course. What do you expect?" It was Flick who spoke. "What are you doing so far away from home, anyway, Hughie?"
The boy's wistful, delicate face clouded. "I had to go somewhere," he said. "That Hanson has been there all morning, and mother has been sitting with her head so close to his, talking, talking."
Pearl laughed a single note, like her father's. "Poor Rudolf!" she muttered, "the men are all jealous of him, even Hugh."
Fortunately, the boy did not hear her, although Bob Flick did, as she intended he should.
"I do love mother," Hugh added plaintively, "but I can't love the people she mostly likes, so I came as far away as I could, and here," his face was irradiated in one of its quick changes, "I've been walking up and down and hearing and seeing things; listening to the quail and the doves; and a while ago there was a humming-bird; and did you ever smell the desert as sweet as it is this morning?" He lifted his head and sniffed ecstatically. "I've been turning the whole morning into music. It's all gold and green and gay with little silver trumpets through it, and now and again the moan of the doves. I'm going to work it out as soon as we get home. That is," he shrugged his shoulders impatiently, "if that Hanson has gone. He stops all the music and the color." This was Hugh's invariable plaint when any one was about whom he disliked.
"Oh, forget him," cried Pearl. "Don't be a cross, Hughie." She spoke with a half impatient, half teasing tenderness. It was remarkable that she showed no resentment toward the boy for the difficulties in which she found herself entangled, although his intuitions and the almost superstitious respect which they were accorded in the Gallito household might be said to have caused the disturbing investigations into Hanson's past. That Pearl herself disregarded these intuitions in this case was to those about her the strongest proof of her infatuation; but she never dreamed of blaming the boy or harboring rancor against him for this mischief he had done. On the contrary, she accepted it fatalistically. He never could account himself for these instinctive likes and dislikes of his; therefore, they were to be accepted and borne with as something of him, and yet apart from him; and that was all there was to it.
"I'll tell you what to do, Hugh. You help me work out some new dances," she cried. "A lot has been coming to me. One shall be 'Night on the Desert.' We can get some great effects. Something really artistic for the big cities, not the old waltz things we have to do for the desert and mountain villages. We might try that 'Desert Morning' that you've just been planning to compose, and I've been thinking of another one—a Cactus Blossom Dance. Something like this." She began to dance.
"Tell me the steps, Pearl; tell me the steps," called the boy impatiently. "Oh, that's a great idea!" His face was flushed; and then suddenly it fell. "Oh!" he cried despairingly to Flick, "she always gets all sorts of ideas for new dances when she's in love—always. I never knew it fail."
He flung himself away pettishly, and started off alone. Hugh never had any difficulty about direction. In a locality with which he was familiar he would walk about with the utmost confidence. Occasionally he would stop, rap his leg sharply with one hand, listen a moment, and then, apparently satisfied, walk on. Those who pressed him for an explanation of this merely received the vague and unilluminating reply that he could feel the earth that way and tell from the sound of it, probably meaning the vibration, just where he was.
Pearl and Flick followed him in a more leisurely way, although no word was spoken between them until they reached home. Pearl's eyes scanned the house, but it was evident that Hanson had gone, for her mother sat in a rocking-chair before the window, her head tilted back, fast asleep.
"What do you suppose your Pop'll say to your signing up with Hanson?" asked Flick, as they passed through the gate.
"I suppose we'll have a row that'll make the house rock," she answered indifferently, dismissing him with a nod.
Hanson had learned of Flick's return to Paloma almost as soon as the Pearl, although from a different source; Jimmy, the bar-keeper, having informed him of the fact. He had sauntered into Chickasaw Pete's place as was his wont, soon after breakfast on the same morning that Pearl had walked in the mesquite alleys with Flick. This he selected as the most agreeable place in which he could while away the time until a suitable hour for either seeking Pearl, or else hastening to keep an appointment with her. And Jimmy, with the same instinct that a squirrel hides nuts, hoarded such chance bits of gossip as came his way and brought them out one by one for the delectation of those with whom he conversed.
"Hello, Paloma Morning Journal!" called Hanson as he entered the door, his large, genial presence radiating optimism and good cheer. "How many big black headlines this morning?"
Jimmy's smile made creases in his round, red cheeks above his white linen jacket. "Pretty shy of headlines," he chuckled. "Nothing but a few personals."
"No murders, no lynchings, nor merry cowboys on bucking broncos shooting up the town?" exclaimed Hanson, in affected dismay. "My! My! What is the West coming to? I'm afraid you ain't serving them the right kind of poison, Jimmy."
"It's so bad I won't touch it myself." Jimmy defended himself with professional pride. "Have some?"
"Not I. I got to be going, anyway."
Seeing that Hanson was about to follow this intention, Jimmy drew forth his first nut. "Bob Flick got back last night," he said, and then, abashed by the meagerness of this bit of information, attempted to enhance its value. "I'd like to know," leaning his elbow on the bar and his chin in his hand, "I'd like to know where he went and what he went for."
Hanson did not alter his lounging pose and yet, indefinably, his attitude became more tense, as if, in a quick riveting of attention, every sense had become alert. "He's doing a good mining business, ain't he?" he spoke carelessly. "I should think there would be a good many things that would take him out of Paloma."
"Oh, 'course," conceded Jimmy, "but don't you know how you kind of feel things sometimes. Well, you listen to me, there's something queer about this trip." He half closed his eyes and shook his head mysteriously.
"Come, now, Jimmy," Hanson's tone was bantering; he rapped on the bar in playful emphasis, but there was anxiety in his glance. "You're just trying to work up a little excitement. A show down now, a show down."
"Kid me all you please," chuckled Jimmy, with imperturbable good humor, "but, take it from me, something special's been doing. Bob's not one to talk about his or any one's else business, but if he's going off on any little trip he's likely to mention it. And, when he comes back, he'll tell you this or that he's seen or heard, just like other folks. But this time, not a word. Glum as an oyster. You just bet," Jimmy emphasized the statement with a series of nods, "that somethin's going on. Him and Gallito have had their heads too close. And that old fox is usually up to some mischief."
"What kind?" asked Hanson quickly.
"I don't know," answered Jimmy, and Hanson saw to his relief that the bar-keeper was sincere, and that he was to his own manifest regret as ignorant as he appeared. "But," he added shrewdly, "you been taking up a good deal of the Pearl's time and attention, and Bob ain't going to stand that from anybody very long."
"He ain't, ain't he?" the insolence of Hanson's tone was touched with triumph.
"No," said Jimmy simply, "he ain't; and so I kind of feel that this trip of his had something to do with you. And, say, Mr. Hanson," there was a touch of embarrassment in his voice, "you and me's been pretty good friends since you been here, and I thought I'd just give you the tip."
Hanson did not answer for a second, and then he looked up with one of his most open and genial smiles. "Thanks, Jimmy," he said heartily. "Always glad to get the straight tip. I've been so anxious since I've been here to sign up with the Black Pearl that maybe, considering Mr. Bob Flick, I haven't been very discreet in the way I've been chasing there." He leaned his elbow on the bar and assumed a more confidential manner. "But, say, it's funny the way every one speaks the same about Gallito. Hints everywhere, but no facts. What is it about him, anyway?" He either could not or did not conceal that he awaited a reply with eagerness.
"I wish I knew." Jimmy spoke with the utmost sincerity. "Folks whisper and shake their heads, but there's nothing to lay a finger on. I've tried to pump Mrs. Gallito more than once, but if she knows anything she keeps it dark. She's afraid of me, anyway. She always says: 'Oh, Jimmy, you're such a gossip!' Me!" He was really injured. "I guess if everybody did as little gossiping as I do this world would be a heap sight better place."
"Sure," agreed Hanson cordially; and this time his smile was genuinely expressive of his thankful and undisguised relief. By what seemed to him an almost incredible piece of good luck, considering the mutual predilection of Mrs. Gallito and Jimmy for gossip, his secret was still intact.
He straightened up involuntarily, and stood a moment deep in thought, his unseeing gaze fixed on a row of bottles on a shelf behind Jimmy. He picked up an apple which Jimmy had left on the bar and turned it around in his hands, apparently considering the effect of its scarlet stripes on a green surface. Then he threw back his shoulders and laughed aloud. "Bill Jones left a peckful of luscious apples in ye editorial sanctum to-day," he said gaily. "Come again, Bill," and laying the fruit down, turned away, Jimmy's delighted chuckles following him to the door and beyond.
Outside, he hesitated a moment, and then turned in the direction of the little railroad station. Seeing him, the weedy youth who acted as agent brought his chair, tilted back at an almost impossible angle, to the earth, took his feet down from a table, laid aside an old and battered magazine and expressed devout gratitude to heaven that any one should relieve what he was pleased to term his solitary confinement.
Hanson took the chair pushed toward him and for nearly an hour discussed events in the outside world, and the various phases of his profession in what the agent found a most entertaining manner. Finally he looked at his watch, murmured something about an engagement and rose to go. "Well," he said at parting, "I expect the next time I see you I'll be buying a ticket."
"Going to leave us soon?" asked the youth regretfully.
"Not to-day," smiled the manager, "but soon. Oh, by the way, now I think of it—is there a train goes straight from here to Colina?"
"Not straight. You got to change twice; once at the junction and once at the branch."
"And what kind of a place is there to stay at? Any hotel?"
"I don't know. Not much of one, I guess. Gallito would know. But he's got his own cabin, ain't he? That's so. Why don't you ask Bob Flick? He's just been up there. I sold him a ticket the other day, and he got back on the train yesterday evening. Thanks," taking the cigar Hanson offered. "So long."
With his suspicions thus definitely confirmed, Hanson wasted no time in following his inclinations and seeking the Pearl in her own home, but his delay had cost him a word with her, and he did not arrive at the Gallito house until after she and Bob Flick had left. This was the first untoward event in a successful morning, but he concealed his chagrin and, with his usual adaptability to circumstances, exerted himself to be agreeable to Mrs. Gallito, not without hope of gaining more or less valuable information.
Mrs. Gallito was in one of her sighing moods. In spite of all the methods of protection which she and Hughie had utilized the coyotes still continued to commit their depredations upon her chicken yard and daily to make way with her choicest "broilers" and "fryers." Also she had shipped several large consignments of sweet potatoes to the eastern markets and, instead of their being, as usual, snapped up by epicures at enormous prices, they had fallen, through competition with other shippers, almost to the price of the ordinary variety—desert sweet potatoes, too.
Life, she averred, was hard, almost a failure. Sometimes things went sort of smooth and you thought it wasn't so bad, and then everything went wrong.
"Oh, not everything," said Hanson, with a rather perfunctory attempt at consolation.
"Yes, sir, everything"—dolefully she creaked back and forth in her rocking-chair—"everything. Here's Gallito, the luckiest man at cards ever was, and he's been losing steady for three nights, and he's getting blacker and sourer and stiller every minute. Oh, if him and Pearl would only talk when things go wrong with 'em. It would seem so natural and—and—humanlike."
"Back in the old sawdust days," she continued reminiscently, "when things went wrong in the circus, everybody'd be screaming at each other, calling names and threatening, and often as not throwing anything that came handy. They'd get it all out of their systems that way, and there was nothing left to curdle. But to sit and glower and think and think! Oh, it's awful! Why, even Hughie, he'll talk and pound the piano like he was going to break the poor thing to pieces; but this Spanish way of Pearl and her father! Oh, my!" Mrs. Gallito shook her head and carefully wiped a tear from her eye, before it could make a disfiguring rivulet down the paint and powder on her cheek.
"It can't be so much fun, all things considered," conceded Hanson.
"Fun!" Mrs. Gallito merely looked at him. "When I think of what life used to be! Lots of work, but just as much excitement. Why, I was awful pretty, Mr. Hanson," a real flush rose on her faded cheek, "and I had lots of admiration, 'deed I did."
"You don't need to tell me that," said Hanson. "I guess I got eyes."
"And when I married Gallito," she went on, "I was awful happy. I guess I was soft, but I always wanted to love some one and be loved a whole lot, and I thought that was what was going to happen, but it didn't. I often wonder what he married me for. But," her voice was poignant with wistfulness, "I would have liked to have been loved, I would."
Hanson nodded understandingly and without speaking, this time, an expression of real sympathy in his eyes. She was weak and silly. She was dyed and painted and powdered almost to the point of being grotesque, and yet, in voicing the universal longing, she became real, and human, and touching.
They sat in silence for a few moments, Hanson giving Mrs. Gallito an opportunity to recover her self-control, while he devoted his attention to Lolita, who had sidled up to him and was gazing at him evilly, ready to nip him malevolently should he attempt the familiarity of scratching her head.
Mrs. Gallito, alive to the courtesies of the occasion, had succeeded in choking back her sobs, and now she endeavored to turn the conversation into less personal channels. "Bob Flick got back yesterday."
"Where's he been traveling?" asked the manager easily. "He can't have gone so very far, hasn't been gone long enough."
Mrs. Gallito leaned forward carefully. "He's been to Colina and, Mr. Hanson, I think his trip had something to do with you. Him and Gallito talked late last night. I tried my best to hear what they were saying," naïvely, "but I couldn't for a long while, and then Gallito said out loud: 'Who's going to tell her, you or me?'
"And Bob kind of waited a minute and then he said: 'Me. You'd only stir her up and make her obstinate. But, God!' he said, sighing awful heavy, 'I wish I didn't have to.'"
"I'll bet he does," muttered Hanson, and throwing back his head laughed aloud.
She looked at him doubtfully, as if surprised at his manner of receiving her information. "Is it funny?" she asked.
"Not for Bob," still vindictively amused.
"I suppose something's gone wrong with her contract with Sweeney, and he can hold her to it, or else have the law on her," ventured Mrs. Gallito. "That's all I can think of to stir them up so."
"I guess that must be it," agreed Hanson. "Eh, Lolita?"
"Here comes Gallito now." She leaned forward suddenly, shielding her eyes with her hand. "Yes, it's him, sure. Why, I thought he'd gone to the mines and wouldn't be back to-day."
Gallito was riding slowly toward the house, his head bent, his frowning gaze fixed before him. Nevertheless, he had seen his wife's guest, and, after taking his horse back to the stable, he made his appearance on the porch. He shook hands with Hanson with his usual punctilious courtesy, and then, turning to Mrs. Gallito, remarked without ceremony:
"Mr. Hanson and I have business matters to discuss and you have duties within; but first bring the small table, the cognac and some glasses."
His wife wasted no time in doing his bidding, setting forth the articles required with a timid and practiced celerity. But even after the brandy had been tasted and praised by Hanson, and his appreciation of it accepted with a grave Spanish bow by Gallito, the latter had made no move to open the conversation, but had insisted upon his guest trying his cigarettes and giving an opinion upon their merits.
Again Hanson was complaisant, extolling them as worthy to accompany the cognac, and after that a silence fell between them. Gallito sat puffing his cigarette, watching with half closed eyes the smoke wreaths curl upward, while Hanson waited patiently, smoking his cigarette in turn with an admirable show of indifference.
"The old fox!" thought he scornfully. "Does he hope to bluff me into giving myself away?"
Finally Gallito spoke, directly and to the point, surprising the other man, in spite of himself, by a most unexpected lack of diplomatic subterfuge and subtlety.
"I received a letter from Sweeney yesterday," he drew it slowly from his pocket, "and he doubles his offer to my daughter, making her salary, practically, what you are willing to pay her. Now, Mr. Hanson, your offer is very fine. I appreciate it; my daughter appreciates it; but she cannot accept it. She treated Sweeney badly, very badly. She is an untaught child, headstrong, wilful," his brow darkened, "but she must learn that a contract is a contract." He took another sip of cognac. "She will go back to Sweeney."
He slightly shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands as if to say: "I deprecate this for your sake, but the question is definitely settled; I beg you, therefore, to advance no useless counter-arguments."
But Hanson ignored this unspoken request. "I'm sorry you feel that way about it," he said, "but your daughter is of age. I guess I'll wait and see what she has to say about this." He spoke pleasantly, almost carelessly, no hint of a threat in his tone, at least.
Gallito looked at him from under his brows in surprise, then he laughed, one single, menacing note. "My daughter will say what I have said."
"I'm not so sure," returned Hanson, and had some difficulty in restraining himself from speaking violently. Then he forced the issue.
"Look here, Gallito," he cried, "what's all this about, anyway? I came down here to the desert anxious to secure the Black Pearl as a new attraction for my vaudeville houses. I see her and I know that she's all to the good. So, banking on my own judgment, I make her an offer that's more than generous, just because I've the courage of my convictions and am willing to back my enthusiasms. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose," he snapped his fingers lightly, "but I'm always ready to take the chances.
"Well—what happens? In the first place, instead of jumping at my offer, like any sensible man would—I'm talking plain now, Gallito—you got to drag Sweeney into the game, which, look at it any way you please, wasn't particularly square. Pah!" scornfully, pitching his cigarette with a single muscular sweep of the arm into the heart of the garden, "you don't know it or you wouldn't have been talking to me like you have, but I've got Sweeney pigeon-holed, know all his resources, and know positively that he can't come up to my offer. I tell you what, Gallito, it's cards on the table now, and," he tapped the table between them with his knuckles, "I'm politely requesting you to draw your nigger from the woodpile."
Gallito's glance was like the stab of a poignard. "But this is strange talk." He drew back haughtily. "I do not have to make explanations. I have my daughter's interests at heart."
"Yes, I know," interrupted Hanson, "but the black man, the black man. Out with him."
Gallito's face had grown livid, his mouth had tightened until it was drawn and pinched. "Have it, then," he growled. "Sweeney's straight. Sweeney hasn't left one wife in Colina while he eloped with one of his head-liners. He's not in one scrape after another with a woman, until he's a joke in the coast newspapers, and every woman he features in his shows has got a black smirch on her—"
"By God, you've got your nerve," cried Hanson violently, interrupting him.
Gallito made a deprecating motion with his hands, as if to say: "Don't mention it, I beg of you," and then carefully selected another cigarette from the box between them. "My nerve is something that rarely deserts me, Mr. Hanson," he replied, "but I wish to finish what I was saying. My daughter has a future. She will not only be a great dancer, but she has the making of a great actress in her, too. And Dios!" he still maintained his cold restraint, but now, in spite of himself, his tones vibrated with passion, "just at the beginning of her career, to be made cheap by you, or any like you—"
He lifted his hooded hawk's eyes and looked at Hanson, who in turn looked boldly back at him with something indefinable yet unmistakable, something that was not only defiance, but also a threat in the blaze of his angry eyes.
And Gallito caught it and raised his brows ever so slightly, pondering surprisedly for a moment, and then resolutely putting the matter aside for the present. But Hanson continued to gaze across the table at him.
"Read me my pedigree, ain't you?" he snarled. "All right. Now just let me tell you something, Gallito. I take my answer from your daughter, and from no one else. Understand?"
"No," returned Gallito, "I do not understand."
Hanson controlled himself with difficulty. For a moment it was on the tip of his tongue to tell Gallito that the latter's connivance in the escape of the notorious Crop-eared José was known to him; also, he was perfectly cognizant of the present whereabouts of that much-desired person, and that he, Hanson, had but to step to the telegraph office and send a wire to Los Angeles, and not only José, but Gallito would be in custody before night. An admirable method for securing Gallito's consent to his daughter's acceptance of this professional engagement which Hanson offered. But, carefully considered, it had its flaws, and Hanson was not the man to overlook them. Indeed, he sat there in a baffled and furious silence, going over them mentally and viewing them from every possible angle.
In the first place, it was extremely doubtful if, after communicating his knowledge to Gallito, he would ever be permitted to reach the telegraph station, and, in the second place, he would, he was convinced, have not only Gallito, but the, to him, more formidable Bob Flick to deal with. Therefore, and most reluctantly, he decided to keep his information and his threats to himself for the present and, certainly, until he was better able to enforce the latter.
But, as he told himself, twisting his shoulders irritably, there was something about this old Spaniard which got on his nerves. A quality of composed patience, as if he, at least, never doubted the successful outcome of his plans; a rock-like imperturbability against which violence or vituperation shattered itself and fell harmless.
"Look here, Gallito," again he adopted a conciliatory manner, leaning his elbows on the table, as if prepared for a long discussion, after first helping himself to another glass of cognac and a fresh cigarette, "what's the use of a row, anyway? Now, why can't we come to some agreement. What you say about your daughter's abilities is all true, every word of it. That's the reason I'm so keen to get her. I know, and I'm frank enough to confess it, that out here in the desert, with not much to think about, on a vacation, and all, why—I kind of lost my head about her. She's a beautiful woman, Gallito, no need to tell you that. But you know, and I know, that a man can always shut down on that sort of thing if he's got to. My reputation ain't what it ought to be, no one knows that better than I, or feels it more; but, honest to God, Gallito, I ain't as black as I've been painted. No man is, probably. Now, what I got to say is this—"
"No need to say it, Mr. Hanson," interrupted Gallito, who had been twisting his mouth wryly during these remarks.
Again Hanson concealed his rising anger, although the color rose in his cheeks. "Now just let me talk a minute, Gallito." He spread out his hands placatingly. "The proposition I'm going to make you is this: Miss Gallito tells me that her mother traveled with her when she was younger, and even now, when she can spare the time from her farming, she goes out on the road with the young lady. Now, why not have a purely business arrangement. Let Miss Pearl sign up with me, and then we'll coax her mother to go with her. I should think that would satisfy you. It ought to satisfy any one, for a girl's mother to go with her."
"Of course," the Spaniard bowed with stately courtesy, but not before had his smile been so sardonic. "As you say, every one should be satisfied with such an arrangement and, let me say, it is one that would greatly please me, but as I told you before, Mr. Hanson, it cannot be. My daughter must keep her contract with Sweeney."
At white heat, Hanson rose and pushed back his chair. "Hell!" he cried. "What am I up against, anyway! Give some people the earth and it wouldn't suit 'em. But you can take this from me, Gallito," he leaned forward and pounded his fist on the table, "I don't take my answer from you. We'll see what the Black Pearl has got to say. The Black Pearl smirched by going out with me!" He laughed aloud.
He fell back frightened as Gallito half rose from his chair, and then, to his unbounded surprise, the Spaniard sat down again and softly rubbed his hands together. Hanson had a fleeting and most disturbing impression of the old man gloating over some secret and pleasant prospect.
Lolita had balanced herself on the edge of the table and Gallito bent forward and scratched her head, making little clucking noises in his throat the while: "Our guest is a great poker player, Lolita, he understands how to make a bluff, but," again that single grating note of a laugh, "assure him, my Lolita, that he will be cold-decked."
Again Hanson was almost betrayed into making his threat then and there. He leaned forward and shook his forefinger under the Spaniard's eyes, his face was purple, but just in time he remembered himself, closed his mouth and drew back.
"Bob, Bob," croaked Lolita, "mi jasmin Pearl, mi corazon."
"A most intelligent bird, you see, Mr. Hanson," observed Gallito, with saturnine politeness.
Hanson turned away impatiently. "I will see your daughter this afternoon," he said.
Gallito had begun to roll a fresh cigarette, but now, checking himself abruptly, he threw a long comprehensive glance at the cloudless brazen sky, and then, squinting his eyes, studied for a second or two the equally brazen desert.
"I think not, Mr. Hanson," he said, with assured finality in his voice. "I do not think you will see my daughter to-day. What? Going so soon? Another glass of cognac? No. Adios, then. Adios."
Hanson walked away, more disturbed in mind by his interview with Gallito than he would have thought possible an hour or two earlier. Something in the finality of the Spaniard's voice when making those last predictions, his evidently sincere belief that his daughter would not appear under Hanson's management, had impressed the latter in spite of himself, causing him seriously to question the extent of his influence over Pearl, a weakness which he had not previously permitted himself.
He strove with all the force of his optimistic will to throw off the depression which deepened with each moment, assuring himself that he was tired, that all morning he had played a part, every faculty on the alert; and that this growing dissatisfaction and unrest were only the evidence of a natural reaction.
He attempted to buttress his hope with mental argument, logical, even final, but singularly unconvincing where Pearl was concerned, as anything logical and final must ever be. He tried to recall in detail stories he had heard of her avarice and her coquetries; he thought of her jewels, her name, her wiles. Who was she to object to past peccadillos on his part? Then, uncomforted, he sought to reassure himself with the remembrance of her love for him, ardent and beautiful as the sun on the desert, but her image rose on the dark of his mind like a flame, veering and capricious, or as the wind, lingering, caressing, yet ever fleeing.
He was tormented by the remembrance also of strange phases of her which he divined but could not analyze. Again, he would in fancy look deep into her dark eyes, demanding that his imagination revive for him those moments when his heart had thrilled to the liquid languor of her gaze, and instead he saw only the world-weariness of that sphynx glance which seemed to brood on uncounted centuries, and far back in her eyes, illusive and brief as the faint, half seen shadow on a mirror, he discerned mockery and disdain.
He took off his hat, baring his brow to the air, and drew long breaths, unpleasantly conscious of an increasing heaviness and sultriness in the air, according well with the oppression of his thoughts. When he arrived at the San Gorgonio, he was glad to take refuge in his room and there, to relieve the tension of nerves strung almost unbearably high, he walked back and forth and, after his fashion, swore volubly and unintermittently.
At last, having exhausted his vocabulary as well as his breath, he turned to the window, struck by some impending change in the atmosphere which had now revealed itself by a slight obscuring of the light in the room. He looked out curiously, half fearfully, dimly but rebelliously aware that the world, his human world of personal desires and activities, as well as all external nature was threatened by vast, unseen, menacing forces. The great, gray desert lay in crouching stillness, a silence which filled the soul of man with horror. The sun, crimson as blood, hung in a sky over which seemed to have been drawn a veil of golden mist.
"Must be something doing," muttered Hanson, and even as he spoke his eye was taken by a movement on the horizon line, a billowing as if the desert were rising like the sea. And truly it did. It lifted in waves that mounted almost to the sky and swept forward with a savage eagerness as if to bear down upon and engulf and obliterate the little oasis of a village with its green productive fields, and reduce it again to the wastes of desolation from which it had been so painfully redeemed by man.
For nearly three days the storm lasted, raging by day and by night. The trees bowed to earth and lifted themselves to bow again with the sound of many waters in their leaves; and in the voice of the wind every savage, primeval menace alternated with every wail of human grief and anguish which has echoed through the ages. All desolation in the heart of man, "I am without refuge!" shrieked in its high cries, and, as if failing to find adequate expression in these, it summoned its chorus of demons and rang with the despairing fury of all damned and discordant things, until one bowed and covered the ears and muttered a prayer.
And the sand! It sifted constantly through doors and windows, and seemed to fall in a fine continuous shower from the very roof. It covered everything with a white rime; it sifted into the hair, the eyes; breathing was difficult, the air was so chokingly full of it.
The rooms, too, were ever paced by the restless feet of the wind, curtains swayed as if shaken by ghostly fingers; rugs and carpets rose and fell upon the floor, and, whether one sat alone or with others, the air seemed full of stealing presences, sad, and sometimes terrible; and of immemorial whispers that would not be stilled.
The desert knows no time, its past and present are one, a thousand years is as a single day, and when it chooses to find its voice all yesterdays and all to-morrows blend.
Some day, when grief and horror shall be abandoned by man as utterly as his dreams of cave-life; when his remembrances of wrestling with the forces of nature or commerce shall seem as remote as his warfare with beasts, and tribes as savage as beasts; when he lifts his dull eyes and dares to dream only joy and beauty, then he will know that the gray cries of the wind are but the emphasis to the singing of the sunlight, that the black storm-clouds are but the contrast Beauty offers to deepen and heighten the effect of her more ethereal hues, blue and rose and pearl.
Hanson had stood the storm badly; inactivity was always a hardship to him, also he was unused to such discomfort as he had to endure; and his depression and unrest induced by the suspense he suffered in continually wondering how Pearl would take Bob Flick's news were greatly increased by the fact that he could get no word to her, nor receive any from her.
But on the third night the storm stilled and in the morning the desert showed herself sparkling like an enchantress, exhibiting all of her marvelous illusions of color and wrapped in a golden garment of sunshine. She smiled with all the allurement of a radiant and beautiful woman.
Early in the morning, just as Hanson was preparing to send a note to Pearl, he received one from her, asking him to meet her again within an hour or two, amid the palms. She did not suggest his riding thither with her. The note was brief, a mere line, and, study it as he would, he found nothing in it to indicate what her attitude was toward him, therefore it did not allay his nervousness in the least as to how she would meet him. But with the passage of the storm his nerves had recovered their normal tone, and with the brilliance and freshness of the morning much of his optimism had returned.
He reached the approach to the foothills where the palms lifted their stately and magnificent height, long before Pearl, and there, walking restlessly back and forth, he watched the road with straining eyes. And then he saw her, at first a mere speck in the distance; then she became more and more distinct, for she rode fast. She waved her hand to him as she came nearer and his heart rose in a great bound. Slackening the speed of her horse, she leaped from the saddle while it was still going, ran by its side, throwing the bridle over her arm, stopped, laughing and breathless, and cast herself into Hanson's waiting arms.
"Pearl, Pearl," he cried, in a low voice, holding her close against him and kissing her upturned face again and again. "Oh, Pearl, it's been a thousand years in hell since I saw you last."
She laughed and, gazing eagerly into her care-free eyes and unreproachful face, his heart rose again in a great sigh of relief. "That's the way a tenderfoot always feels about a sand-storm," she said. "Well, we sure gave you some nice theatrical effects, didn't we? It's the biggest I've seen for many a long day. But you were bound to see something like that before you went away." She spoke with a fatalism approaching Bob Flick's. "The desert never lets you go and forget her." Her eyes dreamed a moment.
"She's like you in that, Pearl. My heavens! I wish you could see yourself this morning. Beautiful ain't the word."
"Am I beautiful, Rudolf?" She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him with a soft, childlike expression, as if longing for his praise.
"I guess you know it," he said adoringly, stroking her shining black hair, "but if you weren't, if you were as ugly as sin, it wouldn't make any difference, you'd get us all just the same. All women like you got to do is to look at a man and he'll follow you like a sheep. I don't know what it is, magnetism or something."
"But I'm glad I'm not as ugly as sin," she murmured, in smiling content. "And I'm glad you're not, too." She reached up her arm and touched his hair caressingly. "I love that little touch of reddish gold in your hair, and, yes, just that sprinkling of gray, and I love your blue eyes. I can't bear dark men. I am so dark myself."
"You sure are, Pearl, thank the Lord! I never was very poetic, but I never see one of these desert nights sparkling with their big stars, twice as big as natural, that I don't think of you."
She smiled, delighted at his praise.
"But, goodness!" he went on, "when ain't I thinking of you? I tell you, you been on my mind steady these last few days. Your Pop was so dead sure when I talked to him that you'd have nothing more to do with me that it got to worrying me, and I thought maybe you'd hold it against me that I hadn't told you about—about my being already tied up." He scanned her face as if fearful of seeing it cloud and change.
It did. The laughter faded from her eyes, her brow darkened. "I wish you had told me," she said, "then I'd been a little better prepared for Pop and Bob; but I guess they got as good as they gave."
"I know I ought to have told you, Pearl," he said miserably, "and I meant to, honey, but"—gathering her more closely in his arms—"I just couldn't spoil those first few days; and, anyway, you drove everything but you out of my head. I just determined every time it came into my mind to tell you, that I wasn't going to spoil Paradise with any recollections of hell. Maybe I was all wrong, but that was the way I felt."
"No, you were all right, Rudolf," she wound her arms about his neck. "When the storm came it broke swift and sudden like the sand storm, and we didn't live it all over beforehand, getting ready for it, and deciding how we'd meet it when it came, and all that. We just enjoyed ourselves. Lived and loved up to the moment when it broke, and that was the best way."
"Gee! was there ever a woman like you!" lifting his glad, gay gaze to the sky. "Why, Pearl, it most frightens me when I think how happy me and you are going to be together."
"Are we?" nestling closer to him. "How?"
"How?" he repeated. "Why, we're going to be together first and last; ain't that enough? It is for me. But"—with drooping head and affectedly humble and dejected mien—"it couldn't be expected to be enough for you, could it?"
"Hardly," she looked up at him through her long lashes.
"Well, since that ain't enough for you," still with affected resignation, "let me tell you this: You're going to dance to bigger crowds and higher class ones than you ever saw before, because you're going to be advertised proper, see?" And then, sketching out plans with his former bold, optimistic confidence, "We're going to travel on the other side and travel in style, too, a big touring automobile. I guess you can show those foreign managers something new in the dancing line. How would you like to see your name all over London and Paris? The Black Pearl! Eh?"
She slipped away from him and took a few buoyant dancing steps. "Fine!" she laughed. "It sure sounds good to me." Floating nearer to him, she pinched his arm. "Ain't you the spellbinder!"
He caught her with one arm. "Oh, Pearl," his voice falling to seriousness, "you don't know how happy you make me. Honest, I've been so plum scared these last few days, I been almost crazy. I didn't know, you see, just how much influence your Pop and Flick might have over you, and I got locoed for fear you wouldn't see me and give me a chance to explain."
"Pop and Bob Flick kindly took the bother of explaining things off your shoulders, didn't they?" with a short, vindictive laugh.
"Darn 'em," bitterly. "I don't want to say anything about your Pop, but Flick's a sneaking coyote, and sooner or later he'll pay for snooping into my business. Oh, I've cursed myself more than once for letting him tell you, but I never loved a woman before, Pearl, and I couldn't take the chances, honest I couldn't. I hadn't the nerve." There was a passionate sincerity in his voice.
"They've been telling me you've loved many a woman." Her eyes gloomed and she slashed her skirt savagely with the riding crop she held.
"You know," he whispered, "you know. I've been a fool. There have been many others, Pearl, I ain't going to deceive you, but—there's never been but one."
She softened and smiled at him, then her face darkened again. "But there's one that stands in the way—yet," she said gloomily.
"In the way? What do you mean?" uncomprehendingly.
"Why, that woman up in Colina? Don't she stand between you and me, now, for a while?"
"Not much, she don't," emphatically, "not her!"
A light flared in Pearl's eyes. "I knew Pop and Bob were up to some of their tricks! They been doing their best to ram it home that she'll die before she lets you get a divorce."
"You bet she will," muttered Hanson, with concentrated bitterness, and stifled some maledictions under his breath. "I've tried every way, turned every trick known to sharp lawyers for the last six years, trying to get free; but she's got money, you see, and she can keep her eye on me, so, in one way or another, she's balked me every time."
Pearl threw herself from him and looked at him with wild eyes. "Then how are you going to get free now?" she cried. "What are your plans? Why is she going to come around now, if she never has before?"
"She ain't, honey, the devil take her!" He caught her back in his arms and held her as if he would never release her. "But what difference does that make to us?" he pleaded ardently. "We're going to let the whole lot of them go hang and live our lives as we choose."
"Then Pop and Bob were right; and I never believed them, not for a moment. I thought you were too smart to stay caught in a trap like that. I thought you were so quick and keen to plan and were so full of ideas that you could get around any situation." Again she flung herself away from him and, with her face turned from him, stood looking out over the desert.
He bent toward her and, throwing his arms about her, again endeavored to draw her back into his embrace, but she resisted.
"Pearl," he cried roughly, "what do you mean? You don't mean to say that you got any foolish ideas about it making any difference whether a preacher says a few words over us or not? Why, you can't feel that way. You've seen too much of life, and your folks have always been show people. They didn't hold any such ideas. Anyway, you got brains to think for yourself. What joke you playing on me, honey? Oh, don't hold me off like that, lift your head and look at me. I know you're going to laugh in about a minute and then I'll know it's all a joke." Again he tried to put his arm about her and again she threw him off.
"Let me alone," she cried harshly. "I'm thinking. Let me alone."
"Pearl," he besought wildly; his face had suddenly grown flabby and white, his voice was broken with his desperate pleading. "Honey, you don't want time to think. Why, there's nothing to think about. We're going off on the train this afternoon to be happy together, and we don't give a cent for anything else. We'd be married if we could. My Lord! I should say so! But since we can't, we'll make the best of it."
He paused and looked at her, but there was something inflexible in her attitude, some almost threatening aloofness that made him hesitate to clasp her as he longed to do for fear he should meet another and final rebuff. He waited a moment or two, but, as she did not speak, he began again.
"I know you're joking, Pearl, but it's awful hard on me"—he wiped the sweat from his brow. "You haven't got any such fool ideas. Of course you haven't. They're for dead ones, old maid country school teachers, and preachers and things like that, hypocrites that have got to make their living by playing the respectable game. But we're not that kind, Pearl, we're alive, and we're not afraid. We're going to be happier than two people ever were in this world. Pearl, speak to me. I don't wonder that your mother complains about the way you shut yourself up and never say a word. Speak to me. Tell me what you're thinking."
"I'm thinking a lot of things," she answered, but without turning her head to look at him, "and I ain't through yet. Now I've got to studying on this matter, I'm a-going to think it out here and now."
"But what is there to think about?" in a sort of exasperated despair. "Oh, Pearl, how can you be so cruel! I know you ain't got any of the fool ideas of the dead ones I was talking about. You couldn't have; not with Isobel Montmorenci for a grandmother, and Queenie Madrew for a mother, and the same kind on your Pop's side of the house. You didn't have any Sunday-school bringing up and I know it. Then what you playing with me like a cat does with a mouse for? It ain't fair, Pearl, it ain't fair."
She turned and faced him now with an impatient gesture of the hands. Some expression on her face, the set of her mouth, the horse-shoe frown on her forehead gave her a fleeting resemblance to her father, a resemblance that momentarily chilled his blood.
"For goodness' sake keep quiet a minute," she cried irritably. "You gave me a jolt a while ago, telling me you couldn't get free, and I want a minute or two to take it in."
"But you don't think hard of me for that," he implored. "Oh, Pearl—" but she had again turned to her contemplation of the desert, and realizing that further speech might bring her swift anger upon him he walked hastily away.
Several yards from her he paused and again wiped his brow. "Oh, God!" he muttered, lifting his face to the sky, "what does a man know about women, anyway?"