The Mystery of The Barranca Part 13

A second offer to walk by her side not only ran counter to the prejudice of a race of riders, but also aroused her sympathies. "I could never think of it!" After a moment of thought she propounded her own solution.

"Your beast is strong. I have ridden double on an animal half his size.

We will both ride."

Now, though Seyd had long ago grown to the sight of rancheros on their way to market in the embrace of their buxom brown wives, the suddenness of it made him gasp. But by a quick mounting he succeeded in hiding the rush of blood to his face. Also he managed to control his voice.

"Fine idea! Give me your hand."

Just touching his foot, she rose like a bird to the croup. When, as the horse moved on, she slid an arm around his waist his demoralization was full and complete. If he glanced down it was to see her fingers resting like small white b.u.t.terflies on his raincoat. Did he look up, then a faint perfume of damp hair would come floating over his shoulder. He thrilled when her clasp tightened as the horse broke into a gentle trot, and was altogether in a bad way when her merry laugh restored order among his senses.

"Now we can play Rosa and Rosario on their way to market. It will be for you to grumble at prices while I rail at the government tax that puts woolens beyond the purse of a peon."

"I prefer to ask what brought you out in such weather." He returned her laugh. "A pretty pickle you would have been in if I had not come along."

He felt the vigorous shake of her head. "I should have walked back to the last hut, and an oxcart would have taken me in to the station."

"But then you would have been out all night."

"I should have loved it." Though he did not see the sudden blooming under her hood, he felt the unconscious squeeze which testified to the sincerity of her feeling. "I love them--the roar of the wind, black darkness, the beat of the rain in my face. Mother would have had me stay in Mexico till the rains were over, but when Don Luis wrote that the river was at flood nothing could hold me." He had thrilled under her unconscious pressure, but her conclusion proved an excellent corrective.

"I am afraid that the site for your new buildings must be under water."

"How can that be?" He spoke quickly. "We are building well back from last year's mark, and Don Luis said that it was the highest known."

"But this year it has gone even higher--and all because of the Yankee companies that are stripping the upper valley of timber. There were great fires, too, last year which broke away from their servants and burned hundreds of miles of woods."

Her quiet answer went far to allay his sudden suspicion, but not his anxiety. He spoke of Billy. "It is over a month since he came out to the station for stores, and the agent told me that none of your people had seen him for weeks."

"But he has with him Angelo"--she gave Caliban his correct name--"and he, as I once told you, was counted Sebastien's best man in his war against the brigands. Though he may not show it to you, he is not ungrateful for the gift of his life. If food is to be had in the country, Mr. Thornton will not go lacking."

He spoke more cheerfully. "Then I don't care; though if the site _is_ flooded we shall be thrown back at least three months with our work."

"And what is three months?" she added, laughing.

To him it was a great deal. Before paying over the loan Don Luis's lawyers had taken Seyd's signatures upon certain instruments which exhibited the General in the new light of a shrewd and conservative business man. Withal, having still plenty of time, he answered quite cheerfully when she turned the conversation with a question concerning his plans. Under the stimulation of her curiosity, which surprised him by its intelligence, he went into details, talking and answering her questions while the horse trudged steadily on into the darkening rain.

If the trail had not suddenly faded out, night would have caught them unnoticed.

In that volcanic country, where for long stretches a hoof left no impression, the loss of a trail was a common experience, and, trusting to the instinct of the beast, Seyd gave it the rein. Left to its own devices, however, it gradually swerved from the beating rain and presently turned on to a cattle track which swung away into gum copal trees and scrub oak at an imperceptible angle. Had he been alone Seyd would have soon noticed the absence of the Aztec ruin. As it was, but not until an hour later, Francesca was the first to speak.

"That's so," he agreed, when she drew his attention. "We ought to have pa.s.sed it long ago. The animal evidently picked up a wrong track coming out from the rocks." After a moment's reflection he said: "It would be worse than foolish to try to go back. We could never find the trail in this black rain. Better follow on and see where it will bring us." With a sudden remembrance of what it might mean to her, a young girl brought up in the rigid conventions of the country, he repentantly added: "I'm awfully sorry for you. I ought to be kicked for my carelessness."

"No, I have traveled this trail much oftener than you," she quietly protested. "If any one is blamed I should be the one."

Sitting there in black darkness, lost in those lonely volcanic hills, with the rain dashing in his face and the roar of the wind in his ears, he was prepared to appreciate her quiet answer. "You are a brick!" he exclaimed. "Nevertheless, I feel my guilt."

"Then you need not." She gave a little laugh. "Did I not say that I enjoyed being out at night in the rain?"

"And now the G.o.ds have called your bluff."

"_Bluff?_" She laughed again at the meaning of that rank Americanism.

"It was no bluff, as you will presently see."

And see he did--during the long hour they spent splashing along in black darkness, up hill, down dale, fording swollen arroyos, through chaparral which tore at them with myriad claws and wet woods whose boughs lashed their faces. Up to the moment that the roof of a hut suddenly loomed out against the dim, dark sky she uttered no doubt or complaint. When, having tied his horse under the wide eaves, he lit a match inside, its flare revealed her face, quiet and serene.

Also it showed that which, while not nearly so interesting, had its immediate uses--a candle stuck in a _tequila_ bottle; and its steadier flare presently helped them to another find--a chemisette and other garments of feminine wear, spotlessly clean and smoothly ironed, arranged on a string that ran over a bunk in one corner.

"The fiesta wear of our hostess," Francesca remarked. "How lucky! for I am drenched."

"And look at that pile of dry wood!" he exclaimed. "The G.o.ds are with us. I'll build a fire, then while I rub down the horse you can change.

What's this?"

It was a rough sketch done with charcoal on the table. Two parallelograms with sticks for legs were in furious pursuit of certain horned squares which, in their turn, were in full flight toward a doll's house in the far corner.

"Oh, I know!" the girl cried, after a moment of study. "Here, in the wild country where they never see man, are raised the fighting bulls for the rings of Mexico. This hut belongs to a vaquero of San Angel, and this is an order, left in his absence, to drive the bulls into the hacienda." Laying her finger on a triangle which had evidently been added later, she continued, laughing: "This shows that his woman has gone with him. They were evidently called away unexpectedly, for she had already set the corn to soak in this _olla_ for the supper tortillas.

And the saints be praised! Here are dried beef, salt, and chilis. Now hurry the fire, and you shall see what a cook I am."

While he was building it in the center of the mud floor she made other finds--a cube of brown sugar, coffee, a cake of goat's cheese; and her little delighted exclamations over each discovery both amused him and proved how sincere was her acceptance of the situation. "She's a brick!"

he told the horse, rubbing him down, outside, with wisps pulled out from the under side of the thatch. "Thoroughbred in blood and bone." As the animal had already experimented with the thatch and found it quite to its liking, the question of provender was settled. But in order that Francesca might have ample time to change, Seyd rubbed and rubbed and rubbed till a rattle of clay pots inside gave him leave to come in.

At the door he paused to admire the picture she made in the red glow of the fire. In place of the slender girl of the stylish raincoat a pretty peona raised velvet eyes from the stone _metate_ on which she was vigorously rubbing soaked corn for the supper tortillas. By emphasizing some features and softening others strange attire always gives a new view of a woman. The sleeveless garment showed the round white arms and foreshortened and filled out her slender lines.

Glancing down at her arms, she confessed, with an uneasy wriggle: "I don't like it, though I wear decollete every evening when we are in the city. But I shall soon get used to it."

Conscious of his admiring eyes, she found them employment in watching the tortillas. But, having grown accustomed to the new dress by the time supper was ready, she left him free to watch the white arms and small hands which hovered like b.u.t.terflies over the clay pot. In the lack of all other utensils, they used bits of tortilla for spoons, dipping alternately into the pot which she had set between them; nor did he find the chili any the worse for its contact with the tortilla which had just taken an impression of her small teeth. It required only an after-dinner pipe, to which she graciously consented, to seal his content.

After the wet and fatigue of the trail the warmth and cheer of food and fire were extremely grateful, but not conducive to talk. While he sat watching the tobacco smoke curl up into the blackened peak of the roof she leaned, chin in her hands, elbows on crossed knees, studying the fire. Leaping out of red coal, an occasional flame set its reflection in her deep eyes, and as his gaze wandered from her around the rough _jacal_ Seyd found it difficult to realize that it was indeed he, Robert Seyd, mining engineer of San Francisco, who sat there sharing food and fire with a girl, on the one hand scion of the Mexican aristocracy, descendant on the other of a line which ran back into the dim time of the Aztecs. The thought stirred the romance within him and helped to prolong his silence. It would have held him still longer if his musings had not been suddenly interrupted by her merry laugh.

"_Si?_" he inquired, looking suddenly up.

"I was thinking what they would say--my mother, Don Luis, the neighbors?"

"Horrible!" he agreed. "Your mother? What would she say?"

As the white hands flew up in a horrified gesture it was the senora herself. "_Santa Maria Marissima!_"

"And Don Luis?"

Her expression changed from laughter into sudden mischievous demureness.

"His remarks, senor, are not for me to repeat."

"Well--the neighbors?"

Once more her hands went up. "'Was it not that we always said it of that mad girl! Maria, thou shalt not speak with her again.'" Smiling, she added, "For you must know, senor, that I have been held as a horrible example of the things a girl should not do since the days of my childhood."

"Like the devil in the old New England theology," he suggested, smiling, "you make more converts than the preacher?"

He had to explain before she understood. Then she laughed merrily. "Just so. What they would do were I to marry, die, or reform, I really cannot tell. It would leave a gap almost equal to the loss of the catechism."

She finished with a mock sigh, "They will never appreciate me till I'm dead."

"Any present danger?"