[Illustration: _A Prairie Infanta.--Frontispiece_
"THE DOCTOR SCOWLED OVER HIS GLASSES AS HE LISTENED."
_See p. 79_]
A
Prairie Infanta
By
Eva Wilder Brodhead
Illustrated
PHILADELPHIA
HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY HENRY ALTEMUS
The pictures in this book have been reproduced by the courtesy of "The
Youth's Companion"
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER ONE
THE POWER OF CONSOLATION 13
CHAPTER TWO
A SACRED CHARGE 37
CHAPTER THREE
A TRUE BENEFACTRESS 61
CHAPTER FOUR
WISE IMPULSES 85
CHAPTER FIVE
DESTINY PRESSES 109
CHAPTER SIX
BEWILDERING SATISFACTION 133
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"The doctor scowled over his glasses as he listened" _Frontispiece_
"'I will not go with you!'" 29
"'He is Tesuque, the rain-god'" 55
"'I hoped you'd be able to lend me a hand'" 101
"'Do not make the thread short, Lolita'" 123
"'_Tia_, you are a lady of fortune'" 153
THE
POWER OF CONSOLATION
A PRAIRIE INFANTA
CHAPTER ONE
THE POWER OF CONSOLATION
At the first glance there appeared to be nothing unusual in the scene
confronting Miss Jane Combs as she stood, broad and heavy, in her
doorway that May morning, looking up and down the single street of the
little Colorado mining-town.
Jane's house was broad and heavy also--a rough, paintless "shack,"
which she had built after her own ideals on a treeless "forty" just
beyond the limits of Aguilar. It was like herself in having nothing
about it calculated to win the eye.
Jane, with her rugged, middle-aged face, baggy blouse, hob-nailed shoes
and man's hat, was so unfeminine a figure as she plowed and planted her
little vega, that some village wag had once referred to her as "Annie
Laurie." Because of its happy absurdity the name long clung to Jane;
but despite such small jests every one respected her sterling
traits,--every one, that is, except Señora Vigil, who lived hard by in
a mud house like a bird's nest, and who cherished a grudge against her
neighbor.
For, years before, when Jane's "forty" was measured off by the
surveyor, it had been developed that the Vigil homestead was out of
bounds, and that a small strip of its back yard belonged in the Combs
tract. Jane would have waived her right, but the surveyor said that the
land office could not "muddle up" the records in any such way; she must
take her land. And Jane had taken it, knowing, however, that thereafter
even the youngest Vigil, aged about ten months, would regard her as an
enemy.
Just now, too, as Alejandro Vigil, a ragged lad with a scarlet cap on
his black head, went by, driving his goats to pasture, he had said
"rogue!" under his breath. Jane sighed at the word, and her eyes
followed him sadly up the road, little thinking her glance was to take
in something which should print itself forever in her memory, and make
this day different from all other days.
In the clear sun everything was sharply defined. From the Mexican end
of town,--the old "plaza,"--which antedated coal-mines and
Americanisms, gleamed the little gold cross of the adobe Church of San
Antonio. Around it were green, tall cottonwoods and the straggling
mud-houses and pungent goat-corrals of its people. Toward the cañon
rose the tipple and fans of the Dauntless colliery, banked in slack and
slate, and surrounded by paintless mine-houses, while to the right
swept the ugly shape of the company's store. The mine end of the town
was not pretty, nor was it quiet, like the plaza. Just at present the
whistle was blowing, and throngs of miners were gathering at the mouth
of the slope. From above clamored the first "trip" of cars. Day and its
work had begun.
Alejandro's red cap was a mere speck in the cañon, and his herd was
sprinkled, like bread-crumbs, over the slaty hills. But over in the
Vigil yard the numberless other little Vigils were to be seen, and
Jane, as she looked, began to see that some sort of excitement was
stirring them. The señora herself stood staring, wide-eyed and curious.
Ana Vigil, her eldest girl, was pointing. Attention seemed to be
directed toward something at the foot of the hill behind Jane's house,
and she turned to see what was going on there.
A covered wagon, of the prairie-schooner type, was drawn up at the
foot of the rise. Three horses were hobbled near by, and a little fire
smoked itself out, untended. The whole thing meant merely the night
halt of some farer to the mountains. Jane, about to turn away, saw
something, however, which held her. In the shadow of the wagon the
doctor's buggy disclosed itself. Some one lay ill under the tunnel of
canvas.
She had just said this to herself when out upon the sunny stillness
rang a sharp, lamentable cry, such as a child might utter in an
extremity of fear or pain. The sound seemed to strike a sudden horror
upon the day's bright face, and Jane shivered. She made an impulsive
step out into her corn-field, hardly knowing what she meant to do. And
then she saw the doctor alighting from the wagon, and pausing to speak
to a man who followed him.
This man wore a broad felt hat, whose peaked crown was bound in a
silver cord which glittered gaily above the startled whiteness of his
face. He had on buckskin trousers, and there was a dash of color at his
waist, like a girdle, which gave a sort of theatric air to his gesture
as he threw up his arms wildly and turned away.
The doctor seemed perplexed. He looked distractedly about, and seeing
Jane Combs in her field, called to her and came running. He reached the
fence breathless, for he was neither so young nor so slim as the man
leaning weeping against the wagon-step.
"Will you go over there, Miss Combs?" he panted. "There's a poor woman
in that wagon breathing her last. They were on their way from Taos to
Cripple Creek--been camping along the way for some time. Probably they
struck bad water somewhere. She's had a low fever. The husband--Keene,
his name is--came for me at daybreak, but it was too late. She seems to
be a Mexican, though the man isn't. What I want you to do is to look
after a child--a little girl of ten or twelve--who is there with her
mother. She must be brought away. Did you hear her cry out just
now?--that desperate wail? We'd just told her!"
"I guess everybody heard it," said Jane. Mechanically she withdrew the
bolt of the gate, which forthwith collapsed in a tangle of barbed wire.
Tramping over this snare, Jane faced the doctor as he wiped his brows.
"I aint much hand with children," she reminded him. "You better send
Señora Vigil, too."
As she strode toward the wagon, the man in the sombrero looked up. He
was good-looking, in a girlish sort of way, with a fair skin and blue
eyes. A lock of damp, yellow hair fell over his forehead, and he kept
pushing it back as if it confused and blinded him.
"Go in, ma'am--go in!" he said, brokenly. "Though I do not reckon any
one can do much for her. Poor Margarita! I wish I'd made her life
easier--but luck was against me! Go in, ma'am!"
As Jane, clutching the iron brace, clambered up the step and pulled
back the canvas curtain, the inner darkness struck blank upon her
sun-blinded eyes. Then presently a stretch of red stuff, zigzagged with
arrow-heads of white and orange and green, grew distinct, and under the
thick sweep of the Navajo blanket, the impression of a long, still
shape. The face on the flat pillow was also still, with closed eyes
whose lashes lay dark upon the lucid brown of the cheek. A braid of
black hair, shining like a rope of silk, hung over the Indian rug.
Heavy it hung, in a lifeless fall, which told Jane that she was too
late for any last service to the stranger lying before her under the
scarlet cover.
Neither human kindness nor anything could touch her farther. "The tale
of what we are" was ended for her; and from the peace of the quiet lips
it seemed as if the close had been entirely free of bitterness or
pain. Jane moved toward the sleeper. She meant to lay the hands
together, as she remembered her mother's had been laid long ago in the
stricken gloom of the Kansas farmhouse which had been her home; but
suddenly there was a movement at her feet, and she stopped, having
stumbled over some living thing in the shadows of the couch, something
that stirred and struggled and gasped passionately, "_Vamos! Vamos!_"
Such was the wrathful force of this voice which, with so little
courtesy, bade the intruder begone, as fairly to stagger the
well-meaning visitor.
"I want to help you, my poor child!" Jane said. And her bosom throbbed
at the sight of the little, stony face now lifted upon her from the
dusk of the floor--a face with a fierce gleam in its dark eyes, and
clouded with a wild array of black hair in which was knotted and
twisted a fantastic _faja_ of green wool, narrowly woven.
"I ask no help!" said the child, in very good English. "Only that you
go away! We--we want to be by ourselves, here--" suddenly she broke
off, glancing piteously toward the couch, and crying out in a changed,
husky voice, "_Madre mia! muerta! muerta!_"
A ray of sunshine sped into the wagon as some hand outside withdrew the
rear curtain a little. It shot a sharp radiance through the red and
orange of the Indian blanket, and flashed across the array of tin and
copper cooking things hung against one of the arching ribs of the
canvas hood. Also it disclosed how slight and small a creature it was
who spoke so imperatively, asking solitude for her mourning.
Jane, viewing the little, desperate thing, seemed to find in herself no
power of consolation. And as she stood wordless, with dimming eyes,
there came from without a sound of mingling voices. Others were come
with offers of service and sympathy. A confusion of Spanish and English
hurtled on Jane's uncomprehending ear; some one climbing the step
cried, "_Ave Maria!_" as his eyes fell on the couch. It was Pablo
Vigil, a mild-eyed Mexican, with a miner's lamp burning blue in his
cap.
Behind him rose the round, doughy visage of his wife, blank with awe.
She muttered a saint's name as she dragged herself upward, and said,
"Ay! ay! ay! the poor little one! Let me take her away! So you are
here, too, Mees Combs. But she will not speak to you, eh? _Lo se! lo
se!_ She will speak to one who is like herself, a Mexican!"
She seemed to gather up the child irresistibly, murmuring over her in
language Jane could not understand, "Tell me thy name, _pobrecita_!
Maria de los Dolores, is it? A name of tears, but blessed. And they
call thee Lola, surely, as the custom is? Come, _querida_! Come with
me to my house. It will please thy mother!"
It was not precisely clear to Jane how among them the half-dozen
Mexican women, who now thronged the wagon and filled it with wailing
exclamations, managed to pass the little girl from hand to hand and out
into the air. Seeing, however, that this was accomplished, she
descended into the crowd of villagers now assembled outside. There was
a strange, dumb pain in her breast as she saw the little, green-tricked
head disappear in the press about the doctor's buggy. She was sensible
of wishing to carry the child home to her own dwelling; and there was
in her a kind of jealous pang that Señora Vigil should so easily have
accomplished a task of which she herself had made a distinct failure.
"If I'd only known how to call the poor little soul a lot of coaxing
names!" deplored Jane, "Then maybe she'd have come with me. She'd have
been better off sleeping on my good feather bed than what she will on
those ragged Mexican mats over to Vigil's." Then, observing that two
burros and several goats, taking advantage of the open gate, were now
gorging themselves on her alfalfa, she proceeded to make a stern end of
their delight.
Early in the morning of the stranger's burial, Mexicans from up the
cañon and down the creek arrived in town in ramshackle wagons, attended
by dogs and colts. She who lay dead had been of their race. It was meet
that she should not go unfriended to the _Campo Santo_. Besides, the
weather was fine, and it is good to see one's kinsfolk and
acquaintances now and then. The church, too, would be open, although
the _padre_, who lived in another town, might not be there. Young and
old, they crowded the narrow aisles, even up to the altar space, where
a row of tapers burned in the solemn gloom. Little children were
there, also, hushed with awe. And many a sad-faced Mexican mother
pressed her baby closer to her heart that day, taking note of the
little girl in the front pew, sitting so silent and stolid beside her
weeping father.
Jane Combs was in the back of the church. In their black _rebozos_, the
poorest class of poor Mexican women were clad with more fitness than
she. For Jane, weighted with the gravity of the occasion, had donned an
austere black bonnet such as aged ladies wear, and its effect upon her
short locks was incongruous in the extreme. No one, however, thought of
her as being more queer than usual; for her sunburned cheeks were wet
with tears, and her eyes were deep with tenderness and pity as they
fixed themselves upon the small, rigid figure in the shadows of the
altar's dark burden.
Upon the following day, as Miss Combs opened her ditch-gate for the
tide of mine water which came in a flume across the arroyo, she saw
the doctor and Mr. Keene approaching. They had an absorbed air, and as
she opened the door for them the doctor said, "Miss Combs, we want you
to agree to a plan of ours, if you can."
Keene tilted his chair restlessly. He looked as if life was regaining
its poise with him, and his voice seemed quite cheerful as he said,
"Well, it's about my little girl! I'm bound for a mountain-camp, and
it's no place for a motherless child. Lola's a kind of queer little
soul, too! My wife made a great deal of her. She was from old Mexico,
ma'am. She was a _mestizo_--not pure Indian, you know, but part
Spanish. Her folks were _rancheros_, near Pachuca, where I worked in
the mines. I'm from Texas, myself. They weren't like these peons about
here--they were good people. They never wanted Margarita to marry me."
He laughed a little. "But she did, and the old folks never let up on
her. They're both dead now. We've lived hither and yon around New
Mexico these ten years past, and I aint been very successful; though
things will be different now that I've decided to pull out for the gold
regions!"
Keene paused with an air of growing good cheer. He seemed to forget his
point. Whereupon the doctor said simply: "In view of these things, Mr.
Keene would like to make some arrangement for leaving his daughter here
until he can look round."
"And we thought of your taking her, ma'am," broke in Keene, with
renewed anxiety. "Lola's delicate and high-strung, and I don't know how
to manage her like my wife did. It'll hamper me terrible to take her
along. Of course she's bright," he interpolated, hastily. "She was
always picking up things everywhere, and speaks two languages well. And
she'd be company for you, ma'am, living alone like you do. And I'd pay
any board you thought right."
[Illustration: "'I WILL NOT GO WITH YOU!'"]
Jane's pulses had leaped at his suggestion. She was aware of making a
resolute effort as she said, "Wouldn't Lola be happier with the
Vigils?"
"Her mother wouldn't rest in her grave," cried Keene, "if she knew the
child was being brought up amongst a tribe of peons! And me--I want my
child to grow up an American citizen, ma'am!"
"Take the little girl, Miss Combs," advised the doctor. "It'll be good
for you to have her here."
"I've got to think if it'll be good for her," said Jane.
"If that's all!" chorused the two men. They rose. The thing was
settled. "I'll go and tell the Vigil tribe," said Keene, "and send
Lola's things over here right off." With a wave of the hand and a
relieved look, he went down the road.
That night a boy brought to Jane's door a queer little collapsible
trunk of sun-cured hide, thonged fast with leather loops. The Navajo
blanket was outside. Jane surmised that Mr. Keene had sent it because
he dreaded its saddening associations. A message from him conveyed the
information that he expected to leave town early the next morning, and
that Lola would be sent over from the Vigils.
All during the afternoon Jane waited with breathless expectancy. The
afternoon waned, but Lola did not come. Finally, possessed of fear and
foreboding, Jane set forth to inquire into the matter.
Upon opening the Vigil gate, she saw Lola herself sitting on the
doorstep, looking over toward the little wood crosses of the Mexican
burying-ground. The girl hardly noted Jane's approach, but behind her,
Señora Vigil came forward, shaking her head at Jane and touching her
lip significantly.
"She does not know," whispered the señora. "Her papa did not say
good-by. He said it was better for him to 'slip away.' And me--I could
not tell her! I am only a woman."
"You think--she will not want--to live with me?"
The other's face grew very bland. "She said to-day 'how ugly' was your
house," confessed Señora Vigil. "And when you was feeding your chickens
she cried out, '_Hola_, what a queer woman is yonder!' Children have
funny things in their heads. But it is for you to tell her you come to
fetch her away!" And the señora called out, "_Lolita, ven aca!_"
The girl looked up startled. "_Que hay?_" she asked, coming toward them
apprehensively.
"Lola," began Jane, "your papa wants you should stay with me for a
while. He--he saw how lonesome I was," she continued, unwisely,
"and--and so he decided to leave you here. Lola, I hope--I--" She could
not go on for the strangeness in Lola's gaze.
"Is he _gone_--my father? But no! he would not leave me behind! No! no!
_Dejeme! dejeme!_ you do not say the truth! You shall not touch me! I
will not--will not go with you!" She turned wildly, dizzily, as if
about to run she knew not where; and then flung herself down before
Señora Vigil, clasping the Mexican woman's knees in a frantic, fainting
grasp.
A SACRED CHARGE
CHAPTER TWO
A SACRED CHARGE
Jane helplessly regarded the child's despair, while Señora Vigil
maintained an attitude curiously significant of deep compassion and a
profound intention of neutrality. With the sound of Lola's distraught
refusals in her ear, Jane felt upon her merely the instinct of flight.
She rallied her powers of speech and set her hand on the gate, saying
simply, "I'm going. She better stay here."
But at this the señora's face, which had exhibited a kind of woful
pleasure in the excitement of the occasion, took on an anxious frown.
"And the board-money?" she exclaimed, with instant eagerness.
"I guess it'll be all right. Mr. Keene said he'd send it every month."
The señora's eyes narrowed. "He said so! Ay, but who can say he shall
remember? There are eight chickens to eat of our meal already. No, Mees
Combs! The _muchacha_ was left to you. It is a charge very sacred. Ave
Maria! yes!"
Jane had closed the gate. "I can't force her," she repeated.
Señora Vigil, watching her go, fell a prey to lively dissatisfaction.
"_Santo cielo!_" she thought. "What will my Pablo say to this? I must
run to the mine for a word with him. It is most serious, this
business!" And casting her apron over the whip-cord braids of her
coarse hair, she started hastily down toward the bridge.
Lola, crouching on the ground, watched her go. It was very quiet in the
grassless yard. The Vigil children were playing in the _arroyo_ bed.
Their voices came with a stifled sound. There was nothing else to hear
save the far-off moaning of a wild dove somewhere up Gonzales cañon.
The echo was like a soft, sad voice. It sounded like the mournful cry
of one who, looking out of heaven, saw her hapless little daughter
bereaved and abandoned, and was moved, even among the blessed, to a
sobbing utterance.
Lola sat up to listen. Her father had spoken of going through that
cañon from which the low call came. Even now he was traveling through
the green hills, regretting that he had left his child behind him at
the instance of a strange woman! Even now he was doubtless deploring
that he should have been moved to consider another's loneliness before
his own.
"Wicked woman," thought the girl, angrily, "to ask him to leave me
here--my poor papa!" She sprang to her feet, filled with an impetuous
idea. She might follow her father!
There was the road, and no one by to hinder her. Even the hideous
wooden house of the short-haired woman looked deserted. Lola, with an
Indian's stealth of tread, crossed the bridge, and walked without
suspicious haste up the empty street.
At the mouth of the cañon, taking heart of the utter wilderness all
about, she began to run. Before her the great Spanish Peaks heaved
their blue pyramids against the desert sky. Shadows were falling over
the rough, winding road, and as she rushed on and on, many a gully and
stone and tree-root took her foot unaware in the growing gray of
twilight. Presently a star came out, a strange-faced star. Others
followed in an unfamiliar throng, which watched her curiously when,
breathless and exhausted, she dropped down beside a little spring to
drink. The water refreshed her. She lay back on the cattle-tramped hill
to rest.
Dawn was rosy in the east when she awoke, dazed to find herself alone
in a deep gorge. Her mission recurred to her, and again she took the
climbing road. Now, however, the way was hard, for it rose ever before
her, and her feet were swollen.
As the day advanced it grew sultry, with a menace of clouds to the
west. After a time the great peaks were lost in dark clouds, and
distant thunder boomed. A lance of lightning rent the nearer sky, and
flashed its vivid whiteness into the gorge. This had narrowed so that
between the steep hills there was only room for the arroyo and the
little roadway beside it. Before the rain began to fall on Lola's bare
head, as it did shortly in sheets, the stream-bed had become a raging
torrent, down which froth and spume and uprooted saplings were
spinning.
In an instant the cañon was a wild tumult of thunder and roaring water,
and Lola, barely keeping her feet, had laid hold of a piñon on the
lower slope and was burying her head in the spiked branches. Wind and
rain buffeted the child. The ground began to slip and slide with the
furious downpour, but she held fast, possessed of a great fear of the
torrent sweeping down below her.
As she listened to the crashing of the swollen tide, another noise
seemed to mingle with the sound of the mountain waters--a sound of
bellowing and trampling, as of a stampeded herd. A sudden horror of
great rolling eyes and rending horns and crazy hoofs hurtled through
the girl's dizzy brain. Her hands loosened. She began to slip down.
The rain had slackened when Bev Gribble, looking from his herder's hut
up on the _mesa_, saw that his "bunch" of cattle had disappeared.
Certain tracks on the left of the upland pasture exhibited traces of a
hasty departure. That there had been a cloudburst over toward the Peaks
he was as yet ignorant; nor did he discover this until he had caught
his cow-pony and descended into the ravine.
The sun was shining now, and the arroyo was nothing more than a placid,
though muddy stream. Its gleaming sides, however, spoke lucidly to
Bev's intelligence, and he set the pony at a smarter pace in the marshy
road.
"_Sus! Sus!_" said Bev to his pony, who knew Spanish best, being a
bronco from the south. But Coco did not respond. Instead, he came back
suddenly on his haunches, as if the rope on the cow-puncher's saddle
had lurched to the leap of a steer.
Coco knew well the precise instant when it is advisable for a cow-pony
to forestall the wrench of the lasso. But now the loop of hemp hung
limp on the saddle-horn, and Gribble, surprised at being nearly thrown,
rose in the stirrups to see what was underfoot.
A drenched thing it was which huddled at the roadside; very limp,
indeed, and laxly lending itself to the motions of Gribble's hands as
he lifted and shook it.
"Seems to be alive!" muttered the cow-puncher. "Where could she have
dropped from? Aha! here's a broken arm! I better take her right to town
to the doctor. Hi there, Coco!" He laid Lola over the saddle and
mounted behind his dripping burden.
When the coal-camp came in sight on the green skirt of the plains, with
the Apishapa scrolling the distance in a velvet ribbon, sunset was
already forward, and the smoke of many an evening fire veined the late
sky.
A man coming toward the cañon stopped at sight of Gribble. He was the
store clerk going home to supper. He shouted, "Hullo, Bev! Why, what
have you struck? Bless me, it's the little girl they're all hunting!
She belongs to Miss Combs, it seems. Her mother died here the other
day. Found her up the cañon, eh? They been all ranging north, thinking
she'd taken after her pa. Maybe she thought he'd headed for La Veta
pass? Looks sure 'nough bad, don't she?"
Jane, when she heard the pony cross the bridge, ran to the door, as she
had run so many times during the long, anxious day. She took the girl
from Gribble without a word, and bore her into the house from which she
had fled with so much loathing.
"Don't look so scared!" said Gribble, kindly. "It's only a broken bone
or so." As this consoling assurance seemed not to lessen Jane's alarm,
he went on cheerfully to say, "There isn't one in my body hasn't been
splintered by these broncos! Tinker 'em up and they're better than new.
Here's doc coming lickety-switch! He'll tell you the same."
But the doctor was less encouraging. "It isn't merely a question of
bones," he said, observing his patient finally in her splints and
bandages. "It's the nervous strain she's lately undergone. She's been
overtaxed with so much excitement and sorrow. If she pulls through,
it'll be the nursing."
Jane drew a deep breath. "She won't die if nursing can save her!" said
she. Her face shone with grave sacrificial tenderness, in the light of
which the shortcomings of her uncouth dress and looks were for once
without significance.
"She's a good woman," said the doctor, as he rode away, "though she
wears her womanhood so ungraciously--as a rough husk rather than a
flower. All the same, she's laying up misery for herself in her
devotion to this fractious child; I wish I'd had no hand in it!"
Jane early came to feel what burs were in the wind for her. Lola soon
returned to the world, staring wonderingly about; but even in the first
moment she winced and turned her face away from Jane's eager gaze. As
the girl shrank back into the pillows, Jane's lips quivered.
"Goose that I am!" she thought. "Of course my looks are strange to her!
It'd be funny if she took to me right off. I aint good-looking. And her
ma was real handsome!" For once in her life Jane sighed a little over
her own plainness. "Children love their mothers even when they're plumb
homely!" she encouraged herself. "Maybe Lola'll like me, in spite of my
not being well-favored, when she finds how much I think of her."
As time passed, and Lola, with her arm in a sling, began to sit up and
to creep about, there was little in her manner to show the wisdom of
Jane's cheerful forecast. The girl was still and reserved, as if some
ancient Aztec strain predominated in her over all others. She watched
the Vigils playing, the kids gamboling, the magpies squabbling; but
never a lighter look stirred the chill calm of her little,
russet-toned features, or the sombre depths of her dark, long eyes.
Jane watched her in despair. "I'm afraid you aint very well contented,
Lola," she said, one day. "Is there anything any one can do?" Lola was
sitting in the August sunshine. A little quiver passed through her.
"I want to hear from my father," she said. "Has he--written?" Her voice
was wishful, indeed, and Jane colored.
"I guess he's been so busy he hasn't got round to it yet," she said,
lightly.
"I thought he hadn't," said Lola, quickly. "I--didn't expect it quite
yet. He hates to write." Her accent was sharp with anxiety as she
added, "But of course he sends the--board-money for me--he would
remember that?" Evidently she recalled the Señora Vigil's questions and
doubts on this subject, for there was such intensity of apprehension in
her look that Jane felt herself full of pain.
"Of course he would remember it, my dear!" she said, on the instant;
she consoled her conscience by reflecting that there was no untruth in
her words. Although Mr. Keene had sent never a word or sign to Aguilar,
it was measurably certain that he remembered his obligations.
"It'd just about kill that child to find out the truth," thought Jane.
"She looks, anyhow, like she hadn't a friend on earth! I'm going to let
her think the money comes as regular as clockwork! I d' know but I'm
real glad he don't send it. Makes me feel closer to the little thing,
somehow."
After a while the broken arm was pronounced whole again, and the sling
was taken off.
"You're all right now," said the doctor to Lola, "and you must run
out-of-doors and get some Colorado tan on your cheeks. _Sabe?_ And eat
more. Get up an appetite. How do you say that in Spanish? _Tener buen
diente_, eh? All right. See you do it."
Lola stood at his knee, solemn and mute. She took his jests with an air
of formal courtesy, barely smiling. She had a queer little
half-civilized look in the neat pigtails which Jane considered
appropriate to her age, and which were so tightly braided as fairly to
draw up the girl's eyebrows. The emerald _fajas_ had been laid by. To
garland that viny strip in Lola's locks was beyond Jane's power.
"What a little icicle it is!" mused the doctor. "If I had taken a thorn
from a dog's foot the creature would have been more grateful!"
Even as he was thinking this, he felt a sudden pressure upon his hand.
Lola had seized it and was kissing the big fingers passionately, while
she cried, "_Gracias! mil gracias, señor!_ You have made me well! When
my papa comes he will bless you! He will pour gold over you from head
to foot!"
"That's all right, Lola," laughed the doctor. "He'll have to thank Miss
Jane more than me. She pulled you through. Have you thanked _her_ yet,
Lola?"
Lola's face stiffened. "But for her I should not have been tramped by
the cattle--I should have been safe in my father's wagon!" she thought.
"I--have not, but I will--soon," she said. "And your housekeeper, too,
for the ice-cream, and other things."
Jane, in succeeding days, took high comfort in the fact that Lola
seemed to like being out-of-doors, and apparently amused herself there
much after the fashion of ordinary children. She had established
herself over by the ditch, and Jane could see her fetching water in a
can and mixing it with a queer kind of adobe which she got half-way up
the hill. That Lola should be engaged with mud _casas_ was, indeed,
hardly in accord with Jane's experience of the girl's dignity; but that
she should be playing ever so foolishly in a slush of clay delighted
Jane as being a healthful symptom.
"What you making down yonder, honey?" she ventured to ask.
"I am making nothing; I am finished," said Lola. "To-morrow you shall
see my work." Jane felt taken aback. It had been work, then; not simple
play. She awaited what should follow with curious interest.
Upon the next morning Lola ran off through the alfalfa rather
excitedly. After a little she reappeared, walking slowly, with an air
of importance. She carried something carefully before her, holding it
above the reach of the alfalfa's snatching green fingers.
It was a square pedestal of adobe, sun-baked hard as stone, upon which
sat a queer adobe creature, with a lean body and a great bulbous head.
This personage showed the presence in his anatomy of an element of
finely chopped straw. His slits of eyes were turned prayerfully
upward. From his widely open mouth hung a thirsty mud tongue, and
between his knobby knees he held an empty bowl, toward the filling of
which his whole expression seemed an invocation.
"He is for you," said Lola, beaming artistic gratification. "He is to
show my thanks for your caring for me in my broken-bonedness. He is
Tesuque, the rain-god. You can let your ditches fill with weeds, if you
like. You won't need to irrigate your _vega_ any more. Tesuque will
make showers come."
Jane trembled with surprised pleasure. The powers ascribed to Tesuque
were hardly accountable for the gratification with which she received
him.
"I'll value him as long as I live!" she exclaimed. "He--he's real
handsome!"
"Not handsome," corrected Lola, with a tone of modest pride, "but
_good_! He makes the rain come. In Taos are many Tesuques."
"I reckon it must rain considerable there," surmised Jane, not
unnaturally.
Lola shook her head. "No. It's pretty dry--but it wouldn't rain at all,
you see, if it wasn't for Tesuque!"
This logic was irresistible. Jane dwelt smilingly upon it as she set
the rain-god on the mantel, with a crockery bowl of yellow daisies to
maintain his state. Afterward, a dark, adder-like compunction glided
through the flowery expanse of her joy in Tesuque, as she wondered if
there was not something heathenish in his lordly enshrinement upon a
Christian mantelpiece.
"Maybe he's an idol!" thought Jane. "Lola," she asked, perturbed, "you
don't _pray_ to Tersookey, do you?" Lola looked horrified.
"Me? _Maria Santissima!_ I am of the Church! Tesuque is not to pray to.
I hope you have not been making your worship to him. It is like this,
señora: You plant the seed and the leaf comes; you set out Tesuque and
rain falls. It is quite simple."
[Illustration: "'HE IS TESUQUE, THE RAIN-GOD.'"]
Jane rested in this easy and convincing philosophy. She saw the joke of
Lola's advice to her not to misplace her devotions, and one day she
repeated the story to the doctor, showing him the rain-god.
"Do you know," said the doctor, handling Tesuque, "that this thing is
surprisingly well-modeled? The Mexicans can do anything with adobe, but
this has something about it beyond the reach of most of them."
After this, a pleasanter atmosphere spread in Jane's dwelling. Lola
often unbent to talk. Sometimes she sewed a little on the frocks and
aprons, preparing for her school career. Oftener she worked in her
roofless pottery by the ditch, where many a queer jug and vase and
bowl, gaudy with ochre and Indian red, came into being and passed early
to dust again, for want of firing. Jane found these things engrossing.
She liked to sit and watch them grow under Lola's fingers, while the
purple alfalfa flowers shed abroad sweet odors, and the ditch-water
sang softly at her feet. As she sat thus one afternoon, Alejandro Vigil
came running across the field, waving a letter.
"'Tis for you, Lolita!" he cried. "My father read the marks. It is from
Cripple Creek!"
"Oh, give me! give me!" cried Lola, flinging down a mud dish.
Jane had taken the letter. "It's for me, dear," she said, beginning to
open it. "I'll read it aloud--" She paused. Her face had a gray color.
Lola held out her hands in a passion of joy and eagerness. "What does
he say? Oh, hurry! Oh, let me have it!"
Jane suddenly crushed the letter, and her eyes were stern as she
withdrew it resolutely from Lola's reaching fingers.
"No, Lola, no!" she said, in a sharp tone. "I--can't let you have this
letter! I can't! I can't!"
A TRUE BENEFACTRESS
CHAPTER THREE
A TRUE BENEFACTRESS
Lola's breath was suspended in amazement. Indignation flashed from her
eyes. She dropped her hands and Jane saw the fingers clench.
"It is my father's letter--and you keep it from me? You are cruel!"
said Lola, passionately.
Jane's eyes, set on the ground, seemed to see there, in fiery type, the
words of the paper in her grasp. Those scrawling lines, roaming from
blot to blot across the soiled sheet, had communicated to Jane no pain
of a personal sort. So far, indeed, as their trend took her on the
score of feeling, she might even have found something satisfying in Mr.
Keene's news, since this was merely a statement of his financial
disability. All along Jane had been dreading the hour when, instead of
this frank disclosure of "hard luck," there should come to her a parcel
of money. Not to have any money to send might conjecturally be
distressing to Mr. Keene; but Jane felt that he would be able to endure
his embarrassment better than she herself any question of barter
respecting Lola.
The very thought of being paid for what she had so freely given hurt
Jane. Without realizing its coldness and emptiness, her life had been
truly void of human warmth before the little, lonely girl stole in to
fill it with her piteous, proud presence. A happier child, with more
childish ways, might not so fully have compassed Jane's awakening; for
this had been in proportion to the needs of the one who so forlornly
made plea for entrance. Having once thrown wide the door of her heart,
Jane had begun to understand the blessedness that lies in generosity.
Lola might never care for her, indeed; but to Lola she owed the impulse
of loving self-bestowal, which is as shining sunlight in the bosom.
Mr. Keene wrote that the claim he had been working had proved
valueless. He expected better luck next time; but just now he could not
do as he had intended for Lola; and in view of his unsettled
circumstances he thought it might be well if Miss Combs could place the
girl in some family where her services would be acceptable.
"Life," he wrote, was at best "a rough proposition," and it would
doubtless be good for Lola, who had sundry faults of temper, to learn
this fact early. For the present she would have to give up all idea of
going to school. Mr. Keene would be sorry if the prospect displeased
his daughter, but people couldn't have everything their own way in this
world.
Such words as these Jane instinctively knew would fall crushingly upon
Lola, and leave her in a sorry plight of abject, hardening thought.
Therefore, steeling herself to bear the girl's misinterpretation, she
said, "Lola, your father wouldn't want you to see this letter. It's on
business."
"Does he say I'm not to see it?" asked Lola.
Jane's brows twisted painfully. "No," she said, "but--"
Lola turned away. Every line of her figure was eloquent of grievance.
She walked off without a glance to apprise her of the anguish in Jane's
face. Slowly Jane went toward the house; whereupon Alejandro Vigil, who
had continued an interested spectator, followed Lola to the ditch.
"If thou hadst wept, she would have given thee the letter," he
suggested. "My mother, she always gives up to us when we weep loudly. A
still baby gets no milk," said Alejandro, wisely, as he hugged his
bare knees.
"I am no baby!" retorted Lola. Nevertheless her voice was husky, and
Alejandro watched her anxiously.
"It's no good to cry now," he advised her. "She's gone into the house."
"_Tonto!_ Do you think I want her to see me?" wept Lola. "She is hard
and cruel. O my father!"
"Come over and tell my mother about it!" urged the boy, troubled. "You
are Mexican like us, no? Your mother was Mexican? Come! My mother will
say what is best to do."
Lola listened. She let herself be dragged up. An adviser might speak
some word of wisdom. "Come, then," she agreed.
But Señora Vigil, on hearing the story, only groaned and sighed.
"These Americans have the heart of ice!" she said. "Doubtless there was
money in the letter and she did not want you to know. Serafita, leave
thy sister alone, or I will beat thee! It will be best, Lolita, to say
little. A close mouth catches no flies."
"I may not stay here with you?" asked Lola.
"Alas, no, little pigeon!" mourned the señora. "In the cage where thy
father has put thee thou must stay! But come and tell me everything.
This shall be thy house when thou art in trouble!" and thus defining
the limits of her hospitality, she made a gesture toward the mud walls
on which strings of goat meat were drying in a sanguinary fringe.
Autumn fell bright on the foot-hills. The plains blazed with yellow
flowers which seemed to run in streams of molten gold from every cañon,
and linger in great pools on the flats and line all the ditches. Ricks
of green and silver rose all along the Apishapa. Alfalfa was purple to
the last crop, and an air of affluence pervaded everything.
The town was thronged with ranchers, coming in to trade; the mine had
started up for the winter. Men who had prospected for precious metals
all summer in the mountains now bundled their pots and pans and
blankets back to shelter for the winter; the long-eared burros, lost in
great rolls of bedding, stood about the tipple awaiting the result of
their masters' interviews with the mine boss, concerning work and the
occupancy of any "shack" that might still be empty.
Now, too, the bell of the red-brick school clamored loudly of mornings;
and dark, taciturn Mexican children, and paler, noisier children from
the mining end of town, bubbled out of every door. Seven Vigils obeyed
the daily summons, clad, boy and girl, in cotton stuff of precisely the
hue of their skin. Bobbing through the gate, one after another, they
were like a family of little dun-colored prairie-dogs, of a hue with
their adobe dwelling, shy and brown and bright-eyed.
Among them Lola had an effect of tropical brilliancy, by reason of the
red frock with which Jane had provided her. There were red ribbons also
in Lola's braided hair; and the girl, although still aware of bitter
wrongs, was sensible of being pleased with her raiment. More than once
on her way to school that first day she looked at the breadths of her
scarlet cashmere with a gratified eye; and catching her at this, Ana
Vigil had sighed disapprovingly, saying, "It is too good for every
day--that dress."
"It isn't too good for me!" flashed back Lola. "My father can do what
he likes!"
"True," said Ana, "since he has a gold-mine. But even if I were rich, I
should fear that the saints might punish me for wearing to school my
best clothes. I would wish to win their good-will by wearing no
finery," said Ana, piously. She was a plump girl, with eyes like
splinters of coal in her suave brown face; despite the extreme
softness of her voice, these glittering splinters rested with no gentle
ray on Lola.
Indeed, Jane's pride in having her charge well-dressed operated largely
against the girl's popularity with others of her mates than Ana.
Primarily Lola's air of hauteur provoked resentment; but hauteur in
poor attire would have been only amusing, while in red cashmere it was
felt to be a serious matter, entailing upon every one the sense of a
personal affront. Lola's quickness of retort was also against her. The
swift flash of her eye, the sudden quiver of her lip, afforded
continual gratification to such as had it in mind to effect her
discomposure.
"They do not love you too well, Lolita," said Ana Vigil, sadly. "They
say you have a sharp tongue. They say you are too well pleased with
yourself. Me, I tell you what I hear because I am your friend."
"So long a tongue as yours, Ana, weaves a short web!" growled
Alejandro, with a masculine distrust of his sister's friendly
assumptions.
"Lola knows if I speak truth," returned Ana, tranquilly.
Lola maintained an impassive front, but she was hurt. The little tricks
and taunts of her schoolfellows tormented her deeply. She had lately
relapsed into the stolid indifference native to her blood, and this was
her best shield, had she only known it, although it, too, for a time
left her open to attack. For when she encased herself in cold silence,
and stalked home with lifted head and unseeing eyes, often a little
throng of Mexican children would walk behind her, imitating her stately
gait and calling mockingly, "_Ea! ea!_ See the _madamisela_! See the
princess! She is sister to the king--that one! _Vah! vah! vah!_"
And mingling their voices they would sing, "_Infanta! Infanta Lolita!_"
until Lola, stung to rage, turned upon them wildly; whereat their
delighted cries served to send her flying homeward.
"I guess not even Squire Baca's girls nor Edith May Jonas had better
things than you," said Jane, unaware of all this. Her own garments
remained things of the baldest utility, but the village seamstress was
kept busy feather-stitching and beribboning articles for Lola's wear.
In these things Jane developed a most prodigal pride, freely expending
upon them the little patrimony which had been put in the Trinidad bank
against her old age. Her usual good judgment quite failed her; and she
who, patternless and guideless, slashed brown denim fearlessly into
uncouth vestures for herself, now had a pulse of trepidation at laying
the tissue-paper model of some childish garment for Lola upon a length
of dainty wool.
"Maybe," said Lola, "the others would like me better if my father
didn't get me so many things."
Jane's eyes shone with a fierce light.
"Don't they like you?" she demanded, harshly.
"Didn't you hear them calling 'infanta' after me just now?"
"Infanta--is it anything _bad_?" Jane's voice was so wroth that Lola
laughed.
"It means princess."
"Oh!" said Jane, mollified. "If it'd been anything _else_, I'd have
gone straight down to see the marshal!" Lola flushed a little. She
thought, "How kind she is! If I could only forget--about that letter!"
The dislike of the Mexican children abated with time. They even came to
admire Lola's quickness. She went above them in class--yes! but also
she went above the Americans! The little Mexicans, aware of a certain
mental apathy, had not enviously regarded the exploits of the "smart"
Americans. If these others "went up," what did it matter? All one
could do if one were Mexican was to accept defeat with dignity, and
reflect upon the fact that things would be different if Spanish and not
English were the language of the school.
When Lola, however, one of themselves by reason of her color and her
fluency in their idiom, displayed an ability to master those
remorseless obscurities of spelling and arithmetic which had seemed
sufficient to dethrone reason in any but a Saxon mind, then the peon
children began to find some personal satisfaction in her achievements.
Whenever Lola went above Jimmy Adkins, the mine boss's boy, and Edith
May Jonas, the liveryman's only daughter, every Mexican face recorded a
slow smile of triumph. "_'Sta 'ueno!_" they would whisper, watching
Edith May, who upon such occasions was wont to enliven things by
bursting into tears, and who commonly brought upon the following day a
note from her mother, stating that Edith May must be excused for
missing in spelling because she had not been at all well and had
misunderstood the word.
The next two years also mitigated much of the constraint which had
marked Miss Combs's relations with Lola. After the episode of the
letter, Lola never asked news of her father. Insensibly she came to
understand that if he wrote at all he wrote seldom, and solely upon the
matter of her expenses. And naturally she ceased clinging warmly to the
thought of his love for her. His silence and absence were not spurs to
affection, although she dwelt gratefully upon the fact that he should
lavish so much upon her.
Jane's money was lessening, but none of Lola's wishes had as yet been
baffled. The girl had a sort of barbaric love of brightness and
softness; and one day, as she looked over some fabrics for which Jane,
spurred by the approach of the vacation and the fact that Lola was to
have a part in the closing exercises of school, had sent to Denver, the
girl said suddenly, "How good my father is to me, _tia_!"
Long before, she had asked Jane what she should call her, and Jane had
said, "Maybe you better call me aunt."
"I will do it in Mexican, then," said Lola. "It sounds more ripe." She
meant mellow, no doubt. Now, as she fingered the pretty muslin, she
seemed to gather resolution to speak of something which had its
difficulties. "_Tia_," she pursued, "he is well off--my father?"
Jane's voice had rather a feigned lightness as she replied, "You have
everything you want, don't you?" No one but herself knew that for some
time she had been paying Mr. Keene a monthly stipend. He had written
that Lola ought not any longer to be giving her services just for
board. So great a girl must be very handy about a house; and as luck
still evaded him, he confessed that Lola's earnings would considerably
"help him out."
Jane had not combated his views. Many Mexican children younger than
Lola earned a little tending the herds and helping about the fields.
They were usually boys; but Jane did not dwell on this point. She had
never clearly realized, on her own part, those distinctions in labor
which appertain to the sexes; she had herself always done everything
that had to be done, whether it were cooking or plowing. If she had any
choice, it was for pursuits of the field. Therefore, without comment,
she had accepted Mr. Keene's theories as just, and began to pay him
what he said would be "about right."