The Mystery of The Barranca Part 27

"What?" The consul looked his surprise. "What's this? A conspiracy? I expected that you would stay with us at least a week?"

"No." His wife took the answer into her own hands. "You know, Francesca's mother and uncle are grieving in the belief that she is drowned. And she has other reasons of her own--and yours," she added for Seyd. "Though you are not to bother her with questions."

At the consulate breakfast was waiting, and in the cheer of the following hour and bustle of departure, Seyd forgot his momentary wonder. It did not revive until, early that afternoon, they reined in to rest their horses on the crest of the first hill in the chain that led in giant steps up to the plateau above the Barranca. As they rode on, after a last look at the harbor, which lay like a huge turquoise within its setting of hills, he looked inquiringly at Francesca.

"Can you not guess?" she asked. When he shook his head she rallied him with a happy laugh upon his dullness. "I think your memory is very poor, Senor Rosario."

"What--Rosa!" For instantly there flashed up a picture of her wet face looking at him from under her capote hood on the day that he found her standing in the rain beside her fallen horse.

"So you recognize me at last?"

"You don't mean to say--"

"_Si_, senor, my husband"--contradicting her laugh, a deep thrill inhered in the words--"it is even so. In the days before the railroad, when there was great travel between San Nicolas and the port, Don Luis maintained houses a day's journey apart. Though none of our family has visited them in the last two years, they were in good condition when Paulo pa.s.sed this way at the beginning of the rains. So to-night, Rosario, we bide in our own house."

Again did her accent on the "our" move and thrill him. Always undemonstrative, however, he merely caught her hand, and so, linked like children, they rode on side by side. At first they observed a happy silence, but presently the trail took on such remarkable likeness to the one they had traveled that other day, proceeding from the stretches of black volcanic rock through copal and scrub oak to spa.r.s.ely gra.s.sed barrens, that the strength of the a.s.sociations forced them into talk.

"That's where your horse fell," he began it. When she agreed, he asked, "I wonder if you had any conception of the risks you were running when you rode behind me?"

Though she knew very well what he meant, she pretended ignorance and made him explain in detail his feelings at the sight of her hands resting like white b.u.t.terflies on the front of his coat, his sudden emotion when the scent of her wet hair floated over his shoulder, utter intoxication whenever a slip of his horse caused her to tighten her hold on his waist.

"You hid it very cleverly," was her comment upon these revelations.

"And you never knew it?"

"Of course I did." To which she added the brazen confession, "Or I would not have done it."

Shooting over a hill not long thereafter, the trail suddenly fell through copal and oak woods into a sheltered valley where, with a suddenness that drew an exclamation of admiration from Seyd, they came in sight of the house. A small adobe, washed with gold with pale-violet borders, it stood under a great banyan tree within the embrace of a grove of tall palms. Almost across its doorway a bright arroyo ran swiftly, to disappear in the dark shade of clump tamarinds. All the afternoon the sun had pursued a futile struggle with the ocean mists, and now, completing the beauty of the place, it shot a last coppery shaft between two clouds.

"A happy augury," was Francesca's greeting to the pathway of light. "Now let it rain."

The door was unlocked, and, entering with her, he found the interior equally to his taste. The solid walls were cream-tinted, and after he had lit the wood which was ready on the open hearth they reflected a comfortable glow on ma.s.sive tables and chairs of plain oak, wide settees, and roomy lounges. His satisfaction was complete when she told him that it stood alone. The knowledge that they would be barred by leagues of distance, shut in by the rainy night from the rest of the world, filled him with deep content. From a survey, conscious of warmth and comfort, his satisfied gaze returned to the fingers which were fluttering like white b.u.t.terflies from b.u.t.ton to b.u.t.ton down her raincoat.

"Lazy one!" She spoke with a pretty a.s.sumption of wifely authority.

"Stable the horses--but first bring in the bundle from my crupper.

While you are out I shall prepare our meal."

"What! Do we really eat? How thoughtful! It had never occurred to me."

"A pretty beginning," she made demure answer, "for a wife to starve her husband."

Neither could there be any complaint of the meal that faced him on his return, for it represented the best that could be bought or borrowed by the consul's wife. Afterward Seyd would have washed the dishes, but, taking him by the shoulders, Francesca marched him back to the fire.

"No, I shall do it myself. Please?" She headed off the mutiny betrayed by his eyes. "If you knew how often I have peeped into our work-folks'

adobes at night to watch, with envy, some little peona preparing her man's meal, you would understand." So, smoking by the fire, he watched with huge comfort the play of dimples in her arms and the fluttering of the small hands which seemed so hopelessly at odds with their task.

While working she chattered happily, but after the last dish was ranged in the plate rack on the wall she came to him and sank in a graceful heap beside his chair. Head pillowed on one white arm spread across his knee, she gazed thoughtfully into the fire; and, looking down upon her, Seyd's thought reverted once more to the shepherd's hut. Again he had difficulty in realizing that it was indeed he, Robert Seyd, mining engineer, who was sharing food and fire with this, his wife, daughter on one side of a proud Spanish house and on the other of descent that ran back into the dim time of the Aztecs.

Her voice called him out of his wonder, and while the fire leaped and crackled in defiance of the wind and rain without they talked of this and that, their trials and travail, absent thoughts, hopes; and in the telling of it they obtained surcease from the smart of past misunderstandings. Also there were confessions. Each told--she with a blush--how they had overlooked each other's sleep in the shepherd's hut.

Because opportunity for such communion had been altogether lacking, they talked late. Their murmurs died with the last light of the fire.

CHAPTER XXVIII

At high noon two days thereafter Seyd and Francesca drew rein on the rim of the Barranca above San Nicolas.

During the moment that the horses rested their thoughts reverted to the last occasion when they had overlooked the great void, and if the thought of Sebastien brought a touch of sadness into the girl's reflections it caused no bitterness. She turned with a low laugh when Seyd produced from an inner pocket the handkerchief he had picked up that day on the trail.

"It did," she said, when he told how it seemed to drip tears. "I had cried all the way up the trail to the rim."

After the usual nightly downpour the sun had come out, and under a flood of golden light the valley floor stood out in relief, with its wooded hills and hollows diminished to toy proportions by the awful depth. In the center the _casa_ of San Nicolas sat like a gold cup in the wide green saucer of surrounding pastures. Beyond, the river lay, a band of fretted silver, splitting the valley; and, following its course upward, the girl's eye paused at the yellow scar, high on the opposite wall, which marked Santa Gertrudis.

"My beacon on many a dark day." She pointed.

"And that reminds me that it is in great danger of being extinguished,"

Seyd answered. "Our first payment was due the day before yesterday.

Unless Billy has returned in my absence with the money--and I haven't the slightest hope--the property is forfeited to your uncle."

"But he will not claim it." Out of her simple woman's faith she went on: "He is too good and kind to advantage himself by your misfortune. In spite of his hate for the gringos, he likes you personally. Now that you are--my husband, he will not attempt your harm."

In view of his present clear view of Don Luis's machinations, Seyd was not so sure. Unwilling to hurt her, he conceded: "Well, we shall see.

Let us ride on down."

"Not together, dear." Leaning over, she caught his arm. "I must see him first alone. He will be furiously angry, of course. But the angrier the better, for just so much sooner will follow the calm."

"But he may try--"

"--To take me from you?" She took the words out of his mouth. "He cannot. In a day, a week, a month, sooner or later, I should escape.

They could not forever keep me locked up. But he will not try. You know, he stole his own wife, s.n.a.t.c.hed her away while she was going to church to marry another, and he comes of a race that gained wives as often as not by the sword. He cannot blame you without condemning himself, and I am sure that he will not try. If you give me a little time to conquer him and soothe my poor scandalized mother it will come out all right. So you must go on to Santa Gertrudis now and see if there be any news of Senor Thornton. And to-morrow--you may come."

"If you have the slightest doubt"--loath to let her out of his hands, he hesitated--"I would ride on to the station. Beautiful as is this place, and much as I have come to love it, I would rather abandon all than incur the risk."

"But there is none, husband mine." She looked up in his face, tenderly smiling. "He will rage and roar like an old lion, but that is all. I should be only half a woman to have come to my age without learning to manage him. Remember, for the second time you have saved my life, and, being already married, he cannot deny us. So go in peace, and"--she put up her mouth--"love."

In spite of her rea.s.surance, he watched her go with apprehension that took a blacker tinge when, arriving at the inn late in the afternoon, he found no word from Billy. Though the inn's meager accommodations had not been improved by a slap from the wing tip of the wave, he remained there all night in preference to crossing and recrossing the river. With so much at stake, Santa Gertrudis could take care of itself for another day. Sleeping with anxiety for a bedfellow, he rose and was on the road at daybreak--but not a bit earlier than Francesca, who met him halfway.

"I knew you would be anxious," she explained, "so I saddled a horse and stole away while all of San Nicolas was still asleep. But not for nothing are you to have my news. _Si_, it is good!

"'Twas as I said," she went on, having received her reward. "The _madre_ had already cried herself beyond further tears, and was glad to have me on any terms. The good uncle, of course, stormed. Never was there such a battle since the French wars, and had you been there 'twould not have lacked its killed and wounded. Until midnight we fought; then, after cursing the blood of the Irishman that has always led me astray, he gave in. ''Tis not for an old soldier to cross tongues with a woman,' he growled. 'To-morrow bring me thy man.' But he knew that he was beaten,"

she finished, confidently, "for when I kissed him he laughed in his throat and patted my hair."

Again Seyd refused to dash her hope, but he was not quite convinced, and when they entered the big living-room where Don Luis stood with Paulo in waiting his dark gravity cast its shadow over the girl's glad face. His immobility afforded no clue to the feeling that lay behind the stereotyped greeting, "The house, senor, is yours.

"I am the more pleased to see you," he went on, "because Paulo reminded me an hour ago of a matter of business that lies between us. Such things stick not in my memory. But I believe it concerns some money."