Over the Border Part 25

The concrete fact behind its bloom emerged from mists of procrastination and stared her boldly in the face. Its reflection set such misery in her eyes that, without understanding, Gordon's sulks gave place to pity.

Bull, who knew even less, was moved to send a _mozo_ with a note to the widow.

Straight to the point the epistle ran:

Dear Ma'am,-The young man, he's a-moping like a moulting chicken an' Miss Lee's that peaked and pale and down-hearted you'd hardly know her. T'other day a _mozo_ brought her some sort of a package from Ramon, and ever since she's looked wild-eyed and scared as a canary in fear of a cat. There's something queer going on. It wouldn't take you more'n a minute to find it out, and you owe us about a dozen visits, anyway. Couldn't you take a day off and come?

She came, of course, the good, kind soul, with Betty, under guard of Terrubio and the bandit reputation which gained so much from his weird eyes. The G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses willed it that they fell in with Gordon returning to the _hacienda_ at the close of his day's work, and the widow seized the opportunity like a skilful general. After permitting Betty and Terrubio to ride on beyond earshot over the slopes that were dyed a glowing apricot by the low sun, she opened on Gordon.

"Now tell me all about it, young man."

He looked at her, surprised, then laughed. "You mean all that I would have said if I hadn't been ordered home that morning? All right. Of course I don't have to tell you that I love you madly, and if it wasn't for the fact that Bull would wring my neck, I should propose at once.

Really-"

"Nice boy!" She laughed merrily. "To comfort your poor mother. It was simply disgraceful the way you flirted with me, almost compromised me with my own offspring. 'I was just ashamed of your dreadful behavior, mama,' Betty told me, afterward, 'trying to take poor Lee's beau from her.' Nevertheless, I found it very encouraging."

"My mother?" He achieved an excellent example of that species of cachinnation known as the "horse laugh." Then, with sincerity of accent and feeling that caused her a little blush, he ran on: "My mother, madam, is more than twenty-eight. Yes, I said twenty-eight. Add to that eyes as clear and young as-"

"Make it Lee's."

"As Betty's. A fine, soft skin, pretty nose, figure-um! just right.

Why-"

"Yes! yes!" She held up her hand, laughing. "But we mustn't waste time.

You know I'm on your side. Tell me-what happened?"

"That's easy-she's engaged herself to Ramon."

"What?" Her shriek of horror and surprise caused Betty and Terrubio to look back. Her next question showed the keenness of her intuition. "Why, whatever did _you_ do to her?"

He told-of his anger, jealousy, pique, attempt to soothe his ruffled vanity by flirting with Felicia. He told all with candor and humorous insight into his own feelings that robbed the narrative of conceit. He told even of the kiss and that Lee had seen it. "Though I don't see how that could have anything to do with her engagement, for she announced it the next second."

"She sent him off within the next hour-with only a kiss of her hand-hasn't seen him since-nor communicated with him till the other day-has looked like a frightened bird ever since." She told off the items with amused contempt. "How stupid men are! Why, it is plain as day. He asked her to marry him, yes, on the way. How could she escape after the way she had flirted? But she had either refused or held him off. But when she saw you kiss-"

"My G.o.d!" It burst on him. "What a fool I am! Why did I-"

"Don't blame, yourself. She was more in fault. The question is-not what is done, but what to do."

"I had thought, at first, of quitting this to join Valles. It would be lots of fun and I was so darned mad-"

"And leave _her_ to _him_?" She looked a little scornful. "Why-"

But he cut in. "You bet I won't! He'll never marry her-if I have to carry her off."

"And I'd help you do it," she warmly declared. "At present Ramon is all right, and if you could put up, like preserves, so he'd keep, it wouldn't be so bad. Yes, he's all right-but, so are the young of any kind, a lamb or kid, little frog, tiny snake, and there's nothing cuter in the whole world than a baby pig. But after it grows up-good Lord deliver us!

"And it's the same with Mexicans. They are the prettiest babies; nice young men. Ramon, with his fine color and wonderful eyes, is too handsome to live just now. But after a while he'll grow stout and lazy from over-feeding and acquire pimples and blotches till his face looks like a scorched hide. Right now he's so romantic he'd tw.a.n.g a guitar all night under Lee's window. After a while she wouldn't be able to sleep for his snores. Now he'd fly at her bidding. Later, she'd fly at his.

She would live behind bars while she was young; go without love in her middle age, be tyrannized and bulldozed all the time."

"But do you think she would _really_ do it?"

"Indeed, yes! She's highly idealistic, and was trained by her father in the old ideas. Now that she has given her word, it will take wild horses to pull her from it-or wild men."

After a sidelong glance that gave her the hard glint of his eyes above the firm mouth, set jaw, she went on, with a little satisfied nod: "Now listen! Ramon will be easier to handle. Being Mexican, he's sensitive as a tarantula, irritable as a scorpion, jealous as a cat. Now that she's promised, he will look upon her as his, body and soul, and if her glance so much as strays in any one else's direction, he'll be ready to kill.

It ought to be quite easy to provoke him to the point where he will either break the engagement or give her cause. In other words, you must force him to play your hand."

She continued, with a little deprecatory laugh: "I know it's a low-down trick, but it may stave off something worse. Before he would let Lee marry Ramon, I feel sure Mr. Perrin would kill him."

A mischievous grin broke up Gordon's grimness. "So we are not altogether disinterested. We could never stand to see Bull get in bad."

She laughed softly, happily, looking away, and lapsed into silence which endured while they rode up and over the last slope that laid the _hacienda_ at their feet.

Its walls and courts, _patio_, painted adobes, lay, a small city of gold magnificently blazoned by the rich red brush of the setting sun. The glossy crests of the shading cottonwoods flamed a deep apricot under a sky that spread its glories of saffron, and cinnabar purple, and umber, down over the horizon. All about them the pastures laid an undulating carpet, violet in the hollows, crimson on the hills. From the stubby chimneys soft smoke pennons trailed away till lost in the smoldering dusk of the east. Up through the clear air came a soft cooing of woman voices broken by laughter, low, sweet, infinitely wild.

The widow lowered her voice in harmony with the peace of it all. "It is a great prize."

He nodded. "It's beautiful, but-I'd love her as much in rags."

Noting the honest eyes, the widow believed, yet could not refrain from teasing. "Yet-a week ago you hardly gave her a thought."

He looked at her in naive wonder. "Isn't it queer-how sudden it gets you?"

She nodded. "That's the beauty of it."

XXII: LEE, TOO, IS CONFESSED

As, in the seclusion of Lee's bedroom that night, she and the widow sat side by side, talking at each other in the wide mirror while making their night toilets, a "movie-man" would have given his head to reproduce the scene with its witcheries in the way of unbound hair, filmy white, glimpses of polished shoulders. But in his absence these may be left where they belong-behind the secure guard of Lee's oaken door. Sufficient for the present is their conversation.

"So we've engaged ourself, have we?" As with Gordon, Mrs. Mills went straight to the bat.

"Why-" Pausing with comb and one yellow curl held in midair, Lee looked her utter surprise at the smiling face in the gla.s.s. "Mary Mills!

_whoever_ told you?"

"This and these would be enough." The widow touched the girl's pale cheeks and shadowed eyes. "But I caught your young man, coming in, and made him confess. So we got mad-because he kissed another girl, and took it out of him by engaging ourself on the spot? Oh, you little fool!"

Dropping the curl, Lee straightened and stiffened till she looked in the filmy nightrobe like a cold and cla.s.sic marble. "If it had been Phyllis or Phbe Lovell, or any other nice girl, I wouldn't have cared. But-a peona."

"Well, what of it?" a.s.sured, now, of the truth of her surmises, the widow went confidently forward. "She's mighty pretty."

"But a _peona_! And you know _her_."

"Yes, and I know _him_-better than you do. Now look here, my dear-"

Followed a little lecture on the creature, Man, that showed she had profited by her married experience. "A man is a _man_ and there's no sense in trying to have him anything else. When a girl loves, she excludes, for the time at least, all others from her life. But a man-while he may love one girl with all his strength, he can still see beauty in others. Nature made him that way and we have simply got to stand for it. Now if Gordon had been ten years older, I'd have allowed you real reason. After thirty a man's kisses mean something. But at Gordon's age they are thistledown and light as air, belong to vanity rather than love. A young fellow is so proud of having kissed a pretty girl that he swells up like a turkey gobbler and struts in his self-esteem without thought for anything else. Then, you, yourself, are mostly to blame. Why-"

Next a little lecture on the sin of flirting, with appropriate personal applications which were, however, interrupted by the person. "_You_ didn't flirt with _him_, of course."