As for Pearl, she scarcely knew that he had ceased to speak to her. She had been thinking, as she averred, thinking back over the years. She had been dancing professionally ever since she had been a child. As a slim, tall, young girl, still in skirts to her shoe tops, her mother had traveled with her, and, although this evidence of chaperonage irked her, she had with her quick intelligence early seen its value. All about her she saw the struggling flotsam of feminine youth, living easily, luxuriously to-day, careless of any less prosperous morrows, and, when those swift, inevitable morrows came, she had seen the girlish, exotic queens of an hour, haggard, stripped of their transient splendor, uncomprehending, almost helpless.
She saw readily enough that it was not only her superior talents and training, the hard work and hard study which she gave to her profession which set her above the butterflies and apart from them, but her mother's constant presence during those early years was of almost equal value.
All this she realized at an age when strong impressions are indelibly retained. Her value, the tremendous value of an unsmirched virtue, a woman's greatest asset in a world of desire and barter, became to her a possession she cherished above her jewels, above the money she could earn and save and the greater sums she dreamed of earning or winning by any means—all means but one.
Her observations of the women about her who gave all for so little, her meditations upon them, and the conclusions she drew from their maimed lives only emphasized the resisting force of her nature. She was not born to be a leaf in the current, whirled by the force of waters into a safe haven or an engulfing whirlpool as chance might decide; she must dominate the currents.
And with the temptations of her youth, and her ardent emotional temperament, would also come the remembrance of those haggard girls with their pinched blue lips, the suffering in their eyes, their delicate faces aged and yellowed and lined and spoiled, weeping with shaking sobs, telling her pitiful stories, and begging her for money, for a word with the management. And, when they had gone, she had turned to her looking-glass and gazed at herself with conscious pride and delight. Contempt, not pity, stirred her heart for the draggled butterflies whose gauzy irridescence was but for a moment; and before her mirror she constantly renewed her vows that never would she barter her bloom, her freshness, her exquisite grace for what those girls had to show.
She had seen a great French actress roll across the desert in her private car, to meet in every city the adulation of thousands and it had stimulated her ambition enormously. She was by nature as insatiable as the horse-leech's daughter; she would take all—love, money, jewels in return for her barren coquetries. The fact that she was "straight," as she phrased it, gave her sufficient excuse for her arrogant domination.
Unfortunately for Hanson, there was no particular temptation in what he could offer in the way of professional advancement. She was perfectly cognizant of her own ability, aware that its resources were scarcely developed. Already her field widened continually. She was in perpetual demand with her public, and therefore with her managers.
But she loved Hanson. In all of the love affairs in which she had been involved she had never really cared before, and now only her strong will kept this attraction from proving overmastering. And here came the struggle. The right or the wrong of the matter, the morals of it, did not touch her. It was the clash of differing desires, a clash between passion and this secret, long-cherished pride of virtue.
"Honey, honey," he was back at her side again; his voice was hoarse and ragged, but for that very reason it moved her. All at once the primitive woman, loving, yielding, glad and proud to yield, stirred in her, rose and dominated her hard ambition. She lifted her head a little and, still with it turned from him, looked at the pagan glory of the day. Her eyes closed with the delight of that moment. She felt her resistance breaking down, the weakening and softening of her resolutions. Was she at last to know the splendor of loving and giving?
"Ain't you played with me long enough, Pearl?" his voice was in her ear, a broken, husky whisper. "What's the use? Why, of course," grasping at his usual self-confidence, "I'm a fool to get scared this way. You've showed me that you care, you have, honey; and I guess," with a nervous laugh, "the Black Pearl hasn't got any damn fool scruples such as I've been frightening myself out of my skin by attributing to her."
Imperceptibly, almost, her whole body stiffened. Her soft, relaxed, yielding attitude was gone. But she remained silent, the same ominous, brooding silence that the desert had held before the storm, had Hanson but noticed. He did not. He was still pleading: "Why all the time you been keeping me on the anxious seat, I been telling myself that the Black Pearl—"
"Yes, the Black Pearl," she interrupted him with her low, unpleasant laugh. "Don't you care a little that I got that name, Rudolf?"
"Care!" He wound his arms about her now and buried his face in the great waves of her inky, shining hair, wildly kissing the nape of her neck; but with a deft twist of her lithe body she slipped almost away from him, although his arms still held her. "Care? Of course I care. But what's that got to do with it when I love you like I do? Pearl, if you were a good deal blacker than you're painted it wouldn't make any difference to me."
He strove to draw her nearer to him, but again she slipped away, this time escaping the circle of his eager arms. For the first time her face was turned toward him, but her eyes were cast down, her long lashes sweeping her cheeks. "But I must be pretty bad to get called the Black Pearl," she said in that same low voice; all of its sliding, drawling inflections were gone; it was strangely tense.
"I guess so, damn it!" he cried; "but I'm past caring, Pearl. I got a hunger and thirst for you, honey, such as men die of out there in the desert. Before God, I don't care anything about your past or your present, if you'll only love me for a while."
With that low, harsh laugh of hers that sounded in his ears afterward like the first muttering menace of the sand wind over the desert, the storm broke. Her eyes had an odd green glitter, her face was white, a dusky white, and her upper lip was drawn back from her teeth at each corner of the mouth.
"You fool!" Her voice was a muffled scream. "Oh, you fool! Sweeney could have told you better, any man on the desert could have told you better. The Black Pearl! Why, I've been called the Black Pearl since I was a baby, almost. It's my hair and my skin and my eyes."
picture
"'I'll show you what I'll do.'"
He didn't believe her, but he saw his blunder at once; cursed himself for it, and, mad to retrieve himself, began incoherent explanations and excuses. "Of course," he stammered, "of course, I—I—was just fooling, you know. But, well, what does it matter, anyway? Oh, Pearl, girl! Don't look at me like that. Don't!"
"I'll do worse than look at you, if you come any nearer me," she threatened. "Do you think I ride all over the desert where I've a mind to without protection? I guess not." She lifted her skirt with a quick movement and drew a long knife, keen as a stiletto, from her boot.
Hanson went a little whiter, but he was no coward. "Come on then, finish it for me," he said. "Your eyes are doing it anyway. Oh, Pearl!" he fell again to desperate pleading, "you won't turn me down just for a mistake?"
"Me, the Black Pearl, held cheap!" she muttered and raised her stag-like head superbly, "and by you! You that pick up women and drop them when you're tired of them. Me, the Black Pearl." She turned quickly and ran to her waiting horse, loosening the tether with quick, nervous fingers. Hanson followed her.
"Pearl, you ain't going to leave me?"
But she was already in the saddle.
He caught at her bridle and held her so. "Pearl, I made a mistake"—he was talking wildly, rapidly—"but you ain't going to throw me down just for that—you can't. Think how happy we've been this last week—think how we've loved each other. Why, you can't turn me down, just for one break, you can't."
"Can't I?" she said, her teeth still showing in that unpleasant way. "Can't I? Well—if you don't get out of my way I'll show you what I'll do. Slash you across your lying face." Her arm was already uplifted, riding crop in hand. "Let me go!" Her voice was so low that he hardly heard it, but full of a thousand threats. Then, swerving her horse quickly to one side, she jerked the bridle from his slack fingers and was off across the desert.
It was about an hour after Pearl had ridden away to meet Hanson among the palms that Bob Flick joined Mr. Gallito, who sat, as usual, upon the porch of his home, smoking innumerable cigarrettes. He was his composed and imperturbable self, exhibiting outwardly, at least, no trace of anxiety, but Flick looked worn, almost haggard.
Gallito had just told him of Pearl's early departure and also of the fact that she had left no word intimating when she might return or in what direction she was riding; but when Flick expressed regret that this had been permitted, he merely lifted his shaggy brows. "What is done is done," he said. "She slipped away before either Hugh or myself knew that she was gone, and what could we or you, for that matter, have done to prevent her?"
"I wish I'd been here," muttered Flick uneasily. "I'd have done something." But his tone did not bear out the confidence of his words.
"I am too old and, I hope, too wise," returned the Spaniard, "to attempt to tame the whirlwind. But cheer up, my friend. Although she rode off to meet this Hanson, without a doubt, still, the day is not over."
"You know what she is when her head is set," murmured Flick.
"I! Have I not cause?" exclaimed Gallito, a depth of meaning in his tone. "Who so much? But, nevertheless, she has not gone for good. She would not leave without some of her clothes, especially her dancing dresses and slippers, if she went with him. And her jewels, oh, certainly, not without her jewels!" he smiled wisely. "There are, as you know, certain ornaments about which she has her superstitions; she will not dance without her emeralds. Oh, no, console yourself, as I do. She has not gone for good."
But Flick was not so easily reassured. "I almost wish she had," he said gloomily. "If she don't go to-day, she will to-morrow or next day."
"In that case they will not go far," returned Gallito and rubbed his hands. His reply had been quick and sharp as the beat of a hammer on an anvil; but now he spoke more softly: "But will she go at all, my friend? You, like myself, have ever played for high stakes. Then you know and I know that this is a world where a man may never look ahead and calculate and say, 'because there is this combination of circumstances, these results will certainly follow,'" he emphasized his words by tapping on the table with his long, gnarled forefinger. "The wise man never predicts, because he is always aware of that interfering something which we call the unexpected." He blew great wreaths of smoke from his mouth and watched them float out on the sun-gilded air. "We know that my daughter is as obstinate as a pig and as wilful as a burro, therefore we conclude that she will follow her mad heart and go with this fellow. But there we take no account of the unexpected, eh, Lolita!" welcoming the parrot who waddled out of the open door and came clucking and muttering across the porch toward the two men.
Flick stirred uneasily. He was in no mood to stand Gallito's philosophizing, and the Spaniard, seeing it, smiled as he scratched Lolita's head. "Two people can not be thrown much together and not show to each other what is in them," he continued. "You know that my daughter is proud," he lifted his own head haughtily here, "and you know that above everything her pride lies in the fact that no man can scorn her. But this that Hanson does not believe."
This roused Flick to a sudden interest, some light came into his heavy eyes, a dull flush rose on his cheek. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"This: Yesterday morning when that hound sat there and talked to me there was something I said which made him forget himself in anger, and he said: 'Me! The Black Pearl smirched by me!'"
"He said that?" Flick's tones had never been more drawlingly soft, but there was a quality in them, an electric and ominous vibration, which boded ill for Hanson.
Gallito nodded. "It is in his mind. It is his thought about her. If he said it to me when he forgot himself he will surely say it to her."
"And you let him say it, Gallito? You let him go away safe after saying it?" Flick looked at him amazed.
"I think far ahead," replied the older man. "It is the custom of a lifetime. To act on the moment is to continually regret. Do you think I want my daughter's tears and reproaches for the rest of my life? No, I wish to spend my old age free of women and their mischief. This Hanson must talk, talk, talk. Therefore, if you give him rope enough he will hang himself before any woman's eyes."
"But when?" asked Flick, and that vibration still lingered in his voice. "I am not so patient as you, Gallito."
The Spaniard made no reply to this and silence fell between them for a few minutes.
"Oh!" said Flick, as if suddenly remembering something, something in which he was not particularly interested, but which would serve as a topic of conversation during these tense moments of waiting; "Nitschkan is up at Colina, and Mrs. Thomas."
"Nitschkan!" A faintly humorous smile crept from Gallito's mouth up to his eyes.
He was genuinely interested if Flick was not. "What is she doing there?"
"She came up to look after those prospects of hers, nurse them along a little, I guess, and to hunt and fish some, I guess, particularly hunt and fish. She says she's going to take a bear-skin or so back with her."
"She sure will, if she says so," returned Gallito confidently.
"Of course, she got wise to José right away." Flick spoke rather anxiously.
"Of course, being Nitschkan." Gallito's tone was quite composed and equable. "Well, she's safe, and she'll keep him in order if anybody can." Again that grimly humorous smile played about his mouth. "Why did she bring Mrs. Thomas?"
Flick laughed. "To keep her in order, too. Mrs. Thomas is big and pretty, with no mind of her own, and she got tangled up in some fool love affair that her friends didn't approve of, so when Nitschkan started off on this last gipsy expedition of hers they sent Mrs. Thomas with her."
Gallito was about to answer and then, suddenly, he seemed to stiffen, his hand, which was conveying a match to his cigarette, remained motionless, the flame of the match flared up and then went out in a gust of wind. "Look, Bob, look," he said, in a low voice. "What do you see out there?"
Flick's eyes, keener even than his, swept the desert. "By George!" he whispered huskily; "it's her, her alone, and coming like the wind."
"I hope," cried Gallito and gnawed his lip, "that she has done nothing that will get us into trouble."
"I hope to God she has," said Flick. "The desert'll take care that she gets into no trouble. It'll be as silent as the grave. Just another case of a reckless tenderfoot getting lost out there in the sand, that's all."
It was indeed Pearl, and, as Flick had said, coming like the wind. She pulled her horse up as she neared the gate and, when she reached it, stopped him abruptly, slipped down from the saddle, threw the bridle over the fence paling and ran toward the two men on the porch. Her face had changed but little since she had left Hanson among the palms. Even her wild ride had failed to bring back its color, and the curl of her upper lip still revealed her teeth.
She stood for a moment before them, slashing her skirt with her riding crop, then she cast it from her and sank down on the porch as if suddenly exhausted. Bob Flick quickly poured out a glass of her father's cognac and held it to her lips. She took a sip of it and it seemed to revive her.
"He thought that I," her voice was hoarse and labored, "he thought that I was like those other women that he has picked up and got tired of and left, Selma Le Grand, and Fanny Estrel, and others. I wonder where he thinks that I've been living that I wouldn't know about them. Fanny Estrel! I went to see her once in vaudeville, and, before I'd hardly got my seat, someone next me began to whisper that she used to be one of Hanson's head-liners and that he was crazy about her once. And there she was, old, and fat and tired, playing in an ingénue sketch in a cheap house!" She laughed harshly. "That's what he was offering me," with a flare of passion, "and I was too green to know it!"
"And he, where is he?" asked her father, speaking more quickly than was his wont and eyeing her closely.
"Out there, I suppose, I don't care. Oh, no," meeting his eye and catching his unspoken question. "He's safe enough; don't worry."
"Shall I make him shoot, Pearl?" asked Flick softly. "He won't have much chance with me, you know. I'll get him in Pete's place and pick a quarrel. He'll understand. You won't be in it."
"No, you won't, Bob, although I can see how you're wanting to," she said decisively. "The Black Pearl!" she broke out presently. "My name's an awful good advertisement. It gives me a reputation for being worse than I am." She laughed cynically. "But he believed it." Her whole face darkened again.
"He needn't go away believing it, Pearl." Once more Flick spoke softly, persuasively, and once more her father looked at her hopefully.
She looked quickly from one to the other as if about to accede, and then, dropping her head on her arms crossed on her knees, she fell into wild and tempestuous weeping. "No," she cried, "no, promise me you won't, Bob. Oh, Oh, Oh!" she wailed and rocked back and forth. "What shall I do? What shall I do?"
At last she lifted her heavy eyes and looked at the two men. "I want to go away from here, quick," she said, "quick."
"With Sweeney," said her father, well pleased.
"No." She threw out her hands as if putting the thought from her with abhorrence. "No, I can't dance and I won't. I never want to dance again. I never will dance again," passionately.
"But that is a feeling which will soon pass away, my daughter," urged her father.
"No, no," she wailed. "And anyway, I would never be safe from Ru—from him, that way. He would follow me about and try to meet me. He would. I know he would."
Gallito drew back and looked at her with uplifted head. "Afraid! You?" he asked in surprise.
"No," she flashed at him scornfully, lifting her head, but again she dropped it brokenly on her arms. "I'm afraid of myself," she cried, suffering causing her to break down those barriers of self-repression which she usually erected between herself and everyone about her. "I'm afraid of myself, because I love him. Yes, I do. I love him just as much as ever—and I hate him, hate him, hate him." She hissed the words. Once more she sobbed wildly and then she broke into speech again. "Oh, I want to go somewhere and hide; somewhere where he'll never find me, where I'll be safe from him."
"What's the matter with Colina?" said Bob Flick suddenly. "He'll never come there. A good reason why!"
Pearl became perfectly still. It was evident that the suggestion had reached her, and that she was thinking it over. Her father, too, considered the matter. "Excellent," he cried; "excellent."
And Pearl looked up eagerly. "But when can we go, when?" she cried and stretched out an imploring hand to touch his knee. "To-morrow? No, to-day. You said yesterday, father, that you would be going back at once. Oh, to-day! The afternoon train—" She looked eagerly from one man to another.
"Yes, to-day," agreed Bob Flick. "You can go as well to-day as to-morrow, Gallito."
The Spaniard had been thinking with thrust-out jaw and narrowed eyes, now he threw out his hands and lifted his brows. "Have it so, then," he said. "The train leaves this afternoon. Go, Pearl, and pack your things. I promised Hughie that he should go back with me, but he had better wait a few days until his mother can get her sister to stay with her. You had better tell him, Pearl."
After she had gone into the house the two men sat in silence for a few minutes and then Flick lifted his relieved face to the sky. "If there's any God up there," he said, "I'm thanking him for that unexpected you were talking about, Gallito."
"Ah, that unexpected!" returned Gallito. "It is more comforting than many religions. More than once when I have been in a tight place I have relied on it and not vainly. You will go with us this afternoon, Bob?"
Flick hesitated a moment. "I can't," he said. "I've got a lot to do at the mines here, but I can come up soon if you think it will be all right."
The old man smiled in his most saturnine fashion and sighed dismally. "I will make a special offering to the church if you come often," he said. "I can see black days ahead of us. She does not like the mountains."
"Oh, she'll not stay long," Flick consoled him. "The summer, perhaps; but she will be ready to sign up with Sweeney before fall. She can't stay off the stage longer than that. You'll see."
Gallito sighed again and pessimistically shook his head. He was far from anxious to assume the responsibility of restoring his daughter's spirits, and had hoped that Flick would relieve him of that duty, but, since that was not to be, he accepted the situation with what philosophy and fortitude he could muster and hurried the feminine preparations for departure so successfully that he and Pearl actually got away on the afternoon train.
This fact was communicated to Hanson by Jimmy early that evening. Hanson had returned to the San Gorgonio before noon and had remained in his room until nightfall. As the day wore on and he recovered in some measure his self-control, he began to view the situation in a different light from that in which it had first appeared to him, although, in strict adherence to fact, he could not be said to have viewed it in any light at all in that first hour or two. It was all dense darkness to him, a black despair not unmingled with anger and a sense of injury. But as he sat alone in his room with its windows looking out over the desert, his naturally confident and optimistic spirit gradually asserted itself. Again and again, and each time more positively, he assured himself that all was not lost yet by any means. He had been unfortunate enough, yes, and fool enough, to make a bad break; a break that he, with all of his experience, should have known better than to make to any woman. Yet he felt that, even admitting that, he could not justly blame himself. The Pearl had not only surprised but frightened him by the way she had taken a fact which he thought she fully understood—that marriage was out of the question for him. He was so crazy about her that he had lost his head, that was the long and short of the matter, and had made a fool of himself and hash of the situation; but temporarily, only temporarily. For, and to this belief he clung more and more hopefully, the Pearl was too deeply in love with him definitely to close the affair between them for just one break. He would not, could not believe that. It was true enough that he had aroused her passionate and violent anger, but the more violent the anger the sooner it will evaporate, and strange and complex as the Pearl was, she was yet a woman; and no woman on earth could long hold resentment against the man she loved. She had, he was able to convince himself, regretted her mad action in first threatening and then riding away from him long before she had reached home; and, without doubt, it was only that high and haughty pride of hers which kept her from returning to him before she had traversed half the distance. But the course of action he had decided upon was sure to win. He would give her a few hours to get over her anger, to regret it and to reproach herself for causing him pain, and then he would give her a little more time to long and ache for him to return to her. He would wait until evening, and then he would go boldly to the Gallito house and, no matter what efforts were made to frustrate their meeting, he would see her alone. Ah, and she would fly to him, if he knew her aright. All the opposition in the world could not keep them apart, it would only strengthen her determination. And then, how he would beg her forgiveness, how he would plead his love, with passionate and irresistible eloquence; and, if he knew the heart of woman, she would yield.
But when the moment came for acting upon this decision he found that it took a certain amount of courage, considerable, in fact, to face not only a woman who had left him in hot anger that morning, but a gnarled and thorny father and also the soft-spoken Bob Flick; and he decided to stop at Pete's place and brace up his courage with a drink.
Jimmy could hardly wait to serve him. He was like a busy and important bird, hopping about on a bough and, literally, he twittered with excitement.
"Well," he exclaimed, "where you been keeping yourself, and why wasn't you down to see 'em off?"
A cold chill ran over Hanson. His impulse was to cry, "Who? What do you mean?" But with an effort he resisted the inclination. Resolutely, he held himself in check, and, although the hand with which he lifted the glass to his lips trembled a little, he drank off the whisky before he spoke.
"Couldn't make it," he said. "Who went beside—" he paused inviting Jimmy's further confidence.
"Just Pearl and her father," returned Jimmy volubly. "I guess that was the reason Bob went to Colina last week to kind of arrange for Pearl going up to make a visit to the old man. But shucks!" he broke off, "what am I telling you this for, when you know more than I do?" His bright, beady eyes rested on Hanson's with pleased and eager anticipation as he awaited further revelations.
"Nothing more to tell," replied the other disappointedly. "It's all just as you say. Well, I got to go up and see Mrs. Gallito. I'm off myself early to-morrow morning. See you before that though. So long."
He walked away, feeling dazed for the moment and beaten. Not at once did he turn his steps in the direction of the Gallito home, but continued to tramp up and down the road, and presently, as the cool, fresh air restored his spirit, he was able to think clearly again. His world was in chaos, but, even so, he still held some winning cards. He had no intention, he gritted his teeth as he made this vow, of dropping out of the game. He meant to play it to a finish. Those cards! He ran over his hand mentally. There was that commanding trump—his knowledge, his unsuspected knowledge of the whereabouts of Crop-eared José. Then his next biggest trump—and here his heart lifted with a thrill—was the fact that Pearl loved him. Yes, in spite of her anger, in spite of the fact that she had rushed off to Colina, where she knew he could not follow her, she loved him; and his desire for her was but increased by the dangers and difficulties with which she surrounded herself. But he must keep in touch with her, and the question as to how this might best be accomplished rose in his mind. Mrs. Gallito was the almost immediate answer, and he determined, no matter what objections might be raised, to communicate with Pearl through that available source. Of one thing was he convinced and that was that not for long would Pearl linger in the gloomy mountains which he knew she abhorred. She belonged to the desert or to the world of men and admiration, the world of light and color and music. He couldn't see her in the mountains, he shivered a little at the thought of her among them; the cold, silent, austere mountains, so alien to this flower of the cactus.
His first poignant disappointment over, and his plan of action decided upon, he wasted no time in seeking Mrs. Gallito. He found her, to his satisfaction, quite alone, Hughie having, as she told him, gone to spend the evening with some friends. She had, before his arrival, been reading the Sunday supplement of an eastern newspaper, gazing with longing eyes at the portraits of the daughters of fashion and intently studying some of the elaborate and intricate coiffures presented, in the hope that she might achieve the same effects.
"Why, Mr. Hanson!" she cried in surprise at the sight of him. "I thought you'd gone sure, and Oh, mercy!" putting her hands to her head, "I ain't on my puffs."
"I wouldn't ever have known it," said Hanson truthfully. "The fact is I'm not noticing anything much, Mrs. Gallito, I got a lot on my mind." He sighed unfeignedly and she noticed that he looked both tired and worried. "And say, I wish you'd sit down and talk to me a little."
She still stood looking at him hesitatingly, a distressed expression on her face. "I—I don't know as I'd better," she faltered. "Gallito, he said, the very last thing he said, was that if you come around—Oh, Mr. Hanson," she sat down weakly in her chair and began to cry. "I thought you was just about the nicest man I'd met for many a day, and here I find you're a dreadful scamp. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I guess all men are alike!"
Hanson bent forward earnestly. He had an end to gain and he meant to gain it. "Now look here, Mrs. Gallito," he said. "You don't want to condemn me unheard. You're not that kind of a lady. I knew that the first minute I set eyes on you. Now understand I'm not trying to persuade you that I'm any better than I am, but I just want you to believe that I'm not quite so black as I'm painted, not as black as your husband and Bob Flick want to paint me, anyway."
She twisted a fold of her dress, already half-persuaded and yet still a little doubtful. "But you never gave us a hint that you were married," she ventured timidly.
"Honest to God, I forget it myself," he asserted devoutly. "How can a man be always thinking to tell everyone he meets that he's still in a legal tie-up, when the only way he can remember it himself is by coming across his marriage certificate, now and then? Why, it's a good ten years since me and that woman parted. You don't call that married?"
His positive personality exerted its usual influence over Mrs. Gallito. "'Course not," she agreed, although she still sat with downcast eyes and pleated her dress.
"I'm a pretty lonely man," pathos in his voice, "and I'd kind of gotten into the way of putting home and happiness and all like that away from me; and then I came here and saw Pearl," he was sincere enough now, "and honest, Mrs. Gallito, it was all up with me then, right from the first minute, and I was so plumb crazy about her that I guess I lost my head. I knew all the time that I ought to tell you and her just how I was fixed, I knew it, but, someways, try as I would, I couldn't. I didn't have the nerve, so I just waited and let the cards fall as they would. Maybe I was a fool and a coward. The way things have turned out, it sure looks like I was, but I just couldn't help it."
"I guess you ain't any different from most men," she answered, weakly sympathetic, "but you see Pearl has her notions, and they're mighty strong ones. It's the way she's been brought up," this with some pride. "You see, me and her pop started out with the idea that we wasn't going to have the Pearl live one of those hand to mouth lives that we'd seen girls in the circus that didn't have much training or much ability live. We saw right from the first that she was awful smart and awful pretty, and her Pop he had the knack of making money and holding on to it. Well, when he saw that she had her head set on the stage and we couldn't keep her off it, it's in her blood, you see, why her Pop says: 'Well, there's one thing, till she's of age, legal, on or off the stage, she's going to have a mother's care and a father showing up every now and then unexpected.' He's got awful Spanish ideas, you know. 'I don't want her kept innocent,' he says. 'My Lord, no. It's the innocent ones that have got to pay, and pay big in a world of bad knowledge where ignorance is not forgave and is punished worse than any crime. Let her see the seamy side,' he says, 'she's no fool. Let her see what those who thinks to live easy and gives themselves away easy gets.'
"And Pearl saw right off. You see, she ain't so soft-hearted like me," again she wiped the furtive tear from her eye. "Pearl's hard. She ain't no conscience about some things. She'll lead a man on and on, when she don't care beans for him, and take all he'll give her, not money, you know, but awful handsome presents. I've seen her let some poor boy that was crazy about her blow in all the dust that he'd saved for a year. Oh, yes, she's like her father in more'n one way, both awful ambitious and terrible fond of making money. Why," she added naïvely, "I've seen Pearl look at a bank note like I never saw her look at a love letter."
"Well, she won't make much money up in those mountains, not dancing, anyway," he laughed briefly and unmirthfully.
"It surprised me a lot, her going," admitted Mrs. Gallito; "she hates the mountains."
"Then she won't stay long," put in Hanson quickly.
Mrs. Gallito was uncertain about this. "But," she confided presently, "she took on awful to her father and Bob Flick. I didn't dare come out, but I heard her through the door there. 'Where can I go,' she cried, 'where he won't come?' And she kept on saying she'd got to go somewhere where you would never find her, because she didn't dare trust herself, and she cried right out: 'I love him, I love him.'"
With these words, the confirmation of his hope, Hanson's blithe self-confidence returned. He threw back his head and straightened his shoulders, the light of an exultant purpose flashing in the steel of his eye. "Pleasant for Bob!" he remarked in vindictive satisfaction; but as he had still an end to gain, he did not permit his mind to gloat long upon the agreeable picture Mrs. Gallito's words had suggested.
"Now, just let me talk a minute, Mrs. Gallito," leaning forward and speaking in his most persuasive manner. "This whole thing is a misunderstanding, that's all. Pearl didn't understand what I was trying to say to her, and she lost her temper and wouldn't let me finish. Now taking all the blame to myself for everything, admitting that I haven't acted right in any particular, still I haven't had a square deal. You've got the sand and the fairness to admit that, Mrs. Gallito, and I may say in passing that you're the only one that has, and you've got to admit that I haven't had a square deal; not from the Pearl, God bless her, and certainly not from her Pop and that Flick," his eyes flashed viciously.
Mrs. Gallito filled up his waiting pause with a murmur of confused but sympathetic assent.
"I'm telling you now what I'd told them if they'd given me a chance, and it's this," emphasizing his words by striking the palm of one hand with the forefinger of the other, "I'm going back to Los Angeles and I'm going to move heaven and earth to get free; but in the meantime, Mrs. Gallito, I got to hear from her, I've got to keep in touch with her, and I believe you've got too much heart and too much common sense not to help me."
She drew back with feeble, inarticulate murmurs of fright and protest. "I wouldn't dare," she began.
"Wait a moment," said Hanson soothingly. "I'm not suggesting anything that could get you into trouble. Mercy, no! All I want you to do is this, just write me now and then and let me know how things are going, and maybe, once in a while, slip a letter of mine in one of yours to Pearl; but," as she gasped a little and opened her eyes widely, "not till you're sure it's quite safe."
"Well," she agreed, still in evident perturbation of mind, "maybe—"
"Oh, Mrs. Gallito," pleadingly, "can't you see that me and Pearl are born for one another? You know that she can't live away from the footlights. She just can't. And you know that I can put her where she belongs. You know that our hearts are better guides than all Bob Flick and her Pop can plan for her."
His efforts were not wasted. As he had foreseen, his arguments were of a nature to appeal to Mrs. Gallito, and it required only a little more persuasion to win her promise of assistance. He further flattered her self-esteem by interlarding his profuse thanks with vague hints of the extreme lengths to which his despair might have led him had it not been for the saving power of her sympathy and understanding.
He had already risen and was halfway to the door before he appeared to remember something. "Oh," halting, his hand on the latch, "where is that—that José? Pearl could not go up there with him about."
Mrs. Gallito, all timorousness again, beat her hands lightly together, in a distressful flurry. "No, he's there," she whispered, and glanced anxiously about her. Then she came nearer. "I heard Gallito and Bob talking about him only yesterday and Bob said there was some mischief brewing among José's pals down on the coast, and Gallito said, yes, and if he let José leave the mountain he'd be right back there again and in the thick of it and sure to be taken and that he, Gallito, meant to keep José in Colina all year, if necessary."
So great was Hanson's satisfaction at this news that he had difficulty in concealing it, but Mrs. Gallito was not an observant person, fortunately, and, hastily changing the subject, he again expressed his thanks and departed.
He left the next morning for Los Angeles to the regret of his benefactress, Jimmy and the station agent.
The train which bore Pearl and her father to Colina had already completed its smooth progress through smiling foot hills and had begun a steep and winding ascent among wild gorges and great overhanging rocks before she noticed the change.
For the greater part of the journey she had sat motionless, huddled in a corner of the seat, a thick veil covering her face; but now she began to observe the physical changes in the landscape with a somber satisfaction, and, for the first time, accepted the mountains listlessly, almost gratefully, instead of rebelliously. In truth any change was grateful to her; she did not want to think of the desert or be reminded of it, and this transition, so marked, so sharply defined as to make the brief railway journey from the plains below seem the passage to another world, was especially welcome.
The human desire for change is rooted in the conviction, a vain and deceptive one, that an entirely different environment must include or create a new world of thought and emotion. So for once the Pearl's desire was for the hills. She who had ever exulted in the wide, free spaces of the desert, who had found the echo of her own heart in its eternal mutation, its luring illusions, its mystery and its beauty, now turned to the austere, shadowed, silent mountains as if begging them to enfold her and hold her and hide her.
It was dark when they reached Colina, but a station wagon awaited them and in this they drove through the village, a straggling settlement, the narrow plateau permitting only two streets, both of them continuations of the mountain roads, and surrounded by high mountains. Scattering lights showed here and there from lamps shining through cabin windows, but the silence, differing in kind if not in degree from the desert silence, was only broken at this hour of the night by the desolate, mocking bark of the coyotes.
Clear of the village, the horses turned and began to mount the hill which led to Gallito's isolated cabin. Their progress was necessarily slow, for the road was rough and full of deep ruts. The velvety blackness of a mountain night was all about them and even the late spring air seemed icy cold. Pearl had begun to shiver in spite of her wraps when the light from a cabin window gleamed across the road and the driver pulled up his horses.
"Somebody's waiting for you," said the driver.
"Yes, Saint Harry," answered Gallito. "He's getting supper for us."
The door, however, was not opened for them and it was not until the driver had turned his horses down the hill that they heard a bolt withdrawn. Then Gallito pushed in and Pearl followed, stepping wearily across the threshold.
The room, a large one for a mountain cabin, was warm and clean; some logs burned brightly on the hearth; a table set for supper was placed within the radius of that glow and a man was bending over a stove at one side of the fireplace, while two women, who had evidently been seated on the other side of the fire, rose and stood smiling a welcome. The air was full of appetizing odors mingled with the fragrance of coffee.
As they entered the man turned with a quick movement. He was an odd-looking creature, brown as a nut, with glinting, changing, glancing eyes which can see what seem to be immeasurable distances to those possessed of ordinary sight. He had a curiously crooked face, one eye was higher than the other and his nose was not in the middle, but set on one side; its sharp, inquisitive point almost at right angles with the bridge. He had the wide, mobile mouth of the born comedian, and his chin was as much to the right as his nose was to the left. He was extremely light and slender in figure and his movements were like quicksilver. His hair was black and straight and long, especially over the ears, and he had long, slender, delicate hands, which one noticed at once for their uncommon flexibility and deftness.
"Supper ready?" asked Gallito, without other greeting.
"Now," replied the other man. He began lifting the food he had been preparing from the pans, arranging it on various dishes and slipping them upon the table with a rapidity and noiselessness which suggested sleight of hand.
Gallito gave a brief nod and advanced toward the two women, bowing low with Spanish courtesy. A smile, a blending of pleasure and amusement, softened his grim mouth and keen eyes as he shook hands with one, whom he introduced to his daughter as Mrs. Nitschkan. About medium height, she was a powerfully built creature, her open flannel shirt disclosing the great muscles of her neck and chest. Rings of short, curly brown hair covered her round head; and small, twinkling blue eyes shone oddly bright in her deeply tanned face, while her frequent smile displayed small, milk-white teeth. A short, weather-stained skirt showed her miner's boots and a man's coat was thrown over her shoulders. A bold, freebooting Amazon she appeared, standing there in the fire-glow, and one to whom hardihood was a birth-right.
The other woman towered above her and even above Gallito. She was a colossal Venus, with a face pink and white as a may-blossom. Tremulous smiles played about her soft, babyish mouth and a joyous excitement shone in her wide, blue eyes. Upon her head was a small, lop-sided bonnet, from which depended a rusty crêpe veil of which she seemed inordinately conscious, and at the throat of her black gown was a large, pink bow.
"Make you acquainted with Mis' Thomas, Miss Gallito," said Mrs. Nitschkan heartily. "Marthy's one of my oldest friends an' one of my newest converts. She's all right if she could let the boys alone, an' not be always tangled up in some flirtation that her friends has got to sit up nights scheming to get her out of. That pink bow an' that crêpe veil shows she ain't got the right idea of her responsibilities as a widow. So I brought her up to my little cabin, just a quarter of a mile through the trees there, hopin' I'd get her mind turned on more sensible things than men. Gosh a'mighty! She's got a chance to shoot bear here."
"I don't think you got any call to introduce me to the Black Pearl that-a-way, Sadie." Mrs. Thomas's eyes filled with ready tears. "It ain't manners. I wouldn't have come with her, Miss Gallito, but I got to see pretty plain that the gentleman," here she blushed and bridled, "that was courting me was awful anxious to get hold of the money and the cabin that my last husband, in his grave 'most six months now, left me." She wiped the tears from her eyes on the back of her hand, a movement hampered somewhat by the fact that her handkerchief had been fashioned into a bag to hold some chocolate creams and was tied tightly to her thumb.
"That's what you get for cavorting around with a spindle-shanked, knock-kneed, mush-brained jack-rabbit of a man," muttered Mrs. Nitschkan scornfully.
But this thrust was ignored by Mrs. Thomas. The color had risen on her cheeks and there was a light in her eyes. Shyly, yet gleefully, she drew a letter from her pocket. "I got a letter from him to-day with an awful cute motto in it. Look!" She showed it proudly to Pearl, José and Gallito. "It's on cream-tinted paper, with a red and blue border, an'," simpering consciously, "it says in black and gold letters, 'A Little Widow Is a Dangerous Thing.'"
The little group seemed for the moment too stunned to speak. Mrs. Nitschkan was the first to recover herself. "Gosh a'mighty!" she murmured in an awed whisper, and allowed her glance to travel slowly over Mrs. Thomas's well-cushioned, six feet of womanhood, "A—little—widow!" huskily.
Gallito seized the opportunity here to direct Pearl's attention to the bandit, who had been nudging him and whispering to him for the last moment or so.
"Pearl, this is—" he hesitated a moment, "José."
Mrs. Nitschkan looked up at him in quick astonishment. "Gosh a'mighty," she cried, "ain't that kind o' reckless?"
But José nodded a quick, cynical approval and, with a sudden turn, executed a deep bow to the Pearl, one hand on the heart, expressing gallantry, fealty, the humblest admiration; all these sincere and yet permeated with a subtle and volatile mockery.
"Better so, Francisco," he said in a voice which scarcely betrayed an accent, and indeed this was not strange considering that he spoke the patois of many people, being a born linguist. His father had been a Frenchman, a Gascon, but his mother was a daughter of Seville. "But you have not said all." He drew himself up with haughty and self-conscious pride and, with a sweeping gesture of his long fingers, lifted the hair from his ears and stood thus, leering like Pan.
"Crop-eared José!" cried Pearl, falling back a pace or two and looking from her father to the two women in wide-eyed astonishment. "Why, they are still looking for him. Are you not afraid?" She looked from one to the other as if asking the question of all. She was not shocked, nor, to tell the truth, particularly surprised after the first moment of wonder. She had been used to strange company all her life, and ever since her childhood, on her brief visits to her father's cabin, she had been accustomed to his cronies, lean, brown, scarred pirates and picaroons, full of strange Spanish oaths.
"You will not mention this in letters to your mother," ordered Gallito, glooming at her with fierce eyes. "You know her. Caramba! If she should guess, the world would know it."
"Lord, yes!" agreed Pearl uninterestedly. "You needn't be afraid of me," to José, "I don't tell what I know."
"That is true," commended Gallito, motioning her at the same time to the table.
It seems a pity to record that such a supper was set before a woman suffering from a wound of the heart. Women at all times are held to be lacking in that epicurean appreciation of good food which man justly extols; but when a woman's whole being is absorbed in a disappointment in love, nectar and ambrosia are as sawdust to her.
On the outer rim of that circle which knew him but slightly, or merely knew of him, the causes of the charmed life which José bore were a matter of frequent speculation, also continual wonder was expressed that his friends would sometimes take incredible risks in effecting the escape of this rogue after one of his reckless escapades. But José had certain positive qualities, had these gossips but known it, which endeared him to his companions; although among them could never be numbered gratitude, a lively appreciation of benefits received or a tried and true affection.
Certainly a dog-like fidelity was not among José's virtues. He would lift the purse of his best friend or his rescuer from a desperate impasse, provided it were sufficiently heavy. A favor of a nature to put him under obligations for a lifetime he forgot as soon as it was accepted. He caricatured a benefactor to his face, nor ever dreamed of sparing friend or foe his light, pointed jibes which excoriated the surface of the smoothest vanity.
No, the only virtues which could be accredited to José, and these were sufficient, were an unfailing lightness of heart, the facile and fascinating gift of yarn-spinning—for he was a born raconteur, with a varied experience to draw upon—a readiness for high play, at which he lost and won with the same gay and unruffled humor, and an incomparable and heaven-bestowed gift of cookery.
To-night the very sight of the supper set before him softened Gallito's harsh face. Brook trout, freshly caught that afternoon from the rushing mountain stream not far away from the cabin, and smoking hot from the frying pan; an omelette, golden brown and buttercup yellow, of a fluff, a fragrance, with savories hidden beneath its surface, a conserve of fruits, luscious, amber and subtly biting, the coffee of dreams and a bottle of red wine, smooth as honey.
"I hope you don't think that we're the kind of wolves that's always gatherin' round wherever there's a snack of food," murmured Mrs. Thomas softly as she took a seat beside Pearl. "We got our own cabin just a piece up in the woods, but José, he kind of wanted to make a celebration of your coming up."
Pearl did not answer, but slipped languidly out of her cloak, untwisted her heavy veil, removed her hat, José's eyes as well as Mrs. Thomas's following her the while with unmixed admiration, and sat down.
José immediately began to roll cigarettes and smoke them while he ate.
"Well, what is the news?" asked Gallito, as he, at least, began his evening meal with every evidence of appreciation; "good fishing, good hunting, good prospecting, eh, Mrs. Nitschkan?"
The gipsy, for she was one by birth as well as by inclination, nodded and showed her teeth in a satisfied smile. "So good that it looks like we'd be kep' here even longer than I expected when we come." She drew some bits of quartz from her pocket and threw them out on the table before him. "Some specimens I chipped off in my new prospect," she said, her eyes upon him.
"So," he said, examining them with interest, "your luck, Mrs. Nitschkan, as usual. Where—? Excuse me," a dark flush rose on his parchment skin at this breach of mining-camp etiquette which he had almost committed.
For a few moments they talked exclusively of the mining interests of the locality. It is this feverish, inexhaustible topic that is almost exclusively dwelt upon in mining camps, all other topics seeming tame and commonplace beside this fascinating subject, presided over by the golden fairy of fortune and involving her. To-day she tempts and eludes, she tantalizes and mocks and flies her thousands of wooers who follow her to the rocks, seeking her with back-breaking toil and dreaming ever of her by day and by night. Variable and cruel, deaf to all beseeching, she picks out her favorites by some rule of caprice which none but herself understands.
Supper over, Gallito ensconced his two feminine visitors in easy chairs and took one himself, while José, with noiseless deftness, cleared away the remains of food. Pearl had wandered to the window and, drawing the curtain aside, stood gazing out into the featureless, black expanse of the night.
"Quite a few things has happened since I saw you last, Gallito," said Mrs. Nitschkan conversationally, filling a short and stubby black pipe with loose tobacco from the pocket of her coat. "For one, I got converted."
"Ah!" returned Gallito with his unvarying courtesy, although his raised eyebrows showed some perplexity, "to—to—a religion?"
"'Course." Mrs. Nitschkan leaned forward, her arms upon her knees. "This world's the limit, Gallito, and queer things is going to happen whether you're looking for 'em or not. About a year ago Jack and the boys went off on a long prospectin' spell, the girls you know are all married and have homes of their own, an' there was me left free as air with a dandy spell of laziness right in front of me ready to be catched up 'twixt my thumb and forefinger and put in my pipe and smoked, and I hadn't even the spirit to grab it."
"Why didn't you think about getting yourself some new clothes, like any other woman would?" asked José, eyeing her curiously.
"What I got's good enough for me," she returned shortly.
"You should have gave your place a nice cleaning and cooked a little for a change, Sadie," said Mrs. Thomas softly and virtuously.
"Such things look worse'n dying to me," replied the gipsy. "And," turning again to Gallito, "the taste goin' out of my tea and coffee wasn't the worst. It went out of my pipe, too. Gosh a'mighty, Gallito! I'll never forget the night I sat beside my dyin' fire and felt that I didn't even take no interest in winnin' their money from the boys; and then suddenly most like a voice from outside somep'n in me says: 'What's the matter with you, Sadie Nitschkan, is that you're a reapin' the harvest you've sowed, gipsyin' and junketin', fightin' and gamblin' with no thought of the serious side of life?'"
"And what is the serious side of life, Nitschkan?" asked José, sipping delicately his glass of wine as if to taste to the full its ambrosial flavors, like the epicure he was. "I have not yet discovered it."
"You will soon." There was meaning in the gipsy's tone and in the glance she bestowed upon him. "It's doin' good. I tell you boys when I realized that I'd probably have to change myself within and without and be like some of the pious folks I'd seen, it give me a gone feeling in the pit of my stomach. But you can't keep me down, and after I'd saw I was a sinner and repented 'cause I was so bad, I saw that the whole trouble was this, I'd tried everything else, but I hadn't never tried doin' good."
"No, Sadie, you sure hadn't made duty the watch-word of your life," agreed Mrs. Thomas.
Mrs. Nitschkan ignored this. "Now doin' good, for I know you don't know what that means, José, is seein' the right path and makin' other folks walk in it whether they're a mind to or not. Well I cert'ny gave the sinners of Zenith a run for their money."
She smoked a moment or two in silence, sunk in agreeable remembrance. She had been true to her word and, having decided to reform as much of the community as in her estimation needed that trial as by fire, she had plunged into her self-appointed task with lusty enthusiasm. As soon as her conversion and the outlet she had chosen for her superabundant energy were noised abroad, there was an immediate and noticeable change in the entire deportment of the camp. Those long grown careless drew forth their old morals and manners, brushed the moths from them, burnished the rust and wore them with undeniable self-consciousness, but without ostentation.
Upon these lukewarm and conforming souls Mrs. Nitschkan cast a darkling eye. It was the recalcitrant, the defiant, the professing sinner upon whom she concentrated her energies.
"So you see, Gallito," rousing herself from pleasant contemplation of past triumphs, "it wasn't only a chance to hunt and prospect that brought me. I heard from Bob Flick that José was still here and I see a duty before me."
"She could not keep away from me," José rolled his eyes sentimentally. "You see beneath that rough old jacket of her husband's which she wears there beats a heart."
"I got some'p'n else that can beat and that's a fist." She stretched out her arm and drew it back, gazing with pride at her great, swelling muscles.
"But never me, who will tidy your cabin and cook half your meals for you." He smiled ingratiatingly at Mrs. Thomas, who grew deeply pink under his admiring smile. "Why do you not convert Saint Harry?"
"Harry's all right," she said. "You need convertin', he don't. I got an idea that he's been right through the fiery furnace like them Bible boys in their asbestos coats, he's smelted."
"Harry got my telegram?" asked Gallito, speaking in a low tone, after first glancing toward Pearl, "and you have made a room ready for her?"
"Clean as a convent cell," said José, with his upcurling, mordant smile. "The wind has roared through it all day and swept away every trace of tobacco and my thoughts."
"That is well," replied Gallito with a sardonic twist of the mouth, "and where do you sleep to-night?"
"In Saint Harry's cabin."
"So," Gallito nodded as if content. "That will be best."
"Best for both," agreed José, a flicker of mirth on his face. "My constant companionship is good for Harry. It is not well to think you have shown the Devil the door, kicked him down the hill and forgotten him; and that he has taken his beating, learned his lesson and gone forever. It is then that the Devil is dangerous. It is better, Gallito, believe me, to remain on good terms with him, to humor him and to pass the time of day. Humility is a great virtue and you should be willing to learn something even of the Devil, not set yourself up on a high, cold, sharp mountain peak, where you keep his fingers itching from morning to night to throw you off. I have observed these things through the years of my life, and the middle course is ever the safest. Give to the church, observe her laws as a true and obedient son, in so far as possible, and only so far. Let her get her foot on your neck and she will demand such sacrifices!" He lifted his hands and rolled his eyes upward, "but the Devil is more reasonable; treat him civilly, be a good comrade to him and he will let you alone. But Saint Harry does not understand that. Saint Harry on his ice peak, and the Devil straddling around trying to find a foothold so that he can climb up to Harry and seize him with those itching fingers. Ho, ho!" José's laughter rang loud and shrill.
Pearl, hearing it, turned from the window with a disturbed frown and began to walk up and down the far end of the room, and Mrs. Nitschkan frowned ominously. "That's enough of your talk, José," she said peremptorily. "It sounds like blasphemin' to me, talkin' about the Devil that light way. Remember one of the reasons I come here. Gallito, you'd better lay out the cards and let's get down to our game. What's the limit?"
"Does Mrs. Thomas play as high as you?" asked Gallito.
"I don't care much for a tame game," said Mrs. Thomas modestly, with lowered lids. "They're too many long, sad winters in the mountains when gentl—, I mean friends, can't cross the trails to see you, an' you got to fill up your heart with cards and religion and things like that."
José had paused to watch, with a keen appreciation, the grace of Pearl's movements. "Caramba!" he muttered. "How sprang that flower of Spain from such a gnarled old tree as you, Gallito? Dios! But she is salado!"
Gallito frowned a little, which did not in the least disconcert José, and, rising, he moved a small table forward, opened it and then going to a cupboard in the wall drew from it a short, squat bottle, four glasses and a pack of cards. "Your room is just beyond this," he said, turning to Pearl. "José says that you will find everything ready for you. You must be tired. You had better go to bed."
Pearl twitched her shoulders impatiently. "I am not sleepy," she said sullenly. She threw herself in the chair that Gallito had vacated and lay there watching the fire with somber, wild eyes.
José threw another log on the fire and then the two men and two women sat down to their cards. A clock ticked steadily, monotonously, on the mantel-piece, but whether an hour or ten minutes passed while she sat there watching the brilliant, soaring flame of the pine logs Pearl could not have told, when suddenly the stillness of the night was broken by the sound of someone whistling along the road. It seemed a long way off at first, but gradually came nearer and nearer, tuneful and clear as the song of a bobolink.
"Saint Harry, by all the saints or devils!" cried José with a burst of his shrill laughter. "Ah, Francisco, the devil is a shrewd fellow; when he can't manage a job himself, he always gets a woman to help him." His glancing, twinkling eyes sought Pearl, who had barely turned her head as her father rose to open the door for the newcomer, exclaiming with some show of cordiality:
"Ah, Seagreave, come in, come in."
"Thanks," said an agreeable voice. "I got home late and found that José had made preparations to lighten my loneliness. Then I saw the light in your window and thought I would come down. You see I suspected pleasant company."
He advanced into the room and then, seeing Pearl, who had twisted about in her chair and was gazing at him with the first show of interest she had yet exhibited, he paused and looked rather hesitatingly at Gallito.
"We have a guest," said José softly and in Spanish.
"My daughter has returned with me," said Gallito. "Pearl, this is Mr. Seagreave."
"Saint Harry," said José more softly still.
Mr. Seagreave bowed, although one who knew him well might have seen that his astonishment increased rather than abated at the sight of Pearl. As for her, she merely nodded and let her lashes lie the more wearily and indifferently upon her cheek.
"Really, I wouldn't have intruded," said Seagreave in his pleasant English voice. "I had an idea from your telegram, Gallito, that Hughie was coming with you. Sha'n't I go?"
For answer Gallito pushed forward a chair and threw another log upon the fire. "My daughter is tired," he said. "She will soon retire; but when a man has been from home for a fortnight, and in the desert!" he raised his brows expressively, "Pah! He wishes to hear of everything which has happened during his absence and particularly, Mr. Seagreave, do I wish to talk to you about that lower drift. José tells me that you have examined it."
Thus urged, Seagreave sat down. He was tall and slight and fair, so very fair that his age was difficult to guess. His hair, with a silvery sheen on it, swept in a wing across his forehead, and he had a habit of pushing it back from his brow; his eyes were of a vivid blue, peculiarly luminous, and his features, which were regular, showed a fine finish of modeling. His age, as has been said, was a matter of conjecture, but judging from his appearance he might have been anywhere from twenty to forty.
"Don't let me interrupt your game," he said. "It is early yet, and if Miss Gallito isn't too tired, and if she will let me, I will talk to her while you play."
José smiled to himself and picked up the cards. The game went on. Seagreave, receiving no encouragement from Pearl, made no attempt at conversation, until at last, stirred by some impulse of curiosity, she lifted her eyes. It was this question of age she wished to decide. In that first, quick glance of hers she had taken it for granted that he was twenty, but in a second stolen look she had noted certain lines about the mouth and eyes which added years to his blonde youthfulness. Then her quick ear had caught José's "Saint Harry," and to her, who knew many men, those lines about mouth and eyes did not suggest a past of saintship.
Her surreptitious glance encountered that of Seagreave, for he, too, had withdrawn his eyes from the fire for a moment to let his puzzled gaze rest upon her. He had known vaguely that Gallito had a daughter, and he remembered in the same indefinite way that some one had told him that she was an actress, but, even so, he could not reconcile this—his mind sought a simile to express her—this exotic, with Gallito, these two mountain women, a mountain cabin, and an equally unpretentious home in the desert. She lay listlessly in her chair, a long and slender shape in a dull black gown which fell about her in those statuesque folds which all drapery assumed immediately she donned it; beneath it showed her feet in black satin slippers and the gleam of the satin seemed repeated in her blue-black hair. Her cheek was unwontedly pale. A monotone she appeared, half-within and half-without the zone of the firelight; but the individuality of her could not be thus subdued. It found expression in the concentration of light and color focused in the splendid rings which sparkled on the long, brown fingers of both her hands.
Her narrow eyes met his sombrously. On either side it was a glance of curiosity, of scrutiny. She, as usual, made no effort to begin a conversation, and he, searching for a polite commonplace, said presently:
"Have you ever been in Colina before?"
"Often, but not in the last two years," she answered tonelessly, "not since you've been here, I guess. I hate the mountains."
"I have been here nearly two years," he vouchsafed, "and I feel as if I would never go away. But you live in the desert, don't you?"
"Sometimes, that is, when I'm not out on the road. The desert is the place. You can breathe there, you can live there," there was a passionate vibration in her voice, "but these old, cold mountains make you feel all the time as if they were going to fall on you and crush you."
"Do they make you feel that way?" He pulled his chair nearer to her so that his back was turned to the two men, and José, who saw everything, smiled faintly, mordaciously. "How strange!" It was not a conventional expression, he seemed really to find it strange, unbelievably so.
"And you, how do they make you feel?" she asked wearily, a touch of scorn in her glance.
A light seemed to glow over his face. "Ah, I do not know that I can tell you," he said, and she was conscious of some immediate change in him, which she apprehended but could never have defined. It was as if he had withdrawn mentally to incalculable distances.
Pearl did not notice his evasion; she was not interested in his view of the mountains. What she instinctively resented, even in her dulled state, was his impersonal attitude toward herself. She was not used to it from any man. She did not understand it. She wondered, without any particular interest in the matter, but still following her instinctive and customary mode of thought, if he had not noticed that she was beautiful. Was he so stupid that he did not think her so? But there was no hint in his manner or look in his eyes of an intention on his part of playing the inevitable game, even a remembrance of it seemed as lacking as desire. The game of challenge and elusion on her part, of perpetual and ever more ardent advance on his. He was interested, she knew that, but, as she felt with a surge of surprise, not in the way she had always encountered and had learned to expect.
"Isn't it strange," she realized that he was speaking again, "that I haven't been drawn to the desert, because so many have had to turn to it? I have only seen it from traveling across it, and then it repelled me, perhaps it frightened me." He seemed to consider this.
For the moment Pearl forgot the inevitable game. "Frightened you!" she cried. "It is the mountains that frighten me; but the desert is always different. It—" she struggled for expression, "it is always you."
Something in this seemed to strike him. "Perhaps I have that to learn." Again he meditated a few moments, then looked up with a smile. "You must tell me all that you find in the desert and I will tell you all that I find in the mountains. It will be jolly to talk to a woman again." He spoke with a satisfaction thoroughly genuine.
She glanced at him suspiciously. She was uncertain how to meet this frank acceptance of comradeship, free yet from the intrusion of sex. "Maybe," she acquiesced a little doubtfully. Then she drew her brows together. "I don't want to learn anything about the mountains," she cried, all the heaviness and the dumb revolt of her spirit finding a voice. "And I don't want ever to go back to the desert again; and I don't even want to dance," looking at him in a sort of wild wonder as if this were unbelievable, "not even to dance."
He realized that she was suffering from some grief against which she struggled, and which she refused to accept. "You will not feel so always," he said. "It is because you are unhappy now."
There was consolation in his sincerity, in his sympathy, in his entire belief in what he was saying, and it was with difficulty that she repressed an outburst of her sullen sorrow. "Yes," her mouth worked, "I am unhappy, and I won't be, I won't be. I never was before. It is all in here, like a dead weight, a drag, a cold hand clutching me." She pressed both hands to her heart. Then she drew back as if furious at having so far revealed herself.
"That heals." He leaned forward to speak. "I am telling you the truth! That heals and is forgotten. I know that that is so."
"I know who you are," she said suddenly. "I have been trying to think ever since I heard him," she nodded toward José, bent over his cards, "say 'Saint Harry.' I remember now. I have heard Hughie often speak of you. They say that you are good, that if any one is sick you nurse him, and that if any one is broke you help him. They all come to you."
"Yes, 'Saint Harry'!" he laughed. "Oh, it's funny, but let them call me any name they please as long as it amuses them. What difference does it make? I am glad Hughie is coming up, I want some music. He puts the mountains into music for me."
"And for me." She smiled and then sighed bitterly, gazing drearily into the fire, now a bed of glowing embers. Then latent and feminine curiosity stirred in her thoughts and voiced itself. "Why are you here?" she said. "Why does a man like you stay here?"
His elbow rested on the arm of his chair, his chin in his hand, his gaze too upon the fading embers. "I don't know," he said in a low voice, "I had to come."
"Where from?" she still followed her instinct of curiosity.
"From the husks"—he turned his head and smiled at her—"from a far country where I had wasted my substance in riotous living."
She frowned a little. She was not used to this type of man, nor had she met any one who used hyperbole in conversation. At first she fancied that he might be chaffing her, but she was too intelligent to harbor that idea, so convincing was his innate sincerity; but nevertheless, she meant to go cautiously.
Again she questioned him: "From what far country?"
He had fallen to musing again, and it is doubtful if he heard her. He saw before him immense, primeval forests, black, shadowy; vast, sluggish rivers, above which hung a thick and fever-laden air; trees from whose topmost branches swung gorgeous, ephemeral flowers; and then long stretches of yellow beach, where a brazen ocean tumbled and hissed. Then many cities, squalid and splendid, colorful and fantastic as the erection of a dream, and through all these he saw himself ever passing, appearing and reappearing, and ever scattering his substance, not the substance of money alone; that was still left him; but the substance of youth, of early promise, of illusion and hopes.
Pearl waited a long time, it seemed to her, for him to speak. At last she broke the silence. "And then?" she said.