feet with entreaties not to leave her again, and the soldiers showed
every possible kindness and attention to the girl, she was seldom seen
among them. Sometimes, at the close of day, she was seen suddenly rising
from some crevice in the hill, where she had clambered and climbed all
day; but oftener she was discovered mounted on her pony, her long, black
hair streaming, her horse in full gallop, as though riding in pursuit of
the setting sun. No word of complaint passed her lips; no one heard her
draw a sigh, or saw her shed a tear; and none dared to speak a word of
comfort. But when Screetah tried to cheer her, one day, she held out her
empty hands, saying, simply, "I have the rosary no more!" Then Screetah
knew that all hope was lost, and she pleaded no more, but broke the
beautiful, sun-baked pottery, tore the matting from the floor, and
crouched by the threshold from noon to night, and night till morning,
waiting quietly for the silent guest that she knew would some day, soon,
enter there with Juanita.
One day, she came slowly down from the hill and entered the dark
_adobe_, where Screetah sat silent by the door.
"A little cloud of dust is rising on the horizon," she said to the old
Indian, "and I must prepare;" and Screetah only wailed the death-song of
her race.
Though Juanita had returned on foot, she had ridden away on the pony the
day before, and the soldiers started out to look for the animal,
thinking it had escaped from her, or had been stolen by some marauding
Indian. But they found the carcass not far from camp--with Juanita's
dagger in the animal's heart. The next day she went to the top of the
hill again, and when night came, she said, "The cloud grows bigger." On
the third day, when Juanita lay stretched on the hard, uncomfortable
bed, denuded of all its gay robes and blankets, a sudden excitement
arose outside, such as the signs of anything approaching camp always
create. A hundred different opinions were expressed as to what and who
it could be. Nearer and nearer came the cloud of dust, and a cry of
surprise went up, as the horse fell from fatigue on the edge of the
camp, and the rider took his way to old Screetah's hut.
What passed within those dark, low walls--what passionate appeals for
forgiveness, what frantic remorse and bitter self-accusations they
echoed--only Screetah and the dying girl knew. The old Indian was
touched, and tried to plead for him; but Juanita seemed to heed neither
the man's presence nor the woman's entreaties. She died "with her face
to the wall," and the words of forgiveness, which he had staked life and
honor to hear, were never uttered by those firmly-closed lips.
With the day of Juanita's death commenced the old Indian woman's search
for the rosary, and she tore her hair in desperation when they laid the
girl in her narrow cell before she had found it. Day after day, the
search was continued. Was it not the peace of Juanita's soul she was
seeking to restore? After awhile the camp was broken up, by orders from
district head-quarters, and a forage-station established. Our friend,
whose term of service had expired, was made station-keeper, and, one by
one, the people from the settlement followed the military, till, at
last, only he and old Screetah were left of all the little band that
once had filled the dreary spot with the busy hum of life.
_HETTY'S HEROISM._
"But, father, you don't really mean to watch the old year out, do you?
It's only a waste of candles, and the boys won't want to get up in the
morning."
"Mebbee so, mother; but New Year's Eve don't come every day; so let's
have it out." And old man Sutton tipped back his chair, after filling
his pipe, and looked contentedly up at the white ceiling of the "best
room."
Johnny, the younger son of the family, whistled gleefully, threw more
wood on the blazing pile in the fire-place, and then, resuming his
oft-forbidden occupation of cracking walnuts in the best room, said:
"Don't the wind howl, though? Just drives the rain. Golly, ain't it nice
here?"
"You're not to say bad words," broke out his mother, sharply. "Father,
why don't you correct the boy? Such a night as this, too, when--"
"What's that?" interrupted the oldest son, springing from his seat, and
showing a straight, manly form and clear, deep eyes, as he stood by the
door in a listening attitude.
"Coyotes, brother Frank; the ghosts don't come round this early, do
they?" laughed the younger.
"Hush, Johnny! It's some one crying for help--a woman's voice!"
"Tut, tut! where would a woman come from this time o' night, and not a
house within miles of us?"
"A woman's voice, I'll stake my head," insisted Frank, after a moment's
silence in the room.
The mother had laid down her glasses. "Wonder if the boy thinks Lolita
is coming through the storm to watch the old year out with him?" She
laughed as at something that gave her much pleasure, though the rest did
not share her merriment.
They were all three listening at door and window now, and when Frank
threw the one nearest him quickly open, there came a sound through the
din and fury of the rain-storm that was neither the howling of the wind
nor the yelp of the coyote.
"Now what do you say?" asked Frank; and he had already passed through an
inner apartment, and in a moment stood on the porch again, swinging a
lantern and peering out into the dark and rain, listening for that cry
of distress. It came in a moment--nearer than they had expected it.
"Help! help! oh, please come and help!"
"The d--l!" was old man Sutton's exclamation; not that he really thought
the slender little figure perched on the back of the tall horse was the
personage mentioned--it was only a habit he had of apostrophizing.
The horse had stopped short and was breathing hard, and the prayer for
help was frantically repeated by the rider. "Come quick, and help the
poor fellow; I've been gone so long from him--oh! _do_ come!"
"What poor fellow--and where is he?" asked the old man, in bewilderment.
"The stage-driver--and he's lying near the old Mission, with his leg
broken. The horses shied in the storm and overturned the stage, and I
was the only passenger, and I crept out of it, and the driver couldn't
move any more, and told me to unhitch the horses and come this way for
help, and--oh! _do_ come now!" She ended her harangue, delivered with
flying breath and little attention to rhetoric or inter-punctuation.
"And you came those nine miles all alone, gal?" asked the old man.
"Oh, I think I must have come a hundred miles," she replied, with a wild
look at the faces on the porch and in the open doorway; "and it is so
cold!" She drew the dripping garments closer about her, while father and
son consulted together, with their eyes only, for a brief moment. Then
the old man said she must be taken in, and they must get the wagon
ready, and waken Pedro and Martin.
Without a word Frank gave a lantern to Johnny, lifted the girl from the
horse and carried her into the room, brushing the drenched hair back
from her face, when he sat her down, as he would have done a child's.
But she pleaded excitedly, "Indeed I cannot stay--let me go back, and
you can follow."
"So you shall go back, my gal," said Mr. Sutton, "as soon as the wagon
is ready. See how she's shivering, mother; get her some hot tea, and
give her your fur sack--for she'll go back with us or die."
"My fur sack?" repeated the old lady, incredulously; "my best sack--out
in this rain!"
"Best sack be ----," he shouted, angrily; "I'll throw it in the fire in
a minute!" And the best sack quickly made its appearance, in spite of
the threat of speedy cremation.
The tea was brought by Johnny, hastily drank, and then the girl repeated
her wish to move on. Frank's own cloak was thrown over "the best fur
sack"--not, I fear, so much from a desire to save this garment as from
the wish to keep the shrinking form in it from shivering so painfully.
It was New-Year's day--though the light had not yet dawned before the
sufferer was comfortably lodged at the Yedral Ranch, and Hetty, as well
as the Sutton family, slept later into the morning than usual. The sun
had risen as serenely cloudless as though no storm had passed through
the land but yesternight; and Father Sutton, thinking he was the first
one up, was surprised to encounter Hetty with Johnny, her new-found
cavalier. He hailed her in his unceremonious fashion: "I'm glad to see
you up bright and early, gal--make a good farmer's wife some day. Did
you come down this way to live on a ranch?"
"No, sir; I came to teach school. Your name is among those of the
gentlemen who engaged me."
"The ----! Are you the new school-marm? Then you're Miss----"
"Hetty Dunlap is my name."
He held out both hands. "A happy New-Year to ye, Hetty Dunlap--and happy
it'll be for all of us, I'm thinking; for a gal that's got so much pluck
as you is sure to know something about teachin' school. Here, Johnny,
how d'ye like your teacher?"
Now, Johnny had drawn back with some slight manifestation of disfavor
when Hetty's true character came to light. But she laid her hand on his
shoulder in her shy yet frank manner, and said quickly:
"I had already selected Johnny as a sort of assistant disciplinarian. I
am so little that I shall want some one who is tall and strong to give
me countenance;" which at once restored the harmony between them. They
went in to breakfast together, during which meal it was decided by
Father Sutton that Hetty was to live in his family, though "the Price's"
was the place where, until now, the teachers had made their home, being
nearest to the school.
"But then," said the old man, "if the Rancho Yedral can't afford a
mustang for such a brave little rider every day of the year, then I'll
give it up;" and he slapped his hat on and left the house.
"Yes," Frank commented rather timidly, "you are brave--a perfect
heroine. And yet you are so very small." She was standing in just the
spot where he had brushed the hair out of her face last night, and
perhaps his words were an apology.
"True," she assented, "I am small; not much taller than my sister's
oldest girl, and she is only twelve."
"You have a sister?"
"Yes, in the city; and she has six children." Her voice was raised a
little, her nut-brown eyes looked into his with an unconscious appeal
for sympathy, and her delicate nostrils quivered as in terror--which the
bare recollection of the little heathens seemed to inspire her with.
"And did you live at her house?--have you neither father nor mother
living?"
"Neither. How happy you must be--you have so kind a father and so good a
mother--"
The "good mother" came in just then, shaking her best sack vigorously,
and lamenting, in pointed words, the "ruination" of this expensive fur
robe--calling a painful blush to Hetty's cheek as well as Frank's. The
young man tried vainly to make it appear a pleasant joke. "Indeed,
mother, you ought to look upon that piece of fur as a handsome
New-Year's gift--you have my promise of a new fur sack as soon as I go
to the city. And isn't my word good for a fur sack?" he asked,
laughingly.
"Yes," said the good mother. "I know your extravagance well enough; but,
to my notion, you can afford such things better after you've married
Lolita, than before."
Frank bit his lips angrily, and turned away--but not before Hetty had
seen the hot red that flushed his cheek.
Toward noon there was loud rejoicing on the porch, and Hetty, looking
from her window, saw Mrs. Sutton welcoming a tall, dark-eyed girl of
about twenty, whose companion--her brother, to all appearance--seemed
several years her senior.
This girl, Lolita Selden, the daughter of an American father and a
wealthy Spanish mother, was a fair specimen of the large class
represented by her in California. Generous and impulsive, as all her
Spanish half-sisters are, neither her piecemeal education, nor the
foolish indulgence of the mother, had succeeded in making anything of
her but an impetuous, though really kind-hearted woman. In the brother's
darker, heavier face, there was less of candor and sympathy, and his
figure--though he had all the grace and dignity of the Spaniard--was
lacking in height and the breadth of shoulder that made Frank Sutton
look a giant beside him.
It was some time before our heroine was introduced to the pair; not,
indeed, till dinner was on the table, though Frank had repeatedly hinted
to his mother that Hetty might not feel at liberty to make her
appearance among them without being formally invited--to which he
received the cheering response that "he was always botherin'."
When they met, it was hard to say whether Hetty was more charmed with
Lolita's stately presence and simple kindness, or Lolita with Hetty's
heroism. The brother, too, seemed lost in admiration of Hetty's heroic
conduct or Hetty's pretty face--a fact which escaped neither Frank nor
his mother, for she commented on it days afterward. "What a chance it
would be for a poor girl like this 'ere one, if she could make a ketch
of young Selden, and he married her!"
"What! that black-faced Spaniard?" but Frank's generous heart reproached
him even while he spoke, and his mother took advantage of his penitence
and charged him with a message to Lolita, that needed to be delivered
the same day. When, therefore, after school-hours, Frank returned
bringing with him both Hetty and Lolita--the latter was visiting her new
friend at the school-house--the mother was well pleased, and spoke more
kindly than she had yet spoken to the new teacher.
"Old man" Sutton, too, had many a pleasant word for both young girls;
and altogether Hetty soon realized that home could be home away from her
sister's house and the six plagues it held.
Spring came into the land, dressing in glossier green the grayish limbs
of the white-oak in the valley, opening with balmy breath the blossoms
of the buckeye by the stream, and covering with gayest flowers the plain
and the hillside; while in some shady nook the laurel stood, shaking its
evergreen leaves in daily wonderment at the dress changes and the
youthful air all nature had put on. The wild rose creeping over the
veranda of the Yedral Ranch shed its perfume through the house, and cast
its bright sheen upon the very roof-tree, a passion-vine, in sombre
contrast, rearing its symbolic blossom cheek to cheek with the rosy
flower-face of the gay child of Castile.
Long since had the stage-driver left the Yedral Ranch, grateful for kind
treatment received, his head and heart full of a firm conviction on two
points: The first, that there was just one man good enough to be Hetty
Dunlap's husband, and that that man was Frank Sutton: the second, that
there was only one woman good enough to be Frank's wife, and she Hetty
Dunlap.
He had resumed his old post, and many a pleasant word and startling bit
of news did he call out to Hetty and her friends when they were down by
the "big gate," as he drove by very slowly, so as to enjoy conversation
as long as possible. George was a deal pleasanter when Hetty was there
by herself, or at least without Lolita; and once, when, by chance, Hetty
and Frank were there alone together, he called down, regardless of the
staring passengers in the coach, "That's the way I like to see things;
two's good company, and three's none. Don't see what you want to be
luggin' that Spanish gal round with you for, Frank; she ain't none o'
your'n nohow, and never will be, nuther."
Before the flush had died on her face, Hetty found her arm drawn
through Frank's, and as they slowly bent their steps homeward, the mind
of each seemed absorbed in the contemplation of some intricate puzzle,
on the solving of which depended their whole future welfare. Then Frank
raised his merry, twinkling eyes and charged her with being hopelessly
enamored of George, the stage-driver, defying her to say that she had
not just then been thinking of him, as he knew by her absent looks.
"I--I was only looking down that way, and thinking there is no lovelier
spot on earth than Yedral Ranch." She stopped abruptly; what she was
saying now to cover her confusion, she had said a few days ago, from the
fulness of her heart, to Lolita, strolling along this same road; and the
Spanish girl had answered impulsively, "Yes; and you shall always make
your home here when I--" Then she had stopped, crimson in the face, and
Hetty had not urged her to finish the sentence.
But Frank, with quickly altered tone, asked softly, "Do you like it so
well, Hetty--really and truly? And have you not wanted often to go back
to the city?"
"To the city?" she repeated, with a little shiver; "no--no!"
The call of a partridge from behind the nearest _manzanita_ bush warned
them that young Johnny was there, and the next moment he appeared before
them--his mother's ambassador to Hetty. "Would she be kind enough just
for once to help with the cake? His mother had burnt her right hand, and
she could not stir the batter with her left."
"And could not you have done it 'just for once' as well?" asked Frank,
impatiently; at which question Johnny opened his eyes wide.
"She didn't ask me," he said; and then they all went silently to the
house.
To do Mrs. Sutton justice, she was loud in her praises of Hetty's
obliging disposition, and Hetty's proficiency in cake-baking, that
evening at tea; and particularly to Julian Selden, who was there with
his sister, did she untiringly sing Hetty's perfections. This seemed to
have the effect of making the young Spaniard bolder and more desirous of
pushing his suit, for the very next evening they came home from Hetty's
school _a partie carrée_--Lolita, her brother, Hetty and Frank.
The facts of the case were that, following a suggestion of Frank's,
Johnny, on Julian's second attempt to escort Hetty home, had kept close
by her side during the whole ride, much more to Hetty's delight than
Julian's. In consequence, Julian had been wise enough to bring Lolita
with him; and Frank, though chagrined, was better pleased to find them
both at Hetty's school than one alone.
Through the spring and far into the summer they met almost daily in this
way; and sometimes, though Mother Sutton's invitations to Lolita and her
brother to "come every day--every day," were loud and vociferous, the
brother and sister would return to their own home after a protracted
ride, leaving Hetty and Frank to find their way back to Yedral Ranch
alone. Hetty thought she could see a cloud on Mrs. Sutton's brow
whenever this happened; and dear as those rides were to her, she avoided
them whenever she could. Unhappily (Frank did not consider it so), while
out alone together one day, Hetty's saddle-girth broke, and though she
sprang quickly to the ground, Frank's nerves were so unstrung, he
declared, that he could not at once repair the damage, but had to
convince himself, by slow degrees, that she really was not hurt or
frightened. Consequently, it was later than usual when they reached
home; and Mother Sutton, darting a quick look to see that the door had
closed behind Frank, who had explained the cause of delay, muttered
something about "cunning minxes, who had neither gratitude nor shame,"
and then tramped out of the room, leaving Hetty with cheeks burning and
eyes strangely bright under the tears rising in them.
Next morning she made much ado over a sprained ankle, which was not so
painful as to keep her at home, but just bad enough to cause her to ride
slowly to school with Johnny and home again before school-hours were
fairly over. I fear that she was a "designing minx," for, if she
managed, by keeping her room to evade Frank's questioning glance and
Mother Sutton's hostile looks, she managed no less to escape an honor
which, according to this good lady's statement, corroborated by Lolita's
more than usual tenderness, Julian Selden had meant to confer upon her.
But she could not stay in her room forever; and Father Sutton dragged
her out of it one day, challenging her to tell the truth ("and shame the
devil"), by acknowledging that something had hurt her beside the
sprained ankle. Had Mrs. Sutton shown no spite openly against "the gal"
before, it broke out now, in little sharp speeches against women "tryin'
to work on the sympathy of foolish young men. Her boys, she knew,
couldn't never be ketched that way by no white-faced--"
"Will yer be still now!" thundered the old man, taking the pipe from
between his lips and pointing with it to Hetty, who at this moment was
really the white-faced thing the old lady had meant to call her.
"Johnny," said Hetty, next morning, on their way to school, "I
think--I'll go home when vacation begins, and--"
"Why, what d'you mean?" asked the boy, startled out of all proper
respect.
"Just what I say;" and she enumerated her reasons for considering it her
duty to return to her lonely sister and the six pining children; and it
was a matter of doubt whether Johnny's lips quivered more during the
recital, or Hetty's. But when the school-house was reached, Johnny was a
man again; and if he did blubber out loud when he told his elder
brother of it, late in the evening, down by the big gate, nobody but
Frank heard him, and _his_ lips were rather white when next he spoke.
"You asked me for that Mexican saddle of mine some time ago, Johnny. You
are welcome to it."
"I don't want no Mexican saddle," replied Johnny, in a surly tone, and
without grammar; but looking into his brother's face, he said, "Thank
you, Frank. I'd say you're 'bully,' only Hetty said it wasn't a nice
word."
In the course of the week Father Sutton, in his character as such, and
as school director, was made acquainted with Hetty's intention. In both
characters he protested at first, but yielded at last. He walked out
with "the gal" one evening, as though to take her over the ranch for the
last time, and then artfully dodged away when Frank--by the merest
accident--came to join them. Left alone with this young man, Hetty
trembled, as she had learned to tremble under his mother's scowling
looks and half-spoken sentences. He spoke quietly, at first, of her
going away; but her very quietness seemed after a while to set him all
on fire.
"Hetty," he cried, "are you then so anxious to go--so unwilling to stay,
even for a day, after the school closes? Is there nothing--is there no
one here you regret to leave behind you?"
Poor little Hetty! How they had praised her for her heroism once. There
was no praise due her then, as she had protested again and again. Now
she was the heroine, when she answered, though with averted face and
smothered voice, "Nothing--no one;" adding, quickly, "you have all been
so kind to me that naturally I shall feel homesick for the Yedral Ranch,
and shall be so glad to see any of you when you come to the city."
Frank had heard "the tears in her voice," and though he turned from her
abruptly, it was not in anger, as she fancied.
"Father," he said, a day or two later, "I don't know but I'll take a run
over the mountains, now harvesting is over, and there seems nothing
particular for me to do."
"Please yourself and you'll please me, Frank," was the answer. "Got any
money? You kin git it when you want it."
Then there was nothing more said about the journey, and Frank, making no
further preparations, seemed to have forgotten all about it.
When Hetty was lifted into the little wagon that took herself and trunk
to the big gate, she repeated her hope of sooner or later greeting the
members of the Sutton family in San Francisco.
"Not soon, I'm afeard, Miss Hetty; me an' father and Johnny never goes
to the city, and as for Frank--I reckon he'll want to git married first,
and bring Lolita 'long with him."
Martin, who was driving, probably knew the meaning of the fire in the
old man's eye, for he whipped up the horse and drove off, as though
"fearing to miss the stage," as he explained at the turn of the road.
Altogether, George showed neither as much surprise nor pleasure as Hetty
had faintly expected him to evince. When they reached the first town he
came and stood by the open coach window, after the customary halt,
drawing on his gloves first, and then pointing out, with great
exactitude, where the old _adobe_ tavern had formerly stood, on the
opposite side of the street.