HIDING
“You find the water for us, _pintito mio_.” Raquel spoke with an effort
at lightness, but in her heart she was praying. There was very little
water left in the canteen. Just a warm swallow gurgled when she shook
it.
All day, even during that unbearable noon hour when the swifts and the
homed toads remain motionless, they had kept moving steadily across the
cracked and blistered spaces. They moved as in a dream, but vaguely
conscious of their burning shoulders, their pinching stomachs, aware
only of great thirstiness. It seemed as if all the moisture were being
sucked from their bodies. The dryness was greater than anything they had
ever known even in their worst times of drouth.
They had allowed themselves to be led astray by two mirages. Once to
their left they had distinctly seen the green line of trees that means a
river bed, and had hastened confidently in that direction only to find
after an hour that the green had disappeared completely. Then there was
a house surrounded by alamos. It vanished before their eyes. Perhaps
Paintbrush saw the house too, for he quickened his pace when Raquel
turned in that direction, and shied when it seemed to be wiped away from
before them, leaving only the ashen white sky.
Again they had seen a windmill. That was in the afternoon. But there
could be no windmills here, Raquel knew, so she forcibly kept Georgie
from riding towards it. Paintbrush had gone obediently toward the green
trees because Raquel had guided him in that direction. That was enough
for him. But he reared with impatience when Raquel turned aside after
Georgie, to pull him back from seeking windmills. The pinto’s sharp
senses gave him no promise of water in that quarter.
And now he pricked up his ears as if he had completely understood
Raquel’s words. She threw the reins loose upon the wild horse’s neck.
His pace quickened to a smooth amble.
Before them a lavender haze of dust blended desert and sky. The pinto
kept straight ahead and, after an hour or more of choking, silent
progress, suddenly cactus and maguey became strange new shrubs, an
upheaval of distorted rocks appeared, and they were treading their way
among bowlders that grew bigger and bigger.
They were in a little canyon. Its floor was sometimes a stream bed and
the coarse-grained sand made heavy going. The horses were plodding, the
riders dazed with heat and a shimmer of light brighter than any they had
ever known.
At length Paintbrush came to a stop in the cool blue shadow of a high
rock cliff. He lifted up his head and sniffed with distended nostrils.
Looking up Raquel saw that the rock was strangely smooth, like lava, and
porous looking. There were curious hollows and holes, and small caves in
it.
She slipped from the back of the little wild horse and instinctively,
trustfully, shakily went over to the largest of the holes. It was a
natural wall fountain, and within it was cool, clear, sweet water.
Twelve inches of it in a wide basin!
The horses were waiting obediently, deferentially. Raquel pulled Georgie
away from the water and made him lie down between drinks, while she
bathed his head and face.
Later on, while the horses grazed on the tufts of sweet grass growing in
the crevices of the rock she searched up the _canoncito_ and found
plenty of ripened tunas on which birds were already feasting. She
knocked the strawberry-red pear to the ground with a stick to avoid
those murderous little needles with which the cactus covers even its
fruit, and rolled them into her handkerchief.
Georgie was weak but much restored, and grinned cheerfully as he
devoured the twelfth prickly pear.
“But somehow my stomach craves solids, Sis,” he admitted.
“Little likelihood of solids, my lad.” Raquel was spreading her blanket
for the night.
They slept, and woke, and slept again, through the warm night. The air
was light as a feather, dry, sweet, cool enough. It was uneasiness,
hunger and fatigue that made them restless. Dawn seemed long in coming,
and shortly after they were making their way again up the canyon. _Some_
habitation _must_ be found. One cannot live forever on cactus fruit.
Then, rounding a corner of the strange porous rock, that made the
landscape appear like some other planet, they came upon a thread of blue
smoke and a delicious smell of cooking food.
There perched on the side of a rock was a tiny house of branches and a
little Mexican woman boiling coffee on a small fire before her door and
baking tortillas on a sheet of iron over the coals. She was patting more
flat corn cakes between her hands as she tended her cooking.
“_Buenos dias, Señora._” They cantered up beneath her little house.
“Good day,” she replied incuriously, quite as if strangers dropped down
upon her for breakfast just at any time. She did not look up, but went
straight on with what she was doing.
[Illustration: A MEXICAN WOMAN WAS BAKING TORTILLAS]
“Could--could we get something to eat from you?” There was a faint catch
in Raquel’s voice. The smell of food suddenly made her stomach do queer
things.
The little old wrinkled woman looked up, and took them in with her
glance. Then a veritable chatter of bird talk burst chippering from her.
She was for all the world like a little black-and-white woodpecker. But
_pobrecitos_! They were not _soldados_ at all! Nor to be treated like
_bandidos_! Right out of the cradles they were. As pretty as girls. And
starving! “Sit here,” and she dusted the earth that it might be cleaner.
She placed a soap box between them and produced miraculously from within
the house of twigs a spotless square of drawn linen for a cloth.
All the coffee, all the tortillas they wanted, they could have. But
beans? Just twelve, or twenty-four for dinner, or thirty-six for _la
cena_. Take instead this _pinole_, freshly ground. She stirred some
white meal into a pan of boiling water and not long afterward offered
them tiny portions of the most delicious cereal they had ever tasted.
Before that meal everything else in the world seemed to have drifted far
away. But now they sat happy, safe, with rising spirits again, and
remembered about everything.
First of all Raquel pulled from within her belt a coin that made the
little old lady’s eyes widen almost with fear. She shook her head
violently. But no! She wished no pay for food. When Raquel had succeeded
in making her understand that she must take the money and that there was
more of it where that came from she accepted it with a profusion of
thanks.
Good American gold--it would take care of her and her _esposo_ for
years! They sat and chatted, while the old Señora smoked many
cigarettes. Her man was beyond in the hills with the goats. He had to
keep them moving and out of the way of the bandits that had been
hereabouts of late. The abandoned creatures had taken all her garden
before it was ripe enough even.
The nearest town? It was her birthplace, her home where she lived when
this summer home grew too cold. It was eight, ten _leguas_ over there,
to the west. But revolutionists occupied Moctezuma now. El Rancho
Escondido? She had never heard of it. But then, she had never traveled
so far. Only between here and Moctezuma in all her fifty-five years.
Follow the canyon and you would come to the silver mine above, where
there were rooms to sleep in and food without a doubt, and where they
could take shelter until the soldiers had left Moctezuma.
So they bid the little old bird woman _adios_. “Go with God,” she called
after them.
The rainy season had come in the mountains, and the hillsides were
covered with _lluvia de oro_, rain-of-gold; the ground beneath their
feet with lilies and Indian paintbrush, that little red and yellow broom
for which the pinto had been named.
The deserted silver mine they found a few miles above: a cluster of
buildings at the top of a high round hill, a natural fortification. As
they rode past the hacienda several people ran out, two men and a woman.
“_De donde viene?_ From where do you come?”
“We got lost, escaping bandits. We fled at night from El Rancho
Escondido. Can you tell us how to get back?” Raquel spoke as one of them
and they accepted her as such. The little fellow with reddish hair, and
bluish eyes--he was a _guerito_, blond and somewhat like the Mayordomo’s
son.
No, they did not know of such a _rancho_. But one thing they knew. To
avoid the desert one _had_ to return north up the valley of the
Moctezuma, and that was now held as far as Nacozari by the
_revolucionistas_ and the _maytorenistas_. Yes, there were plenty of
cattle in these hills, if one would round them up. Sell them? But why
not? Something for nothing.
The boys had better get down and stay there at the _mina_ for a while
until the way was clear. But, yes, get down; though there was little
enough to eat, what with bandits and all. Maybe they were _bandidos_
themselves, the woman suggested questioningly. Veritable _nenes_, babies
merely out of the cradle, were so desperate and abandoned nowadays.
Raquel felt queerly sick. Disappointment very nearly brought tears to
her eyes. She brushed her smarting lids with the back of her hand, and
then, and then----
“It is the heat, _pobrecito_,” said the kindly old woman, gathering the
wilted figure into her arms, while Georgie stood aghast and helpless at
this sudden weakness on Raquel’s part. He followed the old woman inside
the main building, which was nearly as hot as outdoors.
A corrugated iron roof crackled and sizzled like a stove above them.
There on a clean cot with sheets the old woman laid Raquel. She had seen
at once that the pretty boy was a girl. She was shocked. What! Riding
astride, wearing _pantalones_! She had heard Gringo girls did that!
“Hush,” whispered Georgie, who by now had recovered his presence of
mind. “We are _rancheros_. My sister came to buy cattle, and when the
_rancho_ was attacked by soldiers, we had to get away in the night. Of
course we lost our way.
“But we will soon get out,” he added with a confident swagger. “I guess
they’re making a fuss about us up there by now. The Mexicans better
leave us alone.”
Within the house, the old woman was bathing Raquel’s head, and when she
opened her eyes wearily for a moment, the Mexican held to her lips a
gourd of some cooling drink. When she had drunk it, she sank back into a
heavy slumber which lasted until nightfall. Outside their door, a young
Mexican lounged against a post. When no one was looking, he moved his
foot and, stooping, picked up a silver coin that he had covered when it
fell from Raquel’s pocket. “Froylan,” called a voice; “Froylan.” And he
sauntered off.
Georgie led Paintbrush and his pony up to a corral on the mountainside,
and gave them grain. Then he returned to sit near the house, and to talk
with the men and women. Great tales they told, squatted there on their
haunches against the wall--how bandits had come a few days before, and
held up the engineer and the manager of the mine, and gone away over the
mountains threatening to return in a week and kill all _Americanos_.
They had shot a man because he would not hand them an orange, or allow
his granddaughter to kiss them all around.
“How far is it to Moctezuma?” Georgie asked again. About twenty _leguas_
they agreed, and a _legua_ was a bit more than a mile.
Raquel was awakened by the crackling of the iron roof, cooling after
sundown. It sounded like a bombardment of rifle bullets. She was weak;
never had she felt this way before. Strange! Acting up like a little,
old baby! But after supper she was able to sit and listen to the
conversation of the group that passed stories there under the stars. Her
thoughts were on her own problems, however, and she was miserable at the
situation. She was not only further away than ever from getting any
cattle into the States--but here they were fleeing bandits.
“No doubt but that we’ll get out safe all right,” she reflected
gloomily. “We can hide here as long as necessary. I suppose they’d send
out for us eventually. But Mom! She’ll be crazy by this time. Let’s see.
It was ten, eleven days yesterday, since we left.
“She’ll think of the Columbus raid and all the stories she ever heard,
about Americans being held up and killed. And the truth of it is,” she
confessed to herself, “_anything_ is likely to happen.”
Georgie leaned over and whispered. “There are lots of cattle in these
mountains. Suppose it’s too far to drive them up to the border?”
“I’m thinking of getting ourselves up to the border just now,” Raquel
answered in a low voice. “Whatever happens, Georgie, stick by me close,
and should we get separated, we’ll both make for El Escondido. Remember
now.”
“Trust me. But we’re safe here. These _gente_ are as friendly as can be.
Gee, this is exciting. Why, it’s worse than the Indian days and the
cattle country wars, when Dad was a kid. You wouldn’t believe it if you
heard it--people hiding and all like this in the mountains.”
“I should think people would believe anything these days, with all the
world at war, when no one ever expected it,” Raquel replied bitterly.
The talk of the Mexicans burst upon their attention. “And it was a lad
just like this one, a young _gringo_ about the age of this boy.” The
Mexican _minero_ nodded toward Raquel. “They stood him up against a sand
bank and shot him because he defied them. They thought to hold him for
ransom, but when the American troops came over the border they grew
frightened, and so killed the poor young one to get rid of him.”
“Well, what can the _Americanos_ expect? They have not recognized
Carranza yet? What protection should they look for?” A flaming-eyed
sallow fellow spoke up. Georgie’s eyes were popping. He was shivering in
the heat of the tropic night.
“_Cállate, pendejo viejo._ Be still, old fool,” snapped the old _mosa_,
“can’t you see you are frightening the poor lads to death. They are not
such as the wild mountain youngsters who join the _bandidos_ before they
are yet a dozen years from their mother’s milk.” She drew a protecting
arm around Raquel’s shoulders, and rising, motioned her into her own
quarters.
Raquel slept in Old Antonina’s house that night, with Georgie on a palm
mat beside her. The cook house with its mud roof was cool as a cave and
much pleasanter than the iron roofed hacienda. In the early morning
Raquel woke to find Antonina sitting beside her cot braiding her long
hair, still thick and dark.
“Ah hah!” said the old woman, “you couldn’t deceive me, little one, even
though your hair is cropped like a boy’s. Now, why you go about as a
youth I do not know, but believe me, Froylan, who sat by the door last
night, had his eyes on you.”
She paused significantly. She enjoyed dramatizing life, old Antonina.
“And Froylan is a bad one, without conscience, without honor, and
without money. Which last is perhaps the most dangerous in this case.”
“What do you mean, Señora?” Raquel asked.
“That you must not stay here, for Froylan will surely try to get ransom
money out of you. I don’t trust him. I think he would just as soon be a
bandit as a miner--rather!”
“But why should he imagine that he could get any ransom money for me?”
“Grrr,” growled the old woman. “You might deceive these poor country
folk, about here. But I have traveled, me. I have been to Douglas,
Arizona, and seen the Gringoes; and Froylan has been even to El Paso.”
As they sat at their breakfast of _piñole_ and black coffee a young girl
looked in the doorway. She was frankly curious to see the strangers and
made conversation which did not in the least deceive the cynical and
astute Antonina.
“Soldiers came up to Divisaderos (a small place a few miles below the
mine), and took away Don Refugio to shoot him. But he swore he was a
_Carrancista_, and so they spared him. Froylan is so brave,” she said.
“He went before dawn up into the mountains to see that bandits have not
mutilated or molested his cattle.”
“Hmph,” said Antonina.
But when the girl had left she quickly made a little bundle and, after a
casual inspection outside her house, beckoned Raquel and Georgie to
follow her. They walked slowly past the hacienda, then strolled in a
leisurely way up toward the mine, not speaking.
Turning aside before they reached the main shaft, the old woman ducked
into a narrow and villainously rough little canyon. She parted the scrub
oak, brushed through the cactus, Georgie and Raquel following, and in a
moment they stood within the entrance of an abandoned shaft.
The change in atmosphere was so intense that the young Texans gasped. It
was as if a thin, invisible curtain hung over the mouth of the tunnel,
dividing the oven heat of the day outside from the cool, dank rush of
air coming up from the bowels of the earth.
“This is certainly great.” Georgie had kept silence as long as possible.
Antonina shook her head warningly.
“Talk low. They can not find you here. Only one or two have known of the
old workings of the mine. And my fine Froylan is not one of them. It is
as I suspected. He flew forth before daylight to find some desperado or
other to come and capture you.”
“How do you know that is what he went for?”
Antonina ignored the question with a disdainful wave of the hand.
“But when he returns you will have left. You must stay here till I can
see what to do.”
“What about our horses? I would rather be captured than have anything
happen to my pinto.”
“That little grandson of my husband, José, he will herd them on the
hillside. He knows how, and tonight he will bring them to the tunnel
here.”
“But where are we to go?” Raquel trusted the old woman and was eager to
be on her way, even though fleeing bandits and kidnapers. But both she
and Georgie were tired from their experience in the desert, and she felt
that a few days rest would make them fit again.
“You may rest with my old _comadre_, Dorothea, in the valley. Then on
to Moctezuma, from where you must find your way back north, my child.”
With a finger to her lips she ducked quickly and was out in the blinding
glare of the morning. Georgie and Raquel sat taking stock of things.
“Well, it’s better here than on the desert, or in that tin-roofed oven.
We can rest here,” Georgie observed cheerfully.
Raquel was worried about Paintbrush. She had gone up to the corral to
caress him and talk with him before she slept the night before, but he
would be expecting her during the day sometime. Would he behave with the
little boy? Or would he hunt her out here?
As the long day wore on they drowsed and rested. The heat waves before
the tunnel entrance grew whiter and more shimmery. They retreated
farther down the inclining shaft and explored as far as they dared.
Coming back to that white light at the mouth of the shaft they found
Antonina with lunch and a package.
She brought the most delicious of _enchiladas_, savory with cheese and
wild onion, swimming in red hot chili. That she had gathered the
ingredients together was a miracle, yet she apologized for the lack of
eggs to top the dish. In spite of the weather they ate every mouthful
with relish.
“Froylan has just ridden away with three evil-looking men in the
direction of Divisaderos, chasing you,” said Antonina. “You must leave
tonight over the rocks where José will guide you. But you, Señorita,
ought to leave your fine clothes and take these _pantalones_ of the
people, these _teguas_.” She opened the bundle and took out the native
sandals, a cotton shirt and trousers.
José was to take them to the house of Dorothea. She would set them on
the road to Moctezuma when they were ready to leave. They were to ride
fast to the house of the priest and stay there till the silly soldiers
had departed to play their game of hide and seek in other parts.
“The soldiers, they do little harm to each other. It is the _gente_, the
people, who suffer, their houses burned, their crops destroyed.” She was
indignant, the good Antonina.
She embraced Raquel fondly, taking her to her bosom and kissing her upon
both cheeks. Raquel pressed a gold piece in her hand. Antonina wept with
joy. She had mothered the young Americans from the goodness of her
heart.
* * * * *
The escape had been so easy--the pinto’s nicker after dark as he was
brought to the mouth of the old tunnel shaft where they hid, and sensed
his mistress within; the soft dark night, skies like ink in which
millions of stars seemed to be throwing out sparks, and shooting back
and forth across the heavens.
Oh, that sense of nervous expectation as little wiry José led them down
a strange trail and over a hill! But they rode unmolested through the
dawn, and the sun was already high before they stopped at a small house,
located just there in the foothills for no apparent reason.
José left them there with the friends of his grandmother, an old woman
and an old man, who scarcely addressed either Raquel or Georgie all day,
but put them in a wee room off the main room. There Raquel lay on a
canvas cot and fell asleep, her brother on the floor beside her.
Not till after dark did they set out again. They had only six or eight
miles still to go. Their spirits rose and they hummed as they rode
along. They were on their way back; probably they could locate El
Escondido again as they got farther north.
Raquel’s thoughts returned to Don Nestor and the wonderful opportunity
for buying cattle there. Now that they felt safe, somehow they did not
worry so much about what Mrs. Daniels would think.
“Oh, she’ll know we’re all right,” Georgie asserted confidently. “She
knows we can take care of ourselves.”
They were passing an occasional _rancho_, and a glow of lights began to
appear before them among the trees. Suddenly a turn in the road brought
them upon a startling scene. Before them rose a large and pretentious
adobe casa, from whose gayly lighted windows floated music and sounds of
merrymaking.
Outside the house there stood and lounged about several companies of
soldiers. To what faction they belonged neither Raquel nor Georgie could
tell, and before they could beat a retreat two sentries had sprung out
from among the acacias bordering the road, and were holding their
horses’ heads.
“_Quien vive?_” was the hoarse demand on both sides. “Who goes there?”
“_Dios y sus Santas!_ [God and His Saints!]” quavered Raquel.
“Carranza,” shouted Georgie simultaneously at the top of his lungs.
“Ha, a very pretty answer,” replied one of the soldiers, “but off you
get, both of you, and into the house yonder till the _commandante_ sees
for himself if he has any further need of you.”
And at the points of their bayonets they drove the two toward a corral
gate, and through, where they were at once surrounded by other soldiers.
Paintbrush laid back his ears and rose wickedly on his hind feet as a
soldier laid a hand on the bridle. Had the man not ducked out of the way
the pinto would undoubtedly have annihilated him. Raquel slipped quickly
to the ground.
“Let me, Señor. He is not a broncho, only a wild horse but newly
gentled. I am the only one who can manage him.”
“Put him up then,” growled the soldier, “and that one too,” pointing at
Georgie and his little brown pony, which Georgie was stimulating to a
very pretty exhibition of bucking and fancy rearing, through pricking
and a few tricks which the good little beast knew well.
So they were permitted to stable their ponies within an inside corral,
high-walled, over which there was no escape, and as they came out, they
were surprised to find that for the moment their guard had disappeared.
Knowing that there was no escape over the high spiked wall, he had
returned to his gambling game at the gate. Beside them was an open
window, unbarred. Instinctively Raquel pushed Georgie through and
followed on his heels.
They were in an end room, dimly lit with candles, and piled with
soldierly equipment. A doorway opposite led out upon a large patio,
around which ran a gallery. They slipped across and looked out. They
were at the kitchen end of the house and a grape arbor offered a covered
passageway across the rear of the court yard.
A dance was in progress at the front of the house, and the rest of the
place seemed deserted. They could see an empty bedroom across the patio.
Slipping through the arbor they peered in a doorway. On the bed lay
various feminine garments. In an open wardrobe hung others.
“Let’s dress like girls,” whispered Raquel to Georgie, “and then perhaps
we can get by.” It seemed a daring idea. She had entered Mexico
disguised as a boy; now she would escape “disguised” as a girl!
Reaching through a window she lifted from a chest a mass of rose-colored
ruffles. It was a skirt which looked like civil war days. A petticoat
lay beneath it. Raquel pulled off her _pantolones_ and sandals, standing
there in the dark, with the music of the mandolins and fiddles and the
gayety up forward going on all the while.
She slipped into the skirts and stepped within the room to complete her
toilette. She peeped at herself in a little old mirror atop a high chest
of drawers. Horrors! What a dirty face! But there was a basin, water,
and towels in the room, and powder on the bureau beside the _colorete_
which some soft-eyed belle had used that night.
Raquel threw a mantilla out for Georgie. He wrapped it about him and
stepped into the room.
“Roll up our clothes and hide them in a corner of the arbor,” whispered
Raquel.
While he was doing this she bathed, powdered her face, touched her
cheeks with the rouge, her mouth with the red stick lying there. On the
bed lay a black lace scarf which she seized. But what could she do with
bobbed hair in this land of long-haired Señoritas? It would never escape
notice.
Peeping cautiously into a drawer for hairpins she came across a carved
high comb. A little deft work with comb and brush, a thrust of stout
hairpins to fix the comb in the tangle of her back hair--there! It was
ready to drape the black lace scarf about her face.
The effect was magical. The wavery little mirror gave back above a tiny
rose bodice and billowing organdie skirts, a lovely face, rare, piquant,
like the grandmother of old. In the closet was a pair of slippers, shiny
and tiny. But they slipped on.
“Must have been too large or too small for the happy child they belong
to,” surmised Raquel. She hoped that the owner of the clothes would not
catch a glimpse of her. She felt as if she were dressed for a fancy
dress party with these full skirts, for at home, she remembered the
narrow slit skirt was the fashion.
“You look like a princess.” Georgie was watching the finishing touches.
But there was no time to lose and she began to search desperately for
something for Georgie to wear.
There was not a thing but a little old gingham dress, such as any little
kitchen helper might put on. So Georgie was squeezed into that, and with
a mantilla clutched under his chin he made a typical little _muchacha_.
They stepped bravely out through the door, looking for the best way to
escape. There was a large closed gate at the back of the patio. It led
into still another court, and outside that was the open. But they could
not get away without their horses and how to get into the corrals again?
Although there was no outside gate in the corral where they had been
obliged to stable their horses, the corral opened into several other
yards.
“Perhaps we could make a break through in front if we can get back
through that window,” Raquel suggested.
It had taken them more than half an hour to dress as girls. Perhaps the
same soldado would no longer be there in the corral. They slipped across
the court yard, into the first room they had entered. The window was
barred, from the outside!
All Spanish houses are built on very nearly the same design; realizing
this, they crept out on tiptoe and went forward to try the windows of
the next room. They were open, but barred with iron, for this was an
establishment of some pretension.
As they stepped again into the patio they stood for a moment in the
stream of light from a doorway into the _sala de baile_, the dance hall.
A figure lounging there glanced over its shoulder just in time. He
darted out and made a low bow before Raquel, laying at the same time a
detaining hand on her arm.
“Not so fast, Señorita. Why are you so late? What! you are not thinking
of leaving before you have begun? The honor of the first dance must be
mine. Come, it is a _chotess_.” And he swung her irresistibly through
the door, and out on to the floor where a dozen girls were being whirled
from one soldier to another.
“_Varsouviana, valse._” The chief fiddler announced the dances.
A timid little girl peered through the door from under a black shawl for
a few moments, and then flattened herself on her haunches in a shadowy
corner of the court yard.
There was nothing else for it. Raquel must play up. Terrified at first,
her feet nevertheless whirled obediently in the steps of the
old-fashioned schottische she knew so well. Her thoughts collected
themselves. Her poise returned as she whirled about. These fellows
seemed to mean no harm; at any rate, just now they were bent only on
having a good time.
“You dance _divinamente_, Señorita,” whispered the young Mexican who had
captured her. “From where do you come? Surely you are not of this
barbarous locality? What? Yes?” He shrugged. “But of different quality
from the other girls with whom I danced earlier in the evening.” He was
bored with the native belles who coquetted about them.
“Well, it is fortunate for you that you live about here,” went on the
_teniente_, “otherwise you would never return home tonight. No one may
pass through the lines about Moctezuma. There must be no possible
communication with the north--with the United States. The General
Carranza has not yet been recognized by that government, you see, and we
are not any too friendly.
“All gringoes are being detained, and not too well treated!” he laughed.
“But that does not concern you, _Señorita bella_. The _commandante_ has
given orders that this vicinity be molested no more. I understand they
suffered much during the last Villa raid in Sonora.”
“But tell me,” he pursued, “is it native to Sonora of the south, your
beauty? Myself, I am from Chihuahua, where the girls are very
indifferent, but I have heard that the southern provinces, _el distrito_
Sahuaripa especially, is famed for its lovely ladies.”
The attentions of the young lieutenant had not gone unnoticed. Other
uniforms were gathering round. The girls were buzzing with curiosity.
Who was this newcomer? That dress? Was it not exactly like one of
Caterina’s? But this one had a _gracia_ in wearing clothes, surely!
Raquel caught the undercurrent of murmuring as she passed and repassed
the other couples. In an interlude, another Mexican youth in uniform
bowed low and swung his arm within hers as a square dance began, and she
smiled gayly, clasping the hand of one after another in the figures of
the dance.
Indeed, Raquel was having a good time. But she was alive all the while
to the necessity of escape. And although she smiled enchantingly, if
discreetly, according to the etiquette of that region, and spoke
scarcely at all, she clung ever so slightly to the Chihuahuan.
“May I see you home, Señorita?” he leaned above her persuasively. “My
aide can bring your horse to the door. The duenna may follow.”
Her eyes flashed consent. “I must go now,” she whispered. “I have come
without permission”--and that’s true enough, thought she. “My little
_sirviente_ waits outside. Let her go with your man to show him our
horses. Come, I will call her.”
The lieutenant was carried away. He stepped with Raquel out into the
patio. At Raquel’s call, an obedient little figure rose from a corner, a
bundle under its arm, and was despatched through a side room with a
soldier summoned there. It had all worked out too beautifully!
Raquel requested the lieutenant in a low voice that the horses be
brought to the back gate. It would be better were she not observed.
Sensing intrigue, the daft youth consented. It was all to his liking. He
felt that he had indeed made a conquest.
She led him through the patio, within the arbor, where her dignity held
him off, and then they passed through the gate, through the outer court,
the second gate--Raquel drew a breath of infinite relief. The horses,
led by a black-topped little girl, and followed by a peón _soldado_,
came round the corner and stood before the house.
Raquel spoke to the pinto and he pricked up his ears and came close. She
stroked his head, and nuzzled his chin.
“Come,” said her escort, “let me put you up.”
“The little girl first,” said Raquel, “she does not ride so well, and
must go astride.” What would happen when her little wild Paintbrush felt
the flap of skirts upon his flanks for the first time? Many a good horse
had gone crazy with less, especially at night.
She spoke again to Paintbrush, softly, as she allowed the lieutenant to
lift her up on the saddle sidewise.
The pinto leaped as a skirt struck his flank, came down trembling.
“Es broncho,” Raquel called out to the astonished _teniente_, as she
brought down her quirt unobserved on the other flank, “he is afraid of
my ruffled skirt.” And she shot ahead into the darkness with her small
handmaiden following, and disappeared from sight before the startled and
angry youth could dash over and grasp the reins of his own mount. He
followed hot on their trail, taking the road toward Moctezuma, but they
were gone, gone into the darkness, though he searched the streets till
after midnight and made inquiries.