Harboro did not speak. He looked on in amazed silence to see what she would do next. His swarthy face was too sphinx-like to express pleasure, yet he was not displeased. He was thinking: She is a child—but what an extraordinary child!

She crawled toward him and leaned against his leg. She was purring!

Harboro stooped low to see how she did it, but her hair hid her lips from him.

He seized her beneath the arms and lifted her until her face was on a level with his. He regarded her almost uncomfortably.

"Don't you like me to be a kitten?" She adjusted her knees on his lap and rested her hands on his shoulders. She regarded him gravely.

"Well ... a kitten gets to be a cat," he suggested.

She pulled one end of his long mustache, regarding him intently. "Oh, a cat. But this is a different kind of a kitten entirely. It's got nothing to do with cats." She held her head on one side and pulled his mustache slowly through her fingers. "It won't curl," she said.

"No, I'm not the curly sort of man."

She considered that. It seemed to present an idea that was new to her. "Anyway, I'm glad you're a big fellow."

As he did not respond to this, she went on: "Those little shrimps—you couldn't be a kitten with them. They would have to be puppies. That's the only fun you could have."

"Sylvia!" he remonstrated. He adjusted her so that she sat on his lap, with her face against his throat. He was recalling that other Sylvia: the Sylvia of the dining-room, of the balcony; the circumspect, sensible, comprehending Sylvia. But the discoveries he was making were not unwelcome. Folly wore for him a face of ecstasy, of beauty.

As she nestled against him, he whispered: "Is the sandman coming?"

And she responded, with her lips against his throat: "Yes—if you'll carry me."

Antonia was wrong. This was not the time of ashes. It was the time of flame.



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PART III

FECTNOR, THE PEOPLE'S ADVOCATE

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CHAPTER X

And then Fectnor came.

The date of the election was drawing near, and a new sheriff was to be jockeyed into office by the traditional practice of corralling all the male adult Mexicans who could be reached, and making them vote just so. The voice of the people was about to be heard in the land.

It was a game which enjoyed the greatest popularity along the border in those years. Two played at it: the opposing candidates. And each built him a corral and began capturing Mexicans two or three days before the election.

The Mexicans were supposed to have their abodes (of a sort) in Maverick County; but there was nothing conservative in the rules under which the game was played. If you could get a consignment of voters from Mexico you might do so, resting assured that your opponent would not hesitate to fill his corral with citizens from the other side of the river.

The corrals were amazing places. Dispensers of creature comforts were engaged. Barbecued meat and double rations of mezcal were provided. Your Mexican voters, held rigorously as prisoners, were in a state of collapse before the day of the election. They were conveyed in carryalls to the polls, and heads were counted, and the candidate got credit for the full number of constituents he had dumped out into the sunshine.

And then your voter disappeared back into the chaparral, or over the Rio Grande bridge, and pondered over the insanity of the gringos.

It will be seen that the process touched upon was less pleasant than simple. Among the constituents in the corrals there was often a tendency to fight, and occasionally a stubborn fellow had a clear idea that he wanted to be in a different corral from the one in which he found himself. There was needed a strong-handed henchman in these cases. Jesus Mendoza was the henchman for one faction, but the other faction needed a henchman, too.

And so Fectnor came.

He had the reputation of knowing every Mexican in Maverick County and in the territory immediately contiguous thereto. Many of them had been members of his gangs when he had contracts in the neighborhood of Eagle Pass. He knew precisely which of them could be depended upon to remain docile under all manner of indignity, and which of them had a bad habit of placing a sudden check on their laughter and lunging forward with a knife. They knew him, too. They feared him. They knew he could be coldly brutal—an art which no Mexican has ever mastered. The politicians knew that getting Fectnor was almost equivalent to getting the office. It was more economical to pay him his price than to employ uncertain aids who would have sold their services much more cheaply.

Harboro and Sylvia were sitting on their balcony the second night before the election. A warm wind had been blowing and it was quite pleasant out of doors.

One of the corrals lay not far from the house on the Quemado Road. Mounted Mexicans had been riding past the house and on into the town all day, and, contrary to usual custom, they were not to be seen later in the day returning to the chaparral. They were being prepared to exercise their suffrage privileges.

As Harboro and Sylvia listened it was to be noted that over in the corral the several noises were beginning to be blended in one note. The barbecue fires were burning down; the evening meal had been served, with reserved supplies for late comers. Mezcal and cheap whiskey were being dispensed. A low hum of voices arose, with the occasional uplifting of a drunken song or a shout of anger.

Suddenly Harboro sat more erect. A shout had arisen over in the corral, and a murmur higher and more sinister than the dominant note of the place grew steadily in intensity. It came to a full stop when a pistol-shot arose above the lesser noises like a sky-rocket.

"He's getting his work in," commented Harboro. He spoke to himself. He had forgotten Sylvia for the moment.

"He? Who?" inquired Sylvia.

He turned toward her in the dusk and replied—with indifference in his tone now—"Fectnor."

She shrank back so that her face would be out of his line of vision. "Fectnor!" she echoed.

"A fellow they've brought up from the interior to help with the election. A famous bad man, I believe."

There was silence for a long interval. Harboro supposed the matter did not interest her; but she asked at length: "You know him, then?"

"Only by reputation. A fellow with a lot of bluff, I think. I don't believe very much in bad men. He's managed to terrify the Mexicans somehow or other." He had not noticed that her voice had become dull and low.

"Fectnor!" she breathed to herself. She rocked to and fro, and after a long interval, "Fectnor!" she repeated.

He hitched his chair so that he could look at her. Her prolonged silence was unusual. "Are you getting chilly?" he asked solicitously.

"It does seem chilly, doesn't it?" she responded.

They arose and went into the house.



CHAPTER XI

Antonia went marketing the next morning, and when she came back Sylvia met her with fearful, inquiring eyes. She was terribly uneasy, and she was one of those creatures who must go more than half-way to meet impending danger. She was not at all surprised when Antonia handed her a sealed envelope.

The old servant did not linger to witness the reading of that written message. She possessed the discretion of her race, of her age. The senora had been married quite a time now. Doubtless there were old friends....

And Sylvia stood alone, reading the sprawling lines which her father had written:

"Fectnor's here. He wants to see you. Better come down to the house. You know he's likely to make trouble if he doesn't have his way."

She spelled out the words with contracted brows; and then for the moment she became still another Sylvia. She tore the missive into bits. She was pale with rage—rage which was none the less obsessing because it had in it the element of terror. Her father dared to suggest such a thing! It would have been bad enough if Fectnor had sent the summons himself; but for her father to unite with him against her in such an affair!

She tried to calm herself, succeeding but illy. "Antonia!" she called. "Antonia!" For once her voice was unlovely, her expression was harsh.

The startled old woman came with quite unprecedented alacrity.

"Antonia, where did you see my father?"

"On the street. He seemed to have waited for me."

"Very well. You must find him again. It doesn't matter how long you search. I want you to find him."

She hurriedly framed a response to that note of her father's:

"I will not come. Tell Fectnor I never will see him again. He will not dare to harm me."

As she placed this cry of defiance into an envelope and sealed and addressed it certain words of Harboro's came back to her. That night of their wedding he had lifted her in his powerful arms and had given her a man's assurance: "I mean that you're to have all the help you want—that you're to look to me for your strength."

She reasoned shrewdly: Harboro wasn't the sort of man people would tell things to—about her. They would know what to expect: intense passion, swift punishment.

And yet as she watched Antonia go away down the road, suggesting supine submission rather than a friend in need, her heart failed her. Had she done wisely? Fectnor had never stepped aside for any man. He seemed actually to believe that none must deny him the things he wanted. He seemed an insane creature when you thwarted him. There was something terrible about his rages.

She imagined seemingly impossible things: that Fectnor would come to the house—perhaps while Harboro was there. He might kill Harboro.

Alas, the evil she had done in those other days loomed before her now in its true light: not merely as evil deeds, definitely ended with their commission, but as fearful forces that went on existing, to visit her again and destroy her.

She began to hope that Fectnor would actually come to her—now, before Harboro came home. At the worst she might save Harboro, and there was even a chance that she could make Fectnor see her position as she saw it—that she could persuade him to be merciful to her. Surely for the sake of security and peace in all the years that lay before her.... A definite purpose dawned in her eyes. She went to her room and began deliberately to choose her most becoming street costume.

She was ready to go out when Antonia returned.

"Did you find him?" she asked.

Yes, the old woman had found him and delivered the message. He had sent no word in return; he had only glared at the bearer of the message and had cursed her.

"Well, never mind," said Sylvia soothingly. It occurred to her that it must be a sad thing to be an old woman, and a Mexican, and to have to serve as the wire over which the electric current flowed—and to feel only the violence of the current without comprehending the words it carried.

And now to find Fectnor—for this was what she meant to do.

She would see him on the street, where publicity would protect her, even if there were no friends to take her part. She would see him on the street and explain why she could not meet him any more, why he must not ask it. Certainly it would not look very well for her to be seen talking to him; but she could not help that. She would be going out to do a little shopping, ostensibly, and she would hope to encounter him on the street, either coming or going.

However, her earnest planning proved to be of no avail. Fectnor was nowhere to be seen.

She walked rather leisurely through the town—moving barely fast enough to avoid the appearance of loitering. She walked circumspectly enough, seemingly taking little interest in events or individuals. That she was keenly on the alert for one familiar face no one would have guessed.

She got quite to the end of the main street, and then she halted in painful uncertainty. If she turned back now she would have to go on steadily back to her home, save for a brief stop at one of the stores, or else betray the fact to any who might be curiously observing her that she was on the street on some secret mission.

She stood for a space, trying to decide what to do. Often before she had stood on that very spot to view the picture which men and the desert had painted on a vast canvas down toward the river. She occupied a point of vantage at the top of a long flight of stone steps, broken and ancient, leading down to the Rio Grande and its basin. Along the water's edge in the distance, down in the depths below her, ancient Mexican women were washing garments by a process which must have been old in Pharaoh's time: by spreading them on clean rocks and kneading them or applying brushes. The river flowed placidly; the sunlight enveloped water and rock and shore and the patient women bending over their tasks. Nineveh or Tyre might have presented just such a picture of burdened women, concealing no one might say what passions and fires under an exterior which suggested docility or the unkind pressure of tradition's hand or even hopelessness.

But Sylvia scarcely saw the picture now. She was recalling the words she had written in that message to her father. If only she had not defied Fectnor; if only she had made a plea for pity, or suggested a fear of her husband—or if she hadn't sent any answer at all!

It occurred to her that the exposure which menaced her was as nothing to the perils to which she had subjected Harboro. She knew instinctively that Harboro was not a man to submit to deliberate injury from any source. He would defend himself in the face of any danger; he would defend that which belonged to him. And Fectnor was cruel and unscrupulous and cunning. He knew how to provoke quarrels and to gain advantages.

She grew cold at the thought of losing Harboro. The inevitable consequences of such a loss occurred to her. She would have to submit always to Fectnor as long as he willed it. And afterward.... Ah, she must find Fectnor!

She retraced her steps. At a shop where silks were sold she entered. She asked for a piece of ribbon. A particular shade of blue; she could not describe it. She sat on a stool at the counter and kept an eye on the street.... No, something darker than that, something less lustrous. She examined bolt after bolt, and when at length it appeared that she was quite unwilling to be pleased she made a choice. And always she watched the street, hoping that Fectnor would pass.

At last she went up the Quemado Road, walking disconsolately. The withered immensity of the world broke her spirit. The vast stricken spaces were but a material manifestation of those cruelties of nature which had broken her long ago, and which could not be expected to withdraw their spell now that the time had come for her destruction.

She looked far before her and saw where the Quemado Road attained its highest point and disappeared on the other side of a ridge. A house stood there, lonely and serene. She had known it was a convent; but now she observed it with eyes which really saw it for the first time. It had looked cool even during the period of midsummer. There was shade—a friendly garden. She had seen the Mother Superior once or twice: a large, elderly woman who wore but lightly the sedate mien which concealed a gentle humanity.

What if she, Sylvia, were to go on past her own house, on up to the ridge, and appeal to that unworldly woman for succor? Was there a refuge there for such as she?

But this was the merest passing fancy. Where the tides of life ran high she had been moulded; here in the open she would meet her end, whatever the end might be.

She sat inside her house throughout that long day. Beside an open window she kept her place, staring toward Eagle Pass, her eyes widening whenever a figure appeared on the highway.

But the individual she feared—Fectnor, her father, a furtive messenger—did not appear.

Harboro came at last: Harboro, bringing power and placidity.

She ran out to the gate to meet him. Inside the house she flung herself into his arms.

He marvelled at her intensity. He held her a long moment in his embrace. Then he gazed into her eyes searchingly. "Everything is all right," he said—the words being an affirmation rather than a question. He had read an expression of dread in her eyes.

"Yes, everything is all right," she echoed. Everything was right now. She seemed to awaken from a horrible nightmare. Harboro's presence put to flight an army of fears. She could scarcely understand why she had been so greatly disturbed. No harm could come to him, or to her. He was too strong, too self-contained, to be menaced by little creatures. The bigness of him, the penetrating, kindly candor of his eyes, would paralyze base minds and violent hands seeking to do him an injury. The law had sanctioned their union, too—and the law was powerful.

She held to that supporting thought, and during the rest of the evening she was untroubled by the instinctive knowledge that even the law cannot make right what the individual has made wrong.

She was as light-hearted as a child that night, and Harboro, after the irksome restraints of the day, rejoiced in her. They played at the game of love again; and old Antonia, in her place down-stairs, thought of that exchange of letters and darkly pondered.



CHAPTER XII

The election came and went; the voice of the people had been heard, and Maverick County had a new sheriff. In the house on the Quemado Road Fectnor's name was heard no more.

On the Saturday night following the election Harboro came home and found a letter waiting for him on the table in the hall. He found also a disquieted Sylvia, who looked at him with brooding and a question in her eyes.

He stopped where he stood and read the letter, and Sylvia watched with parted lips—for she had recognized the handwriting on the envelope.

Harboro's brows lowered into a frown. "It's from your father," he said finally, lifting his eyes from the letter and regarding Sylvia.

She tried to achieve an effect of only mild interest. "What can he have to write to you about?" she asked.

"Poor fellow—it seems he's been ill. Sylvia, how long has it been since you visited your father?"

"Does he want me to come to see him?"

"He hints at that pretty strongly. Yes, that's really the substance of his letter."

"I've never been back since we were married."

She led the way into the dining-room. Her manner was not quite responsive. She made Harboro feel that this was a matter which did not concern him.

"But isn't that—doesn't that seem rather neglectful?"

She drew a chair away from the table and sat down facing him. "Yes, it does seem so. I think I've hinted that I wasn't happy in my old home life; but I've never talked very much about it. I ought to tell you, I think, that I want to forget all about it. I want the old relationship broken off completely."

Harboro shook his head with decision. "That won't do," he declared. "Believe me, you're making a mistake. You're a good deal younger than I, Sylvia, and it's the way of the young to believe that for every old tie broken a new one can be formed. At your age life seems to have an abundance of everything. But you'll be dismayed, in a few years, to discover that most things come to us but once, and that nearly all the best things come to us in our youth."

He stood before her with an air of such quiet conviction, of such tranquil certainty of the truth of what he said that she could not meet his glance. She had placed an elbow on the table, and was supporting her face in her hand. Her expression was strangely inscrutable to the man who looked down at her.

"Your father must be getting old. If you shouldn't see him for a year or so, you'd be fearfully grieved to note the evidences of failure: a slight stoop, perhaps; a slower gait; a more troubled look in his eyes. I want to help you to see this thing clearly. And some day you'll get word that he is dead—and then you'll remember, too late, how you might have carried little joys to him, how you might have been a better daughter...."

She sprang up, shaking the tears from her eyes. "I'll go," she said. She startled Harboro by that note of despair in her voice. "When does he wish me to come?"

"He says he is ill and alone. I think he would be glad if I could persuade you to go this evening. Why not this evening?"

Unfortunately, Harboro concealed a part of the truth in this. Her father had quite definitely asked to have her come this evening. But Harboro wished her to feel that she was acting voluntarily, that she was choosing for herself, both as to the deed and as to the time of its doing.

And Sylvia felt a wave of relief at the assurance that her father had not set a definite time. Oh, surely the letter was just what it purported to be—a cry of loneliness and an honest desire to see her. And Sylvia really loved her father. There was that in her nature which made it impossible for her to judge him.

"I could go with you," ventured Harboro, "though he doesn't say anything about my coming. I've felt we must both go soon. Of course, I need not wait for an invitation."

But Sylvia opposed this. "If he's ill," she said, "I think I ought to go alone this time." She added to herself: "I don't want him ever to go. I must make him believe that enough has been done if I go myself. I must convince him that my father doesn't care to have him come."

Nevertheless, she was quite resigned to the arrangement that had been made for her. She helped Antonia make the final preparations for supper, and she set off down the road quite cheerfully after they arose from the table. Harboro watched her with a new depth of tenderness. This sweet submission, the quick recognition of a filial duty once it was pointed out to her—here were qualities which were of the essence of that childlike beauty which is the highest charm in women.

And Sylvia felt a strange eagerness of body and mind as she went on her way. She had put all thought of the house under the mesquite-tree out of mind, as far as possible. Becoming a closed book to her, the place and certain things which had been dear to her had become indistinct in her memory. Now that she was about to reopen the book various little familiar things came back to her and filled her mind with eagerness. The tiny canary in its cage—it would remember her. It would wish to take a bath, to win her praise. There had been a few potted plants, too; and there would be the familiar pictures—even the furniture she had known from childhood would have eloquent messages for her.

This was the frame of mind she was in as she opened her father's gate, and paused for an instant to recall the fact that here she had stood when Harboro appeared before her for the first time. It was near sundown now, just as it had been then; and—yes, the goatherd was there away out on the trail, driving his flock home.

She turned toward the house; she opened the door eagerly. Her eyes were beaming with happiness.

But she was chilled a little by the sight of her father. Something Harboro had said about her father changing came back to her. He had changed—just in the little while that had elapsed since her marriage. But the realization of what that change was hurt her cruelly. He looked mean and base as he had never looked before. The old amiable submission to adversities had given place to an expression of petulance, of resentment, of cunning, of cowardice. Or was it that Sylvia was looking at him with new eyes?

He sat just inside the door, by a window. He was in a rocking-chair, and his hands lay heavily against the back of it. He had a blanket about him, as if he were cold. He looked at her with a strange lack of responsiveness when she entered the room.

"I got your message," she said affectionately. "I am glad you let me know you weren't feeling very well." She touched his cheeks with her hands and kissed him. "You are cold," she added, as if she were answering the question that had occurred to her at sight of the blanket.

She sat down near him, waiting for him to speak. He would have a great many things to say to her, she thought. But he regarded her almost stolidly.

"Your marriage seems to have changed you," he said finally.

"For the better, I hope!"

"Well, that's according to the way you look at it. Cutting your old father cold isn't for the better, as far as I can see."

She did not resent the ungenerous use of that phrase, "old father," though she could not help remembering that he was still under fifty, and that he looked young for his years. It was just one of his mannerisms in speaking.

"I didn't do that, you know," she said. "Being married seems a wonderful adventure. There is so much that is strange for you to get used to. But I didn't forget you. You've seen Antonia—occasionally...?"

The man moved his head so that it lay on one side against the chair-back. "I thought you'd throw that up to me," he complained.

"Father!" she remonstrated. She was deeply wounded. It had not been her father's way to make baseless, unjust charges against her. Shiftless and blind he had been; but there had been a geniality about him which had softened his faults to one who loved him.

"Well, never mind," he said, in a less bitter tone. And she waited, hoping he would think of friendlier words to speak, now that his resentment had been voiced.

But he seemed ill at ease in her presence now. She might have been a stranger to him. She looked about her with a certain fond expression which speedily faded. Somehow the old things reminded her only of unhappiness. They were meaner than she had supposed them to be. Their influence over her was gone.

She brought her gaze back to her father. He had closed his eyes as if he were weary; yet she discerned in the lines of his face a hard fixity which troubled her, alarmed her. Though his eyes were closed he did not present a reposeful aspect. There was something really sinister about that alert face with its closed eyes—as there is about a house with its blinds drawn to hide evil enterprises.

So she sat for interminable minutes, and it seemed to Sylvia that she was not surprised when she heard the sound of tapping at the back door.

She was not surprised, yet a feeling of engulfing horror came over her at the sound.

Her father opened his eyes now; and it seemed really that he had been resting. "The boy from the drug-store," he said. "They were to send me some medicine."

He seemed to be gathering his energies to get up and admit the boy from the drug-store, but Sylvia sprang to her feet and placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. "Let me go," she said.

There was an expression of pity and concern for her father in her eyes when she got to the door and laid her hand on the latch. She was too absent-minded to observe at first that the bolt had been moved into its place, and that the door was locked. Her hand had become strange to the mechanism before her, and she was a little awkward in getting the bolt out of the way. But the expression of pity and concern was still in her eyes when she finally pulled the door toward her.

And then she seemed to have known all the time that it was Fectnor who stood there.



CHAPTER XIII

He slipped past her into the room, and when she uttered a forlorn cry of defeat and shrank back he gripped her by the wrist. Holding her so, he turned where he stood and locked the door again. Then he crossed the room, and closed and bolted that other door which opened into the room where Sylvia's father sat.

Then he released her and stood his ground stolidly while she shrank away from him, regarding him with incredulous questioning, with black terror. She got the impression that he believed himself to have achieved a victory; that there was no further occasion for him to feel anxious or wary. It was as if the disagreeable beginning to a profitable enterprise had been gotten over with. And that look of callous complacence was scarcely more terrifying than his silence, for as yet he had not uttered a word.

And yet Sylvia could not regard herself as being really helpless. That door into her father's room: while it held, her father could not come to her, but she could go to her father. She had only to wait until Fectnor was off his guard, and touch the bolt and make her escape. Yet she perceived now, that for all Fectnor's seeming complacence, he remained between her and that door.

She looked about for other means of escape; but she knew immediately that there was none. Her own bedroom opened off the room in which she was now trapped; but it was a mere cubby-hole without an outer door or even a window. On the other side of the room there was a window looking out toward the desert; but even as her glance sought relief in that direction she remembered that this window, of only half-sash dimensions, was nailed into its place and was immovable. Against the dusty panes a bird-cage hung, and she realized with an oddly ill-timed pang of sorrow that it was empty. It was plain that the canary had died during her absence; and she wondered if anything in all the world could seem so empty as a bird-cage which had once had an occupant and had lost it. The sunset sky beyond that empty cage and the uncleaned window-panes caught her glance: an infinitely far-off drift of saffron with never a moving figure between it and the window through which she looked.

Then all her terrors were renewed by Fectnor's voice. He had sauntered to a small table near the middle of the room and sat down on the end of it, after shoving a chair in Sylvia's direction.

"What's the matter with you, Sylvia?" he demanded. He scarcely seemed angry: impatient would be the word, perhaps.

Something in his manner, rather than his words, wiped out that chasm of time that had been placed between them. It was as if she had talked with him yesterday. She felt hideously familiar with him—on the same mental and moral plane with him.

"I am married," she said shortly. If she had thought she would resort to parleying and evasions, she now had no intention of doing so. It seemed inevitable that she should talk to Fectnor in his own language.

"I don't care anything about your marriage," he said. "A bit of church flummery. Use your brains, Sylvia. You know that couldn't make any difference."

"I'm not thinking about the flummery. That isn't it. It's the fact that I love the man I married."

"All very well and good. But you know you used to love me."

"No, I never did."

"Oh, yes you did. You just forget. At any rate, you was as much to me as you could ever be to a husband. You know you can't drop me just because it's convenient for you to take up with somebody else. You know that's not the way I'm built."

She had refused to use the chair he had shoved toward her. She stood beside it a little defiantly. Now she looked into his eyes with a kind of imperious reasonableness. "Whatever I was to you, Fectnor," she said, "I became because I was forced into it."

"I never forced you," he responded stoutly.

"In one way, you didn't; but just the same ... you had both hands reached out to seize me when I fell. You never tried to help me; you were always digging the pitfall under my feet. You were forever holding out your hand with money in it; and there was you on one side of me with your money, and my father on the other with his never-ending talk about poverty and debts and his fear of you—and you know you took pains to make him fear you—and his saying always that it wouldn't make any difference in what people thought of me, whether I stood out against you or...." Her glance shifted and fell. There were some things she could not put into words.

"That's book talk, Sylvia. Come out into the open. I know what the female nature is. You're all alike. You all know when to lower your eyes and lift your fan and back into a corner. That's the female's job, just as it's the male's job to be bold and rough. But you all know to a hair how far to carry that sort of thing. You always stop in plenty of time to get caught."

She looked at him curiously. "I suppose," she said after a pause, "that roughly describes certain love-making processes. But it really wasn't love-making between you and me, Fectnor. It was a kind of barter."

His eyes seemed to snare hers relentlessly. "You're not doing yourself justice, Sylvia," he said. "You're not one of the bartering kind. You'd have killed me—you'd have killed yourself—before you'd have let me touch you, if you hadn't liked me. You know that's a fact."

The shadow of a frown darkened her brow. "There was a time when you had a kind of fascination for me. The way you had of making other men seem little and dumb, when you came in and spoke. You seemed so much alive. I noticed once that you didn't count your change when you'd paid for some drinks. That was the way in everything you did. You seemed lavish with everything that was in you; you let the big things go and didn't worry about the change. You were a big man in some ways, Fectnor. A girl needn't have been ashamed of admiring you. But Fectnor ... I've come to see what a low life it was I was leading. In cases like that, what the woman yields is ... is of every possible importance to her, while the man parts only with his money."

He smote the table with his fist. "I'm glad you said that," he cried triumphantly. "There's a lie in that, and I want to nail it. The man gives only his money, you say. Do you understand what that means where a hard-working devil is concerned? What has he got besides the few pennies he earns? When he gives his money, isn't he giving his strength and his youth? Isn't he giving his manhood? Isn't he giving the things that are his for only a few years, and that he can't get back again? I'm not talking about the dandies who have a lot of money they never earned. I should think a woman with as much as one bone in her body would take a shotgun to that sort whenever they came around. I'm talking about the fellows that sweat for what they get. A lot of mollycoddles and virtuous damn fools have built up that Sunday-school junk about the woman giving everything, and the man giving nothing. But I want to tell you it's nip and tuck as to who gives the most. A woman takes a man's money as if it grew on bushes. Go and watch him earn it, if you want to know what his part of the bargain is."

She felt as if she were being crowded against a wall. She could not look at him. She groped for a weapon—for any weapon—with which to fight him. "That would sound a little more impressive, Fectnor," she said, "if I didn't know what brought you to Eagle Pass just now, and how you sweat for the pay you got."

This was unfortunately said, for there was malice in it, and a measure of injustice. He heard her calmly.

"This election business is only a side-line of mine," he replied. "I enjoy it. There's nothing like knowing you can make a lot of so-called men roll over and play dead. If a man wants to find out where he stands, let him get out and try to make a crowd do something. Let him try to pull any prunes-and-prism stuff, either with his pocketbook or his opinions, and see where he gets off at. No, Sylvia, you played the wrong card. Eleven months out of the year I work like a nigger, and if you don't know it, you'd better not say anything more about it."

He clasped his hands about his knee and regarded her darkly, yet with a kind of joyousness. There was no end of admiration in his glance, but of kindness there was never a suggestion.

She gathered new energy from that look in his eyes. After all, they had been arguing about things which did not matter now. "Fectnor," she said, "I'm sure there must be a good deal of justice in what you say. But I know you're forgetting that when the man and the woman are through with youth there is a reckoning which gives the man all the best of it. His wrong-doing isn't stamped upon him. He is respected. He may be poor, but he isn't shunned."

"That's more of the same lie. Did you ever see a poor man—a really poor man—who was respected? There may be two or three of the people who know him best who will give him credit for certain things—if he denies himself to pay a debt, or forfeits his rest to sit up with a sick neighbor. But take the world as a whole, doesn't it ride over the man who's got nothing? Isn't he dreaded like a plague? Isn't he a kill-joy? I don't care what a woman's been, she's as well off. A few people will give her credit for the good she does, and that's all a man can hope for, if he's been generous enough or enough alive to let his money go. No, you can't build up any fences, Sylvia. We're all in the same herd."

She felt oppressed by the hardness, the relentlessness, of his words, his manner. She could not respond to him. But she knew that everything this man said, and everything he was, left out of the account all those qualities which make for hope and aspirations and faith.

Her glance, resting upon him as from a great distance, seemed to irritate him. "After all, Sylvia," he said, "you're putting on an awful lot of silk that don't belong to you. Suppose we say that you'd have kept away from me if you hadn't been too much influenced. There are other things to be remembered. Peterson, for example. Remember Peterson? I watched you and him together a good bit. You'll never tell me you wasn't loose with him."

Much of her strength and pride returned to her at this. Whatever the truth was, she knew that Fectnor had no right to bring such a charge against her. "Your language is very quaint at times," she said. A curve of disdain hovered about her lips. "I'm not aware of being, or of ever having been, loose in any way. I can't think where such a word originated."

"You know what I mean well enough. And some of those young fellows—the soldiers and railroaders—I don't suppose any of them have got anything on you, either?"

"They haven't, Fectnor!" she exclaimed hotly. She resolved to have nothing more to say to him. She felt that his brutality gave her the right to have done with him. And then her glance was arrested by his powerful hand, where it lay on the table beside him. It was blunt-fingered and broad and red, with the back covered by yellow hairs which extended down to the dabs of finger-nails.

He seemed to read her mind, and in answer he took up a heavy pewter cup and held it toward her. For an instant he permitted her to scrutinize the cup, and then his fingers closed. He opened his hand and the shapeless mass of pewter fell to the floor. He threw his head back with the ecstasy of perfect physical fitness. His laughter arose, almost hysterically.

"Fectnor!" she cried, standing tense and white before him, "I think you're all brute—just common, hopeless brute."

He became perfectly serious; but presently he regarded her with a flicker of humor in his eyes, she thought. "You didn't say that as if you meant it, Sylvia," he declared. "You didn't say it as if you quite believed it. But I'm going to show you that you're right. What we've been together, Sylvia, you and I, we're going to continue to be until we both agree to quit. That's what you may call justice. And so far I'm not agreeing to quit."

He came toward her then, and she perceived that his bearing had altered completely. He seemed moved by some impulse stronger than himself—as if it were quite outside himself.

She felt that her heart had suddenly ceased to beat. A leopard crouching before her on a limb could not have seemed more pitiless, more terrible. She had sprung to the door opening into her father's room before he could reach her. Her fingers shot the bolt and the door was open. And then she knew she had made a fatal mistake in holding that long and quiet parley with the beast that had trapped her. She had led her father, doubtless, to believe that it was an amicable talk that had been going on behind the closed door. She knew now that at the first instant of Fectnor's appearance she should have given battle and cried for help.

Now, looking into the adjoining room, while Fectnor's grip closed upon her wrist, she saw the front door quietly close. Her father had gone out.



CHAPTER XIV

Sylvia climbed the hill in the dusk.

A casual observer would have remarked that all was not right with her. Beneath a calm exterior something brooded. You might have supposed that some of the trivial things of existence had gone wrong: that a favorite servant had left her, or that the dressmaker had failed to keep an appointment. Sylvia was not an unschooled creature who would let down the scroll of her life's story to be read by every idle eye.

But the gods of the desert, if any such there be—the spirit of the yucca and the cactus and the sage—must have known by the lines of that immobile face, by the unseeing stare in those weary eyes, that some fundamental change had come over the woman who passed along that road. Sylvia had seemed almost like a happy child when she descended the hill an hour before. It was a woman who fashioned a new philosophy of life who now returned.

It was her own father who had bade her come; it was the man she loved—for whom she had meant to create her life anew—who had bade her go; and it was one to whom she had never told an untruth, for whose pleasure she had been beautiful and gay, who had destroyed her.

She had not fully realized how beautiful a thing her new security had been; how deeply in her nature the roots of a new hope, of a decent orderliness had taken hold. But the transplanted blossom which had seemed to thrive naturally under the fostering care of Harboro—as if it had never bloomed elsewhere than in his heart—had been ruthlessly torn up again. The seeming gain had been turned into a hideous loss.

And so over that road where a woman with illusions had passed, a philosopher who no longer dreamed returned.

Harboro, from his seat on the balcony, saw her coming. And something which surrounded her like an aura of evil startled him. He dropped his newspaper to the floor and leaned forward, his pulse disturbed, his muscles tense. As she drew nearer he arose with the thought of hurrying down-stairs to meet her; and then it occurred to him that she would wish to see him alone, away from the averted eyes of old Antonia, which saw everything.

A little later he heard her coming up the stairs with heavy, measured steps. And in that moment he warned himself to be calm, to discount the nameless fears—surely baseless fears—which assailed him.

She appeared in the doorway and stood, inert, looking at him as from a great distance.

"Well, Sylvia?" he said gently. He was seated now, and one arm was stretched out over the arm of his chair invitingly. He tried to smile calmly.

She did not draw any nearer to him. Her face was almost expressionless, save that her eyes seemed slowly to darken as she regarded him. And then he saw that certain muscles in her face twitched, and that this tendency swiftly strengthened.

"Sylvia!" he exclaimed, alarmed. He arose and took a step toward her.

She staggered toward him and rested her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were averted, and Harboro realized with a pang that she did not touch him with the familiar touch which seemed to call to something within him to respond, to make itself manifest. She was merely seeking for support such as a wall or a gate might afford to one who is faint.

He touched her face with his hand and brought it about so that he could read her eyes; but this movement she resisted—not irritably, but hopelessly. He slipped an arm around her yearningly, and then the storm within her broke.

He thought she must be suffocating. She gasped for breath, lifting her chin high. She was shaken with sobs. She clasped his head in her hands and placed her face against it—but the movement was despairing, not loving.

He tried again to look into her eyes; and presently he discovered that they were quite dry. It seemed she had lost the power to weep; yet her sobs became rhythmic, even—like those of any woman who grieves deeply and is still uncomforted.

He held her tenderly and spoke her name over and over. The tears would come soon, and when she had wept he could ask her to tell him what it was that had wounded her. He was suffering cruelly; he was in despair. But he admonished himself firmly to bear with her, to comfort her, to wait.

And at last, as if indeed she had been leaning against a wall for support until she could recover herself, she drew away from him. She was almost calm again; but Harboro realized that she was no nearer to him than she had been when first she had climbed the stairs and stood before him.

He placed a firm hand on her shoulder and guided her to a chair. He sat down and pulled her gently down to him. "Now, Sylvia!" he said with firmness.

She was kneeling beside him, her elbows on his knees, her face in her hands. But the strange remoteness was still there. She would not look at him.

"Come!" he admonished. "I am waiting."

She looked at him then; but she wore the expression of one who does not understand.

"Something has gone wrong," he said. "You see, I've not been impatient with you. But you ought to tell me now."

"You mean I ought to tell you what's gone wrong?"

He was startled by the even, lifeless quality of her voice. "Of course!"

"In just a word or two, I suppose?"

"If you can."

She knelt where she could look away toward the west—toward Mexico; and she noted, with mild surprise, that a new moon hung low in the sky, sinking slowly into the desert. It seemed to her that years had passed since she had seen the moon—a full moon, swinging, at this hour of the evening, in the eastern sky.

"Come, Sylvia!" It was Harboro's urgent voice again.

"If I only could!" she said, moving a little in token of her discomfort.

"Why not?"

"I mean, if any of us could ever say what it is that has gone wrong. Everything has gone wrong. From the very beginning. And now you ask me: 'What's gone wrong?' just as you might ask, 'What time is it, Sylvia?' or, 'Who is it coming up the road?' I can't tell you what's gone wrong. If I talked to you a week—a month—I couldn't tell you half of it. I don't believe I ever could. I don't believe I know."

These vagaries might have touched Harboro at another time; they might have alarmed him. But for the moment wrath stirred in him. He arose almost roughly. "Very well," he said, "I shall go to your father. I shall have the facts."

This angry reference to her father—or perhaps it was the roughness of his withdrawal from her—affected her in a new way.

"No, you must not do that!" she cried despairingly, and then the tears came suddenly—the tears which had stubbornly refused to flow.

"There," he said, instantly tender again, "you'll feel better soon. I won't be impatient with you."

But Sylvia's tears were only incidental to some lesser fear or grief. They did not spring from the wrong she had suffered, or from the depths of her nature, which had been dwarfed and darkened. She listlessly pulled a chair into a better position and sat down where she need not look at Harboro. "Give me a little time," she said. "You know women have moods, don't you?" She tried to speak lightly. "If there is anything I can tell you, I will—if you'll give me time."

She had no intention of telling Harboro what had happened. The very thought of such a course was monstrous. Nothing could be undone. She could only make conditions just a little worse by talking. She realized heavily that the thing which had happened was not a complete episode in itself; it was only one chapter in a long story which had its beginnings in the first days in Eagle Pass, and even further away. Back in the San Antonio days. She could not give Harboro an intelligent statement of one chapter without detailing a long, complicated synopsis of the chapters that went before.

To be sure, she did not yet know the man she was dealing with—Harboro. She was entirely misled by the passive manner in which he permitted her to withdraw from him.

"Yes, you shall have time," he said. "I only want you to know that I am here to help you in any way I can."

She remained silent so long that he became impatient again. "Did you find your father very ill?" he hazarded.

"My father? Oh! No ... I can hardly say. He seemed changed. Or perhaps I only imagined that. Perhaps he really is very ill."

Another long silence ensued. Harboro was searching in a thousand dark places for the cause of her abnormal condition. There were no guide-posts. He did not know Sylvia's father. He knew nothing about the life she had led with him. He might be a cruel monster who had abused her—or he might be an unfortunate, unhappy creature, the very sight of whom would wound the heart of a sensitive woman.

He leaned forward and took her arm and drew her hand into his. "I'm waiting, Sylvia," he said.

She turned toward him with a sudden passion of sorrow. "It was you who required me to go!" she cried. "If only you hadn't asked me to go!"

"I thought we were both doing what was right and kind. I'm sorry if it has proved that we were mistaken. But surely you do not blame me?"

"Blame you? No ... the word hadn't occurred to me. I'm afraid I don't understand our language very well. Who could ever have thought of such a meaningless word as 'blame'? You might think little creatures—ants, or the silly locusts that sing in the heat—might have need of such a word. You wouldn't blame an apple for being deformed, would you?—or the hawk for killing the dove? We are what we are—that's all. I don't blame any one."

The bewildered Harboro leaned forward, his hands on his knees. "We are what we make ourselves, Sylvia. We do what we permit ourselves to do. Don't lose sight of that fact. Don't lose sight of the fact, either, that we are here, man and wife, to help each other. I'm waiting, Sylvia, for you to tell me what has gone wrong."

All that she grasped of what he said she would have denied passionately; but the iron in his nature, now manifesting itself again, she did not understand and she stood in awe of it.

"Give me until to-morrow," she pleaded. "I think perhaps I'm ill to-night. You know how you imagine things sometimes? Give me until to-morrow, until I can see more clearly. Perhaps it won't seem anything at all by to-morrow."

And Harboro, pondering darkly, consented to question her no more that night.

Later he lay by her side, a host of indefinable fears keeping him company. He could not sleep. He did not even remotely guess the nature of her trouble, but he knew instinctively that the very foundations of her being had been disturbed.

Once, toward morning, she began to cry piteously. "No, oh no!" The words were repeated in anguish until Harboro, in despair, seized her in his arms. "What is it, Sylvia?" he cried. "No one shall harm you!"

He held her on his breast and soothed her, his own face harrowed with pain. And he noticed that she withdrew into herself again, and seemed remote, a stranger to him.

Then she fell into a sound sleep and breathed evenly for hours. The dawn broke and a wan light filled the room. Harboro saw that her face was the face of Sylvia again—the face of a happy child, as it seemed to him. In her sleep she reached out for him contentedly and found his throat, and her fingers rested upon it with little, intermittent, loving pressures.

Finally she awoke. She awoke, but Harboro's crowning torture came when he saw the expression in her eyes. The horror of one who tumbles into a bottomless abyss was in them. But now—thank God!—she drew herself to him passionately and wept in his arms. The day had brought back to her the capacity to think, to compare the fine edifice she and Harboro had built with the wreck which a cruel beast had wrought. She sobbed her strength away on Harboro's breast.

And when the sun arose she looked into her husband's gravely steadfast eyes, and knew that she must tell the truth. She knew that there was nothing else for her to do. She spared her father, inventing little falsehoods on his behalf; herself she spared, confessing no fault of her own. But the truth, as to how on the night before Fectnor had trapped her and wronged her in her father's house, she told. She knew that Harboro would never have permitted her to rest if she had not told him; she knew that she must have gone mad if she had not unbosomed herself to this man who was as the only tree in the desert of her life.



CHAPTER XV

She was puzzled by the manner in which he heard her to the end. She expected an outburst; and she found only that after one moment, during which his body became rigid and a look of incredulous horror settled in his eyes, a deadly quiet enveloped him. He did not try to comfort her—and certainly there was no evidence that he blamed her. He asked her a few questions when she had finished. He was not seeking to implicate her—she felt certain of that. He merely wanted to be quite sure of his ground.

Then he got up and began dressing, deliberately and quietly. It did not occur to her that he was not putting on the clothes he usually wore on Sunday, but this deviation from a rule would not have seemed significant to her even if she had noticed it. She closed her eyes and pondered. In Sylvia's world men did not calmly ignore injury. They became violent, even when violence could not possibly mend matters. Had Harboro decided to accept the inevitable, the irremediable, without a word? Her first thought, last night, had been that she would probably lose Harboro, too, together with her peace of mind. He would rush madly at Fectnor, and he would be killed. Was he the sort of man who would place discretion first and pocket an insult?

Oddly, the fear that he would attack Fectnor changed to a fear that he did not intend to do so. She could not bear to think of the man she loved as the sort of man who will not fight, given such provocation as Harboro had.

She opened her eyes to look at him, to measure him anew. But he was no longer in the room.

Then her fear for him returned with redoubled force. Quiet men were sometimes the most desperate, the most unswerving, she realized. Perhaps he had gone even now to find Fectnor.

The thought terrified her. She sprang from the bed and began dressing with feverish haste. She would overtake him and plead with him not to go. If necessary, she would tell him other things about herself—about the reasons she had given Fectnor, long ago, to believe that she was not a woman to be respected. Harboro would not forgive her, in that event. He would leave her. But he would not go to his death. It seemed to her quite clear that the only unforgivable sin she could commit would be to permit Harboro to die for her sake.

She hurried down into the dining-room. Ah, Harboro was there! And again she was puzzled by his placidity. He was standing at a window, with his back to her, his hands clasped behind him. He turned when he heard her. "It promises to be another warm day," he said pleasantly. Then he turned and looked out through the kitchen door as if hinting to Antonia that breakfast might now be served.

He ate his grapes and poached eggs and drank his coffee in silence. He seemed unaware that Sylvia was regarding him with troubled eyes.

When he arose from the table he turned toward the hall. As if by an afterthought, he called back, "I'm going to be busy for a little while, Sylvia," and she heard him going up the stairs.

His tone had conveyed a hint that he did not wish to be disturbed, she thought, but she could not help being uncomfortably curious. What was there to be done on a Sunday morning that could compare in importance with the obviously necessary task of helping her to forget the injuries she had suffered? It was not his way to turn away from her when she needed him.

She could not understand his conduct at all. She was wounded; and then she began to think more directly, more clearly. Harboro was not putting this thing away from him. In his way he was facing it. But how?

She noiselessly climbed the stairs and opened the door of their bedroom.

With great exactitude of movement he was cleaning a pistol. He had taken it apart and just now a cylinder of burnished steel was in his hand.

He frowned when he heard her. "I am sorry you came up, Sylvia," he said. "I had an idea I'd given you to understand...."

She hurriedly withdrew, closing the door behind her. She felt an inexplicable elation as she went down the stairs; yet she felt that she stood face to face with calamity, too. Her man was a fighting man, then—only he was not a madman. He was the sort of fighter who did not lose his head. But she could not picture him as a man skilled in the brutal work of killing. He was too deliberate, too scrupulous, for that sort of work. And Fectnor was neither deliberate nor scrupulous. He was the kind of man who would be intently watchful for an advantage, and who would be elated as he seized that advantage.

... She would persuade Harboro not to go, after all. The thing was not known. It would never be known. Her searching woman's logic brought to her the realization that the only way to publish the facts broadcast was for Harboro to seek a quarrel with Fectnor. He would have to give his reasons.

But when Harboro came down the stairs she knew instantly that she could not stop him from going. That quiet look was not unreadable now. It meant unswerving determination.

He called to her, his hand outstretched; and when she went to him he kissed her. His voice was gentle and unshaken, in quite the habitual way, when he said: "I shall be back in a little while."

She clasped her hands and looked at him imploringly. "Don't go," she pleaded.

"Ah, but I must go."

She touched his cheeks with her hands. "Don't go!" she repeated. "Nothing can be undone."

"But a man's job isn't to undo things—it's to do them."

She held her face high as if the waters were engulfing her. "Don't go!" she said again; and her eyes were swimming, so that at the last she did not see him go, and did not know that he had kept that look of placid courage to the end.

It was a little early for the usual Sunday morning loiterers to be about as Harboro entered the town. For a moment he believed there was no one about at all. The little town, with its main street and its secondary thoroughfares bordered by low structures, might have been regarded as the habitation of lesser creatures than human beings, as it stood there musing after the departed night, in the midst of limitless wastes of sand. That group of houses might have been likened to some kind of larger birds, hugging the earth in trepidation, ready to take flight at any moment.

Yet Harboro had been mistaken in supposing that no one was as yet astir. Two men stood out in the street, at the entrance to the Maverick bar, near a hitching-post to which a small horse carrying a big saddle was tethered. One of the men was about to mount. As Harboro approached he untied his horse and lifted one foot to its stirrup, and stood an instant longer to finish what he was saying, or perhaps to hear the other out.

The other man was in his shirt-sleeves. He carried a blue-serge sack-coat over his arm. He stood facing Harboro as the latter approached; and the expression in his eyes seemed to change in a peculiar way at sight of the big, swarthy man who stepped off the sidewalk, down into the street, and seemed to be headed directly toward him.

The two men had never met before; but Harboro, taking in that compact, muscular figure, found himself musing with assurance: "That is Fectnor."

Nothing in his face or carriage betrayed his purpose, and the man with the blue-serge garment on his arm kept his ground complacently. The man with the horse mounted and rode away.

Harboro advanced easily until he was within arm's length of the other man in the street. "You're Fectnor, aren't you?" he asked.

"I am," replied the other crisply.

Harboro regarded him searchingly. At length he remarked: "Fectnor, I see you've got a gun on you."

"I have," was the steely response. Fectnor's narrow blue eyes became, suddenly, the most alert thing about a body which was all alertness.

"So have I," said Harboro.

The other's narrow eyes seemed to twinkle. His response sounded like: "The L you say!"

"Yes," said Harboro. He added: "My wife was the woman you trapped in Little's house last night."

Fectnor's mind went swiftly to the weapon in his holster; and something more than his mind, surely, since Harboro knew. Yet the man's hand had barely moved. However, he casually threw the coat he carried over his left arm, leaving his right hand free. If he had thought of reaching for his weapon he had probably realized that he must first get out of reach of Harboro's arm. "You might put that a little different," he said lightly. "You might say—the woman I met in Little's house."

Harboro took in the insinuated insult. He remained unmoved. He could see that Fectnor was not a coward, no matter what else he was; and he realized that this man would seek to enrage him further, so that his eyes would be blinded, so that his hands would tremble.

"I'm going to kill you, Fectnor," Harboro continued. "But I'm going to give you a chance for your life. I want you to turn and walk down the street twelve paces. Then turn and draw. I'll not draw until you turn unless you try to play a trick on me. Your best chance lies in your doing just as I tell you to."

Fectnor regarded him shrewdly with his peering, merry eyes. He rather liked Harboro, so far as first impressions went. Yet his lips were set in a straight line. "All right," he drawled amiably. His voice was pitched high—almost to a falsetto.

"Remember, you'd better not draw until you've turned around," advised Harboro. "You'll be more likely to get your bearings right that way. You see, I want to give you an even break. If I'd wanted to murder you I could have slipped up from behind. You see that, of course."

"Clear as a whistle," said Fectnor. He gave Harboro a final searching look and then turned about unflinchingly. He proceeded a few steps, his hands held before him as if he were practising a crude cake-walk. The serge garment depended from one arm. He was thinking with lightning-like rapidity. Harboro had courage enough—that he could tell—but he didn't behave like a man who knew very many tricks with a gun. Nevertheless he, Fectnor, would be under a disadvantage in this test of skill which was being forced upon him. When he turned he would need just a second to get a perfect balance, to be quite sure of his footing, to get his bearings. And that one second might make all the difference in the outcome of the affair. Moreover, there was one other point in Harboro's favor, Fectnor realized. His was the stronger determination of the two. Fectnor had not flinched, but he knew that his heart was not in this fight. He could see that Harboro was a good deal of a man. A fool, perhaps, but still a decent fellow.

These were conclusions which had come in flashes, while Fectnor took less than half a dozen steps. Then he turned his head partly, and flung back almost amiably: "Wait until I get rid of my coat!"

"Drop it!" cried Harboro sharply.

But Fectnor plainly had another idea. He turned a little out of his course, still with his hands well in front of him. It was evident, then, that he meant to fling his coat on the sidewalk.

Harboro held him with eyes which were keen as knives, yet still a little dubious. He was puzzled by the man's good humor; he was watchful for sudden stratagems. His own hands were at his sides, the right within a few inches of his hip.

Yet, after all, he was unprepared for what happened. Fectnor leaned forward as if to deposit his coat on the sidewalk. Then he seemed to stumble, and in two swift leaps he had gained the inner side of the walk and had darted into the inset of the saloon. He was out of sight in a flash.

As if by some feat in legerdemain Harboro's weapon was in his hand; but it was a hand that trembled slightly. He had allowed Fectnor to gain an advantage.

He stared fixedly at that place where Fectnor had disappeared. His right hand was held in the position of a runner's, and the burnished steel of the weapon in it caught the light of the sun. He had acquired the trick of firing while his weapon was being elevated—not as he lowered it; with a movement like the pointing of a finger. He was ready for Fectnor, who would doubtless try to take him by surprise.

Then he realized that the level rays of the sun made the whole entrance to the saloon, with its several facets of glass, a thing of dazzling opaqueness. He could not see Fectnor until the latter stepped forth from his ambush; yet it seemed probable that Fectnor might be able to see him easily enough through the glass barricade behind which he had taken refuge. He might expect to hear the report of a weapon and the crash of glass at any instant.

At this realization he had an ugly sensation at the roots of his hair—as if his scalp had gone to sleep. Yet he could only stand and wait. It would be madness to advance.

So he stood, almost single-mindedly. He had a disagreeable duty to perform, and he must perform it. Yet the lesser cells of his brain spoke to him, too, and he realized that he must present a shocking sight to law-abiding, happy people, if any should appear. He was glad that the street was still deserted, and that he might reasonably hope to be unseen.

Then his hand shot forward with the fierceness of a tiger's claw: there had been a movement in the saloon entrance. Only by the fraction of a second was the finger on the trigger stayed.

It was not Fectnor who appeared. Dunwoodie stepped into sight casually and looked in Harboro's direction. The expression of amused curiosity in his eyes swiftly gave place to almost comical amazement when he took in that spasmodic movement of Harboro's.

"What's up?" he inquired. He approached Harboro leisurely.

"Stand aside, Dunwoodie," commanded Harboro harshly.

"Well, wait a minute," insisted Dunwoodie. "Calm yourself, man. I want to talk to you. Fectnor's not in the saloon. He went on through and out the back way."

Harboro wheeled with an almost despairing expression in his eyes. He seemed to look at nothing, now—like a bird-dog that senses the nearness of the invisible quarry. The thought came to him: "Fectnor may appear at any point, behind me!" The man might have run back along the line of buildings, seeking his own place to emerge again.

But Dunwoodie went on reassuringly. He had guessed the thought in Harboro's mind. "No, he's quite gone. I watched him go. He's probably in Mexico by this time—or well on his way, at least."

Harboro drew a deep breath. "You watched him go?"

"When he came into the saloon, like a rock out of a sling, he stopped just long enough to grin, and fling out this—to me—'If you want to see a funny sight, go out front.' Fectnor never did like me, anyway. Then he scuttled back and out. I followed to see what was the matter. He made straight for the bridge road. He was sprinting. He's gone."

Harboro's gun had disappeared. He was frowning; and then he realized that Dunwoodie was looking at him with a quizzical expression.

He made no explanation, however.

"I must be getting along home," he said shortly. He was thinking of Sylvia.



CHAPTER XVI

Dunwoodie was not given to talkativeness; moreover, he was a considerate man, and he respected Harboro. Therefore it may be doubted if he ever said anything about that unexplained drama which occurred on the main street of Eagle Pass on a Sunday morning, before the town was astir. But there was the bartender at the Maverick—and besides, it would scarcely have been possible for any man to do what Harboro had done without being seen by numbers of persons looking out upon the street through discreetly closed windows.

At any rate, there was talk in the town. By sundown everybody knew there had been trouble between Harboro and Fectnor, and men who dropped into the Maverick for a game of high-five or poker had their attention called to an unclaimed blue-serge coat hanging from the ice-box.

"He got away with his skin," was the way the bartender put the case, "but he left his coat."

There was a voice from one of the card-tables: "Well, any man that gets Fectnor's coat is no slouch."

There were a good many expressions of undisguised wonder at Fectnor's behavior; and nobody could have guessed that perhaps some sediment of manhood which had remained after all the other decent standards had disappeared had convinced Fectnor that he did not want to kill a man whom he had injured so greatly. And from the popular attitude toward Fectnor's conduct there grew a greatly increased respect for Harboro.

That, indeed, was the main outcome of the episode, so far as the town as a whole was concerned. Harboro became a somewhat looming figure. But with Sylvia ... well, with Sylvia it was different.

Of course Sylvia was connected with the affair, and in only one way. She was the sort of woman who might be expected to get her husband into trouble, and Fectnor was the kind of man who might easily appeal to her imagination. This was the common verdict; and the town concluded that it was an interesting affair—the more so because nearly all the details had to be left to the imagination.

As for Sylvia, the first direct result of her husband's gun-play was that a week or two after the affair happened, she had a caller—the wife of Jesus Mendoza.

She had not had any callers since her marriage. Socially she had been entirely unrecognized. The social stratum represented by the Mesquite Club, and that lower stratum identified with church "socials" and similar affairs, did not know of Sylvia's existence—had decided definitely never to know of her existence after she had walked down the aisle of the church to the strains of the Lohengrin march. Nevertheless, there had been that trip to the church, and the playing of the march; and this fact placed Sylvia considerably above certain obscure women in the town who were not under public condemnation, but whose status was even more hopeless—who were regarded as entirely negligible.

The wife of Jesus Mendoza was one of these. She was an American woman, married to a renegade Mexican who was notoriously evil. I have referred to Mendoza as a man who went about partly concealed in his own cloud of cigarette smoke, who looked at nothing in particular and who was an active politician of a sort. He had his place in the male activities of the town; but you wouldn't have known he had a wife from anything there was in his conversation or in his public appearances. Nobody remembered ever to have seen the two together. She remained indoors in all sorts of weather save when she had marketing to do, and then she looked neither to left nor right. Her face was like a mask. She had been an unfortunate creature when Mendoza married her; and she was perhaps thankful to have even a low-caste Mexican for a husband, and a shelter, and money enough to pay the household expenses.

That her life could not have been entirely complete, even from her own way of thinking, was evidenced by the fact that at last she came to call on Sylvia in the house on the Quemado Road.

Sylvia received her with reticence and with a knowing look. She was not pleased that Mrs. Mendoza had decided to call. She realized just what her own status was in the eyes of this woman, who had assumed that she might be a welcome visitor.

But Sylvia's outlook upon life, as has been seen, was distorted in many ways; and she was destined to realize that she must form new conclusions as to this woman who had come to see her in her loneliness.

Mrs. Mendoza was tactful and kind. She assumed nothing, save that Sylvia was not very thoroughly acquainted in the town, and that as she had had her own house now for a month or two, she would expect people to be neighborly. She discussed the difficulties of housekeeping so far from the source of supplies. She was able, incidentally, to give Sylvia a number of valuable hints touching these difficulties. She discussed the subject of Mexican help without self-consciousness. During her call it developed that she was fond of music—that in fact she was (or had been) a musician. And for the first time since Sylvia's marriage there was music on the piano up in the boudoir.

Mrs. Mendoza played with a passionateness which was quite out of keeping with her mask-like expression. It was like finding a pearl in an oyster, hearing her at the piano. She played certain airs from Fra Diavolo so skilfully that she seemed to be letting bandits into the house; and when she saw that Sylvia was following with deep appreciation she passed on to the Tower Scene, giving to the minor chords a quality of massiveness. Her expression changed oddly. There was color in her cheeks and a stancher adjustment of the lines of her face. She suggested a good woman struggling through flames to achieve safety. When she played from Il Trovatore you did not think of a conservatory, but of a prison.

She stopped after a time and the color swiftly receded from her cheeks. "I'm afraid I've been rather in earnest," she said apologetically. "I haven't played on a good piano for quite a long time." She added, as if her remark might seem an appeal for pity, "the climate here injures a piano in a year or so. The fine sand, you know."

"You must come and use mine whenever you will," said Sylvia heartily. "I love it, though I've never cared to play myself."

"I wonder why?"

"Ah, I could scarcely explain. I've been too busy living. It has always seemed to me that music and pictures and books were for people who had been caught in an eddy and couldn't go on with the stream." She realized the tactlessness of this immediately, and added: "That's just a silly fancy. What I should have said, of course, is that I haven't the talent."

"Don't spoil it," remonstrated the other woman thoughtfully. "But you must remember that few of us can always go on with the stream."

"Sometimes you get caught in the whirlpools," said Sylvia, as they were going down the stairs, "and then you can't stop, even if you'd like to."

I doubt if either woman derived a great deal of benefit from this visit. They might have become helpful friends under happier conditions; but neither had anything to offer the other save the white logic of untoward circumstances and defeat.

The wife of Jesus Mendoza did not know Sylvia well enough to perceive that a certain blitheness and faith had abandoned her, never to return. Nevertheless, the fact of her visit has its place in this chronicle, since it had a cruel bearing upon a day which still lay in Sylvia's future.

Sylvia's caller went home; and, as it chanced, she never called again at the house on the Quemado Road. As for Sylvia, she did not speak to Harboro of her visitor. From his point of view, she thought, there would be nothing to be proud of in the fact that Mrs. Mendoza had called. And so Harboro was destined to go on to the end without knowing that there was any such person as the wife of Jesus Mendoza.



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PART IV

THE HORSE WITH THE GOLDEN DAPPLES

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CHAPTER XVII

Two events which had a bearing upon Sylvia's destiny occurred at about this time. I am not sure which came first: the invitation to a celebration out at the Quemado settlement, or the arrival on the border of Runyon, the mounted inspector.

The coming of Runyon caused a distinct ripple in the social circles of the two border towns. He was well connected, it was known: he was a cousin to a congressman in the San Angelo district, and he had a brother in the army.

He was a sort of frontier Apollo; a man in his prime, of striking build—a dashing fellow. He had the physical strength, combined with neatness of lines, which characterized Buffalo Bill in his younger days. He was a blond of the desert type, with a shapely mustache the color of flax, with a ruddy skin finely tanned by sun and wind, and with deep blue eyes which flashed and sparkled under his flaxen brows. He was a manly appearing fellow, though there was a glamour about him which made prosaic folk suspicious.

He rode a dun horse with golden dapples—a slim, proud thing which suited Runyon in every detail. When you saw him mounted you thought of a parade; you wondered where the rest of it was—the supernumerary complement.

The man was also characterized by the male contingent of the border as a "dresser." He was always immaculately clad, despite the exposure to which his work subjected him. He seemed to have an artist's sense of color effects. Everything he put on was not only faultless in itself, but it seemed specially designed and made for him. In the set of his sombrero and the style of his spurs he knew how to suggest rakishness without quite achieving it; and when he permitted his spirited horse to give way to its wayward or playful moods there was something just a little sinister in his mirth. He looked as much at home in conventional clothes as in his inspector's outfit, and he immediately became a social favorite on both sides of the river. It developed that he could sing quite amazingly. His voice was high-pitched, but there was power and fire in it. He sang easily and he loved to sing. His songs were the light-opera favorites, the fame of which reached the border from New York and London, and even Vienna. And when there was difficulty about getting the accompaniments played he took his place unaffectedly at the piano and played them himself.

His name began to appear regularly in the Eagle Pass Guide in connection with social events; and he was not merely mentioned as "among those present," but there was always something about his skill as a musician.

Of course Sylvia was destined to see him sooner or later, though she stayed at home with almost morbid fidelity to a resolution she had made. He rode out the Quemado Road one matchless December day when the very air would have seemed sufficient to produce flowers without calling the ungracious desert into service. Sylvia sat in her boudoir by an open window and watched him approach. She immediately guessed that it was Runyon. The remarkable manner in which he had conquered the town had made him an occasional subject for comment between Sylvia and Harboro, and he had described the man to her.

Sylvia thought that the rider and his horse, with the sun on the man's flashing blue eyes and the horse's golden dapples, constituted the prettiest picture she had ever seen. Never before had she observed a man who sat his horse with such an air of gallantry.

And as she regarded him appraisingly he glanced up at her, and there was the slightest indication of pleased surprise in his glance. She withdrew from the window; but when she reckoned that he was well past the house she looked after him. He was looking back, and their eyes met again.

It is decidedly contrary to my conviction that either Sylvia or Runyon consciously paved the way for future mischief when they indulged in that second glance at each other. He was the sort of man who might have attracted a second glance anywhere, and he would have been a poor fellow if he had not considered Sylvia a sight worth turning his head for.

Nevertheless, Sylvia regretted that second glance. It had an effect upon her heart which was far from soothing; and when she realized that her heart seemed suddenly to hurt her, her conscience followed suit and hurt her too. She closed the window righteously; though she was careful not to do so until she felt sure that Runyon was beyond sight and hearing.

And then there came to Harboro the invitation out to the Quemado. The belle of the settlement, a Mexican girl famed for her goodness and beauty, was to be married to one of the Wayne brothers, ranchers on an immense scale. The older of the two brothers was a conventional fellow enough, with an American wife and a large family; but the younger brother was known far and wide as a good-natured, pleasure-pursuing man who counted every individual in Maverick County, Mexican and American alike, his friend. It seemed that he was planning to settle down now, and he had won the heart of a girl who seemed destined to make an admirable mate for one of his nature-loving type, though his brother had mildly opposed the idea of a Mexican girl as a member of the family.

The wedding was to be in the fashion of the bride's race. It was to be an affair of some twenty-four hours' duration, counting the dancing and feasting, and it was to take place in a sort of stockade which served the Quemado settlement in lieu of a town hall or a public building of any kind.

Invitations had been practically unlimited in number. There was to be accommodation for hundreds. Many musicians had been engaged, and there was to be a mountain of viands, a flood of beverages. It was to be the sort of affair—democratic and broadly hospitable—which any honest man might have enjoyed for an hour or so, at least; and it was in that category of events which drew sightseers from a considerable distance. Doubtless there would be casual guests from Spofford (the nearest railroad point on the Southern Pacific) and from Piedras Negras, as well as from Eagle Pass and the remote corners of Maverick County.

Harboro's invitation had come to him through one of his fellow employees in the railroad offices—a Mexican who had spent four years in an American university, and who was universally respected for his urbane manner and kind heart. Valdez, his name was. He had heartily invited Harboro to go to the wedding with him as his guest; and when he saw traces of some sort of difficulty in Harboro's manner, he suggested, with the ready simpatia of his race, that doubtless there was a Mrs. Harboro also, and that he hoped Mrs. Harboro, too, would honor him by accepting his invitation. He promised that the affair would be enjoyable; that it would afford an interesting study of a people whose social customs still included certain pleasures which dated back to the Cortez invasion, as well as many of the latest American diversions.

Harboro tactfully sought for more definite details; and when he gathered that the affair would be too immense to be at all formal—that there would be introductions only so far as separate groups of persons were concerned, and that guests would be expected to come and go with perfect freedom, he accepted the invitation gratefully. He had not forgotten the slight which the two towns had put upon him and Sylvia, and he was not willing to subject himself to snubs from people who had behaved badly. But he realized that it was necessary for Sylvia to see people, to get away from the house occasionally, to know other society than his own.

In truth, Harboro had been very carefully taking account of Sylvia's needs. It seemed to him that she had not been really herself since that Sunday morning when he had had to place his life in jeopardy. In a way, she seemed to love him more passionately than ever before; but not so light-heartedly, so gladly. Some elfin quality in her nature was gone, and Harboro would gladly have brought it back again. She had listless moods; and sometimes as they sat together he surprised a strange look in her eyes. She seemed to be very far away from him; and he had on these occasions the dark thought that even the substance of her body was gone, too—that if he should touch her she would vanish in a cloud of dust, like that woman in Archibald Malmaison, after she had remained behind the secret panel, undiscovered, for a generation.

And so Harboro decided that he and Sylvia would go to the big affair at the Quemado.



CHAPTER XVIII

There was an atmosphere of happiness and bustle in the house when the night of the outing came. Harboro easily managed a half-holiday (it was a Saturday), and he had ample time to make careful selection of horses for Sylvia and himself at an Eagle Pass stable. He would have preferred a carriage, but Sylvia had assumed that they would ride, and she plainly preferred that mode of travel. She had been an excellent horsewoman in the old San Antonio days.

Old Antonia was drawn out of her almost trance-like introspection. The young senora was excited, as a child might have been, at the prospect of a long ride through the chaparral, and she must not be disappointed. She had fashioned a riding-habit and a very charming little jacket, and to these the old woman made an addition of her own—a wonderful rebozo. She brought it forth from among her own possessions and offered it affectionately.

"But shall I need it?" asked Sylvia.

Very surely she might, she was assured. She would not wish to dance in her riding costume, certainly. And it might turn chilly after nightfall. She would find that other young women had such garments to protect them. And this particular rebozo was quite wonderful. She pointed out its wonderful qualities. It was of so delicate a weave that it might have been thrust into a man's pocket; yet, unfolded, it proved to be of the dimensions of a blanket. And there was warmth in it. She folded it neatly and explained how it might be tied to the pommel of the saddle. It would not be in the way.

Sylvia affected much gratitude for such kindness and foresight, though she thought it unlikely that she would need a wrap of any sort.

There was an early supper, Antonia contributing a quite unprecedented alacrity; and then there was a cheerful call from the road. The horses had been brought.

Sylvia ran out to inspect them; and Harboro, following, was not a little amazed to perceive how important a matter she considered the sort of horses he had engaged. Horses were not a mere medium of travel to Sylvia; they were persons in the drama, and it was highly important that they should fit into the various romantic demands of the occasion. Harboro had stipulated that they should be safe horses, of good appearance; and the boy from the stable, who had brought them, regarded them with beaming eyes when Harboro examined them. The boy evidently looked at the affair much as Sylvia did—as if the selection of the horse was far more important than the determining of a destination.

"They seem to be all right," ventured Harboro.

"Yes, they are very good horses," agreed Sylvia; but she sighed a little.

Then there was the clatter of hoofs down the road, and Valdez appeared. He, too, bestrode a decidedly prosaic-appearing animal; but when Harboro exclaimed: "Ah, it's Valdez!" Sylvia became more interested in the man than in the horse. It would be a pity to have as companion on a long ride a man without merits. She was not very favorably impressed by Valdez. The man acknowledged his introduction to her too casually. There were no swift, confidential messages in his eyes. He seemed to be there for the purpose of devoting himself to Harboro, not to her.

Antonia came out to be sure that the cherished rebozo was tied to the pommel of Sylvia's saddle, and then Harboro and Sylvia went back into the house to get into their riding things. When they returned Harboro lifted her to her saddle with a lack of skill which brought a frown to her brows. But if she regretted the absence of certain established formalities in this performance, she yielded herself immediately to the ecstasy of being in the saddle. She easily assumed a pretty and natural attitude which made Harboro marvel at her.

She watched when it came time for him to mount. The horse moved uneasily, as horses have done since the beginning of time beneath the touch of unpractised riders. Harboro gathered the reins in too firm a grip, and the animal tried to pull away from him.

The boy from the stable sprang forward. "Let me hold his head," he said, with a too obvious intimation that Harboro needed help.

"Never mind," said Harboro crisply; and he achieved his place in the saddle by sheer force rather than by skill. Neither did he fall into an easy position; though under ordinary circumstances this fact would not have been noted. But Sylvia swiftly recalled the picture of a dun horse with golden dapples, and of a rider whose very attitude in the saddle was like a hymn of praise. And again she sighed.

She had seen Runyon often since the afternoon on which he had made his first appearance on the Quemado Road. Seemingly, his duties took him out that way often; and he never passed without glancing toward Sylvia's window—and looking back again after he had passed. Nor had he often found that place by the window vacant. In truth, it was one of Sylvia's pleasures in those days to watch Runyon ride by; and the afternoon seemed unduly filled with tedium when he failed to appear.

* * * * *

The little picture in front of Harboro's house dissolved. The three riders turned their horses' heads to the north and rode away. Antonia stood at the gate an instant and looked after them; but she did not derive any pleasure from the sight. It was not a very gallant-appearing group. Sylvia was riding between the two men, and all three were moving away in silence, as if under constraint. The stable-boy went somewhat dispiritedly back along the way he had come.

Sylvia was the first of the three riders to find herself. There were certain things which made the springs of gladness within her stir. The road was perfect. It stretched, smooth and white, away into the dusk. The air was clear as on a mountain top, with just enough crispness to create energy. Of wind there was scarcely a breath.

She was not pleased at all with Harboro's friend. He had assumed the attitude of a deferential guide, and his remarks were almost entirely addressed to Harboro. But she was not to be put out by so small a part of the night's programme. After all, Valdez was not planning to return with them, and they were likely to have the ride back by themselves. Valdez, she had been informed, was to be a sort of best friend to the family of the bride, and it would be his duty to remain for the next day's ceremonies—the feasting and the marriage itself.

The dusk deepened, and a new light began to glow over the desert. A waxing moon, half-full, rode near the zenith; and as the light of day receded it took on a surprising brilliance. The road seemed in some strange way to be more clearly defined than under the light of day. It became a winding path to happiness. It began to beckon; to whisper of the delights of swift races, of coquetries. It bade the riders laugh aloud and fling their cares away. Occasionally it rose or dipped; and then through little valleys between sand-dunes, or from low summits, the waters of the Rio Grande were visible away to the left. A mist was clinging to the river, making more mysterious its undisturbed progress through the desert.

After a long time the silence of the road was broken by the tinkle of a small bell, and Valdez pulled his horse in and looked sharply away into a mesquite-clad depression. Of old the road had been haunted by night-riders who were willing enough to ride away with a traveller's possessions, leaving the traveller staring sightlessly toward the sky. But Valdez thought of no menaces in connection with the border folk. He was a kind-hearted fellow, to whom all men were friends.