The other woman towered above her and even above Gallito. She was a colossal Venus, with a face pink and white as a may-blossom. Tremulous smiles played about her soft, babyish mouth and a joyous excitement shone in her wide, blue eyes. Upon her head was a small, lop-sided bonnet, from which depended a rusty crepe veil of which she seemed inordinately conscious, and at the throat of her black gown was a large, pink bow.

"Make you acquainted with Mis' Thomas, Miss Gallito," said Mrs. Nitschkan heartily. "Marthy's one of my oldest friends an' one of my newest converts. She's all right if she could let the boys alone, an' not be always tangled up in some flirtation that her friends has got to sit up nights scheming to get her out of. That pink bow an' that crepe veil shows she ain't got the right idea of her responsibilities as a widow. So I brought her up to my little cabin, just a quarter of a mile through the trees there, hopin' I'd get her mind turned on more sensible things than men. Gosh a'mighty! She's got a chance to shoot bear here."

"I don't think you got any call to introduce me to the Black Pearl that-a-way, Sadie." Mrs. Thomas's eyes filled with ready tears. "It ain't manners. I wouldn't have come with her, Miss Gallito, but I got to see pretty plain that the gentleman," here she blushed and bridled, "that was courting me was awful anxious to get hold of the money and the cabin that my last husband, in his grave 'most six months now, left me." She wiped the tears from her eyes on the back of her hand, a movement hampered somewhat by the fact that her handkerchief had been fashioned into a bag to hold some chocolate creams and was tied tightly to her thumb.

"That's what you get for cavorting around with a spindle-shanked, knock-kneed, mush-brained jack-rabbit of a man," muttered Mrs. Nitschkan scornfully.

But this thrust was ignored by Mrs. Thomas. The color had risen on her cheeks and there was a light in her eyes. Shyly, yet gleefully, she drew a letter from her pocket. "I got a letter from him to-day with an awful cute motto in it. Look!" She showed it proudly to Pearl, Jose and Gallito. "It's on cream-tinted paper, with a red and blue border, an'," simpering consciously, "it says in black and gold letters, 'A Little Widow Is a Dangerous Thing.'"

The little group seemed for the moment too stunned to speak. Mrs. Nitschkan was the first to recover herself. "Gosh a'mighty!" she murmured in an awed whisper, and allowed her glance to travel slowly over Mrs. Thomas's well-cushioned, six feet of womanhood, "A—little—widow!" huskily.

Gallito seized the opportunity here to direct Pearl's attention to the bandit, who had been nudging him and whispering to him for the last moment or so.

"Pearl, this is—" he hesitated a moment, "Jose."

Mrs. Nitschkan looked up at him in quick astonishment. "Gosh a'mighty," she cried, "ain't that kind o' reckless?"

But Jose nodded a quick, cynical approval and, with a sudden turn, executed a deep bow to the Pearl, one hand on the heart, expressing gallantry, fealty, the humblest admiration; all these sincere and yet permeated with a subtle and volatile mockery.

"Better so, Francisco," he said in a voice which scarcely betrayed an accent, and indeed this was not strange considering that he spoke the patois of many people, being a born linguist. His father had been a Frenchman, a Gascon, but his mother was a daughter of Seville. "But you have not said all." He drew himself up with haughty and self-conscious pride and, with a sweeping gesture of his long fingers, lifted the hair from his ears and stood thus, leering like Pan.

"Crop-eared Jose!" cried Pearl, falling back a pace or two and looking from her father to the two women in wide-eyed astonishment. "Why, they are still looking for him. Are you not afraid?" She looked from one to the other as if asking the question of all. She was not shocked, nor, to tell the truth, particularly surprised after the first moment of wonder. She had been used to strange company all her life, and ever since her childhood, on her brief visits to her father's cabin, she had been accustomed to his cronies, lean, brown, scarred pirates and picaroons, full of strange Spanish oaths.

"You will not mention this in letters to your mother," ordered Gallito, glooming at her with fierce eyes. "You know her. Caramba! If she should guess, the world would know it."

"Lord, yes!" agreed Pearl uninterestedly. "You needn't be afraid of me," to Jose, "I don't tell what I know."

"That is true," commended Gallito, motioning her at the same time to the table.

It seems a pity to record that such a supper was set before a woman suffering from a wound of the heart. Women at all times are held to be lacking in that epicurean appreciation of good food which man justly extols; but when a woman's whole being is absorbed in a disappointment in love, nectar and ambrosia are as sawdust to her.

On the outer rim of that circle which knew him but slightly, or merely knew of him, the causes of the charmed life which Jose bore were a matter of frequent speculation, also continual wonder was expressed that his friends would sometimes take incredible risks in effecting the escape of this rogue after one of his reckless escapades. But Jose had certain positive qualities, had these gossips but known it, which endeared him to his companions; although among them could never be numbered gratitude, a lively appreciation of benefits received or a tried and true affection.

Certainly a dog-like fidelity was not among Jose's virtues. He would lift the purse of his best friend or his rescuer from a desperate impasse, provided it were sufficiently heavy. A favor of a nature to put him under obligations for a lifetime he forgot as soon as it was accepted. He caricatured a benefactor to his face, nor ever dreamed of sparing friend or foe his light, pointed jibes which excoriated the surface of the smoothest vanity.

No, the only virtues which could be accredited to Jose, and these were sufficient, were an unfailing lightness of heart, the facile and fascinating gift of yarn-spinning—for he was a born raconteur, with a varied experience to draw upon—a readiness for high play, at which he lost and won with the same gay and unruffled humor, and an incomparable and heaven-bestowed gift of cookery.

To-night the very sight of the supper set before him softened Gallito's harsh face. Brook trout, freshly caught that afternoon from the rushing mountain stream not far away from the cabin, and smoking hot from the frying pan; an omelette, golden brown and buttercup yellow, of a fluff, a fragrance, with savories hidden beneath its surface, a conserve of fruits, luscious, amber and subtly biting, the coffee of dreams and a bottle of red wine, smooth as honey.

"I hope you don't think that we're the kind of wolves that's always gatherin' round wherever there's a snack of food," murmured Mrs. Thomas softly as she took a seat beside Pearl. "We got our own cabin just a piece up in the woods, but Jose, he kind of wanted to make a celebration of your coming up."

Pearl did not answer, but slipped languidly out of her cloak, untwisted her heavy veil, removed her hat, Jose's eyes as well as Mrs. Thomas's following her the while with unmixed admiration, and sat down.

Jose immediately began to roll cigarettes and smoke them while he ate.

"Well, what is the news?" asked Gallito, as he, at least, began his evening meal with every evidence of appreciation; "good fishing, good hunting, good prospecting, eh, Mrs. Nitschkan?"

The gipsy, for she was one by birth as well as by inclination, nodded and showed her teeth in a satisfied smile. "So good that it looks like we'd be kep' here even longer than I expected when we come." She drew some bits of quartz from her pocket and threw them out on the table before him. "Some specimens I chipped off in my new prospect," she said, her eyes upon him.

"So," he said, examining them with interest, "your luck, Mrs. Nitschkan, as usual. Where—? Excuse me," a dark flush rose on his parchment skin at this breach of mining-camp etiquette which he had almost committed.

For a few moments they talked exclusively of the mining interests of the locality. It is this feverish, inexhaustible topic that is almost exclusively dwelt upon in mining camps, all other topics seeming tame and commonplace beside this fascinating subject, presided over by the golden fairy of fortune and involving her. To-day she tempts and eludes, she tantalizes and mocks and flies her thousands of wooers who follow her to the rocks, seeking her with back-breaking toil and dreaming ever of her by day and by night. Variable and cruel, deaf to all beseeching, she picks out her favorites by some rule of caprice which none but herself understands.

Supper over, Gallito ensconced his two feminine visitors in easy chairs and took one himself, while Jose, with noiseless deftness, cleared away the remains of food. Pearl had wandered to the window and, drawing the curtain aside, stood gazing out into the featureless, black expanse of the night.

"Quite a few things has happened since I saw you last, Gallito," said Mrs. Nitschkan conversationally, filling a short and stubby black pipe with loose tobacco from the pocket of her coat. "For one, I got converted."

"Ah!" returned Gallito with his unvarying courtesy, although his raised eyebrows showed some perplexity, "to—to—a religion?"

"'Course." Mrs. Nitschkan leaned forward, her arms upon her knees. "This world's the limit, Gallito, and queer things is going to happen whether you're looking for 'em or not. About a year ago Jack and the boys went off on a long prospectin' spell, the girls you know are all married and have homes of their own, an' there was me left free as air with a dandy spell of laziness right in front of me ready to be catched up 'twixt my thumb and forefinger and put in my pipe and smoked, and I hadn't even the spirit to grab it."

"Why didn't you think about getting yourself some new clothes, like any other woman would?" asked Jose, eyeing her curiously.

"What I got's good enough for me," she returned shortly.

"You should have gave your place a nice cleaning and cooked a little for a change, Sadie," said Mrs. Thomas softly and virtuously.

"Such things look worse'n dying to me," replied the gipsy. "And," turning again to Gallito, "the taste goin' out of my tea and coffee wasn't the worst. It went out of my pipe, too. Gosh a'mighty, Gallito! I'll never forget the night I sat beside my dyin' fire and felt that I didn't even take no interest in winnin' their money from the boys; and then suddenly most like a voice from outside somep'n in me says: 'What's the matter with you, Sadie Nitschkan, is that you're a reapin' the harvest you've sowed, gipsyin' and junketin', fightin' and gamblin' with no thought of the serious side of life?'"

"And what is the serious side of life, Nitschkan?" asked Jose, sipping delicately his glass of wine as if to taste to the full its ambrosial flavors, like the epicure he was. "I have not yet discovered it."

"You will soon." There was meaning in the gipsy's tone and in the glance she bestowed upon him. "It's doin' good. I tell you boys when I realized that I'd probably have to change myself within and without and be like some of the pious folks I'd seen, it give me a gone feeling in the pit of my stomach. But you can't keep me down, and after I'd saw I was a sinner and repented 'cause I was so bad, I saw that the whole trouble was this, I'd tried everything else, but I hadn't never tried doin' good."

"No, Sadie, you sure hadn't made duty the watch-word of your life," agreed Mrs. Thomas.

Mrs. Nitschkan ignored this. "Now doin' good, for I know you don't know what that means, Jose, is seein' the right path and makin' other folks walk in it whether they're a mind to or not. Well I cert'ny gave the sinners of Zenith a run for their money."

She smoked a moment or two in silence, sunk in agreeable remembrance. She had been true to her word and, having decided to reform as much of the community as in her estimation needed that trial as by fire, she had plunged into her self-appointed task with lusty enthusiasm. As soon as her conversion and the outlet she had chosen for her superabundant energy were noised abroad, there was an immediate and noticeable change in the entire deportment of the camp. Those long grown careless drew forth their old morals and manners, brushed the moths from them, burnished the rust and wore them with undeniable self-consciousness, but without ostentation.

Upon these lukewarm and conforming souls Mrs. Nitschkan cast a darkling eye. It was the recalcitrant, the defiant, the professing sinner upon whom she concentrated her energies.

"So you see, Gallito," rousing herself from pleasant contemplation of past triumphs, "it wasn't only a chance to hunt and prospect that brought me. I heard from Bob Flick that Jose was still here and I see a duty before me."

"She could not keep away from me," Jose rolled his eyes sentimentally. "You see beneath that rough old jacket of her husband's which she wears there beats a heart."

"I got some'p'n else that can beat and that's a fist." She stretched out her arm and drew it back, gazing with pride at her great, swelling muscles.

"But never me, who will tidy your cabin and cook half your meals for you." He smiled ingratiatingly at Mrs. Thomas, who grew deeply pink under his admiring smile. "Why do you not convert Saint Harry?"

"Harry's all right," she said. "You need convertin', he don't. I got an idea that he's been right through the fiery furnace like them Bible boys in their asbestos coats, he's smelted."

"Harry got my telegram?" asked Gallito, speaking in a low tone, after first glancing toward Pearl, "and you have made a room ready for her?"

"Clean as a convent cell," said Jose, with his upcurling, mordant smile. "The wind has roared through it all day and swept away every trace of tobacco and my thoughts."

"That is well," replied Gallito with a sardonic twist of the mouth, "and where do you sleep to-night?"

"In Saint Harry's cabin."

"So," Gallito nodded as if content. "That will be best."

"Best for both," agreed Jose, a flicker of mirth on his face. "My constant companionship is good for Harry. It is not well to think you have shown the Devil the door, kicked him down the hill and forgotten him; and that he has taken his beating, learned his lesson and gone forever. It is then that the Devil is dangerous. It is better, Gallito, believe me, to remain on good terms with him, to humor him and to pass the time of day. Humility is a great virtue and you should be willing to learn something even of the Devil, not set yourself up on a high, cold, sharp mountain peak, where you keep his fingers itching from morning to night to throw you off. I have observed these things through the years of my life, and the middle course is ever the safest. Give to the church, observe her laws as a true and obedient son, in so far as possible, and only so far. Let her get her foot on your neck and she will demand such sacrifices!" He lifted his hands and rolled his eyes upward, "but the Devil is more reasonable; treat him civilly, be a good comrade to him and he will let you alone. But Saint Harry does not understand that. Saint Harry on his ice peak, and the Devil straddling around trying to find a foothold so that he can climb up to Harry and seize him with those itching fingers. Ho, ho!" Jose's laughter rang loud and shrill.

Pearl, hearing it, turned from the window with a disturbed frown and began to walk up and down the far end of the room, and Mrs. Nitschkan frowned ominously. "That's enough of your talk, Jose," she said peremptorily. "It sounds like blasphemin' to me, talkin' about the Devil that light way. Remember one of the reasons I come here. Gallito, you'd better lay out the cards and let's get down to our game. What's the limit?"

"Does Mrs. Thomas play as high as you?" asked Gallito.

"I don't care much for a tame game," said Mrs. Thomas modestly, with lowered lids. "They're too many long, sad winters in the mountains when gentl—, I mean friends, can't cross the trails to see you, an' you got to fill up your heart with cards and religion and things like that."

Jose had paused to watch, with a keen appreciation, the grace of Pearl's movements. "Caramba!" he muttered. "How sprang that flower of Spain from such a gnarled old tree as you, Gallito? Dios! But she is salado!"

Gallito frowned a little, which did not in the least disconcert Jose, and, rising, he moved a small table forward, opened it and then going to a cupboard in the wall drew from it a short, squat bottle, four glasses and a pack of cards. "Your room is just beyond this," he said, turning to Pearl. "Jose says that you will find everything ready for you. You must be tired. You had better go to bed."

Pearl twitched her shoulders impatiently. "I am not sleepy," she said sullenly. She threw herself in the chair that Gallito had vacated and lay there watching the fire with somber, wild eyes.

Jose threw another log on the fire and then the two men and two women sat down to their cards. A clock ticked steadily, monotonously, on the mantel-piece, but whether an hour or ten minutes passed while she sat there watching the brilliant, soaring flame of the pine logs Pearl could not have told, when suddenly the stillness of the night was broken by the sound of someone whistling along the road. It seemed a long way off at first, but gradually came nearer and nearer, tuneful and clear as the song of a bobolink.

"Saint Harry, by all the saints or devils!" cried Jose with a burst of his shrill laughter. "Ah, Francisco, the devil is a shrewd fellow; when he can't manage a job himself, he always gets a woman to help him." His glancing, twinkling eyes sought Pearl, who had barely turned her head as her father rose to open the door for the newcomer, exclaiming with some show of cordiality:

"Ah, Seagreave, come in, come in."

"Thanks," said an agreeable voice. "I got home late and found that Jose had made preparations to lighten my loneliness. Then I saw the light in your window and thought I would come down. You see I suspected pleasant company."

He advanced into the room and then, seeing Pearl, who had twisted about in her chair and was gazing at him with the first show of interest she had yet exhibited, he paused and looked rather hesitatingly at Gallito.

"We have a guest," said Jose softly and in Spanish.

"My daughter has returned with me," said Gallito. "Pearl, this is Mr. Seagreave."

"Saint Harry," said Jose more softly still.

Mr. Seagreave bowed, although one who knew him well might have seen that his astonishment increased rather than abated at the sight of Pearl. As for her, she merely nodded and let her lashes lie the more wearily and indifferently upon her cheek.

"Really, I wouldn't have intruded," said Seagreave in his pleasant English voice. "I had an idea from your telegram, Gallito, that Hughie was coming with you. Sha'n't I go?"

For answer Gallito pushed forward a chair and threw another log upon the fire. "My daughter is tired," he said. "She will soon retire; but when a man has been from home for a fortnight, and in the desert!" he raised his brows expressively, "Pah! He wishes to hear of everything which has happened during his absence and particularly, Mr. Seagreave, do I wish to talk to you about that lower drift. Jose tells me that you have examined it."

Thus urged, Seagreave sat down. He was tall and slight and fair, so very fair that his age was difficult to guess. His hair, with a silvery sheen on it, swept in a wing across his forehead, and he had a habit of pushing it back from his brow; his eyes were of a vivid blue, peculiarly luminous, and his features, which were regular, showed a fine finish of modeling. His age, as has been said, was a matter of conjecture, but judging from his appearance he might have been anywhere from twenty to forty.

"Don't let me interrupt your game," he said. "It is early yet, and if Miss Gallito isn't too tired, and if she will let me, I will talk to her while you play."

Jose smiled to himself and picked up the cards. The game went on. Seagreave, receiving no encouragement from Pearl, made no attempt at conversation, until at last, stirred by some impulse of curiosity, she lifted her eyes. It was this question of age she wished to decide. In that first, quick glance of hers she had taken it for granted that he was twenty, but in a second stolen look she had noted certain lines about the mouth and eyes which added years to his blonde youthfulness. Then her quick ear had caught Jose's "Saint Harry," and to her, who knew many men, those lines about mouth and eyes did not suggest a past of saintship.

Her surreptitious glance encountered that of Seagreave, for he, too, had withdrawn his eyes from the fire for a moment to let his puzzled gaze rest upon her. He had known vaguely that Gallito had a daughter, and he remembered in the same indefinite way that some one had told him that she was an actress, but, even so, he could not reconcile this—his mind sought a simile to express her—this exotic, with Gallito, these two mountain women, a mountain cabin, and an equally unpretentious home in the desert. She lay listlessly in her chair, a long and slender shape in a dull black gown which fell about her in those statuesque folds which all drapery assumed immediately she donned it; beneath it showed her feet in black satin slippers and the gleam of the satin seemed repeated in her blue-black hair. Her cheek was unwontedly pale. A monotone she appeared, half-within and half-without the zone of the firelight; but the individuality of her could not be thus subdued. It found expression in the concentration of light and color focused in the splendid rings which sparkled on the long, brown fingers of both her hands.

Her narrow eyes met his sombrously. On either side it was a glance of curiosity, of scrutiny. She, as usual, made no effort to begin a conversation, and he, searching for a polite commonplace, said presently:

"Have you ever been in Colina before?"

"Often, but not in the last two years," she answered tonelessly, "not since you've been here, I guess. I hate the mountains."

"I have been here nearly two years," he vouchsafed, "and I feel as if I would never go away. But you live in the desert, don't you?"

"Sometimes, that is, when I'm not out on the road. The desert is the place. You can breathe there, you can live there," there was a passionate vibration in her voice, "but these old, cold mountains make you feel all the time as if they were going to fall on you and crush you."

"Do they make you feel that way?" He pulled his chair nearer to her so that his back was turned to the two men, and Jose, who saw everything, smiled faintly, mordaciously. "How strange!" It was not a conventional expression, he seemed really to find it strange, unbelievably so.

"And you, how do they make you feel?" she asked wearily, a touch of scorn in her glance.

A light seemed to glow over his face. "Ah, I do not know that I can tell you," he said, and she was conscious of some immediate change in him, which she apprehended but could never have defined. It was as if he had withdrawn mentally to incalculable distances.

Pearl did not notice his evasion; she was not interested in his view of the mountains. What she instinctively resented, even in her dulled state, was his impersonal attitude toward herself. She was not used to it from any man. She did not understand it. She wondered, without any particular interest in the matter, but still following her instinctive and customary mode of thought, if he had not noticed that she was beautiful. Was he so stupid that he did not think her so? But there was no hint in his manner or look in his eyes of an intention on his part of playing the inevitable game, even a remembrance of it seemed as lacking as desire. The game of challenge and elusion on her part, of perpetual and ever more ardent advance on his. He was interested, she knew that, but, as she felt with a surge of surprise, not in the way she had always encountered and had learned to expect.

"Isn't it strange," she realized that he was speaking again, "that I haven't been drawn to the desert, because so many have had to turn to it? I have only seen it from traveling across it, and then it repelled me, perhaps it frightened me." He seemed to consider this.

For the moment Pearl forgot the inevitable game. "Frightened you!" she cried. "It is the mountains that frighten me; but the desert is always different. It—" she struggled for expression, "it is always you."

Something in this seemed to strike him. "Perhaps I have that to learn." Again he meditated a few moments, then looked up with a smile. "You must tell me all that you find in the desert and I will tell you all that I find in the mountains. It will be jolly to talk to a woman again." He spoke with a satisfaction thoroughly genuine.

She glanced at him suspiciously. She was uncertain how to meet this frank acceptance of comradeship, free yet from the intrusion of sex. "Maybe," she acquiesced a little doubtfully. Then she drew her brows together. "I don't want to learn anything about the mountains," she cried, all the heaviness and the dumb revolt of her spirit finding a voice. "And I don't want ever to go back to the desert again; and I don't even want to dance," looking at him in a sort of wild wonder as if this were unbelievable, "not even to dance."

He realized that she was suffering from some grief against which she struggled, and which she refused to accept. "You will not feel so always," he said. "It is because you are unhappy now."

There was consolation in his sincerity, in his sympathy, in his entire belief in what he was saying, and it was with difficulty that she repressed an outburst of her sullen sorrow. "Yes," her mouth worked, "I am unhappy, and I won't be, I won't be. I never was before. It is all in here, like a dead weight, a drag, a cold hand clutching me." She pressed both hands to her heart. Then she drew back as if furious at having so far revealed herself.

"That heals." He leaned forward to speak. "I am telling you the truth! That heals and is forgotten. I know that that is so."

"I know who you are," she said suddenly. "I have been trying to think ever since I heard him," she nodded toward Jose, bent over his cards, "say 'Saint Harry.' I remember now. I have heard Hughie often speak of you. They say that you are good, that if any one is sick you nurse him, and that if any one is broke you help him. They all come to you."

"Yes, 'Saint Harry'!" he laughed. "Oh, it's funny, but let them call me any name they please as long as it amuses them. What difference does it make? I am glad Hughie is coming up, I want some music. He puts the mountains into music for me."

"And for me." She smiled and then sighed bitterly, gazing drearily into the fire, now a bed of glowing embers. Then latent and feminine curiosity stirred in her thoughts and voiced itself. "Why are you here?" she said. "Why does a man like you stay here?"

His elbow rested on the arm of his chair, his chin in his hand, his gaze too upon the fading embers. "I don't know," he said in a low voice, "I had to come."

"Where from?" she still followed her instinct of curiosity.

"From the husks"—he turned his head and smiled at her—"from a far country where I had wasted my substance in riotous living."

She frowned a little. She was not used to this type of man, nor had she met any one who used hyperbole in conversation. At first she fancied that he might be chaffing her, but she was too intelligent to harbor that idea, so convincing was his innate sincerity; but nevertheless, she meant to go cautiously.

Again she questioned him: "From what far country?"

He had fallen to musing again, and it is doubtful if he heard her. He saw before him immense, primeval forests, black, shadowy; vast, sluggish rivers, above which hung a thick and fever-laden air; trees from whose topmost branches swung gorgeous, ephemeral flowers; and then long stretches of yellow beach, where a brazen ocean tumbled and hissed. Then many cities, squalid and splendid, colorful and fantastic as the erection of a dream, and through all these he saw himself ever passing, appearing and reappearing, and ever scattering his substance, not the substance of money alone; that was still left him; but the substance of youth, of early promise, of illusion and hopes.

Pearl waited a long time, it seemed to her, for him to speak. At last she broke the silence. "And then?" she said.

He roused from his preoccupations and brushed back the wing of hair from his brow. "I realized that I was living, had always lived on husks, and that was what caused the restless fever in my blood, my heart was always restless; and then I began to dream down there in the tropics, really dream at night of these mountains just as you see them here, and in the day time I thought of them and longed for them, as a man whose throat is dry with thirst longs for cool water. Then, presently, I began to have brief, fleeting visions of them by day. And gradually the longing for the hills became so intense that I started out in search of them. I traveled about a good bit, and then drifted here. The place suited me, so I stayed."

She looked at him puzzled and half-fearfully, wondering if he was quite sane. "And will you stay here always?" she asked.

"Oh, as to that, I can't say. Perhaps. I hope so. Life is full here."

"Full!" she interrupted him. "And life! You call this life?" She laughed in harsh scorn.

"Don't you?" He looked at her with those blue, clear eyes that seemed to see through her and around her and beyond her.

"I!" Her glance was full of resentful passion; tightly she closed her lips; but there was something about him which seemed to force her to reveal herself and, presently, she began again. "I am like a coyote with a broken paw. It goes off by itself and hides until it can limp around. But life, real life, is all out there." She threw out her hands as indicating the world beyond the mountains. "If you call this life, you've never lived."

He ignored this, smiling faintly.

"What is real life to you?" he asked.

So compelling was his manner, for no one could shock Seagreave and no one could force him to condemn, that she almost said, "To love and be loved." But she resisted her impulse to voice this. "Until a little while before I came here, life meant to dance. I know, though, what it is to get tired of the very things you think you love the most. After I've stayed a while in the desert, I've just got to see the lights of the city streets, to smell the stage, and to dance to the big audiences; but after a bit, the buildings and the people begin to crowd on me and push me and I feel as if I couldn't breathe, then I've just got to get back to the desert again."

"Dancing is your expression," he said. "All of life is love and expression." And now there was a falling note in his voice which her ear was quick to catch. Almost she cried:

"Love! And yet you live here alone!"

"Yes," he went on, "we must have both. They are as necessary to us as breath. Without them—" he stopped, evidently embarrassed, as if suddenly aware that he had been talking more to himself than to her and that in thus forgetting her, he had been more self-revealing than he would have wished.

She shook her head, plainly puzzled. "But you are young," she said, and stole another glance at him, adding a little shyly, "at least not very old, and I feel, I am sure that you too have a broken paw, but when that is well you will go back to your own country, to cities again. You couldn't stand it here always."

He looked at her, an enigmatic smile on his lips. "Couldn't I?" he said. Glancing again at her as he rose, he saw that she seemed weary, her lashes lay long on her pale cheek. "Oh," with a touch of compunction in his tone, "I have, as usual, talked far too much. You are tired and we must go. Jose," lifting his voice, "as soon as you finish that game."

"The Devil is indeed at your elbow," cried Jose, flinging down his cards, "and prompts all you say. We have just this moment finished a game and Gallito is the winner."

Gallito smiled with bleak geniality. "Has Jose been wise?" he asked, rising and replenishing the dying fire.

"Fairly so," Seagreave smiled, "as far as he knows how to be. He has been up to some of his antics, though. They are beginning to say that this hillside is haunted."

While Gallito talked to Seagreave and Mrs. Nitschkan and Jose argued over certain rules of the game they had been playing, Mrs. Thomas sidled up to Pearl and stood looking at her with the absorbed unconsciousness of an admiring child.

"I s'pose," she began, swaying back and forth bashfully and touching the pink bow at her throat, "that it does look kind of queer to any one that's so up on the styles as you are to see me wearing a pink bow at my neck and a crepe veil down my back?"

Pearl looked up in wearied surprise. "It does seem queer," she said indifferently.

"'Course I know it ain't just citified," Mrs. Thomas hastened to affirm; "but the veil and the bow together's got a meaning that I think is real sweet." She waited a moment, almost pathetically anxious for Pearl to see the symbolism of her two incongruous adornments, but her listener was too genuinely bored and also too self-absorbed to make the attempt. "It's this," said Mrs. Thomas, determined to explain. "The pink bow kind o' shows that I'm in the world again and," bridling coquettishly, "open to offers, while this crepe veil shows that I ain't forgot poor Seth in his grave and can afford to mourn for him right."

But Pearl had not waited to hear all of these explanations. Without a word to the rest of the parting guests, and with a mere inclination of the head toward Seagreave, she had slipped away.

Alone in her small, bare room, undressing by the light of a single candle, the brief interest and curiosity which Seagreave had aroused in her faded from her mind. For hours she lay sleepless upon her bed, listening to the rushing mountain stream not far from the cabin, its arrowy plunge and dash over the rocks softened by distance to a low, perpetual purr, and hearing the mountain wind sigh through the pines about the cabin: but not always did her great, dark eyes stare into the blackness; sometimes she buried her head in the pillow and moaned, and at last she wept, permitting herself the flood of tears that she had held in check all day. "Rudolf, Rudolf," was the name upon her lips.



CHAPTER IX

Within a few days Hughie came up to Colina, and through the long, chilly evenings near the peaks the little, isolated group met in Gallito's cabin. It was understood in the village that Gallito did not care to have his seclusion invaded, and this unspoken desire was universally respected; indeed, it was not questioned. In the solitary places are many eccentrics; they have escaped the melting pot of the city, and in the freedom of the desert and the mountains have achieved an unfettered and unquestioned individuality.

Those who had business dealings with the old Spaniard knew that he was to be found in places more easy of access than his lonely cabin among the rocks and trees; at the mine, for instance, of which he was foreman, the Mont d'Or; or, on an occasional Friday evening, in the village saloon, where he mingled with the miners, engaging in the eternal and interminable discussions of local mining affairs. He also kept a horse in the village, a fiery, blooded creature, which he exercised every few days, taking long rides over the various mountain trails. He was universally respected, as his judgment of mines was known to be sound, and his ventures unusually lucky; but no one was ever rash enough to encroach upon the reserve which he invariably maintained.

So, with small fear of embarrassing interruptions, although Gallito saw that all prudence was observed and every precaution taken, he and Jose, Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas sat over their cards, while Hughie played upon the piano and Harry Seagreave listened, with his eyes closed, to the music. He sometimes brought Pearl a cluster of the exquisite wild flowers which now covered the mountains, but he rarely made any but the briefest attempts at conversation with her, and after the first evening she showed no disposition to have him do so.

Instead of rousing from the depression which had overfallen her, she seemed, for a time, to sink the more deeply into it. Silent, listless, almost sullen, she passed her days. There was but little incentive for her to go down into the village, and she took small interest in the miners' wives who dwelt there. For a time she was curious to see Mrs. Hanson, but, learning through Hughie that that lady lived up near her mine on a mountainside two miles out of the village, and only occasionally, and at irregular intervals, visited the camp, Pearl realized the difficulties in the way of catching a glimpse of her and contented herself with Bob Flick's description of her.

Her mother wrote to her about once a week, brief, ill-spelled letters, always with an ardent inclosure from Hanson, and Pearl would lie out on the hillside during the long summer days reading, and re-reading them, and at night she slept with them next her heart. For the first few months Hanson was content to write to her and to extract what comfort he could from her notes to her mother. These he invested with cryptic and hidden meanings endeavoring to find a veiled message for himself in every line. But presently, growing impatient, he began to beg her for a word, only a word, but sent directly from her to him; yet, although the summer had waned to autumn, she remained obdurate, her will and her pride still stronger than her love.

Sometimes in the evening Hugh would beg her to dance, but she always refused. The desire for that spontaneous and natural form of expression was gone from her; and once when Hugh had persisted in urging her, she had left the room, nor appeared again all evening, so that it became a custom not to mention her dancing to her.

"Gosh a'mighty!" cried Mrs. Nitschkan robustly, looking up from a book of flies over which she had been poring, "think of getting a man on the brain like that."

Jose, who had been putting away the supper dishes, assisted by Mrs. Thomas, who had regarded the opportunity as propitious for certain elephantine coquetries, stopped to regard the gypsy with that peering mixture of amusement and curiosity which she ever evoked in him.

"But, Nitschkan," he asked, "were you never crazy about a man?"

"Marthy Thomas knows more about such goin's on than me," she returned equably; "but since you ask me, I was crazy once about Jack, and another awful pretty girl had him. But that wasn't all." She slapped her knee in joyous and triumphant remembrance, and the cabin echoed with her laughter.

"Ah!" Jose hastily put away his last dish and sat cross-legged on the hearth at her feet, looking up into her face with impish interest. "How did you manage him or her?"

"You can't manage a her no more'n you can manage a cat," bluntly. "You can't make a cat useful, and you can't make it mind; but," significantly, "you can manage a dog and train him, too. I had to learn that girl that'd corraled Jack that a pretty face and ruffled petticoats may catch a man, but they can't always hold him."

"What can hold 'em?" interrupted Mrs. Thomas, sighing heavily. "Not always vittles, and cert'ny not a loving heart."

Mrs. Nitschkan snapped her book impatiently. "Now, Marthy, don't you stir me up with that talk of yours, like men was the only prize packages in life. I can't see what these home-body women love to fool 'emselves so for. You're just like my Celora, Marthy. 'Mommie,' she says to me once, 'I wonder when the right man'll come along and learn me to love him?' Well, I happened to be makin' a dog whip jus' when she spoke, and I says, 'Celora, if you give me much of that talk I'll give you a hidin', big as you are. You got your man all picked out right now, and you mean to marry him whether he thinks so or not, and he can't get away from you no more'n a cat can from a mouse.'"

"No more than I can from you," Jose sprang to his feet with light agility and, leaning forward, made as if about to imprint a kiss upon her forehead.

But he had reckoned without his host. Mrs. Nitschkan's arm shot out before he saw it, and he was sent staggering halfway across the room. "A poor, perishin' brother tried that on me once," she remarked casually. "It was in Willy Barker's drug store over to Mt. Tabor. Celora was with me—she was about four—and I just set her down on the counter and said, 'Now, Celora, set good and quiet and watch Mommie go for the masher real pretty.'"

"I don't see why you got to be so rough on the boys, Sadie," deplored Mrs. Thomas, rocking slowly back and forth in a large chair. "'Course we know they're devils and all, but if it wasn't for their goin's on, trying to snatch a kiss now and then, life would seem awful tame for us poor, patient women. And even the worst of 'em's better'n none at all. Look at me! I had the luck to get a cross-grained, cranky one, as you know. Poor Seth!" She drew a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes. "But you got to admit, Sadie, that even he was white enough to up and die before I got too old for other gentlemen to take notice of me."

"What'd you want 'em to take notice of you for?" asks Mrs. Nitschkan abstractedly, her mind on her flies.

"It's easy enough for you to talk that way," Mrs. Thomas spoke with some heat. "You got the what-you-may-callems—accomplishments—that gets their notice. You're apt to skin 'em at cards, you can easy out-shoot 'em, and there ain't a lady miner in the mountains that can pass off a salted property as cute as you."

"What's the use of livin' in a world of tenderfoots if you don't use 'em?" growled Mrs. Nitschkan.

"'Course. And don't think I'm blaming you, Sadie; I ain't." Mrs. Thomas spoke more gently. "All I'm sayin' is that you can't understand the women that's born feeling the need of a strong right arm to lean on, and has nothing but a nice complexion and a loving heart to offer. The game's a hard one for them, 'cause there're so many others in the field. It ain't always a complexion; sometimes it's a head of hair, or eyes, but whatever it is, competition's keen. I leave it to you, Mr. Jose, if a lady can say to a gentleman the first time she meets him, 'I got a dandy temper,' or 'I can bake a pie that'll coax the coyotes down from the hills.' No, you got to let the hair or complexion do its work first and sort o' insinuate the rest as acquaintance grows."

"There's a man comin' up here to-morrow, Marthy, but he won't know whether you got a strand of hair or a tooth in your head; he'll never see you."

"Maybe he can't help it—not if I stand right in his way," said Mrs. Thomas, with a coy glance from under her lashes at Jose.

"Oh, yes, he can," returned Mrs. Nitschkan. "No matter who's in the way he can't see but one person, and that's that sulky Pearl; for it's good old Bob Flick, one of the best ever."

Two or three times Bob Flick had come up and remained several days, and on these occasions Pearl had roused somewhat from her indifference to life. On his last visit, late in September, he had succeeded in persuading her to ride again, and had sent down to the desert for a horse for her. She would not admit at first that she enjoyed being in the saddle again, but to his unexpressed satisfaction it was obvious that she did.

The crystalline, amber air was like wine; the mountains were a mosaic of color; the trees burned red and yellow, glowing torches of autumn, and accentuating all their ephemeral and regal splendor; among them, yet never of them, were the green austere pines marching in their serried ranks, on, on up the hillsides to timber line.

One day, as Pearl and Flick rode among the hills, a flood of sunlight falling about them, crimson and yellow leaves blowing on the wind, she expressed, for the first time, an interest in the desert and a desire to see it again.

"I'll have to go back sometime, Bob, I suppose," she said, "if it's only to see Lolita."

"I nearly brought her up with me," he said. "I thought maybe she'd stand it all right for a day or two; then I got afraid she'd sicken right away in this rare air, and I didn't dare."

"I guess so," sighed Pearl; "but, goodness! I'd sure like to see her again. I'd most give anything to hear her say, 'mi jasmin, Pearl, mi corazon.'"

"We understand each other, you and me and Lolita," returned Flick. "We all got the South in us, I reckon that's why."

"Maybe," she answered. "Yes, I'd like to see Lolita and mother. She won't leave her chickens and melons and sweet potatoes and all long enough to come up here, and, oh, there's times when I feel like I'd most give my eyes to see the desert again; but I couldn't stand it yet, Bob, not yet."

A shade had fallen over her face as she spoke and, to divert her, he began to speak of Jose. "Doesn't he make you laugh?" he asked. "He keeps everybody else on the broad grin."

"Men," she said scornfully. "I think he works a charm on you that you all put yourselves in danger for a thing like that. Sometimes he makes me laugh—a little; but if I had my way I would waste no time in putting him in prison where he belongs. What is it you see in him?"

"I don't believe women do like Jose much," reflected Flick.

"Except Nitschkan," replied Pearl. "She says she's trying to reform him and save his soul; but it mostly consists in getting him to do all the odd jobs she can think of, and Mrs. Thomas is trying to flirt with him."

"I guess you don't like him, because you don't see him as he is," ruminated Bob Flick. "He's not afraid of anything; he'll take chances, just without thinking of them, that I don't believe another man on earth would. He's always good-natured and amusing, and look how he can cook, Pearl," turning in his saddle, "just think of that! Why, he could take a piece of sole leather and make it taste like venison."

But even this list of perfections failed to arouse any enthusiasm for Jose in Pearl, or to convince her that the proper place for him was not within the sheltering walls of a prison.

"Well, if you don't care much for Jose, how about Seagreave?" There was a touch of anxiety in his glance as he asked this question. The jealousy which he could never succeed in overcoming, and yet of which he was continually ashamed, bit like acid into his heart as he thought of Seagreave's fair youthfulness; the charm of his long, clear, blue eyes; the winning sweetness of his nature.

Pearl drew her brows together a little, her eyes gloomed through her long, silky, black lashes. "I don't like queer people," she said petulantly. "He always seems to be mooning about something, and most of the time he acts like you weren't on the earth." An expression of surprise and resentment grew upon her face and darkened it. Then, with a gesture of annoyance, she threw up her head, dismissing the subject from her mind. A vision of Hanson rose before her and her heart turned to the memory of his ruddy good looks, his gay, bold eyes, his magnetic vitality.

"Say, Bob," she began, a little hesitatingly, "does that Mrs. Hanson still live around here?"

He nodded. "I got a letter from her the other day. She wanted me to attend to a little mining business down in the desert. She's pretty shrewd in business, too."

"Why couldn't she attend to her own business?" asked Pearl sharply. "What's she bothering you, a stranger, for?"

"Because her father died not long ago and she inherited some property and she's got to go East to see about it. I shouldn't wonder if she's already started."

She repressed a sudden start and looked quickly at him, but he was gazing out over the ranges and did not see her, which, she reflected, was an excellent thing, considering the wild and daring idea which had flashed across her mind. If Hanson but knew that his wife had left Colina no power on earth could prevent him from immediately journeying thither. Should she mention the fact in a letter to her mother? She debated this for a day or two, the temptation to do so was almost overmastering, but her pride finally triumphed in the struggle, and she left the matter on the knees of the gods.

Yet, in the depths of her wild heart, she knew that he would come, that he must long have awaited just such an opportunity, and she had no doubt that he kept himself informed of the movements of the woman who bore his name. Her spirits rose in the contemplation of glorious moments when she should live to the full again, when she should feel herself to be as a quickened and soaring flame of passion and intrigue. And what an opportunity! Her father was down at the Mont d'Or all day. Hughie, of course, was about most of the time, but she would not meet Hanson in the cabin, but out in the golden October weather among the pines. Bob Flick was returning to the desert the next day, so she had nothing to fear from him.

Several days, almost a week, passed, and then a letter from Hanson, telling her of Mrs. Hanson's departure, and assuring her that he meant to come to Colina, that he would not stop to consider any risks he might be taking, and that he was equally indifferent to her possible prohibition. He was coming, coming on the morning train the next Thursday, and this was Saturday.

She drew a long breath and pressed the letter to her heart. She would never yield to him, never; not so long as that barrier to a marriage between himself and herself—Mrs. Hanson—remained a legal wall between them, but, oh! if she was to live, she must see him now and again, at long, long intervals; but nevertheless occasionally.

The listless melancholy of months fell from her, and those about her, noting the change, laid it to Bob Flick's influence and to the fact that she was almost continually in the saddle; also Hughie and Gallito congratulated themselves that she was speedily forgetting Hanson. Her whole demeanor had changed, she even condescended to banter Jose, and she took his jibes in good part; and in the evenings when Jose and Gallito, Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas, had sat down to the silence of their cards, and Hughie played softly on the piano in a dim corner, she talked to Seagreave; in fact, their conversations became more prolonged every evening.

One morning, a few days before Hanson arrived, she had chosen to stroll up the mountainside, instead of riding as usual. Absorbed in her glowing anticipations, she had walked almost above timber line, then, presently, just as she realized that she was growing tired, the trail had led her to an ideal and natural resting place, a little chamber of ease. It was an open space where the pine needles lay thick upon the ground, so thick that Pearl's feet sank deeply into them as she entered. All about it were gnarled and stunted pine trees, bent and twisted by the high mountain winds, until they appeared as strange, Japanese silhouettes against the deep, blue sky. It was delightfully warm here, where the sun fell so broadly, and Pearl threw herself down upon the pine needles. The wind sighed softly through the forest, barely penetrating her retreat, and finally, under the spell of the soft and dreamy atmosphere, she fell asleep. After a time she wakened, and slowly opening her eyes saw to her surprise that Seagreave was sitting a few feet away from her. He held a book in his hand, but he was not reading, neither was he looking at her, but out through a break in the trees at innumerable blue ranges, floating, unsubstantial as mist in a flood of sunshine.

She sat up, and he, hearing her move, turned quickly and met her eyes.

"I came here to read," he said, in smiling explanation. "I often come, and, seeing you here and asleep, I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind if I stayed and kept away the bears and mountain lions."

She was still a little dazed. "Why, why," rubbing her eyes, "I must have been asleep. It is so pleasant here."

He turned quickly. "You find it pleasant?" he said, "then the mountains must be beginning to exert their spell upon you."

"I don't know," she answered slowly; "I don't hate them like I used to; but I'll never really care for them. I love the desert."

"You must tell me what you find in the desert," he said. She looked out broodingly at the ranges, the strange sphynx look in her eyes, but she did not answer him. At last she withdrew her gaze from the hills and glanced rather contemptuously at the book in his hands. "Don't you ever work?" she asked abruptly. "You're a man."

"Sometimes I work down in the mines, if I want to," he replied carelessly; "but I rarely want to. Sometimes, too, I write a little."

"But don't you want to work all the time with your hands or your head, like other men do?" she persisted.

"No," he returned. "To what profit would it be?" There was just a trace of bitterness in his voice.

"But you are strong and a man," she spoke now with unveiled scorn. "You wouldn't be content always to sit up in a mountain cabin by the fire like an old woman."

"Wouldn't I?" he asked. "Why not?" The bitterness was more apparent now, and a shadow had fallen over his face. Pearl realized that, for the moment, at least, he had forgotten her presence, and in truth, his mind had traveled back over the years and he was living over again the experience which had made him a wanderer on the earth and finally a recluse in the lonely and isolated mountains.

It was a more or less conventional story. All events which penetrate deeply into human experience are. They are vital and living, because universal; therefore we call them conventional. Seagreave had been left an orphan at an early age, and as he inherited wealth and was born of a line of gentlemen and scholars who had given the world much of service in their day, his material environment offered him no obstacles to be overcome. There were no barriers between him and any normal desires and ambitions, nothing to excite his emulation with suggestions that there were forbidden and therefore infinitely desirable gardens in which he might wander a welcome guest. But life sets a premium on hard knocks. It is usually the bantling which is cast upon the rocks who wins most of the prizes, having acquired in a hard school powers of resistance and endurance.

Seagreave's pleasant experiences continued through youth into manhood. When quite young he became engaged to a charming girl about his own age whom his guardians considered eminently suitable. Among many friendships, he had one so congenial that he fancied no circumstance could arise which could strain or break this tie.

And then, on the very eve of his marriage, his sweetheart had eloped with this friend of his boyhood, and he had not only this wound of the heart to endure, but also the consciousness that he was pilloried as a blind fool by all of his acquaintances.

Consequently he had, in his first young bitterness and heartbreak, taken a sort of gloomy satisfaction in living remote from his fellow beings and burying himself in the wilds, ever strengthening his capacity to do without the ordered and cultivated life of which he had been a part, and which had seemed essential to his well-being; and he had no disillusionizing past experiences to teach him the philosophy that time assuages all griefs, and that it is the part of common sense to take life as you find it.

Gradually his new manner of living, of wandering whither he would without ties or responsibilities, became a habit to him. He lost interest in the world of achievement as well as in the world of manners, but so insidious was this change, this shifting of the point of view, that he had never fully realized it until now when, in some way, some indefinite, goading and not altogether pleasant way, Pearl was bringing a faint realization of his acquired habit of mind home to him.

As Pearl watched him and wondered what remembrance it was that clouded his face, her interest in him increased. "I wonder—" she said, and hesitated.

Her words recalled him to himself immediately; with a little gesture of impatience as if annoyed at his own weakness, he put from him these morbid memories of the past. "You wonder—what?" he asked.

She flushed slightly at the thought that he might think her guilty of an intrusive curiosity, but she could not stop now. She must know more. Her craving intelligence demanded some explanation. "Jose," she said doubtfully and almost involuntarily.

A smile of pure amusement rippled about his mouth. "Yes," he said, "Jose. What about him?"

Speech came readily enough to her now. "You know what Jose is," accusingly. "You know the big reward that is offered for him, and yet you keep him in your cabin and treat him almost like a brother."

"Quite like a brother," he said; "why not? Who would have the heart to put Pan in prison? Do you think shutting Jose up behind bars would make him any better? At any rate, he is safe to do no mischief here, and he is happy. Would you want us to give him up?"

"I!" She looked at him in surprise and shook her head. "But then we are different, my father and me. He likes bad company, and I guess I take after him. But you, they call you Saint Harry, you are respectable."

"Not I," he said earnestly; "you must not accuse me of such things. Look yonder at that long mountain trail, leading up to the peaks. There are mile-stones in it. So it is in life. When we have stopped trying to make people measure up to our standard we have passed one; when we have gone beyond forgiveness and learned that there is never anything to forgive we have passed another, and when we have ceased from all condemnation we have progressed a little farther."

She made no response to this. In that sunwarmed silence the wind whispered softly through the pines, a sound like the monotonous, musical murmur of distant seas. "But you will forget all that," she said suddenly. "You will go back to the world. I know."

He smiled invincibly. "How do you know?"

She tapped her breast lightly with her jewel-encrusted hand. "From myself. Oh, how I have hated life since I came here, but now I love it again, I want it." She threw wide her arms and smiled radiantly, but not at him, rather at the vision of life her imagination conjured. "I want to dance, dance, dance, I want to live."

"And you will dance for us here in the mountains before you go away?" he asked, with interest. "Good dancing is very rare and very beautiful. There are very few great dancers."

"Yes, only a few," she said briefly. He could not know that she was one of them, of course, but nevertheless it piqued her vanity that he did not divine it or take it for granted. She resolved then and there to show him how she could dance, and as she decided this, a subtle, wicked smile crept about her lips. Since he was so sure that he would never return to the world, the world should come to him.

"But you haven't said yet that you would dance for us," he said.

"Yes," the same smile still lingering in her eyes and on her lips, "yes, I will. The camp have sent half a dozen invitations for me to do so, through Hughie. They have a dance once a week in the town hall, don't they? When is the next one?"

"I think I heard Hughie say next Thursday night. He always helps out the orchestra when he is here, doesn't he?"

Next Thursday night! Her eyes widened. That was the evening of the day that Rudolf was coming. Perhaps—perhaps, he would stay over and see her, it was not much of a risk he would be taking in doing so. Her father would not go down to see her dance, he would prefer to sit over his cards with Jose, and no one else knew Hanson. Oh, what a prospect! She almost clapped her hands with joy.

The wind sent a shower of pine needles over them, and Seagreave looked up, scanning the sky with a keen glance. "It will soon be time for the snow to fly," he said.

She looked at him incredulously. "Why, it is mild as summer."

"Yes, but this is October, and October in the mountains. Perhaps in only a few days now the ground will all be covered with snow."

"I hope I shall be away before that time," shivering a little.

"But think what you will miss. Think how beautiful it will be; all still, just a great, white silence; the snow with its wonderful shadows, and sometimes, when the air is very clear, I seem to hear the chiming of great bells."

She shivered again and rose. "I don't believe I'd like it," she said. "I think it would frighten me."

He walked down the hill with her to Gallito's cabin, but on their way they spoke little. Her mind was full of Hanson's coming, and of the revelation of dancing which she meant to show him and, incidentally, Saint Harry. It was not until later in the day that she remembered how impersonal, according to her standards, her conversation with Seagreave had been. Not once, either by word or look had he told her that she was beautiful and to be desired. A new experience for her; never before had she encountered such an attitude in any man. It must be, therefore, that there was some other woman in his life; but where? Certainly not here in Colina or she would have heard of it, and he had been in the mountains two years without leaving them. Surely he, too, must have known unhappiness in love. At intervals during the day she built up various hypotheses explaining the circumstances of his grief, and she also let her imagination dwell upon the woman, picturing her appearance and wondering about her disposition.

That evening at supper she arranged with Hugh that she was to accept the standing invitation of the camp, and that she would dance for them the following Thursday evening, and with an entire return of enthusiasm talked music and different steps to him until Jose and Mrs. Thomas, rendered more expeditious even than usual by their interest in the topic, had cleared away all traces of the meal and moved the table back against the wall. Then Hugh began to play.

"Wait a minute," Pearl cried to him, "until I get my dancing slippers and my manton de Manila." She vanished through the doorway leading to her room and reappeared presently, a fan in her hand and a gorgeous fringed, silken shawl thrown about her; it was white and embroidered in flowers of all colors. "Ready," she called over her shoulder to Hugh.

Then she also began, but not at once to dance; instead, she executed a series of postures; almost without apparent transition she melted from one pose to another of plastic grace, her body the mere, boneless, obedient servant of her directing will.

These she followed with some wonderfully rapid exercises. Sometimes she stood perfectly still and one saw only the marvelous play of her body muscles, plainly visible, as no corsets had ever fettered her unmatched lines. Again, holding the body motionless, she moved only the arms, now with a slow and alluring rhythm, and again with incredible rapidity, showing to the full the flexibility and liquidity of the wrist movements for which she was later to be so famous. Then holding the body and arms quite still she danced only with her legs, and then arms, legs, body married in a faultless rhythm, she whirled like a cyclone about the room.

Her father and Jose sat and smoked and watched her every movement with keen, critical eyes. Were they not Spaniards who had danced all through their childhood and youth, as naturally as they breathed? About Gallito's mouth played the bleak smile which in him betokened content, while Jose could barely wait for her to finish her preliminary exercises before he besought her to let him join her. Even Mrs. Nitschkan laid down some fishing tackle with which she was engrossed and Mrs. Thomas looked on admiringly and half jealously.

"Dios," cried Jose plaintively, "Hughie's music invites me, even if the Senorita does not."

Pearl smiled complaisantly upon him. "The Jota!" she said, and immediately he joined her, making no bad second. Together they danced until Seagreave came down from his cabin, and then, flushed and laughing, she flung herself into a chair and refused to go on, although he begged her to do so.

"Say, Sadie," breathed Mrs. Thomas, "don't you believe I could learn to do that?"

"No," returned her friend, looking up from an earnest contemplation of various hooks, "I don't believe that no woman that's been married and had children and sorrows and buried a husband and is as heavy as a hippopotamus, and stumbles and interferes with both feet like Mis' Evans's old horse, Whitey, can learn something where the trick of it is keepin' up in the air most of the time."

"You needn't hurt a person's feelings by being so harsh." Mrs. Thomas's eyes filled with tears. "Oh, jus' take in Mr. Seagreave," she whispered; "I haven't seen him look at a lady that way yet."

"Cert'ny not at you. He ain't seem' no miner's wives," returned Mrs. Nitschkan cruelly.

"Father," cried Pearl joyously to Gallito, "I have lost nothing. I am not even tired, nor stiff. If anything, I am better than ever. Isn't it so? No," as Seagreave still continued to urge Jose and her to dance, "no," she lifted her narrow, glittering eyes to his, all the old challenge in them again, the pale coffee stains beneath them had deepened, her cheeks held the flush of a crimson rose, "not until Thursday night, then I shall dance the desert for you, and not alone the desert," she flashed her man-compelling, provocative smile straight into his eyes, "I shall bring the world to you, and then you will find how tired you are of these old mountains."

He smiled at her serenely, remotely, as one of the high gods might have smiled upon a lovely, earthly Bacchante. What had the vain and fleeting world to offer him who had so long ignored it?

Then, while Hugh still continued to play, Seagreave followed her to a shadowy seat near a window, whither she had withdrawn to be out of the warmth of the fire, and together they sat there talking until the moon dropped behind the mountain.

Jose, having finished his game of cards with Gallito and the two women, who had now left the table and were examining Pearl's manton de Manila, sent his twinkling, darting glance in their direction. "Caramba!" he cried softly, "but she has the sal Andaluz, she can dance! I have seen many, but not such another." And then he crossed his arms and bent his body over them and rocked back and forth in soundless and apparently inexhaustible mirth in which Gallito finally joined him.

"I don't know what you are laughing at, Jose," he said; "but it is very funny."

"I laugh that the Devil has chosen you as an instrument, my Francisco," he said.

"Because I give you shelter?" asked Gallito, lighting another cigarette.

"Because the Devil schemes always how he can lure Saint Harry from his ice peak. He has not succeeded with cards, nor with wine, nor even with me, for I have tried to tempt him to plan with me those little robberies which for amusement I dream of, here in these damnable solitudes. But before he was a saint he had a wild heart, had Harry. You have but to look at him to know that. Have you forgotten that he has not always lived in these mountains? Do you not recall that he was middle-weight champion of Cape Colony, that he was a scout all through the Boer war? That he also saw service in India and has certain decorations to show for it? Saint Harry! ha, ha, ha!

"The one thing he could not resist was any kind of a mad adventure, all the chances against him and all the hounds on top of him, and he pitting his wits against them and scheming to outwit them. A petticoat could never hold him. Oh, yes," in answer to Gallito's upraised brows, "there have been one or two, here and there, but they meant little to him, as any one might see. But, as you know and I know, Gallito, the Devil often wins by persistence; he never gives up. So, although Saint Harry's case is a puzzling one, the Devil is not discouraged. He looks about him and says, 'My friend, Gallito, my old and tried friend, has a daughter, beautiful as a flower, graceful as a fountain. I will bring her here and then Saint Harry will scramble off his ice peak fast enough.'"

"Your foolish wits run away with you," growled Gallito.

"My legs must run away with me now," said Jose, rising and stretching his arms and yawning. "But tell me first why was your daughter sad when she first came here?"

"Because she had fallen in love with a damned rascal," said Gallito bitterly, "after the manner of women."

"After the manner of women," Jose nodded, and whispered behind his hand, so that the two mountain ladies might not overhear him. "Believe it or not, many have loved me. But women like extremes, too; if they love rascals, they also adore saints. They see the saint standing there in his niche, so calm, so peaceful and composed, entirely forgetful of them, and this they cannot endure. Their brains are on fire; they spend their time scheming and planning how they can claw him down from his pedestal. They burn candles and pray to all the saints in Paradise to help them, and they offer hostages to the Devil, too. They do not really know the difference between devil and angel or between good and bad; but they cannot bear it that the saint is indifferent to them. That is something that drives them mad. Ah, it is a strong saint that can stand firm in his niche against their wiles."

"It is an experience that you will never suffer from, Jose."

"But who can say?" exclaimed Jose, and speaking with gravity. "Some day I shall devote myself to good works and to making my peace with the church, and who knows, I may yet be a saint. But one thing I am sure of, I shall never leave my niche for a woman."

"You know nothing, Jose."

"I know that I will never waste my cooking on a woman. I will enter a monastery of fat monks first and cook for them. They will appreciate it. But to return to Saint Harry and your daughter now—"

"Come," said Gallito harshly, pushing back his chair, "it is time you went home. The ladies," indicating Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas, who had been getting on their capes and hoods, "are waiting for you to escort them."



CHAPTER X

As the day drew near upon which Pearl expected to meet Hanson again all things seemed, as if by some special arrangement with the Fates, to accommodate themselves to her plans. She had intended to ask Seagreave for the use of his private parlor among the pines, intimating that she desired to retire thither to practice some new steps, and, lo! the night before, after discussing weather probabilities with her father and Jose, he had decided to spend the greater part of the day in the village laying in a full stock of winter provisions.

Hughie also would be in the village, making arrangements for the event of the evening and seeing that the piano was properly installed and tuned. Gallito would of course be at the Mont d'Or, and as for Jose, he had announced his intention of assisting Mrs. Thomas in the making of some delicate and elaborate cakes, difficult of composition and of which Pearl was especially fond, and also of constructing certain delicious pastries. No one could think of Jose as merely cooking; the results of his genius justified the use of such high-sounding words as "composing" or "constructing." Thus, his morning would be fully occupied.

Propitious Fates! Her pathway was smoothed before her; yet, alas! such is the perversity of the human mind, that as the morning dawned, as the minutes ticked themselves away on the clock, as the hour drew near when she should again meet Hanson, after all these months of separation, her spirit grew heavier instead of lighter. There was a return of listlessness and an indifference to his coming which constantly increased. She even felt indifferent to her own appearance.

At last, reluctantly, she threw a lace scarf about her head and, wrapping a long, crimson cloak about her, she left the cottage and took her way slowly up the hill.

As it was yet far too early for her rendezvous she turned aside from the main road and followed the narrow mountain trail which led to the cabin occupied by Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas. The gypsy, in her usual careless, almost masculine attire, stood in the door of her cabin gazing out at the mountains in all their mellow and triumphant glory, the evanescent glory of late autumn. A pick and fishing rod lay across the door sill and a lean, flea-bitten dog dozed at her feet. Her arms were akimbo and a pipe was thrust between her teeth.

Her quick ear caught the sound of Pearl's approach and suddenly her blue, twinkling gaze dropped from the hills to the trail which led to her door. Seeing who her visitor was, a smile of blended curiosity and welcome crossed her face. "Howdy, Pearl," she called jovially, "come and set a spell." She removed the pick and fishing rod and dragged the dog out of the way. Through the open doorway Mrs. Thomas and Jose might be seen in the room beyond, bending over a table, evidently deeply engrossed in the composition of some cakes.

"I can only stay a minute; I got a notion to walk this morning." There was a cool deviltry in the slanting gaze with which she surveyed the other woman.

"Seagreave, I'll bet," returned Mrs. Nitschkan frankly. "It ain't in either you or Marthy Thomas to let a man alone. What possesses you, anyway?"

Pearl continued to regard her with that subtle, burning, mocking look. "Your kind can never know," she taunted.

"Mebbe," said Mrs. Nitschkan laconically, "but you're different from Marthy. She's just mush. She'll be thinkin' now that she's cracked about Jose. If it wasn't him it would be your father, and if there wasn't no man up here at all, she'd hoist that crepe veil on her head, stick a red or blue bow at her neck and go swingin' down to camp, tryin' to persuade herself an' me that all she went for was a package of tea or some bacon. But you're different, always a yellin' about bein' free and yet always a tryin' to get tangled up."

Again Pearl laughed wickedly. "You tramp woman! Why would you rather hunt bear or mountain lions than shoot squirrels? Because there's danger in it." She laughed mirthlessly. "I guess it's for the same reason that I got to hunt the biggest game there is—man, and he hunts me."

Mrs. Nitschkan relighted her pipe. "Bob Flick's your best bet," she remarked impersonally.

"Talk about guns and fishing rods and dogs, something you know about," said Pearl scornfully, touching the dozing dog lightly with her foot. He growled angrily, resenting the liberty.

"You better leave Flip alone," cautioned Mrs. Nitschkan; "he's liable to bite anybody but me. Always be kind to dumb animals, 'specially cross dogs. And, say, Pearl, I been running the cards this morning. It was such a dandy day that I didn't know whether I'd do some assessment work or spend the day fishin'; the cards decided in favor of fishin'. I had to get some light so's I could tell how to go ahead. How any one can get along without a pack of cards! It's sure a lamp to the feet. If you wait a minute I'll run 'em for you."

She vanished inside and returned immediately with a board and a well-worn pack of cards. These she shuffled and, after Pearl had cut them several times, she began to lay them out in neat rows on the board on her knee, uttering a strange, crooning sound the while and studying each card as it fell with the most absorbed interest.

"Um-mmm!" with a heavy sigh and shaking her head forebodingly. "You better go home, girl, as fast as you can and shut yourself up in the cabin all day. Did you ever see anything like that?" pointing to the cards. "Trouble, trouble, nothin' but trouble. If it ain't actual murder an' death, it's too near it to be any joke. Look how them spades turns up every whipstitch. How can folks doubt!"

But the cards of evil omen lying there on the board before had roused all of Pearl's inherent superstition and stirred her swift anger against Mrs. Nitschkan. "Parrot-croaker!" she exclaimed angrily, and followed this with a string of Spanish oaths and expletives. "Trouble is over for me."

Mrs. Nitschkan was on her feet in a minute. The board and the cards fell unheeded to the ground. Her small, quick eyes began to roll ominously and show red, and her relaxed figure became immediately tense and alert as that of a panther on guard.

"Trouble's just beginnin' for you," her voice was a mere guttural growl. "A little more sass from you, you double-j'inted jumpin'-jack dancer, and I'll jerk you to the edge of that cliff yonder and throw you down. I'm feelin' particularly good right now," rolling up her sleeves and showing the great knots of swelling muscles on her arms. "Get out of my way."

With one big sweep of her arm she brushed her companion aside as if she had been a fly; but with incredible rapidity Pearl recovered herself and sprang directly before her.

"Then get me out," she taunted, "try it, try it. I'd slip through your fingers like oil. It's no good to flash your over-sized man-muscles on me; I'm made of whip-cord and whalebone. Do you get that?"

Mrs. Nitschkan's courage sprang from a sense of trained and responsive muscles and of tremendous physical strength, but at the sound of that cool voice, those mocking, unwavering eyes, there swept over her an awe of the slighter woman's far higher courage. It was an almost superstitious fear and respect which chilled the hot blood of her passion, the instinctive obedience of the flesh to the indomitable spirit. Reluctantly, against her will and in spite of her anger, the fighting gipsy paid deference to the steel-like, unflinching quality of the Pearl, when, rising above her slender physique, she faced unafraid the brute strength which threatened her, and dominated the situation by sheer consciousness of power.

The gypsy, chilled and subdued, confused by forces she could not understand, fell back a step or two and Pearl seized this opportunity to slip away, calling a careless good-by over her shoulder.

But the depression which had touched her from the time she wakened now lay heavier on her spirit. Her mind reverted to the cards of ill omen and she shivered with a faint chill of apprehension. And as she walked on it seemed to her that the atmosphere was in tune with her mood.

The air was soft, and yet sharp enough to quicken the color in her cheeks, but still indefinably wistful. The song of the wind among the pines, that mountain wind which never ceases to blow, had a sort of sighing pensiveness in its falling cadences. The deep, blue sky dreamed over the russet tree tops and the yellow leaves filled the forest with their flying gold.

And the spirit of the year seemed to have entered into Pearl. She was as wistful as the day, as pensive as the sighing wind. She arrived early at her destination. The sun lay warm in her little bower of encircling pines and she sat down on a fallen log to await Hanson's coming. He could not take her by surprise for, through a little opening in the trees, she could see the trail, it was in plain view.

Sitting down then to wait, she rested her elbow on her knee and her chin in the palm of her hand. It seemed as if the power of anticipation were gone from her. She wondered dully at her own languor, not only of body, but of mind. In a few moments she would see again the man whom she had passionately loved, and in parting from whom she had not dreamed it to be within human possibility so to suffer, and yet, at the prospect of meeting him again, her heart throbbed not one beat faster. She could not even look forward to dancing that night with any excitement or pleasure. She wondered what Seagreave would think of her when he saw her; she would be a vision far more brilliant than any spirit of the autumn woods, and she would wear her emeralds again, the emeralds for which Bob Flick had squandered a fortune. She put up her hand and touched them where they hung about her neck, concealed under her gown, for she wore them night and day, never allowing them to leave her person. Good old Bob! Seagreave had said there were only a few great dancers. Well, she would show him. She could dance; no matter how critical he was, he would have to admit that. And then her heart seemed suddenly to run down with a queer, cold little thrill.

There was Hanson ascending the trail. He was only a few feet away, and even as she jumped to her feet he saw her and waved his hand. He paused a moment for breath and then hurried on.

"Pearl!" he cried, and caught her in his arms, covering her face with kisses and crushing her against his heart. It seemed hours to her, but it was really only a moment before she pushed him from her, slipped from his arms, and stood panting and flushed before him.

"Pearl, O Pearl!" he cried again, and would once more have caught her deftly to him, but again she slipped from him. "Sit down," she cried petulantly, motioning to the fallen log. "You're out of breath, you've had a long climb." She herself sat down and he followed her example, encircling her with his arms; a tiny frown showed itself in her forehead and she bent slightly forward as if to evade his clasp, folding her arms about her knees.

"Gee! You bet it was a climb," he said, wiping his brow and still breathing a little hard. "But I'd have climbed right on up to heaven if you'd been there waiting for me. Lord, Pearl! if I'd had to wait much longer to see you it would have finished me, I do believe. Oh, sweetheart, you're lovelier than ever, and you're not going to punish either of us any more, I can tell you that. You're coming down with me and we're going to live, Pearl, live, just as I told you we would, down there in the palms in the desert. Now I'm telling you again among the pines, and this time you're going to listen and come. I guess we've both of us pretty well found out that it's no use our trying to live apart any longer."

Her crimson cloak had fallen from her shoulders, and Hanson, holding her hand in his, had pushed up her sleeve and was kissing her arm, as he talked, up as far as her elbow and down again to the tips of her fingers. She did not even attempt to draw her hand away, she was still in that state of apathy, where all her senses seemed dulled; and so she let him babble on, murmuring his adoration and his rose-colored dreams of the future.

"By George!" he exclaimed, in sheer, sincere amazement. "To think of you, the Black Pearl, spending all these months up here in these dead old mountains without even a moving-picture show to look at. You got an awful will, girl."

She gazed with somber eyes beyond him. Life, did he say "life"? That was what she asked, what she demanded, life as glorious and as rich in color as a full-blown rose. And only a little while ago she had dreamed that she could find it with him, that that was what he offered to her. She remembered the question that Harry Seagreave had asked her. "What does life mean to you?" Ah, since that first night in the mountains life seemed to have expanded into infinite horizons before her widening vision. She dreamed over them, forgetful for the moment of the man beside her, until he, turning in the full tide of his talk, pressed his lips ardently, passionately to hers.

Taken by surprise, she uttered one of her fluent Spanish oaths and, springing to her feet, stood with her body slightly bent forward, her hands on her hips, gazing at him with her narrow, gleaming eyes. Her apathy was gone, she was alive now to her finger tips.

He rose, too. "Honey, what is it?" he questioned dazedly. "What's got you now?"

"Don't touch me," she said tensely. "Don't dare to touch me."

He looked at her unbelievingly and then fell back a pace or two. "My Lord! What's the matter with you?" he cried.

"I don't know," she muttered wildly. Her eyes still measured him, his bold, obvious good looks, his ruddy self-complacency, his habitual and shallow geniality, the satisfied vanity of a mouth steadily becoming looser; the depiction of years of self-indulgence in the little veins on his highly colored cheeks; the sagging lines of his well-set-up figure, ever taking on more flesh.

So she saw him, not perhaps as he was, but in the light of her own harsh and unmodified criticism, and mercilessly she reflected upon him all the scorn she felt for herself. She did not consider or even remember that with what strength of affection he possessed he had loved her; that, after his constitution he had given her of his best, all he had to give, in fact; that for her he had more than once faced danger, and just to see her again was even now facing it, fearlessly.

He had grown to expect from her an infinite variety of moods, but something in her pose, her expression, frightened him now. "Honey, what are you driving at?" he asked, a little tremulously, and stretched out his hand to lay it on her shoulder.

But again an oath whipped from her lips, her glance darkened. She drew back from him with the horse-shoe frown showing plainly on her forehead.

He looked at her, his whole face broken up, his mouth trembling, something like tears in his eyes. "Why, Pearl," he faltered, "ain't you glad to see me? Why, here I been waiting all these damned, dreary months, never thinking of any one but you, never even looking at another woman, just dreaming of the moment when I could put my arms around you again and know that you loved me and were mine."

A hard and bitter smile showed on her mouth. "Yours! Loved you!" she cried. "My God! You!"

Her unmistakable, unconcealed scorn was like a dagger thrust in the heart, and that stab of pain stirred his anger and restored him to himself. His face went almost purple, his cold eyes blazed. "Say," he cried roughly, "what are you driving at, anyway? Come down to cases now." He caught her by the wrist. "What did you let me come up here for? Just to make a monkey of me? Have you been treasuring spite against me all these months, and is this your way of getting even?"

She dragged her hand away from him and stepped back. "I let you come, if you want to know it, because I thought I was in love with you. Lord, think of it!" she laughed drearily. "I haven't fooled you any worse than I have myself."

He rubbed his hand across his eyes. "It ain't true," he said loudly, positively, defiantly.

"Hush," she exclaimed, darting forward. "What was that?" There was a sound as if some one had trod the underbrush not many feet away. She listened intently a moment, a wild fear at her heart that Seagreave might have returned unexpectedly. It was probably some animal, for there was no further sound. "Oh," she cried, in involuntary relief, "it must have been Jose!"

A gleam came into his eyes, a light of triumph as at the remembrance of some potent weapon of which he had been carelessly forgetful. "And who is Jose?" he asked.

She lifted her startled gaze to his, the question recalled to her her own unthinking speech. "Oh, one of the miners," she said indifferently.

He knew her too well to fancy that he could trap her into any new admissions, and he had no wish to arouse her suspicions. Therefore he dropped the subject, especially as he felt fully answered.

He leaned against a tree and, drawing a cigar from his pocket, lighted it, although the hand with which he did so trembled. "I guess some explanations are in order between you and me," he said. "I guess it's about time that you began to get it into your head that you can't make a fool of me all the time. I'm ready and willing to admit that there was some excuse for you down in the desert. I made a bad break there, which I'm freely conceding was no way to treat a lady. But that don't explain or excuse the way you've treated me this morning," he laughed bitterly. "There's no way to explain it unless living here in the mountains has gone to your head or unless there's another man. Is there?" his eyes pierced her. "Is there?"

She looked back at him with a hard, inscrutable smile, but she did not answer.

Another man! He couldn't, wouldn't believe it. Why, it was only yesterday that they two had met and loved in the desert. Again he fell to pleading. "Oh, Pearl, be like what you were again. Don't stand off from me that way, honey. It ain't in you to be so cruel and hard. Come back to me, here in my arms. Have your spells; treat me like you please; but come back to me. Oh, honey, come."

She looked beyond him, not at him, and then ground a little heap of freshly fallen pine needles beneath her heel.

"What's the use?" she said curtly. "It's over. We can quit right here, Rudolf. I'm done with you, for good."

His outstretched arms fell by his side, his jaw set. "I guess that's right," he said viciously. "Any bigger fool than me could see that; and I'm not going to waste any more time crawling around on my hands and knees after you; I can tell you that. But you can't fool me on the other man proposition."

"I'm not trying to," she interjected cruelly.

"Who is he?" his voice was ragged and uneven. "Not Flick, I'll bet my hat. He's been your dog too long for you to fling him anything but a bone. You'll never tell me, though."

"Not I," she answered indifferently.

"Then I'll just satisfy myself—to-night."

She started and frowned. "You're not staying for that," harshly. "It's not safe."

"Oh, yes, I am staying for that, just to satisfy a little curiosity I've got, and I guess I'll find it safe enough. I guess you've been playing with kids so far in your career, Miss Pearl Gallito; but you'll find that the old man's not quite so easy disposed of as you think. I've got an idea that you'll be down on your knees trying to make terms with him before we're precisely 'quit' as you've just said."