by Bret Harte
first speaker had suffused him with a strangeand delicious anticipation. He restrained himself, though the words shehad naively dropped were filling him with new and tremulous suggestion.He was motionless, even while he felt that the vague longing andyearning which had possessed him hitherto was now mysteriously takingsome unknown form and action.
The murmuring ceased. The humble-bees' drone again became ascendant--asudden fear seized him. She was GOING; he should never see her! While hehad stood there a dolt and sluggard, she had satisfied her curiosity andstolen away. With a sudden yielding to impulse, he darted quickly inthe direction where he had heard her voice. The thicket moved, parted,crackled, and rustled, and then undulated thirty feet before him in along wave, as if from the passage of some lithe, invisible figure. Butat the same moment a little cry, half of alarm, half of laughter, brokefrom his very feet, and a bent manzanito-bush, relaxed by frightenedfingers, flew back against his breast. Thrusting it hurriedly aside,his stooping, eager face came almost in contact with the pink, flushedcheeks and tangled curls of a woman's head. He was so near, her moistand laughing eyes almost drowned his eager glance; her parted lips andwhite teeth were so close to his that her quick breath took away hisown.
She had dropped on one knee, as her companion fled, expecting he wouldoverlook her as he passed, but his direct onset had extracted thefeminine outcry. Yet even then she did not seem greatly frightened.
"It's only a joke, sir," she said, coolly lifting herself to her feet bygrasping his arm. "I'm Mrs. Dall, the Indian agent's wife. They said youwouldn't let anybody see you--and I determined I would. That's all!" Shestopped, threw back her tangled curls behind her ears, shook the briersand thorns from her skirt, and added: "Well, I reckon you aren't afraidof a woman, are you? So no harm's done. Good-by!"
She drew slightly back as if to retreat, but the elasticity of themanzanito against which she was leaning threw her forward once more.He again inhaled the perfume of her hair; he saw even the tiny frecklesthat darkened her upper lip and brought out the moist, red curve below.A sudden recollection of a playmate of his vagabond childhood flashedacross his mind; a wild inspiration of lawlessness, begotten of his pastexperience, his solitude, his dictatorial power, and the beauty of thewoman before him, mounted to his brain. He threw his arms passionatelyaround her, pressed his lips to hers, and with a half-hysterical laughdrew back and disappeared in the thicket.
Mrs. Dall remained for an instant dazed and stupefied. Then she liftedher arm mechanically, and with her sleeve wiped her bruised mouth andthe ochre-stain that his paint had left, like blood, upon her cheek. Herlaughing face had become instantly grave, but not from fear; her darkeyes had clouded, but not entirely with indignation. She suddenlybrought down her hand sharply against her side with a gesture ofdiscovery.
"That's no Injun!" she said, with prompt decision. The next minuteshe plunged back into the trail again, and the dense foliage once moreclosed around her. But as she did so the broad, vacant face and themutely wondering eyes of Wachita rose, like a placid moon, between thebranches of a tree where they had been hidden, and shone serenely andimpassively after her.
*****
A month elapsed. But it was a month filled with more experience toElijah than his past two years of exaltation. In the first few daysfollowing his meeting with Mrs. Dall, he was possessed by terror,mingled with flashes of desperation, at the remembrance of his rashimprudence. His recollection of extravagant frontier chivalry towomankind, and the swift retribution of the insulted husband orguardian, alternately filled him with abject fear or extravagantrecklessness. At times prepared for flight, even to the desperateabandonment of himself in a canoe to the waters of the Pacific: at timeshe was on the point of inciting his braves to attack the Indian agencyand precipitate the war that he felt would be inevitable. As the dayspassed, and there seemed to be no interruption to his friendly relationswith the agency, with that relief a new, subtle joy crept into Elijah'sheart. The image of the agent's wife framed in the leafy screen behindhis lodge, the perfume of her hair and breath mingled with the spicingof the bay, the brief thrill and tantalization of the stolen kiss stillhaunted him. Through his long, shy abstention from society, and his twoyears of solitary exile, the fresh beauty of this young Western wife, inwhom the frank artlessness of girlhood still lingered, appeared to himlike a superior creation. He forgot his vague longings in the inceptionof a more tangible but equally unpractical passion. He remembered herunconscious and spontaneous admiration of him; he dared to connect itwith her forgiving silence. If she had withheld her confidences from herhusband, he could hope--he knew not exactly what!
One afternoon Wachita put into his hand a folded note. With aninstinctive presentiment of its contents, Elijah turned red andembarrassed in receiving it from the woman who was recognized as hiswife. But the impassive, submissive manner of this household drudge,instead of touching his conscience, seemed to him a vulgar and brutalacceptance of the situation that dulled whatever compunction he mighthave had. He opened the note and read hurriedly as follows:--
"You took a great freedom with me the other day, and I am justified intaking one with you now. I believe you understand English as well as Ido. If you want to explain that and your conduct to me, I will be at thesame place this afternoon. My friend will accompany me, but she need nothear what you have to say."
Elijah read the letter, which might have been written by an ordinaryschool-girl, as if it had conveyed the veiled rendezvous of a princess.The reserve, caution, and shyness which had been the safeguard of hisweak nature were swamped in a flow of immature passion. He flew to theinterview with the eagerness and inexperience of first love. He wascompletely at her mercy. So utterly was he subjugated by her presencethat she did not even run the risk of his passion. Whatever sentimentmight have mingled with her curiosity, she was never conscious of anecessity to guard herself against it. At this second meeting she wasin full possession of his secret. He had told her everything; she hadpromised nothing in return--she had not even accepted anything. Evenher actual after-relations to the denouement of his passion are stillshrouded in mystery.
Nevertheless, Elijah lived two weeks on the unsubstantial memory of thismeeting. What might have followed could not be known, for at the end ofthat time an outrage--so atrocious that even the peaceful Minyos werethrilled with savage indignation--was committed on the outskirts of thevillage. An old chief, who had been specially selected to deal with theIndian agent, and who kept a small trading outpost, had been killedand his goods despoiled by a reckless Redwood packer. The murderer hadcoolly said that he was only "serving out" the tool of a fraudulentimposture on the Government, and that he dared the arch-impostorhimself, the so-called Minyo chief, to help himself. A wave ofungovernable fury surged up to the very tent-poles of Elijah's lodge anddemanded vengeance. Elijah trembled and hesitated. In the thraldom ofhis selfish passion for Mrs. Dall he dared not contemplate a collisionwith her countrymen. He would have again sought refuge in his passive,non-committal attitude, but he knew the impersonal character of Indianretribution and compensation--a sacrifice of equal value, withoutreference to the culpability of the victim--and he dreaded somespontaneous outbreak. To prevent the enforced expiation of the crimeby some innocent brother packer, he was obliged to give orders for thepursuit and arrest of the criminal, secretly hoping for his escape orthe interposition of some circumstance to avert his punishment. A day ofsullen expectancy to the old men and squaws in camp, of gloomy anxietyto Elijah alone in his lodge, followed the departure of the braves onthe war-path. It was midnight when they returned. Elijah, who from hishabitual reserve and the accepted etiquette of his exalted station hadremained impassive in his tent, only knew from the guttural rejoicingsof the squaws that the expedition had been successful and the captivewas in their hands. At any other time he might have thought it anevidence of some growing scepticism of his infallibility of judgmentand a diminution of respect that they did not confront him with theirprisoner. But he was too glad to escape from the danger of e
xposure andpossible arraignment of his past life by the desperate captive, eventhough it might not have been understood by the spectators. He reflectedthat the omission might have arisen from their recollection of hisprevious aversion to a retaliation on other prisoners. Enough that theywould wait his signal for the torture and execution at sunrise the nextday.
The night passed slowly. It is more than probable that the selfish andignoble torments of the sleepless and vacillating judge were greaterthan those of the prisoner who dozed at the stake between his curses.Yet it was part of Elijah's fatal weakness that his kinder and morehuman instincts were dominated even at that moment by his lawlesspassion for the Indian agent's wife, and his indecision as to the fateof his captive was as much due to this preoccupation as to a selfishconsideration of her relations to the result. He hated the prisoner forhis