It was not thought inconsistent with Susy's capriciousness that she
should declare her intention the next morning of driving her pony buggy
to Santa Inez to anticipate the stage-coach and fetch Mary Rogers from
the station. Mrs. Peyton, as usual, supported the young lady's whim and
opposed her husband's objections.
“Because the stage-coach happens to pass our gate, John, it is no reason
why Susy shouldn't drive her friend from Santa Inez if she prefers it.
It's only seven miles, and you can send Pedro to follow her on horseback
to see that she comes to no harm.”
“But that isn't Pedro's business,” said Peyton.
“He ought to be proud of the privilege,” returned the lady, with a toss
of her head.
Peyton smiled grimly, but yielded; and when the stage-coach drew up the
next afternoon at the Santa Inez Hotel, Susy was already waiting in her
pony carriage before it. Although the susceptible driver, expressman,
and passengers generally, charmed with this golden-haired vision,
would have gladly protracted the meeting of the two young friends, the
transfer of Mary Rogers from the coach to the carriage was effected with
considerable hauteur and youthful dignity by Susy. Even Mary Rogers,
two years Susy's senior, a serious brunette, whose good-humor did not,
however, impair her capacity for sentiment, was impressed and even
embarrassed by her demeanor; but only for a moment. When they had driven
from the hotel and were fairly hidden again in the dust of the outlying
plain, with the discreet Pedro hovering in the distance, Susy dropped
the reins, and, grasping her companion's arm, gasped, in tones of
dramatic intensity:--
“He's been heard from, and is coming HERE!”
“Who?”
A sickening sense that her old confidante had already lost touch with
her--they had been separated for nearly two weeks--might have passed
through Susy's mind.
“Who?” she repeated, with a vicious shake of Mary's arm, “why, Clarence
Brant, of course.”
“No!” said Mary, vaguely.
Nevertheless, Susy went on rapidly, as if to neutralize the effect of
her comrade's vacuity.
“You never could have imagined it! Never! Even I, when mother told me, I
thought I should have fainted, and ALL would have been revealed!”
“But,” hesitated the still wondering confidante, “I thought that was all
over long ago. You haven't seen him nor heard from him since that day
you met accidentally at Santa Clara, two years ago, have you?”
Susy's eyes shot a blue ray of dark but unutterable significance into
Mary's, and then were carefully averted. Mary Rogers, although perfectly
satisfied that Susy had never seen Clarence since, nevertheless
instantly accepted and was even thrilled with this artful suggestion
of a clandestine correspondence. Such was the simple faith of youthful
friendship.
“Mother knows nothing of it, of course, and a word from you or him would
ruin everything,” continued the breathless Susy. “That's why I came
to fetch you and warn you. You must see him first, and warn him at any
cost. If I hadn't run every risk to come here to-day, Heaven knows what
might have happened! What do you think of the ponies, dear? They're
my own, and the sweetest! This one's Susy, that one Clarence,--but
privately, you know. Before the world and in the stables he's only
Birdie.”
“But I thought you wrote to me that you called them 'Paul and
Virginie,'” said Mary doubtfully.
“I do, sometimes,” said Susy calmly. “But one has to learn to suppress
one's feelings, dear!” Then quickly, “I do so hate deceit, don't you?
Tell me, don't you think deceit perfectly hateful?”
Without waiting for her friend's loyal assent, she continued rapidly:
“And he's just rolling in wealth! and educated, papa says, to the
highest degree!”
“Then,” began Mary, “if he's coming with your mother's consent, and if
you haven't quarreled, and it is not broken off, I should think you'd be
just delighted.”
But another quick flash from Susy's eyes dispersed these beatific
visions of the future. “Hush!” she said, with suppressed dramatic
intensity. “You know not what you say! There's an awful mystery hangs
over him. Mary Rogers,” continued the young girl, approaching her small
mouth to her confidante's ear in an appalling whisper. “His father
was--a PIRATE! Yes--lived a pirate and was killed a pirate!”
The statement, however, seemed to be partly ineffective. Mary Rogers was
startled but not alarmed, and even protested feebly. “But,” she said,
“if the father's dead, what's that to do with Clarence? He was always
with your papa--so you told me, dear--or other people, and couldn't
catch anything from his own father. And I'm sure, dearest, he always
seemed nice and quiet.”
“Yes, SEEMED,” returned Susy darkly, “but that's all you know! It was in
his BLOOD. You know it always is,--you read it in the books,--you
could see it in his eye. There were times, my dear, when he was
thwarted,--when the slightest attention from another person to me
revealed it! I have kept it to myself,--but think, dearest, of the
effects of jealousy on that passionate nature! Sometimes I tremble to
look back upon it.”
Nevertheless, she raised her hands and threw back her lovely golden mane
from her childish shoulders with an easy, untroubled gesture. It was
singular that Mary Rogers, leaning back comfortably in the buggy, also
accepted these heart-rending revelations with comfortably knitted
brows and luxuriously contented concern. If she found it difficult to
recognize in the picture just drawn by Susy the quiet, gentle, and sadly
reserved youth she had known, she said nothing. After a silence, lazily
watching the distant wheeling vacquero, she said:--
“And your father always sends an outrider like that with you? How nice!
So picturesque--and like the old Spanish days.”
“Hush!” said Susy, with another unutterable glance.
But this time Mary was in full sympathetic communion with her friend,
and equal to any incoherent hiatus of revelation.
“No!” she said promptly, “you don't mean it!”
“Don't ask me, I daren't say anything to papa, for he'd be simply
furious. But there are times when we're alone, and Pedro wheels down so
near with SUCH a look in his black eyes, that I'm all in a tremble. It's
dreadful! They say he's a real Briones,--and he sometimes says something
in Spanish, ending with 'senorita,' but I pretend I don't understand.”
“And I suppose that if anything should happen to the ponies, he'd just
risk his life to save you.”
“Yes,--and it would be so awful,--for I just hate him!”
“But if I was with you, dear, he couldn't expect you to be as grateful
as if you were alone. Susy!” she continued after a pause, “if you just
stirred up the ponies a little so as to make 'em go fast, perhaps he
might think they'd got away from you, and come dashing down here. It
would be so funny to see him,--wouldn't it?”
The two girls looked at each other; their eyes sparkled already with
a fearful joy,--they drew a long breath of guilty anticipation. For a
moment Susy even believed in her imaginary sketch of Pedro's devotion.
“Papa said I wasn't to use the whip except in a case of necessity,”
she said, reaching for the slender silver-handled toy, and setting
her pretty lips together with the added determination of disobedience.
“G'long!”--and she laid the lash smartly on the shining backs of the
animals.
They were wiry, slender brutes of Mojave Indian blood, only lately
broken to harness, and still undisciplined in temper. The lash sent
them rearing into the air, where, forgetting themselves in the slackened
traces and loose reins, they came down with a succession of bounds that
brought the light buggy leaping after them with its wheels scarcely
touching the ground. That unlucky lash had knocked away the bonds of
a few months' servitude and sent the half-broken brutes instinctively
careering with arched backs and kicking heels into the field towards the
nearest cover.
Mary Rogers cast a hurried glance over her shoulder. Alas, they had
not calculated on the insidious levels of the terraced plain, and the
faithful Pedro had suddenly disappeared; the intervention of six inches
of rising wild oats had wiped him out of the prospect and their possible
salvation as completely as if he had been miles away. Nevertheless,
the girls were not frightened; perhaps they had not time. There was,
however, the briefest interval for the most dominant of feminine
emotions, and it was taken advantage of by Susy.
“It was all YOUR fault, dear!” she gasped, as the forewheels of the
buggy, dropping into a gopher rut, suddenly tilted up the back of the
vehicle and shot its fair occupants into the yielding palisades of dusty
grain. The shock detached the whiffletree from the splinter-bar, snapped
the light pole, and, turning the now thoroughly frightened animals again
from their course, sent them, goaded by the clattering fragments, flying
down the turnpike. Half a mile farther on they overtook the gleaming
white canvas hood of a slowly moving wagon drawn by two oxen, and,
swerving again, the nearer pony stepped upon a trailing trace and
ingloriously ended their career by rolling himself and his companion in
the dust at the very feet of the peacefully plodding team.
Equally harmless and inglorious was the catastrophe of Susy and her
friend. The strong, elastic stalks of the tall grain broke their fall
and enabled them to scramble to their feet, dusty, disheveled, but
unhurt, and even unstunned by the shock. Their first instinctive cries
over a damaged hat or ripped skirt were followed by the quick reaction
of childish laughter. They were alone; the very defection of Pedro
consoled them, in its absence of any witness to their disaster; even
their previous slight attitude to each other was forgotten. They groped
their way, pushing and panting, to the road again, where, beholding
the overset buggy with its wheels ludicrously in the air, they suddenly
seized and shook each other, and in an outburst of hilarious ecstasy,
fairly laughed until the tears came into their eyes.
Then there was a breathless silence.
“The stage will be coming by in a moment,” composedly said Susy. “Fix
me, dear.”
Mary Rogers calmly walked around her friend, bestowing a practical
shake there, a pluck here, completely retying one bow and restoring an
engaging fullness to another, yet critically examining, with her head on
one side, the fascinating result. Then Susy performed the same function
for Mary with equal deliberation and deftness. Suddenly Mary started and
looked up.
“It's coming,” she said quickly, “and they've SEEN US.”
The expression of the faces of the two girls instantly changed. A
pained dignity and resignation, apparently born of the most harrowing
experiences and controlled only by perfect good breeding, was distinctly
suggested in their features and attitude as they stood patiently by the
wreck of their overturned buggy awaiting the oncoming coach. In sharp
contrast was the evident excitement among the passengers. A few rose
from their seats in their eagerness; as the stage pulled up in the road
beside the buggy four or five of the younger men leaped to the ground.
“Are you hurt, miss?” they gasped sympathetically.
Susy did not immediately reply, but ominously knitted her pretty
eyebrows as if repressing a spasm of pain. Then she said, “Not at all,”
coldly, with the suggestion of stoically concealing some lasting or
perhaps fatal injury, and took the arm of Mary Rogers, who had, in the
mean time, established a touching yet graceful limp.
Declining the proffered assistance of the passengers, they helped each
other into the coach, and freezingly requesting the driver to stop at
Mr. Peyton's gate, maintained a statuesque and impressive silence. At
the gates they got down, followed by the sympathetic glances of the
others.
To all appearance their escapade, albeit fraught with dangerous
possibilities, had happily ended. But in the economy of human affairs,
as in nature, forces are not suddenly let loose without more or less
sympathetic disturbance which is apt to linger after the impelling
cause is harmlessly spent. The fright which the girls had unsuccessfully
attempted to produce in the heart of their escort had passed him to
become a panic elsewhere. Judge Peyton, riding near the gateway of his
rancho, was suddenly confronted by the spectacle of one of his vacqueros
driving on before him the two lassoed and dusty ponies, with a face that
broke into violent gesticulating at his master's quick interrogation.
“Ah! Mother of God! It was an evil day! For the bronchos had run away,
upset the buggy, and had only been stopped by a brave Americano of an
ox-team, whose lasso was even now around their necks, to prove it, and
who had been dragged a matter of a hundred varas, like a calf, at their
heels. The senoritas,--ah! had he not already said they were safe, by
the mercy of Jesus!--picked up by the coach, and would be here at this
moment.”
“But where was Pedro all the time? What was he doing?” demanded Peyton,
with a darkened face and gathering anger.
The vacquero looked at his master, and shrugged his shoulders
significantly. At any other time Peyton would have remembered that
Pedro, as the reputed scion of a decayed Spanish family, and claiming
superiority, was not a favorite with his fellow-retainers. But the
gesture, half of suggestion, half of depreciation, irritated Peyton
still more.
“Well, where is this American who DID something when there wasn't a
man among you all able to stop a child's runaway ponies?” he said
sarcastically. “Let me see him.”
The vacquero became still more deprecatory.
“Ah! He had driven on with his team towards San Antonio. He would not
stop to be thanked. But that was the whole truth. He, Incarnacion, could
swear to it as to the Creed. There was nothing more.”
“Take those beasts around the back way to the corral,” said Peyton,
thoroughly enraged, “and not a word of this to any one at the casa, do
you hear? Not a word to Mrs. Peyton or the servants, or, by Heaven, I'll
clear the rancho of the whole lazy crew of you at once. Out of the way
there, and be off!”
He spurred his horse past the frightened menial, and dashed down the
narrow lane that led to the gate. But, as Incarnacion had truly said,
“It was an evil day,” for at the bottom of the lane, ambling slowly
along as he lazily puffed a yellow cigarette, appeared the figure of
the erring Pedro. Utterly unconscious of the accident, attributing the
disappearance of his charges to the inequalities of the plain, and,
in truth, little interested in what he firmly believed was his purely
artificial function, he had even made a larger circuit to stop at a
wayside fonda for refreshments.
Unfortunately, there is no more illogical sequence of human emotion than
the exasperation produced by the bland manner of the unfortunate object
who has excited it, although that very unconcern may be the convincing
proof of innocence of intention. Judge Peyton, already influenced, was
furious at the comfortable obliviousness of his careless henchman, and
rode angrily towards him. Only a quick turn of Pedro's wrist kept the
two men from coming into collision.
“Is this the way you attend to your duty?” demanded Peyton, in a thick,
suppressed voice, “Where is the buggy? Where is my daughter?”
There was no mistaking Judge Peyton's manner, even if the reason of
it was not so clear to Pedro's mind, and his hot Latin blood flew
instinctively to his face. But for that, he might have shown some
concern or asked an explanation. As it was, he at once retorted with the
national shrug and the national half-scornful, half-lazy “Quien sabe?”
“Who knows?” repeated Peyton, hotly. “I do! She was thrown out of her
buggy through your negligence and infernal laziness! The ponies ran
away, and were stopped by a stranger who wasn't afraid of risking
his bones, while you were limping around somewhere like a slouching,
cowardly coyote.”
The vacquero struggled a moment between blank astonishment and
inarticulate rage. At last he burst out:--
“I am no coyote! I was there! I saw no runaway!”
“Don't lie to me, sir!” roared Peyton. “I tell you the buggy was
smashed, the girls were thrown out and nearly killed”--He stopped
suddenly. The sound of youthful laughter had come from the bottom of the
lane, where Susy Peyton and Mary Rogers, just alighted from the coach,
in the reaction of their previous constrained attitude, were flying
hilariously into view. A slight embarrassment crossed Peyton's face; a
still deeper flush of anger overspread Pedro's sullen cheek.
Then Pedro found tongue again, his native one, rapidly, violently,
half incoherently. “Ah, yes! It had come to this. It seems he was not
a vacquero, a companion of the padrone on lands that had been his own
before the Americanos robbed him of it, but a servant, a lackey of
muchachas, an attendant on children to amuse them, or--why not?--an
appendage to his daughter's state! Ah, Jesus Maria! such a state! such a
muchacha! A picked-up foundling--a swineherd's daughter--to be
ennobled by his, Pedro's, attendance, and for whose vulgar, clownish
tricks,--tricks of a swineherd's daughter,--he, Pedro, was to be brought
to book and insulted as if she were of Hidalgo blood! Ah, Caramba! Don
Juan Peyton would find he could no more make a servant of him than he
could make a lady of her!”
The two young girls were rapidly approaching. Judge Peyton spurred his
horse beside the vacquero's, and, swinging the long thong of his bridle
ominously in his clenched fingers, said, with a white face:--
“Vamos!”
Pedro's hand slid towards his sash. Peyton only looked at him with a
rigid smile of scorn.
“Or I'll lash you here before them both,” he added in a lower voice.
The vacquero met Peyton's relentless eyes with a yellow flash of hate,
drew his reins sharply, until his mustang, galled by the cruel bit,
reared suddenly as if to strike at the immovable American, then,
apparently with the same action, he swung it around on its hind legs, as
on a pivot, and dashed towards the corral at a furious gallop.