The Black Pearl Part 3

"Well, tell her that Mr. Hanson's here," called Pearl after him, unaffected by his outburst. "He hasn't taken a shine to you," she remarked frankly to Hanson.

Again he was disturbed to notice that she seemed to give this obvious fact some weight. She had rested her chin on her hand and was gazing meditatively at the gay garden. A shadow of disappointment was on her face, and more than a touch of it in her voice.

"That don't bother me," affirmed Hanson confidently. "All that I'm caring about is whether some one else shares his opinion." His bold, gay eyes looked straight into hers.

"I wonder who?" drawled Pearl. The gleam of her eyes shining through narrowed lids and black, tangled lashes flicked him like the tang of a whip. "Maybe you mean Lolita?"

The parrot, which had perched on her shoulder and was tweaking her ear, now hearing its name, looked up, fluttered its wings, and called out in a gruff, masculine voice: "Mi jasmin, Pearl. Mi corazon."

"He's talking for me, sure," said Hanson, who knew enough Spanish to make out.

"Oh, d.a.m.n," said the parrot disgustedly; "why the h.e.l.l can't you shut up?"

Hanson gave a great burst of laughter. "Lolita and Hughie are well matched when it comes to politeness."

"They got the artistic temperament, and me, too, and mom, also," said Pearl. "That's what the newspaper boys always wrote about me when I was on the road."

The manager did not miss the opening. "Look here," he said earnestly; "ain't you tired loafing around here? I guess you know what I'm in Paloma for. I've made no secret of it. Now all you got to do is to show me your contract with Sweeney and I'll double what he gave you, play you over a bigger circuit, and advertise you, so's before your contract with me's expired you'll be asked to do a few turns on the Metropolitan Opera stage of New York City, New York."

"Love me to-day," sang Lolita, meltingly, if with grating harshness.

"That's right, Lolita, sing your pretty song," coaxed Pearl. "Come on, I'll sing with you." She lifted her languorous eyes and sang softly, almost under her breath, but straight at Hanson:

"Love me to-day, Love me an hour; Love is a flower, Fading alway."

The blood surged to his temples at the direct challenge, he half rose and leaned toward her. Then, as she laughed at him, he sat down. "Treble Sweeney's offer, by G.o.d!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Cash down beforehand." He brought his fist down on the arm of the chair with a crash.

"Oh, I ain't ready to make any plans yet," Pearl announced indifferently. "I want to talk things over with Pop first. He'll be down from the mines before long, maybe to-day."

She sat for a few moments in silence, her eyes fixed on the far purple hazes of the desert. "Oh, I wish there weren't so many of me," she said at last and wistfully. "After I'm 'out' a while, I'll get to longing so for the desert that I'm likely to raise any kind of a row and break any old contract just to get here. I can't breathe. I feel as if everything, buildings and people and all, were crowding me so's if I didn't have a place to stand; and then, after I'm here a while, I got to see the footlights, I got to hear them clapping, I got to dance for the big crowds. Oh, Lord! life's awful funny, always trying to chain you up to one thing or another. But I won't be tied. I got to be free, and I will be free." She threw out her arms with a pa.s.sionate gesture.

"You'd be free with me," he cried.

But, if she heard him, she gave no indication of having done so. "Can you ride?" she asked presently.

"You bet," said Hanson eagerly. "I was born in Kaintucky. Just tell me where I can get a horse here, and--"

"I'll lend you one of mine, and we'll have some rides. I'll take you out on the desert. It ain't safe to go alone. You see those sand hills yonder? Do you think you could walk out to them and back?"

"Sure," said Hanson confidently and looking at her in some surprise.

Pearl laughed. "Oh, Lolita!" she cried; "a tenderfoot is sure funny. The chances are, Mr. Hanson, that if you started to walk around those dunes you'd never get back. Goodness! ain't that mirage pretty?"

The desert, which had lain vast, dun-colored and unbroken before their eyes, had vanished; instead, a sapphire sea sparkled in the sunshine, its white-capped waves breaking upon the beach. Upon one side of it spread a city with white domes and fairy towers, and palm trees uplifting their graceful fronds among them.

Hanson rubbed his eyes and looked again. It was the first time that he had ever seen one of these miracles of illusion, and he became so absorbed in it that he failed to notice that some one else had entered the gate and was making a leisurely progress toward the house.

It was Bob Flick, and Rudolf Hanson could not repress a slight scowl at this unexpected appearance of one whom he was constrained to regard as more or less of an enemy, and certainly this morning as a blot upon the landscape.

Without a smile, but politely enough, Flick greeted him, after speaking to Pearl, who looked at the newcomer with a sort of resigned resentfulness. Lolita, however, made up what was lacking in cordiality.

With a loud squawk of welcome she flew to Flick's shoulder, uttering gutteral and incoherent expressions doubtless meant to convey endearment.

"Call Mom, Bob," commanded Pearl lazily, and Flick obediently stepped inside of the door in search of Mrs. Gallito. She must have been near at hand, for she and Flick emerged before the manager could do more than give Pearl a glance of eloquent disappointment, which she returned with teasing mockery.

Mrs. Gallito had evidently been making a toilet, and it is to be regretted for her own sake that she might not have reserved all of her appearances for the evening, for this brilliant desert sunshine was pitiless in revealing those artificial aids with which she strove to recreate and hold her vanished youth and bloom.

Bob Flick she evidently regarded as a matter of course, but at the sight of Hanson she showed unmistakable pleasure.

"Hughie told me you were here," she said, sitting down beside him and patting somewhat anxiously the ma.s.s of canary-colored puffs on the back of her head; "and I been hurrying to get out before you got away."

"I wouldn't have thought of going before you came," Hanson a.s.sured her.

She smiled and bridled a little, evidently well pleased.

"Has Pearl told you that her Pop'll probably be down to-day?" she leaned across Hanson to speak to Flick.

"No, is that so?" he asked in his smooth, pleasant tones.

"Where are the mines that Mr. Gallito is interested in?" asked Hanson, determined to keep in the conversation.

"Up in Colina." It was Mrs. Gallito that spoke.

An up-darting gleam of suddenly aroused interest and curiosity flashed for a moment in Bob Flick's eyes. Was it possible that at the mention of that name Hanson had started and that something which might have been taken for the shadow of dismay had overfallen his face?

"Fine mining camp," Flick commented. "You know it at all, Mr. Hanson?"

Hanson had scratched a match to light his cigarette, but now he lifted his eyes and looked across its tiny flare straight at Flick. "No," he said indifferently, "never was in it in my life."

His tone and manner were both open and convincing, and yet the ruddy color, as Flick noticed with merciless satisfaction, had not returned to his face.

"He's an awful queer man," confided Mrs. Gallito in a low voice to Hanson. "I suppose," with a sigh, "it's the Spanish of him. Just think,"

she spoke as one who has never overcome an unmitigated wonder, "born in the sawdust same as me; his folks from way back all in the business, and him with no use for it. Never rested till he got away from it. Why, he didn't even want me to train Pearl, but," and here triumph rang in her tones, "he couldn't help that. She took to it like a duck takes to water. Always ready for it, never cried or complained at the long hours."

"She's sure got cause to be grateful to you." Hanson spoke sincerely.

"I wouldn't have known what else to do with a child," said Mrs. Gallito simply. "I always saw them trained that way. But her Pop didn't stand for it."

During this conversation Pearl and Flick had risen and, with Lolita still on Flick's shoulder, had sauntered down through the garden.

Seeing this, Rudolf, with his customary philosophy, made the best of the situation. "Well," with rather vague gallantry, "I don't see how he can stay away from a home like this."

"It's the Spanish of him." This was Mrs. Gallito's explanation of all the eccentricities in which her husband might indulge. "And," with unwonted optimism, "maybe it's a blessing, too, 'cause he's awful queer.

And, anyway, he's what they call a man's man. Why, you might think he lived all by himself up there in Colina; but he don't. He's got more old Spaniards around"--she raised her eyes--"and they're the awfullest!

Cut-throats and pirates, I call 'em. They come up from the coast. And it's funny, too," she exclaimed in a sort of querulous wonder, "because Gallito's awful respectable himself."

"That is queer, isn't it?" His tone was politely interested, but his errant glance strayed to where Pearl and Flick stood gazing over the vast s.p.a.ces of the desert, flooded with illimitable sunshine.

But Mrs. Gallito needed only a modic.u.m of interest upon which to launch her confidences. "Yes, he certainly is queer, and Pearl's like him in lots of ways. Neither of them can stand anything holding them. They're always wanting to be free, and they both got the strongest wills."

"And does he ever bring his cut-throat friends here?" asked Hanson.