It was quite possible that, though Lockwood could not have told when and
how the acquaintance between him and Felice began and progressed, the
young woman herself could. But this is guesswork. Felice being a woman,
and part Spanish at that, was vastly more self-conscious, more
disingenuous, than the man, the Anglo-Saxon. Also she had that
fearlessness that very pretty women have. In her more refined and
city-bred sisters this fearlessness would be called poise, or, at the
most, "cheek."
And she was quite capable of making young Lockwood, the superintendent,
her employer, and nominally the ruler of her little world, fall in love
with her. It is only fair to Felice to say that she would not do this
deliberately. She would be more conscious of the business than the man,
than Lockwood; but in affairs such as this, involving women like Felice,
there is a distinction between deliberately doing a thing and
consciously doing it.
Admittedly this is complicated, but it must be understood that Felice
herself was complex, and she could no more help attracting men to her
than the magnet the steel filings. It made no difference whether the man
was the "breed" boy who split logging down by the engine-house or the
young superintendent with his college education, his white hands and
dominating position; over each and all who came within range of her
influence Felice, with her black hair and green eyes, her slim figure
and her certain indefinite "cheek"--which must not by any manner of
means be considered as "boldness"--cast the weird of her kind.
If one understood her kind, knew how to make allowances, knew just how
seriously to take her eyes and her "cheek," no great harm was done.
Otherwise, consequences were very apt to follow.
Hicks was one of those who from the very first had understood. Hicks was
the manager of the mine, and Lockwood's chief--in a word, _the boss_. He
was younger even than Lockwood, a boy virtually, but a wonderful boy--a
boy such as only America, western America at that, could produce,
masterful, self-controlled, incredibly capable, as taciturn as a sphinx,
strong of mind and of muscle, and possessed of a cold gray eye that was
as penetrating as chilled steel.
To this person, impersonal as force itself, Felice had once, by some
mysterious feminine art, addressed, in all innocence, her little
maneuver of fascination. One lift of the steady eyelid, one quiet glint
of that terrible cold gray eye, that poniarded her every tissue of
complexity, inconsistency, and coquetry, had been enough. Felice had
fled the field from this young fellow, so much her junior, and then
afterward, in a tremor of discomfiture and distress, had kept her
distance.
Hicks understood Felice. Also the great majority of the
miners--shift-bosses, chuck-tenders, bed-rock cleaners, and the
like--understood. Lockwood did not.
It may appear difficult of belief that the men, the crude, simple
workmen, knew how to take Felice Zavalla, while Lockwood, with all his
education and superior intelligence, failed in his estimate of her. The
explanation lies no doubt in the fact that in these man-and-woman
affairs instinct is a surer guide than education and intelligence,
unless, indeed, the intelligence is preternaturally keen. Lockwood's
student life had benumbed the elemental instinct, which in the miners,
the "men," yet remained vigorous and unblunted, and by means of which
they assessed Felice and her harmless blandishments at their true worth.
For all Lockwood's culture, his own chuck-tenders, unlettered fellows,
cumbersome, slow-witted, "knew women"--at least, women of their own
world, like Felice--better than he. On the other hand, his intelligence
was no such perfected instrument as Hicks's, as exact as logarithms, as
penetrating as a scalpel, as uncoloured by emotions as a steel trap.
Lockwood's life had been a narrow one. He had studied too hard at
Columbia to see much of the outside world, and he had come straight from
his graduation to take his first position. Since then his life had been
spent virtually in the wilderness, now in Utah, now in Arizona, now in
British Columbia, and now, at last, in Placer County, California. His
lot was the common lot of young mining engineers. It might lead one day
to great wealth, but meanwhile it was terribly isolated.
Living thus apart from the world, Lockwood very easily allowed his
judgment to get, as it were, out of perspective. Class distinctions lost
their sharpness, and one woman--as, for instance, Felice--was very like
another--as, for instance, the girls his sisters knew "back home" in New
York.
As a last result, the passions were strong.
Things were done "for all they were worth" in Placer County, California.
When a man worked, he worked hard; when he slept, he slept soundly; when
he hated, he hated with primeval intensity; and when he loved he grew
reckless.
It was all one that Felice was Chino's wife. Lockwood swore between his
teeth that she should be _his_ wife. He had arrived at this conclusion
on the night that he sat on the back porch of his office and watched the
moon coming up over the Hog Back. He stood up at length and thrust his
pipe into his pocket, and putting an arm across the porch pillar, leaned
his forehead against it and looked out far in the purple shadows.
"It's madness," he muttered; "yet, I know it--sheer madness; but, by the
Lord! I _am_ mad--and I don't care."