Mexico. She said she had once taught it to an American, a tall, handsome
man, with blue eyes and fair face, who must have been in love with her,
I think, for he had always substituted her name, in the refrain, for the
name which the author of the song had put into it. She, too, must have
been fond of this American with blue eyes and dark blonde hair; for,
though not in the least conceited, or aware of her own attractions, she
always sang the refrain with her own name, Manuela, instead of the
original name, Juanita, simply because this American had wished her so
to do. The air is beautiful, I think; and the words are very pretty
too." She turned to the keys again, as though to repeat the air.
"Stop!" he said hoarsely, arresting her hand; "you will kill me. What is
the price you ask?"
"The price is high," he groaned, when she had coolly and in unfaltering
tones stated her conditions to him. "But if you promise to keep to your
word, I will do my best."
"You will succeed, then," she said, holding out her hand, and speaking
almost cordially as they parted for the night.
When she reached her room she seemed for once to have fallen into Paul's
_rôle_ of Wandering Jew; but her steps were noiseless, though the
thoughts that danced and chased through her brain _would_ come to her
tongue, in quick, triumphant words.
"My upright, truthful judge and brother-in-law--to bring about a
reconciliation between his best friend, my husband, and his 'erring but
loving wife.'" A haughty look flashed in her eyes: "Regina--and pleading
for forgiveness! Ah, well--even a queen must sometimes stoop to
conquer!"
The weeks passed slowly on; and, absorbed though Laura was in her
camphor-bottle and her novels, she could not but notice that Paul had
altogether changed in his behavior toward her sister; and she rejoiced
over this in her own fashion:
"I always told Regina that her innocence would come to light, and she
would triumph over the machinations of her enemies, and get married to
a--But she _is_ married--I forget. Well, it will all come right, and
she'll be ever so happy, I know."
Poor thing! She could not live to see her so. The camphor-bottle, the
close, dark room, and the Frenchy novels were too much for her; and
before the spring had brought any flowers to strew on her grave, they
had laid her in a darker, closer room than she had yet been in. Her
husband and Regina followed the coffin, dressed in deep mourning; and
Regina's face, as well as Paul's, was paler and sadder by a good many
shades than usual.
Meanwhile, letters passed frequently between Paul and his friend and
brother-in-law; and one day, when the roses and lilacs that bordered the
lawn were shedding fragrance and beauty together over the old
homestead-grounds, Paul announced to his sister-in-law that he would
accompany her on her journey to New Mexico.
How the wind of the plains through Paul's hair made it look more than
ever like a lion's mane! and how like the Paul of long ago he looked,
mounted on his fiery black horse! Something like pity for him sometimes
stole into Regina's heart; but she would sneer at herself for the
feeling. "Did he pity me when I came home broken-hearted--repentant?"
The long hours of their rest--for the colonel had seen to it that his
wife had not to travel in the plebeian stage, but was furnished train
and escort at Fort Leavenworth--she beguiled with telling, bit by bit,
the story of her acquaintance with Manuela, who had found her way to the
fort on the Rio Pecos, one day, where they had been stationed. Regina
had been captivated at once by the girl's gentle face and soft black
eyes; and when, after an acquaintance of some weeks, she surmised that
the girl was looking for the man who had once loved and then,
unaccountably, deserted her, she felt only pity for one who could so
unselfishly and devotedly love any man as to give up home and friends,
and wander through what must seem the wide world to this poor girl, in
search of him. That the man was Paul, she felt quite sure; though she
had never expressed the least suspicion of this to the colonel.
This much only could Paul learn from his sister-in-law; and that she
knew, even now, where the girl could be found; further than this she
would not say; would not tell him that Manuela had lived in her own
household, half as domestic, half as companion; that she had been
induced to this by the vague hope that while with Americans she might
more easily learn of those who arrived, or returned, from the States to
the Territories; that on leaving Santa Fé she had exacted a promise from
the girl to remain in the colonel's quarters and employ until she should
send her permission to leave her post.
And so they reached Santa Fé--Paul hopeful and expectant as a young
bridegroom; Regina calm and thoughtful, but trying to look cheerful when
she knew of Paul's eyes resting on her; when unobserved, the dreary,
despairing look crept back into her eyes, and her face, white as marble,
grew rigid as the face of a statue. When the cluster of square,
low-built adobe houses, called Santa Fé, rose up before them, Paul
could hardly restrain his impatience; but he had promised to be guided
in all things by his sister-in-law, and he had now to abide by her
decisions. "It would be painful and embarrassing to have any one, even
her own brother-in-law, present at her first meeting with the colonel,"
she said, and therefore requested Paul to remain over night in Santa Fé,
and ride over in the morning to where Fort Marcy lay, on the low rise of
the hills bordering the plain.
Since Regina so wished it, let the meeting between herself and husband
be entirely private. We will not draw aside the veil till the next
morning, which came up with a blaze of broad, staring sunshine,
promising an unpleasantly hot day. The commanding officer's quarters,
though surrounded by a neat paling-fence, was as bare and innocent of
the least attempt at a garden as all the rest of the quarters were. The
red, hard earth alone stared up at the hard blue sky; outside the
fortress walls, ungainly cactus and stunted mesquit bushes made the
plain look only the more inhospitable and barren.
The quarters were low, but cool; and as the doorways were only hung with
curtains, the breeze that swept over the plain had free access to every
room in the house. The large sitting-room at the colonel's quarters had
been darkened since early morning, and the heat excluded as much as
possible, for the colonel was threatened with a severe attack of the
torturing headache that sprang from the badly-healed wound in his
forehead. As the sun rose higher, he succumbed to the pain; and as he
threw himself on the wide, low lounge, in intolerable suffering, Regina
stepped lightly to his side, to supply the usual remedies. But a cold
look and colder words drove her back from his couch; and as he called to
Manuela to bathe his head, in gentle, almost tender tones, she for the
first time felt a deadly hatred toward this girl, whom she knew still to
be an angel in virtue and purity.
Struck to the heart, she left the room, only to throw herself on the
hard floor of the next apartment, where she grovelled in an agony of
anger and pain. Suddenly the sound of horses' hoofs fell on her ear, and
she sprang up with one wild bound, and flew to the door, just in time to
motion Paul, who had already dismounted, into her presence.
"Now has my time come!" She could hardly restrain herself from crying it
out aloud to the frowning mountain and the arid plain. "Ricardo, thou
shalt be avenged! avenged thou, my poor heart, for the tears and the
blood wrung from thee for many, many bitter days!"
The light of the sun shining into Paul's eyes, blinded him; and though
he saw the finger laid on her lips, he could not see the dishevelled
hair and bloodshot eyes, and approached her, looking for some glad
surprise. He had donned a Mexican costume, and the little silver bells
on the outside seam of his pantaloons jingled musically at every step;
while the short jacket, showing the pistol-belt under the red sash, set
his figure off to full advantage.
He spoke laughingly: "You see I have turned Mexican, every inch of me!"
then he caught the wild eyes, with their frenzied look, and he grasped
her hand, exclaiming, "Good God! what has happened?"
"Happened?" she echoed with a demoniac laugh; "we have been
deceived--outraged--cheated out of our life's happiness--both you and I!
Behold the traitor and the serpent!"
Drawing aside the curtain that hung in the door-arch between the two
rooms, she beckoned him to approach, and pointed silently to the group
in the next room. Bending over the reclining form of the man on the
lounge stood a girl, whose face, of angel goodness, was turned in
profile to the two intruders at the doorway. The man's eyes were closed;
and as the girl stooped lower, his hand stole softly around her form,
and nestled there, lovingly, tenderly, as though it had found a
long-sought resting-place. Pliant braids of glossy black hair fell far
below the girl's waist; and her eyes were of the almond shape, that we
find in the faces of those descended from the people of Castile.
In a moment Paul's burning eyes had taken in the picture, and an
inarticulate sound came over his lips. The woman beside him watched him
with the eyes of a tigress; and he never knew--was it _her_ touch that
guided him, or did his own evil passions move his hand from his reeking
brow to the pistol in his belt? There was a sharp report, a shriek and a
groan, and the next minute Paul Kennerly was dashing over the plain,
mounted on his fleet black horse, the wind tossing through his hair, and
raising it from his bare brow, where it reared itself proudly, like the
mane of a lion when he flies from captivity and death.
_THE ROMANCE OF GILA BEND._
Travelling from Los Angeles to Tucson, you can, if you choose, sleep
under a roof almost every night, providing you have good teams. There
are Government forage stations along the whole route, where travellers
are "taken in" by the station-keepers, though not on Government account.
I do not say that it is pleasant at all these stations, particularly for
a woman, as she will seldom or never meet one of her own sex on the way.
When we left Fort Yuma, Sam, the driver, assured me that I would not see
a white woman's face between there and Tucson. He was mistaken. I met
not only one, but a whole family of them, one after another.
The day that brought us to Oatman's Flat was murky, dark, and gloomy--a
day in full harmony with the character of the country we were travelling
through. We descended into the Flat by an abrupt fall in the road that
landed us at once among a clump of scraggy, darkling willows, drooping
wearily over a sluggish little creek. In the distance we could see the
white sand of the bed of the Gila, and half-buried in it the ghastly,
water-bleached limbs of the trees that the river had uprooted year after
year in its annual frenzy. We could not go the upper road, on account of
the Gila's having washed out a portion of it, and the lower road seemed
to be regarded by Sam with all the disfavor it deserved. Verde or
grease-wood, as ragged and scraggy as the willows, covered the whole
Flat, except where, towards the centre, a dilapidated shanty stood on a
sandy, cheerless open space. Not far from it were the remains of a
fence, enclosing some six paces of uneven ground, and on the only upper
rail left of the inclosure sat a dismal-looking, solitary crow.
There was something so repulsively dreary about the whole place that it
made me shudder, and when Sam, pointing to it with his whip, said it was
the spot where the Oatman family had been murdered and lay buried, I was
not in the least surprised. Only one of the whole family had escaped--a
little chap who had crawled away after he had been left for dead, and
brought the white people from the next settlement to the scene of the
massacre. There was nothing to be done but to bury the mutilated
corpses; after this, the place had been deserted and shunned by the few
who lived here, though there had been no more Indian depredations
committed for years past.
I was glad that the road did not take us very near the shanty, though I
watched it with a strange fascination. Sam, too, had his eyes fixed on
something that might have been the shadow of one of the victims,
flitting by the black gap which had once been the door. The place was so
weird that the ghostly shadow seemed to belong there; it chimed in so
well with the rest, that I accepted it as a part of the uncanny whole.
We had been going along at the usual leisurely gait, but Sam whipped up
the mules all at once, and leaned out of the ambulance to speak to Phil,
who drove the army wagon containing our baggage. The road was good and
solid, so I took no alarm at first; but when the speed was continued,
and the baggage-wagon kept thundering close behind us, I ventured to
ask, "Is there danger from Indians here?"
"There hain't no Indians been seen around here for more'n three years,"
was the answer, which satisfied me at the time.
When we came to Burke's Station, where we were to pass the night, a
surprise awaited us. The house, a squalid _adobe_, was built in the
style common along the route--an open passage-way with rooms on either
side. The principal room to the left was bar-room and store-room; the
room to the right was reception-room, sitting-room, bed-room, and behind
it was the kitchen. The passage-way was dining-hall. When the tall young
Missourian, mine host, had ushered me into the room, he stepped to the
opening leading to the kitchen and called out:
"Here, Sis, come and speak to the lady."
Obedient to the call, a bashful, half-grown girl appeared, wiping her
hands on her apron, and looking up timidly from under her long
eyelashes. I took her by the hand. "How do you, child? How in the world
did you get here, and where is your mother?" I asked.
Sam and Phil stood in the hall-door nudging each other, until Sam could
restrain himself no longer.
"Why, that's his wife," pointing to the young Goliah from Missouri, "and
her dad and mam's living in the old shanty down on the Flat. I'll be
derned if they didn't give me the worst scare I had yet--thought they
was Indians, shore!"
I looked from one to the other. "And how old are you?" I asked the girl.
"Almost fifteen!" was the answer; and when the men withdrew she told me
about the rest of her family, whom I would probably find along the road.
Sis was badly dressed; a coarse cotton gown, made with a yoke about an
inch and a half in depth, was drawn up close around her neck, and hung
loosely about her slender, immature form; her naked feet were thrust
into coarse boots, and a large check apron completed her costume. But
there was a shy, daisy-like grace about her that made one forget the
dress and see only the dove-like eyes and half-pensive smile on her
face. Her husband treated her in all things like a child, and she obeyed
him without a murmur or a question. When we left he told us that we
would find Sis's aunt at Kenyon's Station, and charged us to say that
Sis was well, and not the least bit homesick.
We made Kenyon's Station early in the day, Sam and Phil greatly enjoying
the prospect of seeing another white woman here. She appeared on the
threshold, a brawny, coarse-handed woman of about forty, tidy-looking,
in spite of her bare feet and the short pipe in her mouth. By her side
appeared a shock-headed girl of twelve, with eyes agog and mouth open at
the strange apparition of a civilized-looking white woman. The husband
stood beside the ambulance--six feet and a half in his cowhide boots--a
good-humored smile on his leathery face, and lifted me to the ground as
though I had been a feather. Though the house, like that at Burke's
Station, was only _adobe_, there was an air of homely comfort about it,
inside and out, that made it much more cheerful than the other place.
Aunt Polly was an excellent housekeeper--as viewed from a Texan
standpoint--and after she had in the most _naïve_ manner satisfied her
curiosity in regard to my looks and general make-up, she commenced
preparations for dinner. Sarah Eliza Jane, sole daughter of the house
and race, stayed by me in the room. Sitting in a low, home-made chair,
she stared steadily at me, sitting on a taller home-made chair, till she
had comprehended that the bits of braid and lace in my lap were to be
manufactured into a collar similar to the one I wore in my dress. When
she learned that the collar was to be for her, she ran out to the
kitchen, shouting for her mother to come and see what I was doing. The
mother's delight was as frank and hearty as the daughter's, and all at
once the secret leaked out that the family was in possession of a fine
American cow. Never speak disparagingly to me of Pikes and Texans. The
least kindness shown to them is returned tenfold, and the smallest
advance of friendliness is met by them half-way. When dinner (or supper)
was placed on the table, there came with it the most delicious butter I
had eaten for many a long day, to say nothing of a glass of buttermilk,
the sweetest I ever tasted. But I must tell you how Aunt Polly made the
butter, in case you should emigrate to Arizona without a patent diamond
churn. The cream was put into a high tin quart cup, and beaten with a
spoon till the butter came--which it did in about fifteen minutes.
By the time dinner was over we had become quite intimate, and Aunt Polly
having resumed her pipe, gave me a short account of her history since
emigrating from Texas. The two most striking incidents were the loss of
her former husband by a stroke of lightning, about ten months ago, and
the acquisition of her present husband by a stroke of policy, about
three months ago. Though she did not show me the weeds she had worn on
becoming a widow, she exhibited the gorgeous "good clothes" she wore on
again becoming a wife. She stood at a little distance from me and spread
out the second-day dress, so that I could see the whole of the pattern,
consisting of detached bouquets--brilliantly variegated in color and
gigantic in size--scattered over a plain of light sky-blue. The dress
worn for "the occasion" was a gauzy white muslin, which must have had a
delicate effect--if she wore bare feet and a pipe in her mouth with it.
Her husband had proved kind and indulgent. Since their marriage he had
been at Maricopa Wells, and had bought at the store there another
beautiful dress of many colors--which, alas! had run out of his
saddle-bags, after a two hours' hard rain, on his way home. I saw the
dress pattern, and--oh, it was pitiful.
After this display of good-will and fine clothes on her part, she said
she had a favor to ask of me, too. She pointed to my trunk, and said her
husband was crazy to know whether there was a waterfall in it? He had
read so much about waterfalls in the stray papers that fell into his
hands that he had the greatest curiosity in the world to know what it
was, and to see one with his own eyes. He imagined it to be a kind of
box or bag that ladies wore on their heads to carry their hair in, and,
seeing no foreign matter on my head, he "reckoned that I packed it with
me in my trunk." Aunt Polly had shrewdly guessed it to be a new fashion
of "putting up" the hair; but they both had about as correct an idea of
it as a blind man has of colors. With deep regret I owned that there was
no waterfall in my trunk; but seeing their disappointment, I succeeded,
with the aid of a pair of stockings and a pin-cushion, in putting up my
hair into quite a little Niagara, to the great delight of these
fashion-worshipping people.
How charming the grove of trees looks, when you draw up under their
shadow at Gila Bend, after days of travel over tedious sand-plains or
through wildernesses of grease-wood and cactus. The whisper of the wind
in the trees, the bark of the dog that ran out to meet us, and the
cackle of the busy hens around the doorway, told us that we should find
good and happy people here. There was the solitary house as usual, but
it seemed more pretentious than those at the other stations. The
passage-way was higher and wider, the rooms more numerous, and finished
with whitewash and good glass windows. At the windows curtains; a
gay-colored counterpane on the bed, and wolf-skins in front of it and
the lounge.
The station-keeper was a black-bearded, good-looking man, and his name
was George Washington--(I won't give the rest of his name--it's too
long). I knew I should find Sis's elder sister here as Mrs. George W.
----, for she had been married on the same day with her Aunt Polly. The
blue eyes, under long, silken lashes, that met my gaze on the threshold
at Gila Bend were like Sis's, only these were the eyes of a woman; there
were the same pretty movements, too, only there was more of
self-assertion in them. She might have been eighteen; from out of the
muslin dress she wore shone the whitest shoulders that belle ever
exhibited in a ball-room. Her hands and feet were small, and her rich
brown hair, oddly, though not unbecomingly dressed, lay on a forehead
white and pure as that of a child.
No wonder George W. was proud of his wife, and had tried hard to win as
such the barefooted girl whom he found one day, with her family and some
sorry ox-teams, camped near his house, on their way from Texas to
California. It was quite a large family. There was the girl's mother,
her step-father, her sister, her brother, the aunt, and the aunt's
little girl. Aunt Polly seemed to be the leading man, for to her
belonged the two best ox-teams, one of which was driven by herself, the
other by the girl, Dorinda. She had hired or bought her niece from the
step-father for this purpose, after she had lost her husband by
lightning, and Dora had been faithful to her task, although pretty
nearly worn out crossing the Desert from Maricopa Wells to Gila Bend,
where George W. first found them. After he had taken a deep look into
the girl's eyes, he very disinterestedly invited the whole family to
come into his house--as far as they would go in--to rest there from the
long, hard journey. The family was treated to the best the house
afforded, and the oxen were fed on such hay as they had perhaps never
dreamed of before.
The Texans were in no hurry to move on, and George W. was in no hurry to
have them go; being a bachelor, he was naturally fond of ladies'
society. Dora, Sis, and the ten-year-old brother soon became warmly
attached to him, and they, with the big dog, Bose, would daily wander
off to the Gila to catch fish. When they got there the two barefooted
girls and the brother would wade into the stream with ever fresh zest,
as they recalled that dreadful drag across the waterless desert. Bose
always went into the water with them, George W. alone remaining on the
bank, fishing-line in hand.
One day, when Dora had watched the cool, clear water gliding swiftly
over her sun-browned feet in silence, she raised her eyes suddenly from
under the long, shading lashes:
"Why do you never come into the water? Don't you like to stand in it?"
she asked of George.
"Come and sit beside me here, and I will tell you!"
She nestled down beside him, and he called to Bose, who laid his head on
his master's knee and looked knowingly from one to the other.
"About three years ago, before I had built this house of mine, I lived
in a little shanty, about a mile from the river--just back here. The
summer was very hot. I had suffered much from the sun and the want of
water in crossing the country, and after the man who came out here with
me had gone on to Fort Yuma, I was left entirely alone. When I see you
over your ankles in the water now, I am often tempted to call you back,
only I know that you are young and strong, and I remember but too well
what pleasure there is in it. Besides, you do not remain in it as I did,
for long weary hours every day, standing in the shade of a willow
catching fish for my dinner. There was little else here to eat then, and
I never left off fishing till I was taken with rheumatism, from which I
had suffered years before. I was all alone and could not move, and had
nearly perished for want of water, because I could not walk down to the
river to get it. Nor could I cook anything, because beans require a
great deal of water, and I would have died alone in my shanty, if it had
not been for this dog." (Bose wagged his tail to indicate that he
understood what was being said.) "A dozen times a day Bose would trot
down to the river, dip up a small tin pailful of water, and bring it to
me where I stood or lay. Otherwise the faithful old fellow never left my
side, day or night, and though he would, no doubt, nurse me through
another spell of rheumatism, it would be dreadful to be sick and alone
here after you and your people have left me."