"Well, I reckon this about lets us out."
The Three sat under the _portales_, heavily smoking. Bull puffed
meditatively at a strong old pipe. Between lungfuls Sliver toyed
absently with a cigarette. The necessities of dealing faro-bank had
trained Jake in the labial manipulations of his fat native cigar. As all
necessary readjustment could be made with the tongue or lips, his hands
were thrust deep in his pockets, a proof of profound mental
concentration. It was he who had spoken, and the "this" alluded to
Carleton's funeral, which had taken place the preceding day.
It had been a quiet affair. William Benson, the nearest white neighbor,
happened to be in El Paso. Of a round dozen Mexicans of the better
class, eleven were wearily waiting on the other side of the border till
still another revolution should restore their territorial rights. The
Icarzas, Ramon and his father, a bewhiskered _hacendado_, attended, with
Isabel, the dusky beauty of the house. The Lovells, a small American
rancher and his two pretty daughters, represented the hundreds of
_gringos_, miners, ranchers, engineers, smelter men, who would have come
in normal times. So these, with Lee, Carleton's _peones_, and the Three,
had followed the rude ox-cart that bore him to the graveyard of a little
adobe church in the hills. Their duty in the premises being thus
consummated, the Three had resolved themselves into a committee on ways
and means.
"Yes, I s'pose we'll have to move on." If not actually dismal, Sliver's
indorsement both expressed regret and invited contradiction.
Bull did not speak. He was watching Lee and the Lovell girls, who had
just then stepped out of her room across the _patio_. Phyllis, the
younger, was to stay for a week, while Phoebe, the elder, returned home
with her father, who had just brought the horses to the gateway. As Lee
walked with her guests the length of the _patio_ she took with her the
sympathetic glances of the Three.
Nature mercifully provides her own anesthesia, stunning the victims of
her catastrophes till the dangerous period of shock be passed. Later,
the sight of Carleton's riding-whip, spurs, or gloves, carelessly thrown
in a corner, would bring a violent recurrence of grief, set her
agonizing once more before the great blank wall of death. But just now
complete emotional exhaustion left her quiet and calm. Neither had she
made any attempt to bury her youth under the frowsy trappings of grief.
Even the black velvet riband she wore at her throat was purely
accidental, a natural trimming of her dress.
Indeed, the other girls showed more outward sorrow. Though American
born, they were almost Spanish in their coloring, and their dusky eyes,
dark hair, rich cream skins provided a vivid foil for Lee's fairness. If
their eyes were swollen and nose tips chafed, the fact merely
accentuated their feminine charm. To the Three, deprived for years of
association with any but the lowest Mexican women, they swam in
sweetness and light. The graceful turn of a rounded neck, lift of a
smooth chin, flexure of a lithe waist aroused powerful memories. Like a
cleansing stream, the sweetness of their first young, cool loves swept
through their beings, purging them, for the moment, of shame and dross
and passion.
"Adios, you fellows!" Lovell's friendly voice came floating back from
the gate. "Come and see us at San Miguel."
It was the climax; the climax of a week during which, in place of
suspicion and distrust bred of the knowledge that every man's hand was
against them and theirs against every man, they had met only faith and
trust and friendship. The invitation instigated Sliver's muttered
exclamation: "Lordy! I'd like to! but--"
"--it's no place for us." Bull nodded toward Lee. "It 'u'd be easier if
she was provided for. Think of her, alone here, an' a new revolution
breaking every other day!"
"Pretty fierce," Jake coincided. "But if 'twas left to that young Mex at
the funeral yesterday--Ramòn Icarza, wasn't that what they called him?
If 'twas left to him she'd soon be--"
"--damned an' done for!" Sliver exploded. Hard eyes flashing, he added:
"Come to think of it, the son of a gun did behave sorter soft. No Mex
that was ever pupped is fit to even herd sheep for the little lady-girl.
Hell! if I thought she'd look twice his way, I'd croak him afore we
left."
"It wouldn't be unnatural, she being raised here an' not knowing much
else." Bull's gloom was here pierced by a flash of thought. "I'll bet
you that's what her father dreaded when he said for Benson to try an'
get her up to the States. I wish the man was here so's I could tell him
afore we left."
"Tol' her yet?" Sliver asked.
Bull nodded. "Las' night. Said she hadn't given any thought, yet, to the
future."
The two girls were now coming back from the gate. At first they made to
go down the opposite _portales_. Then Lee paused, gently disengaging her
arm from the other girl's waist, and came walking on alone.
They rose and though she was, as before said, tall for a girl and well
formed, she appeared childlike by comparison with their crude bulk. They
felt it, and it drove in more keenly the sense of her loneliness.
"Oh, shore!" with his customary impulsiveness, Sliver cut off her
attempts to thank them for their kindness. "We hain't done nothing worth
while."
"Sliver's right." Jake's bleak eyes had grown almost soft. "You don't
owe us anything. All that's bothering us is--"
"--that we kain't jest see how you're going to manage," Bull finished.
"Your father's idea--" He stopped.
Her smooth white brow had drawn up into a thoughtful little frown. "It
isn't practicable. Valles would never permit us to drive horses across
the border. We have asked him once before. And if he would--" Her
sweeping hand took in the sunlit _patio_, the brown _criadas_
soft-footing it along the _corredor_; the compound ablaze with barbaric
color; the _peonas_ gossiping in the shade at the well; all of that
medieval life that wraps Mexico in the sunshine of the past. "And if he
would--I could never be happy in the United States. I was brought up to
this. I'm part of it, and it of me," she concluded, with a firm little
nod. "I shall carry on my father's work."
The Three looked at one another. Bull's troubled look, Jake's dubious
brows, Sliver's cough, all expressed their common doubt. "Can you do it,
Miss, alone?"
"I sha'n't be altogether alone. Mr. Lovell and Mr. Benson will be here
to advise, and I shall hire an American foreman. If you--" she paused,
looking them over with sudden interest, then shook her head. "Of course,
that's absurd! You have your own business. But perhaps you might know
some one?"
The Three looked at one another again, the same thought in the mind of
each. Well they knew how close they were to the end of their rope. As in
a cinematograph they saw Don Manuel, insolent and threatening; the
American border tightly closed; the _fusilado_ against a 'dobe wall that
would surely end their Mexican operations. Black as a thundercloud that
dark prospect stood out against the sunlit peace of the past week. Yet,
to do them justice, the girl's helpless situation affected them most. If
they paused, it was with the natural hesitation of men surveying a new
path.
Jake spoke first. "To tell the truth, Miss, we ain't exactly what you'd
call rushed with business."
"Like all of us--upset by the revolutions." She jumped to the natural
conclusion, "Were you--mining?"
A picture of the lair on the bench of the abandoned mine flashed before
all Three. Not without truth was Bull's statement, "We ain't worked it
much, of late."
"Peones all gone to the wars, I suppose?"
A sudden memory of Rosa's desertion permitted Sliver to say, "The las'
we had left jest t'other day."
Her pretty face brightened. "Then you mean to say that you are free for
the present?"
That was exactly what they had!
She went on, slowly: "I'll have to be frank. We own about a hundred and
sixty or seventy thousand acres of land. But we haven't been permitted
to sell any stock for two years, so have no ready cash. I don't know,
even, whether I could pay a regular wage. But if you would take what I
can scrape up and wait for the remainder till things quieten--"
"Don't you be bothering about that, Miss," Bull broke in. "We'll stay,
an' when it comes that you don't need us any longer--"
"--we ain't a-going to bust you with no claims for high wages," Sliver
concluded. "To tell you the truth, Miss, I'd be willing to work for my
board jest to feel at loose on a range ag'in."
His enthusiasm brought her smile, and though it was but a wintry effort,
it still added warmth to her words. "Then--now you are _my_ men."
The accent on the "my" unconsciously expressed the deepest lack of her
bereavement, the sudden check to the natural feminine instinct to own
and care for a man. The isolation of herself and her father amid an
alien brown people had undoubtedly tended to develop it in her to the
fullest. Though Carleton had grumbled, man-like, at her pretty tyrannies
in manners and modes, shirts and socks, he had, surreptitiously, hugely
enjoyed it. Now, the stronger for her sorrow, that dominant trait broke
loose on the devoted heads of the Three.
"_My_ men!" It sealed their adoption.
"Phyllis, come here!" She was eying them with that microscopic feminine
scrutiny that detects the minutest personal defect. Her gesture of
despair when the other girl came up was so lovingly insulting it could
not have been outdone by the best of mothers. "They are going to work
for me, so we'll have to care for them. Do you suppose we can _ever_ get
them to rights?"
Phyllis wasn't quite sure, but as her interest while real was more
casual, she held out hope. "They'll look better, dear, after they're
washed and mended."
That was too mild for Lee. Nothing but revolution, drastic and complete,
would satiate that hungry instinct. "No, they'll have to have new
things. The store is run down badly, but it will supply their present
needs."
With something of the air of convicts arraigned before a stern judge the
Three listened to certain other frank comments upon their appearance. As
laid down, their reconstruction included shaves for Sliver and Jake, a
beard-trim for Bull, hair-cuts for all three. To this they meekly
agreed; took their new things with sheepish thanks when they were
brought from the store; endured all with resignation, if not
cheerfulness, up to the moment that she tried to quarter them in the
house. Then the last shreds of masculine independence asserted
themselves. They made a stand.
"If it's all the same, Miss," Jake pleaded, "we'd sooner bunk down in
one of those empty adobes."
Sliver supported the rebellion. "You see, Miss, we're that rough an' not
used to ladies' society--"
"An' we smoke something dreadful," Bull added his bit. "You really
couldn't stan'--"
"Oh, I wouldn't mind it a bit. I love tobacco smoke. It's half of
Mexico."
Deprived of their last weapon, the Three could only stand and fidget
till Phyllis came to the rescue. Her interest, as aforesaid, being
founded merely on the general principles of loyalty to her sex, she
could afford to be generous.
"They'll want to play cards and generally carry on," she whispered. "Men
always do. Let them sleep in the adobe and take their meals with you at
the house."
A compromise thus effected, Lee marched the Three to their new abode.
But this was not the end. Just as they were about to settle therein she
turned loose upon them a veritable hornets' nest of brown _criadas_. All
afternoon they found themselves encircled, as it were, by clouds of
flying skirts, and when the flutter subsided the adobe stood scrubbed
and dusted and furnished with _catres_, bed-clothing, wash-stands,
chairs, and a table for the "cards and general carrying on." When the
invasion, brown and white, finally withdrew, and the suggested changes
in apparel and personal appearance were duly consummated, they were left
gazing with something of awe and a great deal of wonder at their
reconstructed selves.
"You look almost human," Jake gave his opinion of Bull. "A touch with a
powder-puff an' I allow you might mash one o' them criadas."
Catching himself up short, Sliver walked to the door to expectorate.
"It's dreadfully clean in here," he remarked, coming back. "But I reckon
we'll sorter get used to it. Now if we on'y had a bottle o' aguardiente
to hold a bit of a house-warming, it 'u'd--"
Bull looked at him with sudden sternness. "Look here! We've got the care
of a young girl on our han's. There's going to be no boozing--at least
on the premises. When you feel you kain't stan' it any longer, light out
somewheres an' get it over."
"That's right," Jake lent support to the moralities. "Though it sorter
looks to me like she'd adopted us."
As a matter of fact, the girls' talk, walking back to the house, quite
favored the latter theory. While overseeing the housecleaning Lee had
obtained temporary surcease from her grief. She laughed softly at
Phyllis's remark, "Aren't they big and crude and funny?"
"Helpless and clumsy as children. But just wait till I've had them a
month."
"Won't it be a little difficult? They're grown up; can't be treated like
babies."
"Not a bit." Lee laughed softly again. "If one of them misbehaves, I
shall quietly draw the attention of another to it. Mr. Jake will correct
Mr. Bull; and Mr. Sliver, Mr. Jake. If they were girls they'd see
through it at once. Being men, they'll feel quite perked up."
Why they should have thought it so funny is hard to say. Perhaps their
merriment proceeded from that obscure source whence issues the
disappointment of a woman after she has molded masculine clay in her own
likeness, and wishes it back in all of its crudity again. In any case,
as they looked forward to that most delightful of feminine visions, a
crude man-animal, tamed and parlor broke, they laughed again.