Cairness had made a tune for himself and was putting to it the words of
the ill-fated poet of his own Land of the Dawning.
"Oh! wind that whistles, o'er thorns and thistles
Of the fruitful earth, like a goblin elf,
Why should he labor to help his neighbor,
Who feels too reckless to help himself?"
He felt altogether reckless. In just such a mood, he reflected, his
grandmother had probably poisoned her first husband. He could almost
have poisoned Landor, the big duty-narrowed, conventional, military
machine. Why could he not have married some one of his own mental
circumspection?--Mrs. Campbell, for instance. He had watched that affair
during his enlistment. More the pity it had come to nothing. Landor
could have understood Mrs. Campbell. Then he thought of Felipa, as he
had seen her first, looking full into the glare of the sunset, and
afterward at him, with magnificent impersonality.
"He has caught a lioness and tricked her out in fashionable rags and
taught her some capers, and now he thinks he has improved the animal,"
he said to himself, and raged inwardly, asking the intangible Fate,
which was always opposing him, if there was not enough little doll
women in the world that such an one as Felipa must be whittled down to
the size.
The probable outcome of things at the rate they were going was perfectly
apparent. Landor would advance in age, respectability, and rank, and
would be retired and settle down on three-fourths pay. He himself would
end up in some cow-boy row, degraded and worthless, a tough character
very probably, a fine example of nothing save atavism. And Felipa would
grow old. That splendid triumphant youth of hers would pass, and she
would be a commonplace, subdued, middle-aged woman, in whom a relapse to
her nature would be a mere vulgarity.
He recalled the dark, unbecoming flush that had deepened the color of
her skin just enough to show the squaw, beyond mistaking, at least to
one who knew. It was all very well now. But later, later she would look
like that frequently, if not all the time. With youth she would lose her
excuse for being. He knew that very well. But it was the youth, the
majestic, powerful youth, that he loved. He had seen too many old hags
of squaws, disfigurers of the dead and wounded, drudges of the
rancheria, squatting on hides before their tepees, not to know what
Felipa's decline would be in spite of the Anglo-Saxon strain that seemed
to show only in her white skin.
Her only salvation, he knew that too, was to keep that strain always
uppermost, to force it to the surface, exactly as Landor was doing now.
Conventional, stately, reserved, in the garb of civilization, she would
have a certain dignity. But youth was too good to sell for that.
"Where is the use of the lip's red charm,
The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,
And the blood that blues the inside arm?"--
He laughed crossly. Evidently he was dropping back into the poetical
tendencies of his most callow youth. He would be doing her a sonnet
next, forsooth. He had done two or three of them in his school days for
Sydney damsels. That was when he had aspired to be ranked in his own
country with Gordon. Good Lord! how many aspirations of various sorts he
had had. And he was a cow-boy.
Somewhere in that same poem, he remembered, there had been advice
relative to a man's contending to the uttermost for his life's set
prize, though the end in sight were a vice. He shrugged his shoulders.
It might be well enough to hold to that in Florence and the Middle Ages.
It was highly impracticable for New Mexico and the nineteenth century.
So many things left undone can be conveniently laid to the prosaic and
materialistic tendencies of the age. Things were bad enough now--for
Landor, for himself, and most especially for Felipa. But if one were to
be guided by the romantic poets, they could conceivably be much worse.
He struck his pony with the fringed end of the horse-hair lariat that
hung around his pommel, and cantered on in the direction of the post.
The pony had been found among the foot-hills, without any trouble.
That, at any rate, had been a stroke of luck. He had led it into the
fort just at the end of guard-mounting, and had met a party of riders
going out.
Mrs. Landor was with them. She had a little battered, brass trumpet
hanging from her horn, and he knew that they were going to play at hare
and hounds. She and the three with her were evidently the hares. They
would take a ten minutes' start; then, at the sound of the trumpet, the
hounds would follow. The riding was sometimes reckless. A day or two
before he had seen Felipa leap an arroyo, the edges of which were
crumbling in, and take a fallen tree on very dangerous ground.
He looked about now for a sign of either party. Across the creek was
some one riding slowly along the crest of a hill, seeming so small and
creeping that only a very trained eye could have made it out. It was
probably a hound. The hares lay low, in cañons and gullies and brush, as
a rule. As he scanned the rest of the valley, his horse stopped short,
with its fore legs planted stiffly. He looked down and saw that he was
at the brink of a sheer fall of twenty feet or more, like a hole scooped
in the side of the little rise he was riding over. He remembered, then,
that there was a cave somewhere about. He had often heard of it, and
probably it was this. He dismounted, and, tying the pony in a clump of
bushes, walked down and around to investigate.
It was plainly the cave. He went and stood in the mouth and looked into
the dark, narrowing throat. A weird silence poured up with the damp,
earthy smell. He went farther in, half sliding down the steep bank of
soft, powdery, white earth. There was only the uncanny light which comes
from reflection from the ground upward. But by it he could see
innumerable tiny footprints, coyote, squirrel, prairie-dog, polecat
tracks and the like. It took very little imagination to see yellow teeth
and eyes gleaming from black shadows also, although he knew there were
no dangerous animals in those parts.
When he was well within, he began to investigate, and he recalled now
that he had heard a great deal of this cave. It was very large,
supposedly, but almost unexplored. Tradition ran that the Spaniards, in
the long-past days of their occupation, had had a big silver mine in
there, worked by padres who had taught the timid Indians to believe that
it was haunted, that they might not take it for themselves, nor yet
guide others to it. And, too, it had been the refuge and hiding-place of
Billy the Kid for years. It was said that since then a corporal and
three men had gone in once, and that a search party had found their
gnawed skeletons by the edge of the river that flowed there underground.
Oddly enough, and thanks to the missionary fathers, it had never served
as an Indian stronghold, though its advantages for such a use were
manifest.
Cairness sat himself down and tried to listen for the flow of the great
black river yonder in the great black hollow. By dint of straining his
ears he almost fancied that he did catch a sound. But at the same
instant, there came a real and unmistakable one. He started a little,
not quite sure, just at first, what manner of wild beast, or man, or
genius of the cave might pounce out upon him.
It was only some one standing at the mouth of the hole, however, a
shadow against the shimmering sunlight. And it was a woman--it was
Felipa.
He sat quite still, clinching his teeth and clawing his fingers tensely.
In the great crises of life, training and upbringing and education fall
away, and a man is governed by two forces, his instincts and his
surroundings. And Cairness's instincts were in entire accord with his
surroundings; they were of the Stone Age, when men fought with the
beasts of the wilderness in their cave homes, and had only the law of
sheer strength. He leaned forward, holding his breath, and watched her.
Had she seen his horse tied up above, and come here to find him--because
he was here?
She might have seen two dots of light fixed on her from the shadow, if
she had looked that way. But she did not, and came unconcernedly down.
She was sure-footed and agile, and she was daring, too. He himself had
felt a qualm at coming here. But she did not appear to hesitate once.
She came on, close by where he sat, and going to the dark passage peered
in. Then she turned away and caught sight of him.
He was accustomed to the gloom by now, but she was not. She could only
see that there was some one in the shadow. It flashed through his mind
that she would scream, but the next moment he knew that she would not.
She drew herself up and grasped her loaded quirt more firmly. There are
some natures to which flight from a thing feared is physically
impossible. They must not only face danger, they must go up to it. It is
a trait, like any other. Felipa took two steps toward him.
He came out of the rock nook into the half light and spoke her own name.
She was frightened now. The quirt fell from her hand with a thud. She
loosed her hold upon her long riding skirt and tripped over it.
If he had not sprung forward, with his arms outstretched to catch her,
she would have fallen, face downward in the dust. It was three times now
he had so saved her.
He knew even then while her hand grasped at his arm, that he should have
set her upon her feet, as he had done before. He knew that she had
merited at least that. But he held her tight and close, and bending back
her head, his own very close above it, looked into her eyes.
Then he stopped, with every muscle drawn, for he had seen in her
answering, unflinching gaze that he was losing her, surely, irrevocably
losing her. He let her go, almost throwing her away, and she caught hold
of a ledge of rock to steady herself. He picked up the heavy quirt and
held it out to her, with a shaking hand, shame-faced, and defiant, too.
She took it, and they both stood for a time without speaking. Then she
turned her head and looked up at the sunshine. "I think I must go," she
whispered. But she did not move.
He asked her angrily why she had ever come at all, and she explained,
with a piteous whimper, like a penitent child's, that she had left her
horse tied in a little hollow and had come to explore. She had often
meant to explore before this.
He was still more exasperated, with himself and with her, that he had
allowed himself to think for one moment that she had come on purpose to
find him. Where were the others? How did she happen to be here alone? he
asked.
She told him that they had all scattered some time before, with the
hounds in full cry. "I must go," she repeated more firmly now, "they
will be looking--" She stopped short.
There was the crunching of heavy feet up above, on the gravel. It came
to them both, even to her, that for them to be seen there together would
be final. There would be no explaining it away. Cairness thought of her.
She thought of her husband. It would ruin him and his life.
It was done before either of them was conscious of doing it. The black
throat of the cave was open behind him. Cairness jumped back into it,
and she turned away and stood waiting, stiff with fear, not of the man
whoever it might prove to be up there, but for the one who had stepped
into the unknown dangers of the darkness behind her.
The man up above showed himself, and putting his hands to his mouth
shouted, "Felipa!"
She gave a cry of relief. "Mr. Cairness, Mr. Cairness," she called, "it
is only my husband." She went herself a little way into the passage.
"Jack, Mr. Cairness has gone in there, call to him." And she called
again herself.
Landor came sliding and running down. His face was misshapen with the
anger that means killing. She saw it, and her powers came back to her
all at once. She put both hands against his breast and pushed him back,
with all the force of her sinewy arms. His foot slipped on a stone and
he fell.
She dropped beside him and tried to hold him down. "He did not know I
was coming here," she pleaded. "It was a mistake, Jack! Will you wait
until I tell you? Will you wait?" She was clinging around his neck and
would not be shaken off. He dragged her in the dust, trying to get free
himself.
Cairness had groped his way back. He stood watching them. And he, too,
was ready to kill. If Landor had raised his hand against her, he would
have shot him down.
But, instead, Landor stopped abruptly, rigid with the force of will. "I
will wait. Go on," he said. His voice was low and rasping.
It dawned upon Cairness that this was rather more than a military
machine after all, that he had underestimated it.
Felipa stood up and told the truth shortly. "It was my fault, if it was
any one's," she ended. "You may kill me, if you like. But if you hurt
him, I will kill myself." It was she who was threatening now, and she
never said more than she meant. She turned almost disdainfully from
them, and went up and out of the cave.
Landor stopped behind, looking at Cairness undecidedly for a moment
longer. "It is well for you that I can believe her implicitly," he said.
It had been a relapse to the Stone Age, but the rebound to the
nineteenth century was as quick.
Cairness bowed, with no realization of the humor of it. "You are equally
fortunate," he said easily, and motioned with his hand to the opening
above, where Felipa was going. He might have been under his own roof,
and that the door.
Landor went. Felipa waited for him, already mounted. He mounted his own
horse and rode beside her back to the post. They did not speak, and he
was conscious above his anger that his fondness for her had been
gradually turning to dislike, and was now loathing. He had seen her
dragging in the dust before him, pleading abjectly. She had humiliated
him and herself in the presence of Cairness, of all men, and he would
never forget it. A woman who once grovels at a man's feet has lost
thenceforth her power over him.