The Black Pearl Part 5

"Crop-eared Jose," she answered, "and Gallito's going to keep him there for several months yet."

"Is he?" and again Hanson strove to speak with disarming indifference.

"How do you know?"

"I heard him and Bob Flick planning it," she answered. "They don't think it's safe to try and get him out of the country now." Then, having delivered herself of her burden of important news, she suffered one of her quick revulsions of fright, and clapped her hand to her mouth and turned white.

"Oh, Lordy!" she cried. "Lordy! Ain't I the leaky vessel, though! Oh, say, Mr. Hanson," she clutched his arm like a terrified child, "promise me you won't give me away."

"Sure," soothingly. "Why, Mrs. Gallito, you got to believe that everything that you tell me just goes in one ear and out of the other.

But look here, just to take your mind off of this, I wish you'd do me a little favor."

"'Deed I will," she fervently a.s.sured him. "What is it?"

"Why, Miss Pearl and I are going riding to-morrow morning, and I particularly want to talk business to her. You know how anxious I am to get her signed up. Well, I wish you'd manage to keep Hughie from b.u.t.ting in as usual?"

"Is that all?" she cried. "'Course I'll keep Hughie at home. I didn't realize how he was tagging round after you and Pearl. I want him to help me, anyway. We got to patch up my chicken house and yard so's to keep the coyotes out some way or other."

True to her word, she kept Hugh so busily employed the next morning that to Hanson's infinite relief he and Pearl were able to ride off alone.

"I'm going to take you to a palm grove to-day," said Pearl, as they started off.

She was in the gayest of humors, and for a time she bantered and coquetted with him with an unrestrained and childlike enjoyment in her mood, taking his ardent lovemaking as a matter of course; but, gradually, as they rode, she became more quiet and fell into silence, the Sphynx expression appearing on her face.

Suddenly she leaned forward in her saddle and looked at him. There was a hint of laughter in her glance, and yet behind it a certain serious scrutiny.

"I'm wondering a lot about you, do you know it?" she drawled softly.

"Turn about's fair play, then, honey," he answered. "You keep me guessing all the time. But what is it now?"

She did not answer him immediately, but rode on in silence as if cogitating whether or no she would reply to his question, and in some way he received the impression that it was not the first time she had mentally debated the matter. But finally she decided to speak, and again she turned in her saddle and regarded him with that piercing scrutiny which reminded him uncomfortably of her father.

"Say," she began, with apparent irrelevance, "what you been doing, anyway?"

"Me!" cried Hanson. "You know. Been falling in love with you as hard as I could, and"--his voice ringing with a pa.s.sionate sincerity--"that's G.o.d's truth, Pearl."

She looked up at him, her wild eyes melting, her delicately cut lips upcurling in a smile; then her head drooped, her whole body expressed a soft yielding.

Hanson grew white, almost he stretched out his arms as if to clasp her, when she threw up her head with a low laugh, a tinkle of mockery through it, like the jangled strings of her guitar.

"But I mean it," she insisted, and now he saw that she had something really on her mind, something she had determined to say to him. "Listen to me," imperiously, "and stop looking at me as if you were looking through me and still didn't see me."

"I'm seeing your eyes, Pearl," he muttered, "and they drown me. And I'm seeing your lips and they draw me like a magnet does a needle; but if they drew me through h.e.l.l, I'd go."

"Listen," she spoke more imperiously than before. "Have you noticed how Pop's been watching you--looking slantwise out of the corners of his eyes whenever you come around."

"I sure have," replied Hanson, "being as I'm not blind. But what of it?

I supposed he treated every one that came around you like that."

"No," she shook her head thoughtfully. "I been studying over it, but I can't quite make it out. Pop don't pay much attention to men that ain't his kind, and you're not. And Bob Flick is always jealous, of course, but he doesn't usually take it out watching folks like a ferret does a rat hole. No, it isn't that."

"Well, what do you put it down to?" Rudolf tried to speak easily.

Pearl paid no particular heed to this question. "And it's not all Hughie," she mused. "Of course," and here he saw an expression of real regret, almost worry, on her face, "of course it's bad for all of us when Hughie takes a dislike to any one."

Hanson's sense of injury was inflamed. "But why the devil," he cried, "should Hughie's unreasoning cranks count with commonsense people? I can't understand," with wondering impatience, "why you all act like you do about that boy!"

"We've all learned that Hughie knows things that we don't know."

"Umph!" the exclamation was disgustedly incredulous. "And so, simply because Hughie chooses to take a dislike to me, I'm to be watched like a criminal and treated, even by you, with suspicion."

"No," she said, "I've been studying over it, but I can't quite make it out. Pop don't pay much attention, usually. But," she spoke slowly, "I thought maybe you'd tell me this morning."

"Well, there's nothing to tell," he affirmed obstinately.

She looked out over the desert for a moment. "Bob Flick hit the trail last night," she spoke casually.

"To go where?"

"I don't know. I wish I did. But I kind of feel, I can't help but feel, that it had something to do with you, and I wanted to tell you, to let you know, so that you can clear out if you've a mind to."

"I've no cause to clear out," said Hanson. "Gee!" his bold eyes looked gaily into hers, "you all seem determined to make me out bad, don't you?

But if that's your way of trying to get rid of me, it don't go. When you tell me that you won't sign up with me, and are going back to Sweeney, for just half of what I offer you, then I'll know that you want to get rid of me, and I'll clear out."

"But I ain't told you that yet," the corners of Pearl's mouth were dimpling.

"No, and, by George, until you do I stay right here."

"Look!" she cried with a change in her voice. They had entered a canon, where palms grew and involuntarily they drew up their horses to gaze at the sight before them. The stately, exotic palms lifted their shining green fronds to the blue, intense, illimitable sky, flooded with the gold of sunshine, and beyond them was the background of the mountains, their dark wooded slopes climbing upward until they reached the white, dazzling peaks of snow.

The sharp and apparently impossible contrasts, the magic illusions of color made it a land of remote enchantment, even to the most unimaginative. And to Hanson the world outside became as unreal as a dream that is past. Here was beauty, and the wide, free s.p.a.ces of nature, where every law of man seemed puny, ineffectual and void. In this unbounded, uncharted freedom the shackles of conventionality fell from him. Here was life and here was love. He was a primitive man, and here, before him in visible form, stood the world's desire. Barriers there were none. A man and woman, both as vital as the morning, and love between them. The craving heart of the eternal man rose up in Hanson, imperatively urging him to claim his own.

He drew his hand across his brow almost dazedly. "Whew!" he muttered, "I kind of remember when I was a kid that my mother used to tell me about the Garden of Eden. I thought it was a pipe dream, but, George!

it's true--it's true, and I can't quite believe it."

The Pearl stood leaning against a great palm tree. She seemed hardly to hear him. Her eyes were on the waving, shimmering horizon line of the desert. Her face held a sort of wistful dreaming.

"'The Garden of Eden!'" she repeated. "I've heard of it, too. It was a place where you were always happy, but"--still wistfully--"I haven't found that place yet." She turned her vaguely troubled eyes on him and then sighed and drooped against the tree.

"You can have things as you please, if you'll come to me." His speech was rapid, hard-breathing; it was as if he hardly knew what he was saying, but was talking merely to relieve the tension. "I'm boss and I can manage that you shall dance when you please, and come back here for a little breathing spell whenever you want. But," with an impatient gesture, "I ain't here to talk business. That's what I came to Paloma for--business. That's all I was before I met you, just a cold, hard business proposition. I guess I was pretty hard-headed. They seemed to think so in my line, anyway. I thought I knew it all." He gave a short laugh. "I'm not so young. I thought I knew life pretty well--had kind of wore it out, in fact. I thought I'd loved more than one woman; but I know now that I've never loved, never lived before, that I've just woke up, here in this Garden of Eden.

"Pearl," the beads of sweat stood out on his brow, "I ain't made you out. I know you're one thing one hour and another the next. I'm no vain boy. I can't tell whether you've been drawing me on one minute and holding me back the next just because you got to annex the scalp of every man your sweet eyes fall on. That's all right, honey, I ain't blaming you; but there's been moments lately, Pearl, when I've thought that maybe you might care, moments when I been plumb crazy with joy. You ain't let 'em last very long, honey," with a strained smile, "but they most made up for the black question mark that came after 'em." He drew out his handkerchief and wiped his wet brow with a trembling hand.

She threw back her head and smiled into his eyes through her narrowed lids. She held out her hands to him; and with one step Hanson lifted her clear off the ground, gathering her up in his arms, holding her against his heart and kissing her scarlet mouth.

And she wound her arms about his neck and returned those kisses.

"Put me down," she said at last, and Hanson did so, although he still held her close to his heart with one arm.