Children of the Desert Part 14

Of course Sylvia was connected with the affair, and in only one way. She was the sort of woman who might be expected to get her husband into trouble, and Fectnor was the kind of man who might easily appeal to her imagination. This was the common verdict; and the town concluded that it was an interesting affair--the more so because nearly all the details had to be left to the imagination.

As for Sylvia, the first direct result of her husband's gun-play was that a week or two after the affair happened, she had a caller--the wife of Jesus Mendoza.

She had not had any callers since her marriage. Socially she had been entirely unrecognized. The social stratum represented by the Mesquite Club, and that lower stratum identified with church "socials" and similar affairs, did not know of Sylvia's existence--had decided definitely never to know of her existence after she had walked down the aisle of the church to the strains of the Lohengrin march. Nevertheless, there had been that trip to the church, and the playing of the march; and this fact placed Sylvia considerably above certain obscure women in the town who were not under public condemnation, but whose status was even more hopeless--who were regarded as entirely negligible.

The wife of Jesus Mendoza was one of these. She was an American woman, married to a renegade Mexican who was notoriously evil. I have referred to Mendoza as a man who went about partly concealed in his own cloud of cigarette smoke, who looked at nothing in particular and who was an active politician of a sort. He had his place in the male activities of the town; but you wouldn't have known he had a wife from anything there was in his conversation or in his public appearances. n.o.body remembered ever to have seen the two together. She remained indoors in all sorts of weather save when she had marketing to do, and then she looked neither to left nor right. Her face was like a mask. She had been an unfortunate creature when Mendoza married her; and she was perhaps thankful to have even a low-caste Mexican for a husband, and a shelter, and money enough to pay the household expenses.

That her life could not have been entirely complete, even from her own way of thinking, was evidenced by the fact that at last she came to call on Sylvia in the house on the Quemado Road.

Sylvia received her with reticence and with a knowing look. She was not pleased that Mrs. Mendoza had decided to call. She realized just what her own status was in the eyes of this woman, who had a.s.sumed that she might be a welcome visitor.

But Sylvia's outlook upon life, as has been seen, was distorted in many ways; and she was destined to realize that she must form new conclusions as to this woman who had come to see her in her loneliness.

Mrs. Mendoza was tactful and kind. She a.s.sumed nothing, save that Sylvia was not very thoroughly acquainted in the town, and that as she had had her own house now for a month or two, she would expect people to be neighborly. She discussed the difficulties of housekeeping so far from the source of supplies. She was able, incidentally, to give Sylvia a number of valuable hints touching these difficulties. She discussed the subject of Mexican help without self-consciousness. During her call it developed that she was fond of music--that in fact she was (or had been) a musician. And for the first time since Sylvia's marriage there was music on the piano up in the boudoir.

Mrs. Mendoza played with a pa.s.sionateness which was quite out of keeping with her mask-like expression. It was like finding a pearl in an oyster, hearing her at the piano. She played certain airs from _Fra Diavolo_ so skilfully that she seemed to be letting bandits into the house; and when she saw that Sylvia was following with deep appreciation she pa.s.sed on to the _Tower Scene_, giving to the minor chords a quality of ma.s.siveness.

Her expression changed oddly. There was color in her cheeks and a stancher adjustment of the lines of her face. She suggested a good woman struggling through flames to achieve safety. When she played from _Il Trovatore_ you did not think of a conservatory, but of a prison.

She stopped after a time and the color swiftly receded from her cheeks.

"I'm afraid I've been rather in earnest," she said apologetically. "I haven't played on a good piano for quite a long time." She added, as if her remark might seem an appeal for pity, "the climate here injures a piano in a year or so. The fine sand, you know."

"You must come and use mine whenever you will," said Sylvia heartily. "I love it, though I've never cared to play myself."

"I wonder why?"

"Ah, I could scarcely explain. I've been too busy living. It has always seemed to me that music and pictures and books were for people who had been caught in an eddy and couldn't go on with the stream." She realized the tactlessness of this immediately, and added: "That's just a silly fancy. What I should have said, of course, is that I haven't the talent."

"Don't spoil it," remonstrated the other woman thoughtfully. "But you must remember that few of us can always go on with the stream."

"Sometimes you get caught in the whirlpools," said Sylvia, as they were going down the stairs, "and then you can't stop, even if you'd like to."

I doubt if either woman derived a great deal of benefit from this visit.

They might have become helpful friends under happier conditions; but neither had anything to offer the other save the white logic of untoward circ.u.mstances and defeat.

The wife of Jesus Mendoza did not know Sylvia well enough to perceive that a certain blitheness and faith had abandoned her, never to return.

Nevertheless, the fact of her visit has its place in this chronicle, since it had a cruel bearing upon a day which still lay in Sylvia's future.

Sylvia's caller went home; and, as it chanced, she never called again at the house on the Quemado Road. As for Sylvia, she did not speak to Harboro of her visitor. From his point of view, she thought, there would be nothing to be proud of in the fact that Mrs. Mendoza had called. And so Harboro was destined to go on to the end without knowing that there was any such person as the wife of Jesus Mendoza.

PART IV.

THE HORSE WITH THE GOLDEN DAPPLES.

CHAPTER XVII.

Two events which had a bearing upon Sylvia's destiny occurred at about this time. I am not sure which came first: the invitation to a celebration out at the Quemado settlement, or the arrival on the border of Runyon, the mounted inspector.

The coming of Runyon caused a distinct ripple in the social circles of the two border towns. He was well connected, it was known: he was a cousin to a congressman in the San Angelo district, and he had a brother in the army.

He was a sort of frontier Apollo; a man in his prime, of striking build--a dashing fellow. He had the physical strength, combined with neatness of lines, which characterized Buffalo Bill in his younger days. He was a blond of the desert type, with a shapely mustache the color of flax, with a ruddy skin finely tanned by sun and wind, and with deep blue eyes which flashed and sparkled under his flaxen brows. He was a manly appearing fellow, though there was a glamour about him which made prosaic folk suspicious.

He rode a dun horse with golden dapples--a slim, proud thing which suited Runyon in every detail. When you saw him mounted you thought of a parade; you wondered where the rest of it was--the supernumerary complement.

The man was also characterized by the male contingent of the border as a "dresser." He was always immaculately clad, despite the exposure to which his work subjected him. He seemed to have an artist's sense of color effects. Everything he put on was not only faultless in itself, but it seemed specially designed and made for him. In the set of his sombrero and the style of his spurs he knew how to suggest rakishness without quite achieving it; and when he permitted his spirited horse to give way to its wayward or playful moods there was something just a little sinister in his mirth. He looked as much at home in conventional clothes as in his inspector's outfit, and he immediately became a social favorite on both sides of the river. It developed that he could sing quite amazingly. His voice was high-pitched, but there was power and fire in it. He sang easily and he loved to sing. His songs were the light-opera favorites, the fame of which reached the border from New York and London, and even Vienna. And when there was difficulty about getting the accompaniments played he took his place unaffectedly at the piano and played them himself.

His name began to appear regularly in the Eagle Pa.s.s _Guide_ in connection with social events; and he was not merely mentioned as "among those present," but there was always something about his skill as a musician.

Of course Sylvia was destined to see him sooner or later, though she stayed at home with almost morbid fidelity to a resolution she had made.

He rode out the Quemado Road one matchless December day when the very air would have seemed sufficient to produce flowers without calling the ungracious desert into service. Sylvia sat in her boudoir by an open window and watched him approach. She immediately guessed that it was Runyon. The remarkable manner in which he had conquered the town had made him an occasional subject for comment between Sylvia and Harboro, and he had described the man to her.

Sylvia thought that the rider and his horse, with the sun on the man's flashing blue eyes and the horse's golden dapples, const.i.tuted the prettiest picture she had ever seen. Never before had she observed a man who sat his horse with such an air of gallantry.

And as she regarded him appraisingly he glanced up at her, and there was the slightest indication of pleased surprise in his glance. She withdrew from the window; but when she reckoned that he was well past the house she looked after him. He was looking back, and their eyes met again.

It is decidedly contrary to my conviction that either Sylvia or Runyon consciously paved the way for future mischief when they indulged in that second glance at each other. He was the sort of man who might have attracted a second glance anywhere, and he would have been a poor fellow if he had not considered Sylvia a sight worth turning his head for.

Nevertheless, Sylvia regretted that second glance. It had an effect upon her heart which was far from soothing; and when she realized that her heart seemed suddenly to hurt her, her conscience followed suit and hurt her too. She closed the window righteously; though she was careful not to do so until she felt sure that Runyon was beyond sight and hearing.

And then there came to Harboro the invitation out to the Quemado. The belle of the settlement, a Mexican girl famed for her goodness and beauty, was to be married to one of the Wayne brothers, ranchers on an immense scale. The older of the two brothers was a conventional fellow enough, with an American wife and a large family; but the younger brother was known far and wide as a good-natured, pleasure-pursuing man who counted every individual in Maverick County, Mexican and American alike, his friend. It seemed that he was planning to settle down now, and he had won the heart of a girl who seemed destined to make an admirable mate for one of his nature-loving type, though his brother had mildly opposed the idea of a Mexican girl as a member of the family.

The wedding was to be in the fashion of the bride's race. It was to be an affair of some twenty-four hours' duration, counting the dancing and feasting, and it was to take place in a sort of stockade which served the Quemado settlement in lieu of a town hall or a public building of any kind.

Invitations had been practically unlimited in number. There was to be accommodation for hundreds. Many musicians had been engaged, and there was to be a mountain of viands, a flood of beverages. It was to be the sort of affair--democratic and broadly hospitable--which any honest man might have enjoyed for an hour or so, at least; and it was in that category of events which drew sightseers from a considerable distance. Doubtless there would be casual guests from Spofford (the nearest railroad point on the Southern Pacific) and from Piedras Negras, as well as from Eagle Pa.s.s and the remote corners of Maverick County.

Harboro's invitation had come to him through one of his fellow employees in the railroad offices--a Mexican who had spent four years in an American university, and who was universally respected for his urbane manner and kind heart. Valdez, his name was. He had heartily invited Harboro to go to the wedding with him as his guest; and when he saw traces of some sort of difficulty in Harboro's manner, he suggested, with the ready _simpata_ of his race, that doubtless there was a Mrs. Harboro also, and that he hoped Mrs. Harboro, too, would honor him by accepting his invitation. He promised that the affair would be enjoyable; that it would afford an interesting study of a people whose social customs still included certain pleasures which dated back to the Cortez invasion, as well as many of the latest American diversions.

Harboro tactfully sought for more definite details; and when he gathered that the affair would be too immense to be at all formal--that there would be introductions only so far as separate groups of persons were concerned, and that guests would be expected to come and go with perfect freedom, he accepted the invitation gratefully. He had not forgotten the slight which the two towns had put upon him and Sylvia, and he was not willing to subject himself to snubs from people who had behaved badly. But he realized that it was necessary for Sylvia to see people, to get away from the house occasionally, to know other society than his own.

In truth, Harboro had been very carefully taking account of Sylvia's needs. It seemed to him that she had not been really herself since that Sunday morning when he had had to place his life in jeopardy. In a way, she seemed to love him more pa.s.sionately than ever before; but not so light-heartedly, so gladly. Some elfin quality in her nature was gone, and Harboro would gladly have brought it back again. She had listless moods; and sometimes as they sat together he surprised a strange look in her eyes. She seemed to be very far away from him; and he had on these occasions the dark thought that even the substance of her body was gone, too--that if he should touch her she would vanish in a cloud of dust, like that woman in _Archibald Malmaison_, after she had remained behind the secret panel, undiscovered, for a generation.

And so Harboro decided that he and Sylvia would go to the big affair at the Quemado.

CHAPTER XVIII.

There was an atmosphere of happiness and bustle in the house when the night of the outing came. Harboro easily managed a half-holiday (it was a Sat.u.r.day), and he had ample time to make careful selection of horses for Sylvia and himself at an Eagle Pa.s.s stable. He would have preferred a carriage, but Sylvia had a.s.sumed that they would ride, and she plainly preferred that mode of travel. She had been an excellent horsewoman in the old San Antonio days.

Old Antonia was drawn out of her almost trance-like introspection. The young seora was excited, as a child might have been, at the prospect of a long ride through the chaparral, and she must not be disappointed. She had fashioned a riding-habit and a very charming little jacket, and to these the old woman made an addition of her own--a wonderful _rebozo_. She brought it forth from among her own possessions and offered it affectionately.

"But shall I need it?" asked Sylvia.

Very surely she might, she was a.s.sured. She would not wish to dance in her riding costume, certainly. And it might turn chilly after nightfall. She would find that other young women had such garments to protect them. And this particular _rebozo_ was quite wonderful. She pointed out its wonderful qualities. It was of so delicate a weave that it might have been thrust into a man's pocket; yet, unfolded, it proved to be of the dimensions of a blanket. And there was warmth in it. She folded it neatly and explained how it might be tied to the pommel of the saddle. It would not be in the way.

Sylvia affected much grat.i.tude for such kindness and foresight, though she thought it unlikely that she would need a wrap of any sort.

There was an early supper, Antonia contributing a quite unprecedented alacrity; and then there was a cheerful call from the road. The horses had been brought.

Sylvia ran out to inspect them; and Harboro, following, was not a little amazed to perceive how important a matter she considered the sort of horses he had engaged. Horses were not a mere medium of travel to Sylvia; they were persons in the drama, and it was highly important that they should fit into the various romantic demands of the occasion. Harboro had stipulated that they should be safe horses, of good appearance; and the boy from the stable, who had brought them, regarded them with beaming eyes when Harboro examined them. The boy evidently looked at the affair much as Sylvia did--as if the selection of the horse was far more important than the determining of a destination.