AT THE CASA O’DONOJU
Six days after Quelele the Papago set out on his mission of mercy
from the Casa O’Donoju he returned to the oasis. It was in the first
flush of dawn that the _shuf-shuf_ of the little car roused master
and servants; Quelele had travelled all night and at a pace to
conserve the strength of the wounded man, who lay on thick straw in
the box body. All night without lights save the thickly strewn lamps
in the firmament, wending hither and thither through the scrub where
half-guessed lines in the sand marked the Road of the Dead Men--a
journey weird enough.
For Grant Hickman it was but part of the moving drama of a dream. That
instant of flight from the chain gang, when a bullet tore through his
shoulder and sent him toppling into the arroyo, was the visitation
of death; in his flickering perceptions all else following was but
adventuring in the country beyond death--incidents to paint impressions
on a consciousness otherwise wiped clean of otherworld recollections.
First of these exposures on the cloudy plate of his mind came many days
after the rurales had left him for dead in the desert: a face deep-dyed
as mahogany and with white bristles of a beard about chin and lips,
a face kindly withal, which bent near his as a hand lifted his head
to bring his lips to a vessel of pungent brew. Then another age of
drifting and swimming through soft clouds.
Grant had just come to accept the grey-thatched face of El Doctor
Coyote Belly as part of a permanent picture when another Indian
appeared between himself and the bundles of sticks making a roof over
his head. This second personage in the world of the unreal, a giant
with the features of a boy, had spelled El Doctor in ministering herb
brews and keeping the wet cloths under the burning wound in his back
for what seemed many years. Then Grant had felt himself lifted, carried
from the hut with the bundles of sticks for a roof and laid on sweet
smelling straw. In the starshine he felt the hand of El Doctor close
over his own with a heartening squeeze.
Then--wonder of wonders!--the racking cough of a gas engine, and Grant
was soaring back to that familiar earth which had been lost to him so
long.
Upon the arrival of the car bringing Grant to the Casa O’Donoju Don
Padraic, hastily dressed, superintended the moving of his guest to
a small, clean room, candle lit. The wounded man felt the gracious
softness of feathers under him, the suave clinging of sheets. An aged
Indian woman, working under the white man’s direction, divested him of
his tattered clothes and patted everything comfortable. Drowsy luxury
stole across his consciousness to cloud it and bring sleep.
Sunlight flooded the room when Grant awoke. He was alone. His mind was
clearer than it had been since he was shot. Only the steady burning
in his vitals linked this moment of comfort with the tortured past.
His eyes roved about the room to take in its appointments. White walls
devoid of ornamentation; by the heavy door with its curiously wrought
iron latch a single chest of drawers of some antique pattern; the bed
he lay upon massive as a galleon of old days and with a canopy of
carved wood and tapestry for a sail: here was a room from the period
department of the Metropolitan Museum.
Grant was patiently trying to fit together the jig-saw scraps of his
memory when the door opened and the white man he had seen the night
before entered. Seeing the light of reason in the patient’s eyes, Don
Padraic smiled and bowed. Something mighty heartening lay in that
welcome and the warm cordiality of Don Padraic’s features.
“I am rejoiced to find you better to-day,” he said as he drew a chair
to the side of the bed. “Yours was a hard journey last night.”
“I am still a little uncertain up here”--Grant tapped his forehead with
an attempt at a laugh. “For instance, I was just thinking I had been
lifted straight into a room of the Metropolitan in New York.”
The host’s brows were knitted an instant, then he caught the allusion
and smiled.
“Ah, yes; we have rather ancient furnishings here. But you are quite a
distance from New York, señor. This is the Casa O’Donoju in the Garden
of Solitude, and I am Don Padraic O’Donoju.”
The name crashed into Grant’s consciousness like the clang of iron. His
heart gave a great leap. Could it be possible--? No, this must be but
part of the aurora dreams of the vague eternity still just behind his
back. Grant wished to make no blunder which might belie the present
soundness of his mind, so he held his tongue over the question burning
to be asked. Instead:
“My name is Grant Hickman, sir. I am deeply obliged to you for your
charity in bringing me here. Of course, I do not know quite how it
all happened--my coming here from some place else, where an Indian,
or two of them--seemed to be caring for me. And I fear I am hardly a
presentable guest.” The sick man’s hand passed ruefully over his stubby
chin.
Don Padraic made a gesture dismissing Grant’s fastidiousness. “Señor, a
gentleman should not consider the state of his beard and the state of
his health with equal seriousness. The one may be repaired at once even
if our wishes cannot immediately effect a cure of the other. Permit
me to retire, señor, and not tax you with questions until you are
stronger.”
Shortly after the gentle host had bowed himself out an Indian servant
entered with basin and razor and effected an agreeable change in the
patient’s appearance. Then Grant was left alone with the tab to a
wonderful possibility to turn over and over in his mind.
He was in the house of the O’Donoju. Could there be more than one
family of that unusual name in the desert country; or had fate thrown
him a recompense for all he’d suffered by lifting him from a line of
chained convicts to carry him through a nightmare straight to the one
spot in all the world he most desired to be in? Perhaps under the same
roof, near enough to him to permit the carrying of her laughter, was
Benicia, the vivid creature who had won his heart into captivity.
He was not kept long in suspense. The door opened and Don Padraic’s
white clad figure appeared, behind it Benicia. She was in khaki, as
Grant had last seen her at the Arizora station, wide-brimmed hat noosed
under her chin just as she had come in from a ride through the oasis.
All the wild, free spaces of the wilderness seemed compacted in the
girl’s trim figure, in the flush of her browned cheeks touched by the
sun.
“Señor Hickman--” Don Padraic began introduction, but Benicia was at
the bedside; her cool hand was given to Grant’s clasp with a gesture of
boyish comradeship.
“We need not be introduced, father,” Benicia laughed, and there was
a queer catch in her throat. “Señor Hickman did me a service on the
train which served as the best introduction in the world.” Turning back
to Grant--“I did not know, señor, you were the wounded man Quelele
brought into our home so early this morning--did not even know we had
a guest until my father told me when I returned from my ride a few
minutes ago.”
Grant strove to put all his heart prompted in words that were mete:
“And I did not dare hope that this house to which a miracle has brought
me was the desert home you described on the train.”
Benicia’s eyes read surely what his lips would not frame. She saw in
the white face of the wounded man a touch of that old hardihood and
forthright spirit of address which had commended this American to her
at first meeting--commended him even against her own impulse to resent
his self-assurance. But she saw, too, how suffering battled to dim the
valiant spirit, and something deeper than abstract sympathy stirred in
her heart.
“But, señor, to meet you again this way! Father has told me the message
brought from El Doctor: how you were found among dead men on the
Hermosillo road and brought back to life by that old Papago. You, a
stranger and unknown here in the desert country--how could this happen
to you, señor?”
Don Padraic interposed:
“Perhaps, ’Nicia, when Señor Hickman is stronger he will answer
questions. Would it not be better--?”
The girl was quick to appreciate her father’s considerate thought.
Again she laid her hand in Grant’s.
“If you will permit me to play the doctor--at least to see to it that
lazy old ’Cepcion, your nurse, does not neglect you?” The smile that
went with this promise was tonic for the sick man. It remained like
an afterglow when the door was closed behind the girl. And when the
wrinkled Indian woman came an hour later with broth on a silver tray
that smile reappeared, translated into the fragrant beauty of rose
petals laid by the side of the bowl.
Five luxurious days passed--days each with a wonderful spot of sunshine
in them--that when Benicia accompanied the aged ’Cepcion to his
chamber. On these daily visits she would draw her chair to the side of
the great bed--she looked very small below the high buttress of the
mattress--and while he quaffed his chicken broth and nibbled his flaky
tortillas Benicia would talk. ’Cepcion, like some mahogany coloured
manikin in her flaring skirts and winged bodice, always stood, arms
akimbo and features passive as a graven image, behind her mistress’
chair.
The girl’s talk was directed away from the personal; with an art
concealing art she evaded Grant’s frequent endeavours to swing
conversation into more intimate channels. She brought the world of
the desert into the sick room, unconsciously revealing herself as
a flashing, restless creature of the wastes: now on horseback and
threading dim trails over the Line to carry quinine to a family
of Papagoes down with the fever; now beside Quelele in the little
gas-beetle and skimming to Caborca, the southern town, to buy a wedding
dress for an Indian belle.
Not once did she touch again upon the subject of Grant’s misadventures
and how he came to be found on the road to Hermosillo. A delicate
sense of the fitness of things prompted her to await the moment when
he himself should volunteer explanations. Grant, on his part, felt an
impelling reluctance to give details, for to do so would necessitate
his revealing his conviction that little Colonel Urgo’s was the hand
that had pushed him so near death. A delicate--perhaps quixotic--sense
of personal honour prompted that he keep his enemy’s name out of
any explanations. He could not know how close might be the little
Spaniard’s relations with Benicia and her father--even discounting
Urgo’s boast that he expected to make the girl his wife--and, besides,
he felt the score between himself and Urgo must be evened before he
linked the Colonel’s name with his experiences.
With Benicia’s father Grant modified his resolution to a certain
degree. It was no more than proper, he argued with himself, that the
master of the Casa O’Donoju have some explanation for the presence in
his house of a man from a Mexican chain gang.
“Señor O’Donoju,” Grant addressed his host when the latter was come on
one of his daily visits, “you have been more than kind to me, but I
fear I may be an embarrassment to you--a fugitive, you know, if that is
my status before the law.”
“My dear sir”--the courtly Spaniard waved away Grant’s scruples with
a smile--“you forget that the evidence El Doctor Coyote Belly found
on the Hermosillo Road--you the only survivor among eight men who had
been murdered, eight men with marks of fetters on their wrists; that
this evidence, I say, clearly indicates you now have no status whatever
before what the Mexicans call their law.”
Grant looked his surprise. Don Padraic continued easily:
“You are officially dead, Señor Hickman. It is the _ley de fuga_--the
law of flight. You were shot trying to escape while being transferred
from one prison to another. Monstrous barbarism! So the president,
Francisco Madero, met his end; so, perhaps, Carranza. When you were
chained to other convicts and sent afoot out into the desert you were
doomed; the men responsible for that act counted you as dead the minute
they ordered you overland to Hermosillo.”
Grant recalled the mask of fear he’d seen settle over the features of
the big Indian, his chain mate, when the rurales began to loose the
fetters in the sunset hour of that fateful night on the desert; how the
asthmatic little Chinaman had commenced his chant to the joss--men who
had known every weary hour of that march brought them nearer to the
stroke of doom.
“I have no direct evidence to explain why I was in that chain gang,”
Grant began, honestly enough; then he told the story of the fight in
the gambling palace after the discovery of the counterfeit dollars in
his pocket, reserving only all reference to Colonel Urgo. His host
heard him through with a grave face.
“Perhaps,” he ventured, “you were on some mission to the Border which
ran counter to the interests of a scheming official on the Mexican
side.”
“To be honest, I do not know yet on what mission I came to Arizora,”
Grant conceded with a laugh. “A friend of mine wrote me in New York
he wanted me to join him in ’a whale of a proposition’ out here along
the Border. I was fool enough to come just on that, and when I had an
interview with a Dr. Stooder--”
“Ah!” The interjection escaped Don Padraic against instant reflex of
judgment, as his hand part way raised to his lips betrayed. Grant
caught the other’s quickly covered confusion and suddenly was sensible
of his careless garrulity. Here he was bandying names in a matter his
friend Bagley had surrounded with unexplained secrecy. He finished
lamely:
“And so on my first night in Arizora I fell into a trap.”
When Don Padraic left the chamber Grant still was dwelling upon his
host’s involuntary exclamation at the name of Doc Stooder. What was
there about the saturnine physician, what notorious reputation which
could lead a hermit such as Don Padraic away off in this desert oasis
to evince surprise that one under his roof had had dealings with him?
More and more an undefined regret for his mention of the name of
Stooder plagued him.
In truth, the whole reason for his coming to Arizora and whatever
fantastic project might be at the bottom of it appeared now strangely
linked with this latest turn of fate, his coming to the Casa O’Donoju.
Grant became aware of a duty long overlooked and wrote a brief and
non-committal note to Bim Bagley, in Arizora, saying only he had
suffered an accident and would return to the Border town as soon as he
was able. This Benicia took from him to give to Quelele when he should
go to the nearest railroad town.
Two days thereafter befell a boon the wounded man had dreamed of during
many yearning hours. Two male servants of the household came to dress
him in one of Don Padraic’s white suits--his own clothes were rags--and
assisted him down a long hall which turned into the green paradise
of the patio. There under the royal date palm they sat him, with the
fountain pool and its magic purple sails of the hyacinth at his feet,
behind and on either hand the green and crimson glory of the geraniums.
Benicia was awaiting him there alone. The girl, in a simple green frock
which revealed bare arms and the warm round of her shoulders, was the
embodiment of the garden’s fairy essence. She was a sprite of this
green and glowing place. Hot sunlight falling upon her head made it a
great exotic flower.
“Now both of us can revel in being lawbreakers,” she exclaimed when the
Indians had bowed themselves out. She was hovering about Grant, patting
into place the gay serape which covered his knees.
“Lawbreakers!” Grant’s glowing eyes bespoke the intoxication of
pleasure. “I feel, rather, like a prisoner whose sentence is commuted.”
The girl’s rippling laughter ended with, “Oh, but my father said you
should not be moved for three days yet. Now he has gone into town with
Quelele and you and I are breaking the law--with you equally guilty.”
“What man would not rush into crime with you to lead?” he rallied,
and the little game of give and take in joke and repartee which had
been of their devising these last few days of Grant’s convalescence,
when Benicia made her daily visits at his bedside, was resumed. It was
in this course their friendship had grown: on a basis of comradeship
and with healthy minds in apposition, giving and finding something of
humour, of rollicking fun. No angling for sickly sentimentalism on the
part of this unspoiled girl of the waste places--so Grant during hours
of staring at the ceiling had appraised the heart of Benicia O’Donoju;
no place in their communion for any of the trite nothings a man burbles
into concealed ear of a flapper over tea or whatever else comes from
the sophisticated city teapot.
During these delicious hours in the shadow-dappled patio, as
heretofore, Benicia continued a tantalizing enigma to the man of
cities. While seeming to give so freely of herself in laughing quip
and quick answer to his sallies, never was there that least suspicion
of some overtone to her buoyancy the man yearned to catch; not the
quick revealing of secret depths in the eyes which would betray a
heart responsive to the waves of the man’s love enveloping her. Yet
the lips of the girl, full, soft, trembling with unconcealed promise
of richness to the one conquering them: these were not the lips of one
devoid of love’s alluring tyrannies. Nor was the rounded body of her,
fully ripened to share in the law of life giving, one to wither outside
love’s garden.
Grant could not speculate, with tremors of eagerness, on the flood of
passion that was dammed behind the girl’s sure mastery of herself. Dare
he believe that he might be the one to loose that flood? As he sat
there in the odorous garden the nimble, superficial part of his brain
was playing with bubbles while the deeper fibre of him resolved that
nothing in the world mattered beyond possessing Benicia’s love.
When luncheon was cleared away--it had been a veritable feast of
laughter--Benicia clapped her hands and gave some direction to the
servant answering. The Indian woman disappeared in the body of the
house, soon to come waddling out under the weight of the great harp.
Grant gasped his surprise; he never had associated harps with any
surroundings other than the orchestra pit.
“My Irish ancestors, who were kings in Donegal, always called for their
harp after a feast,” Benicia declared with laughter in her eyes. “That
is the reason we Irish are such dreamers. The harp is the stairs to
dreams. Listen, señor, and hear if I tell the truth.”
Grant watched her, fascinated. Her slender body was in the shade of
a great palm frond, but when she leaned her head forward against the
carved sounding board a narrow lance of sunshine shot down to kindle
her hair to flame there against the gold. As her bare arms passed
in swift flight of swallows across the field of strings shadows and
sunlight played upon them in gules and chevrons of black and ivory.
First she gave the solo, _Depuis le Jour_, from some opera Grant
vaguely recalled; it was a mad thing, wherein the great instrument
thundered to the far recesses of the patio garden. Then the girl’s mood
changed and was interpreted in the sighing motif of _In the Garden_.
It was all bird song and lisping fountains. Grant allowed his eyes to
close so his soul could take flight with the music.
Slowly, reluctantly, Benicia’s fingers swept the final chords. The
great harp was still.
Out from the shadow of a flanking archway stepped a dapper little
figure in a cloak. Heels clicked sharply and the marionette bowed low.
It was Colonel Hamilcar Urgo.