CONFLICTING EMOTIONS
“Dennis! Dennis! Please open your eyes. O, Dennis! How could you be so
foolish?”
“Eh? What? Hey? An’ be I still--alive?”
“It’s not by your own merit that you are. But, since you’ve only broken
your arm and cracked your head, I’m thankful to scold you, Dennis.
Silly, silly fellow!”
The ex-trackman and amateur desperado raised his sound arm and
carefully examined his head. It ached badly, yet it seemed intact.
“Skull, is it? An’ where is the break in it?”
“Of course, I don’t mean that, exactly. You bumped it pretty hard. What
were you meaning to do, Dennis?”
He tried to rise but failed. Then he looked about him and realized
that he was lying on a straw pallet, upon one of those curious roofs
he had seen rising before him, when he engaged in the late combat. He
reproachfully regarded Carlota, who sat comfortably curled up, her face
bright, her hair freshly brushed, and her whole attitude one of entire
complacency. Yet, as he made a second effort to rise and turned giddy,
her expression changed to one of pity.
“There, poor dear, lie still. I’ll tell you all about it. Oh! Dennis,
we’ve found friends! Wait. I forgot that the chief’s wife said you were
to drink this as soon as you awoke.”
She lifted his head upon her arm and held an earthen bowl to his lips
and he drank from it, eagerly. He was both faint and thirsty and the
warm liquid was very grateful to him. It was a broth of meat which he,
at once, termed “victuals an’ drink.”
“There, that is good. The others say that she is a fine ‘medicine
woman’ and it should give you strength.”
All this was very astonishing to the injured man whose chief interest,
however, concerned himself.
“What happened to me, Miss Carlota?”
“Why--I guess you tried to kill somebody--and he objected. The young
men who were going to their daily tasks were gathered on the terrace,
singing--”
“‘Singin’,’ says she!”
“Surely. It’s the custom in this pueblo. So the woman told me. It’s
their ‘labor song,’ before they go down into the fields to work. A hymn
to the Great Spirit, praising him and asking his blessing on the day. I
think it’s a lovely ceremony and when we get home to Refugio, I shall
ask my father to have our men do just that way. Only, I’m afraid some
of them won’t wish it. They aren’t very revi--reverentiational. That
isn’t the right word, Dennis, but it means doing honor to God. But, oh,
Dennis! I am so happy!”
This amazing statement aroused the wounded man’s curiosity and so aided
his recovery.
“I--maybe I can sit up now. I’m dead, entirely, but--I’ll try.”
“You’re better, Dennis Fogarty. And if you’re alive how can you be
dead?”
“Yes, I know, I know. But if Injuns can sing hymns--Faith! It must be
in some better world nor any I’ve seen. So we must all be together in
another. Injuns! Arrah musha! The beasts!”
“You are not in another world, you are still in the same dear old one
where you’ve always been. You’re a darling fellow, but you’re almost
as silly as ‘The Dancer.’ Now you must listen. First: this is a Pueblo
village. It belongs to a very peaceful tribe. My brother is here;
Carlos, my own brother, and he is safe, too. Can you understand?”
“Sure, Miss Carlota, have I no wits entirely? If he’s here, why isn’t
he here? Tell me that, if ye please.”
She laughed, then answered rather soberly:
“Why, it’s the oddest thing! They’ve ‘arrested’ him!”
“They’ve what? ’Deed, it’s muddled I am.”
“It’s like what my father told about people who did wrong in the big
towns and cities. Other people take the wrong-doing people and put
them in a prison. Well, they have put my Carlos, my own sweetest,
innocentest brother, in a sort of prison here. The woman told me and
that I should see him very soon. They’re going to have his ‘trial’
this morning and you must get well right off. Think of it! Can’t you
hurry up? But, of course, soon as he tells them it will be all right.
He has done nothing he should be punished for.”
Dennis drew himself up and bolstered his back against an angle of the
next roof. The sun was getting high and the shadow he thus obtained
soothed his still aching head. But Carlota was native to that land and
unclouded sunshine never disturbed her. It merely set her golden hair
a-glitter while she unblinkingly studied the details of this mud-built
pueblo. In the adoring gaze of the Irishman she seemed herself to
radiate sunshine and he winked fast, as if the vision blinded him; or
to hide a tell-tale tear, forced from him by weakness and dismay. But
she saw the betraying drop and taxed him with it:
“Crying? You, Dennis? When you should be so thankful? Or does your
arm pain you? Of course it must, yet wasn’t it a good way the oldest
‘medicine man’ fixed it? Adobe mud, or something, outside the sticks,
which are not to be touched, he says, for ‘a moon and a moon.’ That’s
their queer kind of clock. By then it will be better than the other
arm, which you might break to match, if you like!”
She leaned back, laughing at her own conceit, and, since he had the
happy faculty of making fun at his own expense, he joined in her mirth.
Yet he felt that their situation was graver than she realized, and
begged:
“Begin at the very start o’ the matter, if ye please, Miss Carlota, an’
tell it me body an’ bones, from when ye rode off with the Injun an’
left me to carry the truck.”
“That wasn’t my fault, poor Dennis. I’d have stayed to help you if I
could but even I was a little afraid--then. I’m not now. I’m so happy
because Carlos is here. He is well. No centipede stung him, and nothing
hurt him. We’ll see him soon and we’ll tell them that-- But I’m getting
to be as great a talker as you, Dennis, dear. Do you wish another
drink?”
He nodded, and now was fully able to hold the bowl for himself with his
uninjured arm.
“We rode from you clear to the pueblo without a word said, though I saw
the man often look at my clothes. Then up to my hair, and down to the
ground. All the time I was longing to ask--”
“Sure, ’twas hard for ye not!”
“But as soon as we came here we saw women, squaws, at work. They were
getting breakfast, broiling meat upon coals and baking little cakes
of meal. They, too, looked at me as if I were--they didn’t know what!
Their clothes are more like Marta’s and Anita’s than mine are. Much
prettier things than the old blue ones Mrs. Burnham gave me.”
“Did they give ye a bit o’ their breakfast, Miss Carlota?”
“Afterward. Plenty of it and it was nice. But, don’t interrupt, please,
or I’ll never get through. As soon as the man who brought us had spoken
to them in their own language--which they didn’t know that I knew,
too, a little--they came and took my hands. They smiled at me and yet
I thought they looked sorry. One of them touched my tunic and said
something which means ‘pretty.’ So, I told her all about it. Then they
led me up to one of these queer roofs and down into the house. It is
very cosy and comfortable. There is a sort of fireplace, though I think
they do their cooking out of doors when it’s as pleasant as now. One of
them washed my face, just as if I’d been a baby, or Teddy; and they
brushed my hair with a curious comb that pulled it dreadfully.”
“Bad cess to the meddlesome creatur’s!”
“Oh! no. It was all in kindness; and just as I was hoping for my
breakfast, there were you, outside the walls, making such trouble for
us both! Dennis, why did you run at the men with your knife?”
“Arrah musha! ’Twas themselves came runnin’ to me, first hand; yellin’
like wildcats, as they be!”
“Nonsense. That was the song, the hymn, as I told you. It wasn’t music
I liked very well, though it sounded a good deal like the way you
sing, Dennis, dear,” she commented, frankly. “They saw you carrying
the saddles and things and, from the man who brought us, they’d heard
about the centipede. They meant to bid you only a decent welcome, yet
you rushed at them as if you would murder them. You would, too, if one
of them hadn’t caught your arm just in time. He hurried to stop you and
snatched away your dirk, but that threw you to the ground and your head
struck a stone. The women said that your arm was doubled under you and
they thought you were killed.”
“Hmm. I know; I know. Bad cess to me for an ill-thriven idjut!”
“No. I understand. You thought, as the Captain did, that there could be
but one kind of Indian. Yet you should have known better, after that
good one saved your life from the centipede. That’s all. Your arm has
been fixed and you’ve been fed; and as soon as they have had that--that
‘trial’--of Carlos, we’ll go on again and try to find the Burnhams. I
wish they’d hurry it up!”
“Wisha, for what are they ‘tryin’’ him?”
“For--taking a horse. Just a horse.”
“Wh-e-ew!” said Dennis and said no more. He had lived in that region
long enough to know that horse stealing is the unforgivable crime,
against white man or red; and, indeed, this made the affair a most
serious one.
Carlota was frightened by his manner and quickly demanded:
“Why do you say ‘Whew!’ in that tone of voice, Mr. Dennis Fogarty? It
isn’t at all a nice word and it isn’t nice in you to use it.”
“Sure, I’m uneasy, Miss Carlota. A horse is a horse an’ there’s no
denyin’ that same.”
[Illustration: “HE OFTEN CAUGHT A WILD HORSE”]
“Dennis, that fall has made you silly.”
“Very like that’s the truth you be speakin’. But, for why did he go
steal a horse?”
“He never! How can a body ‘steal’ what belongs to nobody else? At home
he often caught a wild horse out of a herd and broke it to ride. He’s
very--very expertatious that way, Dennis. My Miguel was terr’ble proud
of him.”
Then, after a moment, she continued:
“I don’t see what made you disturb me when I was so happy. I wish
somebody--But I won’t wait to wish. I’ll go straight away and find out
what it all means. I _will_ see my brother. I _will_ make them bring
him out from wherever he is, for he can’t talk with these people and I
can. Oh! how glad I am I learned, even if only a little bit!”
She hastily left him to his lonely foreboding, there upon the roof,
which grew unpleasantly warm as the shadows moved from him. Scrambling
down into the interior of the house upon which they had been sitting,
Carlota wildly demanded of the first person she met to be taken to her
brother.
“I must and shall see him. Where is he?”
“Where you will be if you make an uproar. The council is deliberating.”
That the girl would dare force her presence upon the elders of the
village did not enter the informant’s mind till she saw Carlota look
frantically around and then dart toward the nearest opening in the
inner wall. This was not in the direction of the hall of justice, but
it led--somewhere! and through it the child ran, crying at the top of
her voice:
“Carlos! My Carlos! Where are you?”
Then she was confronted by an aged woman, who caught and almost
viciously questioned her:
“Would you rush before the wise men thus--you?”
“Wise? You mean wicked--wicked! Oh, my father, my father! Why did we
ever leave Refugio!” and shrieking, she threw herself prone on the
floor and buried her face in her arms.