presently he heard her voice again murmuring brokenly to him in the way
that he knew and had said over in his mind and dwelt upon through the
desert stages he had ridden, he trembled, and with savage triumph drew
her close, and let his doubt and the thoughts that had chilled and
changed him sink deep beneath the flood of this present rapture. "My
life!" she said. "Toda mi vida! All my life!" Through the open door the
air of the canon blew cool into the little room overheated by the fire
and the lamp, and in time they grew aware of the endless rustling of the
trees, and went out and stood in the darkness together, until it ceased
to be darkness, and their eyes could discern the near and distant shapes
of their world. The sky was black and splendid, with four or five
planets too bright for lesser stars to show, and the promontories of the
keen mountains shone almost as in moonlight. A certain hill down towards
the Tinaja and its slate ledge caught Genesmere's eye, and Lolita felt
him shudder, and she wound her arm more tightly about him.
"What is it?" she said.
"Nothing." He was staring at the hill. "Nothing," he replied to himself.
"Dreamer, come!" said Lolita, pulling him. "It is cold here in the
night--and if you choose to forget, I choose you shall remember."
"What does this girl want now?"
"The cards! our cards!"
"Why, to be sure!" He ran after her, and joy beat in her heart at the
fleet kiss he tried for and half missed. She escaped into the room,
laughing for delight at her lover's being himself again--his own right
self that she talked with always in the long days she waited alone.
"Take it!" she cried out, putting the guitar at him so he should keep
his distance. "There! now you have broken it, songless Americano! You
shall buy me another." She flung the light instrument, that fell in a
corner with a loud complaint of all the strings together, collapsing to
a blurred hollow humming, and silence.
"Now you have done it!" said Genesmere, mock serious.
"I don't care. I am glad. He played on that to-day. He can have it, and
you shall give me a new one.
"'Yo soy purita mejicana;
Nada tengo espanol,'"
sang the excited, breathless Lolita to her American, and seated herself
at the table, beginning a brisk shuffle of a dim, dog-eared pack. "You
sit there!" She nodded to the opposite side of the table. "Very well,
move the lamp then." Genesmere had moved it because it hid her face from
him. "He thinks I cheat! Now, Senor Don Ruz, it shall be for the guitar.
Do you hear?"
"Too many pesos, senorita."
"Oh, oh! the miser!"
"I'm not going broke on any senoritas--not even my own girl!"
"Have you no newer thing than poverty to tell me? Now if you look at me
like that I cannot shuffle properly."
"How am I to look, please?" He held his glance on her.
"Not foolish like a boy. There, take them, then!" She threw the cards at
him, blushing and perturbed by his eyes, while he scrambled to punish
her across the table.
"Generous one!" she said. "Ardent pretender! He won't let me shuffle
because he fears to lose."
"You shall have a silk handkerchief with flowers on it," said he,
shuffling.
"I have two already. I can see you arranging those cards, miser!"
It was the custom of their meetings, whether at the cabin or whether she
stole out to his camp, to play for the token he should bring for her
when he next came from town. She named one thing, he some other, and the
cards judged between them. And to see Genesmere in these hours, his
oldest friend could not have known him any more than he knew himself.
Never had a woman been for him like Lolita, conjuring the Saxon to
forget himself and bask openly in that Southern joy and laughter of the
moment.
"Say my name!" he ordered; and at the child effort she made over "Russ"
he smiled with delight. "Again!" he exclaimed, bending to catch her R
and the whole odd little word she made. "More!"
"No," pouted the girl, and beat at him, blushing again.
"Make your bet!" he said, laying out the Mexican cards before him.
"Quick! Which shall it be?"
"The caballo. Oh, my dear, I wanted to die this afternoon, and now I am
so happy!"
It brought the tears to her eyes, and almost to his, till he suddenly
declared she had stolen a card, and with that they came to soft blows
and laughing again. So did the two sit and wrangle, seizing the pack out
of turn, feigning rage at being cheated, until he juggled to make her
win three times out of five; and when chance had thus settled for the
guitar, they played for kisses, and so forgot the cards at last. And at
last Genesmere began to speak of the next time, and Lolita to forbid
such talk as that so soon. She laid her hand over his lips, at which he
yielded for a little, and she improvised questions of moment to ask him,
without time for stopping, until she saw that this would avail no
longer. Then she sighed, and let him leave her to see to his animals,
while she lighted the fire again to make breakfast for him. At that
parting meal an anxiety slowly came in her face, and it was she that
broke their silence after a while.
"Which road do you go this time, querido?" she asked.
"Tucson, Maricopa, and then straight here to you."
"From Maricopa? That is longer across the desert."
"Shorter to my girl."
"I--I wish you would not come that way."
"Why?"
"That--that desert!"
"There's desert both ways--all ways. The other road puts an extra week
between you and me."
"Yes, yes. I have counted."
"What is all this, Lolita?"
Once more she hesitated, smiling uneasily beneath his scrutiny. "Yo no
se" (I don't know). "You will laugh. You do not believe the things that
I believe. The Tinaja Bonita--"
"That again!"
"Yes," she half whispered. "I am afraid."
He looked at her steadily.
"Return the same road by Tucson," she urged. "That way is only half so
much desert, and you can carry water from Poso Blanco. Do not trust the
Coyote Wells. They are little and shallow, and if the Black Cross--Oh,
my darling, if you do not believe, do this for me because you love me,
love me!"
He did not speak at once. The two had risen, and stood by the open
door, where the dawn was entering and mixing with the lamp. "Because I
love you," he repeated at length, slowly, out of his uncertain thoughts.
She implored him, and he studied her in silence.
Suddenly hardness stamped his face. "I'll come by Tucson, then--since I
love you!" And he walked at once out of the door. She followed him to
his horse, and there reached up and pulled him round to her, locking her
fingers behind his neck. Again his passion swept him, and burned the
doubt from his eyes. "I believe you love me!" he broke out.
"Ah, why need you say that?"
"Adios, chiquita." He was smiling, and she looked at his white teeth and
golden mustache. She felt his hands begin to unlock her own.
"Not yet--not yet!"
"Adios, chiquita."
"O mi querido!" she murmured; "with you I forget day and night!"
"Bastante!" He kissed her once for all.
"Good-bye! good-bye! Mis labios van estar frios hasta que tu los toques
otra vez" (My lips will be cold until you touch them again).
He caught her two hands, as if to cling to something. "Say that once
more. Tell me that once more."
She told him with all her heart and soul, and he sprang into his saddle.
She went beside him through the cold, pale-lighted trees to the garden's
edge, and there stood while he took his way across the barren ground
among the carcasses. She watched the tip of his mustache that came
beyond the line of his cheek, and when he was farther, his whole strong
figure, while the clack of the hoofs on the dead ground grew fainter.
When the steeper fall of the canon hid him from her she ran to the
house, and from its roof among her peppers she saw him come into sight
again below, the wide, foreshortened slant of ground between them, the
white horse and dark rider and the mules, until they became a mere line
of something moving, and so vanished into the increasing day.
Genesmere rode, and took presently to smoking. Coming to a sandy place,
he saw prints of feet and of a shod horse in the trail heading the other
way. That was his own horse, and the feet were Lolita's and Luis's--the
record and the memory of yesterday afternoon. He looked up from the
trail to the hills, now lambent with violet and shifting orange, and
their shapes as they moved out into his approaching view were the shapes
of yesterday afternoon. He came soon to the forking of the trails, one
for Tucson and the other leading down into the lumpy country, and here
again were the prints in the sand, the shod horse, the man and the
woman, coming in from the lumpy country that lay to the left; and
Genesmere found himself stock-still by the forking trails, looking at
his watch. His many-journeyed mules knew which was the Tucson trail,
and, not understanding why he turned them from their routine, walked
asunder, puzzled at being thus driven in the wrong direction. They went
along a strange up-and-down path, loose with sliding stones, and came to
an end at a ledge of slate, and stood about on the tricky footing
looking at their master and leaning their heads together. The master sat
quiet on his horse, staring down where a circular pool lay below; and
the sun rose everywhere, except in his mind. So far had he come
yesterday with that mind easy over his garnered prosperity, free and
soaring on its daily flight among the towers of his hopes--those
constructions that are common with men who grow fond: the air-castle
rises and reaches, possessing the architect, who cherishes its slow
creation with hourly changes and additions to the plan. A house was part
of Genesmere's castle, a home with a wife inside, and no more camping
alone. Thus far, to this exact ledge, the edifice had gone forward
fortunately, and then a blast had crumbled house and days to come into
indistinguishable dust. The heavy echo jarred in Genesmere, now that he
had been lured to look again upon the site of the disaster, and a
lightning violence crossed his face. He saw the two down there as they
had stood, the man with his arms holding the woman, before the falling
stone had startled them. Were the Mexican present now in the flesh, he
would destroy him just for what he had tried to do. If she were
true--She was true--that was no thanks to the Mexican. Genesmere was
sorry second thoughts had spared that fellow yesterday, and he looked at
his watch again. It was time to be starting on the Tucson trail, and the
mules alertly turned their steps from the Tinaja Bonita. They could see
no good in having come here. Evidently it was not to get water. Why,
then? What use was there in looking down a place into a hole? The mules
gave it up. Genesmere himself thought the Tinaja poorly named. It was
not pretty. In his experience of trail and canon he knew no other such
hole. He was not aware of the twin, dried up, thirty yards below, and
therefore only half knew the wonders of the spot.
He rode back to the forks across the rolling steepness, rebuilding the
castle; then, discovering something too distant to be sure about, used
his glass quickly. It was another rider, also moving slowly among the
knolls and gullies of the mesa, and Genesmere could not make him out. He
was going towards the cabin, but it was not the same horse that Luis had
ridden yesterday. This proved nothing, and it would be easy to circle
and see the man closer--only not worth the trouble. Let the Mexican go
to the cabin. Let him go every day. He probably would, if she permitted.
Most likely she would tell him to keep away from her. She ought to. She
might hurt him if he annoyed her. She was a good shot with a pistol. But
women work differently from men--and then she was Mexican. She might
hide her feelings and make herself pleasant for three weeks. She would
tell him when he returned, and they would laugh together over how she
had fooled this Luis. After all, shooting would have been too much
punishment. A man with a girl like Lolita must expect to find other men
after her. It depends on your girl. You find that out when you go after
other men's girls. When a woman surely loves some other man she will not
look at you. And Lolita's love was a sure thing. A woman can say love
and a man will believe her--until he has experienced the genuine article
once; after that he can always tell. And to have a house, with her
inside waiting for you! Such a turn was strange luck for a man, not to
be accounted for. If anybody had said last year--why, as late as the
20th of last March--that settling down was what you were coming to--and
now--Genesmere wondered how he could ever have seen anything in riding a
horse up and down the earth and caring nothing for what next. "No longer
alone!" he said aloud, suddenly, and surprised the white horse.
The song about the hunchback and the sacristan's cat stirred its rhythm
in his mind. He was not a singer, but he could think the tune, trace it,
naked of melody, in the dry realm of the brain. And it was a diversion
to piece out the gait of the phantom notes, low after high, quick after
slow, until they went of themselves. Lolita would never kiss Luis again;
would never want to--not even as a joke. Genesmere turned his head back
to take another look at the rider, and there stood the whole mountains
like a picture, and himself far out in the flat country, and the bare
sun in the sky. He had come six miles on the road since he had last
noticed. Six miles, and the air-castle was rebuilt and perfect, with no
difference from the old one except its foundation, which was upon sand.
To see the unexpected plain around him, and the islands of blue, sharp
peaks lying in it, drove the tune from his head, and he considered the
well-known country, reflecting that man could not be meant to live here.
The small mountain-islands lay at all distances, blue in a dozen ways,
amid the dead calm of this sand archipelago. They rose singly from it,
sheer and sudden, toothed and triangled like icebergs, hot as stoves.
The channels to the north, Santa Rosa way, opened broad and yellow, and
ended without shore upon the clean horizon, and to the south narrowed
with lagoons into Sonora. Genesmere could just see one top of the Sierra
de la Quitabac jutting up from below the earth-line, splitting the main
channel, the faintest blue of all. They could be having no trouble over
their water down there, with the Laguna Esperanca and the Poso de Mazis.
Genesmere killed some more of the way rehearsing the trails and
water-holes of this country, known to him like his pocket; and by-and-by
food-cooking and mule-feeding and the small machine repetitions of a
camp and a journey brought the Quijotoa Mountains behind him to replace
Gun Sight and the Sierra de la Naril; and later still the Cababi hid the
Quijotoa, and Genesmere counted days and nights to the good, and was at
the Coyote Wells.
These were holes in rocks, but shallow, as Lolita said. No shallower
than ordinary, however; he would see on the way back if they gave signs
of failing. No wonder if they did, with this spell of drought--but why
mix up a plain thing with a lot of nonsense about a black cross down a
hole? Genesmere was critically struck with the words of the tune he now
noticed steadily running in his head again, beneath the random surface
of his thoughts.
"Cinco dragones y un cabo,
Y un gato de sacristan."
That made no sense either; but Mexicans found something in it. Liked it.
Now American songs had some sense:
"They bathed his head in vinegar
To fetch him up to time,
And now he drives a mule team on
The Denver City line."
A man could understand that. A proud stage-driver makes a mistake about
a female passenger. Thinks he has got an heiress, and she turns out to
peddle sarsaparilla. "So he's naturally used up," commented Genesmere.
"You estimate a girl as one thing, and she--" Here the undercurrent
welled up, breaking the surface. "Did she mean that? Was that her
genuine reason?" In memory he took a look at his girl's face, and
repeated her words when she besought him to come the longer way and
hesitated over why. Was that shame at owning she believed such stuff?
True, after asking him once about his religion and hearing what he said,
she had never spoken of these things again. That must be a woman's way
when she loved you first--to hide her notions that differed from yours,
and not ruffle happy days. "Return the same road by Tucson!" He
unwrapped a clean, many-crumpled handkerchief, and held Lolita's
photograph for a while. Then he burst into an unhappy oath, and folded
the picture up again. What if her priest did tell her? He had heard the
minister tell about eternal punishment when he was a boy, and just as
soon as he started thinking it over he knew it was a lie. And this quack
Tinaja was worse foolishness, and had nothing to do with religion.
Lolita afraid of his coming to grief in a country he had travelled
hundreds, thousands of miles in! Perhaps she had never started thinking
for herself yet. But she had. She was smarter than any girl of her age
he had ever seen. She did not want him back so soon. That was what it
was. Yet she had looked true; her voice had sounded that way. Again he
dwelt upon her words and caresses; and harboring these various thoughts,
he killed still more of the long road, until, passing after awhile Poso
Blanco, and later Marsh's ranch-well at the forks where the Sonora road
comes in, he reached Tucson a man divided against himself. Divided
beyond his will into two selves--one of faith besieged, and one of
besieging inimical reason--the inextricable error!
Business and pleasure were waiting in Tucson, and friends whose ways and
company had not been of late for him; but he frequented them this time,
tasting no pleasure, yet finding the ways and company better than his
own. After the desert's changeless, unfathomed silence, in which nothing
new came day or night to break the fettering spell his mind was falling
under, the clink and knocking of bottles was good to hear, and he
listened for more, craving any sound that might liven or distract his
haunted spirit. Instead of the sun and stars, here was a roof; instead
of the pitiless clear air, here was tobacco smoke; and beneath his
boot-heels a wooden floor wet with spilled liquids instead of the
unwatered crumbling sand. Without drinking, he moved his chair near the
noisiest drinkers, and thus among the tobacco smoke sought to hide from
his own looming doubt. Later the purring tinkle of guitars reminded him
of that promised present, and the next morning he was the owner of the
best instrument that he could buy. Leaving it with a friend to keep
until he should come through again from Maricopa, he departed that way
with his mules, finding in the new place the same sort of friends and
business, and by night looking upon the same untasted pleasures. He went
about town with some cattlemen--carousing bankrupts, who remembered
their ruin in the middle of whiskey, and broke off to curse it and the
times and climate, and their starved herds that none would buy at any
price. Genesmere touched nothing, yet still drew his chair among these
drinkers.
"Aren't you feeling good to-night, Russ?" asked one at length.
And Genesmere's eyes roused from seeing visions, and his ears became
aware of the loud company. In Tucson he had been able to sit in the
smoke, and compass a cheerful deceit of appearance even to himself.
Choosing and buying the guitar had lent reality to his imitated peace of
mind; he had been careful over its strings, selecting such as Lolita
preferred, wrapt in carrying out this spiritual forgery of another
Genesmere. But here they had noticed him; appearances had slipped from
him. He listened to a piece of late Arizona news some one was in the
middle of telling--the trial of several Mormons for robbing a paymaster
near Cedar Springs. This was the fourth time he had heard the story,
because it was new; but the present narrator dwelt upon the dodgings of
a witness, a negress, who had seen everything and told nothing,
outwitting the government, furnishing no proofs. This brought Genesmere
quite back.
"No proofs!" he muttered. "No proofs!" He laughed and became alert. "She
lied to them good, did she?"
They looked at him, because he had not spoken for so long; and he was
told that she had certainly lied good.
"Fooled them clean through, did she? On oath! Tell about her."
The flattered narrator, who had been in court, gave all he knew, and
Genesmere received each morsel of perjury gravely with a nod. He sat
still when the story was done.
"Yes," he said, after a time. "Yes." And again, "Yes." Then he briefly
bade the boys good-night, and went out from the lamps and whiskey into
the dark.
He walked up and down alone, round the corral where his mules stood,
round the stable where his bed-blankets were; and one or two carousers
came by, who suggested further enjoyments to him. He went to the edge of
the town and walked where passers would not meet him, turning now and
then to look in the direction of Tucson, where the guitar was waiting.
When he felt the change of dawn he went to the stable, and by the first
early gray had his mules packed. He looked once again towards Tucson,
and took the road he had promised not to take, leaving the guitar behind
him altogether. His faith protested a little, but the other self
invented a quibble, the mockery that he had already "come by Tucson,"
according to his literal word; and this device answered. It is a comfort
to be divided no longer against one's self. Genesmere was at ease in his
thraldom to the demon with whom he had wrestled through the dark hours.
As the day brightened he wondered how he had come to fool a night away
over a promise such as that. He took out the face in the handkerchief,
and gave it a curious, defiant smile. She had said waiting would be
long. She should have him quickly. And he was going to know about that
visitor at the cabin, the steeple-hatted man he saw in his visions. So
Maricopa drew behind him, small, clear-grouped in the unheated morning,
and the sun found the united man and his mules moving into the desert.
By the well in the bottom of the Santa Cruz River he met with cattle and
little late-born calves trying to trot. Their mothers, the foreman
explained, had not milk enough for them, nor the cursed country food or
water for the mothers. They could not chew cactus. These animals had
been driven here to feed and fatten inexpensively, and get quick money
for the owner. But, instead, half of them had died, and the men were
driving the rest to new pastures--as many, that is, as could still
walk. Genesmere knew, the foreman supposed, that this well was the last
for more than a hundred miles? Funny to call a thing like that Santa
Cruz a river! Well, it was an Arizona river; all right enough, no doubt,
somewhere a thousand feet or so underground. Pity you weren't a
prairie-dog that eats sand when he gets a thirst on him. Got any
tobacco? Good-bye.