on the wide ledge, so that she was in full sight of the waiting man by
the wall. Then, she turned to Señor John’s easel with a great show of
interest. “You are making a picture of Los Morales!” she began. “Am I
not quick at guessing? You see it could not be Albuquerque, for you
have put flat roofs on the houses. And it is not _old_ Albuquerque,
because--oh, _padrecito!_ here is your house, and the garden, and the
church with the little tower! Paint a bell in the tower, señor, since
we have none.” And she smiled up at Señor John saucily.
“My daughter!” chided Father José, almost sternly, “do not jest of the
bell!”
“So there was a bell--once,” said the young painter.
The father folded a damp napkin, covered his salad, and set the
white-and-gold dish away carefully on a shelf. Then he came over and
stood beside the easel, one slender hand clasping the other, and both
held against the jet cross that swung on his breast. He was short and
lean, with straight, white hair; a pale, bulging, bald forehead; a high
nose; thin cheeks--upon each a spot of scarlet; and dark eyes that
were on occasions alive with almost childish fun, nearly extinguished
by laughter and as full of glints as the big, shining, brown-black
beads of his rosary, but which, at other times, were wide, serene, and
luminous.
“It was when there were mulberry-trees here by the river,” he began,
“--the trees that gave the pueblo its name. There are some who say that
mulberry-trees were never here; or, if trees were indeed here, they
were only of the cottonwood. But these doubters think also”--a gentle
smile parted his lips--“that the silver bell of Los Morales is only a
legend.”
“The _silver_ bell,” repeated Señor John.
“Aye, silver,” answered the father sadly; “that is why it hangs no
longer in the tower of San Felipe. Alas! my belfry is a pierced ear
from which the jewel has been torn.” And his head bent to his hands.
After a moment he raised his face, and raised his hands so that they
pressed one palm against the other, at his chin. “It came to be lost
through greed,” he went on. “A wandering band of Indians crossed the
Rio Grande at this ford and attacked the pueblo. That was many, many
years ago. The band came to steal, for they were hungry--not having
been wise, Paloma, and provided themselves against a day of need. They
fought from the ground, for they had no horses, and the Pueblos fought
from the flat roofs of their houses, sending sharp arrows down upon
their enemies. These, before they were fully routed, withdrew from
the town, and sought a brief refuge in the chapel, and here, in this
house. They demanded money, but there was no money to give them, and
so the brave priest said. They did not harm the man of God. But they
climbed to the belfry. There was the bell. They knew there was silver
in it, else they would not have troubled. There was much silver in it,
señor, it having been made in Old Mexico, where the custom was to use
silver. The bell was easy to take. It swung in no yoke, but from a
roundish, wooden beam, by heavy thongs that were run through its iron
loop. These thongs they cut, and then----” The scarlet spots on his
thin cheeks blanched, his eyes became round pools of glowing black.
“Señor, a storm broke--a storm the like of which Los Morales had never
before seen. Rain like a second deluge, so that the Rio Grande deepened
on its bed, and wind so strong that it caught up the water of the river
and lashed the ground with it, and carried waves up to the edge of the
town--aye, even to the foot of the dirt-cliffs beyond. The thieves in
the chapel were frightened--not because they saw what a terrible thing
it was they had done, señor, only because they believed they might not
get safely away with their lives. So they hurried down to the river,
six men carrying the bell, and started to cross. As they entered the
stream the silver tongue was swinging to and fro, to and fro, calling
a farewell through the storm. And the Indians on the housetops called
back to their beloved bell, answering it, and they wept aloud.”
Here, the father’s voice faltered, broke, and went silent. He shut his
eyes, and his slender hands trembled. But presently, he again looked
up at the two who were listening. “Then, as the bell was choked into
dumbness by the rushing waters,” he said, “the six who bore it suddenly
sank from sight. They had walked into a very pit of death!”
“How?” questioned the young painter.
“The quicksands, señor.”
“The quicksands!”
“You should know that for all its shallow depth, the Rio Grande is here
most treacherous, and travellers keep to the ford. The sands shift,
señor--the bed of the river rots.”
“And the silver bell--it was never heard of again?”
“Listen! and I will tell you. One black night, long before I came to
Los Morales, a second band of thieving Indians crept up across the
level ground beyond the river--across the ground where stands the
hacienda in which you stay, Señor John. Before entering the ford the
band halted to get ready their arrows, for they meant to take the town
and drive out all the inhabitants. But see what happened! Scarcely had
the enemy pushed their horses into the water at the farther side when
the priest who lived here then wakened of a sudden. It seemed to him
that from overhead had sounded a warning--_the single clear peal of a
bell!_”
Paloma crossed herself. Her dark eyes were wet. “Ah! _padrecito!_” she
said softly. “I would pray for the return of the silver bell were I not
too wicked.”
“I pray,” said the father, “and my faith does not falter. Ah! señor!
when the bell is restored to its tower, I shall waken the town with its
mellow call to prayer! The Indians come but slowly to the chapel now.
But think how musically sweet and inviting----”
He was interrupted by the slow, dull _thub, thub, thub_ of a drum,
which was beating from somewhere in the direction of the pueblo. He
nodded gravely. “That is what calls my people, señor,” he said. “Little
wonder that they lag.”
The drum had brought Paloma to her feet. “The noon service, and so much
yet left undone!” she cried. She gave a backward nod to Señor John,
caught up one of the father’s hands upon her wrist, dutifully kissed
it, and went out the door through which she had come.
“That warning in the night,” said the young painter, “--it saved the
town?”
“Yes.” The father went to the window and leaned his hands on the sill.
“Little wonder that they lag,” he said again, as if to himself. Then,
to Señor John: “See!--for I am an old man and my eyes are poor--is that
Roberta Allen? _She_ does not know fear of the ford.”
The young man also looked out. A girl was slowly passing, mounted on
a spotted mustang that was wet to his hocks. She was a slender girl,
in laced boots, a riding-skirt, and a waist of some thin, white stuff
that the wind fluttered. She peered in through the window--a sailor hat
shielding her face from the glare on the adobe wall, and her blue eyes
fixed themselves eagerly upon Señor John.
“Yes, father,” answered the young painter, and he smiled and bowed to
the girl. Having watched after the spotted mustang for a moment, he
turned to look the opposite way, where a bobbing black head showed
above the untidy board fence that surrounded a near-by house. “Paloma
is very beautiful,” he added presently.
The father was searching in the wide seat of his cane armchair. “Aye,
señor,” he admitted. “But often a pink _dulce_ has a black pulp.”
“What a contrast to Miss Allen!” the other went on. The spotted mustang
was entering the winding street of the pueblo.
The father had found his book, and now paused a moment, his hand on the
door-latch. “My peacock, señor,” he said, “does not mean to be vain.
But he cares only for the bright feathers that hang upon his body, and
he loves to strut. But, Roberta, she is wise and modest, I think.” And
he went out.
When Father José had disappeared through the side entrance of the
chapel, Señor John opened the front door of the kitchen and stepped
down to the flat stone that lay just before it. The front door opened
on the father’s garden--the only garden in the whole of Los Morales.
Two feet of paved walk divided the garden and led from the door to
a weathered picket-gate. All the wide cracks of this walk were well
weeded and neatly filled with trowel-marked adobe, and on either side
of the walk stretched small squares of bright green lawn. Across these
squares now, and across the stone walk, the father’s peacock was
strutting, from the rose-bushes that stood against the pickets on one
hand to the sweet-pea vines that screened the fence on the other. And,
as he paraded, the sun glanced upon his crested head, brilliantly blue
breast, and the green-and-gold semicircle of his tail plumage.
The young painter was still watching the bird when his ear caught a
song not from the chapel. A girl’s voice was singing it--a clear voice,
if a little loud:
The moon is a sun with a veil--
Lift my veil, and behold my eyes shining.
The voice neared, repeating the words but somewhat disconnectedly.
Then, “Go _on_!” cried the voice impatiently, breaking off the song.
“Must I carry you!”
The next moment Paloma came into view beyond the pickets at the corner
of the kitchen. A scarlet shawl was thrown about her shoulders, and she
was half-leading, half-shoving a young deer. The deer was a full-eyed
creature, nimble and strong. And now it butted with its sharp horns,
and now struck out swiftly with alternating front and hind feet.
“Open the gate,” called Paloma. “Miguel does not wish to come in. But
how shall he get grass except when Father José is in the chapel? Go
on, you beast!”
The young painter hastened to the gate.
“Shove and lead and coax!” scolded Paloma, puffing. “Once I could do
anything with him. But now he is getting too big. There! Now he’s in!”
“But, look!” cried Señor John. “He’s tearing the roses!”
“My life!” exclaimed the girl, hastening forward across the grass.
“Stop it, Miguel! Stop it! Oh, you sinful one!”
But as fast as she drove him away, Miguel returned to the rose-bushes,
circling the strutting peacock with little leaps. After him raced
Paloma. And as she ran, she shrieked with laughter and threw bits of
dirt at the deer.
“Oh, I am dying for breath!” she called. “He knows the roses are
choice, you see! Is he not beautiful! Who could _help_ but love him!”
The last was aimed at a figure approaching from the town. It was
Anastacio, bound riverward, his serape so far across his face that only
his gleaming eyes showed from under his wide and heavy sombrero. He
strode past slowly, those eyes now upon Señor John, now upon Paloma and
the running deer. Behind him, riding at a distance, came the girl on
the spotted mustang.
Paloma redoubled her laughter and her merry cries and Señor John joined
his laughter to hers and leaned his arms on the pickets of the gate.
She called upon him to testify that Miguel was a very goat. She pursued
the little animal more fleetly, lashing out at him so smartly with a
broken rose-spray that the peacock retired to the wide stone-step,
and let fall the glory of his train. Around and around she tore, her
cheeks scarlet as her shoulder-shawl, her black eyes dancing, her hair
whipping out behind, her teeth gleaming like a score of pearls as white
as that one in her ring.
All at once, spent with her running and shouting, and almost choking
with her mirth, she turned to the gate to find that Señor John was
no longer there, but was now standing between the garden and the
river, talking to the girl on the spotted mustang; while Anastacio had
disappeared entirely--under the high bank that stood back from the
strip of gently sloping beach. Paloma’s face fell, her eyes stared, her
head came up resentfully. Then she walked over to Miguel, seized him by
a narrow strap about his neck, gave him a cuff to quiet him, and jerked
him, struggling, out of the yard.
* * * * *
It happened the very next morning. Señor John was in the garden,
sketching the peacock, and humming the song of the sun and the moon and
the veil as he sketched, and Father José was close by, busy with the
roses, a violet-bordered square of black silk tied over his ears, and
his hands full of dislodged pickets and lengths of string. Suddenly
they heard the screams of a girl--screams sharp with grief--then, wild
broken cries--“Padre! Oh! oh! _Mamita! Dios!_ It is blood!”
“Señor John!” called the father. “Something unlucky has befallen
Miguel. Come!”
They hurried into the kitchen by one door and out of it by another
and along the path that led back of the chapel. A middle-aged lady was
standing beside the path--a bareheaded, fat lady, whose face, though
gentle and somewhat dirty, suggested the round face of Paloma; with her
was Paloma--her head upon her mother’s breast, and her form shaking
with tempestuous sobs. At their feet, on the smooth-packed ground, was
a little round dark pool.
“It is as I feared,” said the father, when he stopped and looked down.
“Here are some yellow-grey hairs, and here, cloven hoof-marks.”
Paloma, seeing out of one eye that Señor John was present, now began to
wail more vigorously than before. “O my Miguel!” she exclaimed. “You
were so pretty and so good! O _padrecito_, he but pruned the roses!”
Her mother wept, too, but silently, and strove to sooth Paloma by
patting her on the shoulder. Her own tears she dried against the
scarlet shawl, after she had smiled a sad greeting through them.
“Do not cry,” said Father José, wiping surreptitiously at his cheeks
with a flowing corner of the silk square.
“Because Miguel isn’t dead,” declared Señor John. “The dogs have only
wounded him probably, and he’s run away to hide.”
The words of comfort had an effect opposite to that desired. Paloma’s
sorrow mounted. She threw herself upon her knees, clinging now to her
mother’s dress, and now catching at the black skirt of the father, and
“Oh! oh! oh!” she sobbed.
“I’m going to start right out and hunt him,” said the young painter.
“If he’s dead, I’ll find his body.”
The father shook his head doubtfully. “Maybe,” he said. “But you
forget, señor, the deer is good to eat.”
“At _this_ time of the year?” asked the other, significantly.
At that the two men exchanged glances of meaning. Then, “Let us hunt
until we know,” advised Father José, in a low tone. “And, meanwhile,
let us say nothing.” He laid a finger on his lips.
Paloma had listened--between sobs--to what was being said. Now, she
sprang up excitedly. “Know?” she cried. “I know this moment. _He_ did
it! None needs to tell me different. Every day he has come. ‘Marry me
or give back the ring,’ he has said. And I have said, ‘No,’ to both.
And he has done this to revenge himself. The rattlesnake!” The next
moment she straightened resentfully, and stared past Señor John and the
father. Then, “Rattlesnake!” she cried again, and stamped a foot.
The others turned about, and beheld Anastacio sauntering down the
path that led from the pueblo to the chapel. He returned their look
defiantly--almost triumphantly--and took off his sombrero in a wide,
mocking sweep.
There was that in the gesture which made the father resolve on a
rebuke. “Anastacio!” he called peremptorily, and hurried toward the
vaquero, his eyes severe, his thin face flushed even up his bald
forehead to the roots of his white hair. “Anastacio,” he said, as he
neared the path, “the cock that crows the loudest catches the eye of
the cook.”
The vaquero’s eyes widened in innocent wonderment. “What is it that I
have done?” he questioned, in an aggrieved voice.
“Miguel is gone. It was a coward’s trick, I say, even though he nibbled
my roses.”
“Miguel gone! Since when, father? Alas! Too bad! But if a man is in
Albuquerque all the night----” he pulled at his moustache.
“Where do you visit in Albuquerque? You busy yourself with gambling, I
have no doubt, or with drinking--surely some sin. Where?”
“At Riley’s, father, on the street which has a car. There till
midnight. Then, at Georgio’s, for the stupid Riley shuts his door when
it is twelve.”
“So? I trust you do not think to throw ashes in my eyes. For I get
the truth always, do I not?” Then, suddenly pointing, “I see that you
crossed the river _on foot_.”
Anastacio regarded his boots. They showed a recent wetting, and one end
of his serape--from which a small, bright square had been torn--hung as
heavy as if it had been trailed in a stream.
“Do you _walk_ to Albuquerque?” inquired Father José, eyeing him
narrowly.
The vaquero tried to smile, but it was only a drawing back of his lips
from over his white teeth. “Sometimes I walk,” he answered evasively.
“Then the Rio Grande is plainly like a sea for you,” declared the
father. “For you are the tint of an unripe lemon.” With that, he walked
away.
Instead of searching for the lost Miguel, Señor John rode to
Albuquerque that afternoon, that being Father José’s wish. When he
returned at sunset, it was with the expected news. Anastacio had not
been seen in the town the evening previous. And neither could venison
be purchased at a certain little Spanish shop, though the young painter
had first winked across a piece of silver and then asked for a cut of
the deer brought from Los Morales.
But the day following the hunt began. As many as three Indians
reluctantly consented to help, and led by Señor John and the girl on
the spotted mustang, made off to the marshes north of the town. Late
rains had deepened the ooze of the marshes, and even the road which
crossed them was a channel for running water. The two on horseback
floundered from one muddy pool to another, while the Pueblos, wound in
bright blankets, stationed themselves on a dry eminence and solemnly
rotated.
Paloma watched the searchers from the roof of her home, and when
they returned, gave herself over to tears of rage and desolation.
Fortunately, Anastacio came to talk with her at suppertime, and to
declare his guiltlessness solemnly. So her unhappiness found a vent.
She berated him. She cried that never, _never_ would she marry him. And
in the end, when she had said all her say, she stuffed her fingers into
her pretty ears and bade him begone.
After that, seven days passed without incident.
The morning of the ninth day following Miguel’s disappearance, Señor
John chanced to be painting by the river. At Los Morales the Rio Grande
is wide, and the colour of the crumbling dirt banks between which it
runs; the colour, too, of the high, crumbling dirt-cliffs that stand
back of the pueblo on the west, and the colour of the low, square,
flat-roofed adobe houses of the Indian village. Two high, white crosses
marked its ford--one being set on the farther shore and one on the
near. At the base of the latter the young painter had his easel, and
over him, made fast to the cross so as to shade him from the sun, was a
huge umbrella, yellower than the river.
As he worked he glanced, now at the shallow stream, and now at his
canvas--this as painters do. Suddenly, something close to the bank
caught his eye--a greyish something, almost submerged, around which the
water purled and played with little whispers. He sprang up in haste,
overturning easel and stool, and ran down the narrow, sloping beach
which here stretched between river and bank.
There was no need to doubt what he saw. For there, thrust up through
the moving water, almost in reach of his hand, was the point of a sharp
horn.
His first thought was that Paloma might see it; his next, that Father
José must be summoned.
The father came at once, adjusting his spectacles upon his high nose
as he hurried along. And when he saw what was lying near the shore,
with the water urging it inch by inch downstream, he fell back with a
shocked and sorrowful face, murmuring his pity. “The gentle creature!”
he said. “I trust I was never over-bitter against him. Though he had
green to feed upon, yet he would rather crop at my flowers. Señor, how
human!”
“But what is that, Father José?” Señor John pointed to a bit of
bright-coloured cloth that was now spread out upon the surface of the
water from the tip of the horn. By wading a step and poking at the
cloth with the end of his brush-handle, he dislodged it, whereupon it
gave a sudden whirl, floated for a few feet, then rode into shore on an
eddy.
“Ah, señor!” cried Father José, as he caught it up--and anger succeeded
pity on his face. “He thought to throw the little beast where he would
be sucked down. But the sands have shifted! And here is telltale proof!
Come with me, señor. It requires discussion.” And he led the way
hastily to Paloma’s.
What befell at the council needs no particular recounting. Paloma’s
mother said little and that in Spanish. Paloma wept and threatened,
and vowed that now she truly would _not_ marry Anastacio, though he
lived to be as old as the father himself and as rich as the richest
man in Albuquerque. As for Señor John, he said little, but listened
respectfully to Father José, who spoke chiefly of the law.
After the drum had beaten, and midday prayers had been said in the
chapel, Father José took a cup of coffee to fortify him, then donned
cloak and hat and climbed up to the little railway station at the top
of the crumbling dirt-cliffs. There he asked on the telephone for the
office of the sheriff of the county, and when the sheriff spoke at the
other end of the wire, Father José asked him to hasten to Los Morales
to arrest one Anastacio Galvez, for killing a deer out of season.
* * * * *
When the sheriff came, Anastacio, swaggering cheerfully, again sought
Paloma. “_Ninita_,” he began, “I come for a farewell word. I am sorry
now that Miguel is dead, since it makes you so unhappy. But do not
forget that love urged me to do away with him.”
“Then murder again!” retorted Paloma, enraged; “--my mother, the dear
father, the guinea-pigs which _Mamita_ has just given me--all! So you
will have my heart alone--perhaps.” And she laughed harshly.
There was a suspicion of merriment in his eyes, but he pulled a long
face. “I am going to prison for the sake of my love,” he protested. “I
_must_ go to prison, for I have not a cent with which to pay the fine.”
Now Paloma almost shrieked in her triumph. “_Good!_” she cried. “And
perish in prison. I am pleased! I am pleased! And because you have been
in prison I shall never marry you. The killing of Miguel was very much.
But a prison is much more. I could never marry a man who had been in
prison. My pride would not let me.”
“Then all is over between us?” questioned Anastacio, meekly.
“All! _All!_ I tell you I would not marry you now if you were covered
thick with gold and silver and jewels from your head to your ugly
feet--no, not even if you had thousands of pearls as big as this one.”
And she flashed the ring before his dark eyes.
“In that case,” he went on, “I think it but honest that you should give
back this pearl.” And he watched her keenly.
“The pearl!” she cried. She was walking to and fro, her head high “The
pearl will pay me for the loss of Miguel. Yesterday I said, ‘I shall
give Anastacio back the ring, for I hate the sight of it. And, besides,
the pearl is doubtless only glass, after all, and I can easily get a
better.’ But now--I shall keep it.” (This with an imperious glance of
her eyes.)
“Miguel was not worth so much,” argued Anastacio. “He was little and
thin. And the pearl----” His eyes rested upon it, where it flashed on
the hand at her side.
“You shall not have the pearl,” she declared, “not if you _die_
asking for it. You killed my pretty Miguel--and it was not even on a
feast-day. So now, this is how you pay.” As she crossed the floor with
slow grace, she smiled mockingly.
Again his look rested longingly on the round whiteness of his gift.
“Ah, Paloma,” he said tenderly, “you but increase my passion as you
storm. Little dove, your sweet mouth is the colour of pepper-tree
berries. Your eyes----”
“Have done with my mouth and my eyes!” ordered Paloma, pausing against
the window. But she spoke perhaps a shade less angrily than before.
“They are not for you. Go hunt among the Indian girls for a wife. One
of these you can lead about on a rope, as you do your cows. But, ah, I
pity the one you would choose! A squaw is too good for you--much too
good.”
“I must speak of your beauty,” insisted Anastacio. “It fills my eyes
like the light of the sun. When I shall see it no more the night will
fall for me. O my Paloma!” And he took one step toward her.
She waved him back with her two hands. “Keep your compliments!” she
said haughtily. “I do not want them. And take yourself off. I never
wish to see you again.”
But Anastacio, undaunted, approached another step or two. “Do not be
cruel, Paloma,” he begged. “Say farewell kindly to me, sweet dove. And
before I go let me--yes, be merciful--let me kiss your little hand.”
“No! _No!_ I say!” She leaned farther away, and struck at him as he
came--though not hard.