CHAPTER XII

They had a whole hour entirely to themselves and it went far toward restoring the years that the locusts had eaten. It was characteristic of them both that they talked little, even after the long ache of silence. For Jimsy, it was enough to have her there, in his arms, utterly his—to know that she had come to him alone and unafraid across land and sea; and for Honor the journey's end was to find him clear-eyed and clean-skinned and steady. Stephen Lorimer was right when he applied Gelett Burgess' "caste of the articulate" against them; they were very nearly of the "gagged and wordless folk." Yet their silence was a rather fine thing in its way; it expressed them—their simplicity, their large faith. It was not in them to make reproaches. It did not occur to Jimsy to say—"But why didn't you let me know you were coming?—At least you might have let me have the comfort of knowing you were on this side of the ocean!" And Honor never dreamed of saying "But Jimsy,—to rush from Stanford down here without sending me a line!"

Therefore it was somewhat remarkable that it came out, in the brief speeches between the long stillnesses, that Honor knew that Carter had telephoned to his mother as they passed through Los Angeles, and that Mrs. Van Meter had spoken of Honor's return, and she had naturally supposed he would tell Jimsy; and that Jimsy had written her a ten page letter, telling with merciless detail of the one wild party of protest in which he had taken part, of his horror and remorse, of his determination to go to his people in Mexico and stay until he was certain he had himself absolutely in hand and had made up his mind about his future.

"Well, it will be sent back to me from Florence," said Honor, contentedly.

"Funny it wasn't there almost as soon as you were—I sent it so long ago!—The night after that party, and I didn't leave for over two weeks, and that makes it—well, anyhow, it's had time to be back. But it doesn't matter now."

"No, it doesn't matter, now, Jimsy. I won't read it when it does come, because it's all ancient history—ancient history that—that never really happened at all! But I'm glad you wrote me, dear!" She rubbed her cheek against his bronzed face.

"Of course I'd tell you everything about it, Skipper."

"Of course you would, Jimsy."

They were just beginning to talk about the future—beyond hurrying back to Jimsy's father—when Carter came for them. He called to them before he came limping into the little cleared space, which was partly his tact in not wanting to come upon them unannounced, and partly because he didn't want, for his own sake, to find them as he knew he would find them, without warning. As a matter of fact, while Honor lifted her head with its ruffled honey-colored braids from Jimsy's shoulder, he kept his arm about her in brazen serenity.

Carter's eyes contracted for an instant, but he came close to them and held out his hand. "Honor! This is glorious! But why didn't you wire and let us meet you? We never dreamed of your coming! Of course, the mater told me you were on your way home, but I didn't tell old Jimsy here, as long as you hadn't. I knew you meant some sort of surprise. I thought he'd hear from you from L. A. by any mail, now."

"Say, Cart', remember that long letter I wrote Skipper, the night after the big smear?"

"Surely I do," Carter nodded.

"Well, she never got it."

"It passed her, of course. It will come back,—probably follow her down here."

"Oh, it'll show up sometime. I gave it to you to mail, didn't I?"

"Yes, I remember it distinctly, because it was the fattest one of yours I ever handled."

He grinned ruefully. "Yep. Had a lot on my chest that night."

"Mrs. King thought you ought to rest before dinner, Honor."

"At least I ought to make myself decent!" She smoothed the collar Jimsy's arms had crumpled, the hair his shoulder had rubbed from its smooth plaits. "She must think I'm weird enough as it is!"

But the Richard Kings had lived long enough in the turbulent tierra caliente to take startling things pretty much for granted. Honor's coming was now a happily accepted fact. A cool, dim room had been made ready for her,—a smooth floor of dull red tiles, some astonishingly good pieces of furniture which had come, Mrs. King told her when she took her up, from the Government pawnshop in Mexico City and dated back to the brief glories of Maximilian's period, and a cool bath in a tin tub.

"You are so good," said Honor. "Taking me in like this! It was a dreadful thing to do, but—I had to come to him."

The Englishwoman put her hand on her shoulder. "My dear, it was a topping thing to do. I—" her very blue eyes were pools of understanding. "I should have done it. And we're no end pleased to have you! We get fearfully dull, and three young people are a feast! We'll have a lot of parties and divide you generously with our friends and neighbors—neighbors twenty miles away, my dear! We'll do some theatricals,—Carter says your boy is quite marvelous at that sort of thing."

"Oh, he is," said Honor, warmly, "but I'm afraid we ought to hurry back to his father!"

"I'll have Richard telegraph. Of course, if he's really bad, you'll have to go, but we do want you to stay on!" She was moving about the big room, giving a brisk touch here and there. "Have your cold dip and rest an hour, my dear. Dinner's at eight. Josita will come to help you." She opened the door and stood an instant on the threshold. Then she came back and took Honor's face between her hands and looked long at her. "You'll do," she said. "You'll do, my girl! There's no—no royal road with these Kings of ours—but they're worth it!" She dropped a brisk kiss on the smooth young brow and went swiftly out of the room.

To the keen delight of the hosts there was a fourth guest at dinner, a man who was stopping at another hacienda and had come in to tea and been cajoled into staying for dinner and the night. He was a personage from Los Angeles, an Easterner who had brought an invalid wife there fifteen years earlier, had watched her miraculous return to pink plump health and become the typical California-convert. He had established a branch of his gigantic business there and himself rolled semiannually from coast to coast in his private car. Honor and Jimsy were a little awed by touching elbows with greatness but he didn't really bother them very much, for they were too entirely absorbed in each other. He seemed, however, considerably interested in them and looked at them and listened to them genially. The Kings were thirstily eager for news of the northern world; books, plays, games, people—they drank up names and dates and details.

"We must take a run up to the States this year," said Richard King.

"It would be jolly, old dear," said his wife, levelly, her wise eyes on his steady hands. "If the coffee crop runs to it!"

"There you have it," he growled. "If the coffee crop is bad we can't afford to go,—and if it's good we can't afford to leave it!"

"But we needn't mind when we've house parties like this! My word, Rich'—fancy having four house guests at one and the same blessed time!" She led the way into the long sala for coffee.

"Yes,—isn't it great? Drink?" Richard King held up a half filled decanter toward his guest.

The personage shook his head. "Not this weather, thanks. That enchanted well of yours does me better. Wonderful water, isn't it?"

"Water's all right, but it's a deuce of a nuisance having to carry every drop of it up to the house."

"Really? Isn't it piped?"

"Ah, but it will be one day, Rich'! I expect the first big coffee crop will go there, rather than in a trip to the States. But it is rather a bother, meanwhile."

"But you have no labor question here."

"Haven't we though? With old Diaz gone the old order is changed. This bunch I have here now are bad ones," King shook his head. "They may revolute any minute."

"Oh, Rich'—not really?"

"I daresay they'll lack the energy when it comes to a show-down, Madeline. But this man Villa is a picturesque figure, you know. He appeals to the peon imagination."

The guest was interested. "Yes. Isn't it true that there's a sort of Robin Hood quality about him—steals from the rich to give to the poor—that sort of thing?"

"That's more or less true, but the herd believes it utterly." He sighed. "It was a black day for us when Diaz sailed."

Jimsy King had been listening. "But, Uncle Rich', they have had a rotten deal, haven't they?"

His uncle shrugged. "Got to treat 'em like cattle, boy. It's what they are."

"Well, it's what they'll always be if you keep on treating 'em that way!" Jimsy spoke hotly and his uncle turned amused eyes on him.

"Don't let that Yaqui fill you up with his red tales!"

"But you'll admit the Yaquis have been abused?"

"Well, I believe they have. They're a cut above the peon in intelligence and spirit. But—can't have omelette without breaking eggs." He turned again to his elder guest. "This boy here has been palling about with a Yaqui Indian he made me take in when he was here last time."

The great man nodded. "Yes,—I've seen them together. Magnificent specimen, isn't he?"

"They are wonderfully built, most of them. This chap was pretty badly used by his master—they are virtually slaves, you know,—and bolted, and Jimsy found him one night——"

The boy got up and came over to them. "Starving, and almost dead with weakness and his wounds,—beaten almost to death and one of his ears hacked off! And Uncle Rich' took him in and kept him for me."

His uncle grinned and flung an arm across his shoulder. "And had the devil—and many pesos to pay to the local jefe and the naturally peevish gentleman who lost him. But at that I'll have to admit he's the best man on the rancho to-day." He threw a teasing look at Honor, glowing and misty-eyed over Jimsy's championing of the oppressed. "The only trouble is, I suppose Jimsy will take him with him when he sets up housekeeping for himself. What do you think, Maddy? Could Yaqui Juan be taught to buttle?"

"No butlers for us, Uncle Rich'!" Jimsy was red but unabashed. "We might rent him for a movie star and live on his earnings. We aren't very clear yet as to what we will live on!"

The personage looked at him gravely. "You are going to settle in Los Angeles?"

"Yes!" said Jimsy and Honor in a breath. The good new life coming which would be the good old life over again, only better!

"Oh," said Mrs. King, "I forgot,—I asked them to come up from the quarters and make music for you! They're here now! Look!" She went to the window and the others followed. The garden was filled with vaguely seen figures, massed in groups, and there was a soft murmur of voices and the tentative strumming of guitars. "Shall we come out on the veranda? You'll want a rebozo, Honor,—the nights are sharp." She called back to the serving woman. "Put out the lights, Josita."

They sat in the dusk and looked out into the veiled and shadowy spaces and the dim singers lifted up their voices. The moon would rise late; there was no light save the tiny pin points of the cigarettes; it gave the music an elfin, eerie quality.

"Pretty crude after Italy, eh, Honor?" Richard King wanted to know.

"Oh, it's delicious, Mr. King! Please ask them to sing another!"

"May we have the Golondrina?" the eldest guest wanted to know.

"Well—how about it, Maddy? Think we're all cheerful enough? We know that two of us are! All right!" He called down the request and it seemed to Honor that a little quiver went through the singers in the shadow. The guitars broke into a poignant, sobbing melody.

"I don't know what the words mean," said the personage under his breath. "I don't believe I want to know. I fancy every one fits his own words to it."

"Or his own need," said Richard King's wife. She slipped her hand into her husband's. The melody rose and fell, sobbed and soared. Honor drew closer to Jimsy and he put his arm about her and held her hard. "Yes," he whispered. "I know." The man who had asked for Golondrina sat with bent head and his cigar went out. Only Carter Van Meter, as once long ago in Los Angeles, seemed unmoved, unstirred, scatheless.

There was a little silence after the music. Then the personage said, "You know, I fancy that's Mexico, that song!"

Jimsy King wheeled to face him through the dusk. "Yes, sir! It's true! That is Mexico,—everything that's been done to her,—and everything she'll do, some day!"

"It's—beautiful and terrible," said Honor. "I had to keep telling myself that we are all safe and happy, and that nothing is going to happen to us!"

Carter laughed and got quickly to his feet. "I suggest indoors and lights—and Honor! Honor must sing for us!"

She never needed urging; she sang as gladly as a bird on a bush. The Kings were parched for music; they begged for another and another. She had almost to reproduce her recital in Florence. Jimsy listened, rapt and proud, and at the end he said—"Not too tired for one more, Skipper? Our song?"

"Never too tired for that, Jimsy!" She sat down again and struck her stepfather's ringing, rousing chords. Instantly it ceased, there in the room, to be Mexico; it was as if a wind off the sea blew past them. The first verse had them all erect in their chairs. She swung into the second, holding a taut rein on herself:

The sand of the desert is sodden red; Red with the wreck of a square that broke; The gatling's jammed and the colonel dead, And the regiment blind with dust and smoke: The River of Death has brimmed his banks; And England's far and Honor's a name, But the voice of a school boy rallies the ranks— Play up! Play up! and—Play the Game!

Honor sat still at the piano. She did not mean to lift her eyes until she could be sure they would not run over. Why did that song always sweep her away so?—from the first moment Stepper had read her the words in the old house on South Figueroa Street, all those years ago? Why had she always the feeling that it had a special meaning for her and for Jimsy—a warning, a challenge? Jimsy came over to stand beside her, comfortably silent, and then, surprisingly, the personage came to stand beside Jimsy.

"I've been wondering," he said, "if you hadn't better come in to see me one day, when we're all back in Los Angeles? You haven't any definite plans for your future, have you?"

"No, sir," said Jimsy. "Only that I've got to get something—quick!" He looked at Honor, listening star-eyed.

The great man smiled. "I see. Well, I think I can interest you. I've watched you play football, King. I played football, forty years ago. I like the breed. My boys are all girls, worse luck—though they're the finest in the world——"

"Oh, yes," said Honor, warmly.

"But I like boys. And I like you, Jimsy King." He held out his hand. "You come to me, and if you're the lad I think you are, you'll stay."

"Oh, I'll come!" Jimsy stammered, flushed and incoherent. "I'll come! I'll—I'll sweep out or scrub floors—or—or anything! But—I'm afraid you don't——" he looked unhappily at Honor.

"Yes, Jimsy. He's got to know."

Jimsy King stood up very straight and tall. "You've got to know that I was kicked out of college two months ago, for marching in a parade against——"

"For telling the truth," cried Honor, hot cheeked, "when a cowardly lie would have saved him!"

"But just the same, I was kicked out of college, and——"

"Lord bless you, boy," said the personage, and it was the first time they had heard him laugh aloud, "I know you were! And that's one reason why I want you. So was I!"



CHAPTER XIII

There were telegrams from Stephen Lorimer and the doctor; James King's condition remained unchanged. Honor and Jimsy decided to return at once, but Richard King flatly refused to let them go. The next train after Honor's had been held up just beyond Cordoba by a band of brigands, supposed to be a section of Villistas, the passengers robbed and mistreated and three of the train men killed.

"Not a step without an escort," said Jimsy's uncle.

Then Jimsy's new friend came to the rescue. He was eager to get home but cannily aware of his own especial risk,—two wealthy Americans having been recently taken and held for ransom. He had influence at the Capital; he wrote and telegraphed and the replies were suave and reassuring; reliable escort would be furnished as soon as possible,—within the week, it was hoped. Meanwhile, there was nothing for it but to wait. He went back to the hacienda where he had been visiting, and life—the merry, lyrical life of El Pozo, moved forward. Jimsy's only woe was that he was condemned by her own decision to share Honor lavishly with his uncle and aunt and their friends and Carter. "Skipper, after all these years, leaving me for a darn' tea!"

"Jimsy, dear," she scolded him, "you know that it's the very least I can do, now isn't it—honestly? Think how lovely she's been to us, and how much it means to her, having people here. And we've got all our lives ahead of us, Jimsy! Be good! And besides"—she colored a little and hesitated—"it's—not kind to Cartie." Then, at the sobering of his face, "You know he—cares for me, Jimsy, and I don't believe it's just cricket for us to—to sort of wave our happiness in his face all the time."

He sighed crossly. "But—good Lord, Skipper,—he's got to get used to it!"

"Of course,—but need we—rub it in, just now?" The fact was that Honor was anxious. Carter was pallid, haggard, morose. The brief flare of composure with which he had greeted her was gone; he showed visibly and unpleasantly what he was suffering at the sight of their vivid and hearty happiness. Mrs. King had commented pityingly on it to Honor and it was simply not in the girl to go on adding to his misery. She began to be very firm with Jimsy about their long walks or rides alone; she accepted all Mrs. King's invitations and plans for them; she included Carter whenever it was possible. These restrictions had naturally the result of making Jimsy the more ardent in their scant privacy, and Honor, amazingly free from coquetry though she was, must have sensed it. Perhaps the truth was that she had in her, after all, something of Mildred Lorimer's feeling for values and conventions; having flown from Florence to Cordoba to her lover she was reclaiming a little of her aloofness and cool ladyhood by this discipline. But she was entirely honest in her wish to spare Carter so far as possible. Once, when Jimsy was briefly away with his Yaqui henchman she asked Carter to walk with her, but he decided for the dim sala; the heat which seemed to invigorate and vitalize Jimsy left him limp and spent.

He brushed her generalities roughly aside. "Are you happy, Honor?"

She lifted her candid eyes to his bleak young face. "Yes, Cartie. Happier than ever before—and I've been happy all my life."

He was silent for a moment as if sorting out and considering the things he might say to her. "Well, you have a marvelous effect on Jimsy. I don't believe he's taken a drop since you've been here."

"He hasn't touched a drop since he came to Mexico, Carter,—Mr. King told me that, and Jimsy told me himself!" Honor was a little declamatory in her pride and he raised his eyebrows.

"Really?" He limped over to the table where the smoking things were and the decanter of whiskey and siphon of soda. "Let me have a look...." He picked up the decanter and held it to the light. "The last time I looked at it, it came just to the top of the design here,—and it does yet. Yes, it's just where it was."

"Carter! I call that spying!"

He turned back to her without temper. "I call it looking after my friend," he said gently. "I don't suppose you've let him tell you very much about what happened at college?"

"No, Carter. What's the use of it, now? He wrote it all to me, but the letter must have passed me. It's a closed chapter now."

"I hope to God it will stay closed," he said, haggardly. "But I'm afraid, Honor; I'm horribly afraid for you."

"I'm not afraid, Carter,—for myself or for Jimsy." She got up and walked to the window; she was aware that she hated the dimness of the sala; she wanted the honest heat of the sun. "Look!" she said, gladly. Carter limped slowly to join her. Jimsy King was swinging toward them through the brazen three o'clock glare, his Yaqui Juan by his side. They were a sightly and eye-filling pair. They might have been done in bronze for studies of Yesterday and To-day. "Look!" said Honor again. "Oh, Carter, do you think any—any horrible dead trait—any clammy dead hand—can reach up out of the grave to pull him down?"

Carter was silent.

A high and cleanly anger rose in the girl. "Carter, I don't want to hurt you,—oh, I know I hurt you all the time, in one way, and I can't help that,—I don't want to be unkind, but—are you sure it isn't because you—care—for me that you have this hopeless feeling about Jimsy?" She faced him squarely and made him meet her eyes. "Carter! Tell me."

His unhappy gaze struggled with her level look and slipped away. "Of course I want you myself, Honor. I want you—horribly, unbearably, but I do honestly feel it's wrong for you to marry Jimsy King."

"But, Carter—see how nearly his father won out! Every one says that if his mother had lived—And his Uncle Richard! He's absolutely free from it, now. And the very look of Jimsy is enough to show you——"

But Carter had turned and was staring moodily at the decanter. "It comes so suddenly, Honor ... with such frightful unexpectedness. Remember, when we were youngsters, the World's Biggest Snake, 'Samson,'—exhibited in a vacant store on Main Street, and how keen we all were about him?"

Honor kindled to the memory. "I adored him. He had a head like a nice setter's and he wasn't cold or slimy a bit!"

"Remember what the man told us about his hunger? How he'd go three months without anything, and then devour twenty live rabbits and chickens and cats?"

She nodded, frowning. "I know. It was awful."

"But the point was the suddenness. They never knew when the hunger would seize him. The fellow said that it came like a flash. He was gentle as a lamb for weeks on end—and then it came. He'd pounce on the keeper's pet rabbit—his dog—the man himself if he were within reach. He was an utterly changed creature; he was just—an appetite." He stood staring somberly at the decanter. "That's the way it comes, Honor."

It seemed to be getting dimmer and dimmer in the sala. Honor found herself wishing with all her heart for her stepfather. Stephen Lorimer would know how to answer; how to parry,—to combat this thing. She felt her own weapons clumsy and blunt, but such as they were she would use them.

"But it isn't coming ever again, Carter! I tell you it isn't coming! And I want you to stop saying and thinking that it is! Now I'm going to Jimsy!"

In the wide out-of-doors, under the unbelievably blue sky and the stinging sun, with Jimsy and Yaqui Juan, life was sound and whole again. The Indian, tall as a pine, looked at her with eyes of respectful adoration and smiled his slow, melancholy smile, as she swung off with the boy, down the path which led to the old well.

"Juan approves of me, doesn't he?" said Honor, contentedly.

"Of course; you're my woman!" She loved his happy impudence. "Aren't you, Skipper?" They had passed the twist in the path—the path which was like a moist green tunnel through the tropic jungle—which hid them from the house and she halted and went swiftly into his arms.

"Yes, Jimsy! Yes! And—I've been stingy and mean to you but I won't be, any more. Carter must just—stand things."

"Skipper!" He wasn't facile with words, Jimsy King, but he was able to make himself clear.

"Jimsy, isn't it wonderful—the all-rightness of everything? Being together again, and——"

"Going to be together always! And my job waiting! Isn't the old boy a wonder? I saw him, just now. He says he's heard from Mexico City and it's O. K. to start Thursday. They're going to send the escort."

"In two days," said Honor, blissfully, "we'll be on our way home! Jimsy, in two days!"

But in two days dizzyingly, terrifyingly much had happened. The pleasant little comedy of life at El Pozo had changed to melodrama, crude and strident. They had been attacked by a band of insurrectos, a wing of Villa's hectic army, presumably; the peons, with the exception of the house servants and Yaqui Juan, had gone gleefully over to the enemy; Richard King had been wounded in his hot-headed defense of his hacienda, shot through the shoulder, and was running a temperature; the telephone wires were cut; infinitely worse than all, the besiegers had taken possession of the well and they were entirely without water.

There had been, of course, the usual supply in the house at the time of the attack and it had been made to last as long as was humanly possible, the lion's share going to the wounded man, but they had arrived, now, at the point of actual suffering. His role of helpless inaction was an intolerable one for Jimsy King to play. To know that—less than a quarter of a mile away, down the moist green path through the tropic verdure—was the well; to see Honor's dry lips and strained eyes, Carter's deathly pallor, to hear his uncle, out of his head, mercifully, most of the time, begging for water, meant a constant battle with himself not to rush out, to make one frantic try at least, but he knew that the deeper courage of patient waiting was required of him. They could only conjecture what the invaders meant to do,—whether they intended to have them die of thirst, whether they meant to rush the house when it suited their pleasure—raggedly fortified and guarded by Jimsy and Carter and the half dozen of the faithful. Jimsy had talked the latter probability over steadily with Honor and she understood.

"Jimsy," she managed not to let her teeth chatter, "it's like a play or—or a Wild West tale, isn't it? Like a 'Frank Merriwell'—remember when you used to adore those things?"

"No, Skipper, it's not like a 'Frank Merriwell'; he could always do something...." Jimsy's strong teeth ground together.

"Yes—'Blooey, blooey! Fifteen more redskins bit the dust!'"

"Skipper, you wonder! You brick!"

"Jimsy, I—there's no use talking about things that may never happen, because of course help will get here, but if it should not—if they should rush us, and we couldn't keep them out"—her hoarse voice faltered but her eyes held his—"you won't—you wouldn't let them—take me, Jimsy?"

"No, Skipper."

"Promise, Jimsy?"

"Promise, Skipper. 'Cross my heart!'" The old good foolish words of the old safe days, here, now, in this hideous and garish present!

With that pledge she was visibly able to give herself to a livelier hope. "But of course Yaqui Juan got through to the Grants' hacienda! Can you imagine him failing us, Jimsy?"

He shook his head. "He'll make it if any man living could." The Indian had slipped through the insurrectos in the first hour, as soon as it had been known that the wires were cut. Unless the Grants, too, were besieged, they would be able to telephone for help for El Pozo, and if they were likewise in duress, Yaqui Juan would go on to the next rancho,—on and on until he could set the wheels of rescue in motion. "I wish to God I had his job. Doing something——"

Carter came into the sala. He was terrifyingly white but with an admirable composure. "Steady, old boy," he said, putting his frail hand on Jimsy's shoulder. "Sit tight! We depend on you. And you're doing"—he looked at the decanter, as if measuring its contents with his eye—"gloriously, splendidly, old son! I know the strain you're under. You're a bigger man even than I thought you were, Jimsy."

Honor went away to sit with Mrs. King and the sick man and both boys stared unhappily after her. "If Skipper were only out of this——" Jimsy groaned.

"And whose fault is it that she's in it?" Carter snarled. Two red spots sprang into his white cheeks.

"Why—Cart'!" Jimsy backed away from him, staring.

"Whose fault is it, I say?" Carter followed him. "If she hadn't been terrified over you, if she hadn't the insane idea of duty and loyalty to you, would she have come? Would she?"

Jimsy King sat down and looked at him, aghast. "Good Lord, Cart'—that's the truth! That shows what a mutt I am. It hasn't struck me before. It's all my fault."

"Whatever happens to Honor—whatever happens to her—and death wouldn't be the worst thing, would it?—it's your fault. Do you hear what I say? It's all your fault!" In all the years since he had known him Jimsy had never seen Carter Van Meter like this,—cool Carter, with his little elegancies of dress and manner, his studied detachment. This was a different person altogether,—hot-eyed, white-lipped, snarling. "Your fault if she dies here, dies of thirst; your fault if they get in here and carry her off, those filthy brutes out there."

"They'll never ... get her," said Jimsy King. His face was scarlet and he was breathing hard and clenching and unclenching his hands.

"Yes," Carter sneered, "yes! I know what you mean! You feel very heroic about it. You feel like a hero in a movie, don't you? Noble of you, isn't it? Slay the heroine with your own hands rather than let her——"

"Oh, for God's sake, Cart'!" Jimsy got up and came toward him. "Cut it out! What's the good of talking like that? We're in it now, all of us, and we've got to stick it out. I know it's harder on you because you're not strong, but——"

"Damn you! 'Not strong—' Not built like an ox—muscles in my brain instead of my legs! Because I cared for something else besides rolling around in the mud with a leather ball in my arms——"

"Key down, old boy." Jimsy was cool now, unresentful; he understood. Poor old Cart' ... he couldn't stand much suffering.

"That's how you got Honor, when she was a child, with no sense of values, but you haven't held her! You can't hold her."

"Cart', I'm not going to get sore at you. I know you're about all in. You don't know what you're saying."

"Don't I? Don't I? You listen to me. Honor Carmody never really loved you; it was a silly boy-and-girl, calf love affair, and when she realized it she stood by, of course,—she's that sort. She kept the letter of her promise, but she couldn't keep the spirit."

"Key down, old top," said Jimsy King again, grinning. "I'm not going to get sore, but I don't want to use up my breath laughing at you. Skipper—going back on me!" He did laugh, ringingly.

"She hasn't gone back on you; except in her heart. Good God, Jimsy King, what do you think you are to hold a girl like that—with her talent and her success and her future? She's only stuck by you because it was her creed, that's all."

"Look here, Cart', I'm not going to argue with you. It's not on the square to Skipper even to talk about it, but don't be a crazy fool. Would she have come to me here—from Italy, if she didn't——"

"Yes. Yes, she would! She's pledged to see it through—to stand by you as all the other miserable women have stood by the men of your family,—if you're cad enough to let her."

That caught and stuck. "If I'm—cad enough to let her," said Jimsy in a curiously flat voice. But the mood passed in a flash. "It's no use talking like that, Carter. Of course I know I'm not good enough or brainy enough—or anything enough for Skipper, but she thinks I am, and——"

"You poor fool, she doesn't think so. I tell you she's only standing by because she said she would. I tell you she cares for some one else."

"That's a lie," said Jimsy King with emphasis but without passion. The statement was too grotesque for any feeling over it.

Carter stopped raving and snarling and became very cool and coherent. "I think I can prove it to you," he said, quietly.

"You can't," said Jimsy, turning and walking toward the door.

"Are you afraid to listen?" He asked it very quietly.

"No," said Jimsy King, wheeling. "I'm not afraid. Go ahead. Get it off your chest."

"Well, in the first place,—hasn't she kept you at arm's length here? Hasn't she insisted on being with other people all the time,—on having me with you?"

"Cart', I hate to say it, but that's because she's sorry for you."

"And for herself."

The murky dimness of the sala was pressing in on Jimsy as it had on the girl, that other day. He was worn with vigil and torn with thirst, sick with dread of what might any moment come to them,—with remorse for bringing Honor there, tormented with his helplessness to save her. Even at his best he was no match for the other's cleverness and now he was in the dust, blaming and hating himself. He stood there in silence, listening, and Carter's hoarse voice, Carter's plausible words, went on and on. "But I don't believe it," Jimsy would say at intervals. "She doesn't care for you, Cart'. She's all mine, Skipper is. She doesn't care for you."

"Wait!" Carter took out his wallet of limp leather with his initials on it in delicately wrought gold letters and opened it. "I didn't mean to show you this, but I see that I must. It was last summer. I—I lost my head the night before we sailed, and let Honor see.... Then I asked her.... I didn't say, 'Will you marry me?' because I knew there was no hope of that so long as she thought there was a chance of saving you by standing by you. I asked her—something else. And she sent me this wire to the boat at Naples."

Jimsy did not put out his hand to take the slip of paper which Carter unfolded and smoothed and held toward him. It was utterly still in the sala but from an upper room came the sound of Richard King's voice, faint, thick, begging for water, and from somewhere in the distance a muffled shot ... three shots.

Carter held the message up before Jimsy's eyes:

Carter Van Meter care Purser S. S. Canopic Naples Yes. HONOR.



CHAPTER XIV

If Stephen Lorimer, far to the north in the safe serenity of the old house of South Figueroa Street, could have envisaged the three of them that day his chief concern would not have been for their bodily danger. It would have seemed to him that the intangible cloud settling down over them was a more tragic and sinister thing than the insurrectos besieging them, than the thirst which was cracking their lips and swelling and blackening their tongues.

He was to remember and marvel, long afterward, that his thought on that date had tugged uneasily toward them all day and evening. Conditions, so far as he knew, were favorable; the escort for the personage would be a stout one and under his wing the boy and girl would be safe, and James King was waiting for them, spinning out his thread of life until they should come to him. Nevertheless, he found himself acutely unhappy regarding them, aware of an urgent and instant need of being with them.

They had never, in all their blithe young lives, needed him so cruelly. He could not have driven back the bandits, but he could have driven back the clouds of doubt and misery and misunderstanding; he could not have given them water for their parched throats but he could have given them to drink of the waters of understanding; he could have relieved the drought in their wrung young hearts. He would have seen, as only a looker-on could see, what was happening to them. He would have yearned over Honor, fronting the bright face of danger so gallantly but stunned and crushed by the change in Jimsy, over Jimsy himself, setting out to do an incredibly stupid, incredibly noble deed, absolutely convinced by the sight of her one-word telegram that she loved Carter (and humbly realizing that she might well love Carter, the brilliant Carter, better than his unilluminated self), seeing the thing simply and objectively as he would be sure to do, deciding on his course and pursuing it as definitely as he would take a football over the line for a touchdown. He would even have yearned over Carter, at the very moment when the youth fulfilled his ancient distrust of him. He would have understood as even Carter himself did not, by what gradual and destructive processes he had arrived at the point of his outbreak to Jimsy; would have realized in how far his physical suffering—infinitely harder for him than for the others—had broken down his moral fiber; how utterly his very real love for Honor had engulfed every other thought and feeling. And he would have seen, in the last analysis, that Carter was sincere; he had come at last to believe his own fabrications; he honestly believed that Honor's betrothed would go the way of all the "Wild Kings"; that Honor would be ruining her life in marrying him.

But Stephen Lorimer was hundreds and thousands of miles away from them that day of their bitter need, making tentative notes for a chapter on young love for his unborn book, listening to the inevitable mocking-bird in the Japanese garden, waiting for Mildred Lorimer to give him his tea ... wearing the latest of his favorites among her gowns....

Madeline King was spent with her vigil and Honor had coaxed her to lie down for an hour and let her take the chair beside Richard King's bed.

"Very well, my dear. I'll rest for an hour. I'll do it because I know I may want my strength more, later on." She seemed to have aged ten years since the day Honor had come to El Pozo, but she came of fighting blood, this English wife of Jimsy's uncle. "I'm frightfully sorry you're let in for this, Honor, but it's no end of a comfort, having you. Call me if he rouses. I daresay I shan't really sleep."

Honor sat on beside him, fanning him until her arm ached, resting it until he stirred again, trying to wet her dry lips with her thickened tongue. She wasn't thinking; she was merely waiting, standing it. It was a relief not to talk, but she must talk when she was with the boys again; it helped to keep them up, to keep an air of normality about things.

Jimsy King had read the message Carter held up to him and gone away without comment, and Carter had stayed on in the sala. It was almost an hour before Jimsy came back. Honor's stepfather would have marked and marveled at the change so brief a little space of time had been able to register in the bonny boy's face. The flesh seemed to have paled and receded and the bones seemed more sharply modeled; more insistent; and the eyes looked very old and at the same time pitifully young. He was very quiet and sure of himself.

"Jimsy," said Carter, "I shouldn't have told you, now, but I went off my head."

Jimsy nodded. "The time doesn't matter, Cart'. I just want to ask you one thing, straight from the shoulder. I've been thinking and thinking ... trying to take it in. Sometimes I seem to get it for a minute, that Skipper cares for you instead of me, and then it's gone again. All I can seem to hang on to is that telegram." The painful calm of his face flickered and broke up for an instant and there was an answering disturbance in Carter's own. "I keep seeing that ... all the time. But there's no use talking about it. What I want to ask you is this, Cart'"—he went on slowly in his hoarse and roughened voice—"you honestly think Skipper is sticking to me only because she thinks it's the thing to do? Because she thinks she must keep her word?"

Carter swallowed hard and tried to moisten his aching throat, and he did not look at his friend.

"Is that what you honestly believe, Cart'?"

Carter brought his eyes back with an effort and his heart contracted. Jimsy King—Jimsy King—the boy he had envied and hated and loved by turns all these years; Jimsy King, idolized, adored in the old safe days—the old story book days—

King! King! King! K-I-N-G, KING! G-I-N-K, GINK! He's the King Gink! He's the King Gink! He's the King Gink! K-I-N-G, King! KING!

The Jimsy King, the young prince who had had everything that all the wealth of Ali Baba's cave couldn't compass for Carter Van Meter ... standing here before him now, his face drained of its color and joy, begging him for a hope. There was a long moment when he hesitated, when the forces within him fought breathlessly and without quarter, but—long ago Stephen Lorimer had said of him—"there's nothing frail about his disposition ... his will doesn't limp." He wrenched his gaze away before he answered, but he answered steadily.

"That is what I believe."

Jimsy was visibly and laboriously working it out. "Then, she's only sticking to me because she thinks I'm worth saving. If she thought I was a regular 'Wild King,' if she believed what her mother and a lot of other people have always believed, she'd let go of me."

"I believe she would," said Carter.

"Then," said Jimsy King, "it's really pretty simple. She's only got to realize—to see—that I'm not worth hanging on to; that it's too late. That's all."

"What do you mean?"

He walked over to the little table and picked up the decanter of whisky and looked at it, and the scorn and loathing in his ravaged young face were things to marvel at, but Honor Carmody, coming into the room at that moment, could not see his expression. His back was toward her and she saw the decanter in his hand.

"Jimsy!" She said it very low, catching her breath.

His first motion was to put it down but instead he held it up to the fast fading light at the window and grinned. "It's makin' faces at me, Skipper!"

"Jimsy," she said again, and this time he put it down.

Honor began hastily to talk. "Do you think Juan will try to come back, or will he wait and come with the soldiers?"

"He'll come back," said Jimsy with conviction. "He must have found the wires down at the first place he tried, or he'd have been here before this. Yes—as soon as he's got his message through, he'll come back to us. I hope to God he brings water."

"But did he realize about the well? He got away at the very first, you know, and they weren't holding the well, then."

"He'll have his own canteen, won't he?" said Jimsy crossly.

Honor's eyes mothered him. "Mrs. King really slept," she said cheerfully. "She said she had a good nap, and dreamed!" She sat down in a low chair and made herself relax comfortably; only her eyes were tense. She never did fussy things with her hands, Honor Carmody; no one had ever seen her with a needle or a crochet hook. She was either doing things, vital, definite things which required motion, or she was still, and she rested people who were near her. "Well, he'll be here soon then," she said contentedly. "And so will the soldiers. Our Big Boss will have us on his mind, Jimsy. He'll figure out some way to help us. Just think—in another day—perhaps in another hour, this will all be over, like a nightmare, and we'll be back to regular living again. And won't we be glad that we all stood it so decently?" It was a stiff, small smile with her cracked lips but a stout one. "You know, I'm pretty proud of all of us! And won't Stepper be proud of us? And your dad, Jimsy, and your mother, Cartie!" Her kind eyes warmed. "I'm glad she hasn't had to know about it until we're all safe again." She was so hoarse that she had to stop and rest and she looked hopefully from one to the other, clearly expecting them to take up the burden of talk. But they were silent and presently she went on again. "You know, boys, it's like being in a book or a play, isn't it? We're—characters—now, not just plain people! I suppose I'm the leading lady (though Mrs. King's the real heroine) and we've got two heroes and no villain. The insurrectos are the villain—the villain in bunches." Suddenly she sat forward in her chair, her eyes brightening and a little color flooding her face. "Boys, it's our song come true! Now I know why I always got so thrilled over that second verse,—even the first time Stepper read it to us,—remember how it just bowled me over? And it seemed so remote from anything that could touch our lives,—yet here we are, in just such a tight place." They were listening now. "There isn't any desert or regiment or gatling, and Mr. King isn't dead, only dreadfully hurt, but it fits, just the same! We've got this thirst to stand ... and it's a good deal, isn't it? Those insurrectos down there,—planning we don't know what, perhaps to rush the house any moment—

The River of Death has brimmed his banks; And England's far, and Honor's a name—

That means to us that L. A. is far, and South Figueroa Street ... all the safe happy things that didn't seem wonderful then...."

"'Honor's a name,'" said Jimsy under his breath.

"Oh," said the girl, "I never noticed that before! Isn't that funny? Well—

The voice of a school boy rallies the ranks!

That fits! And won't we be thankful all our lives—all our snug, safe, prosy lives—that we were sporting now?— That we all played the game?" Her eyes were on Jimsy, reassuring him, staying him. "When this is all over——"

He cut roughly into her sentence. "Oh, for God's sake, Skipper, let's not talk!"

Again he had to bear the mothering of her understanding eyes. "All right, Jimsy. We won't talk, then. We'll sit here together"—she changed to the chair nearest his and put her hand on his arm—"and wait for Juan and——"

He sprang to his feet. "I wish you'd leave me alone!" he said. "I wish you'd go upstairs and stay with Aunt Maddy and Uncle Rich'. I want to be by myself."

She did not stir. "I think I'll stay with you, Jimsy."

His voice was ugly now. "When I don't want you? When I tell you I'd rather be alone?"

Honor was still for a long moment. She rose and went to the door but she turned to look at him, a steady, intent scrutiny. "All right, Jimsy. I'll go. I'll leave you alone. I'll leave you alone because—I know I can leave you alone." She seemed to have forgotten Carter's presence. She held up the hand which wore the old Italian ring with the hidden blue stone of constancy. "I'm 'holding hard,' Jimsy."

Soon after dark Yaqui Juan came. He had been waiting for three hours, trying to get past the sentries; it had been impossible while there was any light. He was footsore and weary and had only a little water in his canteen, but he had found the telephone wires still up at the second hacienda, the owner had got the message off for him, and help was assuredly on the way to them. There was the off chance, of course, that the soldiers might be held up by another wing of the insurrectos, but there was every reason to hope for their arrival next day. Jimsy King sent the Yaqui up to Honor with the canteen, and the Indian returned to say that the Senorita had not touched one drop but had given it to the master.

Carter dragged himself away to his room and Jimsy and Yaqui Juan talked long together in the quiet sala. It was a cramped and halting conversation with the Indian's scant English and the American's halting Spanish; sometimes they were unable to understand each other, but they came at last to some sort of agreement, though Juan shook his head mutinously again and again, murmuring—"No, no! Senor Don Diego! No!"

It was almost midnight when Jimsy called them all down into the sala. They came, wondering, one by one, Carter, Mrs. King,—Richard King had fallen asleep after his half dozen swallows of water—and Honor, and Josita, her head muffled in her rebozo, her brown fingers busy with her beads.

Jimsy King was standing in the middle of the room, standing insecurely, his legs far apart, the decanter in his hand, the decanter which had been more than half full when Honor left the room and had now less than an inch of liquor in it. Yaqui Juan, his face sullen, his eyes black and bitter, crouched on the floor, his arms about his knees.

Honor did not speak at all. She just stood still, looking at Jimsy until it seemed as if she were all eyes. "It comes so suddenly,"—Carter had told her—"like the boa constrictor's hunger ... and then he was just—an appetite."

"Ladies'n gem'mum," said Jimsy, thickly, "goin' shing you lil' song!" Then, in his hoarse and baffled voice he sang Stanford's giddy old saga, "The Son of a Gambolier."

They all stiffened with horror and disgust. Mrs. King wept and Josita mumbled a frightened prayer, and Carter, red and vehement, went to him and tried to take the decanter away from him. Only Honor Carmody made no sign.

I'm a son of a son of a son of a gun of a son of a Gambolier,

sang Jimsy King. He looked at every one but Honor.

Like every honest fellow, I love my lager beer——

—"And my 'skee!" he patted the decanter.

Madeline King put her arms about Honor. "Come away, my dear," she said. "Come upstairs."

"No," Jimsy protested. "Don' go 'way. Got somep'n tell you. Shee this fool Injun here? Know wha' he's goin' do? Goin' slide out'n creep down to ol' well. Says insur—insur-rectos all pretty drunk now ... pretty sleepy.... Fool Injun's goin' take three—four—'leven canteens ... bring water back for you. Not f' me! I got somep'n better. 'Sides, he'll get killed ... nice'n dead ... fancy dead ... cut ears off ... cut tongue out firs'! Not f' me! I'm goin' sleep pret' soon. Firs' I'll shing you lil' more!" Again the rasping travesty of melody:

Some die of drinkin' whisky, Some die of drinkin' beer! Some die of diabetes, An' some——

"Shut up, you drunken fool!" said Carter, furiously.

"Oh," said Jimsy, blinking his eyes rapidly, bowing deeply. "Ladies present. I shee. My mishtake. My mishtake, ladies! Well, guesh I go sleep now. Come on. Yac', put me to bed 'fore you go. Give you lil' treat. All work'n no play makes Yac' a dull boy!" He roared over his own wit. The Indian, his face impassive, had risen to his feet and now Jimsy cast himself into his arms and insisted on kissing him good-night, clinging all the while to the decanter with its half inch of whisky.

Carter wrenched it away from him. "You'll kill yourself," he said, in cold disgust.

"Well," said his friend, reasonably, "ishn't that the big idea? Wouldn' you razzer drink yourself to death'n die of thirst?"

They were making for the door now in a zigzag course, and when they passed Honor, Jimsy stayed their progress. He held out his hand and spoke to her, but he did not meet her eyes. "Gimme ring," he said, crossly.

"What do you mean?" said Honor.

"Gimme back ring ... busted word ... busted engagement ... want ring anyway ... maybe nozzer girl ... you can't tell!" His hoarse voice rose querulously. "Gimme ring, I shay!"

Honor shrank back from him against Mrs. King. "Jimsy," she said, "when the boy that gave me this ring comes and asks me for it, he can have it. You can't!"

His legs seemed to give way beneath him, at that, and Yaqui Juan half led, half dragged him out of the room.

Mrs. King wept again but Honor's eyes were dry. Carter started to speak to her but she stopped him. "Please, Carter ... I can't ... talk. I think I'd like to be alone."

"Oh, my dear, please come up with me," Mrs. King begged, "it's so cold here, and——"

"I have to be alone," said Honor in her worn voice.

"Then you must have this," said the older woman, finding comfort in wrapping her in her own serape. It was a gay thing, striped in red and white and green, the Mexican colors; it looked as if it had been made to wear in happy days.

They went away and left her alone in the sala. She didn't know how long she had sat there when she saw a muffled figure crawling across the veranda. She opened the door and stepped out, nodding to the peon on guard there, leaning on his gun. "Juan?" she called softly.

The crouching, cringing figure hesitated. "Si," came the soft whisper. He kept his head shrouded. She knew that he was sick with shame for the lad he had worshiped; he did not want to meet her gaze. She could understand that. It did not seem to her that she could ever meet any one's eyes again—kind Mrs. King's, Carter's—her dear Stepper's. Suddenly it came to her with a positive sense of relief and escape that perhaps there would be no need for facing any one after to-night.... Perhaps this was to be the last night of all nights. It might well be, when Jimsy King slept in a drunken stupor and a Yaqui Indian slave went out with his life in his hands to help them. She crossed the veranda and leaned down and laid her hand on the covered head. Her throat was so swollen now that she could hardly make herself heard. "Tu es amigo leal, Juan," she said. "Good friend; good friend!" Then in her careful Spanish—"Go with God!"

He had been always an impassive creature, Yaqui Juan, his own personal sufferings added to the native stoicism of his race, but he made an odd, smothered sound now, and caught up the trailing end of her bright serape and pressed his face against it for an instant. Then he crept away into the soft blackness of the tropic night and Honor went back into the empty sala. She wished that she had seen his face; she was mournfully sure she would never see it again. It did not seem humanly possible for any one to go into the very midst of their besiegers encamped about the well, fill the canteens and return alive, but it was a gallant and splendid try, and she would have liked a memory of his grave face. It would have blotted out the look of Jimsy King's face, singing his tipsy song. She thought she would keep on seeing that as long as she lived, and that made it less terrible to think that she might not live many more hours.



CHAPTER XV

They would not leave her alone. Carter came to stay with her and she sent him away, and then Madeline King came, her very blue eyes red rimmed and deep with understanding, but Honor could not talk with her nor listen to her. She went away, shaking her head, and Josita came in her place. Honor did not mind the little Mexican serving woman. She did not try to talk to her. She just crouched on the floor at her feet and prayers slipped from her tongue and her fingers:

Padre Nuestra qui estas en los cielos—

and presently:

Santa Maria—

Honor found herself listening a little scornfully. Was there indeed a Father in the heavens or anywhere else who concerned Himself about things like this? Josita seemed to think so. She was in terror, but she was clinging to something ... somewhere.... Honor decided that she did not mind the murmur of her voice; she could go on with her thinking just the same. Jimsy. Jimsy King—Jimsy—"Wild"—King. What was she going to do? What had she promised Stepper that day on the way to the train? It all came back to her like a scene on the screen—the busy streets—the feel of the wheel in her hands again—Stepper's slow voice—"But, if the worst should be true, if the boy really has gone to pieces, you won't marry him?" And her own words—"No; if Jimsy should be—like his father—I wouldn't marry him, Stepper. There shouldn't be any more 'Wild Kings.'"

That was her promise to her stepfather, her best friend. But what had been her promise to Jimsy, that day on the shore below the Malibou Ranch when they sat in the little pocket of rocks and sand and sun, and he had given her the ring with the clasped hands? Hadn't she said—"I do believe you, Jimsy. I'll never stop believing you!" Yes, but how was she to go on believing that he would not do the thing she saw him do? How compass that? Her love and loyalty began to fling themselves against that solid wall of ugly fact and to fall back, bruised, breathless.

Jimsy King of the hard muscles and winged heels, the essence of strength and sunny power; Jimsy King, collapsed in the arms of Yaqui Juan, failing her in the hour of her direst need. Jimsy, her lover, who had promised her she should never go alive into those dark and terrible hands ... Jimsy, who could not lift a finger now to defend her, or to put her beyond their grasp. It became intolerable to sit still. She sprang up and began to walk swiftly from wall to wall of the big room, her heels tapping sharply on the smooth red tiles. Josita lifted mournful eyes to stare at her for an instant and then returned to her beads. Honor paused and looked out of the window. She could see nothing through the inky blackness. Perhaps Yaqui Juan was creeping back to them now, the canteens of precious water hung about his neck,—and perhaps he was dead. There had been no shots, but they would not necessarily shoot him. There were other ... awfuller ways. And Jimsy King was asleep. What would he be like when he wakened, when he came to himself again? Could he ever face her? Would he live?... And suppose she cast him off,—then, what? She would go back to Italy, to the mountainous Signorina. She would embrace her warmly and there would emanate from her the faint odor of expensive soap and rare and costly scents, and she would pat her with a puffy hand and say—"So, my good small one? The sun has set, no? Ah, then, it does not signify whether one feel joy or sorrow, so long as one feels. To feel ... that is to live, and to live is to sing!" And she would go to work again, and sing in concert, and take the place offered to her in the opera. And some day, when she went for a holiday to Switzerland (she supposed she would still go on holidays; people did, no matter what had happened to them) she would meet Ethel Bruce-Drummond, hale and frank as the wind off the snow, and she would say—"But where's your boy? I say, you haven't thrown him over, have you?"

Well, could you throw over what fell away from you? Could you? She realized that she was gripping the old ring with the thumb and fingers of her right hand, literally "holding hard." Was this what James King had meant? Had Jeanie King, Jimsy's firm-chinned Scotch mother who so nearly saved her man, had she held on in times like this? Surely no "Wild King" had ever failed his woman as Jimsy had failed her, in the face of such hideous danger. But did that absolve her? After all (her love and loyalty flung themselves again against the wall and it seemed to give, to sway) was it Jimsy who had failed her? Wasn't it the taint in his blood, the dead hands reaching up out of the grave, the cruel certainty that had hemmed him in all his days,—the bitter man-made law that he must follow in the unsteady footsteps of his forbears?

It wasn't Jimsy! Not himself; not the real boy, not the real man. It was the pitiful counterpart of him. The real Jimsy was there, underneath, buried for the moment,—buried forever unless she stood by! (The wall was swaying now, giving way, crumbling.) Her pride in him was gone, perhaps, and something of her triumphant faith, but her loyalty was there and her love was there, bruised and battered and breathless; not the rosy, untried, laughing love of that far-away day in the sand and sun; a grave love, scarred, weary, argus-eyed. (The wall was down now, a heap of stones and mortar.) She went upstairs to Jimsy's room and knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again, and after an instant she tried to open it. It was locked, and she could not rouse him, and a sense of bodily sickness overcame her for the moment.

Madeline King came out of her husband's room and hurried to her. "Ah, I wouldn't, my dear," she said. "Wait until he—wait a little while." She put her arm about her and pulled her gently away.

"I'll wait," said Honor in her rasping whisper. "I'll wait for him, no matter how long it is."

The Englishwoman's eyes filled. "My dear!" she said. "Do you mind sitting with Richard a few moments? I find it steadies me to move about a bit."

"Of course I'll sit with him," said Honor, docilely, "but I'll always be waiting for Jimsy." She sat down beside Richard King and took up the fan.

"He's been better ever since that bit of water," said his wife, thankfully. "And Juan will fetch us more! Good soul! If ever we come out of this, Rich' must do something very splendid for him."

Carter went down into the sala. Honor had asked him to leave her, but he found that he could not stay away from her; the remembrance of her eyes when she looked at Jimsy was intolerable in the loneliness of his own room. The big living room was empty but he supposed Honor would be back presently, and he sat down in an easy chair and leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. He had arrived, very nearly, at the end of his endurance. He knew it himself and he was husbanding his failing strength as best he could. All his life, at times of illness or stress, he had been subject to fainting fits; miraculously, in these dreadful days, he had not fainted once, but now waves were rising about him, almost submerging him. If the Indian came soon with the water ... if he could once drink his fill ... if he could drink even a few drops ... he could hold out. But the Indian had been gone for more than an hour, and there was grave doubt of his ever coming back.

His eyes, skimming the ceiling, dropped to the shelves of books which ran about the room and rose almost to meet it. They came to a startled halt on a vase of ferns on a high shelf. A vase of ferns. There must have been water in it. Perhaps there was water in it now! He was so weak that it was a tremendous effort for him to drag himself out of his chair and across the room, to climb up on the book ladder and reach for it. He grew so dizzy that it seemed as if he must drop it. He shook it. Water! He lifted out the ferns and looked. It was almost full. He stood there with it in his hand, his eyes on the doors. He wanted with all his heart to call Honor, to share it. His heart and his mind wanted to call her, but his hands lifted the vase to his dry lips and he drank in great gulps. He stopped himself before he was half satisfied. He was equal to that. Then he put the ferns back in the vase and the vase back on the shelf and went into the hall and called upstairs to her.

Honor came at once. "Oh, Carter, has Juan come?"

"No, not yet! But I think—I hope—I've made a discovery! Look!" He pointed to the vase.

She caught her breath. "There might be water in it?"

"Yes, I'm sure there is." Again, more steadily this time, he mounted the little sliding book ladder and reached for the vase, and Honor stood watching him with wide eyes, her cracked lips parted.

"Water?" she whispered.

He nodded solemnly, shaking the tall vase for her to hear the heartening sound of it. When he stood on the floor he held it toward her. "You first, Honor."

"No." She was trembling. "We'll pour it out into a pitcher. If there's enough to divide, we'll all have some. If there's just a little, we'll give it to Mr. King." She went away, walking a little unsteadily, putting out a hand here and there against the wall or the back of a chair, and in a moment she came back with a tall glass pitcher. "Careful, Cartie ... mustn't spill a drop...."

There was less than a cupful of dark, stale water, with bits of fern fronds floating in it.

"Only enough for him," said Honor, her chin quivering. "Oh, Cartie, I'm so thirsty ... so crazy thirsty...."

"You must take it yourself," said Carter, sternly. "Every drop." He held the pitcher up to her.

Honor hesitated. "Cartie, I couldn't trust myself to drink it out of the pitcher ... I'm afraid ... but I'll pour out about two teaspoonfuls for each of us...." She poured an inch of water into a tiny glass. "You first, Carter."

"No," said Carter, "I'm not going to touch it. It's for you and the Kings."

"Carter! You're wonderful!" She drank her pitiful portion in three sips. "There ... now you, please, Cartie! Just one swallow!"

But Carter shook his head. "No; I don't need it. Shall I take this to Mrs. King?"

"Yes." Her sad eyes knighted him.

Carter took the pitcher of water to Mrs. King without touching a drop of it and helped her to strain the fern bits out of it through a handkerchief before she began to give it to her husband in spoonfuls. With the first sip he ceased his uneasy murmuring and she smiled up at the boy. "Thank you, Carter. It's very splendid of you. Won't you take a sip for yourself?"

Carter said he did not need it.

"You do look fresher, really. You've stood this thing extraordinarily well. Did you give Honor some?"

"She would take only a taste."

Madeline King's eyes filled. "This is a black night for her, Carter. The thirst—and the insurrectos—are the least of it for Honor."

Carter's eyes were bleak. "But she had to know it some time. She had to find it out, sooner or later. She couldn't have gone on with it, Mrs. King."

She sighed. "I never was so astounded, so disappointed in all my life. One simply cannot take it in. He has been so absolutely steady ever since he came down,—and so fine all through this trouble! And to fail us now, when we need him so,—with Honor in such danger—" She gave her husband the last of the water and then laid on his forehead the damp handkerchief through which she had strained it. "It will break his uncle's heart. He was no end proud of him."

"She had to know it some time," said Carter, stubbornly. "Is there anything I can do, Mrs. King?"

"Nothing, Carter."

"Then I'll go back to Honor."

Something in his expression, in the way his dry lips said it, made the woman smile pityingly. "Carter, I—I'm frightfully sorry for you, too."

He drew himself up with something of the old concealing pride. "I'm quite all right, thank you."

She was not rebuffed. "You are quite all wretched," she said, "you poor lad, and I'm no end sorry, but—Carter, don't think this ill wind of Jimsy's will blow you any good."

He flushed hotly through his strained pallor.

"Ah," said the Englishwoman, gently, "you were counting on it. It's no good, Carter. It's no good. Not with Honor Carmody."

Carter did not answer her in words but there was angry denial in the tilt of his head as he limped away, and she looked after him sadly.

He found Honor limply relaxed in a long wicker chair. "Carter," she whispered, "I wish I'd asked you to give Jimsy a taste of that water."

"You think he deserves it?" He couldn't keep the sneer out of his voice.

"No," she answered him honestly. "I don't think he deserves it ... but he needs it."

The words repeated themselves over and over in the other's mind. He didn't deserve it, but he needed it. That was the way—the weak, sentimental, womanish way in which she would reason it out about herself, he supposed ... Jimsy King didn't deserve her, but he needed her. He was deep in his bitter reflections when he realized that she was speaking to him.

"Cartie, I must tell you how fine I think you are! You were splendid ... about the water ... not taking any ... when I know how you're suffering." She had to speak slowly, and if Stephen Lorimer had stood out in the hall he would never have recognized his Top Step's voice. "Of course we believe help is coming ... that we'll be safe in a few hours ... but because we may not be ... this is the time for telling the truth, isn't it, Carter? I want to tell you ... how I respect you.... Once I said you were weak, when I was angry at you.... But now I know you're strong ... stronger than—Jimsy ... with the best kind of strength. I want you to know that I know that, Carty."

"Honor!" The truth and the lie spun round and round in his aching head; he was stronger than Jimsy King; he hadn't made a drunken beast of himself; suppose he had taken the first sip of the water?—He hadn't taken it all. He was a better man than Jimsy King. He made a swift motion toward her, saying her name brokenly in his choked voice, but he crumpled suddenly and slid from his chair to the floor and was still.

Honor flew to the foot of the stairs and called Mrs. King. "Carter has fainted! Will you help me?"

Mrs. King called the Mexican guard in from the porch to lift him to the couch, and she and the girl fanned him and chafed his thin wrists. When he came to himself he was intensely chagrined. "I'm all right," he said impatiently, sitting up. "I wish you wouldn't bother."

"Lie still for a bit," said Mrs. King. "You've had a nasty faint."

Honor saw his painful flush. "Cartie, it's no wonder you fainted,—I feel as if I might, any minute. And I did nearly faint once, didn't I, Mrs. King? The day I arrived here—remember?" She remembered all too keenly herself ... the instant of relaxed blackness that followed on the sound of Richard King's hearty voice—"Why, the boy's all right! Ab-so-lutely all right! Isn't he, Madeline? Steady as a clock. That college nonsense—" And the contrast between that day of faith triumphant and this dark night was so sharp and cruel that she could not talk any more, even to comfort Carter. They were all silent, so that they clearly heard the unlocking, the opening, the closing of the door of Jimsy's room, and then a step—a swift, sure step upon the stair.

Then Yaqui Juan walked into the sala.

"Juan!" They sprang at him, galvanized into life and vigor at the sight of him. But he stood still, staring at them with a look of scorn and dislike, his arms folded across his chest.

"Juan," Mrs. King faltered,—"no agua?" It was incredible. He was back, safely back, untouched, not even breathing hard. Where was the water he had risked his life to bring them? The Englishwoman began to cry, childishly, whimpering. "I can't bear it ... I can't bear it ... I wanted it for Rich' ... for Rich'!"

The Indian did not speak, but his scornful, accusing eyes, raking them all, came to rest on Honor, fixing her with pitiless intensity.

The girl was shaking so that she could hardly stand; she caught hold of the back of a tall chair to steady herself. "Juan,—you came out of Senor Don Diego's room?" she whispered.

"Si, Senorita." He was watching the dawning light in her face, but the sternness of his own did not soften.

"You didn't go at all," wept Mrs. King, rocking to and fro and wringing her hands. "You didn't go at all!"

"No, Senora."

Honor Carmody screamed, a hoarse, exultant shout. It was as she had screamed in the old good days when Jimsy King, the ball clutched to his side, tore down the field and went over the line for a touchdown. "Jimsy went! Jimsy went! Jimsy went! It was Jimsy! Jimsy!" She flung her arms over her head, swaying unsteadily on her feet. Tears streamed from her eyes and ran down over her white cheeks and into her parched mouth. In that instant there was room for no fear, no terror; they would come later, frantic, unbearable. Now there was only pride, pride and faith and clean joy. "Jimsy! Jimsy!" Her legs gave way beneath her and she slipped to the floor, but she did not cease her hoarse and pitiful shouting.

"How could he?" said Carter Van Meter. "It was impossible—in that condition! Honor, he couldn't——"

But Yaqui Juan strode to the little table where the empty decanter stood, stooped, picked up a rough jug of decorative Mexican pottery from an under shelf. Then, pausing until he saw that all their eyes were upon him, he slowly poured its contents back into the decanter. The liquor rose and rose until it reached the exact spot which Carter had pointed out to Honor—the top of the design engraved on the glass. "Mira!" said the Indian, sternly.

"God," said Carter Van Meter.

"He was acting! He was acting!" wept Mrs. King.

But Jimsy's Skipper sat on the floor, waving her arms, swaying her body like a yell leader, still shouting his name in her cracked voice, and then, crazily, her eyes wide as if she visualized a field, far away, a game, a gallant figure speeding to victory, she sang:

You can't beat L. A. High! You can't beat L. A. High! Use your team to get up steam But you cant beat L. A. High!



CHAPTER XVI

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 Senor 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. Senor 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, Senorita," 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 peon and he stood with his gun leveled, covering the path.

"Mira!" said the Indian, proudly. "Senorita, 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.

THE END