THE LITTLE LADY OF THE HORSE
[Illustration: I told thee so, señor! See! she is leading him as gentle
as a lamb.--Page 152.]
THE LITTLE LADY OF THE HORSE
BY EVELYN RAYMOND
❁
BOSTON ROBERTS BROTHERS 1898
_Copyright, 1894_, By Roberts Brothers.
University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
THE LITTLE LADY OF THE HORSE.
CHAPTER I.
[Illustration]
Old Sutro and young Steenie were where they might have been found on
almost every day at the same hour,--down on the beach, where the great
cañon cut through the _mesa_ to the sea.
A group of rocks, roughly piled, and a few evergreen shrubs clustering
about them, made a pleasant break in a long, monotonous stretch of
coast, and the coolness of the spot was always refreshing after their
canter in the sunshine. Their horses had been unsaddled and set free
to browse upon the herbage up the cañon; and these moved here and
there, lazily, as if--like the old _caballero_ himself--they felt the
languor of that midday hour.
“Sutro, what makes the water so bluey-green?” asked the little girl,
who had been sitting silent for full one minute and gazing dreamily at
the shining waves.
“_Caramba!_ How can I tell?”
“But you should know, shouldn’t you? Doesn’t everybody keep learning
things all the time? If I were a’most a hundred, like you, I should
know everything, I think. In verity, I should be able to answer a
simple question such as that. And so I tell you.”
“_Si?_ Thou wouldst find thou knew nothing at all, maybe; and thou
wouldst not trouble if it were so. Because, if the good _Dios_ wished
to make us wise He would put wisdom into our heads without labor to us,
wouldn’t he? Why not?”
“Fie, my Sutro! Do I learn reading that way? But no. I should wait a
long time first, my father says. Well, then, if you do not know what
makes the water green, I s’pose, at least, you can tell what lies
beyond the water?”
“Ah, that I can! Beyond the water lies the sky. Thou canst see that
for thyself,” answered the old man, with a chuckle of delight, and
pointing to the horizon, where, in truth, the sky and ocean seemed to
blend.
“No, that is a mistake, begging your pardon, dear Sutro, though it
looks so. For my father says that it is only seeming; and that if I
were to sail ’way, ’way over ever so far, it would be just as it is
here,--the water so low down and the sky so high up above my reach.
But, dearie me, I s’pose you will never tell me anything, Sutro! I must
find out all things for myself. I wish my father wasn’t so busy. I wish
my mother hadn’t died when I was a baby. I wish I knew what makes the
road-runners such silly birds. Why should they keep always in front of
one in a chase after them? Why don’t they fly up out of the way? But,
of course, you can’t tell. And I wish--I wish--What makes people grow
wrinkley when they get old? You can’t help being wrinkley, I know that,
dear Sutro, but what makes it?”
“_En verdad!_ It may be answering thy idle questions, Little Un; yet
there is one thing I would have thee know, and remember it. My soul! if
thou dost not, I will be--”
“Not angry, please, Sutro!” cried Steenie, in sudden alarm.
“Maybe no. Not angry, truly. But wilt thou remember? I cannot be a
hundred till the _Natividad_ (Christmas) comes round five-and-ten times
more. When I am a hundred years, thou wilt be a woman. This I know,
because I asked Father Antonio when I was last at his house. My father
was a hundred and ten when he died; and his father even more than that.
The Vives’ family lives long in this world, and--_Guay!_ wouldst thou
lie down without thy blanket?”
For Steenie had thrown herself full length on the mass of sea-pink
vines, and would have been asleep in another moment; but kind old Sutro
spread his gay Navajo blanket further up, under the shelter of the
rocks, and, after the child had curled herself upon it, arranged with
utmost care the branches of the chaparral till she was wholly screened
from sunlight. Next, he whistled for the horses, who came obediently
back to the mouth of the cañon; and then he went speedily to sleep,
as Steenie had done. But for himself he made no screen, save his arm
across his eyes, nor any bed softer than the warm sand.
During the next half hour these two odd comrades slumbered so
peacefully that the teal in the pool beyond the rocks, and the
sand-pipers in the rushes, went on about their business as fearlessly
as if no human intruders were near; but when the half-hour was up, the
girl awoke as suddenly as she had slept. Sitting on her blanket, she
pushed her brown curls from her blue eyes, and looked mischievously
around at old Sutro, whom she began to pelt with the crimson-rayed
pinks, aiming so deftly that one gold-hearted blossom landed plump in
the open mouth of the sleeper. “_Hola! hola!_ that was well sent!”
shouted she.
Sputtering the flower from his lips, the Spaniard retorted, “In verity,
I--”
But if he meant to scold his darling he was not allowed; for she leaned
over him, patted his brown cheeks, and kissed him squarely on the
forehead, in the very thickest tangle of the wrinkles she so disliked.
“There, there, that will do, Señor Sutro Vives! If I was rude, you will
forgive me; and if I hurt you, the wound will heal.”
“Thou hast healed it already, Little Un, and hast gladdened the heart
of thy slave!” answered the other, with the extravagance of expression
to which his tongue was prone.
“Pooh, my Sutro, you my slave,--the proudest of proud on all Santa
Felisa ranch! My father says that the blood of three races runs in
your veins, and that you have kept the best part of each. What does he
mean by that? I heard him talking thus, once, with some strangers, who
came to see the place. It was when you rode away on Mazan´, there; and
one of the gentlemen said you were a very picture-y, or something, kind
of a man, and--”
“Ten thousand pardons, Little Un, but it is false!”
“Why, Sutro, what do you mean? Isn’t it fine to be picture-y? I’m sure
the stranger thought so, for he noticed everything about you,--your
buckskin leggings, your sombrero, your big saddle, your lariat, and
all. He said you were a most int’resting kind of a ‘type,’ and an ‘old
Californian,’ and so on. I didn’t like the ‘old’ part of the talk,
though, ’cause if you have to be called old, I’d rather do it myself,
wouldn’t I?”
Sutro vouchsafed no reply. His brow had grown moody, and his movements
betokened anger; for he picked up the blanket, and folded it with
unusual precision, and, if it were possible, threw his shoulders
back more squarely than ever. At that moment, from the snap of his
black eyes and the rigidity of his upright figure, he might have been
eighteen instead of eighty-five, which was the number of years Father
Antonio’s reckoning accorded him.
Steenie became silent, for the one thing she feared was anger; but when
the _caballero_ whistled for Mazan´, she puckered her own red lips into
a summons for Tito, who answered by a loving neigh and an immediate
approach.
Not so the brown mare, Mazan´, to whose sensitive ears Sutro’s whistle
had conveyed the information that her master was cross; and when that
was the case, it were well that all tender-hearted creatures kept out
of his way. So, instead of trotting forward to be mounted, pretty
Mazan´ trotted off up the beach, and at a distance of a few rods broke
into a wild gallop toward home.
Then Steenie laughed; she couldn’t help it, though she trembled
instantly, fearing she had made matters worse.
But no. There was something so merry and infectious about that laugh
that doting old Sutro was not the one to withstand its influence;
his frown relaxed to a smile. “Well, well, _En verdad!_ Mazan´ knows
something after all! For she would be a foolish thing to come back for
a beating she did not deserve, would she not, _mi niña_ [my little
one]?”
“So I should think, indeed! But what fun! You shall mount with me, and
we will chase her. She’ll not stop to think that Tito can run her two
to one, will she?”
“No, no!” assented the _caballero_, vaulting up behind his young
favorite, and making ready for use the lariat which had been wound
around his waist while he rested; also, for once, accepting without
challenge Steenie’s declaration that Tito was the fleeter animal.
Such a race as that was! Save themselves and the fleeing mare, not
a moving thing was in sight; for, leaving the _mesa_ bluff and the
cañon, they left also the teal and the sand-pipers and the few creeping
creatures which lived in the chaparral. To the west glittered the
rich-hued Pacific Ocean; before them and behind them lay miles and
miles of yellow beach, while far eastward towered the mountains which
formed the boundary of the great Santa Felisa rancho.
Lonely? Why, yes, it may have been; but so free, so roomy, and so
sunny, that these two who darted athwart the picture never thought of
loneliness. Besides, why should they? Santa Felisa was home to them;
and during the few short years that Steenie Calthorp had lived she had
viewed just such wide stretches of this lovely world, and no other;
for a city, or even town, she had never seen.
As they rode they talked,--the girl asking and her attendant parrying
questions without number, till he cried out, impatiently, “If thou wilt
chatter always, Little Un, how can Tito win the race? Be quiet now,
for just two minutes, and my lady Mazan´ shall feel the rope about
her throat, if Sutro’s hand has not lost its cunning, with all this
tiresome talk of ‘old,’ ‘old’!”
“_Ce, ce, ce!_” echoed Steenie, softly, in her eagerness using the
familiar Spanish injunction to silence, and bending low to whisper a
few encouraging words in Tito’s ear. Like an arrow he shot forward, and
in a brief space had gained so close to Mazan´ that Sutro made ready to
throw.
“Whiz-z! Swish!” The rope had cut the air in shining circles above the
runaway’s straining head, and descended with unerring exactness to her
steaming neck; who, at the first touch of the cord, understood its
meaning, and stood stock-still,--a throbbing, beautiful, but wholly
conquered thing.
“_Caramba!_ Señ’rita Mazan´! Wouldst serve thy master so? Take that--”
But the uplifted hand was stayed, as suddenly as the mare’s flight
had been, by Steenie’s clutch of Sutro’s wrist, and her rebuke: “What!
would you strike her, really,--Mazan´, who never knew stroke or blow!
Or has this been your habit, and I s’posing you so gentle! For shame to
you, Sutro Vives! and shame ten thousand times! What is she but--”
“A vixen! so I tell thee, who must be broken of her evil tricks.
_Caramba!_ Thus I will have it. ‘Women and mares and a spaniel dog--’”
“Sutro! Leave your dirty Spanish jabbering, and listen to me. If you
strike her you shall not ride on the beach--for--one--whole--week! And
‘so I tell thee’! I will take--let me see--maybe Nicoloso Barbazon,
instead.”
“_Si?_ but thou wilt not, Little Un! What does the stupid Nicoloso know
of what a señorita’s body-servant should be? Answer me that. _Caramba!_”
“Ah, ha, my Sutro! Somebody is silly still; but it isn’t Mazan´, nor
Tito, nor me! And you make me think you are not well: you are so very,
very cross. Never mind, poor thing! Get upon your pretty beast, who
stands so quiet now, and let us go on. I am as hungry as hungry; aren’t
you?”
“But--Nicoloso?”
“Pooh! for Nicoloso! He needn’t come if you are good, need he? Sutro,
what makes one so uncomf’table to be hungry? If it weren’t for that
queerness inside of me I could stay out all day, and maybe all night.”
“Ten thousand pardons, Señ’rita, but thou couldst not. What would thy
father do if dinner came but not his little daughter?”
“Sure--what could he? He couldn’t live without me, could he? And
there’s the house. Another race, ’tween Tito and Mazan´ this time, not
Tito catching her. To the house. I’ll beat you, my Sutro!”
They struck into it briskly; but, as they neared the goal, both
riders slackened pace at sight of a strange carriage standing before
the ranch-house door, with several of the household servants grouped
excitedly about it.
“More strangers!” cried Steenie, regretfully. “It is nothing but
comp’ny all the time, nowadays; and I get no more nice times with papa,
because he must always attend to them. I wish they wouldn’t come; don’t
you, Sutro?”
But she received no answer; for the old _caballero_ had muttered two
words, “The master!” then had dashed around the building toward the
kitchen court.
“The master? Who can he be? Isn’t my father the master? Except, of
course, that great rich lord who owns Santa Felisa, and never comes
near it at all,--not once in all my life, my father says; and I’m sure
I hope he hasn’t now, for I should be dreadfully afraid of a lord who
wore a gold cornet on his head, as Suzan´ says ‘every lord does who is
any ’count at all.’”
But he had indeed come; and the little girl, who had trotted slowly up
to the verandah, was lifted from her saddle, and duly presented by her
father, the manager, to a stout, red-faced old gentleman as, “My Lord,
my daughter.”
“So? Hm-m. Let me see. Wife died. Only one? So, so. Nice child.
Run along, Sissy. Hm-m. I’d like dinner now. Great country for
appetite--California. Afterward, business.”
Mr. Calthorp bowed gravely and respectfully; and, loosing Steenie’s
hand, bade her make herself ready for the table as soon as possible.
She held up her face for a kiss, then sped away, thinking she had never
seen her father look so serious, and wondering why. “Was he afraid of a
lord, too? And was the cor’net under the man’s hat?”
Customs were simple at Santa Felisa; for, till now, the household had
been practically that of the manager alone, and, in default of an older
person, Daniel Calthorp had liked to have his little daughter preside
at table. So it seemed strange to none but Lord Plunkett himself when,
a little later than usual, she entered the dining-room and took her
usual place. Feeling she must honor such a wonderful occasion, she had
taken uncommon pains with her toilet; and, fortunately, the guest was
too indifferent to such matters to be shocked by the rather striking
combination of a red sash, a blue throat-knot against the white frock,
and a mass of reddish-brown curls bound into a stiff little knot by a
band of green velvet.
Sutro followed her. As the oldest resident of the rancho, he felt
that he fully understood the requirements of the hour; and he had
also hastily arrayed himself in his gayest apparel, to take his
place solemnly behind his little “señorita’s” chair. There he stood,
perfectly motionless, apparently not noticing anybody,--even Steenie
herself,--and reminding the amused Lord Plunkett of nothing in the
world save one of the wooden figures outside a tobacconist’s shop.
A Chinese waiter, instructed and assisted by the valet, Dorsey, served
the unexpected guest, and the housemaid attended to the others. But
nobody ate very much except the stranger; for Mr. Calthorp was too busy
answering his lordship’s questions, and Steenie too curiously regarding
his lordship’s appearance.
Suddenly that gentleman looked up. “Well, Sissy! What d’ye think? Seem
to be staring sharp. Children read folks. Hope you’ll like me. Fond of
children. If they don’t talk. You don’t talk. Look as if you wished to.
Out with it! Don’t be afraid.”
“Oh, no! I’m not afraid, now. Ought I to be? But, will you please tell
me where you keep it? And why don’t you wear it?”
“Eh? How? Keep it? Wear it? What?”
“Your cor’net. Suzan´ says you can’t be a real lord, ’n’ess you have
one.”
“Steenie!” reproved Mr. Calthorp, smiling in spite of himself.
“Good. Good. Let her alone. Hm-m. Coronet. Suzan´ ought to know. Well.
Didn’t bring it.”
“Oh!” In a tone of deep regret.
“No. Sorry now. If I’d imagined disappointment--might.
But--inconvenient. Don’t wear it often.”
“Oh,” said Steenie again, surprised by the twinkle in the nobleman’s
eyes. “I didn’t know. I s’posed you had to. But I should think it would
be uncomf’table; ’cause gold is so heavy, and your head so smooth and
shiny. I s’pose it would slip off.”
His lordship’s manners certainly were peculiar. He nearly choked
himself trying to suppress a laugh and to eat at the same time; but
finally yielded to a real guffaw, as noisily as any cow-boy on the
_hacienda_.
“Steenie!” said the manager once more, this time with real severity,
and comprehending for the first time how sadly neglected the child had
been.
But, fortunately, Lord Plunkett was very good-natured, and wisely
divined that his small new acquaintance was rude from ignorance,
not intention. Dinner over, he made friends with her directly, and
explained away the mistaken notions with which the housemaid had
filled her head; while Steenie listened eagerly, delighted to find at
last somebody who had both leisure and patience to answer “foolish
questions.”
Lord Plunkett did this without waste of words; and at the same time
went poking about the place, enjoying the novelty of all he saw, and
gaining from Steenie’s talk a pretty fair idea of the daily life at
San’ Felisa. “Hm-m. So I see. Brought yourself up, my dear. No mother.
Father busy. Servants ignorant. No church. No school. Well, well. Good
thing for you, bad for me. Pity about his eyes. Bad, bad. Hope he won’t
be blind. Permanently.”
“I hope so, too; though I don’t know who you mean,” said the little
girl, sweetly.
“Good child. But--don’t know? Why--father. Your father, of course.
Hope he’s the only one losing eyesight and going away. Hate new men.
Old ones invaluable. Hope he’ll get better. Come back. Bad country for
eyes. Too much sunshine. Not enough green.”
Steenie stopped short on the path. “What was that, sir, please?
My--father--blind? My father--going away? Oh, dear Lordship, is that
what you said?”
“Yes. Yes. Certainly. What? Not know it? Why else should I come? Hm-m.
Queer. Starts in few days. Operation--maybe cure--”
But he did not finish his sentence; for the child had suddenly darted
away from him, and to the side of the “tobacconist’s sign,” who was
crossing the court at that moment. “Sutro! O my Sutro! My father is
blind--and--going--away!”
“It is false!” cried the old Spaniard, with his ready and angry
defiance of all things unpleasant.
“No, no--it is true! ’Cause the cor’net man said so!” And clinging to
her ancient playfellow, Steenie buried her face in his blanket, and
sobbed bitterly.