by Wister, Owen
“So he is not dead,” murmured Luis, “and we need not live alone.”
“Come down!” the girl called, and waved her hand. But the new-comer stood by his horse like an apparition.
“Perhaps he is dead, after all,” Luis said. “You might say some of the Mass, only he was a heretic. But his horse is Mexican, and a believer.”
Lolita had no eyes or ears for Luis any more. He prattled away on the stone stairs of the Tinaja, flippant after a piercing shock of fear. To him, unstrung by the silence and the Black Cross and the presence of the sinking pool, the stone had crashed like a clap of sorcery, and he had started and stared to see—not a spirit, but a man, dismounted from his horse, with a rifle. At that his heart clutched him like talons, and in the flashing spasm of his mind came a picture—smoke from the rifle, and himself bleeding in the dust. Costly love-making! For Luis did not believe the rifle to have been brought to the ledge there as a staff, and he thanked the Virgin for the stone that fell and frightened him, and made him move suddenly. He had chattered himself cool now, and ready. Lolita was smiling at the man on the hill, glowing without concealment of her heart’s desire.
“Come down!” she repeated. “Come round the side.” And, lifting the olla, she tapped it, and signed the way to him.
“He has probably brought too much white flour for Uncle Ramon to care to climb more than he must,” said Luis. But the man had stirred at last from his sentinel stillness, and began leading his horse down. Presently he was near enough for Luis to read his face. “Your gringo is a handsome fellow, certainly,” he commented. “But he does not like me to-day.”
“Like you! He doesn’t think about you,” said Lolita.
“Ha! That’s your opinion?”
“It is also his opinion—if you’ll ask him.”
“He is afraid of Cousin Luis,” stated the youth.
“Cousin grasshopper! He could eat you—if he could see you.”
“There are other things in this world besides brute muscle, Lolita. Your gringo thinks I am worth notice, if you do not.”
“How little he knows you!”
“It is you he does not know very well,” the boy said, with a pang.
The scornful girl stared.
“Oh, the innocent one!” sneered Luis. “Grasshopper, indeed! Well, one man can always recognize another, and the women don’t know much.”
But Lolita had run off to meet her chosen lover. She did not stop to read his face. He was here; and as she hurried towards him she had no thought except that he was come at last. She saw his eyes and lips, and to her they were only the eyes and lips that she had longed for. “You have come just in time,” she called out to him. At the voice, he looked at her one instant, and looked away; but the nearer sight of her sent a tide of scarlet across his face. His actions he could control, his bearing, and the steadiness of his speech, but not the coursing of his blood. It must have been a minute he had stood on the ledge above, getting a grip of himself. “Luis was becoming really afraid that he might have to do some work,” continued Lolita, coming up the stony hill. “You know Luis?”
“I know him.”
“You can fill your two canteens and carry the olla for us,” she pursued, arriving eagerly beside him, her face lifted to her strong, tall lover.
“I can.”
At this second chill of his voice, and his way of meeting her when she had come running, she looked at him bewildered, and the smile fluttered on her lips and left them. She walked beside him, talking no more; nor could she see his furtive other hand mutely open and shut, helping him keep his grip.
Luis also looked at the man who had taken Lolita’s thoughts away from him and all other men. “No, indeed, he does not understand her very well,” he repeated, bitter in knowing the man’s suspicion and its needlessness. Something—disappointment, it may be—had wrought more reality in the young Mexican’s easy-going love. “And she likes this gringo because—because he is light-colored!” he said, watching the American’s bronzed Saxon face, almost as young as his own, but of sterner stuff. Its look left him no further doubt, and he held himself forewarned. The American came to the bottom, powerful, blue-eyed, his mustache golden, his cheek clean-cut, and beaten to shining health by the weather. He swung his blue-overalled leg over his saddle and rode to the Tinaja, with a short greeting to the watcher, while the pale Lolita unclasped the canteen straps and brought the water herself, brushing coldly by Luis to hook the canteens to the saddle again. This slighting touch changed the Mexican boy’s temper to diversion and malice. Here were mountains from mole-hills! Here were five beans making ten with a vengeance!
“Give me that,” said the American; and Luis handed up the water-jar to him with such feline politeness that the American’s blue eyes filled with fire and rested on him for a doubtful second. But Luis was quite ready, and more diverted than ever over the suppressed violence of his Saxon friend. The horseman wheeled at once, and took a smooth trail out to the top of the mesa, the girl and boy following.
As the three went silent up the cañon, Luis caught sight of Lolita’s eyes shining with the hurt of her lover’s rebuff, and his face sparkled with further mischief. “She has been despising me all day,” he said to himself. “Very well, very well.—Señor Don Ruz,” he began aloud, elaborately, “we are having a bad drought.”
The American rode on, inspecting the country.
“I know at least four sorts of kisses,” reflected the Mexican trifler. “But there! very likely to me also they would appear alike from the top of a rock.” He looked the American over, the rifle under his leg, his pistol, and his knife. “How clumsy these gringos are when it’s about a girl!” thought Luis. “Any fool could fool them. Now I should take much care to be friendly if ever I did want to kill a man in earnest. Comical gringo!—Yes, very dry weather, Don Ruz. And the rainy season gone!”
The American continued to inspect the country, his supple, flannel-shirted back hinting no interest in the talk.
“Water is getting scarce, Don Ruz,” persisted the gadfly, lighting again. “Don Ramon’s spring does not run now, and so we must come to the Tinaja Bonita, you see. Don Ramon removed the cattle yesterday. Everybody absent from home, except Lolita.” Luis thought he could see his Don Ruz listening to that last piece of gossip, and his smile over himself and his skill grew more engaging. “Lolita has been telling me all to-day that even the Tinaja will go dry.”
“It was you said that!” exclaimed the brooding, helpless Lolita.
“So I did. And it was you said no. Well, we found something to disagree about.” The man in the flannel shirt was plainly attending to his tormentor. “No sabe cuantos son cinco,” Luis whispered, stepping close to Lolita. “Your gringo could not say boo to a goose just now.” Lolita drew away from her cousin, and her lover happened to turn his head slightly, so that he caught sight of her drawing away. “But what do you say yourself, Don Ruz?” inquired Luis, pleased at this slight coincidence—“will the Tinaja go dry, do you think?”
“I expect guessing won’t interfere with the water’s movements much,” finally remarked Don Ruz—Russ Genesmere. His drawl and the body in his voice were not much like the Mexican’s light fluency. They were music to Lolita, and her gaze went to him once more, but he got no answer. The bitter Luis relished this too.
“You are right, Don Ruz. Guessing is idle. Yet how can we help wondering about this mysterious Tinaja? I am sure that you can never have seen so much of the cross out of water. Lolita says—”
“So that’s that place,” said Genesmere, roughly.
Luis looked inquiring.
“Down there,” Genesmere explained, with a jerk of his head back along the road they had come.
Luis was surprised that Don Ruz, who knew this country so well, should never have seen the Tinaja Bonita until to-day.
“I’d have seen it if I’d had any use for it,” said Genesmere.
“To be sure, it lay off the road of travel,” Luis assented. And o
f course Don Ruz knew all that was needful—how to find it. He knew what people said—did he not? Father Rafael, Don Ramon, everybody? Lolita perhaps had told him? And that if the cross ever rose entirely above the water, that was a sign all other water-holes in the region were empty. Therefore it was a good warning for travellers, since by it they could judge how much water to carry on a journey. But certainly he and Lolita were surprised to see how low the Tinaja had fallen to-day. No doubt what the Indians said about the great underground snake that came and sucked all the wells dry in the lower country, and in consequence was nearly satisfied before he reached the Tinaja, was untrue.
To this tale of Jesuits and peons the American listened with unexpressed contempt, caring too little to mention that he had heard some of it before, or even to say that in the last few days he had crossed the desert from Tucson and found water on the trail as usual where he expected. He rode on, leading the way slowly up the cañon, suffering the glib Mexican to talk unanswered. His own suppressed feelings still smouldered in his eye, still now and then knotted the muscles in his cheeks; but of Luis’s chatter he said his whole opinion in one word, a single English syllable, which he uttered quietly for his own benefit. It also benefited Luis. He was familiar with that order of English, and, overhearing, he understood. It consoled the Mexican to feel how easily he could play this simple, unskilful American.
They passed through the hundred corpses to the home and the green trees, where the sun was setting against the little shaking leaves.
“So you will camp here to-night, Don Ruz?” said Luis, perceiving the American’s pack-mules. Genesmere had come over from the mines at Gun Sight, found the cabin empty, and followed Lolita’s and her cousin’s trail, until he had suddenly seen the two from that ledge above the Tinaja. “You are always welcome to what we have at our camp, you know, Don Ruz. All that is mine is yours also. To-night it is probably frijoles. But no doubt you have white flour here.” He was giving his pony water from the barrel, and next he threw the saddle on and mounted. “I must be going back, or they will decide I am not coming till to-morrow, and quickly eat my supper.” He spoke jauntily from his horse, arm akimbo, natty short jacket put on for to-day’s courting, gray steeple-hat silver-embroidered, a spruce, pretty boy, not likely to toil severely at wood contracts so long as he could hold soul and body together and otherwise be merry, and the hand of that careless arm soft on his pistol, lest Don Ruz should abruptly dislike him too much; for Luis contrived a tone for his small-talk that would have disconcerted the most sluggish, sweet to his own mischievous ears, healing to his galled self-esteem. “Good-night, Don Ruz. Good-night, Lolita. Perhaps I shall come to-morrow, mañana en la mañana.”
“Good-night,” said Lolita, harshly, which increased his joy; “I cannot stop you from passing my house.”
Genesmere said nothing, but sat still on his white horse, hands folded upon the horns of his saddle, and Luis, always engaging and at ease, ambled away with his song about the hunchback. He knew that the American was not the man to wait until his enemy’s back was turned.
“‘El telele se murió
A enterrar ya le llevan—’”
The tin-pan Mexican voice was empty of melody and full of rhythm.
“‘Ay! Ay! Ay!’”
Lolita and Genesmere stood as they had stood, not very near each other, looking after him and his gayety that the sun shone bright upon. The minstrel truly sparkled. His clothes were more elegant than the American’s shirt and overalls, and his face luxuriant with thoughtlessness. Like most of his basking Southern breed, he had no visible means of support, and nothing could worry him for longer than three minutes. Frijoles do not come high, out-of-doors is good enough to sleep in if you or your friend have no roof, and it is not a hard thing to sell some other man’s horses over the border and get a fine coat and hat.
“‘Cinco dragones y un cabo,
Oh, no no no no no!
Y un gato de sacristan.’”
Coat and hat were getting up the cañon’s side among the cactus, the little horse climbing the trail shrewdly with his light-weight rider; and dusty, unmusical Genesmere and sullen Lolita watched them till they went behind a bend, and nothing remained but the tin-pan song singing in Genesmere’s brain. The gadfly had stung more poisonously than he knew, and still Lolita and Genesmere stood watching nothing, while the sun—the sun of Arizona at the day’s transfigured immortal passing—became a crimson coal in a lake of saffron, burning and beating like a heart, till the desert seemed no longer dead, but only asleep, and breathing out wide rays of rainbow color that rose expanded over earth and sky.
Then Genesmere spoke his first volunteered word to Lolita. “I didn’t shoot because I was afraid of hitting you,” he said.
So now she too realized clearly. He had got off his horse above the Tinaja to kill Luis during that kiss. Complete innocence had made her stupid and slow.
“Are you going to eat?” she inquired.
“Oh yes. I guess I’ll eat.”
She set about the routine of fire-lighting and supper as if it had been Uncle Ramon, and this evening like all evenings. He, not so easily, and with small blunderings that he cursed, attended to his horse and mules, coming in at length to sit against the wall where she was cooking.
“It is getting dark,” said Lolita. So he found the lamp and lighted it, and sat down again.
“I’ve never hurt a woman,” he said, presently, the vision of his rifle’s white front sight held steady on the two below the ledge once more flooding his brain. He spoke slowly.
“Then you have a good chance now,” said Lolita, quickly, busy over her cooking. In her Southern ears such words sounded a threat. It was not in her blood to comprehend this Northern way of speaking and walking and sitting, and being one thing outside and another inside.
“And I wouldn’t hurt a woman”—he was hardly talking to her—“not if I could think in time.”
“Men do it,” she said, with the same defiance. “But it makes talk.”
“Talk’s nothing to me,” said Genesmere, flaming to fierceness. “Do I care for opinions? Only my own.” The fierceness passed from his face, and he was remote from her again. Again he fell to musing aloud, changing from Mexican to his mother-tongue. “I wouldn’t want to have to remember a thing like that.” He stretched himself, and leaned his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, the yellow hair hiding his fingers. She had often seen him do this when he felt lazy; it was not a sign by which she could read a spiritual standstill, a quivering wreck of faith and passion. “I have to live a heap of my life alone,” the lounger went on. “Journey alone. Camp alone. Me and my mules. And I don’t propose to have thoughts a man should be ashamed of.” Lolita was throwing a cloth over the table and straightening it. “I’m twenty-five, and I’ve laid by no such thoughts yet. Church folks might say different.”
“It is ready,” said Lolita, finishing her preparations.
He looked up, and, seeing the cloth and the places set, pulled his chair to the table, and passively took the food she brought him. She moved about the room between shelves and fire, and, when she had served him, seated herself at leisure to begin her own supper. Uncle Ramon was a peon of some substance, doing business in towns and living comparatively well. Besides the shredded spiced stew of meat, there were several dishes for supper. Genesmere ate the meal deliberately, attending to his plate and cup, and Lolita was as silent as himself, only occasionally looking at him; and in time his thoughts came to the surface again in words. He turned and addressed Lolita in Mexican: “So, you see, you saved his life down there.”
She laid her fork down and gave a laugh, hard and harsh; and she said nothing, but waited for what next.
“You don’t believe that. You don’t know that. He knows that.”
She laughed again, more briefly.
“You can tell him so. From me.”
Replies seemed to struggle together on Lolita’s lips and hinder each other’s escaping.
“You lie!” This side issue in some manner set free the girl’s tongue, “I am not Spanish. I care nothing for Spaniards or what they may do. I am Mexican, and I waited to see you kill him. I wanted to watch his blood. But you! you listened to his false talk, and believed him, and let him go. I save his life? Go after him now! Do it with this knife, and tell him it is Lolita’s. But do not sit there and talk any more. I have had enough of men’s talk to-day. Enough, enough, enough!”
Genesmere remained in his chair, while she had risen to her feet. “I suppose,” he said, very slowly, “that folks like you folks can’t understand about love—not about the kind I mean.”
Lolita’s two hands clinched the edge of the table, and she called upon her gods. “Believe it, then! Believe it! And kill me, if that will make you contented. But do not talk any more. Yes, he told me that he loved me. Yes, I kissed him; I have kissed him hundreds of times, always, since before I can remember. And I had been laughing at him to-day, having nothing in my heart but you. All day it had rejoiced me to hear his folly and think of you, and think how little he knew, and how you would come soon. But your folly is worse. Kill me in this house to-night, and I will tell you, dying, that I love you, and that it is you who are the fool.”
She looked at her lover, and seeing his face and eyes she had sought to bring before her in the days that she had waited for him, she rushed to him.
“Lolita!” he whispered. “Lolita!”
But she could only sob as she felt his arms and his lips. And when presently he heard her voice again murmuring brokenly to him in the way that he knew and had said over in his mind and dwelt upon through the desert stages he had ridden, he trembled, and with savage triumph drew her close, and let his doubt and the thoughts that had chilled and changed him sink deep beneath the flood of this present rapture. “My life!” she said. “Toda mi vida! All my life!” Through the open door the air of the cañon blew cool into the little room overheated by the fire and the lamp, and in time they grew aware of the endless rustling of the trees, and went out and stood in the darkness together, until it ceased to be darkness, and their eyes could discern the near and distant shapes of their world. The sky was black and splendid, with four or five planets too bright for lesser stars to show, and the promontories of the keen mountains shone almost as in moonlight. A certain hill down towards the Tinaja and its slate ledge caught Genesmere’s eye, and Lolita felt him shudder, and she wound her arm more tightly about him.