"Can you take care of our horses, too, and--give us a place to sleep?"
Dave asked. His eyes were heavy; he had been almost constantly in the
saddle since leaving Jonesville, and now could barely keep himself
awake.
"Trust me," the Mexican assured them, confidently. "If somebody comes
I'll send them away. Oh, I can lie with the best of them."
The Garcias were not ordinary people, and they lived in rather good
circumstances for country folk. There were three rooms to their little
house, all of which were reasonably clean. The food that Inez set
before her guests, too, was excellent if scanty.
Juanito, taking the cue from his parents, flung himself whole-heartedly
into the task of entertainment, and since Alaire met his advances
halfway he began, before long, to look upon her with particular favor.
Once they had thoroughly made friends, he showered her with the most
flattering attentions. His shyness, it seemed, was but a pretense--at
heart he was a bold and enterprising fellow--and so, as a mark of his
admiration, he presented her with all his personal treasures. First he
fetched and laid in her lap a cigar-box wagon with wooden
wheels--evidently the handiwork of his father. Then he gave her, one by
one, a highly prized blue bottle, a rusty Mexican spur, and the ruins
of what had been a splendid clasp knife. There were no blades in the
knife, but he showed her how to peep through a tiny hole in the handle,
where was concealed the picture of a dashing Spanish bullfighter. The
appreciation which these gifts evoked intoxicated the little man and
roused him to a very madness of generosity. He pattered away and
returned shortly, staggering and grunting under the weight of another
and a still greater offering. It was a dog--a patient, hungry dog with
very little hair. The animal was alive with fleas--it scratched
absent-mindedly with one hind paw, even while Juanito strangled it
against his naked breast--but it was the apple of its owner's eye, and
when Inez unfeelingly banished it from the house Juanito began to
squall lustily. Nor could he be conciliated until Alaire took him upon
her knee and told him about another boy, of precisely his own age and
size, who planted a magic bean in his mother's dooryard, which grew up
and up until it reached clear to the sky, where a giant lived. Juanito
Garcia had never heard the like. He was spellbound with delight; he
held his breath in ecstasy; only his toes moved, and they wriggled like
ten fat, brown tadpoles.
In the midst of this recital Garcia senior appeared in the door with a
warning.
"Conceal yourselves," he said, quickly. "Some of our neighbors are
coming this way." Inez led her guests into the bedchamber, a bare room
with a dirt floor, from the window of which they watched Juan go to
meet a group of horsemen. Inez went out, too, and joined in the parley.
Then, after a time, the riders galloped away.
When Alaire, having watched the party out of sight, turned from the
window she found that Dave had collapsed upon a chair and was sleeping,
his limbs relaxed, his body sagging.
"Poor fellow, he's done up," Father O'Malley exclaimed.
"Yes; he hasn't slept for days," she whispered. "Help me." With the
assistance of Dolores they succeeded in lifting Dave to the bed, but he
half roused himself. "Lie down, dear," Alaire told him. "Close your
eyes for a few minutes. We're safe now."
"Somebody has to keep watch," he muttered, thickly, and tried to fight
off his fatigue. But he was like a drunken man.
"I'm not sleepy; I'll stand guard," the priest volunteered, and,
disregarding further protest, he helped Alaire remove Dave's coat.
Seeing that the bed was nothing more than a board platform covered with
straw matting, Alaire folded the garment for a pillow; as she did so a
handful of soiled, frayed letters spilled out upon the floor.
"Rest now, while you have a chance," she begged of her husband. "Just
for a little while."
"All right," he agreed. "Call me in--an hour. Couldn't sleep--wasn't
time." He shook off his weariness and smiled at his wife, while his
eyes filmed with some emotion. "There is something I ought to tell you,
but--I can't now--not now. Too sleepy." His head drooped again; she
forced him back; he stretched himself out with a sigh, and was asleep
almost instantly.
Alaire motioned the others out of the room, then stood looking down at
the man into whose keeping she had given her life. As she looked her
face became radiant. Dave was unkempt, unshaven, dirty, but to her he
was of a godlike beauty, and the knowledge that he was hers to comfort
and guard was strangely thrilling. Her love for Ed, even that first
love of her girlhood, had been nothing like this. How could it have
been like this? she asked herself. How could she have loved deeply
when, at the time, her own nature lacked depth? Experience had
broadened her, and suffering had uncovered depths in her being which
nothing else had had the power to uncover. Stooping, she kissed Dave
softly, then let her cheek rest against his. Her man! Her man! She
found herself whispering the words.
Her eyes were wet, but there was a smile upon her lips when she
gathered up the letters which had dropped from her husband's pocket.
She wondered, with a little jealous twinge, who could be writing to
him. It seemed to her that she owned him now, and that she could not
bear to share him with any other. She studied the inscriptions with a
frown, noticing as she did so that several of the envelopes were
unopened--either Dave was careless about such things or else he had had
no leisure in which to read his mail. One letter was longer and heavier
than the rest, and its covering, sweat-stained and worn at the edges,
came apart in her hands, exposing several pages of type-writing in the
Spanish language. The opening words challenged her attention.
In the name of God, Amen,
Alaire read. Involuntarily her eye followed the next line:
Know all men by this public instrument that I, Maria Joséfa Law, of
this vicinity--
Alaire started, Who, she asked herself, was Maria Joséfa Law? Dave had
no sisters; no female relatives whatever, so far as she knew. She
glanced at the sleeping man and then back at the writing.
--finding myself seriously ill in bed, but with sound judgment, full
memory and understanding, believing in the ineffable mysteries of the
Holy Trinity, three distinct persons in one God, in essence, and in the
other mysteries acknowledged by our Mother, the Church--
So! This was a will--one of those queer Spanish documents of which
Alaire had heard--but who was Maria Joséfa Law? Alaire scanned the
sheets curiously, and on the reverse side of the last one discovered a
few lines, also in Spanish, but scrawled in pencil. They read:
MY DEAR NEPHEW,--Here is the copy of your mother's will that I told you
about. At the time of her death she was not possessed of the property
mentioned herein, and so the original document was never filed for
record, but came to me along with certain family possessions of small
value. It seems to contain the information you desire.
Y'rs aff'ly,