Men who were next door neighbors, or friends of long standing, passed each other with scowls or averted faces, if they were members of the opposing parties. Mrs. John Daniels was planning to give a swell breakfast to a dozen chosen friends early the next week, the first appearance of that form of entertainment in Las Plumas society, and she was delightedly pluming herself over the talk the function would be sure to create and the envious admiration her friends would feel because she had introduced something new. She had talked the matter over with her dearest friend, Mrs. Judge Harlin, whom she had sworn to secrecy, and she was on her way to the post-office to mail her invitations when she saw that the threatened storm was breaking. Her glance swept up Main street on one side and down on the other, and she turned about and hurried home to substitute in her list of guests for those whose sympathies were Democratic, others whose masculine affiliations were Republican.
Hurried messages were sent out to mines and cattle ranches, and in the afternoon fighting men of both parties began to come in from the country. A procession of horsemen poured into the town,bronzed and grim-faced men, each with a roll of blankets behind him, a revolver at his side, a rifle swung to his saddle, or a shot-gun across its pommel. They loped about the town, sometimes surrounding the court-house, angrily discussing whether or not the clerk of the court was probably hiding the official order, and sometimes lining the two sides of Main street, as if they were two opposing companies of cavalry ready to join battle. Among the Republican forces Judge Harlin saw a red-whiskered Mexican who, he learned, was Antone Colorow. The man’s broken wrists had healed, but they had lost all their suppleness, and he could never throw the lariat again. He could shoot as well as ever though, and not a day had passed since that morning at the round-up when he had not sworn to himself that Emerson Mead should die by his hand. He hated Mead with all the vengefulness and fierceness of his race. His mind held but one idea, to work upon the man who had ruined his occupation the crudest possible revenge, in whatever way he could compass it. He had allied himself with the Republican forces only because they were opposed to his enemy, and he hoped that in the impending clash he would find opportunity to carry out his purpose.
On that same Saturday Marguerite Delarue received a letter from Albert Wellesly saying he would be in Las Plumas the following Tuesday, when he hoped he would hear from her own lips the answer for which he had been waiting. She was no nearer a decision than she had been weeks before, and in her perplexity she at last decided that she must ask her father’s advice. But he was so absorbed in the factional feud that she could scarcely catch sight of him. In the late afternoon of Sunday she took little Paul and walked to the mesa east of the town, toward the Hermosa mountains. For the hundredth time she debated the matter, for the hundredth time she told herself that he loved her and that she loved him, that it would please her father, and that there was no reason why she should not marry him. And for the hundredth time her misgivings held her back and would not let her say conclusively that she would be Wellesly’s wife. Then she would think that her hesitancy was because she really preferred not to marry any one, and that she would always feel the same doubts.
She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she did not notice the unusual abstraction of thechild. With one chubby fist grasping her forefinger and the other trailing, head downward, a big yellow chrysanthemum, he trudged silently by her side, his red fez making a spot of bright color against her white dress. He was wondering why he had no mamma. Many times he had talked the matter over with Marguerite, but she had never been able to explain it to his entire satisfaction. He accepted her statements when she made them, but as they did not seem to him to justify the fact, she had to make them all over again the next time he thought of the subject. That day he had visited a little playmate who had both a big sister and a mamma, and as he walked across the mesa with Marguerite his small brain was busy with the problem and his childish heart was full of longing. He lifted his serious, puzzled face, with its big, blue, childishly earnest eyes to his sister, who was as absorbed in her problem as was he in his.
“Say, Daisy, why haven’t I got a mamma, just like Janey?”
“Darling, our mamma, yours and mine, has gone to Heaven.”
“What did she go there for?”
“Because God wanted her to go there and live with Him.”
“Did God take her to Heaven?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Well, it was awful mean for Him to do that.”
“Oh, my darling! My little Bye-Bye mustn’tsay such things! Everything God does is right. Poor mamma was so ill she could not stay with us any longer, and God took her to Heaven to make her well.”
“Is she ill in Heaven?”
“No, dearie. She is well and happy in Heaven, and so is every one who goes there.”
“When I go to Heaven shall I see my mamma?”
“Yes, dear.”
The child was silent for a few moments and Marguerite turned again to her own thoughts. She scarcely heard him when he spoke again:
“Heaven is up in the sky, ain’t it, Daisy?”
His eyes were caught by the sunset glow on the Hermosa mountains and he did not press her for confirmation of his idea. The swelling flanks and the towers and pinnacles and castellated crags of the rugged Hermosa range were glowing and flaming with the tenderest, deepest pink, as though the living granite had been dyed in the blood of crimson roses. The eastern sky, vivid with seashell tints, hovered so low that the topmost crags seemed to support its glowing colors. It was no wonder that the child’s mind, already awed and made receptive by his thoughts of Heaven, was at once filled with the idea that its gates had been opened before him. He dropped his sister’s finger and went forward a few steps, his eager eyes fixed on the glory that flamed in the east, and his heart beating wildly with the thought that if he ran on a little way hecould go in and see his mother. Of course, she would see him coming and she would run out to meet him and take him in her arms, just as Marguerite did when he came home from Janey’s. Filled with the sudden, imperious impulse, he ran down the hill on which they were standing, across the dry, sandy bed of a watercourse, and up the hill on the other side. The miracle of beauty which dazzled him was of almost daily occurrence, but, baby that he was, he had never noticed it before.
Marguerite took Wellesly’s letter from her pocket when Paul dropped her hand, and, turning to get the sunset light on the page, read it over and over. She knew Paul had run on ahead, but thought he was playing in the arroyo. She folded the letter slowly and put it in her pocket again and watched for a few moments the glowing banks of color that filled the western sky. Then she looked down the little hill and along the arroyo, calling, “Come, Paul! We must go home.” But the sturdy little figure was nowhere in sight. At that moment he was crossing the second hill beyond. She ran up and down the arroyo calling, “Paul! Paul!” at the top of her voice. Gathering her white skirts in one hand, she rushed to the top of the hill and called again and again. But there was no reply. As she listened, straining forward, all the earth seemed strangely still. The silence struck back upon her heart suffocatingly. Over the crest of the next hill Paul heard her voice and hid behind a big, closeclump of feathery mesquite, fearful lest she should find him and take him home again. Across the arroyo she ran, and up to the hill-top, where she stood and called and looked eagerly about. But he, intent on carrying out his plan of reaching the rosy, glowing gates of Heaven over there such a little way, crouched close behind the spreading bush and made no answer.
“He would not have gone so far,” she thought, anxiously. “He must be back there in one of those arroyos.”
She ran back and hurried farther up and down, first one and then the other gulch, calling the little one’s name and straining her eyes through the dusk that had begun to gather for a glimpse of his flaxen curls and red cap. Paul, meanwhile, was scurrying across the hills as fast as his two fat, determined legs could carry him, straight toward the deepening, darkening glory upon the mountains.
At last Marguerite decided that he must have turned about, after he had run a few steps away from her, and gone home. Comforting herself with this hope, she hurried back, looking about her as she ran, to be sure that she did not pass him. Flushed and panting, she rushed through the house and asked the servant if little Bye-Bye had come home. The maid had not seen him, and the two women looked through the house and searched the yard and garden, stopping every moment to call the child. Then they ran out again upon the mesa,where Marguerite had walked with him, calling and circling about through the gathering dusk.
When it became quite dark Marguerite, thoroughly frightened, ran back to the town and hurried down Main street looking for her father. She met a clerk from his store on the way to tell her that he had just started to his alfalfa ranch, ten miles down the river, to bring in the men who were there at work, and would not return until early the next morning. The clerk quickly got together a half dozen young men and they set out for the mesa. The mother of one and the sister of another stayed with Marguerite, and by dint of constant persuasion kept her at home.
At daybreak the party returned, worn out by their long tramp. The moon had risen about ten o’clock, and by its brilliant light they had searched carefully the hills and arroyos within two or three miles of the town, but had not found a trace of the lost child. Main street had slept on its arms that night. Men of both parties, wrapped in their blankets, with revolvers and shot-guns and rifles under their hands, had dotted the court-house yard, had lain on the sidewalks near the jail, and had slept on the floors of shops and offices along both sides of Main street. Feeling had risen so high that a hasty word, or the unguarded movement of a hand toward a pistol butt, was likely to cause the beginning of the battle. The Democrats had telegraphed to Santa Fe and learned that the orderof the court making Joe Davis sheriff, having left there by mail on Saturday, should have reached Las Plumas on Sunday. So they announced that they would wait until the arrival of the mail from the north on Monday at noon, and that if the Republicans did not then vacate the office they would march upon the court-house, seize the clerk of the court, take forcible possession of the jail, and install Joe Davis in the office of sheriff. They swore they would do all this before sunset Monday night if they had to soak the sand of the streets a foot deep in blood. The Republicans grimly said that they would not give up the office without the official order of the court if they had to kill every Democrat in the town to hold it.
When the party searching for little Paul walked down Main street in the dim, early light, their footsteps breaking loudly upon the morning silence, men jumped to their feet with revolvers at ready, and set faces, crowned with disheveled hair, looked out from doorways whence came the click of cocking triggers. As the party was divided in its political affiliations, the young men knew that it would be safer for them to separate and for each to walk down Main street on that side to which his elders belonged. And so it happened that armed men, jumping from their blankets with revolvers drawn and cocked, and sternly commanding “halt,” heard on both sides of the street at the same time how Pierre Delarue’s little boy was lost on the mesa.Over and over again the young men told their story as they walked down the street, and group after group of armed and expectant men asked anxiously, “What’s the matter?” “What’s up?” “What’s happened?” As they listened, the angry resolve in their faces softened into sympathy and concern, and everywhere there were low exclamations of “We must hunt him up!” “We must all turn out!”
When Pierre Delarue returned he found the feud forgotten. Men were running hither and thither getting horses and carriages ready, a long line of men and boys straggled out across the mesa, the Main street barrier, which had risen sky high when he left the town, had sunk to the middle of the earth, and men who, a few hours before, would have shot to kill, had either opened mouth to the other, rode or walked side by side, talking together of the lost child, as they hurried out to the hills to join in the search.
Mrs. John Daniels, as soon as she rose from the breakfast table, hastened to Mrs. Judge Harlin’s house, and together they went to offer sympathy and neighborly kindness to Marguerite. Other women came, and their tear-dyed lids told how the mother-sympathy in their hearts had already opened the flood-gates of feeling. None of them thought it possible that the child could be found alive, though they talked encouragingly with Marguerite. But among themselves they said, “Poor girl! It will kill her!”
Marguerite wished to join the searchers on the mesa, but the women would not let her go. She had not slept during the night, and her usually blooming face was pale and drawn and her eyes were wide and brilliant. When her father came she appealed to him.
“No, my dear, you can do no good out there. Stay here and be ready to take care of him when we bring him home. We shall find him, my dear, we shall find him. Keep up your courage and save all your strength for the time when it will be needed.”
So Marguerite stood on her veranda and watched the people stringing out to the hills, men and boys and even a few women, on foot, on horseback, in carts and carriages and wagons. She could not shut from her eyes the vision of her little Bye-Bye alone, far out on the hills in the darkness and cold—the little baby Bye-Bye, who, if he wakened in the night, had always to be taken into her own bed and cuddled in her arms before he could sleep again.
Judge Truman, of the district court, reached Las Plumas on Sunday and prepared to open the court and call the case of Emerson Mead on Monday morning. The sheriff and his deputy brought Mead out of the jail and started to conduct him to the court-house. Suddenly the bell of the Methodist church began to ring violently; a moment later that of the Catholic convent added its sharp tones, and the fire bell, over by the plaza, joined their clamor.
“What are those bells ringing for, John,” said Mead to Daniels.
“Haven’t you heard about Frenchy Delarue’s kid? He was lost on the mesa last night and the whole town is turning out to hunt him. They are ringing the bells to call out everybody that hasn’t gone already.”
Mead stopped short at the words “Frenchy Delarue’s kid.”
“Little Paul Delarue?” he asked in quick, sharp tones.
“Yes, the little fellow with the yellow curls.”
Without a word Mead turned sharply on his heel and ran with long strides down Main street toward Delarue’s house. The hands of the two men went instinctively to their revolvers, then their eyes met, and Daniels said:
“I guess we’d better not touch him, Jim.”
At that moment Judge Truman turned the corner, just from the court-house, and saw the escaping prisoner.
“Let him go, Mr. Sheriff,” he said. “His help will be valuable in the search. Better go yourself, and take as many with you as you can. I have adjourned court and told everybody to hurry out to the mesa, and I’m going myself as soon as I can get a horse.”
Emerson Mead ran at the top of his speed to the Delarue house, going there without thought of whyhe did it, feeling only that Marguerite was in deepest trouble, and all his mind filled with the idea that it would kill her if anything happened to the child. As he entered the gate Marguerite saw him and rushed down from the veranda.
“How did it happen?” he asked hastily.
“I took him out to walk with me on the mesa yesterday afternoon, and he slipped away from me and I could not find him.”
“Can you tell me where you saw him last?”
“Let me go with you! I can show you the very place!”
“Are you strong enough? Can you stand it? You are very pale!”
“Yes, yes! It will not be so hard as to stay here and wait! Let me go with you and help you!”
“Come, then, quick!”
She snatched her little white sunbonnet from a chair on the porch and they hurried off. Walking swiftly and silently they passed through the back streets of the town and across vacant lots and hurried over the rising plain until they came to the place in the rolling hills where the child had disappeared.
“It was here,” said Marguerite. “I am very sure of the place. He stood beside me and while I was thinking about—something that troubled me, and reading a letter, he slipped away. I was sure he had only run down the hill into the arroyo, butwhen I looked for him, and it seemed hardly more than a minute, I could not find him.”
Mead looked about for footprints, but the ground had been trampled by scores of feet since the night before, and tracks of shoes in many sizes covered the sandy earth. A few scattered searchers were near them, but the great mass of people could be seen in groups and bunches trailing off over the hills, most of them headed to the northeast. A shout came along the line and one of the men near by ran across the hills to learn its cause.
“What had he been talking about?” Mead asked.
“About Heaven and our mother, and if he could see her if he should go there.”
Mead looked about him, thinking there was no clue in that, when his glance rested upon the towering peaks of the Hermosa range, their western slopes soft in the violet shadows of the forenoon, their upreared crags seeming to lean against the very blue of the sky. A sudden memory from his own childish years flashed into his mind.
“I remember when I was a kid I used to think that if I could only get to the top of a mountain I could jump from it into the sky and see God. Children always think Heaven is in the sky, don’t they? Maybe he had some such idea. Let’s go straight toward the mountain and see if we can’t find his tracks.”
They walked down the hill, and in the sand in the bottom of the arroyo Mead’s quick eye caughta faint depression. He stopped Marguerite as she was about to step on it, and they knelt together to examine it. There were other footprints all about, but this one little track had escaped obliteration, and none had noticed it. Marguerite thought it was the size and shape of his shoe, and they went on over the hill, watching the ground closely, but seeing nothing more. A man came running back to tell them that a child’s footprints had been found near the mountain road, two miles or more to the northward. Marguerite wished to go there at once.
“Yes, certainly, go if you wish,” said Mead, “but I think I will stay here. If they have found his tracks there are plenty of people there to follow them, but I am anxious to follow this lead.”
Marguerite said she would stay with him, and the others hurried over the mesa to the mountain road, leaving the two alone. They walked slowly up and down the hills toward the mountains, finding in one place a little curved depression, as if from the toe of the child’s shoe. And presently, close behind a clump of bushes, they saw two little shoe-prints clearly defined in the sand. They were so close to the bush that they had escaped detection.
“Why, he must have hid here while I was looking for him!” Marguerite exclaimed, “for I came to the top of the hill, not more than twenty feet away! He must have hid behind this big bush and kept very still when he heard me calling, and that was how he got away from me!”
They went on over the hills, Mead keeping a fairly straight course toward the mountains, and constantly running his eye along the ground in front of them. Twice he saw faint depressions in the sand, partly obliterated, but enough to make him think they were on the right track. At last, in a wide, sandy arroyo, he paused before a track in the farther edge of the sand which turned up the canyon.
“What time was it when you lost him?” he asked.
“Just at sunset. I remember, because the red was on the mountains and the sky was very brilliant.”
“Then by the time he had traveled this far it was dark and this wide sandy streak was lighter and brighter than the hill up there, covered with bushes. Come on!”
Mead rushed up the canyon, almost on the run, his eye catching a toe-print here, a heel track there, a sunken pebble in one spot, a crushed blade of grass beside the sand in another. The young men who had gone out first had been through this arroyo the night before, when the moonlight did not show the faint trail. Since sunrise the searching parties had gone farther toward the north, covering ground which the other party had left untouched, for every one believed, since the failure of the first expedition, that the child must have turned in that direction and tried to go home.
Mead and Marguerite followed the winding of the arroyo for a mile or more, and at last, where itheaded and the ground was covered by a thicker growth of bushes, the little tracks climbed the hill. By that time they were well beyond the farthest point toward the mountains which any one else believed the child could have reached, and there were no footprints of previous searchers to perplex their eyes or blot out such traces as they might find. From the top of the hill they saw the great body of men again scattering out over the mesa, and knew that they had been disappointed.
It was some minutes before Mead found any indication of the trail on the hill. Then the child seemed to have wandered about in the dark without purpose. For a long time he had kept to the top of the hill, going backward and forward and circling about, and at last following its crest toward the mountains.
“This must have been after the moon rose,” Mead said, “and while it was still so low that only the top of the hill was light.”
After a time the track turned down the hillside again, and the man and the girl followed, eagerly scanning the ground for the faint traces of the child’s feet. Slowly and carefully they walked along, sometimes able to follow the trail without difficulty for long distances, and again keeping it only by the greatest care. Marguerite noticed that Mead looked for it always toward the south, and asked him why he did it.
“Because the moon was considerably past the full and shone more from the south, and he would have kept his face toward it.”
Up and down the hills they went and along the arroyos, the trail sometimes heading straight for the mountains, and again turning toward the south, sometimes following the sandy watercourse beds and sometimes the hilltops, and again crossing them at varying angles. Once they lost it entirely, and searched over a wide area in vain, until Marguerite found a shred of brown linen hanging upon the thorny limb of a mesquite bush.
“This is from his dress!” she exclaimed.
About the same time Mead saw a number of dog-like tracks, all going in the same direction, and a sickening fear rose in him so great that he scarcely dared sweep with his eyes the arroyo into which they were descending. He did not let Marguerite see that he had noticed anything unusual, and she followed him silently, wondering how he could trace the trail so rapidly. For he knew that he need not stop to look for the child’s footprints. He could follow swiftly, almost on the run, the plain trail of the dog-like tracks down the sandy arroyo. Presently she saw him stoop and pick up something from the ground. He turned and held out to her a large yellow chrysanthemum. She ran to him and seized it eagerly.
“Yes, I picked it as we were leaving home yesterday. He wanted it and I gave it to him. Andhe clung to it all this way! I wonder what made him drop it finally!”
Mead did not tell her of the fear that probably had relaxed the little muscles and sent the weary feet flying over the sand. He could think of no word of encouragement to say, for he felt no hope in his heart. But her face had lighted with the finding of the flower and she seemed to feel almost as though it were a call from the child. She pressed the yellow bloom to her face and thrust it into her bosom. Then she dropped upon her knees and hid her face in her hands. Mead felt that she was praying, and impulsively he took off his hat and bent his head, but his eyes still swept the arroyo in front of them. As they went on he noticed that the child’s tracks had been almost obliterated. Here and there a toe print, pressed deeply into the sand, showed that the little one had been running. At last Mead stopped beside a large flat stone. The child’s footprints showed plainly beside it. And the dog-like tracks ranged in a half circle six or eight feet distant.
“He must have sat down here to rest,” said Mead, hoping she would not notice the other tracks. But she saw them and looked at him with sudden fear in her eyes. A single word shaped itself upon her whitening lips.
“Coyotes?”
He nodded, saying, “I have been watching their tracks for the last mile.”
She threw her hands to her head with a despairing gesture. He moved toward her, filled with the yearning to take her in his arms and comfort her. But he remembered that she was to be married to Albert Wellesly and his hands dropped to his sides. He turned to examine the ground about the stone and saw in the sand many little holes and scratches. He noticed, too, some pebbles in front of the coyote tracks.
“Look!” he exclaimed. “The brave little man! He threw stones at the coyotes and kept them off! He must have had a stick, too, for see these little holes in the sand. He probably stood up and thrust the stick toward them.”
“Could he keep them off so that they would not attack him?”
“Yes, I think he could. As long as—as he kept moving they would only follow him.”
A little farther on they found many deep impressions of the child’s feet close together, as if he had been jumping, and after that the coyote tracks disappeared.
“He must have jumped at them and shouted and thrust out his stick,” said Mead, “and frightened them away. He might have done that after he found he could drive them back. And this was probably after daybreak, when they would be less likely to follow him. We can’t be so very far behind him now, for he would be tired and could not walk fast.”
“Come, hurry! Let us go on!” urged Marguerite,
He looked at her doubtfully. Her face was drawn and white under her sunbonnet, notwithstanding her long walk in the hot sun, and dark rings circled her eyes.
“Have you strength to go farther? Hadn’t you better wait here?”
“No, no! I can go on! Come, let’s hurry!” and she moved forward.
“Then lean on my arm. That will help you some.”
“No, thank you. I might keep you back. You go on and follow the trail as fast as you can and I will come behind. Don’t stop a minute for me.”
The trail left the arroyo and climbed the hill again and from its summit they could see the crowd of people far toward the north scattering out over the mesa and dotting the hills beyond the mountain road. A banner of smoke lay low against the northern horizon, while across the distance came the faint whistle of an approaching train. A vague remembrance came into Marguerite’s mind that there was to have been trouble in the town, a battle and bloodshed, after the passing of that train, and that she had been anxious on her father’s account. But that all seemed years ago, and the remembrance of it quickly passed.
The trail wandered on, keeping to the hilltops for some time. Mead told Marguerite that the boy had been cold in the early morning and had stayedon the hilltops because it was warmer there when the sun first rose. Then the trail went up and down again, sometimes over the hills and sometimes following the arroyos, sometimes turning on itself and going back, and sometimes circling about in long curves, facing by turns all points of the compass. Along arroyos, and on hillsides that were comparatively barren and sandy it was easily followed. At other times Mead lost it entirely and they would wander about, searching the ground closely. Once Marguerite found the faint track of the shoe when Mead was going away in another direction, and she called him back delightedly. For long distances he would spring rapidly along a trail so faint that it was only by close scrutiny she could see anything, his mind unconsciously marking the distance from one trace to where the next should be, his eye skimming the ground and his quick sight catching the crushed flower stem, the sunken pebble, the broken blade of grass, the tiny depression of heel or toe that marked the way.
The girl toiled on after him, sometimes falling far behind and again catching up and walking by his side. The slumbrous heat of the October day filled the clear, dry air and the sun shone fiercely, unveiled by a single vaporous cloud. Marguerite’s mouth was dry and her throat was parched and all her body called for water. She thought of the thirst and the hunger that must be tormenting the little thing that had been wandering over thosesun-flooded hills, with neither food nor drink nor sight of friendly face, for so many hours, and the agony of the thought seemed more than she could endure. Sharp, lightning-like pains cracked through her brain, and a dizzy, chaotic whirl filled her head. She put her hands to her forehead and stopped short on the hillside, the fear flying through her mind that she might be going mad. Mead saw her and came quickly to her side, alarmed by her white, tense face and the wild look of agony in her eyes. Her lips were pale and dry.
“Do not stop!” she pleaded. “It is nothing but a little headache. Don’t stop a minute for me. Five minutes may mean the difference between life and death for my little boy. Hurry on, and I will come close behind you.”
The fear of delaying her companion gave her fresh strength and she went on beside him. In the next arroyo they found a footprint deeply marked in a bed of sand. As Mead glanced at it he saw some grains of sand fall down from the rim of the depression. He called Marguerite’s attention to them.
“We must be close behind him,” he said, “or that sand would not still be trembling on the edge like that.”
“If we only had some water for him!” said Marguerite. “He will need it so badly.”
Mead thought that the child would probably be beyond the need of human aid when they shouldfind him, but he merely answered: “Yes, I ought to have thought of it, but we started so hurriedly.” His only hope was that they might be in time to save the little worn body from the coyotes. The trail crossed the arroyo and essayed the hill. It was steep and had been too much for the child’s ebbing strength. The track went down into the valley again and part way up the other side, then back and across the arroyo, and took the hill once more at a long slant. They lost the trail there and walked about for a few minutes, searching the ground closely for signs of the little feet. Marguerite went on to the top of the hill, and Mead, glancing toward her, saw her standing stiff and still as if turned to stone, holding a little forward her tightly clasped hands. She gave a low cry and he sprang to her side. A moving splotch of red showed above a clump of greasewood half way down the hill. Then a tottering little figure in a torn and ragged linen kilt moved slowly down the hillside, lifting its feet wearily, but still going on.
“Paul! Paul! My darling!” A ringing call broke from Marguerite’s lips and she rushed down the hill at a pace which even Mead’s running strides could barely equal. The boy heard her cry, turned, swayed on trembling legs, and fell to the ground. She snatched the child to her breast and pressed her face to his. He smiled faintly and wearily, and his parched, cracked lips whispered, “some drink!” and then his eyes closed and his head fellback upon her arm. The gladness in her face froze into terror and she turned to Mead in despairing appeal.
“Is he dead?” she whispered.
The man bent one ear to the child’s heart.
“No, he is not dead, nor dying. His heart seems to be beating naturally, but feebly. If we only had some water!”
She held the child toward him, speaking rapidly: “Take him in your arms and run to where the others are. Doctor Long is there, and somebody will have water.”
He looked at her anxiously. “But you?” he exclaimed.
She answered with a sharp insistence in her tones, leaning toward him, the words flying from her lips:
“Take him and run, run! Never mind me. I will come behind you. Go, go quickly!”
He cradled the unconscious child in his arms, running with long strides up hill and down, aiming a straight course toward the bulk of the searching party, which he could see from the hilltops, a multitude of moving dots straggling back into the hills where he and Marguerite had first followed the footprints. As he ran, his mind went back over the winding trail they had followed, and he calculated that the child had traveled not less than a dozen miles since sunset of the night before. He glanced over the hills at the crowds beyond and thought it must be some four or five miles to thenearest one. He saw a single horseman off to his left who seemed much nearer, but he decided it would be safer to run straight for the greater number, lest the man might turn about and ride away without seeing him. But the horseman presently came in his direction and soon Mead saw that the man was looking toward him. He waved his hat and halloed, and the man evidently saw and understood, for he spurred his horse into a gallop. As he came nearer Mead thought there was something familiar in his attitude and the outline of his body. But he did not look closely, for he was running through a growth of prickly pear cactus and needed to watch his footsteps. Scarcely more than two hundred yards separated them when the horseman leaned forward in his saddle, studying keenly the figure of the man on foot. A look of cruel, snarling triumph flashed over his face and a Spanish oath broke from his lips. He whipped out a revolver and leveled it at the running man with the child in his arms. Mead had been looking at the ground, choosing his course, and then had glanced at Paul’s face for a moment. When he raised his eyes again he saw the shining muzzle of a revolver pointed at his breast and above it the savage, revengeful, triumphant face of Antone Colorow.
Abullet tore through the sleeve of Mead’s coat, passing but a few inches from the head of the unconscious child. Another sang over his left shoulder, scorching his coat. His face, flushed with running, went white and grim with sudden passion, his lips closed in a narrow, straight line, and the yellow flame blazed in his wide and brilliant eyes. He shifted the child more to the left and turned sidewise toward his assailant, shielding the little one with his body. Antone Colorow, shouting curses and vile names, came dashing on, revolver in hand, to try again at closer quarters. Mead kept on, running sidewise, his set white face turned over his shoulder and his flashing eyes fixed on Antone’s revolver hand. They were within a score of paces of each other when Mead suddenly jumped to one side and the bullet that was meant for his head whistled harmlessly through the air. “Three!” he thought, his eyes fixed steadily on Antone’s right hand, as he still advanced toward the angry man. For he had noticed that the Mexican wore no cartridge belt. Again he sprang to one side as he saw Antone’s finger stiffen upon the trigger, and the ball rattled through the bushes behind him. “Four!”he thought, veering toward the west. The Mexican turned his horse to follow, and Mead, with eyes fixed on the trigger, and noting, too, the slant of the barrel, knew that he had no need to dodge the next bullet. It went wild and tore up the ground some feet away. “Only one more!” he thought, as he halted with the sun at his back and shining straight in the Mexican’s face. A sudden, quick leap and a loud yell startled Antone’s horse, it jerked backward, and the last bullet went singing harmlessly through the air.
Antone’s voice shot up into a falsetto, and shrieking vile curses he threw the empty revolver over his shoulder and leaped to the ground. Mead’s watchful eye caught the gleam of a steel blade in the sunlight. He dropped his burden upon the ground, in the shade of a clump of greasewood, and sprang to one side. He caught Antone’s wrist, as the knife made its downward turn, and held that hand high in the air for a moment while he looked into the Mexican’s eyes. They shone with the angry glare of a wild beast.
“Antone,” he said, “I have found the lost child. It is still alive, and it may live if I can get it to the doctor at once. Will you let me go and finish this quarrel afterward?”
The Mexican’s only answer was a volley of curses. This man had broken his wrists and made useless that boasted skill with the lasso which had been the one pride of his life. For weeks andmonths anger and hatred and the determination to have revenge had blazed in his heart, and at sight of his enemy everything else went from his mind. He too had been ranging the hills since early morning searching for the boy, but so fierce was his rage that he could have jumped upon the little form and trampled its life out, if by so doing he could have killed Mead with a double death.
Antone’s wrists were stiff and his arms had not recovered their full strength, so that Mead had no difficulty in holding the dagger aloft. He waited a moment to see if some glimmer of human feeling would not strike through the man’s rage. Suddenly Antone began kicking his shins, and Mead understood that the sooner the struggle began the sooner it would be ended. He strove warily, with the coolness of a masterful determination, with a quick eye, a quick hand, and a quick brain. The Mexican fought with the insensate rage of an angered beast. They struggled first for the possession of the knife. Antone succeeded in releasing his wrist and sprang backward out of Mead’s reach. With a lunge straight at his enemy’s heart he came forward again, but Mead sprang quickly to one side and the Mexican barely saved himself from sprawling headlong on the ground. He faced about, his features distorted with anger, and, as he dashed forward, Mead caught his wrist again. There was a short, sharp struggle, and Mead sent the knife whirling down the hillside.
Then they closed in a hand to hand struggle. Antone bent his head and sent his teeth deep into Mead’s arm. Into the flesh they sank and met and with a slipping sound tore the solid muscle from its bed. Then there flamed in Emerson Mead’s heart that wild, white rage that mettles the nerves and steels the muscles of him who suffers that indignity. He felt the strength of a giant in his arms as he gripped the Mexican by both shoulders. In another minute Antone Colorow was flat upon the ground and Emerson Mead was sitting on his chest.
“You hound!” Mead exclaimed, “I ought to kill you, and by the living God, I would if I could do it decently! But I’m no Greaser, to use lariats and knives and boot-heels, and so you get off this time, you beast! If I had a rope,” he went on, “I’d tie you here!”
With his right hand he grasped Antone’s two wrists while he thrust his left into his pockets in search of something with which he could bind the fallen man. From the side pocket of his coat he drew a shiny, snaky black thing, and a satisfied “ah!” broke from his lips as he saw the Chinaman’s queue, which Nick Ellhorn had forgotten, and which he had put into that pocket two weeks before.
As he held it in his hands Marguerite Delarue came running over the hill. Her sunbonnet hung by its strings around her neck, her hair had come down and was streaming over her shoulders, her dress hung in rags and tatters, and she was pantingand almost breathless. She had hurried on behind Mead as rapidly as she could walk, until she heard the first pistol shot. Then, fearful of trouble, she had run as fast as possible, stopping at nothing, her anxiety giving speed to her feet and endurance to her muscles.
The look of savage triumph on Mead’s face made her shrink back for an instant, awed and frightened. But her comprehension quickly took in what had happened and her heart rose in sympathetic exultation.
“You are just in time,” said Mead, “and I’m mighty glad. I’ll have to ask you to sit on this man’s chest and hold him down while I tie him fast to that mesquite.”
Marguerite sat down on the Mexican’s breast while Mead tied his wrists tightly together and then began fastening them to the stocky stem of the bush beside which he had fallen. Antone struggled and tried to throw her off, and Mead said:
“I think, Miss Delarue, you’d better put your thumbs on his windpipe and press a little, just to keep him from fighting too hard. We’ve got no time to waste on him.”
Marguerite gasped and hesitated, but her eye fell on little Paul’s unconscious figure, and she did as he asked her.
“There,” said Mead. “Now get up and jump quickly away.”
The prostrate Mexican struggled and rolled about,but he could not rise. Marguerite ran to the child and with her ear to his breast she called to Mead.
“His heart is beating! He is still alive!”
Mead caught Antone’s horse, and with Marguerite behind him and the child on one arm started off on the gallop. A long, straggling line of searchers stretched across the mesa, the nearest at least four miles away. As Mead came nearer he dropped the bridle on the horse’s neck and waved his hat and shouted again and again. At last he attracted the attention of the nearest ones, and two or three came running toward him. “Water! Water!” he called, at the top of his voice. They understood, and one ran back to the nearest horseman, who galloped off to a group of people still farther away.
Almost instantly the great throng, like a huge organism, animated by one thought, started off across the mesa toward the galloping horse, every atom in it moved by the single purpose to reach at once the new-found babe. Two horses in front of the hastening multitude ran at their topmost speed and distanced all the others. One carried Pierre Delarue and the other Doctor Long, and behind them came horsemen, carts, carriages and people on foot, all rushing to the one point.
The physician administered such restoratives as he had with him and brought the boy back to consciousness. Then, in the shade of a canopy phaeton, he carried the child home in his arms, while Marguerite and her father and Emerson Mead followedin another carriage, and all the crowd came pouring along after them.
But there were four men who stayed behind. Joe Davis and John Daniels and two others, all in perfect accord and friendliness, went back to find Antone Colorow. They had listened to Mead’s hastily told story of how Antone had attacked and delayed him. Daniels and Davis had looked at each other with a single significant glance and the one remark, “We’d better attend to him!” And then they had taken the other two men and started back.
They found Antone Colorow still struggling, rolling and kicking on the ground. His lips were stained with the blood his own teeth had drawn, and his red beard was flecked with foam. They untied him, and he sprang to his feet and would have darted away, intent on his one purpose to kill the enemy who had escaped his vengeance, had not quick hands seized him. They tied his arms behind him and set him astride his own horse, and then, surrounding him, with their revolvers drawn, they rode away to the southwest, leaving Las Plumas far to their right. On to the river bottom they went, and into abosquewhere the cottonwoods and the sycamores grew thickly and the willow underbrush was dense.
Long afterward a river ranchman, hunting a lost cow, penetrated thebosqueand started back in sudden fright from a dangling, decaying body that hung from a sycamore limb.
Pierre Delarue insisted that Emerson Mead should come into his house for some wine and wait until they should know the worst or the best concerning little Paul. He sat alone in the room where first he had seen Marguerite, his anxiety about the child driven quite out of his mind by the thought that the long hours alone with her, out on the hills, their hearts and minds united in a common purpose, had come to an end, that she was soon to be another man’s wife, and that he would never see her again. After a time the door opened and she came toward him, smiling gladly. The color had come back to her cheeks and her eyes were bright, though there were still dark rings around them, and her face told of the weariness her brain had not yet recognized. So absorbed had she been in giving the physician assistance and carrying out his directions that she had not thought of her appearance. Her white dress, which yesterday had been fresh and dainty, was in tatters and bedraggled strings, and her hair hung down her back in a disheveled mass. But she came shining down upon Mead’s dark thoughts, fresh and beautiful and glorious beyond compare. He did not remember rising, but presently he knew that he was on his feet and that she was standing in front of him. He did not even hear her say, “Doctor Long says my little Bye-Bye will live and that there will probably be no serious results.”
Then she saw that he was trembling from head to foot, shaking as do the leaves of a cottonwood treein a west wind, and she drew back in alarm, looking at him anxiously.
“What is the—” she began, but the look in his eyes stopped her tongue and held her gaze, while she felt her breath come hard and her heart beat like a triphammer. For an instant there was silence. Then Marguerite heard in a whisper so soft that it barely reached her ears, “I love you! I love you!” It was the loosing of the floods, and at once their arms were about each other. But in a second he remembered that she was to be another man’s wife, and the thought came over him like the drawing down of the black cap over the head of a condemned man. With a fierce girding of his will he put both his hands upon her shoulders and drew back.
“I forgot! Forgive me!” The words came in a groan from his lips. “I forgot you’re going to be his wife!”
“Whose?” said Marguerite, stepping back. For the instant she had forgotten there was any other man in the world.
“Why, Wellesly’s!”
“Indeed, I am not!” That one second in Mead’s embrace had settled Marguerite’s long-vexed problem, and she felt her mind grow full of sudden wonder that it had ever troubled her. “He wanted me to marry him, but I’m not going to do it!”
Again their arms were about each other, their lips met, and her head was pillowed on his shoulder.Then he remembered the fate that was hanging over him, and he said bitterly:
“I’ve no right to ask you to be my wife, for in another week I’ll probably be convicted of murder and sentenced to be hung, or sent to the penitentiary for life.”
From the yard came the sound of Pierre Delarue’s voice speaking to the crowd. She took Mead’s hands in hers and swung a little away from him, looking into his face.
“I know that you didn’t kill Will Whittaker!”
“How do you know it?” he answered, looking at her in loving surprise.
“Because he was shot in the back!”
She felt herself swept into the sudden storm of a masterful embrace, and with soft laughter yielded to his rapturous caresses. “And all this time,” came to her ear in a whisper, “I’ve cared about it only because I thought you would believe me guilty even if I was cleared!
“But I’ve no proof of my innocence,” he added presently, “and I can’t ask your father’s consent, or allow your name to be mentioned with mine in the town’s gossip until my own is clear. I’ve no right even to ask you for another kiss until—”
She closed his lips with the kiss he would not ask for, and said:
“I would just as lief go out there now and say to all that crowd that I love you and know that you are innocent—”
“No, no!” he broke in upon her passionate protestation. “No one shall couple your name with mine and pity you while they are doing it! The penitentiary may be my fate, for the rest of my life, but its shadow shall not touch yours. If I can clear myself of this charge I will come and ask you to be my wife, and openly ask your father’s consent. If I can’t—” He turned and looked out of the window, but instead of the trees and flowers that were there, he saw a big, grim building with a high stone wall all around it and armed guards on the bastions. Outside they heard the crowd calling for him. She understood his feeling, and taking his face between her palms she kissed his lips, whispering, “We will wait,” and hurried from the room.
The crowd massed itself around the house, squatting on the sidewalk, perching on the fence, and filling the waiting vehicles, until Pierre came out and announced that the physician said little Paul would recover and would probably be none the worse for his experience. Everybody shouted “hurrah!” and somebody yelled, “three cheers for Frenchy!” The cheers were given, and Pierre stepped out on the sidewalk and began thanking them all for the kindness and sympathy they had shown and for their willing efforts to help him in his trouble. Then he launched into rhetorical praises of the country, the climate and the community, and from these turned to enthusiastic commendation of the man who had restored to him hislost child. “Among all the brave and noble men of this favored region,” he exclaimed, “there is none braver, nobler, greater-hearted, more chivalrous, than he who has this day proved himself worthy of all our praises—Emerson Mead!” The crowd cheered loudly and called for Mead. Somebody shouted, “Three cheers for Emerson!” and the whole assemblage, Pierre leading, waved their hats and cheered again and again.
Then there arose a general cry for “Emerson Mead! Emerson Mead!” “Where is Emerson!” “Bring him out, Frenchy!” and Delarue rushed back into the house to find him. When Pierre entered the room which his daughter had just left it occurred to him, vaguely, that Mead looked unusually proud and happy, but as he himself, also, felt happy and proud, and filled with a genial glow over the success of his burst of oratory, it seemed quite proper that every one else should also be elated. So he thought nothing of it and hurried Mead out to the waiting crowd, where everybody, Democrats and Republicans alike, gathered about him and shook hands and made terse, complimentary remarks, until Jim Halliday presently took him away to his former quarters.
The crowd trailed off down Main street, and Judge Harlin and Colonel Whittaker stood treat together for the entire company, first at the White Horse and then at the Palmleaf saloon. The whistle of the train from the south, two hours late, broke inupon all this friendliness with a harsh reminder. Men suddenly recalled the fact that the mail from the north had come in long ago and had not brought the court order for which they had been waiting. The issues which had set the town at gun muzzles the day before again asserted themselves, and gradually the two factions began to mass, each on its own side of the street. In the midst of this the clerk of the court came out of the post-office with the missing order, which had gone astray in the mails and had just come in on the train from El Paso. Neither Joe Davis nor John Daniels could be found, and it was an hour later when they rode together into the town, coming back from the hanging of Antone Colorow.
Daniels read the official paper through and handed it to Davis. “Well, Joe,” he said, “the court says you are sheriff now, and I reckon there’s no goin’ back of that. I hope the office will bring you better luck than it has me. Let’s have a drink.”
Darkness so dense lay over the Fernandez plain that not the faintest outline of the rimming mountains penetrated its blackness. Like some palpable, suffocating substance it filled the plain and mounted far up into the air, even to the blue-black sky, whence a million gemming stars pierced it with their diamond lances.
Perched alone among the foothills of the Fernandez range, Juan Garcia’s gray adobe house glimmered faintly through the darkness. Every sound about the house was hushed, and only the burro in thejacaldown the hillside made known to the silent plain that he was still awake. The door into theportalopened softly, and with a quick, gliding, silent movement a dark figure came hastily out, closed the door, listened a moment, and then trod lightly across theportaland down to the road. There it paused, and Amada Garcia’s face, anxious and wistful, framed in the black folds of her mantilla, looked back at the silent house. A deep, dry sob shook all her frame and she half turned back, as if irresolute. Then she drew from her breast a folded bit of paper, pressed it to her heart and her cheek, and kissed it again and again. She cast another regretful, longinglook at the gray adobe house, and started off in the direction of Muletown. The faintly glimmering track of the sandy road opened slowly before her in the darkness, and, drawing her mantilla closely around her shoulders, she walked briskly along the dusty highway.
She kept the folded paper in her hand, pressing it to her lips and cheek with little cooing sounds of love. Once, standing still in the darkness and silence of the wide, black plain, she unfolded the letter and kissed the open sheet. It was too dark for her to see a single word upon the page, but she knew just where were “mi esposa,” and “mi querida,” and “mi corazon.”
That afternoon, as she filled herollaat the spring, a young Mexican came riding by in brave attire of braided jacket and trousers and silver trimmed sombrero. She knew him well. Indeed, she had often bantered back his compliments and adroitly turned to merriment the sweet speeches he would rather have had her take in earnest. He stopped and gave her the letter, which he had brought all the way from the post-office at Muletown solely for excuse to see her. She poised theollafull of water upon her head and he walked up the hill to the house by her side, and while he talked to her mother she slipped stealthily out and hid in thejacalbeside the burro for a chance to read the letter. When she returned she showed so plainly that his compliments and sweet speeches were distasteful to her that he sulkilyleft the house and galloped home again. Then her mother reproved her, telling her that she must not discourage the young man, because he was plainly in earnest in his attentions and would make the best and richest husband of all the youngcaballeroswho came to the house, and that when next she saw him she must make amends for her unkind treatment. Amada listened with terror and rebellion in her heart; and in her brain there sprang into life the purpose which she set out to execute as soon as her father and mother were asleep.
In her pocket she had four dollars which she had saved from the sale of eggs and goat’s-milk cheeses at Muletown, and which she had been carefully keeping for the purpose of buying a new mantilla with a deep, deep silk fringe the next time they should go to Las Plumas to celebrate the fiesta of its patron saint. And under one arm she carried someenchiladasandtamales, left from that night’s supper.
She trudged on through the darkness and silence of the night, and, although she walked briskly, the frosty air now and again sent a shiver of cold through her body and made her draw her mantilla more closely across her chest. The staccato yelping of coyotes down in the plain was answered by short, sharp barks from the hills, and all night long the beasts kept up a running exchange of howls from one to the other side of the road. Sometimes Amada heard the stealthy rustle of the herbage as theyneared the highway, or saw the gleaming of their eyes in the darkness. But she knew their cowardly nature too well to be afraid, and when they came too near, a pebble from her hand sent them scurrying away.
Hour after hour she followed the faint glimmer of the dusty road, over the low, rolling hills, across the sloping upland, and down into the edge of the Fernandez plain, steadily leaving behind her the slowly measured miles. At last the east began to glow above the Fernandez mountains and against the golden sky shone the thin, silver-white crescent of the old moon. The blackness of night gradually faded into the gray light of dawn, the sky blushed rosy red, the plain spread itself out before her, flooded with golden red sunlight, and still Amada held to the pace she had kept up all night long. Before her she saw columns of blue smoke rising from the chimneys of Muletown, and she thought longingly of the well in the plaza. But early though it was, she feared to be seen and questioned, for she knew many people in Muletown. So she turned from the main road, leaving the town far to her right, and struck across the trackless plain for the highway running toward the Hermosa mountains. When she reached it the sun was well up in the sky and she sat down on a hillock of sand to rest and eat her breakfast. She was very tired and it seemed good to lie still on the warm sand under the warm sun, so she rested there for a long time, thinking atfirst of the little gray adobe house far back in the foothills and wondering what the two old people would think and what they would do when they should find their one child gone and no trace left to tell them whither or why she had fled. These thoughts would bring the tears to her eyes, then she would open the letter and read it slowly over and over, and kiss the words of love, and, with soft little laughs and cooings, picture to herself her journey’s end.
At last she saw a cloud of dust coming toward her from the direction of Muletown and, reminded of the possibility of being seen and questioned by some one she knew, she got up and hurried on her way. She knew her father and mother would not at once be alarmed over her departure. They would think she had risen early and gone up into the foothills to gather sweet herbs. Even after they should find that she was gone she knew that, in the leisurely fashion of the land and people ofmañana, it might be two or three days before they would hitch the horses to the wagon and drive to Muletown to ask if any one there had seen her. But she did not wish to be discovered in her flight by any one whom she knew, and so she hurried on, drawing her mantilla across her face until only her two great black eyes peeped from its folds.
The wagon behind her clattered up and its sole occupant, a middle-aged American, asked her in Spanish if she would like to ride. She hesitated,instinctively fearing speech with any one, and glanced shyly at the Americano, who was smiling down good-naturedly at her from the wagon. The man added that if she were going far she had better ride, for the road across the plain would soon be very hot. She considered that she did not know this man, that he would not know who she was, and thought how much more quickly she could cross that wide plain, so, with a grateful glance of her black eyes and a “muchas gracias, señor,” she climbed up and sat down in the seat beside him. He asked her how far she was going, and she answered, to the other side of the Hermosa mountains. He replied that he was going to his mining camp in the mountains, but that he would drive her to the top of the pass, as the road was rocky and steep up the mountain side. He had some water in a canteen, from which she drank gratefully, and as midday approached, he shared with her his luncheon of bread and cheese, while she divided with him what remained of hertamalesandenchiladas.
The man’s kindly manner gave her confidence and the innate coquetry of her nature unconsciously began to assert itself. She talked gaily with him, her eyes by turns sparkled, invited and repelled, her mantilla almost covered her face one moment and the next was shaken gracefully down to her shoulders, leaving the coils of her hair shining black as a crow’s wing in the sun. Her little, rosebud mouth pouted and smiled, and altogether she wasso sweet and dainty and graceful that the middle-aged, gray-bearded Americano began to beam upon her with admiring eyes and to hover over her with jerky, heavy attempts at gallantry. He asked her name, but she took sudden alarm and answered only with a shrug of her shoulders and a swooning glance of her great black eyes. He put his arm about her waist and stooped to kiss her smiling mouth. She struggled away from him with a terrified, appealing cry, “No, no, señor!” of whose meaning there could be no mistake.
The man looked at her with wide, surprised eyes and exclaimed, “Well, I’ll be damned!” and whipped up his horses. He glanced at her curiously several times and saw that she had edged away from him as far as she could and drawn the black folds of her mantilla well over her face. Presently he said, in her own tongue:
“Pardon me, señorita! I thought you would not care.”
Her only answer was a little shiver, and they drove on in silence up the winding mountain road to the top of the pass. There she climbed out of the wagon and smiled back at the man with a grateful “muchas, muchas gracias, señor,” and started down the road toward Las Plumas. He looked after her contemplatively for a moment and said to himself:
“Well, I’ll be damned! But you never can tell how a Greaser’s going to break out next!” Thenhe turned his team about and drove whistling back to his own road.
Amada’s spirits rose as she looked down into the Rio Grande valley and saw the thread of glowing yellow foliage which marked the course of theacequiaand the long, straggling procession of gray dots which she knew was the town of Las Plumas. She had been there twice with her father and mother when they had gone to join in the fiesta of Santa Guadaloupe. They had a “primo” there, one of those distant relatives of whom the Mexicans keep track so faithfully, but she meant to stay far away from his house and to be seen neither by him nor any of his family. She was sure she could reach the town by nightfall. She began to wonder if the train on which she meant to go away would come after that and what she should do with herself all night if it did not. The two visits she had made to Las Plumas had been the only times in her life when she had seen a railroad train, and she asked herself if she would be afraid when she should get into the car and it should go tearing across the country so fast. Ah, it would not go fast enough for her, not nearly fast enough! And unconsciously she quickened her steps to keep pace with her thoughts.
Presently mighty pains began to rack her body. She groaned and clenched her fists until the blood stained her palms. But still she hurried on, urging herself with thoughts of her journey’s end, which began to loom distant and impossible through thehaze of her suffering. The road wound over the rounded foothills, across the crest of one, down the hillside, and over another, and another, and another, until Amada thought their end would never come. She longed to lie down there in the dusty road and give herself up to the agony that held her body in its grip. But she so feared that she might yield to the temptation, and never rise again, that she ran down the hills and hurried her aching feet up the slopes until she panted for breath. An awful fear had come to terrify her soul. In its absorbing clutch she scarcely thought again of her wish to reach the railroad, and the love letter that had brought her comfort and sustained her strength was almost forgotten. If she should die there alone, with no priest to listen to the story of the sins that oppressed her soul, to give her the sacrament and whisper the holy names in her ear—ah, she could not—any suffering could be endured better than so terrible a fate. So she gathered up her strength and strove to force a little more speed into her aching, blistered feet and to endure the pains that gripped and racked her body, hoping only that she might reach the town and find the priest before the end should come.
At last the gray, rolling waves of the foothills smoothed themselves out and gently merged into the plain that rose from the valley below. So near seemed the houses and the long streets of the town, with the yellow cottonwoods flaming through itsheart, that Amada felt encouraged. She hurried limping down the road, her black dress gray with dust, her mantilla pulled awry, her eyes wide with the terror that filled her soul, and her face tense and drawn with the pain that tortured her body.
She reached the edge of the town and saw people in the houses along the street. But she met none and she could not make up her mind to stop long enough to turn aside to one of the houses and ask the way to the priest’s dwelling. Presently she saw two children come hand in hand through a gateway. One of them, a tiny boy with flaxen curls about his neck and a thin white face, put his hands on the shoulders of his baby girl companion and kissed the face she lifted to his. As she went away she turned and threw kisses to him and he waved his hand to her and called out “bye-bye, bye-bye.”
Amada staggered against the fence and stood there resting a moment while she smiled at the pretty scene, notwithstanding her suffering and anxiety. When the child turned back into the yard she moved away from the fence and tried to go on. But her knees trembled and gave way, a cry of pain broke from her lips, and she fell upon the sidewalk. For woman’s greatest extremity was upon her and she could go no farther.
Marguerite Delarue stood upon the veranda steps smiling fondly upon little Paul as he came up the walk. She had noticed the strange young Mexican woman leaning against the fence, and when Amadafell she ran down to the gate to see if the stranger were ill. The look of awful agony in Amada’s face and eyes frightened her, and quickly calling the maid, the two women took her into the house and put her to bed. Then Marguerite sent in all haste for the physician, and herself removed the dusty shoes and stockings, bathed the swollen, blistered feet, took off the dust-filled garments and clothed the suffering girl in one of her own night robes.