A Prairie Infanta Part 2

"I want to hear from my father," she said. "Has he--written?" Her voice was wishful, indeed, and Jane colored.

"I guess he's been so busy he hasn't got round to it yet," she said, lightly.

"I thought he hadn't," said Lola, quickly. "I--didn't expect it quite yet. He hates to write." Her accent was sharp with anxiety as she added, "But of course he sends the--board-money for me--he would remember that?" Evidently she recalled the Senora Vigil's questions and doubts on this subject, for there was such intensity of apprehension in her look that Jane felt herself full of pain.

"Of course he would remember it, my dear!" she said, on the instant; she consoled her conscience by reflecting that there was no untruth in her words. Although Mr. Keene had sent never a word or sign to Aguilar, it was measurably certain that he remembered his obligations.

"It'd just about kill that child to find out the truth," thought Jane.

"She looks, anyhow, like she hadn't a friend on earth! I'm going to let her think the money comes as regular as clockwork! I d' know but I'm real glad he don't send it. Makes me feel closer to the little thing, somehow."

After a while the broken arm was p.r.o.nounced whole again, and the sling was taken off.

"You're all right now," said the doctor to Lola, "and you must run out-of-doors and get some Colorado tan on your cheeks. _Sabe?_ And eat more. Get up an appet.i.te. How do you say that in Spanish? _Tener buen diente_, eh? All right. See you do it."

Lola stood at his knee, solemn and mute. She took his jests with an air of formal courtesy, barely smiling. She had a queer little half-civilized look in the neat pigtails which Jane considered appropriate to her age, and which were so tightly braided as fairly to draw up the girl's eyebrows. The emerald _fajas_ had been laid by. To garland that viny strip in Lola's locks was beyond Jane's power.

"What a little icicle it is!" mused the doctor. "If I had taken a thorn from a dog's foot the creature would have been more grateful!"

Even as he was thinking this, he felt a sudden pressure upon his hand.

Lola had seized it and was kissing the big fingers pa.s.sionately, while she cried, "_Gracias! mil gracias, senor!_ You have made me well! When my papa comes he will bless you! He will pour gold over you from head to foot!"

"That's all right, Lola," laughed the doctor. "He'll have to thank Miss Jane more than me. She pulled you through. Have you thanked _her_ yet, Lola?"

Lola's face stiffened. "But for her I should not have been tramped by the cattle--I should have been safe in my father's wagon!" she thought.

"I--have not, but I will--soon," she said. "And your housekeeper, too, for the ice-cream, and other things."

Jane, in succeeding days, took high comfort in the fact that Lola seemed to like being out-of-doors, and apparently amused herself there much after the fashion of ordinary children. She had established herself over by the ditch, and Jane could see her fetching water in a can and mixing it with a queer kind of adobe which she got half-way up the hill. That Lola should be engaged with mud _casas_ was, indeed, hardly in accord with Jane's experience of the girl's dignity; but that she should be playing ever so foolishly in a slush of clay delighted Jane as being a healthful symptom.

"What you making down yonder, honey?" she ventured to ask.

"I am making nothing; I am finished," said Lola. "To-morrow you shall see my work." Jane felt taken aback. It had been work, then; not simple play. She awaited what should follow with curious interest.

Upon the next morning Lola ran off through the alfalfa rather excitedly. After a little she reappeared, walking slowly, with an air of importance. She carried something carefully before her, holding it above the reach of the alfalfa's s.n.a.t.c.hing green fingers.

It was a square pedestal of adobe, sun-baked hard as stone, upon which sat a queer adobe creature, with a lean body and a great bulbous head.

This personage showed the presence in his anatomy of an element of finely chopped straw. His slits of eyes were turned prayerfully upward. From his widely open mouth hung a thirsty mud tongue, and between his k.n.o.bby knees he held an empty bowl, toward the filling of which his whole expression seemed an invocation.

"He is for you," said Lola, beaming artistic gratification. "He is to show my thanks for your caring for me in my broken-bonedness. He is Tesuque, the rain-G.o.d. You can let your ditches fill with weeds, if you like. You won't need to irrigate your _vega_ any more. Tesuque will make showers come."

Jane trembled with surprised pleasure. The powers ascribed to Tesuque were hardly accountable for the gratification with which she received him.

"I'll value him as long as I live!" she exclaimed. "He--he's real handsome!"

"Not handsome," corrected Lola, with a tone of modest pride, "but _good_! He makes the rain come. In Taos are many Tesuques."

"I reckon it must rain considerable there," surmised Jane, not unnaturally.

Lola shook her head. "No. It's pretty dry--but it wouldn't rain at all, you see, if it wasn't for Tesuque!"

This logic was irresistible. Jane dwelt smilingly upon it as she set the rain-G.o.d on the mantel, with a crockery bowl of yellow daisies to maintain his state. Afterward, a dark, adder-like compunction glided through the flowery expanse of her joy in Tesuque, as she wondered if there was not something heathenish in his lordly enshrinement upon a Christian mantelpiece.

"Maybe he's an idol!" thought Jane. "Lola," she asked, perturbed, "you don't _pray_ to Tersookey, do you?" Lola looked horrified.

"Me? _Maria Santissima!_ I am of the Church! Tesuque is not to pray to.

I hope you have not been making your worship to him. It is like this, senora: You plant the seed and the leaf comes; you set out Tesuque and rain falls. It is quite simple."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'HE IS TESUQUE, THE RAIN-G.o.d.'"]

Jane rested in this easy and convincing philosophy. She saw the joke of Lola's advice to her not to misplace her devotions, and one day she repeated the story to the doctor, showing him the rain-G.o.d.

"Do you know," said the doctor, handling Tesuque, "that this thing is surprisingly well-modeled? The Mexicans can do anything with adobe, but this has something about it beyond the reach of most of them."

After this, a pleasanter atmosphere spread in Jane's dwelling. Lola often unbent to talk. Sometimes she sewed a little on the frocks and ap.r.o.ns, preparing for her school career. Oftener she worked in her roofless pottery by the ditch, where many a queer jug and vase and bowl, gaudy with ochre and Indian red, came into being and pa.s.sed early to dust again, for want of firing. Jane found these things engrossing.

She liked to sit and watch them grow under Lola's fingers, while the purple alfalfa flowers shed abroad sweet odors, and the ditch-water sang softly at her feet. As she sat thus one afternoon, Alejandro Vigil came running across the field, waving a letter.

"'Tis for you, Lolita!" he cried. "My father read the marks. It is from Cripple Creek!"

"Oh, give me! give me!" cried Lola, flinging down a mud dish.

Jane had taken the letter. "It's for me, dear," she said, beginning to open it. "I'll read it aloud--" She paused. Her face had a gray color.

Lola held out her hands in a pa.s.sion of joy and eagerness. "What does he say? Oh, hurry! Oh, let me have it!"

Jane suddenly crushed the letter, and her eyes were stern as she withdrew it resolutely from Lola's reaching fingers.

"No, Lola, no!" she said, in a sharp tone. "I--can't let you have this letter! I can't! I can't!"

A TRUE BENEFACTRESS

CHAPTER THREE

A TRUE BENEFACTRESS

Lola's breath was suspended in amazement. Indignation flashed from her eyes. She dropped her hands and Jane saw the fingers clench.

"It is my father's letter--and you keep it from me? You are cruel!"

said Lola, pa.s.sionately.

Jane's eyes, set on the ground, seemed to see there, in fiery type, the words of the paper in her grasp. Those scrawling lines, roaming from blot to blot across the soiled sheet, had communicated to Jane no pain of a personal sort. So far, indeed, as their trend took her on the score of feeling, she might even have found something satisfying in Mr.

Keene's news, since this was merely a statement of his financial disability. All along Jane had been dreading the hour when, instead of this frank disclosure of "hard luck," there should come to her a parcel of money. Not to have any money to send might conjecturally be distressing to Mr. Keene; but Jane felt that he would be able to endure his embarra.s.sment better than she herself any question of barter respecting Lola.