LOST! TWO HASTY TEMPERS
"One more throw, and then no more until the contest," Jack announced
placatingly, when he spied a lone bull standing just before a thicket of
chaparral and staring at them with stupid resentment that his siesta had
been disturbed. "A kiss for luck, little one!"
Riata coiled in his hand, Jack rode closer and leaned to the girl, his
eyes and his voice caressing, his lips quivering for the kiss he craved.
It had come to kisses long before then, and to half promises, when her
mood was tender, that she would marry her blue-eyed one--sometime.
Just now her mood was not tender. Jack was not to blame, nor was the
pretty Señora Simpson, although Mrs. Jerry was quite innocently and
unconsciously the cause. Mrs. Jerry had a headache, that day, and a fit
of the blues; and from the first moment when Teresita had entered the
cabin she had felt a lack of warmth in the pretty señora's manner that
had piqued her, who had lived upon adoration all her life. Mrs. Jerry
had even shown a disposition to shirk keeping her promise anent the new
way of doing Teresita's hair.
She said that she didn't think she'd go to the fiesta, after all--which
was like calmly telling a priest that one does not, after all, feel as
if heaven is worth striving for.
Teresita failed to see how the wistfulness was quite submerging the
twinkle in Mrs. Jerry's eyes, and if she had seen, she would never have
guessed what put it there; nor would she have understood why Mrs. Jerry
might shrink from attending that magnificent festival, perhaps the only
gringo woman in all the crowd, and a pitifully shabby gringo woman at
that. To her mind, Mrs. Jerry was beautiful and perfect, even in her
shapeless brown dress that was always clean. Teresita herself would
never have worn that dress at all, yet it did not occur to her that Mrs.
Jerry might have some very feminine quality of pride crowded down into
some corner of her sweet nature. So Teresita was mightily offended at
what she considered a slight from the only gringo woman she had ever
known; and she was also bitterly disappointed over the abandonment of
the new coiffure.
"Why don't you wear it just the way it is, honey?" Mrs. Jerry had
suggested--and very sensibly, too. "I wouldn't go and twist it all up
and stick pins through it, if I was you. It's prettier just that way."
Teresita had understood enough of that, thanks to the teachings of her
blue-eyed one, to know that the pretty señora did not mean to keep her
promise. She had gone almost immediately to the cabin door to tell Jack
that she was ready to go home. And Jack, deep in one of those
interminable conversations with Jerry himself, over on the pile of logs
that would one day be a stable if Jerry's hopes reached fruition, had
merely waved his hand carelessly when he saw her, and had given all his
attention to Jerry again.
Of course, Teresita could not know that they were discussing a brief but
rancorous encounter which Jerry had had with Manuel that morning, when
the two happened to meet farther down the valley while Manuel was riding
his share of the rodeo circle. Two of José's men had been with Manuel,
and their attitude had been "purty derned upstropolus," according to
Jerry. (Jack decided after a puzzled minute that the strange word which
Jerry spoke with such relish must be Simpsonese for obstreperous.) They
had, in fact, attempted to drive off three of Jerry's oxen to the rodeo
ground, and only the characteristic "firmness" of Jerry had prevented
them from doing it. Jemina, he said, had helped some when pointed at
Manuel's scowling face; but Jerry opined that he would hereafter take
the twins along too when he rode out anywhere, and that he guessed he'd
cut another loophole or two in his cabin walls.
All of these various influences had created an atmosphere which Teresita
felt and resented without attempting to understand. The big señor had
not given her the smiles and the funny attempts at conversation which
she had come to accept as a matter of course. The pretty señora had not
been as enthusiastic as she should have been, when Teresita showed her
the ruby chain which, like a child, she had brought over for the pretty
señora to admire.
Therefore, Jack's lips found reason to tighten and cease their eager
quivering for a kiss. For Teresita twitched her shoulders pettishly and
her reins dexterously, and so removed herself some distance from the
kissing zone.
"No? Well, I'll have to depend on my good riata, then. I'll take that
gentleman at twenty-five feet, and if I can get him to run right, I'll
heel him. Don't ride any closer, Teresita."
He had not called her dulce corazon (sweetheart) as she had expected him
to call her; he had not even insisted upon the kiss, but had given up
altogether too tamely; and for that she rode closer to the bull in
spite. She even had some notion of getting in Jack's way, and of making
him miss if she could. She was seventeen, you see, and she was terribly
spoiled.
Jack had never made any attempt to study the psychological twists of a
woman's nature. He contented himself with loving, and with being
straightforward and selfish and a bit arrogant in his love, after the
manner of the normal man. It would never occur to him that Teresita was
piqued because he had not called her sweetheart, and he straightway
sinned more grievously still.
"Go back, the other way! He's liable to start in your direction," he
cried, intent upon her safety and his own whim to rope the beast.
Teresita deliberately kicked her horse and loped forward.
It would not be nice to say that bulls are like some humans, but it is a
fact that they are extremely illogical animals, full of impulses and
whims that have absolutely no relation to cause or effect. This bull had
not moved except to roll his eyes from one to the other of the riders.
If he meditated war he should, by all the bovine traditions of warfare,
have bellowed a warning and sent up a whiff or two of dirt over his
back, as one has a right to expect a pessimistic bull to do. Instead of
which he flung down his head and made an unexpected rush at
Teresita--and Jack had left his pistols at home.
Jack's riata was coiled in his hand and his head was turned towards the
girl, his brain busy with his thoughts of her and her wilfulness. From
the tail of his eye he caught the first lunge of the bull, and that
automatic mental adjustment to unexpected situations, which we call
presence of mind, sent a knee-signal to Surry which that intelligent
animal obeyed implicitly.
Surry rushed straight at the bull, but the triangle was a short one, and
there was much to do in that quarter of a minute. Teresita was stubborn
and would not turn and run; but she happened to be riding Tejon, who
knew something about bulls and was capable of acting upon his knowledge.
He whirled with hind feet for a pivot and ducked away from the horns
coming at him, and it was not one second too soon. The bull swept by, so
close that a slaver of foam was flung against Teresita's skirt as he
passed.
He whirled to come back at the girl--and that time he seemed sure to
give that vicious, ripping jab he had so narrowly missed giving before;
even the girl saw that he would, and turned a little pale, and Tejon's
eyes glazed with terror.
But Jack had gained the second he needed--the second that divided
adventure from tragedy. The riata loop shot from his upflung hand and
sped whimperingly on its errand, even as Tejon tried to swing away,
tripped, and tumbled to his knees. The riata caught the lifted forefeet
of the bull just as he stiffened his neck for the lunge. Surry braced
himself automatically when Jack drew tight the loop, and the bull went
down with a thud and lay with his forefeet held high in air, so close to
his quarry that the tip of one horn struck Tejon upon the knee and
flicked a raw, red spot there.
Then Jack, in the revulsion from deadly fear to relief, was possessed by
one of those gusts of nervous rage that seized him sometimes; such a
brief fit of rage as made him kill lustfully three men in the space of
three heart-beats, almost, and feel regret because he could not keep on
killing.
He did not run to Teresita and comfort her for her fright, as a lover
ought to have done. Instead he gave her one look as he went by, and that
a look of indignation for her foolishness. He ran to the bull, drew his
knife from his sash and tried to stab it in the brain; but his hand
shook so that he missed and only gave it a glancing gash that let much
blood flow. He swore and struck again, snapping the dagger blade short
off against the horns. Whereupon he threw the dagger violently from him
and gave an angry kick at the animal, as if he would kill it that way.
"Savage!" cried Teresita, hysterically shrill. "Brute! Leave the poor
thing alone! It has done nothing, that you should beat it while it
cannot fight back."
Jack, lifting his spurred foot for another kick, set it down and turned
to her dazedly.
In her way as shaken by her narrow escape as he was himself, she
straightway called him brute and savage again, and sentimentally pitied
the bull because he lay upon his back with his front feet in the air,
and because the gash on his head was bleeding.
Jack's rage passed as quickly as it came; but it left him stubborn under
her recriminations.
"You are very soft-hearted, all of a sudden, señorita," he said, with a
fairly well-defined sneer, when he could bear no more. "You won't enjoy
the bull-fighting, then, to-morrow--for all you have been looking
forward to it so anxiously, and have robbed yourself of ribbons to
decorate the darts. It's not half so brutal to kill a bull that tries to
kill you, as it is to fill it with flag-trimmed arrows for fun, and only
put it out of its misery when you're tired of seeing it suffer! This
bull came near killing you! That's why I'm going to kill it."
"You are not! Santa Maria, what a savage beast you are! Let him go
instantly! Let him go, I say!"
If she had been on the ground, she would have stamped her foot. As it
was, she shook an adorably tiny fist at Jack, and blinked her long
lashes upon the tears of real, sincere anger that stood in her black
eyes, and gritted her teeth at him; for the señorita had a temper quite
as hot as Jack's, when it was roused, and all her life she had been
given her own way in everything.
"Let him go this moment, or I shall never speak to you again!" she
threatened rashly.
For answer, Jack walked deliberately past her to where Surry stood with
his feet braced still against the pull of the riata and his neck arched
knowingly, while he rolled the little wheel in the bit with his tongue.
Jack made himself a cigarette, lay down in the shade of his horse, and
smoked just as calmly as though his heart was not thumping so that he
could hear it quite plainly. She had gone the wrong way about making him
yield; threats had always acted like a goad upon Jack's anger, just as
they do upon most of us.
Teresita looked at him in silence for a minute. And Jack, his head upon
his arm in a position that would give him a fair view of her from the
brim of his sombrero while he seemed to be taking no notice of her,
wondered how soon she would change her mood to coaxing, and so melt that
lump of obstinacy in his throat that would not let him so much as answer
her vixenish upbraidings. A very little coaxing would have freed the
bull then, and he would have kissed the red mouth that had reviled him,
and would have called her "dulce corazon," as she loved to have him do.
Such a very little coaxing would have been enough!
"Dios! How I hate a gringo!" she cried passionately, just when Jack
believed she was going to cry "Señor Jack?" in that pretty, cooing tone
she had that could make the words as tender as a kiss. "José is right.
Gringos are savages and worse than savages. Stay and torture your bull,
then! I hate you! Never have I known hate, till now! I shall be glad
when José drags you from your horse to-morrow. I shall laugh and clap my
hands, and cry, 'Bravo, bravo, querido mio!' [my beloved] when you are
flung into the dirt where you belong. And when he kills you, I shall
kiss him for his reward, before all the people, and I shall laugh when
they fling you to the coyotes!" Yes, she said that; for she had a
temper--had the Señorita Teresita--and she had a tongue that could speak
words that burned like vitriol.
She said more than has been quoted; epithets she hurled upon the
recumbent form that seemed a man asleep save for the little drift of
smoke from his cigarette; epithets which she had heard the vaqueros use
at the corrals upon certain occasions when they did not know that she
was near; epithets of which she did not know the meaning at all.
"Bravo!" applauded some one, and she turned to see that Manuel and
Carlos, José's head vaquero, had ridden up to the group very quietly,
and had been listening for no one knew how long.
The señorita was so angry that she was not in the least abashed by the
eavesdropping. She smiled wickedly, drew off a glove and tossed it to
Manuel, who caught it dexterously without waiting to see why she wanted
him to have it.
"Take that to José, for a token," she cried recklessly. "Tell him I have
put a wish upon it; and if he wears it next his heart in the duelo
to-morrow he will win without fail. Tell José I shall ask the Blessed
Virgin to-night to let no accident befall him, and that I shall save the
first two dances for him and none other!"
She was not a finished actress, because of her youth. She betrayed by a
glance his way that she spoke for Jack's benefit. And Jack, in the
hardening of his stubborn anger, blew a mouthful of smoke upward into a
ring which the breeze broke almost immediately, and laughed aloud.
Teresita heard, bit her lips cruelly at failing to bring that stubborn
gringo to his feet--and to hers!--and wheeled Tejon close to Manuel and
Carlos. She rode away between the two towards home, and she did not
once look behind her until she had gone so far she feared she could not
see what her blue-eyed one was doing. Then she turned, and her teeth
went together with a click. For Jack was lying just as she had left him,
with his head upon his arm as if he might be asleep.