Felipa sat up in bed, and leaning over to the window beside it drew up the shade and looked out. The cold, gray world of breaking day was battling furiously with a storm of rain. The huddling flowers in the garden bent to the ground before the rush of wind from the mountains across the prairie. The windmill sent out raucous cries as it flew madly around, the great dense clouds, black with rain, dawn-edged, charged through the sky, and the shining-leaved cottonwoods bent their branches almost to the earth. The figures of Cairness and a couple of cow-boys, wrapped in rubber coats, passed, fighting their way through the blur,—vague, dark shadows in the vague, dark mist.
The storm passed, with all the suddenness it had come on, and Felipa rose, and dressing herself quickly went out upon the porch. Three drenched kittens were mewing there piteously. She gathered them up in her hands and warmed them against her breast as she stood watching the earth and sky sob themselves to rest. All the petunias in the bed by the steps were full of rain, the crowfoot and madeira vines of the porch were stirring with the dripping water. Many great trees had had their branches snapped off and tossed severalyards away, and part of the windmill had been blown to the top of the stable, some distance off. She wondered if Cairness had been able to get the cut alfalfa covered. Then she took the kittens with her to the house and went into the kitchen, where the Chinese cook already had a fire in the stove. She ordered coffee and toast to be made at once, and leaving the kittens in the woodbox near the fire, went back to the sitting room.
It was a luxurious place. As much for his own artistic satisfaction as for her, Cairness had planned the interior of the house to be a background in keeping with Felipa, a fit setting for her, and she led the life of an Orient queen behind the walls of sun-baked clay. There was a wide couch almost in front of the roaring fire. She sank down in a heap of cushions, and taking up a book that lay open where her husband had put it down the night before, she tried to read by the flickering of the flame light over the pages.
She was drowsy, however, for it was still very early, and she was almost dropping off to sleep when the Chinaman brought the coffee and set it down upon a table near her, with a deference of manner not common to the Celestial when serving the Occidental woman, who, he believes, has lost the right to it directly she shows the inclination to do work herself. But Felipa was a mistress to his taste. As he bowed himself abjectly from her presence, Cairness came in. He had taken off his rubber coat and big hat, and was full of the vigor of life which makes the strong andhealthy-minded so good to look upon at the beginning of a day.
Felipa, from her place on the couch, smiled lazily, with a light which was not all from the fire in her half-closed eyes. She put out her hand, and he took it in both his own and held it against his cold cheek as he dropped down beside her. She laid her head on his shoulder, and for a while neither of them spoke.
Then there came a chuckling scream of baby laughter and a soft reproach, spoken in Spanish, from across the hall. She stood up and poured the coffee, but before she took her own she went out of the room and came back in a moment, carrying her small son high upon her shoulder.
Cairness watched how strong and erect and how sure of every muscle she was, and how well the blond little head looked against the dull blackness of the mother's hair. The child was in no way like Felipa, and it had never taken her place in its father's love. He was fond of it and proud, too; but, had he been put to the test, he would have sacrificed its life for that of its mother, with a sort of fanatical joy.
She put the baby between them, and it sat looking into the fire in the way she herself so often did, until her husband had called her the High Priestess of the Flames. Then she sank down among the cushions again and stirred her coffee indolently, drowsily, steeped in the contentment of perfect well-being. Cairness followed her movements with sharp pleasure.
Later, when the sun was well up in the jewel-blue sky, and the world was all ashine, they began the real routine of the day. And it would have been much like that of any of the other days that had gone before it for two years, had not Cairness come in a little before the noon hour, bringing with him a guest. It was an Englishman, whom he presented to Felipa as a friend of his youth, and named Forbes.
He did not see that there was just the faintest shadow of pausing upon Forbes's part, just the quickest passing hesitation and narrowing of the eyes with Felipa. She came forward with unquestioning welcome, accustomed to take it as a matter of course that any traveller, minded to stop for a time, should go into the first ranch house at hand.
He told her, directly, that he was passing through Arizona to hunt and to look to certain mining interests he held there. And he stayed, talking with her and her husband about the country and the towns and posts he had visited, until long after luncheon. Then Cairness, having to ride to the salt lick at the other end of the ranch, up in the Huachuca foot-hills, suggested that Forbes go with him.
It was plain, even to Felipa, how thoroughly he enjoyed being with one who could talk of the past and of the present, from his own point of view. His Coventry had been almost complete since the day that the entire army, impersonated in Crook, had turned disapproving eyes upon him once, and had then looked away from him for good and all. It had been too bittera humiliation for him ever to subject himself to the chance of it again.
The better class of citizens did not roam over the country much, and no officers had stopped at his ranch in almost two years, though they had often passed by. And he knew well enough that they would have let their canteens go unfilled, and their horses without fodder, for a long time, rather than have accepted water from his wells or alfalfa from his land. He could understand their feeling, too,—that was the worst of it; but though his love and his loyalty toward Felipa never for one moment wavered, he was learning surely day by day that a woman, be she never so much beloved, cannot make up to a man for long for the companionship of his own kind; and, least of all,—he was forced to admit it in the depths of his consciousness now,—one whose interests were circumscribed.
They had lived an idyl for two years apast, and he begrudged nothing; yet now that the splendor was fading, as he knew that it was, the future was a little dreary before them both, before him the more, for he meant that, cost him what it might, Felipa should never know that the glamour was going for himself. It would be the easier that she was not subtle of perception, not quick to grasp the unexpressed. As for him, he had wondered from the first what price the gods would put upon the unflawed jewel of their happiness, and had said in himself that none could be too high.
Forbes and her husband having gone away, Felipa lay in the hammock upon the porch and looked up into the vines. She thought hard, and remembered many things as she swayed to and fro. She remembered that one return to Nature long ago of which Landor had not known.
There had been an afternoon in Washington when, on her road to some reception of a half-official kind, she had crossed the opening of an alleyway and had come upon three boys who were torturing a small, blind kitten; and almost without knowing what she did, because her maternal grandfather had done to the children of his enemies as the young civilized savages were doing to the kitten there, she stopped and watched them, not enjoying the sight perhaps, but not recoiling from it either. So intent had she been that she had not heard footsteps crossing the street toward her, and had not known that some one stopped beside her with an exclamation of wrath and dismay. She had turned suddenly and looked up, the pupils of her eyes contracted curiously as they had been when she had watched the tarantula-vinagrone fight years before.
The man beside her was an attaché of the British legation, who had been one of her greatest admirers to that time, but thereafter he sought her out no more. He had driven the boys off, and taking the kitten, which mewed piteously all the way, had gone with her to her destination and left her.
She had been sufficiently ashamed of herself thereafter, and totally unable to understand her own evilimpulse. As she lay swinging in the hammock, she remembered this and many other things connected with that abhorred period of compulsory civilization and of success. The hot, close, dead, sweet smell of the petunias, wilting in the August sun, and the surface-baked earth came up to her. It made her vaguely heartsick and depressed. The mood was unusual with her. She wished intensely that her husband would come back.
After a time she roused herself and went into the house, and directly she came back with the baby in her arms. The younger of the two children that she had taken under her care at Stanton, the little girl, followed after her.
It was a long way to the salt lick, and the chances were that the two men would be gone the whole afternoon. The day was very hot, and she had put on a long, white wrapper, letting her heavy hair fall down over her shoulders, as she did upon every excuse now, and always when her husband was out of the way. There was a sunbonnet hanging across the porch railing. She put it on her head and went down the steps, carrying the child.
Back of her, a score or more of miles away, were the iron-gray mountains; beyond those, others of blue; and still beyond, others of yet fainter blue, melting into the sky and the massed white clouds upon the horizon edge. But in front of her the flat stretched away and away, a waste of white-patched soil and glaring sand flecked with scrubs. The pungency of greasewood and sagewas thick in the air, which seemed to reverberate with heat. A crow was flying above in the blue; its shadow darted over the ground, now here, now far off.
Half a mile beyond, within the same barbed-wire enclosure as the home buildings and corrals, was a spring-house surrounded by cottonwoods, just then the only patch of vivid green on the clay-colored waste. There were benches under the cottonwoods, and the ground was cool, and thither Felipa took her way, in no wise oppressed by the heat. Her step was as firm and as quick as it had been the day she had come so noiselessly along the parade, across the path of the private who was going to the barracks. It was as quiet, too, for she had on a pair of old red satin slippers, badly run down at the heel.
Cairness started for the salt lick, then changed his mind and his destination, and merely rode with Forbes around the parts of the ranch which were under more or less cultivation, and to one of the water troughs beneath a knot of live oaks in the direction of the foot-hills. So they returned to the home place earlier than they otherwise would have done, and that, too, by way of the spring-house.
They caught sight of Felipa, and both drew rein simultaneously. She was leaning against a post of the wire fence. The baby was carried on her hip, tucked under her arm, the sunbonnet was hanging by the strings around her neck, and her head, with its straight loose hair, was uncovered. The little girl stood beside her, clutching the white wrapper which had trailed inthe spring-house acequia, and from under which a muddy red slipper showed. That she was imposing still, said much for the quality of her beauty. She did not hear the tramp of the two horses, sharp as her ears were, for she was too intent upon watching a fight between two steers.
One had gone mad with loco-weed, and they gored each other's sides until the blood ran, while only a low, moaning bellow came from their dried throats. A cloud of fine dust, that threw back the sun in glitters, hung over them, and a flock of crows, circling above in the steel-blue sky, waited.
"Felipa!" shouted Cairness. He was angry—almost as angry as Forbes had been when he had come upon Mrs. Landor watching the boys and the kitten in the alleyway.
She heard, and again her eyes met Forbes's. There was a flash of comprehension in them. She knew what he was thinking very well. But she left the fence, and, pushing the sunbonnet over her head, joined them, not in the least put out, and they dismounted and walked beside her, back to the house.
Cairness was taciturn. It was some moments before he could control his annoyance, by the main strength of his sense of justice, by telling himself once again that he had no right to blame Felipa for the manifestations of that nature he had known her to possess from the first. It was not she who was changing.
Forbes explained their early return, and spoke of the ranch. "It might be a garden, this territory, ifonly it had water enough," he said; "it has a future, possibly, but its present is just a little dismal, I think. Are you greatly attached to the life here, Mrs. Cairness?" He was studying her, and she knew it, though his glance swept the outlook comprehensively, and she was watching the mail-carrier riding toward them along the road. It was the brother of the little girl who followed along behind them, and who ran off now to meet him, calling and waving her hand.
"Yes," she said, "I am very much attached to it. I was born to it."
"Do you care for it so much that you would not be happy in any other?"
"That would depend," she answered with her enigmatical, slow smile; "I could be happy almost anywhere with Mr. Cairness."
"Of course," he laughed tolerantly, "I dare say any wilderness were paradise with him."
Felipa smiled again. "I might be happy," she went on, "but I probably should not live very long. I have Indian blood in my veins; and we die easily in a too much civilization."
That evening they sat talking together long after the late dinner. But a little before midnight Felipa left them upon the porch, smoking and still going over the past. They had so much to say of matters that she in no way understood. The world they spoke of and its language were quite foreign to her. She knew that her husband was where she could never follow him, and she felt the first utter dreariness of jealousy—thejealousy of the intellectual, so much more unendurable than that of the material.
With the things of the flesh there can be the vindictive hope, the certainty indeed, that they will lose their charm with time, that the gold will tarnish and the gray come above the green, but a thought is dearer for every year that it is held, and its beauty does not fade away. The things of the flesh we may even mar ourselves, if the rage overpowers us, but those of the intellect are not to be reached or destroyed; and Felipa felt it as she turned from them and went into the house.
There was a big moon, already on the wane, floating very high in the heavens, and the plain was a silvery sheen.
"This is all very beautiful," said Forbes, after a silence.
Cairness did not see that it called for a reply, and he made none.
"But it is doing Mrs. Cairness an injustice, if you don't mind my saying so."
"What do you mean?" asked Cairness, rather more than a trifle coldly. He had all but forgotten the matter of that afternoon. Felipa had redeemed herself through the evening, so that he had reason to be proud of her.
"I used to know Mrs. Cairness in Washington," Forbes went on, undisturbed; "she has probably told you so."
Cairness was surprised almost into showing his surprise. Felipa had said nothing of it to him. And heknew well enough that she never forgot a face. He felt that he was in a false position, but he answered "Yes?" non-committally.
"Yes," answered Forbes, "she was very much admired." He looked a little unhappy. But his mind was evidently made up, and he went on doggedly: "Look here, Morely, old chap, I am going to tell you what I think, and you may do as you jolly well please about it afterward—kick me off the ranch, if you like. But I can see these things with a clearer eye than yours, because I am not in love, and you are, dreadfully so, you know, not to say infatuated. I came near to being once upon a time, and with your wife, too. I thought her the most beautiful woman I had ever known, and I do yet. I thought, too, that she was a good deal unhappier with Landor than she herself realized; in which I was perfectly right. It's plainer than ever, by contrast. Of course I understand that she is part Indian, though I've only known it recently. And it's because I've seen a good deal of your Apaches of late that I appreciate the injustice you are doing her and Cairness Junior, keeping them here. She is far and away too good for all this," he swept the scene comprehensively with his pipe. "She'd be a sensation, even in London. Do you see what I mean, or are you too vexed to see anything?"
Cairness did not answer at once. He pushed the tobacco down in his brier and sat looking into the bowl. "No," he said at last, "I'm not too vexed. The fact is, I have seen what you mean for a long time. But whatwould you suggest by way of remedy, if I may ask?" They were both talking too low for their voices to reach Felipa through the open window of her bedroom.
"That you take them to civilization—the missus and the kid. It's the only salvation for all three of you—for you as well as them."
"You heard what Mrs. Cairness said this afternoon. She was very ill in school when she was a young girl, and still more so in Washington afterward." He shook his head. "No, Forbes, you may think you know something about the Apache, but you don't know him as I do, who have been with him for years. I've seen too much of the melting away of half and quarter breeds. They die without the shadow of an excuse, in civilization."
But Forbes persisted, carried away by his idea and the determination to make events fit in with it. "She was ill in Washington because she wasn't happy. She'd be happy anywhere with you; she said so this afternoon, you remember."
"She also said that it would kill her."
Forbes went on without noticing the interruption. "You are a great influence in her life, but you aren't the only one. Her surroundings act powerfully upon her. When I knew her before, she was like any other beautiful woman—"
"I am far from being sure that that is entirely to be desired, very far," said Cairness, with conviction. He had never ceased to feel a certain annoyance atthe memory of that year and a half of Felipa's life in which he had had no part.
Forbes shrugged his shoulders. "You'll pardon me if I say that here she is a luxurious semi-barbarian." It was on his tongue's tip to add, "and this afternoon, by the spring-house, she was nearly an Apache," but he checked it. "It's very picturesque and poetical and all that,—from the romantic point of view it's perfect,—but it isn't feasible. You can't live on honeycomb for more than a month or twain. I can't imagine a greater misfortune than for you two to grow contented here, and that's what you'll do. It will be a criminal waste of good material."
Cairness knew that it was true, too true to refute.
"I am speaking about Mrs. Cairness," Forbes went on earnestly, "because she is more of an argument for you than the child is, which is un-English too, isn't it? But the child is a fine boy, nevertheless, and there will be other children probably. I don't need to paint their future to you, if you let them grow up here. You owe it to them and to your wife and to yourself—to society for that matter—not to retrograde. Oh! I say, I'm out and out lecturing on sociology. You're good-tempered to put up with it, but I mean well—like most meddlers."
"I have the ranch; how could I get away?" Cairness opposed.
But the argument was weak. Forbes paid small heed to it. "You've a great deal besides. Every one in the country knows your mines have made you arich man. And you are better than that. You are a talented man, though you've frittered away your abilities too long to amount to anything much, now. You ought to get as far off from this kind of thing as you can."
He did not even hint that he knew of the isolation of their lives, but Cairness was fully aware that he must, and that it was what he meant now. "You ought to go to another country. Not back to Australia, either; it is too much this sort, but somewhere where the very air is civilizing, where it's in the atmosphere and you can't get away from it. I'll tell you what you do." He stood up and knocked the ashes from his pipe against the porch rail. "You've plenty of friends at home. Sell the ranch, or keep it to come back to once in a way if you like. I'm going back in the autumn, in October. You come with me, you and Mrs. Cairness and the boy."
Cairness clasped his hands about one knee and bent back, looking up at the stars,—and far beyond them into the infinity of that Cause of which they and he and all the perplexing problems were but the mere effects. "You mustn't think I haven't thought it over, time and again," he said, after a while. "It's more vital to me than to you; but my way isn't clear. I loved Mrs. Cairness for more than ten years before I could marry her. I should lose her in less than that, I am absolutely certain, if I did as you suggest. She is not so strong a woman as you might suppose. This dry air, this climate, are necessary to her." He hesitated alittle, rather loath to speak of his sentiments, and yet glad of the chance to put his arguments in words, for his own greater satisfaction. "You call it picturesque and poetical and all that," he said, "but you only half mean it after all. It is picturesque. It has been absolutely satisfactory. I'm not given to talking about this kind of thing, you know; but most men who have been married two years couldn't say truthfully that they have nothing to regret; that if they had had to buy that time with eternity of damnation and the lake of fire, it would not have come too dear. And I have had no price to pay—" he stopped short, the ring of conviction cut off, as the sound of a bell is when a hand is laid upon it. The hand was that of a fact, of the fact that had confronted him in the Cañon de los Embudos, and that very day by the cottonwoods of the spring-house.
"Mrs. Cairness would go where I wished gladly," he added, more evenly; "but if it were to a life very different from this, it would end in death—and I should be the cause of it. There it is." He too rose, impatiently.
"Think it over, in any case," urged Forbes; "I am going in, good night."
"I have thought it over," said Cairness; "good night."
Cairness sat for a long time, smoking and thinking. Then Felipa's voice called to him and he went in to her. She was by the window in a flood of moonlight, herself all in flowing white, with the mantle of black hair upon her shoulders.
He put his arm about her and she laid her head against his breast. "I am jealous of him," she said, without any manner of preface.
He made no pretence of not understanding. "You have no need to be, dear," he said simply.
"He gives you what I can't give," she said.
"You give me what no one else could give—the best things in life."
"Better than the—other things?" she asked, and he answered, unhesitating, "Yes."
There was another silence, and this time he broke it.
"Why did you not tell me you had known Forbes, Felipa?" If it had not been that she was commonly and often unaccountably reticent, there might have been some suspicion in the question. But there was only a slight annoyance. Nor was there hesitation in her reply.
"It brought back too much that was unpleasant for me. I did not want to talk about it. He saw that I did not, too, and I can't understand why he should have spoken of it. I should have told you after he had gone." She was not disconcerted in the slightest, only a little vindictive toward Forbes, and he thought it would hardly be worth his while to point out the curious position her silence put him in.
He gathered his courage for what he was going to say next, with a feeling almost of guilt. "Forbes says that I am doing you an injustice, keeping you here; that it is no life for you."
"It is the only one I can live," she said indifferentlyenough, stating it as an accepted, incontrovertible fact, "and it's the one you like best."
He had told her that many times. It had been true; perhaps it was true still.
"He does not understand," she continued; "he was always a society man, forever at receptions and dances and teas. He doesn't see how we can make up to each other for all the world."
She moved away from him and out of the ray of moonlight, into the shadow of the other side of the window, and spoke thoughtfully, with more depth to her voice than usual. "So few people have been as happy as we have. If we went hunting for more happiness somewhere else, we should be throwing away the gifts of the gods, I think."
Cairness looked over at her in some surprise, but her face was in the shadow. He wondered that she had picked up the phrase. It was a common one with him, a sort of catchword he had the habit of using. But she was not given to philosophy. It was oddly in line with his own previous train of thought.
He laughed, a little falsely, and turned back into the room.
"The gods sell their gifts," he said.
Forbes left the ranch after breakfast the next day, and Cairness went with him to Tombstone. He had business there, connected with one of his mines.
Felipa spent the day, for the most part, in riding about the ranch and in anticipating the night. Her husband had promised to be back soon after moonrise. When it had begun to turn dark, she dressed herself all in white and went out to swing in the hammock until it should be time for her lonely dinner.
Before long she heard a horse coming at a gallop up the road, to the front of the house. She put out her hand and pushed aside the vines, but could see little until the rider, dismounting and dropping his reins to hang on the ground, ran up the steps. It was the mail carrier, the young hero of the Indian massacre. Felipa saw in a moment that he was excited. She thought of her husband at once, and sat up in the hammock.
"Well?" she said peremptorily.
"It's—" the boy looked around nervously. "If you'd come into the house—" he ventured.
She went into the bedroom, half dragging him by the shoulder, and shut the door. "Now!" she said, "make haste."
"It's Mr. Cairness, ma'am," he whispered.
"Is he hurt?" she shook him sharply.
The boy explained that it was not that, and she let him go, in relief.
"But he is goin' to be. That's what I come so quick to tell you." He stopped again.
"Will you make haste?" cried Felipa, out of patience.
"He's coming back from Tombstone with some money, ain't he?"
Felipa nodded. "A very little," she said.
"Well, they think it's a lot."
"Who?"
"The fellers that's after him. They're goin' to hold him up fifteen miles out, down there by where the Huachuca road crosses. He's alone, ain't he?"
"Yes," said Felipa.
"How do you know this?"
"Old Manuel he told me. You don't know him. It's an old Greaser, friend of mine. He don't want no one to tell he told, they'd get after him. But it's so, all right. There's three of them."
A stable man passed the window. Felipa called to him. "Bring me my horse, quick, and mount four men! Don't take five minutes and be well armed," she ordered in a low voice. Hers was the twofold decision of character and of training that may not be disregarded. The man started on a run.
"What you goin' to do?" the boy asked. He was round-eyed with dismay and astonishment.
Felipa did not answer. She broke her revolver and looked into the chambers. Two of them were empty,and she took some cartridges from a desk drawer and slipped them in. The holster was attached to her saddle, and she rarely rode without it.
"You ain't goin' to try to stop him?" the boy said stupidly. "He was goin' to leave Tombstone at sundown. He'll be to the place before you ken ketch him, sure."
"We'll see," she answered shortly; "it is where the Huachuca road crosses, you are certain?"
He nodded forcibly. "Where all them mesquites is to one side, and the arroyo to the other. They'll be behind the mesquite. But you ain't goin' to head him off," he added, "there ain't even a short cut. The road's the shortest."
The stableman came on a run, leading her horse, and she fairly leaped down the steps, and slipping the pistol into the holster mounted with a spring. "All of you follow me," she said; "they are going to hold up Mr. Cairness."
On the instant she put her horse to a run and tore off through the gate toward the open country. It was dark, but by the stars she could see the road and its low bushes and big stones that danced by as her horse, with its belly to the ground, sped on. She strained her ears and caught the sound of hoofs. The men were following her, the gleam of her white dress guiding them. She knew they could not catch her. The horse she rode was a thoroughbred, the fastest on the ranch; not even Cairness's own could match it. It stretched out its long black neck and went evenly ahead, almost withoutmotion, rising over a dog hole now and then, coming down again, and going on, unslacking. She felt the bit steadily and pressed her knee against the hunting horn for purchase, her toe barely touching the stirrup, that she might be the freer in a fall.
If it went like this, she thought, she might get to the cross-road first, and beyond. The four men would not matter much then, if she could but stop her husband. Why had he started back alone—and carrying money too? It was foolhardy. But then there was so little money, she knew, that he had probably not thought of it as booty. She turned her uncovered head and listened. Her hair had fallen loose and was streaming out in the wind. She could not hear the others now. They must be well behind.
There was a faint, white light above the distant mountains in the east. The moon was about to rise. In a few moments more it came drifting up, and the plain was all alight. Far away on the edge was a vague, half-luminous haze, and nearer the shadows of the bushes fell sharp and black. A mile ahead, perhaps, along the road, she could make out the dark blot of the mesquite clump. Behind, as she looked again, she could just see four figures following.
It occurred to her now for the first time that there was danger for herself, so far in front, so entirely alone. The chances for passing the mesquites were not very good. If the men were already there, and that might be counted upon, they would not let her pass if they could help it. It occasioned her but one fear—that shecould not stop her husband. If she were to turn from the road out into the open, she would lose time, even if the horse did not fall, and time was not to be lost.
The mesquites were very near. She bent down over the horse's neck and spoke to him. His stride lengthened out yet more. She drew the little revolver, and cocked it, still bending low. If they were to fire at her, the white gown would make a good mark; but she would show as little of it as might be, and she would not waste time answering shots, if it could be helped.
The mesquites were directly ahead. A horseman came out from behind them and placed himself across the road. There was a sheen of moonlight on a revolver barrel and a shouted "Halt there!"
He was in front of her, not a hundred feet away; to the left were the mesquites, to the right the ragged arroyo. There could be no turning aside. She threw up her own revolver, and fired, not at the man, but at the head of his horse. It reared and fell, and a moment after her own rose in the air, touched the ground beyond, and went on. It had leapt the fallen one and his rider, and was leaving them behind.
The man on the ground twisted his body around on his crushed leg, pinned under the pony, aimed deliberately at the white figure, and fired. Felipa's firm hold upon her revolver turned to a clutch, and her mouth fell open in a sharp gasp. But very deliberately she put the revolver into its holster, and then she laid her hand against her side. At once the palm was warm with blood.
She drew her horse down to a gallop, and the jar of the changed gait made her moan. There was no haste now. Her own men had come upon the desperadoes and there was a quick volley. And ahead, riding fast toward her from the top of a little rise, was a man on a white horse—her husband, she knew.
She gave a dry little sob of unutterable glad relief and tried to raise her voice and call to him, the call they used for one another when they rode about the ranch. But the sound was only a weak, low wail.
The horse came down to a walk. She had lost all control of the reins now, and clung to the pommel with both hands, swaying from side to side. She could hear galloping hoofs, behind and in front—or was it only the blood, the icy cold blood, pounding in her ears?
The horse stopped, and she reeled blindly in her seat into a pair of strong arms that caught her and drew her down. A voice was saying words she could not hear, but she knew the voice so well. And she smiled and dropped her head down upon her husband's shoulder. "Just—just in time," she whispered very low.
"In time, Felipa? In time for what, dear?" but there was no answer.
He turned her face up to the moonlight, and the head fell heavily back with the weight of hair. The half-closed eyes looked unseeing up to him, and the quiet lips smiled still.
"Felipa!" he cried, "Felipa!"
But only a coyote barked from a knoll near by.
THE LIFE AND DEATH OFRICHARD YEA AND NAY
By MAURICE HEWLETT
Author of "The Forest Lovers," "Little Novels of Italy," etc.
Cloth. 12mo. $1.50
"The hero of Mr. Hewlett's latest novel is Richard Cœur de Lion, whose character is peculiarly suited to the author's style. It is on a much wider plan than 'The Forest Lovers,' and while not historical in the sense of attempting to follow events with utmost exactness, it will be found to give an accurate portrayal of the life of the day, such as might well be expected from the author's previous work. There is a varied and brilliant background, the scene shifting from France to England, and also to Palestine. In a picturesque way, and a way that compels the sympathies of his readers, Mr. Hewlett reads into the heart of King Richard Cœur de Lion, showing how he was torn by two natures and how the title 'Yea and Nay' was peculiarly significant of his character."—Boston Herald.
"The tale by itself is marvellously told; full of luminous poetry; intensely human in its passion; its style, forceful and picturesque; its background, a picture of beauty and mysterious loveliness; the whole, radiant with the very spirit of romanticism as lofty in tone and as serious in purpose as an epic poem. It is a book that stands head and shoulders above the common herd of novels—the work of a master hand."—Indianapolis News.
"Mr. Hewlett has done one of the most notable things in recent literature, a thing to talk about with abated breath, as a bit of master-craftsmanship touched by the splendid dignity of real creation."—The Interior.
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66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
WHO GOES THERE?
The Story of a Spy in the Civil War
By B. K. BENSON
Cloth. 12mo. $1.50
"Beyond question the best story of the Civil War that has appeared of recent years.... Veterans who took part in the campaigns of the Army of the Potomac will follow every page with absorbed interest ... so detailed and seemingly so accurate are the descriptions of battlefields and of the positions occupied by the two armies at different times. The book deserves to be put among the works of history dealing with the Civil War, rather than among the works of fiction, so great is the preponderance of fact. It is due to the author's power for graphic presentation of detail, and his keen regard for the fears and emotions of his hero, that his book contains much of the interest of a novel while containing more historical truth than most historical fictions."—The Springfield Republican.
"Unquestionably this production ranks with the very best stories that have been written about the great rebellion.... No veteran of the war could read of the gallant work done so systematically, yet modestly, by the almost unknown soldier, Jones Berwick, and add anything to the charm of the tale."—Evening Post, Chicago.
THE HOSTS OF THE LORD
By FLORA ANNIE STEEL
Author of "On the Face of the Waters," "Voices in the Night," etc.
Cloth. 12mo. $1.50
"'The Hosts of the Lord' is a very dramatic and absorbing story; once embarked on its broad current, one is carried swiftly to the final catastrophe.... The novel is not only dramatic in the sense of presenting a well-defined plot, relating the actors to it and carrying the narrative on to a tragic climax; it is also full of atmospheric effects; the languor, the heat, the passion of nature in the East are in it."—Hamilton W. Mabie.
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66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
IN THE PALACE OF THE KING
A Love Story of Old Madrid
By F. MARION CRAWFORD
Author of "Via Crucis," "Saracinesca," etc.
Illustrated byFred Roe
Cloth. 12mo. $1.50
"Marion Crawford's latest story, 'In the Palace of the King,' is quite up to the level of his best works for cleverness, grace of style, and sustained interest. It is, besides, to some extent a historical story, the scene being the royal palace at Madrid, and the author drawing the characters of Philip II. and Don John of Austria with an attempt, in a broad, impressionist way, at historic faithfulness. His reproduction of the life at the Spanish court is as brilliant and picturesque as any of his Italian scenes, and in minute study of detail is, in a real and valuable sense, true history."—The Advance.
"Mr. Crawford has taken a love story of vital interest and has related the web of facts simply, swiftly, and with moderation ... a story as brilliant as it is romantic in its setting. Here his genius for story telling is seen at its best."—Boston Herald.
"For sustained intensity and graphic description Marion Crawford's new novel is inapproachable in the field of recent fiction."—Times Union, Albany.
"Don John of Austria's secret marriage with the daughter of one of King Philip's officers is the culminating point of this story.... An assassination, a near approach to a palace revolution, a great scandal, and some very pretty love-making, besides much planning and plotting, take place."—Boston Transcript.
"Mr. Crawford wastes no time in trying to re-create history, but puts his reader into the midst of those bygone scenes and makes him live in them.... In scenes of stirring dramatic intensity.... It all seems intensely real so long as one is under the novelist's spell."—Chicago Tribune.
"No man lives who can endow a love tale with a rarer charm than Crawford."—San Francisco Evening Bulletin.
"No book of the season has been more eagerly anticipated, and none has given more complete satisfaction ... a drama of marvellous power and exceptional brilliancy, forceful and striking ... holding the reader's interest spell-bound from the first page of the story to the last, reached all too soon."—The Augusta Herald.
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66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
THE REIGN OF LAW
A Tale of the Kentucky Hempfields
By JAMES LANE ALLEN
Author of "The Choir Invisible," "A Kentucky Cardinal," etc.
Illustrated byJ. C. EarlandHarry Fenn
Cloth. 12 mo. $1.50
"The whole book is a brilliant defence of Evolution, a scholarly statement of the case. Never before has that great science been so presented; never before has there been such a passionate yet thrilling appeal."—Courier Journal.
"This is a tremendous subject to put into a novel; but the effort is so daring, and the treatment so frank and masterly on its scientific side, that the book is certain to command a wide hearing, perhaps to provoke wide controversy."—Tribune, Chicago.
"'When a man has heard the great things calling to him, how they call, and call, day and night, day and night!' This is really the foundation idea, the golden text, of Mr. James Lane Allen's new and remarkable novel."—Evening Transcript, Boston.
"In all the characteristics that give Mr. Allen's novels such distinction and charm 'The Reign of Law' is perhaps supreme ... but it is pre-eminently the study of a soul ... religion is here the dominant note."—The New York Times' Saturday Review.
"In David there is presented one of the noblest types of our fiction; the incarnation of brilliant mentality and splendid manhood.... No portrait in contemporary literature is more symbolic of truth and honor."—The Times, Louisville.
"Mr. Allen has a style as original and almost as perfectly finished as Hawthorne's, and he has also Hawthorne's fondness for spiritual suggestion that makes all his stories rich in the qualities that are lacking in so many novels of the period.... If read in the right way, it cannot fail to add to one's spiritual possessions."—San Francisco Chronicle.
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66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK