So as the slow, solemn days drifted onward, like the wonderful river
which dominated the desert valley, it came to pass that the dreaming,
pondering Adam suddenly awakened to the danger in this dusky-eyed
maiden.
The realization came to Adam at the still sunset hour when he and
Margarita were watching the river slide like a gleam of gold out of
the west. They were walking among the scattered mesquites along the
sandy bank, a place lonesome and hidden from the village behind, yet
open to the wide space of river and valley beyond. The air seemed full
of marvelous tints of gold and rose and purple. The majestic scene,
beautiful and sad, needed life to make it perfect. Adam, more than
usually drawn by Margarita’s sympathy, was trying to tell her something
of the burden on his mind, that he was alone in the world, with only a
hard gray future before him, with no one to care whether he lived or
died.
Then had come his awakening. It did not speak well for Margarita’s
conceptions of behavior, but it proved her a creature of heart and
blood. To be suddenly enveloped by a wind of flame, in the slender
twining form of this girl of Spanish nature, was for Adam at once a
revelation and a catastrophe. But if he was staggered, he was also
responsive, as in a former moment of poignancy he had vowed he would
be. A strong and shuddering power took hold of his heart and he felt
the leap, the beat, the burn of his blood. When he lifted Margarita
and gathered her in a close embrace it was more than a hot upflashing
of boyish passion that flushed his face and started tears from under
his tight-shut eyelids. It was a sore hunger for he knew not what,
a gratefulness that he could express only by violence, a yielding to
something deeper and more far-reaching than was true of the moment.
Adam loosened Margarita’s hold upon his neck and held her back from him
so he could see her face. It was sweet, rosy. Her eyes were shining,
black and fathomless as night, soft with a light that had never shone
upon Adam from any other woman’s.
“Girl, do you--love me?” he demanded, and if his voice broke with the
strange eagerness of a boy, his look had all the sternness of a man.
“Ah...!” whispered Margarita.
“You--you big-hearted girl!” he exclaimed, with a laugh that was glad,
yet had a tremor in it. “Margarita, I--I must love you, too--since I
feel so queer.”
Then he bent to her lips, and from these first real kisses that
had ever been spent upon him by a woman he realized in one flash
his danger. He released Margarita in a consideration she did not
comprehend; and in her pouting reproach, her soft-eyed appeal, her
little brown hands that would not let go of him, there was further
menace to his principles.
Adam, gay and teasing, yet kindly and tactfully, tried to find a way to
resist her.
“Señorita, some one will see us,” he said.
“Who cares?”
“But, child, we--we must think.”
“Señor, no woman ever thinks when love is in her heart and on her lips.”
Her reply seemed to rebuke Adam, for he sensed in it what might be
true of life, rather than just of this one little girl, swayed by
unknown and uncontrollable forces. She appeared to him then subtly and
strongly, as if there was infinitely more than willful love in her. But
it did not seem to be the peril of her proffered love that restrained
Adam so much as the strange consciousness of the willingness of his
spirit to meet hers halfway.
Suddenly Margarita’s mood changed. She became like a cat that had been
purring under a soft, agreeable hand and then had been stroked the
wrong way.
“Señor think he love me?” she flashed, growing white.
“Yes--I said so--Margarita. Of course I do,” he hastened to assure her.
“Maybe you--a gringo liar!”
Adam might have resented this insulting hint but for his uncertainty
of himself, his consequent embarrassment, and his thrilling sense of
the nearness of her blazing eyes. What a little devil she looked! This
did not antagonize Adam, but it gave him proof of his impudence, of his
dreaming carelessness. Margarita might not be a girl to whom he should
have made love, but it was too late. Besides, he did not regret that.
Only he was upset; he wanted to think.
“If the _grande_ señor trifle--Margarita will cut out his heart!”
This swift speech, inflexible and wonderful with a passion that
revealed to Adam the half-savage nature of a woman whose race was alien
to his, astounded and horrified him, and yet made his blood tingle
wildly.
“Margarita, I do not trifle,” replied Adam, earnestly. “God knows I’m
glad you--you care for me. How have I offended you? What is it you
want?”
“Let señor swear he love me,” she demanded, imperiously.
Adam answered to that with the wildness that truly seemed flashing more
and more from him; and the laughter and boldness on his lips hid the
gravity that had settled there. He was no clod. Under the softness of
him hid a flint that struck fire.
As Margarita had been alluring and provocative, then as furious as a
barbarian queen, so she now changed again to another personality in
which it pleased her to be proud, cold, aloof, an outraged woman to
be wooed back to tenderness. If, at the last moment of the walk home,
Margarita evinced signs of another sudden transformation, Adam appeared
not to note them. Leaving her in the dusk at the door where the señora
sat, he strode away to the bank of the river. When he felt himself free
and safe once more, he let out a great breath of relief.
“Whew! Now I’ve done it!... So she’d cut my heart out? And I had to
swear I loved her! The little savage!... But she’s amazing--and she’s
adorable, with all her cat claws. Wouldn’t Guerd rave over a girl like
Margarita?... And here I am, standing on my two feet, in possession of
all my faculties, Adam Larey, a boy who thought he had principles--yet
now I’m a ranting lover of a dark-skinned, black-eyed slip of a greaser
girl! It can’t be true!”
With that outburst came sobering thought. Adam’s resolve not to ponder
and brood about himself was as if it had never been. He knew he would
never make such a resolve again. For hours he strolled up and down the
sandy bank, deep in thought, yet aware of the night and the stars, the
encompassing mountains, and the silent, gleaming river winding away in
the gloom. As he had become used to being alone out in the solitude
and darkness, there had come to him a vague awakening sense of their
affinity with his nature. Success and people might fail and betray him,
but the silent, lonely starlit nights were going to be teachers, even
as they had been to the Wise Men of the Arabian waste.
Adam at length gave up in despair and went to bed, hoping in slumber to
forget a complexity of circumstance and emotion that seemed to him an
epitome of his callow helplessness. The desert began to loom to Adam as
a region inimical to comfort and culture. He had almost decided that
the physical nature of the desert was going to be good for him. But
what of its spirit, mood, passion as typified by Margarita Arallanes?
Adam could ask himself that far-reaching query, and yet, all the answer
he got was a rush of hot blood at memory of the sweet fire of her
kisses. He saw her to be a simple child of the desert, like an Indian,
answering to savage impulses, wholly unconscious of what had been
a breach of womanly reserve and restraint. Was she good or bad? How
could she be bad if she did not know any better? Thus Adam pondered and
conjectured, and cursed his ignorance, and lamented his failings, all
the time honest to acknowledge that he was fond of Margarita and drawn
to her. About the only conclusion he formed from his perplexity was the
one that he owed it to Margarita to live up to his principles.
At this juncture he recollected Merryvale’s significant remarks about
the qualities needed by men who were to survive in the desert, and
his nobler sentiments suffered a rout. The suddenness, harshness,
fierceness of the desert grafted different and combating qualities upon
a man or else it snuffed him out, like a candle blown by a gusty wind.
* * * * *
Next morning, as every morning, the awakening was sweet, fresh, new,
hopeful. Another day! And the wonderful dry keenness of the air, the
colors that made the earth seem a land of enchantment, were enough in
themselves to make life worth living. In the morning he always felt
like a boy.
Margarita’s repentance for her moods of yesterday took a material turn
in the preparation of an unusually good breakfast for Adam. He was
always hungry and good meals were rare. Adam liked her attentions,
and he encouraged them; though not before the señora or Arallanes,
for the former approved too obviously and the latter disapproved too
mysteriously.
When, some time later, a boat arrived, Adam was among the first to meet
it at the dock.
He encountered MacKay coming ashore in the company of a man and two
women, one of whom was young. The manager showed a beaming face for
the first time in many days. Repairs for the mill engine had come.
MacKay at once introduced Adam to the party; and it so turned out that
presently the manager, who was extremely busy, left his friends for
Adam to entertain. They were people whom Adam liked immediately, and as
the girl was pretty, of a blond type seldom seen in the Southwest, it
seemed to Adam that his task was more than agreeable. He showed them
around the little village and then explained how interesting it would
be for them to see the gold mill. How long a time it seemed since he
had been in the company of a girl like those he had known at home! She
was merry, intelligent, a little shy.
He was invited aboard the boat to have lunch with the mother and
daughter. Everything tended to make this a red-letter day for Adam.
The hours passed all too swiftly and time came for the boat to depart.
When the boat swung free from the shore Adam read in the girl’s eyes
the thought keen in his own mind--that they would never meet again.
The round of circumstances might never again bring a girl like that
into Adam’s life, if it were to be lived in these untrodden ways. He
waved his hand with all the eloquence which it would express. Then the
obtruding foliage on the bank hid the boat and the girl was gone. His
last thought was a selfish one--that his brother Guerd would not see
her at Ehrenberg.
Some of MacKay’s laborers were working with unloaded freight on the
dock. One of these was Regan, the little Irishman who had been keen to
mark Adam on several occasions. He winked at MacKay and pointed at Adam.
“Mac, shure thot boy’s a divil with the wimmen!”
MacKay roared with laughter and looked significantly past Adam as if
this mirth was not wholly due to his presence alone. Some one else
seemed implicated. Suddenly Adam turned. Margarita stood there, with
face and mien of a tragedy queen, and it seemed to Adam that her
burning black eyes did not see anything in the world but him. Then,
with one of her swift actions, graceful and lithe, yet violent, she
wheeled and fled.
“O Lord!” murmured Adam, aghast at the sudden-dawning significance
of the case. He had absolutely forgotten Margarita’s existence. Most
assuredly she had seen every move of his with her big eyes, and read
his mind, too. He could not see the humor of his situation at the
moment, but as he took a short cut through the shady mesquites toward
his hut, and presently espied Margarita in ambush. What fiendish glee
this predicament of his would have aroused in his brother Guerd! Adam,
the lofty, the supercilious, had come a cropper at last--such would
have been Guerd’s scorn and rapture!
Margarita came rushing from the side, right upon him even as he turned.
So swiftly she came that he could not get a good look at her, but she
appeared a writhing, supple little thing, instinct with fury. Hissing
Spanish maledictions, she flung herself upward, and before he could
ward her off she had slapped and scratched his face and beat wildly at
him with flying brown fists. He thrust her away, but she sprang back.
Then, suddenly hot with anger, he grasped her and, jerking her off
her feet, he shook her with far from gentle force, and did not desist
till he saw that he was hurting her. Letting her down and holding her
at arm’s length, he gazed hard at the white face framed by disheveled
black hair and lighted by eyes so magnificently expressive of supreme
passion that his anger was shocked into wonder and admiration. Desert
eyes! Right there a conception dawned in his mind--he was seeing a
spirit through eyes developed by the desert.
“Margarita!” he exclaimed, “are you a cat--that you----”
“I hate you,” she hissed, interrupting him. The expulsion of her
breath, the bursting swell of her breast, the quiver of her whole
lissom body, all were exceedingly potent of an intensity that utterly
amazed Adam. Such a little girl, such a frail strength, such a
deficient brain to hold all that passion! What would she do if she had
real cause for wrath?
“Ah, Margarita, you don’t mean that. I didn’t do anything. Let me tell
you.”
She repeated her passionate utterance, and Adam saw that he could
no more change her then than he could hope to move the mountain.
Resentment stirred in him.
“Well,” he burst out, boyishly, “if you’re so darned fickle as that I’m
glad you do hate me.”
Then he released his hold on her arms and, turning away without another
glance in her direction, he strode from the glade. He took the gun he
had repaired and set off down the river trail. When he got into the
bottom lands of willow and cottonwood he glided noiselessly along,
watching and listening for game of some kind.
In the wide mouth of a wash not more than a mile from the village Adam
halted to admire some exceedingly beautiful trees. The first was one
of a species he had often noted there, and it was a particularly fine
specimen, perhaps five times as high as his head and full and round in
proportion. The trunk was large at the ground, soon separating into
innumerable branches that in turn spread and drooped and separated into
a million twigs and stems and points. Trunk and branch and twig, every
inch of this wonderful tree was a bright, soft green color, as smooth
as if polished, and it did not have a single leaf. As Adam gazed at
this strange, unknown tree, grasping the nature of it and its exquisite
color and grace and life, he wondered anew at the marvel of the desert.
As he walked around to the side toward the river he heard a cry.
Wheeling quickly, he espied Margarita running toward him. Margarita’s
hair was flying. Blood showed on her white face. She had torn her dress.
“Margarita!” cried Adam, as he reached her. “What’s the matter?”
She was so out of breath she could scarcely speak.
“Felix--he hide back there--in trail,” she panted. “Margarita
watch--she know--she go round.”
The girl labored under extreme agitation, which, however, did not seem
to be fright.
“Felix? You mean the Mexican who drew a knife on your father? The
fellow I threw around--up at Picacho?”
“_Si_--señor,” replied Margarita.
“Well, what of it? Why does Felix hide up in the trail?”
“Felix swore revenge. He kill you.”
“Oh-ho!... So that’s it,” ejaculated Adam, and he whistled his
surprise. A hot, tight sensation struck deeply inside him. “Then you
came to find me--warn me?”
She nodded vehemently and clung to him, evidently wearied and weakening.
“Margarita, that was good of you,” said Adam, earnestly, and he led her
out of the sun into the shade of the tree. With his handkerchief he
wiped the blood from thorn scratches on her cheek. The dusky eyes shone
with a vastly different light from the lurid hate of a few hours back.
“I thank you, girl, and I’ll not forget it.... But why did you run out
in the sun and through the thorns to warn me?”
“Señor know now--he kill Felix before Felix kill him,” replied
Margarita, in speech that might have been naïve had its simplicity not
been so deadly.
Adam laughed again, a little grimly. This was not the first time there
had been forced upon him a hint of the inevitableness of life in the
desert. But it was not his duty to ambush the Mexican who would ambush
him. The little coldness thrilled out of Adam to the close, throbbing
presence of Margarita. The fragrance, the very breath of her, went to
his head like wine.
“But girl--only a little while ago--you slapped me--scratched me--hated
me,” he said, in wonder and reproach.
“No--no--no! Margarita love señor!” she cried, and seemed to twine
around him and climb into his arms at once. The same fire, the same
intensity as of that unforgetable moment of hate and passion, dominated
her now, only it was love.
And this time it was Adam who sought her red lips and returned her
kisses. Again that shuddering wild gust in his blood! It was as strange
and imperious to him then as in a sober reflection it had been bold,
gripping, physical, a drawing of him not sanctioned by his will. In
this instance he was weaker in its grip, but still he conquered.
Releasing Margarita, he led her to a shady place in the sand under the
green tree, and found a seat where he could lean against a low branch.
Margarita fell against his shoulder, and there clung to him and wept.
Her dusky hair rippled over him, soft and silky to the touch of his
fingers. The poor, faded dress, of a fabric unknown to Adam, ragged and
dusty and torn, and the little shoes, worn and cracked, showing the
soles of her stockingless feet, spoke eloquently of poverty. Adam noted
the slender grace of her slight form, the arch of the bare instep, and
the shapeliness of her ankles, brown almost as an Indian’s. And all at
once there charged over him an overwhelming sense of the pitifulness
and the wonderfulness of her--a ragged, half-dressed little Mexican
girl, whose care of her hair and face, and the few knots of ribbon,
betrayed the worshipful vanity that was the jewel of her soul, and
whose physical perfection was in such strange contrast to the cramped,
undeveloped mind.
“My God!” whispered Adam, under his breath. Something big and undefined
was born in him then. He saw her, he pitied her, he loved her, he
wanted her; but these feelings were not so much what constituted the
bigness and vagueness that waved through his soul. He could not grasp
it. But it had to do with the life, the beauty, the passion, the soul
of this Mexican girl; and it was akin to a reverence he felt for the
things in her that she could not understand.
Margarita soon recovered, and assumed a demeanor so shy and modest
and wistful that Adam could not believe she was the same girl.
Nevertheless, he took good care not to awaken her other characteristics.
“Margarita, what is the name of this beautiful tree?” he asked.
“_Palo verde._ It means green tree.”
It interested him then to instruct himself further in regard to the
desert growths that had been strange to him; and to this end he led
Margarita from one point to another, pleased to learn how familiar she
was with every growing thing.
Presently Margarita brought to Adam’s gaze a tree that resembled smoke,
so blue-gray was it, so soft and hazy against the sky, so columnar and
mushrooming. What a strange, graceful tree and what deep-blue blossoms
it bore! Upon examination Adam was amazed to discover that every branch
and twig of this tree was a thorn. A hard, cruel, beautiful tree of
thorns that at a little distance resembled smoke!
“_Palo Christi_,” murmured Margarita, making the sign of the cross. And
she told Adam that this was the Crucifixion tree, which was the species
that furnished the crown of thorns for the head of Christ.
Sunset ended several happy and profitable hours for Adam. He had not
forgotten about the Mexican, Felix, and had thought it just as well to
let time pass and to keep out of trouble as long as he could. He and
Margarita reached home without seeing any sign of Felix. Arallanes,
however, had espied the Mexican sneaking around, and he warned Adam in
no uncertain terms. Merryvale, too, had a word for Adam’s ear; and it
was significant that he did not advise a waiting course. In spite of
all Adam’s reflections he did not need a great deal of urging. After
supper he started off for Picacho with Arallanes and a teamster who was
freighting supplies up to the camp.
Picacho was in full blast when they arrived. The dim lights, the
discordant yells, the raw smell of spirits, the violence of the crude
gambling hall worked upon Adam’s already excited mind; and by the time
he had imbibed a few drinks he was ready for anything. But they did not
find Felix.
Then Adam, if not half drunk, at least somewhat under the influence
of rum, started to walk back to his lodgings. The walk was long and,
by reason of the heavy, dragging sand, one of considerable labor.
Adam was in full possession of his faculties when he reached the
village. But his blood was hot from the exercise, and the excitement
of the prospective battle of the early evening had given way to an
excitement of the senses, in the youthful romance felt in the dark,
the starlight, the wildness of the place. So when in the pale gloom of
the mesquites Margarita glided to him like a lissom spectre, to enfold
him and cling and whisper, Adam had neither the will, nor the heart,
nor the desire to resist her.