"Not from here."
They began descending around the sides of the crumbled slate-rock face
that tilted too steep for foothold.
"The other well is dry, of course," said Lolita. In the slaty,
many-ledged formation a little lower down the canon, towards the peep of
outlying open country which the cloven hills let in, was a second round
hole, twin of the first. Except after storms, water was never in this
place, and it lay dry as a kiln nine-tenths of the year. But in size and
depth and color, and the circular fashion of its shaft, which seemed
man's rather than nature's design, it might have been the real Tinaja's
reflection, conjured in some evil mirror where everything was faithfully
represented except the water.
"It must have been a real well once," said Luis.
"Once, yes."
"And what made it go dry?"
"Who knows?"
"How strange it should be the lower well that failed, Lolita!"
The boy and girl were climbing down slowly, drawing near each other as
they reached the bottom of the hollow. The peep of open country was
blocked, and the tall tops of the mountains were all of the outer world
to be seen down here below the mesa's level. The silence was like
something older than this world, like the silence of space before any
worlds were made.
"Do you believe it ever can go dry?" asked Luis. They were now on the
edge of the Tinaja.
"Father Rafael says that it is miraculous," said the girl, believingly.
Opposite, and everywhere except where they were, the walls went sheer
down, not slate-colored, but white, with a sudden up-cropping formation
of brick-shaped stones. These also were many-layered and crumbling,
cracking off into the pool if the hand hung or the foot weighed on them.
No safe way went to the water but at this lower side, where the riven,
tumbled white blocks shelved easily to the bottom; and Luis and Lolita
looked down these natural stairs at the portent in the well. In that
white formation shot up from the earth's bowels, arbitrary and
irrelevant amid the surrounding alien layers of slate, four black stones
were lodged as if built into the wall by some hand--four small stones
shaping a cross, back against the white, symmetrical and plain.
"It has come farther--more uncovered since yesterday," Lolita whispered.
"Can the Tinaja sink altogether?" repeated Luis. The arms of the cross
were a measurable space above the water-line, and he had always seen it
entirely submerged.
"How could it sink?" said Lolita, simply. "It will stop when the black
stones are wholly dry."
"You believe Father Rafael," Luis said, always in a low voice; "but it
was only Indians, after all, who told the mission fathers at the first."
"That was very long ago," said she, "and there has always been water in
the Tinaja Bonita."
Boy and girl had set the jar down, and forgotten it and why they had
come. Luis looked uneasily at the circular pool, and up from this
creviced middle of the canon to the small high tops of the mountains
rising in the free sky.
"This is an evil place," he said. "As for the water--no one, no three,
can live long enough to be sure."
But it was part of Lolita's religion. "I am sure," said she.
The young Mexican's eyes rested on the face of the girl beside him, more
beautiful just then with some wave of secret fear and faith.
"Come away with me, Lolita!" he pleaded, suddenly. "I can work. I can be
a man. It is fearful for you to live here alone."
"Alone, Luis?" His voice had called her from her reverie back to her
gay, alert self. "Do you consider Uncle Ramon nobody to live with?"
"Yes. Nobody--for you."
"Promise me never to tell that to uncle. He is so considerate that he
might make me marry somebody for company. And then, you know, my husband
would be certain to be stupid about your coming to see me, querido."
"Why do you always mock me, Lolita?"
"Mock you? What a fancy! Oh, see how the sun's going! If we do not get
our water, your terrible Tinaja will go dry before supper. Come, Luis, I
carried the olla. Must I do everything?"
He looked at her disconsolate. "Ah!" he vibrated, revelling in deep
imaginary passion.
"Go! go!" she cried, pushing him. "Take your olla."
Upon the lightest passing puff of sentiment the Southern breast can
heave with every genuine symptom of storm, except wreck. Of course she
stirred his gregarious heart. Was she not lovely and he twenty-two? He
went down the natural stairs and came slowly up with the water, stopping
a step below her. "Lolita," he said, "don't you love me at all? not a
very little?"
"You are my dearest, oldest friend, Luis," she said, looking at him with
such full sweetness that his eyes fell. "But why do you pretend five
beans make ten?"
"Of course they only make ten with gringos."
She held up a warning finger.
"Oh yes, oh yes! Strangers make fine lovers!" With this he swelled to a
fond, dangerous appearance, and muttered, "It is not difficult to kill a
man, Lolita."
"Fighting! after what I told you!" Lolita stooped and kissed her cousin
Luis, and he instantly made the most of that chance.
"As often as you please," he said, as she released herself angrily, and
then a stroke of sound struck their two hearts still. They jumped apart,
trembling. Some of the rock slide had rattled down and plunged into the
Tinaja with a gulping resonance. Loitering strings of sand strewed after
it, and the boy's and girl's superstitious eyes looked up from the
ringed, waving water to the ledge. Lolita's single shriek of terror
turned to joy as she uttered it.
"I thought--I thought you would not come!" she cried out.
The dismounted horseman above made no sign of understanding her words.
He stepped carefully away from the ledge his foot had crumbled, and they
saw him using his rifle like a staff, steadying its stock in successive
niches, and so working back to his horse. There he slid the rifle into
its leather sling along the left side of his saddle.
"So he is not dead," murmured Luis, "and we need not live alone."
"Come down!" the girl called, and waved her hand. But the new-comer
stood by his horse like an apparition.
"Perhaps he is dead, after all," Luis said. "You might say some of the
Mass, only he was a heretic. But his horse is Mexican, and a believer."
Lolita had no eyes or ears for Luis any more. He prattled away on the
stone stairs of the Tinaja, flippant after a piercing shock of fear. To
him, unstrung by the silence and the Black Cross and the presence of the
sinking pool, the stone had crashed like a clap of sorcery, and he had
started and stared to see--not a spirit, but a man, dismounted from his
horse, with a rifle. At that his heart clutched him like talons, and in
the flashing spasm of his mind came a picture--smoke from the rifle, and
himself bleeding in the dust. Costly love-making! For Luis did not
believe the rifle to have been brought to the ledge there as a staff,
and he thanked the Virgin for the stone that fell and frightened him,
and made him move suddenly. He had chattered himself cool now, and
ready. Lolita was smiling at the man on the hill, glowing without
concealment of her heart's desire.
"Come down!" she repeated. "Come round the side." And, lifting the olla,
she tapped it, and signed the way to him.
"He has probably brought too much white flour for Uncle Ramon to care to
climb more than he must," said Luis. But the man had stirred at last
from his sentinel stillness, and began leading his horse down. Presently
he was near enough for Luis to read his face. "Your gringo is a handsome
fellow, certainly," he commented. "But he does not like me to-day."
"Like you! He doesn't think about you," said Lolita.
"Ha! That's your opinion?"
"It is also his opinion--if you'll ask him."
"He is afraid of Cousin Luis," stated the youth.
"Cousin grasshopper! He could eat you--if he could see you."
"There are other things in this world besides brute muscle, Lolita. Your
gringo thinks I am worth notice, if you do not."
"How little he knows you!"
"It is you he does not know very well," the boy said, with a pang.
The scornful girl stared.
"Oh, the innocent one!" sneered Luis. "Grasshopper, indeed! Well, one
man can always recognize another, and the women don't know much."
But Lolita had run off to meet her chosen lover. She did not stop to
read his face. He was here; and as she hurried towards him she had no
thought except that he was come at last. She saw his eyes and lips, and
to her they were only the eyes and lips that she had longed for. "You
have come just in time," she called out to him. At the voice, he looked
at her one instant, and looked away; but the nearer sight of her sent a
tide of scarlet across his face. His actions he could control, his
bearing, and the steadiness of his speech, but not the coursing of his
blood. It must have been a minute he had stood on the ledge above,
getting a grip of himself. "Luis was becoming really afraid that he
might have to do some work," continued Lolita, coming up the stony hill.
"You know Luis?"
"I know him."
"You can fill your two canteens and carry the olla for us," she pursued,
arriving eagerly beside him, her face lifted to her strong, tall lover.
"I can."
At this second chill of his voice, and his way of meeting her when she
had come running, she looked at him bewildered, and the smile fluttered
on her lips and left them. She walked beside him, talking no more; nor
could she see his furtive other hand mutely open and shut, helping him
keep his grip.
Luis also looked at the man who had taken Lolita's thoughts away from
him and all other men. "No, indeed, he does not understand her very
well," he repeated, bitter in knowing the man's suspicion and its
needlessness. Something--disappointment, it may be--had wrought more
reality in the young Mexican's easy-going love. "And she likes this
gringo because--because he is light-colored!" he said, watching the
American's bronzed Saxon face, almost as young as his own, but of
sterner stuff. Its look left him no further doubt, and he held himself
forewarned. The American came to the bottom, powerful, blue-eyed, his
mustache golden, his cheek clean-cut, and beaten to shining health by
the weather. He swung his blue-overalled leg over his saddle and rode to
the Tinaja, with a short greeting to the watcher, while the pale Lolita
unclasped the canteen straps and brought the water herself, brushing
coldly by Luis to hook the canteens to the saddle again. This slighting
touch changed the Mexican boy's temper to diversion and malice. Here
were mountains from mole-hills! Here were five beans making ten with a
vengeance!
"Give me that," said the American; and Luis handed up the water-jar to
him with such feline politeness that the American's blue eyes filled
with fire and rested on him for a doubtful second. But Luis was quite
ready, and more diverted than ever over the suppressed violence of his
Saxon friend. The horseman wheeled at once, and took a smooth trail out
to the top of the mesa, the girl and boy following.
As the three went silent up the canon, Luis caught sight of Lolita's
eyes shining with the hurt of her lover's rebuff, and his face sparkled
with further mischief. "She has been despising me all day," he said to
himself. "Very well, very well.--Senor Don Ruz," he began aloud,
elaborately, "we are having a bad drought."
The American rode on, inspecting the country.
"I know at least four sorts of kisses," reflected the Mexican trifler.
"But there! very likely to me also they would appear alike from the top
of a rock." He looked the American over, the rifle under his leg, his
pistol, and his knife. "How clumsy these gringos are when it's about a
girl!" thought Luis. "Any fool could fool them. Now I should take much
care to be friendly if ever I did want to kill a man in earnest. Comical
gringo!--Yes, very dry weather, Don Ruz. And the rainy season gone!"
The American continued to inspect the country, his supple,
flannel-shirted back hinting no interest in the talk.
"Water is getting scarce, Don Ruz," persisted the gadfly, lighting
again. "Don Ramon's spring does not run now, and so we must come to the
Tinaja Bonita, you see. Don Ramon removed the cattle yesterday.
Everybody absent from home, except Lolita." Luis thought he could see
his Don Ruz listening to that last piece of gossip, and his smile over
himself and his skill grew more engaging. "Lolita has been telling me
all to-day that even the Tinaja will go dry."
"It was you said that!" exclaimed the brooding, helpless Lolita.
"So I did. And it was you said no. Well, we found something to disagree
about." The man in the flannel shirt was plainly attending to his
tormentor. "No sabe cuantos son cinco," Luis whispered, stepping close
to Lolita. "Your gringo could not say boo to a goose just now." Lolita
drew away from her cousin, and her lover happened to turn his head
slightly, so that he caught sight of her drawing away. "But what do you
say yourself, Don Ruz?" inquired Luis, pleased at this slight
coincidence--"will the Tinaja go dry, do you think?"
"I expect guessing won't interfere with the water's movements much,"
finally remarked Don Ruz--Russ Genesmere. His drawl and the body in his
voice were not much like the Mexican's light fluency. They were music to
Lolita, and her gaze went to him once more, but he got no answer. The
bitter Luis relished this too.
"You are right, Don Ruz. Guessing is idle. Yet how can we help wondering
about this mysterious Tinaja? I am sure that you can never have seen so
much of the cross out of water. Lolita says--"
"So that's that place," said Genesmere, roughly.
Luis looked inquiring.
"Down there," Genesmere explained, with a jerk of his head back along
the road they had come.
Luis was surprised that Don Ruz, who knew this country so well, should
never have seen the Tinaja Bonita until to-day.
"I'd have seen it if I'd had any use for it," said Genesmere.
"To be sure, it lay off the road of travel," Luis assented. And of
course Don Ruz knew all that was needful--how to find it. He knew what
people said--did he not? Father Rafael, Don Ramon, everybody? Lolita
perhaps had told him? And that if the cross ever rose entirely above the
water, that was a sign all other water-holes in the region were empty.
Therefore it was a good warning for travellers, since by it they could
judge how much water to carry on a journey. But certainly he and Lolita
were surprised to see how low the Tinaja had fallen to-day. No doubt
what the Indians said about the great underground snake that came and
sucked all the wells dry in the lower country, and in consequence was
nearly satisfied before he reached the Tinaja, was untrue.
To this tale of Jesuits and peons the American listened with unexpressed
contempt, caring too little to mention that he had heard some of it
before, or even to say that in the last few days he had crossed the
desert from Tucson and found water on the trail as usual where he
expected. He rode on, leading the way slowly up the canon, suffering the
glib Mexican to talk unanswered. His own suppressed feelings still
smouldered in his eye, still now and then knotted the muscles in his
cheeks; but of Luis's chatter he said his whole opinion in one word, a
single English syllable, which he uttered quietly for his own benefit.
It also benefited Luis. He was familiar with that order of English, and,
overhearing, he understood. It consoled the Mexican to feel how easily
he could play this simple, unskilful American.
They passed through the hundred corpses to the home and the green trees,
where the sun was setting against the little shaking leaves.
"So you will camp here to-night, Don Ruz?" said Luis, perceiving the
American's pack-mules. Genesmere had come over from the mines at Gun
Sight, found the cabin empty, and followed Lolita's and her cousin's
trail, until he had suddenly seen the two from that ledge above the
Tinaja. "You are always welcome to what we have at our camp, you know,
Don Ruz. All that is mine is yours also. To-night it is probably
frijoles. But no doubt you have white flour here." He was giving his
pony water from the barrel, and next he threw the saddle on and mounted.
"I must be going back, or they will decide I am not coming till
to-morrow, and quickly eat my supper." He spoke jauntily from his horse,
arm akimbo, natty short jacket put on for to-day's courting, gray
steeple-hat silver-embroidered, a spruce, pretty boy, not likely to toil
severely at wood contracts so long as he could hold soul and body
together and otherwise be merry, and the hand of that careless arm soft
on his pistol, lest Don Ruz should abruptly dislike him too much; for
Luis contrived a tone for his small-talk that would have disconcerted
the most sluggish, sweet to his own mischievous ears, healing to his
galled self-esteem. "Good-night, Don Ruz. Good-night, Lolita. Perhaps I
shall come to-morrow, manana en la manana."
"Good-night," said Lolita, harshly, which increased his joy; "I cannot
stop you from passing my house."
Genesmere said nothing, but sat still on his white horse, hands folded
upon the horns of his saddle, and Luis, always engaging and at ease,
ambled away with his song about the hunchback. He knew that the American
was not the man to wait until his enemy's back was turned.
"'El telele se murio
A enterrar ya le llevan--'"
The tin-pan Mexican voice was empty of melody and full of rhythm.
"'Ay! Ay! Ay!'"
Lolita and Genesmere stood as they had stood, not very near each other,
looking after him and his gayety that the sun shone bright upon. The
minstrel truly sparkled. His clothes were more elegant than the
American's shirt and overalls, and his face luxuriant with
thoughtlessness. Like most of his basking Southern breed, he had no
visible means of support, and nothing could worry him for longer than
three minutes. Frijoles do not come high, out-of-doors is good enough to
sleep in if you or your friend have no roof, and it is not a hard thing
to sell some other man's horses over the border and get a fine coat and
hat.
"'Cinco dragones y un cabo,
Oh, no no no no no!
Y un gato de sacristan.'"
Coat and hat were getting up the canon's side among the cactus, the
little horse climbing the trail shrewdly with his light-weight rider;
and dusty, unmusical Genesmere and sullen Lolita watched them till they
went behind a bend, and nothing remained but the tin-pan song singing in
Genesmere's brain. The gadfly had stung more poisonously than he knew,
and still Lolita and Genesmere stood watching nothing, while the
sun--the sun of Arizona at the day's transfigured immortal
passing--became a crimson coal in a lake of saffron, burning and beating
like a heart, till the desert seemed no longer dead, but only asleep,
and breathing out wide rays of rainbow color that rose expanded over
earth and sky.
Then Genesmere spoke his first volunteered word to Lolita. "I didn't
shoot because I was afraid of hitting you," he said.
So now she too realized clearly. He had got off his horse above the
Tinaja to kill Luis during that kiss. Complete innocence had made her
stupid and slow.
"Are you going to eat?" she inquired.
"Oh yes. I guess I'll eat."
She set about the routine of fire-lighting and supper as if it had been
Uncle Ramon, and this evening like all evenings. He, not so easily, and
with small blunderings that he cursed, attended to his horse and mules,
coming in at length to sit against the wall where she was cooking.
"It is getting dark," said Lolita. So he found the lamp and lighted it,
and sat down again.
"I've never hurt a woman," he said, presently, the vision of his rifle's
white front sight held steady on the two below the ledge once more
flooding his brain. He spoke slowly.
"Then you have a good chance now," said Lolita, quickly, busy over her
cooking. In her Southern ears such words sounded a threat. It was not in
her blood to comprehend this Northern way of speaking and walking and
sitting, and being one thing outside and another inside.
"And I wouldn't hurt a woman"--he was hardly talking to her--"not if I
could think in time."
"Men do it," she said, with the same defiance. "But it makes talk."
"Talk's nothing to me," said Genesmere, flaming to fierceness. "Do I
care for opinions? Only my own." The fierceness passed from his face,
and he was remote from her again. Again he fell to musing aloud,
changing from Mexican to his mother-tongue. "I wouldn't want to have to
remember a thing like that." He stretched himself, and leaned his elbows
on his knees and his head in his hands, the yellow hair hiding his
fingers. She had often seen him do this when he felt lazy; it was not a
sign by which she could read a spiritual standstill, a quivering wreck
of faith and passion. "I have to live a heap of my life alone," the
lounger went on. "Journey alone. Camp alone. Me and my mules. And I
don't propose to have thoughts a man should be ashamed of." Lolita was
throwing a cloth over the table and straightening it. "I'm twenty-five,
and I've laid by no such thoughts yet. Church folks might say
different."
"It is ready," said Lolita, finishing her preparations.
He looked up, and, seeing the cloth and the places set, pulled his chair
to the table, and passively took the food she brought him. She moved
about the room between shelves and fire, and, when she had served him,
seated herself at leisure to begin her own supper. Uncle Ramon was a
peon of some substance, doing business in towns and living comparatively
well. Besides the shredded spiced stew of meat, there were several
dishes for supper. Genesmere ate the meal deliberately, attending to his
plate and cup, and Lolita was as silent as himself, only occasionally
looking at him; and in time his thoughts came to the surface again in
words. He turned and addressed Lolita in Mexican: "So, you see, you
saved his life down there."
She laid her fork down and gave a laugh, hard and harsh; and she said
nothing, but waited for what next.
"You don't believe that. You don't know that. He knows that."
She laughed again, more briefly.
"You can tell him so. From me."
Replies seemed to struggle together on Lolita's lips and hinder each
other's escaping.
"And you can tell him another thing. He wouldn't have stopped. He'd have
shot. Say that. From me. He'd have shot, because he's a Spaniard, like
you."
"You lie!" This side issue in some manner set free the girl's tongue, "I
am not Spanish. I care nothing for Spaniards or what they may do. I am
Mexican, and I waited to see you kill him. I wanted to watch his blood.
But you! you listened to his false talk, and believed him, and let him
go. I save his life? Go after him now! Do it with this knife, and tell
him it is Lolita's. But do not sit there and talk any more. I have had
enough of men's talk to-day. Enough, enough, enough!"
Genesmere remained in his chair, while she had risen to her feet. "I
suppose," he said, very slowly, "that folks like you folks can't
understand about love--not about the kind I mean."
Lolita's two hands clinched the edge of the table, and she called upon
her gods. "Believe it, then! Believe it! And kill me, if that will make
you contented. But do not talk any more. Yes, he told me that he loved
me. Yes, I kissed him; I have kissed him hundreds of times, always,
since before I can remember. And I had been laughing at him to-day,
having nothing in my heart but you. All day it had rejoiced me to hear
his folly and think of you, and think how little he knew, and how you
would come soon. But your folly is worse. Kill me in this house
to-night, and I will tell you, dying, that I love you, and that it is
you who are the fool."
She looked at her lover, and seeing his face and eyes she had sought to
bring before her in the days that she had waited for him, she rushed to
him.
"Lolita!" he whispered. "Lolita!"