Children of the Desert Part 16

Happiness radiated from her, and she added to the warmth of every heart that came within her influence.

Harboro watched her with wonder. She was like a flame; but he saw her as a sacred flame.

CHAPTER XX.

Sylvia was resting. She had not danced to her heart's content, but she had become weary, and she threw Antonia's _rebozo_ over her shoulders and leaned back in her seat. For the moment Harboro and Valdez and Wayne were grouped near her, standing. The girl Wayne was to marry the next day had made her formal appearance now and was the centre of attention. She was dancing with one after another, equally gracious toward all.

Then Sylvia heard Valdez and Wayne cry out simultaneously:

"Runyon!"

And then both men hurried away toward the entrance to the stockade.

Sylvia drew her wrap more snugly about her. "Runyon!" she repeated to herself. She closed her eyes as if she were pondering--or recuperating.

And she knew that from the beginning she had hoped that Runyon would appear.

"It's that inspector fellow," explained Harboro, without looking at her.

His tone was not at all contemptuous, though there was a note of amus.e.m.e.nt in it. "He seems a sort of Prince Charming that everybody takes a liking to." Wayne and Valdez were already returning, with Runyon between them.

They pretended to lead him captive and his face radiated merriment and good nature. He walked with the elasticity of a feline creature; he carried his body as if it were the depository of precious jewels. Never was there a man to whom nature had been kinder--nor any man who was more graciously proud of what nature had done for him. For the occasion he was dressed in a suit of fawn-colored corduroy which fitted him as the rind fits the apple.

"Just a little too much so," Harboro was thinking, ambiguously enough, certainly, as Runyon was brought before him and Sylvia. Runyon acknowledged the introduction with a cheerful urbanity which was quite without discrimination as between Harboro and Sylvia. Quite impartially he bestowed a flashing smile upon both the man and the woman. And Harboro began vaguely to understand. Runyon was popular, not because he was a particularly good fellow, but because he was so supremely cheerful. And he seemed entirely harmless, despite the glamour of him. After all, he was not a mere male coquette. He was in love with the world, with life.

Wayne was reproaching him for not having come sooner. He should have been there for the beginning, he said.

And Runyon's response was characteristic enough, perhaps: "Everything is always beginning."

There was gay laughter at this, though the meaning of it must have been obscure to all save Sylvia. The words sounded like a song to her. It was a song she had wished to sing herself. But she was reflecting, despite her joy in the saying: "No, everything is always ending."

Runyon was borne away like a conqueror. He mingled with this group and that. His presence was like a stimulant. His musical voice penetrated everywhere; his laughter arose now and again. He did not look back toward Sylvia. She had the strange feeling that even yet they had not met--they had not met, yet had known each other always. He ignored her, she felt, as one ignores the best friend, the oldest a.s.sociate, on the ground that no explanations are necessary, no misunderstanding possible.

Harboro sat down beside Sylvia. When he spoke there was a note of easy raillery in his voice. "They're getting him to sing," he said, and Sylvia, bringing her thoughts back from immeasurable distances, realized that the dancing s.p.a.ce had been cleared, and that the musicians had stopped playing and were engaged in a low-spoken conference with Runyon. He nodded toward them approvingly and then stepped out into the open, a little distance from them.

The very sky listened; the desert became dumb. The orchestra played a prelude and then Runyon began to sing. The words came clear and resonant:

"By the blue Alsatian mountains Dwelt a maiden young and fair...."

Runyon sang marvellously. Although he was accustomed to the confines of drawing-rooms with low ceilings, he seemed quite at home on this earthen floor of the desert, with the moon sinking regretfully beyond the top of the stockade. He was perfectly at ease. His hands hung so naturally by his sides that they seemed invisible.

"But the blue Alsatian mountains Seem to watch and wait alway."

The song of a woman alone, and then another, "A Warrior Bold," and then "Alice, Where Art Thou?" And finally "Juanita." They were songs his audience would appreciate. And all those four songs of tragedy he sang without banishing the beaming smile from his eyes. He might have been relating the woes of marionettes.

He pa.s.sed from the scene to the sound of clapping hands, and when he returned almost immediately after that agreeable theatrical exit, he began to dance. He danced with the bride-to-be, and then with the bridesmaids.

He found obscure girls who seemed to have been forgotten--who might be said to have had no existence before he found them--and danced with them with natural gallantry. He came finally to Sylvia, and she drifted away with him, her hand resting on his shoulder like a kiss.

"I thought you would never come to me," she said in a lifeless voice.

"You knew I would," was the response.

Her lips said nothing more. But her heart was beating against him; it was speaking to him with clarity, with eloquence.

PART V.

A WIND FROM THE NORTH.

CHAPTER XXI.

Harboro and Sylvia were taking leave of Wayne and Valdez. Their horses had been brought and they were in their saddles, their horses' heads already in the direction of Eagle Pa.s.s. Valdez was adding final instructions touching the road.

"If you're not quite sure of the way I'll get some one to ride in with you," said Wayne; but Harboro would not listen to this.

"I'll not lose the way," he declared; though there remained in his mind a slight dubiousness on this point. The moon would be down before the ride was finished, and there were not a few roads leading away from the main thoroughfare.

Then, much to Harboro's surprise, Runyon appeared, riding away from the corral on his beautiful dun horse. He overheard the conference between Harboro and the others, and he made himself one of the group with pleasant familiarity.

"Ah, Harboro, must you be going, too?" he inquired genially; and then: "If you don't mind, I'll ride with you. It's rather a lonely road at this hour, and I've an idea I know the way better than you."

Harboro's eyes certainly brightened with relief. "It's good of you to offer," he declared heartily. "By all means, ride with us." He turned toward Sylvia, plainly expecting her to second the invitation.

"It will be much pleasanter," she said; though it seemed to Harboro that her words lacked heartiness. She was busying herself with the little package at her pommel--old Antonia's _rebozo_.

"And you must all remember that there's one more latch-string out here at the Quemado," said Wayne, "whenever you feel inclined to ride this way."

They were off then. The sound of violins and the shuffle of feet became faint, and the last gay voice died in the distance. Only now and then, when the horses' feet fell in unison, there drifted after them the note of a violin--like a wind at night in an old cas.e.m.e.nt. And then the three riders were presently aware of being quite alone on a windless waste, with a sentinel yucca standing on a distant height here and there between them and the descending moon, and distant groups of mesquite wreathing themselves in the silver mist of early morning. It had been a little past midnight when they left the Quemado.

Sylvia, riding between the two men, was so obviously under some sort of constraint that Harboro sought to arouse her. "I'm afraid you overtaxed yourself, Sylvia," he suggested. "It's all been pleasant, but rather--heroic." It was an effort for him to speak lightly and cheerfully.

The long ride out to the Quemado was a thing to which he was not accustomed, and the merrymaking had seemed to him quite monotonous after an hour or two. Even the midnight supper had not seemed a particularly gay thing to him. He was not quite a youth any more, and he had never been young, it seemed to him, in the way in which these desert folk were young.

Joy seemed to them a kind of intoxication--as if it were not to be indulged in save at long intervals.

"I didn't overtax myself," replied Sylvia. "The ending of things is never very cheerful. I suppose that's what I feel just now--as if, at the end, things don't seem quite worth while, after all."

Harboro held to his point. "You _are_ tired," he insisted.

Runyon interposed cheerfully. "And there are always the beginnings," he said. "We're just beginning a new day and a fine ride." He looked at Harboro as if inviting support and added, in a lower tone: "And I'd like to think we were beginning a pleasant acquaintance."

Harboro nodded and his dark eyes beamed with pleasure. It had seemed to him that this final clause was the obvious thing for Runyon to say, and he had waited to see if he would say it. He did not suppose that he and Sylvia would see a great deal of Runyon in Eagle Pa.s.s, where they were not invited to entertainments of any kind, but there might be occasional excursions into the country, and Runyon seemed to be invited everywhere.

But Sylvia refused to respond to this. The pagan in her nature rea.s.serted itself, and she felt resentful of Runyon's affable att.i.tude toward Harboro. The attraction which she and Runyon exerted toward each other was not a thing to be brought within the scope of a conventionally friendly relationship. Its essence was of the things furtive and forbidden. It should be fought savagely and kept within bounds, even if it could never be conquered, or it should be acknowledged and given way to in secret. Two were company and three a crowd in this case. She might have derived a great deal of tumultuous joy from Runyon's friendship for her if it could have been manifested in secret, but she could feel only a sense of duplicity and shame if his friendship included Harboro, too. The wolf does not curry favor with the sheep-dog when it hungers for a lamb. Such was her creed. In brief, Sylvia had received her training in none of the social schools. She was a daughter of the desert--a bit of that jetsam which the Rio Grande leaves upon its arid banks as it journeys stealthily to the sea.

They were riding along in silence half an hour later, their horses at a walk, when the stillness of the night was rudely shattered by the sound of iron wheels grinding on stone, and in an instant a carriage could be seen ascending a branch road which arose out of a near-by _arroyo_.

The riders checked their horses and waited: not from curiosity, but in response to the prompting of a neighborly instinct. Travellers in the desert are never strangers to one another.

The approaching carriage proved to be an impressively elegant affair, the locality considered, drawn by two horses which were clearly not of the range variety. And then further things were revealed: a coachman sat on the front seat, and a man who wore an air of authority about him like a kingly robe sat alone on the back seat. Then to Harboro, sitting high with the last rays of the moon touching his face, came the hearty hail: "Harboro! How are you, Harboro?"

It was the voice of the General Manager.