Play the Game! Part 18

His uncle shrugged. "Got to treat 'em like cattle, boy. It's what they are."

"Well, it's what they'll always be if you keep on treating 'em that way!" Jimsy spoke hotly and his uncle turned amused eyes on him.

"Don't let that Yaqui fill you up with his red tales!"

"But you'll admit the Yaquis have been abused?"

"Well, I believe they have. They're a cut above the _peon_ in intelligence and spirit. But--can't have omelette without breaking eggs." He turned again to his elder guest. "This boy here has been palling about with a Yaqui Indian he made me take in when he was here last time."

The great man nodded. "Yes,--I've seen them together. Magnificent specimen, isn't he?"

"They are wonderfully built, most of them. This chap was pretty badly used by his master--they are virtually slaves, you know,--and bolted, and Jimsy found him one night----"

The boy got up and came over to them. "Starving, and almost dead with weakness and his wounds,--beaten almost to death and one of his ears hacked off! And Uncle Rich' took him in and kept him for me."

His uncle grinned and flung an arm across his shoulder. "And had the devil--and many _pesos_ to pay to the local _jefe_ and the naturally peevish gentleman who lost him. But at that I'll have to admit he's the best man on the _rancho_ to-day." He threw a teasing look at Honor, glowing and misty-eyed over Jimsy's championing of the oppressed. "The only trouble is, I suppose Jimsy will take him with him when he sets up housekeeping for himself. What do you think, Maddy? Could Yaqui Juan be taught to b.u.t.tle?"

"No butlers for us, Uncle Rich'!" Jimsy was red but unabashed. "We might rent him for a movie star and live on his earnings. We aren't very clear yet as to what we _will_ live on!"

The personage looked at him gravely. "You are going to settle in Los Angeles?"

"_Yes!_" said Jimsy and Honor in a breath. The good new life coming which would be the good old life over again, only better!

"Oh," said Mrs. King, "I forgot,--I asked them to come up from the quarters and make music for you! They're here now! Look!" She went to the window and the others followed. The garden was filled with vaguely seen figures, ma.s.sed in groups, and there was a soft murmur of voices and the tentative strumming of guitars. "Shall we come out on the veranda? You'll want a _rebozo_, Honor,--the nights are sharp." She called back to the serving woman. "Put out the lights, Josita."

They sat in the dusk and looked out into the veiled and shadowy s.p.a.ces and the dim singers lifted up their voices. The moon would rise late; there was no light save the tiny pin points of the cigarettes; it gave the music an elfin, eerie quality.

"Pretty crude after Italy, eh, Honor?" Richard King wanted to know.

"Oh, it's delicious, Mr. King! Please ask them to sing another!"

"May we have the _Golondrina_?" the eldest guest wanted to know.

"Well--how about it, Maddy? Think we're all cheerful enough? We know that two of us are! All right!" He called down the request and it seemed to Honor that a little quiver went through the singers in the shadow.

The guitars broke into a poignant, sobbing melody.

"I don't know what the words mean," said the personage under his breath.

"I don't believe I want to know. I fancy every one fits his own words to it."

"Or his own need," said Richard King's wife. She slipped her hand into her husband's. The melody rose and fell, sobbed and soared. Honor drew closer to Jimsy and he put his arm about her and held her hard. "Yes,"

he whispered. "I know." The man who had asked for _Golondrina_ sat with bent head and his cigar went out. Only Carter Van Meter, as once long ago in Los Angeles, seemed unmoved, unstirred, scatheless.

There was a little silence after the music. Then the personage said, "You know, I fancy that's Mexico, that song!"

Jimsy King wheeled to face him through the dusk. "Yes, sir! It's true!

That _is_ Mexico,--everything that's been done to her,--and everything she'll do, some day!"

"It's--beautiful and terrible," said Honor. "I had to keep telling myself that we are all safe and happy, and that nothing is going to happen to us!"

Carter laughed and got quickly to his feet. "I suggest indoors and lights--and Honor! Honor must sing for us!"

She never needed urging; she sang as gladly as a bird on a bush. The Kings were parched for music; they begged for another and another. She had almost to reproduce her recital in Florence. Jimsy listened, rapt and proud, and at the end he said--"Not too tired for one more, Skipper?

Our song?"

"Never too tired for that, Jimsy!" She sat down again and struck her stepfather's ringing, rousing chords. Instantly it ceased, there in the room, to be Mexico; it was as if a wind off the sea blew past them. The first verse had them all erect in their chairs. She swung into the second, holding a taut rein on herself:

The sand of the desert is sodden red; Red with the wreck of a square that broke; The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead, And the regiment blind with dust and smoke: The River of Death has brimmed his banks; And England's far and Honor's a name, But the voice of a school boy rallies the ranks-- Play up! Play up! and--Play the Game!

Honor sat still at the piano. She did not mean to lift her eyes until she could be sure they would not run over. Why did that song always sweep her away so?--from the first moment Stepper had read her the words in the old house on South Figueroa Street, all those years ago? Why had she always the feeling that it had a special meaning for her and for Jimsy--a warning, a challenge? Jimsy came over to stand beside her, comfortably silent, and then, surprisingly, the personage came to stand beside Jimsy.

"I've been wondering," he said, "if you hadn't better come in to see me one day, when we're all back in Los Angeles? You haven't any definite plans for your future, have you?"

"No, sir," said Jimsy. "Only that I've got to get something--quick!" He looked at Honor, listening star-eyed.

The great man smiled. "I see. Well, I think I can interest you. I've watched you play football, King. I played football, forty years ago. I like the breed. My boys are all girls, worse luck--though they're the finest in the world----"

"Oh, _yes_," said Honor, warmly.

"But I like boys. And I like you, Jimsy King." He held out his hand.

"You come to me, and if you're the lad I think you are, you'll stay."

"Oh, I'll come!" Jimsy stammered, flushed and incoherent. "I'll come!

I'll--I'll sweep out or scrub floors--or--or anything! But--I'm afraid you don't----" he looked unhappily at Honor.

"Yes, Jimsy. He's got to know."

Jimsy King stood up very straight and tall. "You've got to know that I was kicked out of college two months ago, for marching in a parade against----"

"For telling the truth," cried Honor, hot cheeked, "when a cowardly lie would have saved him!"

"But just the same, I was kicked out of college, and----"

"Lord bless you, boy," said the personage, and it was the first time they had heard him laugh aloud, "I know you were! And that's one reason why I want you. _So was I!_"

CHAPTER XIII

There were telegrams from Stephen Lorimer and the doctor; James King's condition remained unchanged. Honor and Jimsy decided to return at once, but Richard King flatly refused to let them go. The next train after Honor's had been held up just beyond Cordoba by a band of brigands, supposed to be a section of Villistas, the pa.s.sengers robbed and mistreated and three of the train men killed.

"Not a step without an escort," said Jimsy's uncle.

Then Jimsy's new friend came to the rescue. He was eager to get home but cannily aware of his own especial risk,--two wealthy Americans having been recently taken and held for ransom. He had influence at the Capital; he wrote and telegraphed and the replies were suave and rea.s.suring; reliable escort would be furnished as soon as possible,--within the week, it was hoped. Meanwhile, there was nothing for it but to wait. He went back to the _hacienda_ where he had been visiting, and life--the merry, lyrical life of _El Pozo_, moved forward.

Jimsy's only woe was that he was condemned by her own decision to share Honor lavishly with his uncle and aunt and their friends and Carter.