The Indian looked at Honor and the bitterness in his eyes melted a
little. "_Esta una loca_," he said.
It was quite true. She was a madwoman for the moment. They tried to
control her, to calm her, but she did not see or hear them. "Let her
alone," said Mrs. King. "At least she is happy, Carter. She'll realize
his danger in a minute, poor thing." She turned to Yaqui Juan at the
sound of his voice. He told her that he was going out after his young
lord. He was going to find Señor Don Diego, alive or dead. He had
promised him not to leave the locked room for two hours; he had kept his
word as long as he could endure it. Señor Don Diego had had time to come
back unless he had been captured. Now he, Yaqui Juan, whom the young
master had once saved, would go to him, to bring him back, or to die
with him. The solemn, grandiloquent words had nothing of melodrama in
them, falling from his grave lips. He took no pains to conceal his deep
scorn for them all.
Madeline King thought of her husband, wounded, helpless. "Oh,
Juan--must you leave us? If--if something has happened to him it only
means your life, too!"
"_Voy_!" said the Indian, "_I go_!" He turned and looked again at Honor,
this time with a warming pity in his bronze face. "_I will bring back
your man, Señorita_," he said in Spanish. "And this great strong
one"--he pierced Carter through with his black gaze--"shall guard you
till I come again." Then he smiled and flung at him that stinging
Spanish proverb which runs, "In the country of the blind the one-eyed
man is king!" Then he went out of the house, dropping to his hands and
knees, hugging the shadows, creeping along the tunnel of tropic green
which led to the ancient well.
Honor stopped her wild singing and shouting then, but she still sat on
the floor, striking her hands softly together, her dry lips parted in a
smile of utter peace.
"Come, Honor, take this chair!" Carter urged her, bending over her.
"I don't want a chair, Cartie," she said, gently. "I'm just waiting for
Jimsy." She looked up and caught the expression on Madeline King's face.
"Oh, you mustn't worry," she said, contentedly. "He'll bring him back.
Yaqui Juan will. He'll bring him back _safe_. Why, what kind of a God
would that be?--To let anything happen to him, _now_?" Her defense was
impregnable.
"Let her alone," said Mrs. King again. "She'll realize, soon enough,
poor child. Stay with her, Carter. I must go back to my husband." She
went away with a backward, pitying glance which yet held understanding.
She knew that danger and death and thirst were smaller things than
shame, this wife of a King who had held hard in her day.
Carter sat down and watched her drearily. He wasn't thinking now. He was
nothing at all but one burning, choking thirst, one aching resentment
... Jimsy King, who had won, after all ... who had won alive or dead.
Honor was silent for the most part but she was wholly serene. Sometimes
she spoke and her speech was harder to hear than her happy stillness.
"You know, Cartie, I can be glad it happened." She seemed to speak more
easily now, almost as if her thirst had been slaked; her voice was
clearer, steadier. "I should never have known how much I cared. It was
easy enough, wasn't it, to look at my ring and talk about 'holding hard'
when there wasn't really anything to hold _for_? I really found out
about caring to-night ... what it means. I guess I never really loved
him before to-night, Carter." She was not looking at him, hardly talking
to him; she seemed rather to be thinking aloud. Even if she had looked
him full in the face she would not have realized what she was doing to
him; there was only one realization for her now. "I guess I just loved
what he _was_--his glorious body and his eyes and the way his hair
_will_ wave--and what he could _do_--the winning, the people cheering
him. But to-night, when I thought--when I believed the very worst thing
in the world of him--when I thought he had failed me--then I found out.
Then I knew I loved--_him_." She leaned her head back against the arm of
the chair, and her hands rested, palm upward, in her lap. "It's worth
everything that's happened, to know that." She was mercifully still
again. Carter thought once that she must be asleep, she was breathing so
softly and evenly, but after a long pause she asked, with a shade of
difference in her tone, "How long has Juan been gone, Carter?"
He looked at his watch. "Twenty minutes. Perhaps half an hour."
Honor rose to her feet. "Well, then," she said with conviction, "they'll
be here soon! Any minute, now."
"They may not come." He could not help saying it.
"Oh, they'll come! They'll come very--" she stopped short at the sound
of a shot. "What was that?" she asked, childishly.
"That was a shot," said Carter, watching her face.
"But it wouldn't hurt Jimsy or Juan. They're nearly here! That was far
away, wasn't it, Carter?" Still her bright serenity held fear at bay.
"Not very far, Honor." He wanted to see that calm of hers broken up; he
wanted cruelly to make her sense the danger.
"But, Cartie," she explained to him, patiently, "you know nothing is
going to happen to Jimsy now, when I've just begun really to care for
him!" She opened the door and stepped out on the veranda, and he
followed her. "See--it's almost morning!" The east was gray and there
was a drowsy twittering of birds.
"It's the false dawn," said Carter stubbornly. "Listen--" another shot
rang out, then three in quick succession. "I believe they're chasing
Juan!"
The Mexican who was on guard held up a hand, commanding them to listen.
They held their breath. Through the soft silence they began to get the
sound of running feet, stumbling feet, running with difficulty, and in
another moment, up the green lane came Yaqui Juan, bent almost double
with the weight of Jimsy King across his back.
"Honor!" Carter tried to catch her. "Come back! You mustn't--Are you
crazy?"
But Honor and the Mexican who had been on guard at the steps were
running, side by side, to meet them. Yaqui Juan flung a word to the
_peón_ and he stood with his gun leveled, covering the path.
"_Mira_!" said the Indian, proudly. "_Señorita_, I have brought back
your man!"
"Skipper," cried Jimsy King in a strong voice, "get in the house! Get
_in_! I'm all right!"
Then, unaccountably, inconsistently, all the terror she had not suffered
before laid hold on her. "Jimsy! You're hurt! You're wounded!"
"Just a cut on the leg, Skipper! That's why I was so slow. It's nothing,
I tell you,--get in the house!"
But Honor, running beside them, trying to carry a part of him, kept pace
beside them until Yaqui Juan had carried Jimsy into the house and up the
stairs and laid him on his own bed.
"There are five canteens," said Jimsy. "Here--one's for you, Skipper.
Take the rest to Mrs. King, Juan. Skipper, drink it. Just a little at
first, you know--careful! Don't you hear what I'm saying to you?
Drink--the water--out of this canteen!"
Mechanically, her eyes always on his face, Honor loosened the cap and
opened the canteen and drank.
"There,--that's enough!" said Jimsy, sharply. "Now, wait five minutes
before you take any more." He took the canteen away from her. "Sit
down!" He was not meeting her eyes.
"Did you have any, Jimsy?"
"Gallons. I didn't have any trouble to speak of, really. Only one fellow
actually on guard. We had a little rough-house. He struck me in the leg,
and it bled a lot. That's what kept me. And it took--some time--with
him."
"Jimsy, is it bad? Is it still bleeding? Let me see!"
He pushed her away, almost roughly. "It's all right. Juan tied it up.
It'll do. I guess you can have a little more water, now,--but take it
slowly.... There! Now you'd better go and see about the rest. Don't let
them take too much at first."
"I'm not going away," said Honor, quietly. "I'm not going to leave you
again, ever." She pulled her chair close beside the bed and took his
hand in both of hers. "Jimsy, I know. I know everything."
"That darn' Indian," said Jimsy, crossly. "If he'd stayed in here, with
the door locked! I'd have been back in half an hour longer."
"And he poured the whisky back into the decanter. Oh, Jimsy----"
"Well, I suppose it was a fool stunt, but I knew I could put it over. I
did a booze-fighter in the Junior play,--and I guess it comes pretty
easy!" He turned away from her, his face to the wall. "I'd like to be
alone, now, Skipper. You'd better look after Cart'. Watch him on the
water. He'll kill himself if he takes too much."
"Jimsy, I'm not going to leave you."
He lifted himself on his elbow. "Skipper, dear," he said gently, "what's
the use? I suppose I took a crazy kid way to show you I wasn't worth
your sticking to, and I guess I'm not, if it comes to that, but the fact
remains, and we can't get away from it."
"What fact, Jimsy?"
"That you--care--for Carter."
"Jimsy, have you lost your senses? I--care for _Carter_?"
"He told me."
"Then," said Honor, her eyes darkening, "he told you a lie."
He dropped back on the pillow. He had lost a lot of blood before Yaqui
Juan found him and tied up his cut, and he looked white and spent. "Oh,
Skipper, please.... Let's not drag it out. I saw your message to him."
"What message?"
"The one you sent to the steamer, after he'd lost his head and told you
he loved you,--and--and asked you if you loved him." Difficult words;
grotesque and meaningless, but he must manage with them. "I'm not
blaming you, Skipper. I know I'm slow in the head beside Cart' and he
can give you a lot that I can't. And nothing--hanging over him. You'd
have played the game through to the last gun; I know that. But it
wouldn't have been right for any of us. I'm glad Cart' blew up and told
me."
Honor laid his hand gently back on the bedspread of exquisite Mexican
drawnwork and stood up. "Carter showed you the telegram I sent him from
Genoa?"
"Yes. He carries it always in his wallet."
"He told you it meant that I loved him?"
"Skipper, don't feel like that about it. It had to come out, some time."
His voice sounded weary and weak.
She bent over him, speaking gently. "Be quiet, Jimsy; lie still. I'm
going to bring Carter up here."
"Oh, Skipper, what's the use? You--you make me wish that greaser had
finished me, down at the well. Please----"
"Wait!"
He heard her feet in the hall, flying down the stairs, and he turned his
face to the wall again, his young mouth quivering.
She found Carter lying on the wide couch, one arm trailing limply over
the side of it, the emptied canteen dangling from his hand, and he was
breathing with difficulty. His face was darkly mottled and congested but
Honor did not notice it. "Carter," she said, "I want you to come with me
and tell Jimsy how you lied to him. I want you to tell him what my
message really meant."
"I--can't come--now," he gasped. "I can't--" he tried to raise himself
but he fell back on the pillows.
"Then give me your wallet," she said, implacably, bending over him.
"No, _no_! It isn't there--wait! By and by I'll----" but his eyes
betrayed him.
Roughly, with fierce haste, she thrust her hand into his coat pocket and
pulled out his wallet of limp leather with the initials in slimly
wrought gold letters.
"Please, Honor! Please,--let me--I'll give you--I'll find it--" he
clutched at her dress but she stepped back from the couch and he lost
his balance and fell heavily to the floor.
When she pulled out the bit of closely folded paper with a sharp sound
of triumph there came with it a thick letter which dropped on the red
tiles. He snatched at it but Honor's downward swoop was swifter. She
stood staring at it, her eyes opening wider and wider, turning the plump
letter in her hands.
"Jimsy's letter to me," she said at last in a flat, curious tone. "The
one he gave you to mail." She was not exclamatory. She was too utterly
stunned for that. She seemed to be considering a course of action, her
brows drawn. "I won't tell Jimsy; I'm--afraid of what he'd do. I'll let
him go on believing in you, if you go away."
He looked up at her from his horrid huddle on the floor, through his
bloodshot eyes, the boy who had taught her so much about books and plays
and dinners in restaurants and the right sort of music to admire, and it
seemed to him that her long known, long loved face was a wholly strange
one, sharply chiseled from cold stone.
"If you'll go away," she went on, "I won't tell him about the letter."
She was looking at him curiously, as if she had never seen him before.
"All these years I've been sorry for you because you limped. But I
haven't been sorry enough. I see now; it's--your soul that limps. Well,
you must limp away, out of our lives. I won't have you near us. You've
tried and tried to drag him down but something--somewhere--has held him
up! As soon as help comes-to-morrow--to-day--I'm going to marry him,
here, in Mexico, and I'll never leave him again as long as we live. Do
you hear?"
She turned to go, but he made a smothered, inarticulate sound and she
looked down at him, and down and down, to the depths where he lay. "You
poor--thing," she said, gently. "Oh, you poor thing!"
She ran up to Jimsy and sat down on the edge of his bed and gathered him
into her arms, so that his head rested on her breast. "Carter--poor
Carter," she said, "is too weak to come upstairs now, but I am going to
tell you the whole truth, and you are going to believe me. Listen,
dearest----"
They were still like that, still talking, when Madeline King rushed into
the room. "Children," she cried, "oh, my dears--haven't you heard them?
Don't you know?"
"No," they told her, smiling with courteous young attention.
"They're here--the soldiers! It's all right!" She was crying
contentedly. "Rich' is conscious,--he understands. My dears, we're
saved! I tell you we're saved!"
"Oh, we knew that," said Honor, gravely.