GEORGIE GETS LOST
Three days after the gay ball at the military quarters of the
_Carrancista_ detachment a little Mexican girl wept disconsolately in
the doorway of the priest’s home. The priest was not there; he had never
returned since the first morning the little girl had presented herself.
But she persisted in coming back. The housekeeper was quite annoyed. She
had fed her, and now the ugly, rawboned child was crying. Roughly she
swept her back into the house.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“I wait for my big brother. Has he been here since I came yesterday
afternoon?” The little girl wiped a smudged face.
“Your big brother? How do I know who is your big brother? Many men and
boys come, but none ask after an ugly little girl. Here, take this for
your dinner and don’t come back for a week.” And she thrust the child
out through the door, with a palm leaf basket full of tortillas, sweet
cakes and fruit.
George Washington Daniels retired into a quiet lane behind the church
and gorged himself with food, topping off with figs and grapes that
drooped conveniently over the wall. It was the first really full meal in
three days. Comforted, he dropped asleep, and when he woke the grief of
the past few days had left him, shaken off with that miraculous ease
with which youth divests itself of sorrow too long held.
There was no use waiting here longer for Rakie. She must have got away
to El Escondido. The last he’d seen of her was that flapping pink skirt
as she shot past a window, and though he’d followed the hammer of the
pinto’s hoofs for several miles--well, anyway half a mile--it turned out
to be the lieutenant and not Rakie at all, and he’d had to escape in the
other direction. There were soldiers there and the sentry had calmly
made him get down and sent him off without his horse. It was Custer’s
pony--the best of his string. What would he say? By golly, the horse
thief! He’d get that animal back some way!
So Georgie had lived in the streets and haunted the padre’s house. On
this night, however, he started out determined first of all to get rid
of this hated girl’s dress. The bundle of clothes he had thrust entire
into Raquel’s saddle pocket.
But he had not completely stripped off his own possessions, although he
had no money; for round his waist was a belt with a knife, and several
little treasures from which he never parted--a pocket compass, his
watch, a burning glass. Now at dusk he was able to make a trade with a
lad about his own size whom he found in the street, and shortly
thereafter he emerged from behind a wall, clad like any other Mexican
youngster, with a wide straw sombrero, calico pantaloons, and a blue
gingham shirt, while the pink gingham dress lay in a huddle behind the
wall.
He stepped forth into the orchid twilight of the little Mexican city,
whose dusty streets, flat roofs and goats laden with water-filled skins,
might have been those of a village on the Nile, though he did not know
it. The quiet dusk was broken only by the screeching of the parakeets
and the twitter of the birds in the court yards of the larger houses.
Georgie wandered along till he stood before a picturesque building with
wrought-iron balconies. It was the hotel. Here the officer in charge of
the troops sat at dinner. Georgie could see him through the window, a
large fellow, coarse and drunken.
“What can the _Americanos_ expect in the way of protection?” The words
of the fiery-eyed miner up in the mountains came back to him. No use
asking for any help up to the border from him. He pressed his face
miserably up against the gratings and stared through unseeing.
Where was Raquel?