A GIRL NAMED BENICIA
Grant Hickman was not one of that tribe dignified by the name of
he-flirts. He abominated the whole slimy clan with the loathing of a
clean man. When he had seized upon the part of studied rudeness toward
the Spaniard it was not with the ulterior purpose of winning a smile
or paving the way for acquaintance with a pretty woman; Grant’s vivid
recollection of the sidewalk cafés of Paris in war time and their
hunting women left him cold toward the type that is careless of men’s
approaches. In flouting the foreigner and preventing his scheme to gain
a place in the car with the girl he had bullied on the station platform
the New York man had acted merely on instinct; he had protected a
girl from annoyance. Yet now that he had won through by dint of crass
boorishness--and the young man’s conscience gave him a twinge over the
substance of his discourtesy--he suffered a not unreasonable curiosity
regarding the possessor of that glorious beacon in the seat across the
aisle.
Who was she? What circumstances had led to that scene on the platform
which had ended with the unexpected dagger thrust of the steel hair
ornament? Was this little black-and-tan whipper-snapper a lover--a
brother--blackmailer? Grant’s galloping imagination built up flimsy
hypotheses only to rip them apart. And his eyes dwelt upon the soft
involutions of flame coloured hair, which were the only physical
indices of personality granted him thus far.
Once the object of his conjectures shifted her seat so that a profile
peeped out from behind the wide seat arm. Grant’s eyes hungrily conned
delectable details: one broad wing of hair sweeping down in a line of
studied carelessness over a forehead somewhat low and rounded; fine
line of nose with the hint of a passionate spirit in the modelling;
mouth that was all girlish, mobile, ready to reflect whims or laughter.
The sort of mouth, Grant reflected, that could load a laugh with
poison--even as he had seen it done that tense instant on the platform
at El Paso--or freight it with sweetness for a favoured one. A world
of fire and seduction untried lay in the full round lips, yet a chin
with the thrust of will in it warned that the promise of those lips was
jealously guarded.
A broad sheaf of sunlight lay across her cheek. Grant saw that hers
was not the usual apple tint of the red-haired, the characteristic
skin so delicate as to suggest translucence. Rather a touch of the sun
had spread an impalpable film of tan, warm as the colour of old ivory,
over cheek and throat. Duskiness of a southland dyed cheek and throat
despite the anomaly of the burning hair, quite Celtic.
The afternoon waned with no favouring fortune throwing Grant’s way
opportunity to study the girl closer. When the sunset was in the sky he
walked through the train to the observation platform. As he drew near
the glassed-in end of the observation car he noted with a little leap
of elation that the girl was sitting under the awning beyond the screen
door. He saw, too, the objectionable Spanish gentleman. His midget body
was packed into a chair, one neatly booted foot under him; like some
hunting cat he sat in watchful patience inside the body of the car, his
eyes never leaving the figure of the girl beyond the screen door.
Grant passed through to the platform, not giving the Spaniard so much
as a glance. As the door slammed behind him the girl looked up quickly.
Grant saw her eyes were blue, saw, too, a fighting gleam quickly pass
from them. Evidently he was not the one they expected to fall upon.
A pretty confusion which tried to deny recognition swiftly replaced
the strained look. Grant allowed himself to be bold to the extent of
tip-tilting his cap. The girl evidently decided that to overlook a
service done would be pushing decorum too far; she gave Grant a quick,
shy smile which might have carried a hint of gratitude mingled with
naïve humour.
“You were very kind,” she said as Grant took the camp-stool next to
her, “and very amusing. The high hand--you possess the art of using it,
sir.”
“I should be ashamed of my rudeness,” he answered with a quick smile.
“But somehow I am not. Your way of repelling attack has its advantages,
too--” His eyes strayed to the silver comb, whose concealed steel had
been so efficacious on the El Paso platform. The girl reddened prettily.
“Always one must be--prepared against--persuasion,” was the answer
that put a period to all reference which might be distasteful. Grant
would have liked to know more of circumstances that had pushed this
radiant young person into the grip of a bullying little civet cat of a
Spaniard, but he dared not risk rudeness by further questioning. Reward
enough was his already; he had it in the swift play of laughter across
delicate features, in the sweetly resonant quality of her voice, all of
a part with the engaging exotic character of the girl. For American she
assuredly was not, though her trim tailoring was impeccably the mode of
the moment. Her speech had a rippling musical lilt to it suggestive of
a mother tongue less harsh than Anglo-Saxon; her enunciation was too
perfect to be American. There was a trick of the eyes, something almost
vocal, which was an inheritance from mothers whose speech is sternly
hedged about by conventions but who find subtler ways of expression.
What could her nationality be? Assuredly not Irish, though eyes and
hair were exactly what Grant had seen in the green island during a
furlough spent in jaunting cars and peaty inns. Mexican? The flame hair
denied that. Here was another mystery to be set aside with that of the
encounter at the station. With two avenues of conversation closed Grant
plunged blindly along one strictly innocuous.
“We seem to be getting rather deep into the desert.” He waved out at a
hundred mile vista of sunset painted waste, all purple and hot gold in
the glory from the west--a new picture for the eastern man. The girl
made an unconscious movement of half-stretched arms as if to free her
soul for wandering in limitless spaces.
“Yes, the desert,” she breathed. “How wonderful! And for me, returning
to it after two years in cities--in cities where one chokes from walls
all about--you see how the desert welcomes with all its glory.” Grant
looked at her curiously; he saw a vision in her eyes.
“Then you like this--this dry and barren land? Why, I thought
nobody lived out here unless he had to. No trees, no water--” The
girl’s wondering eyes upon him checked his summary of the desert’s
shortcomings.
“You do not know the desert then,” she reproved. “You have never seen
the _palo verde_ tree when every branch is heavy with gold. You do not
know how the _sahuaro_ wreathes itself a crown of blossoms--the tough
old _sahuaro_, a giant with flowers on his head ready to play with
spring fairies. Water!”--a crescendo gust of laughter--“You think water
only comes from a faucet. If you dug for it with your bare hands--dug
and dug in hot sands while death moved closer to you each hour, then
you would come to see a real beauty in water.”
“You know something of the desert,” Grant conceded.
“Something! Señor”--the alien word slipped from her in her flurry of
devotion--“señor, my home is there and my father’s home has been there
more than a hundred and fifty years. I have been away from it in the
slavery of the cities--two years at music in New Orleans and Baltimore.
Now I return. To-morrow morning at Arizora big Quelele, my father’s
Indian servant, meets me to take me a hundred miles--a hundred miles
off the railroad and away from the nearest city to my home.”
“But Arizora is where I am bound,” Grant eagerly caught her up. “That’s
on the Line, isn’t it? A hundred miles--why, then you must live in
Mexico.” She nodded. His curiosity would not down:
“Then you are Mexican?”
An instant her blue eyes sparkled resentment. Grant sensed he had made
some blunder, though he could not for the life of him guess how his
innocent question could have offended. The girl, on her part, quickly
regretted her show of displeasure; one new to the Southwest naturally
could not know much about its social distinctions.
“Not Mexican,” she amended gently. “We are Spanish folk living in
Mexico. We have always been Spanish since the time one of my ancestors
got his grant from the king of Spain. Never Mexican. That sounds like
silly boasting to you. When you have lived in this country for a little
while you will understand why we have pride in our blood. Just as you
have pride, señor, in your American blood when all the cities of your
country are choked with mongrels.”
Hoping to hear her name, Grant gave her his own. She repeated it as
if to fix it in memory; then she told him hers. Benicia O’Donoju it
is written, but in her mouth the two words had a quality like a muted
violin note, too fugitive to be imprisoned in letters. She spoke the
surname without accent on any syllable--“Odonohoo.” The man grasped at
something evanescent in the sound:
“Why, I’d pronounce that ‘O’Donohue.’”
“My great-great-grandfather did.” Once more Grant’s ears drank in that
velvety contralto laughter which bubbled to her lips so easily. “You
would pronounce his first name ‘Mike,’ and so did he.”
“Then your first name should be Peg or Molly-o,” Grant rallied. She
shook her head in gay denial.
“Señorita Peg--impossible! Benicia is much better. It means ‘Blessed’
in our tongue. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart,’ Señor Hickman; or
‘Blessed are the meek.’ I might be either if I could forget I am an
O’Donoju.”
“Benicia.” Grant tried to copy the slurring softness she gave to the
word.--“B’nishia: that sounds like little bells. I like it.”
“You are gracious, señor. I thought Americans were too busy with
skyscrapers and wheat markets to learn the art of paying compliments
gracefully.”
“Compliments are born, not paid,” he joked. Conversation limped no
longer. Youth has a way of opening little windows in the souls of two
brought together under its wizardry and giving each elusive peeps
into secret chambers. It was Benicia who first became conscious of
the lateness of the hour and the strain on strict canons of propriety
her presence alone with a stranger on the observation platform had
entailed. She arose with a little laugh.
“My guardian”--a roguish glance toward the tiny figure of the Spaniard
still on the watch beyond the platform’s glass--“I fear he does not
approve. And so--_adios_.” She gave Grant the tips of her fingers and
was gone.
He watched her pass where the sentinel was sitting. The little man
uncurled himself from his hump-shouldered crouch and scrambled to his
feet as if he would speak to her. But Benicia, bowing sweetly, passed
on up the aisle and into the alley of rosewood and glass beyond. After
a moment’s hesitation the Spaniard came to the screen door giving onto
the platform, where Grant now stood alone, and opened it. He scratched
a match and put it to his cigarette. Grant saw the flare illumine
a cruel hawk’s nose and thin, saturnine lips. The Spaniard inhaled
deeply, then let thin streams of smoke seep from his nostrils.
“Señor”--his voice was cold as a lizard’s foot--“perhaps you do not
know that Señorita O’Donoju is travelling under my protection.”
Grant took time to tap a cigarette on the heel of his palm and light it
before he answered. His eyes were brimming with laughter.
“Perhaps not,” he said. “I congratulate the lady on her protector.”
Again blue smoke played over the toy moustache; little eyes were
snapping like a badger’s.
“I have the honour to inform you, señor, that your attentions to the
lady do her no credit and that they must cease.”
“Really!” Grant’s settled good humour received a jar. He felt a
tingling of fighting nerves down his back. “Really? And who constituted
you judge of the value of my attentions?”
“Very naturally I have appointed that position to myself, señor, since
Señorita O’Donoju is to become my wife.”
“Ah!” Grant’s interjection did not carry all the irony he would have
wished. His assurance was a trifle shaken.
“And so,” the little man continued, “it is understood. You will not
address the lady further.” Grant laughed.
“My understanding is very weak and not at all reliable. I promise you
that unless the lady objects I shall continue to address her whenever
opportunity presents.”
The little figure in the doorway straightened itself in an access of
dignity. He snapped his cigarette over the car rail.
“Señor, let us have no misunderstanding. We approach the Border,
where every man works justice according to the dictates of his own
conscience. To-morrow we touch Mexico, where it is known that Colonel
Hamilcar Urgo is a law unto himself. I am that Colonel Hamilcar Urgo.
Need I go farther?”
“And I am Captain Grant Hickman, formerly of the First Division,
Expeditionary Forces. Go as far as you like!”