In the fundamentals of feeling poor humans are very much alike.
A university training confers no immunity from jealousy, and as he rode
into the hills Gordon's thoughts exhibited all of the phases customary
with plowboys and professors who have been flouted and flirted and
flurried till they can hardly say whether they are standing on their
heads or their heels. He assured himself, of course, that he "didn't
give a damn"! and smoked a pipe to prove it. But after a few puffs the
pipe burned out in his hand, wasting its fragrance on the desert air.
The flashes that fitfully broke his brooding again marked sudden
impulses to go back, punch Ramon's head, and lead Lee away by one pretty
ear. Mentally he twisted it till she cried out; whereupon he would let
go with the admonition, "There! that will teach you to behave!"
Once he even turned to go back. But sanity intervened. He rode
on--madder than ever. Also--but, as before said, his thoughts and
feelings conformed to the universal type. Let it suffice that when,
hours later, he saw the _fonda_ lying like a cup of gold in the ravine
below he was in a highly reckless state.
Up to that moment it is safe to say that no thought of Felicia had been
in his mind. But when suffering from injured pride, vanity, or love,
plowman and professor alike proceed to "take a hair of the dog that bit
them" by turning to the nearest maid. Of husbands that have been so
caught on the rebound, wives obtained, as it were, on a ricochet, the
number shall never be told!
In accordance with this natural law, Felicia's pretty face now flashed
up before Gordon's eyes. His exclamation, "Aw, take a drink and forget
it!" might, metaphorically, be applied to the _fonda's_ liquors less
than to her.
A _peona's_ life gravitates between her grinding at the _metate_ and
laundering on the river boulders, with spells of "drawnwork" between.
Having put out her "wash" and bathed herself in the stream, Felicia was
making her toilet before two inches of cracked mirror she had propped on
the lintel against the wooden bar shutter when Gordon came riding down
from above.
From her smooth forehead, her cloud-black hair fell in dark waves around
a spotless chemisette whose low cut and lack of sleeves revealed the
satin-gold of her shoulders. Under the same circumstances a white girl
would, of course, have fled. But at the sight of him, alone, she spat
out a mouthful of hair-pins that interfered with her welcoming smile,
led his horse in under the shady _ramada_, then proceeded calmly with
her toilet.
Toward both Sliver and Lee she had displayed a certain sullenness, the
dull resentment born of racial oppression, but now while she combed and
arranged her hair she flooded Gordon with smiles. And how she talked!
eyes, hands, body, shoulders, and tongue going together in a way that
would have given the most loquacious of white girls twenty yards start
out of a hundred and beaten her to the tape.
The tongue Gordon could not understand. But the big eyes, small hands,
golden shoulders told in the language of the universe that she was
exceedingly glad! To a young man who had been recently flouted and
flattened, the nose of him held down, as it were, on the grindstone of a
girl's contempt, it was very soothing. He bathed in the subtle flattery.
Like a spring tonic, it percolated, a healing oil, through every pore of
his wounded vanity, restoring, revigorating his self-esteem. So he
looked on approvingly; even made admiring note of the perfect arms and
shoulders.
Her toilet concluded, Felicia surveyed it a few inches at a time in the
cracked bit of mirror. Then letting down the wooden shutter, she filled
two _copas_ of anisette and, leaning on one shapely elbow, pledged him
in Spanish.
"Salud y pesitos, señor!" (Health and a little money!)
In clinking glasses, she touched his hand, but he did not find the
contact unpleasant; neither took alarm when she refused a _peso_
note--even after he had filled and drunk again.
A _peona_ refusing money? It was contrary to instinct and tradition! Had
he known that, or her private mind, he would have moved on; for he was
not only naturally shy with girls, but also responsible beyond his
years. But being absolutely ignorant of _peona_ nature, and in fine
fettle for sympathetic philandering, he leaned against the bar and
chatted as best he could, with his little Spanish helped out by signs.
When she suggested that he would learn more quickly if he had a
_diccionario_ with "long hair" he laughed, but failed to catch the
personal application. Again, if, as on the former occasion, she had
repeated the offer made through Sliver, he would also have laughed. But
now that she was sure, or thought she was, of her game, she enwrapped
herself in a savage modesty; masked advances under alluring retreats.
To tell the truth, as the anisette fulfilled its ordained purpose and
burned up his shyness in its consuming flame, he found the flirtation so
delightful that an hour slipped by unnoticed. During that time the
"long-haired _diccionario_" was in constant use. While her father and
mother dozed under the _ramada_ he consulted it about the scenery and
natural objects, trees, chickens, pigs; the path, stream, and hills. But
when, irresistibly, the range of his questions narrowed to nearer
objects--fingers, eyes, hair--the lesson passed the boundaries of
etymology into the domain of love.
He was well over that border before he realized it--how far he did not
guess until, when he had asked playfully the Spanish for "kiss," the
_diccionario_ answered swiftly, not with the word, but with the action
to illustrate it.