Alaire Austin slept badly. The day's hardships had left their traces.
The toxins of fatigue not only poisoned her muscles with aches and
pains, but drugged her brain and rendered the night a long succession
of tortures during which she experienced for a second time the agonies
of thirst and fatigue and despair. Extreme physical ordeals, like
profound emotional upheavals, leave imprints upon the brain, and while
the body may recover quickly, it often requires considerable time to
rest exhausted nerves. The finer the nervous organism, the slower is
the process of recuperation. Like most normal women, Alaire had a
surprising amount of endurance, both nervous and muscular, but, having
drawn heavily against her reserve force, she paid the penalty. During
the early hours of the night she slept hardly at all, and as soon as
her bodily discomfort began to decrease her mind became unruly. Twice
she rose and limped to the water-hole for a drink, and it was not until
nearly dawn that she dropped off into complete unconsciousness. She was
awakened by a sunbeam which pierced her leafy shelter and with hot
touch explored her upturned face.
It was still early; the sun had just cleared the valley's rim and the
ground was damp with dew. Somewhere near by an unfamiliar bird was
sweetly trilling. Alaire listened dreamily until the bird-carol changed
to the air of a familiar cowboy song, then she sat up, queerly startled.
David Law was watering his horse, grooming the animal meanwhile with a
burlap doth. Such attention was unusual in a stock country where horses
run wild, but this horse, Mrs. Austin saw, justified unusual care. It
was a beautiful blood-bay mare, and as the woman looked it lifted its
head, then with wet, trembling muzzle caressed its owner's cheek.
Undoubtedly this attention was meant for a kiss, and was as daintily
conferred as any woman's favor. It brought a reward in a lump of sugar.
There followed an exhibition of equine delight; the mare's lips
twitched, her nose wrinkled ludicrously, she stretched her neck and
tossed her head as the sweetness tickled her palate. Even the nervous
switching of her tail was eloquent of pleasure. Meanwhile the owner
showed his white teeth in a smile.
"Good morning," said Mrs. Austin.
Law lifted his hat in a graceful salute as he approached around the
edge of the pool, his spurs jingling musically. The mare followed.
"You have a fine horse, there."
"Yes'm. Her and me get along all right. I hope we didn't wake you,
ma'am."
"No. I was too tired to sleep well."
"Of course. I heard you stirring about during the night." Law paused,
and the mare, with sharp ears cocked forward, looked over his shoulder
inquisitively. "Tell the lady good morning, Bessie Belle," he directed.
The animal flung its head high, then stepped forward and, stretching
its neck, sniffed doubtfully at the visitor.
"What a graceful bow!" Mrs. Austin laughed. "You taught her that, I
presume."
"Yes'm! She'd never been to school when I got her; she was plumb
ignorant. But she's got all the airs of a fine lady now. Sometimes I go
without sugar, but Bessie Belle never does."
"And you with a sweet tooth!"
The Ranger smiled pleasantly. "She's as easy as a rockin'-chair. We're
kind of sweethearts. Ain't we, kid?" Again Bessie Belle tossed her head
high. "That's 'yes,' with the reverse English," the speaker explained.
"Now you just rest yourself, ma'am, and order your breakfast. What 'll
it be--quail, dove, or cottontail?"
"Why--whatever you can get."
"That ain't the kind of restaurant we run. Bessie Belle would sure be
offended if she understood you. Ever see anybody call a quail?"
"Can it really be done?"
Law's face brightened. "You wait." He led his mare down the arroyo,
then returned, and, taking his Winchester from its scabbard, explained:
"There's a pair of 'top-knots' on that side-hill waitin' for a drink.
Watch 'em run into my lap when I give the distress signal of our secret
order." He skirted the water-hole, and seated himself with his heels
together and his elbows propped upon his spread knees in the military
position for close shooting. From where he sat he commanded an
unobstructed view of the thicket's edge. Next he moistened his lips and
uttered an indescribable low whistle. At intervals he repeated the
call, while the woman looked on with interest. Suddenly out of the
grass burst a blue quail, running with wings outstretched and every
feather ruffled angrily. It paused, the man's cheeks snuggled against
the stock of his gun, and the bark of the thirty-thirty sounded loudly.
Mrs. Austin saw that he had shot the little bird's head off. She spoke,
but he stilled her with a gesture, threw in a second shell, and
repeated his magic call. There was a longer wait this time, but finally
the performance was repeated. The marksman rose, picked up the two
birds, and came back to the camping-place.
"Kind of a low-down trick when they've just started housekeeping, ain't
it?" he smiled.
Mrs. Austin saw that both crested heads had been cleanly severed. "That
is quite wonderful" she said. "You must be an unusually good shot."
"Yes'm. You can fool turkeys the same way. Turkeys are easy."
"What do you say to them? What brings them out, all ruffled up?" she
asked, curiously.
Law had one of the birds picked by this time. "I tell 'em a snake has
got me. I reckon each one thinks the other is in trouble and comes to
the rescue. Anyhow, it's a mighty mean trick."
He would not permit her to help with the breakfast, so she lay back
enjoying the luxury of her hard bed and watching her host, whose
personality, now that she saw him by daylight, had begun to challenge
her interest. Of late years she had purposely avoided men, and
circumstances had not permitted her to study those few she had been
forced to meet; but now that fate had thrown her into the company of
this stranger, she permitted some play to her curiosity.
Physically Law was of an admirable make--considerably over six feet in
height, with wide shoulders and lean, strong limbs. Although his face
was schooled to mask all but the keenest emotions, the deftness of his
movements was eloquent, betraying that complete muscular and nervous
control which comes from life in the open. A pair of blue-gray,
meditative eyes, with a whimsical fashion of wrinkling half-shut when
he talked, relieved a countenance that otherwise would have been a
trifle grim and somber. The nose was prominent and boldly arched, the
ears large and pronounced and standing well away from the head; the
mouth was thin-lipped and mobile. Alaire tried to read that bronzed
visage, with little success until she closed her eyes and regarded the
mental image. Then she found the answer: Law had the face and the head
of a hunter. The alert ears, the watchful eyes, the predatory nose were
like those of some hunting animal. Yes, that was decidedly the
strongest impression he gave. And yet in his face there was nothing
animal in a bad sense. Certainly it showed no grossness. The man was
wild, untamed, rather than sensual, and despite his careless use of the
plains vernacular he seemed to be rather above the average in education
and intelligence. At any rate, without being stupidly tongue-tied, he
knew enough to remain silent when there was nothing to say, and that
was a blessing, for Mrs. Austin herself was not talkative, and idle
chatter distressed her.
On the whole, when Alaire had finished her analysis she rather resented
the good impression Law had made upon her, for on general principles
she chose to dislike and distrust men. Rising, she walked painfully to
the pond and made a leisurely toilet.
Breakfast was ready when she returned, and once more the man sat upon
his heels and smoked while she ate. Alaire could not catch his eyes
upon her, except when he spoke, at which time his gaze was direct and
open; yet never did she feel free from his intensest observation.
After a while she remarked: "I'm glad to see a Ranger in this county.
There has been a lot of stealing down our way, and the Association men
can't seem to stop it. Perhaps you can."
"The Rangers have a reputation in that line," he admitted. "But there
is stealing all up and down the border, since the war. You lost any
stuff?"
"Yes. Mostly horses."
"Sure! They need horses in Mexico."
"The ranchers have organized. They have formed a sort of vigilance
committee in each town, and talk of using bloodhounds."
"Bloodhounds ain't any good, outside of novels. If beef got scarce,
them Greasers would steal the dogs and eat 'em." He added,
meditatively, "Dog ain't such bad eatin', either."
"Have you tried it?"
Mr. Law nodded. "It was better than some of the army beef we got in the
Philippines." Then, in answer to her unspoken inquiry, "Yes'm, I served
an enlistment there."
"You--were a private soldier?"
"Yes'm."
Mrs. Austin was incredulous, and yet she could not well express her
surprise without too personal an implication. "I can't imagine
anybody--that is, a man like you, as a common soldier."
"Well, I wasn't exactly that," he grinned. "No, I was about the most
UNcommon soldier out there. I had a speakin' acquaintance with most of
the guard-houses in the islands before I got through."
"But why did you enlist--a man like you?"
"Why?" He pondered the question. "I was young. I guess I needed the
excitement. I have to get about so much or I don't enjoy my food."
"Did you join the Maderistas for excitement?"
"Mostly. Then, too, I believed Panchito Madero was honest and would
give the peons land. An honest Mexican is worth fightin' for, anywhere.
The pelados are still struggling for their land--for that and a chance
to live and work and be happy."
Mrs. Austin stirred impatiently. "They are fighting because they are
told to fight. There is no PATRIOTISM in them," said she.
"I think," he said, with grave deliberateness, "the majority feel
something big and vague and powerful stirring inside them. They don't
know exactly what it is, perhaps, but it is there. Mexico has outgrown
her dictators. They have been overthrown by the same causes that
brought on the French Revolution."
"The French Revolution!" Alaire leaned forward, eying the speaker with
startled intensity. "You don't talk like a--like an enlisted man. What
do you know about the French Revolution?"
Reaching for a coal, the Ranger spoke without facing her. "I've read a
good bit, ma'am, and I'm a noble listener. I remember good, too. Why, I
had a picture of the Bastille once." He pronounced it "Bastilly," and
his hearer settled back. "That was some calaboose, now, wasn't it?" A
moment later he inquired, ingenuously, "I don't suppose you ever saw
that Bastille, did you?"
"No. Only the place where it stood."
"Sho! You must have traveled right smart for such a young lady." He
beamed amiably upon her.
"I was educated abroad, and I only came home--to be married."
Law noted the lifeless way in which she spoke, and he understood. "I'll
bet you hablar those French and German lingoes like a native," he
ventured. "Beats me how a person can do it."
"You speak Spanish, don't you?"
"Oh yes. But I was born in Mexico, as near as I can make out."
"And you probably speak some of the Filipino dialects?"
"Yes'm, a few."
There was something winning about this young man's modesty, and
something flattering in his respectful admiration. He seemed, also, to
know his place, a fact which was even more in his favor. Undoubtedly he
had force and ability; probably his love of adventure and a happy lack
of settled purpose had led him to neglect his more commonplace
opportunities and sent him first into the army and thence into the
Ranger service. The world is full of such, and the frontier is their
gathering-place. Mrs. Austin had met a number of men like Law, and to
her they seemed to be the true soldiers of fortune--fellows who lived
purely for the fun of living, and leavened their days with adventure.
They were buoyant souls, for the most part, drifting with the tide,
resentful of authority and free from care; meeting each day with
enthusiastic expectancy for what it held in store. They were restless
and improvident; the world counted them ne'er-do-wells, and yet she
knew that at least their hours were full and that their names--some of
them--were written large in the distant places. Alaire Austin often
told herself that, had she been born a man, such a life as this might
have been hers, and she took pleasure in dreaming sometimes of the
experience that fate, in such a case, would have brought to her.
Being a woman, however, and being animated at this particular moment by
a peculiarly feminine impulse, she felt urged to add her own touch to
what nature had roughed out. This man had been denied what she termed
an education; therefore she decided to put one in his way.
"Do you like to read?" she asked him.
"Say! It's my favorite form of exercise." Law's blue-gray eyes were
expressionless, his face was bland. "Why?"
"I have a great many books at Las Palmas. You might enjoy some of them."
"Now that's nice of you, ma'am. Mebbe I'll look into this
cattle-stealin' in your neighborhood, and if I do I'll sure come
borrowin'."
"Oh, I'll send you a boxful when I get back," said Alaire, and Dave
thanked her humbly.
Later, when he went to move his mare into a shady spot, the Ranger
chuckled and slapped his thigh with his hat. "Bessie Belle, we're going
to improve our minds," he said, aloud. "We're going to be literary and
read Pilgrim's Progress and Alice in Wonderland. I bet we'll enjoy 'em,
eh? But--doggone! She's a nice lady, and your coat is just the same
color as her hair."
Where the shade was densest and the breeze played most freely, there
Dave fixed a comfortable couch for his guest, and during the heat of
the forenoon she dozed.
Asleep she exercised upon him an even more disturbing effect than when
awake, for now he could study her beauty deliberately, from the loose
pile of warm, red hair to the narrow, tight-laced boots. What he saw
was altogether delightful. Her slightly parted lips offered an
irresistible attraction--almost an invitation; the heat had lent a
feverish flush to her cheeks; Dave could count the slow pulsations of
her white throat. He closed his eyes and tried to quell his unruly
longings. He was a strong man; adventurous days and nights spent in the
open had coarsened the masculine side of his character, perhaps at
expense to his finer nature, for it is a human tendency to revert. He
was masterful and ruthless; lacking obligations or responsibilities of
any sort, he had been accustomed to take what he wanted; therefore the
gaze he fixed upon the sleeping woman betrayed an ardor calculated to
deepen the color in her cheeks, had she beheld it.
And yet, strangely enough, Dave realized that his emotions were
unaccountably mixed. This woman's distress had, of course, brought a
prompt and natural response; but now her implicit confidence in his
honor and her utter dependence upon him awoke his deepest chivalry.
Then, too, the knowledge that her life was unhappy, indeed tragic,
filled him with a sort of wondering pity. As he continued to look at
her these feelings grew until finally he turned away his face. With his
chin in his hands he stared out somberly into the blinding heat. He had
met few women, of late years, and never one quite like this--never one,
for instance, who made him feel so dissatisfied with his own
shortcomings.
After a time he rose and withdrew to the shelter of another tree, there
to content himself with mental images of his guest.
But one cannot sleep well with a tropic sun in the heavens, and since
there was really nothing for her to do until the heat abated, Alaire,
when she awoke, obliged the Ranger to amuse her.
Although she was in fact younger than he, married life had matured her,
and she treated him therefore like a boy. Law did not object. Mrs.
Austin's position in life was such that most men were humble in her
presence, and now her superior wisdom seemed to excite the Ranger's
liveliest admiration. Only now and then, as if in an unguarded moment,
did he appear to forget himself and speak with an authority equaling
her own. What he said at such times indicated either a remarkably
retentive memory or else an ability to think along original lines too
rare among men of his kind to be easily credited.
For instance, during a discussion of the Mexican situation--and of
course their talk drifted thither, for at the moment it was the one
vitally interesting topic along the border--he excused the barbarous
practices of the Mexican soldiers by saying:
"Of course they're cruel, vindictive, treacherous, but after all there
are only a hundred and forty generations between us and Adam; only a
hundred and forty lifetimes since the Garden of Eden. We civilized
peoples are only a lap or two ahead of the uncivilized ones. When you
think that it takes ten thousand generations to develop a plant and
root out some of its early heredities, you can see that human beings
have a long way yet to go before they become perfect. We're creatures
of environment, just like plants. Environment has made the Mexican what
he is."
Certainly this was an amazing speech to issue from a sun-browned cowboy
sitting cross-legged under a mesquite-tree.
From under her hat-brim Alaire Austin eyed the speaker with a curiosity
into which there had come a vague hostility. For the moment she was
suspicious and piqued, but Law did not appear to notice, and as he
talked on her doubts gradually subsided.
"You said, last night, that you were born on the other side?" She
inclined her ruddy head to the west.
"Yes'm. My father was a mining man, and he done well over there until
he locked horns with the Guadalupes. Old Don Enrique and him had a
run-in at the finish, over some land or something. It was when the Don
was gobbling all the property in the state, and laying the foundation
for his big fortune. You know he had permission from the president to
steal all the land he cared to, just like the rest of those local
governors had. Well, Guadalupe tried to run my people out."
"Did he succeed?"
"No'm. He killed 'em, but they stayed."
"Not--really?" The listener was shocked. "American citizens, too?"
"Times wasn't much different then than now. There's plenty of good
Americans been killed in Mexico and nothing done about it, even in our
day. I don't know all the details--never could get 'em, either--for I
was away at school; but after I came back from the Philippines the
Madero fuss was just brewing, so I went over and joined it. But it
didn't last long, and there wasn't enough fighting to suit me. I've
been back, off and on, since, and I've burned a good deal of Guadalupe
property and swum a good many head of Guadalupe stock."
As the morning progressed Law proved himself an interesting companion,
and in spite of the discomforts of the situation the hours slipped past
rapidly. Luncheon was a disagreeable meal, eaten while the arroyo baked
and the heat devils danced on the hills; but the unpleasantness was of
brief duration, and Law always managed to banish boredom. Nor did he
seem to waste a thought upon the nature of that grim business which
brought him to this place. Quite the contrary, in the afternoon he put
his mare through her tricks for Alaire's edification, and gossiped idly
of whatever interested his guest.
Then as the sun edged to the west and Mrs. Austin became restless, he
saddled Bessie Belle and led her down the gulch into a safer covert.
Returning, he carefully obliterated all traces of the camp. He watered
the ashes of the fire, gathered up the tell-tale scraps of paper and
fragments of food, and then when the place suited him fell to examining
his rifle.
Alaire watched him with interest. "Where shall I go," she asked, "and
what shall I do?"
"You just pick out a good cover beyond the water-hole and stay there,
ma'am. It may be a long wait, for something may have happened. If so
we'll have to lie close. And don't worry yourself none, ma'am; he won't
make no trouble."
The afternoon drew to a close. Gradually the blinding white glare of
the sun lessened and yellowed, the shadow of the bluffs began to
stretch out. The shallow pool lay silent, deserted save for furtive
little shapes that darted nervously out of the leaves, or for winged
visitors that dropped out of the air.
With the sunset there came the sound of hoofs upon loose stones,
branches rustled against breasting bodies, and Mrs. Austin cowered low
in her hiding-place. But it was only the advance-guard of a bunch of
brush cattle coming to water. They paused at a distance, and nothing
except their thirst finally overcame their suspicions. One by one they
drifted into sight, drank warily at the remotest edge of the tanque,
then, alarmed at some imaginary sight or sound, went clattering up the
ravine.
Once again the water-hole lay sleeping.
Alaire's retreat was far from comfortable; there was an ants' nest
somewhere near her and she thought of moving; but suddenly her breath
caught and her heart jumped uncontrollably. She crouched lower, for
directly opposite her position, and outlined against the sky where the
sharp ridge cut it, was the figure of a mounted man. Rider and horse
were silhouetted against the pearl-gray heaven like an equestrian
statue. How long they had been there Alaire had no faintest notion.
Perhaps it was their coming which had alarmed the cattle. She was
conscious that a keen and hostile pair of eyes was searching the
coverts surrounding the charco. Then, as silently as it had appeared,
the apparition vanished beyond the ridge, and Alaire wondered if the
rider had taken alarm. She earnestly hoped so; this breathless vigil
was getting on her nerves, and the sight of that threatening figure had
set her pulses to throbbing. The rider was on his guard, that was
plain; he was armed, too, and probably desperate. The ominous
possibilities of this ambush struck her forcibly.
Alaire lay close, as she had been directed, praying that the horseman
had been warned; but shortly she heard again the rustle of stiff
branches, and out into the opening rode a Mexican. He was astride a
wiry gray pony, and in the strong twilight Alaire could see his every
feature--the swarthy cheeks, the roving eyes beneath the black felt
hat. A carbine lay across his saddle-horn, a riata was coiled beside
his leg, a cartridge-belt circled his waist. There was something
familiar about the fellow, but at the moment Alaire could not determine
what it was.
After one swift appraising glance the new-comer rode straight to the
verge of the water-hole and dismounted; then he and his horse drank
side by side.
It was the moment for a complete and effective surprise, but nothing
happened. Why didn't Law act? Alaire bent low, straining eyes and ears,
but no command came from the Ranger. After a while the traveler rose to
his feet and stretched his limbs. Next he walked to the ashes of the
fire and looked down at them, stirring them with his toe. Apparently
satisfied, he lit a cigarette.
Could it be that something had gone wrong with the Ranger's plan? Had
something happened to him? Alaire was startled by the possibility; this
delay was beyond her comprehension.
Then, as if in answer to her perplexity, a second horseman appeared,
and the woman realized how simply she had been fooled.