Heart of the Sunset

by Beach, Rex Ellingwood

  "He must have meant it." Alaire spoke with a conviction she did not entirely feel. "Father O'Malley aroused the finer side of his nature."

  "Perhaps," agreed the priest. "Somewhere in him there is a fear of God."

  But Dave was skeptical. "More likely a fear of the gringo Government," said he. "Longorio is a four-flusher. When he realized he was licked he tried to save his face by a grandstand play. He didn't want to let us go."

  "Then what is to prevent him from—well, from having us followed?"

  Alaire inquired.

  "Nothing," Dave told her.

  As they climbed the bank and rode onward into the night she said: "No matter what happens, dear, I shall be happy, for at last one of my dreams has come true." He reached out and patted her. "You've no idea what a coward I was until you came. But the moment I saw you all my fears vanished. I was like a lost child who suddenly sees her father; in your arms I felt perfectly safe, for the first time in all my life, I think. I—I couldn't bear to go on without you, after this."

  Dave found nothing to say; they rode along side by side for a time in a great contentment that required no speech. Then Alaire asked:

  "Dear, have you considered how we—are going to explain our marriage?"

  "Won't the circumstances explain it?"

  "Perhaps. And yet—It seems ages since I learned—what happened to Ed, but in reality it's only a few hours. Won't people talk?"

  Dave caught at the suggestion. "I see. Then let's keep it secret for the present. I promise not to—act like a husband."

  With a little reckless laugh she confessed, "I—I'm afraid I'll find it difficult to be conventional."

  "My wife!" he cried in sharp agony. Leaning far out, he encircled her with his arm; then, half lifting her from her saddle, he crushed his lips to hers. It was his first display of emotion since Father O'Malley had united them.

  There were few villages along the road they followed, and because of the lateness of the hour all were dark, hence the party passed through without exciting attention except from an occasional wakeful dog. But as morning came and the east began to glow Dave told the priest:

  "We've got to hide out during the day or we'll get into trouble.

  Besides, these women must be getting hungry."

  "I fear there is something feminine about me," confessed the little man. "I'm famished, too."

  At the next rancho they came to they applied for shelter, but were denied; in fact, the owner cursed them so roundly for being Americans that they were glad to ride onward. A mile or two farther along they met a cart the driver of which refused to answer their greetings. As they passed out of his sight they saw that he had halted his lean oxen and was staring after them curiously. Later, when the sun was well up and the world had fully awakened, they descried a mounted man, evidently a cowboy, riding through the chaparral. He saw them, too, and came toward the road, but after a brief scrutiny he whirled his horse and galloped off through the cactus, shouting something over his shoulder.

  "This won't do," O'Malley declared, uneasily. "I don't like the actions of these people. Let me appeal to the next person we meet. I can't believe they all hate us."

  Soon they came to a rise in the road, and from the crest of this elevation beheld ahead of them a small village of white houses shining from the shelter of a grove. The rancheria was perhaps two miles away, and galloping toward it was the vaquero who had challenged them.

  "That's the Rio Negro crossing," Dave announced. Then spying a little house squatting a short distance back from the road, he said: "We'd better try yonder. If they turn us down we'll have to take to the brush."

  O'Malley agreed. "Yes, and we have no time to lose. That horseman is going to rouse the town. I'm afraid we're—in for it."

  Dave nodded silently.

  Leaving the beaten path, the refugees threaded their way through cactus and sage to a gate, entering which they approached the straw-thatched jacal they had seen. A naked boy baby watched them draw near, then scuttled for shelter, piping an alarm. A man appeared from somewhere, at sight of whom the priest rode forward with a pleasant greeting. But the fellow was unfriendly. His wife, too, emerged from the dwelling and joined her husband in warning Father O'Malley away.

  "Let me try," Alaire begged, and spurred her horse up to the group. She smiled down at the country people, saying: "We have traveled a long way, and we're tired and hungry. Won't you give us something to eat? We'll pay you well for your trouble."

  The man demurred sullenly, and began a refusal; but his wife, after a wondering scrutiny, interrupted him with a cry. Rushing forward, she took the edge of Alaire's skirt in her hands and kissed it.

  "God be praised! A miracle!" she exclaimed. "Juan, don't you see? It is the beautiful señora for whom we pray every night of our lives. On your knees, shameless one! It is she who delivered you from the prison."

  Juan stared unbelievingly, then his face changed; his teeth flashed in a smile, and, sweeping his hat from his head, he, too, approached Alaire.

  "It is! señora, I am Juan Garcia, whom you saved, and this is Inez," he declared. "Heaven bless you and forgive me."

  "Now I know you," Alaire laughed, and slipped down from her saddle. "This is a happy meeting. So! You live here, and that was little Juan who ran away as if we were going to eat him. Well, we are hungry, but not hungry enough to devour Juanito."

  Turning to her companions, she explained the circumstances of her first meeting with these good people, and as she talked the Garcias broke in joyfully, adding their own account of her goodness.

  "We've fallen among friends," Alaire told Dave and Father O'Malley.

  "They will let us rest here, I am sure."

  Husband and wife agreed in one voice. In fact, they were overjoyed at an opportunity of serving her; and little Juan, his suspicions partially allayed, issued from hiding and waddled forward to take part in the welcome.

  Shamefacedly the elder Garcia explained his inhospitable reception of the travelers. "We hear the gringos are coming to kill us and take our farms. Everybody is badly frightened. We are driving our herds away and hiding what we can. Yesterday at the big Obispo ranch our people shot two Americans and burned some of their houses. They intend to kill all the Americans they find, so you'd better be careful. Just now a fellow rode up shouting that you were coming, but of course I didn't know—"

  "Yes, of course. We're trying to reach the border," Father O'Malley told him. "Will you hide us here until we can go on?"

  Juan courtesied respectfully to the priest. "My house is yours, Father."

  "Can you take care of our horses, too, and—give us a place to sleep?" Dave asked. His eyes were heavy; he had been almost constantly in the saddle since leaving Jonesville, and now could barely keep himself awake.

  "Trust me," the Mexican assured them, confidently. "If somebody comes

  I'll send them away. Oh, I can lie with the best of them."

  The Garcias were not ordinary people, and they lived in rather good circumstances for country folk. There were three rooms to their little house, all of which were reasonably clean. The food that Inez set before her guests, too, was excellent if scanty.

  Juanito, taking the cue from his parents, flung himself whole-heartedly into the task of entertainment, and since Alaire met his advances halfway he began, before long, to look upon her with particular favor. Once they had thoroughly made friends, he showered her with the most flattering attentions. His shyness, it seemed, was but a pretense—at heart he was a bold and enterprising fellow—and so, as a mark of his admiration, he presented her with all his personal treasures. First he fetched and laid in her lap a cigar-box wagon with wooden wheels—evidently the handiwork of his father. Then he gave her, one by one, a highly prized blue bottle, a rusty Mexican spur, and the ruins of what had been a splendid clasp knife. There were no blades in the knife, but he showed her how to peep through a tiny hole in the handle, where was concealed the picture of a dashing Spanish bullfighter. The
appreciation which these gifts evoked intoxicated the little man and roused him to a very madness of generosity. He pattered away and returned shortly, staggering and grunting under the weight of another and a still greater offering. It was a dog—a patient, hungry dog with very little hair. The animal was alive with fleas—it scratched absent-mindedly with one hind paw, even while Juanito strangled it against his naked breast—but it was the apple of its owner's eye, and when Inez unfeelingly banished it from the house Juanito began to squall lustily. Nor could he be conciliated until Alaire took him upon her knee and told him about another boy, of precisely his own age and size, who planted a magic bean in his mother's dooryard, which grew up and up until it reached clear to the sky, where a giant lived. Juanito Garcia had never heard the like. He was spellbound with delight; he held his breath in ecstasy; only his toes moved, and they wriggled like ten fat, brown tadpoles.

  In the midst of this recital Garcia senior appeared in the door with a warning.

  "Conceal yourselves," he said, quickly. "Some of our neighbors are coming this way." Inez led her guests into the bedchamber, a bare room with a dirt floor, from the window of which they watched Juan go to meet a group of horsemen. Inez went out, too, and joined in the parley. Then, after a time, the riders galloped away.

  When Alaire, having watched the party out of sight, turned from the window she found that Dave had collapsed upon a chair and was sleeping, his limbs relaxed, his body sagging.

  "Poor fellow, he's done up," Father O'Malley exclaimed.

  "Yes; he hasn't slept for days," she whispered. "Help me." With the assistance of Dolores they succeeded in lifting Dave to the bed, but he half roused himself. "Lie down, dear," Alaire told him. "Close your eyes for a few minutes. We're safe now."

  "Somebody has to keep watch," he muttered, thickly, and tried to fight off his fatigue. But he was like a drunken man.

  "I'm not sleepy; I'll stand guard," the priest volunteered, and, disregarding further protest, he helped Alaire remove Dave's coat.

  Seeing that the bed was nothing more than a board platform covered with straw matting, Alaire folded the garment for a pillow; as she did so a handful of soiled, frayed letters spilled out upon the floor.

  "Rest now, while you have a chance," she begged of her husband. "Just for a little while."

  "All right," he agreed. "Call me in—an hour. Couldn't sleep—wasn't time." He shook off his weariness and smiled at his wife, while his eyes filmed with some emotion. "There is something I ought to tell you, but—I can't now—not now. Too sleepy." His head drooped again; she forced him back; he stretched himself out with a sigh, and was asleep almost instantly.

  Alaire motioned the others out of the room, then stood looking down at the man into whose keeping she had given her life. As she looked her face became radiant. Dave was unkempt, unshaven, dirty, but to her he was of a godlike beauty, and the knowledge that he was hers to comfort and guard was strangely thrilling. Her love for Ed, even that first love of her girlhood, had been nothing like this. How could it have been like this? she asked herself. How could she have loved deeply when, at the time, her own nature lacked depth? Experience had broadened her, and suffering had uncovered depths in her being which nothing else had had the power to uncover. Stooping, she kissed Dave softly, then let her cheek rest against his. Her man! Her man! She found herself whispering the words.

  Her eyes were wet, but there was a smile upon her lips when she gathered up the letters which had dropped from her husband's pocket. She wondered, with a little jealous twinge, who could be writing to him. It seemed to her that she owned him now, and that she could not bear to share him with any other. She studied the inscriptions with a frown, noticing as she did so that several of the envelopes were unopened—either Dave was careless about such things or else he had had no leisure in which to read his mail. One letter was longer and heavier than the rest, and its covering, sweat-stained and worn at the edges, came apart in her hands, exposing several pages of type-writing in the Spanish language. The opening words challenged her attention.

  In the name of God, Amen,

  Alaire read. Involuntarily her eye followed the next line:

  Know all men by this public instrument that I, Maria Joséfa Law, of this vicinity—

  Alaire started, Who, she asked herself, was Maria Joséfa Law? Dave had no sisters; no female relatives whatever, so far as she knew. She glanced at the sleeping man and then back at the writing.

  —finding myself seriously ill in bed, but with sound judgment, full memory and understanding, believing in the ineffable mysteries of the Holy Trinity, three distinct persons in one God, in essence, and in the other mysteries acknowledged by our Mother, the Church—

  So! This was a will—one of those queer Spanish documents of which Alaire had heard—but who was Maria Joséfa Law? Alaire scanned the sheets curiously, and on the reverse side of the last one discovered a few lines, also in Spanish, but scrawled in pencil. They read:

  MY DEAR NEPHEW,—Here is the copy of your mother's will that I told you about. At the time of her death she was not possessed of the property mentioned herein, and so the original document was never filed for record, but came to me along with certain family possessions of small value. It seems to contain the information you desire.

  Y'rs aff'ly,

  FRANCISCO RAMIREZ.

  The will of Dave's mother! Then Maria Joséfa Law was that poor woman regarding whose tragic end Judge Ellsworth had spoken so peculiarly. Alaire felt not a little curiosity to know more about the mother of the man whose name she had taken. Accordingly, after a moment of debate with herself, she sat down to translate the instrument. Surely Dave would not object if she occupied herself thus while he slept.

  The document had evidently been drawn in the strictest form, doubtless by some local priest, for it ran:

  First: I commend my soul to the Supreme Being who from nothing formed it, and my body I order returned to earth, and which, as soon as it shall become a corpse, it is my wish shall be shrouded with a blue habit in resemblance to those used by the monks of our Seraphic Father, St. Francis; to be interred with high mass, without pomp—

  Alaire mused with a certain reverent pleasure that Dave's mother had been a devout woman.

  Second: I declare to have, in the possession of my husband, Franklin Law, three horses, with splendid equipment of saddles and bridles, which are to be sold and the proceeds applied to masses for the benefit of my soul. I so declare, that it may appear.

  Third: I declare to owe to Mrs. Guillelmo Perez about twenty dollars, to be ascertained by what she may have noted in her book of accounts. So I declare, that this debt may be paid as I have ordered.

  Fourth: In just remuneration for the services of my cousin, Margarita

  Ramirez, I bequeath and donate a silver tray which weighs one hundred

  ounces, seven breeding cows, and four fine linen and lace tablecloths.

  So I declare, that it may appear.

  Fifth: I bequeath to my adopted son, David, offspring of the unfortunate American woman who died in my house at Escovedo, the share of land—

  Alaire re-read this paragraph wonderingly, then let the document fall into her lap. So Dave was an adopted son, and not actually the child of this woman, Maria Joséfa Law. She wondered if he knew it, and, if so, why he hadn't told her? But, after all, what difference did it make who or what he was? He was hers to love and to comfort, hers to cherish and to serve.

  For a long time she sat gazing at him tenderly; then she tiptoed out and delighted the naked Garcia baby by taking him in her arms and hugging him. Inez thought the beautiful señora's voice was like the music of birds.

  It was growing dark when Dave was awakened by cool hands upon his face and by soft lips upon his. He opened his eyes to find Alaire bending over him.

  "You must get up," she smiled. "It is nearly time to go, and Inez is cooking our supper."

  He reached up and took her in his arms. She lay upon his breast, thrilling
happily with her nearness to him, and they remained so for a while, whispering now and then, trying ineffectually to voice the thoughts that needed no expression.

  "Why did you let me sleep so long?" he asked her, reproachfully.

  "Oh, I've been napping there in that chair, where I could keep one eye on you. I'm terribly selfish; I can't bear to lose one minute." After a while she said: "I've made a discovery. Father O'Malley snores dreadfully! Juanito never heard anything like it, and it frightened him nearly to death. He says the Father must be a very fierce man to growl so loudly. He says, too, that he likes me much better than his mother."

  It seemed to Dave that the bliss of this awakening and the sweet intimacy of this one moment more than rewarded him for all he had gone through, and paid him for any unhappiness the future might hold in store.

  He felt called upon to tell Alaire the truth about himself; but with her in his arms he had no strength of purpose; her every endearment made him the more aware of his weakness. Again he asked himself when and how he could bear to tell her? Not now. Certainly not now when she was trembling under his caresses.

  "I've been busy, too," she was saying. "I sent Juan to the village to learn the news, and it's not very nice. It's good we stopped here. He says Nuevo Pueblo has been destroyed, and the Federal forces are all moving south, away from the border. So our troubles aren't over yet. We must reach the river tonight."

  "Yes, by all means."

  "Juan is going with us as guide."

  "You arranged everything while I snoozed, eh? I'm ashamed of myself."

  Alaire nodded, then pretended to frown darkly. "You ought to be," she told him. "While you were asleep I read your mail and—"

  "My mail?" Dave was puzzled.

  "Exactly. Have you forgotten that your pockets were full of unopened letters?"

  "Oh, those! They came just as I was leaving Jonesville, and I haven't thought of them since. You know, I haven't had my clothes off."