"Sliver took me there the day we caught the raiders. Pretty? I should
say!" He added, laughing, "She made me a very nice proposal of marriage,
adding the _fonda_ as an extra inducement."
Her expression now said, "Oh, she _did_?" But as she looked away, he
failed to see it, got only her words, "And you had the heart to refuse?"
"Sad to relate."
"And you haven't even been to see her again?"
"No time."
She took her answer from his unconcern rather than the words. And yet,
as they rode along, she gave him little brooding looks that
expressed--perhaps not altogether disbelief so much as that rooted and
reasonable doubt which her sex invariably entertains when another woman
is in question. As they rode around the end of the spur and proceeded up
the cañon her glances grew in frequency; finally settled in a stealthy
watch as they approached the _fonda_.
"There's your beauty--attired like a bride for her groom."
Lee nodded at Felicia, who was coming up from the stream with an _olla_
of water gracefully poised on her head. For a cushion she had twisted a
handful of scarlet runners into a thick chaplet, and, escaping from
under the _olla_, half a dozen vivid tendrils streaked the black wavy
mass of her hair. With her velvet pools of eyes, satiny arms and
shoulders, pliant, shapely figure, she might have been a golden Hebe
bearing wine to Aztec gods. Small wonder if Gordon stared at the pretty
picture overmuch for his companion's taste.
His interest undoubtedly instigated her addition, "Perhaps she hasn't
lost hope?"
She did not, either, like his laugh, for it seemed just a bit conscious.
While drinking a glass of native concoction, barley water flavored with
seeds, she kept a stealthy watch that was none the less efficient
because masked by gay chatter with the old man and woman who came
hobbling out of the house. She saw not only the dark glance that
followed and enfolded Gordon in a lingering embrace, but as the girl
reached up, handing the glass, she caught a glimpse of Gordon's fob
dangling within the golden bosom at the end of a chain of beads.
At first she recognized it only for an American-made trinket. But under
pretense of admiring the hand-made lace edging on the girl's chemisette,
she managed another peep and saw the leather worked with Gordon's
monogram in gold.
"Ah, _ha_! señor!"
Her mental ejaculation expressed on the surface only mischief. But under
it a deeper feeling moved like a stir of wind through sultry heat. Was
it the widow's "wind" fanning an unsuspected flame? Perhaps. At least
when, looking back after they rode on, she saw the same dark gaze
following, enwrapping Gordon, she was seized with sudden unhappiness.
Plainly as the day that dark gaze spoke:
"I am yours!"
After they had ridden on, out of sight, and her beast was scrambling
after Gordon's up the mule trail that rose in a series of zigzag
staircases, the little queer looks at his back asked a vital question.