She suddenly brought up short, and wheeling, faced him, her face lowering, her breath quick:

"I'm the one to say that, for I don't get you, Boye Mayer, I don't see what you're up to. But sometimes I think you've just come snooping round roe to find out something. You come and you go, always so curious, always wanting to know, pussy-footing round with your questions and your compliments. What's on your mind?"

Mayer found himself in an impasse. She knew him too well and she was too angry to be diverted with the temporizing lightness of their early acquaintance. There was only one thing to say to her, and—the cause of her excitement plain to his informed mind—it was not difficult to say.

"Pancha," he pleaded, "you don't understand."

"You bet I don't and I want to. I'd like to have it explained—I'd like to know what you hang round me for. Do you think I'm hiding something? Do you think I'm a criminal?"

"I think you're the most charming girl in the world," he protested.

She gave a smothered sound of rage and started off, faster than ever, down the street. This time he kept up with her, and rounding a corner the two lamps at the foot of the Vallejo's steps loomed up close at hand.

"Stop," he said. "Wait." He had no idea the hotel was so near, and surprised at the sight of it his voice became suddenly imperious and he seized her arm with a dominating grip. She tried to jerk it away, but he held it and drew her, stiff and averse, toward him.

"You foolish one," he whispered. "Why, don't you see? I hang around because I can't help it. I come because I can't stay away—I want to know about you because I'm jealous of every man that ever looked at you."

With the last word he threw his arm about her and snatched her close. Against him she suddenly relaxed, melted into a thing of yielding softness, while his lips touched a cheek like a burning rose petal.

The next moment she was gone. He had a glimpse of her on the Vallejo steps in swallow-swift silhouette and then heard the bang of the door.

In her room Pancha moved about mechanically, doing the accustomed things. She lighted the light, took off her hat and jacket, brought the milk from the window sill. Then, with the bottle on the table beside her, she sat down, her hands in her lap, her eyes on space. She was as motionless as a statue, save for the breaths that lifted her chest. She sat that way for a long time, her only movements a shifting of her blank gaze or a respiration deeper than the others. She saw nothing of what her glance rested on, heard none of the decreasing midnight sounds in the street or the house about her. An intensity of feeling had lifted her to a plane where the familiar and habitual had no more place than had premonitions and forebodings.



CHAPTER XIII

FOOLS IN THEIR FOLLY

"The Zingara" had run its course and given place to "The Gray Lady," which had not pleased the public. The papers said the leading role did not show Miss Lopez off to the greatest advantage and the audiences thinned, for Miss Lopez had transformed the Albion from a house of light opera to a temple enshrining a star. The management, grumbling over their mistake, laid about for something that would give the star a chance to exhibit those qualities which had deflected so many dollars from the "Eastern attractions" to their own box office.

Charlie Crowder and Mark Burrage, walking together in the early night, turned into the Albion to have a look at the house and see Pancha in the last act. They stood in the back, surveying the rows of heads in a dark level, against the glaring picture of the stage, upon which, picked out by the spotlight, Pancha stood singing her final solo. Crowder's eye dropped from the solitary central figure to the audience and noted gaps in the lines, unusual in the Albion and predicting "The Gray Lady's" speedy demise. As the curtain fell he told Mark he was "going behind" for a word with his friend, she would need cheering up, and Mark, nodding, said he'd move along, he had work to do at home.

The floor of heads broke as though upheaved by an earthquake, and the house rose, rustling and murmurous, and began crowding into the aisles. The young man, leaning against the rail behind the last row, watched it, a dense, coagulated mass, animated by a single impulse and moving as a unit. Crowding up the aisle it looked like a thick dark serpent, uncoiling its slow length, writhing toward the exit, the faces turned toward him a pattern of pale dots on its back. Among them at first unnoticed by his vaguely roving glance were three he knew—the two Alston girls and Aunt Ellen.

It was always hot and stuffy in the Albion and Aunt Ellen had been uncomfortable and fussed about it, and Chrystie was disappointed that her favorite had not been able to make the performance a success. As they edged forward she explained to Lorry that it wasn't Pancha's fault, it was the sort of thing she didn't do as well as other things and she oughtn't to have been made to do it. Then, her eye ranging, she suddenly stopped and gave Lorry a dig with her elbow.

"There's Marquis de Lafayette. Do you see him?"

Lorry had, which did not prevent her from saying in a languid voice,

"Where?"

"Over there by the railing. You know he is good-looking, Lorry, when he's all by himself that way, not trying to be worthy of a college education."

"Um," said her sister. "It's fearfully hot in here."

"I don't see why we ever came," Aunt Ellen moaned.

They were near him now and he saw them. For a moment he stared, then gave a nod and reddened to his forehead.

"Oh, he's blushing!" Chrystie tittered as she returned the bow. "How perfectly sweet!"

The first sight of them had given Mark a shock as violent as if he had met them in an exploration of the South Pole or the heart of a tropical forest. It took him some minutes to recover, during which he stood rooted, only his head moving as he watched them borne into the foyer, there caught in merging side currents and carried toward the main entrance. It was not till they were almost at the door, Chrystie's high blonde crest glistening above lower and less splendid ones, that he came to life. He did it suddenly, with a sharp reaction, and started in impetuous pursuit. His first movement—a spirited rush—carried him into a family, a compact phalanx moving solidly upon the exit. He ran into someone, a child, stammered apologies, placated an irate mother, then craning his neck for his quarry, saw the high blonde head in the distance against the darkness of the street.

The check was more than physical. It caused a sudden uprush of his old timidity and he stood irresolute, in everybody's way, spying at the distant golden head. It seemed as if they had wanted to avoid him, they had gone so quickly, just bowed and been carried on—if only Chrystie would look back and smile. Standing on his toes, jostled and elbowed, he caught a glimpse of them, all three, outside the door. They appeared preoccupied, the two girls talking across Aunt Ellen, with no backward glances for a young man struggling to reach them—anyone could have seen they had forgotten his existence. With a set face he turned and made for the side exit. They had no use for him; he would go home to the place where he belonged.

The bitterness of this thought carried him through the side exit and there left him. Whatever they felt and however they acted, it was his duty to see them on the car. Boor! clod! goat! He could still catch them if he went round to the front, and he started to do it, facing the emerging throng, battling his way through. That was too slow; he backed out, turned into the street and ran, charging through streams that had broken from the main torrent and were trickling away in various directions. Rounding the corner he saw he was not too late. There, standing on the curb, were Aunt Ellen and Chrystie, conspicuous in their ornamental clothes, looking in the opposite direction up the street's animated vista. He followed their eyes and saw a sight that made him halt—Lorry, her satin-slippered feet stepping delicately along the grimy pavements, her pale skirts emerging from the rich sheath of her cloak. Beside her, responding to a beckoning hand, a carriage rattled down upon Chrystie and Aunt Ellen. They had a carriage and she had had to go and find it!

With a heart seared by flaming self-scorn, Mark turned and slunk away. He slid into the crowd's enveloping darkness as into a friendly shelter. He wanted to hide from them, crawl off unseen like the worm he was. This was the least violent term he applied to himself as he walked home, cursing under his breath, wondering if in the length and breadth of the land there lived a greater fool than he. There was a mitigating circumstance—he had never dreamed of their having a carriage. In his experience carriages, like clergymen, were only associated with weddings and funerals. He thought of it afterward in his room, but it didn't help much—in fact it only accentuated the difference between them. Girls who had carriages when they went to the Albion were not the kind for lawyers' clerks to dream of.

Inside the carriage, Aunt Ellen insisted on an understanding with the livery stable man:

"Running about in the mud in the middle of the night—it's ridiculous! Lorry, are your slippers spoiled?"

"No, Aunt Ellen. There isn't any mud."

"There might just as well have been. Any time in the winter there's liable to be mud. Will you see Crowley tomorrow and tell him we won't have any more drivers who go away and hide in side streets?"

"Yes, I'll tell him, but he wasn't hiding, he was only a little way from the entrance."

"Having no man in the family certainly is inconvenient," came from Chrystie, and then with sudden recollection: "What happened to Marquis de Lafayette? Why didn't he come and get it?"

"I don't know, I'm sure." Lorry was looking out of the window.

"Well, I must say if we ask him to our parties the least he can do is to find our hacks."

"I think so, too," said Aunt Ellen. "The young men of today seem to have forgotten their manners."

"Forgotten them!" echoed Chrystie. "You can't forget what you never had."

"Oh, do keep quiet," came unexpectedly from Lorry. "The heat in that place has given me a headache."

Then they were contrite, for Lorry almost never had anything, and their attentions and inquiries had to be endured most of the way home.

Crowder, contrary to his expectations, found Pancha in high good spirits. When a piece failed she was wont to display that exaggerated discouragement peculiar to the artist. Tonight, sitting in front of her mirror, she was as confident and smiling as she had been in the first week of "The Zingara."

"I'm glad to see you're taking it so well," he said. "It's pretty hard following on a big success."

"Oh, it's all in the day's work. You can't hit the bull's eye every time. The management are going to dig down into their barrel next week, hunting for another gypsy role. They want me again in my braids and my spangles. They liked my red and orange—Spanish colors for the Spanish girl."

She flashed her gleaming smile at him and he thought how remarkably well she was looking, getting handsomer every day. Her words recalled something he had wanted to ask her and had forgotten.

"Talking of red and orange, how about that anonymous guy that sent you the flowers? You remember, back in the autumn—a lot of roses with a motto he got out of a Christmas cracker?"

She had her comb in her hand and dropped it, leaning down to scratch round for it on the floor.

"Oh, him—he's just petered out."

"Did you find out who he was?"

Up to this Pancha had been nearly as truthful with Crowder as she was with her father. But now a time had come when she felt she must lie. That secret intimacy, growing daily dearer and more dangerous, could not be confessed. Crowder had been mentor as well as friend and she feared not only his curiosity but his disapproval. He would argue, plead, interfere. She disliked what she had to say, and as she righted herself, comb in hand, her face was flushed.

"Yes, a chap from the East. He just admired from afar and went his way."

"Oh, he's gone." Crowder was satisfied. "Seen your father lately?"

"No, but I had a letter to say he'd be down soon."

The color in her face deepened. She knew that her father would ask even more searching questions than Crowder and she was prepared to lie to him. Biting her lip at the thought, she looked down the long spray of lashes defined on her cheeks. Crowder stared at her, impressed anew by that suggestion of radiant enrichment in her appearance.

"I say, old girl," burst from him, "do you know you're looking something grand."

She raised her lids and let her glance rest on him, soft and deep. It was a strange look to come from Pancha's bold, defiant eyes.

"Am I?" she said gently. "I guess I'm happy, that's all."

"Well, it's powerful becoming, believe me. And why are you, especially with 'The Gray Lady' a frost?"

She rose, the red kimono falling straight about her lithe, narrow shape, then stretched, a slow spread of arms, languid and catlike. Pressing her hands on her eyes she said from smiling lips:

"Oh, there's no particular reason. It just happens so. I'm getting to feel sure of myself—that's what, I guess. Now run along, old son, I'm sleepy. 'The Gray Lady' does it to me as well as the audience. Good-night."

Crowder was not the only one who had noticed Pancha's improved looks and high spirits. Behind the scenes the failure of "The Gray Lady" had produced dejection and rasped tempers. She alone seemed to escape the prevailing gloom. She came in at night smiling, left a trail of notes behind her as she walked to her dressing room, and from there clear scales and mellow bars rose spasmodically as she dressed. Usually holding herself aloof, she was friendly, made jokes in the wings, chatted with the chorus, and when she left the old doorkeeper was warmed by her gay good-night.

Her confreres were puzzled; it was quite a new phase. They had not liked Miss Lopez at first; she gave herself airs and had a bad temper. Once she had slapped a chorus woman who had spoiled her exit; at a rehearsal she had been so rude to the tenor the stage manager had had to call her down and there had been a fight. Now they wondered and whispered—under circumstances conducive to ill-humor she was as sweet as honey dropping from the comb. They set it down to temperament; everybody from the start had seen she had it, and anyway there wasn't anything else to set it down to.

What they saw was only a gleam, a thin shining through of the glory within. It irradiated, permeated, illumined her, escaping in those smiles and words and snatches of song because she could not hold it in. As she had told Crowder, she was happy, and she had never been before. She came out of sleep to the warming sense of it. It stayed with her all day, fed on a note, a telephone message, a gift of flowers, fed on nothing but her own thoughts.

It was the happiness found in little of one who has been starved, nourished by trifles, tiny seeds flowering into growths that touched the sky. She did not see Mayer as often as formerly and when she did their talk was on other things than love. In fact he was rather shy of the subject, did not repeat his kiss, was more comrade than wooer. But he sought her, he had told her why and that was enough. What he had said she believed, not alone because it seemed the only reasonable explanation of his actions, but because she wanted to believe it. He had come, a nonchalant wayfarer, and grown to care, said at last the words she was longing to hear, and, hearing, she felt them true and was satisfied.

And then she had drifted, content to rest in the complete comfort of her belief. The moment was enough, and she stood on the summit of each one, swaying in blissful balance. Vaguely she knew she was moving on a final moment, on a momentous, ultimate decision, and she neither cared nor questioned. Like a sleepwalker she advanced, inevitably drawn, seeing a blurred dazzle at the path's end in which she would finally be absorbed.

Everything that had made her Pancha Lopez, familiar to herself, was gone. She was somebody else, somebody filled with a brimming gladness, with no room for any other feeling. Her old, hard self-sufficiency seemed a poor, bleak thing, her high head was lowered and gloried in its abasement. All the fierce, combative spirit of the past had vanished; even her work, heretofore her life, was executed automatically and pushed aside, an obstruction between herself and the sight and thought of Mayer. The laws that had ruled her conduct, the pride that had upheld her, melted like cobwebs before the sun. She lived to please a man she thought loved her and that she loved to the point where honor had become an empty word and self-respect transformed to self-surrender. Whatever he would ask of her she was ready to give. The Indian's blood prompted her to the squaw's impassioned submission, the outlaw's to a repudiation of the law and the law's restraints.

Early in January her father came down and when he asked her about Mayer she lied as she had to Crowder. She told him she still saw the man but that his devotion had lapsed, giving evidence of a languishing interest. When she saw her father's relief she had qualms, but her lover's voice on the phone, asking her to dine with him that night, dispersed them. All the lies in the world then didn't matter to Pancha.

So she drifted, not caring whither, only caring that she should see Mayer, listen to him, dwell on his face, try to catch his wish before it was spoken. Her outer envelope was the same, performed the same tasks, lived in the same routine, but a new creature, a being of fire, dwelt within it.



CHAPTER XIV

THE NIGHT RIDER

February had been a month of tremendous rains. Days of downpour were succeeded by days of leaden skies and damp, brooding warmth, and then the clouds opened again and the downpour was renewed. Along the Mother Lode the rivers ran bank-high and the camps sat in lagoons, the sound of running water rising from the old flumes and ditches. Down every gully that cut the foothills came streams, loud-voiced and full of haste as they rushed under the wooden bridges.

It was a night toward the end of the month, no rain falling now, but the sky sagging low with a weight of cloud. An eye trained to such obscurity could have made out the landscape in looming degrees of darkness, masses rising against levels, the fields a shade lighter than the trees. These were discernible as huddlings and blots and caverned blacknesses into which the road dove and was lost. To the left the chaparral rose from the trail's edge in dense solidity, exhaling rich earth scents and the aromatic breath of pine and bay. The roadbed was torn to pieces, ruts knee-high; the stones, washed loose of soil, ringing to the blow of a moving hoof.

A rider, advancing slowly, had noticed this and with a jerk of his rein, directed his horse to the oozy grass along the side. Here, noiseless, man and beast passed, a moving blackness against stationary black, leaves and branches brushing against them. Neither heeded this; both were used to rough ways and night traveling and to each every foot of the road was familiar.

Under a roof of matted branches they drew up; the horse, the reins loose, stretched its neck, blowing softly from widened nostrils. The man took a match box from his pocket, struck a light and looked at his watch—it was close on ten. The flame, breaking out in a red spurt, gilded the limbs of the overarching trees, the glistening leaves, the horse's glossy neck and the man's face. It glowed beneath the brim of his hat like a portrait executed on a background of velvet varnished by the match's gleam—it was the face of Garland the outlaw.

His hand again on the rein sent its message and the horse padded softly on through the arch of trees to the open road. Had it been brighter Garland could have seen to the right rolling country, fields sprinkled with oak domes, falling away to the valley, to the left the chaparral's smothering thickness. Between them the road passed, a pale skein across the backs of the foothills, connecting camps and little towns. Farther on the Stanislaus River, rushing down from the Sierra, would crook its current, to run, swift and turbulent, beyond the screen of alders and willows.

The road ascended, and on a hillcrest he again halted and looked back, listening. Unimpeded by trees, the thick air holding all sound close to the earth, he could hear far-distant noises. The bark of a dog came clear—that was from Alec Porter's ranch on the slopes toward the valley. Facing ahead he caught, faint and thin, the roar of the Crystal Star's stamp mill. Over to the right—the road would loop down toward it at the next turning—was Columbus, gutted and dying slowly among its abandoned diggings.

He avoided this turn, taking a branch trail that slanted through the thicket, wet leaves slapping against him, the horse's hoofs sucking into the spongy turf. It was still and dark, the air drenched with the odors of mossed roots and pungent leaves. When he emerged, the lights of Columbus shone below, a small sprinkling of yellow dots gathered about the central brightness of the Magnolia Saloon. The night was so still he could hear the voices of roysterers straggling home.

Presently the rushing weight of the Stanislaus River swept along the nearby bank. He could hear the rustle of its current, the wash of its waves sucking and nosing on the stones; feel the breath of its swollen tide chilled by mountain snows. It was up to the alder bushes, nearly flood high, cutting him off from a detour he had hoped to make—he would have to ride through San Marco. He put a spur to his horse and took it boldly, hoping the mud would dull the sound of his passage. The cabins and shacks that fringed the town were dark but in the main street there were lights, from the ground floor of the Mountain Hotel where he caught a glimpse of shirt-sleeved men playing cards, from the Pioneer Saloon, whence the jingling notes of a piano issued. There was less mud than he had expected and the thud of his flying hoofs was flung from wall to wall and called out a burst of barking dogs, and a startled face behind a drawn curtain in a red-lit cabin window.

Then away into the darkness—round Chinese Crossing, under the eaves of the spreading plant of the Northern Light, up a hill and down on the other side through a tunnel of trees to the Stanislaus Ferry. As he passed into their hollow he could hear the thunder of the Lizzie J's stamps across the river, beating gigantic on the silence, shaking the night.

The stream showed a flat space between bulwarked hills, one yellow spot—the light in the ferryman's window—shining like an eye unwinking and vigilant. Garland's hail was answered from within the shack, and the ferryman came out, a dog at his heels, a lantern in his hand. There was a short conference, and the lantern, throwing golden gleams on the ground, swung toward the flat boat, the horse following, his steps, precise and careful, ringing hollow on the wooden boards.

They slid out into the current, the boat vibrating to the buffets of little waves, the dog running from side to side, barking excitedly. The ferryman, the lantern lifted, took a look at his passenger.

"Mighty wet weather we're having," he said.

"Terrible. Don't ever remember it worse."

The light of the lantern fell on the horse's mud-caked legs.

"Looks as if you'd rid quite a ways."

"From this side of Jackson."

"That's some ride. Guess y'ain't met many folks."

"Not many. Staying indoors this weather, all that can."

"Belong round here?"

"No—back up toward the Feather."

They were in midstream, the scow advancing with a tremulous motion, spray springing across its low edges and showering the men. The dog, who had come to a standstill, his forepaws on the gunnel, his face toward Garland, suddenly broke into a furious barking. Garland shifted in his saddle.

"What's got your dog?" he said gruffly. "He ain't afraid, is he?"

"Afraid? Don't know the meanin' of the word. Don't mind him—it's his way; lived so long with me he acts sort of notional. Some days he'll bark like now at a passenger and then again he won't take no notice. Just somethin' about you, can't tell what, but he scents somethin' that makes him act unfriendly."

"What do you suppose it is?" growled the other.

The ferryman laughed.

"Oh, you can't ever tell about them animals—they got a thinkin' outfit of their own. Goin' far?"

"To Angels."

"Well, hope you'll get there all right. Sort of black weather to be traveling specially if you got money on you. Knapp and Garland's bound to get busy soon."

It was the passenger's turn to laugh.

"I'm not the sort they're after. It's big business for them. Ever seen 'em?"

"Search me. I guess mebbe I've taken 'em acrost, but how was I to know?"

The scow bumped against its landing and man and horse embarked. There was an interchange of rough good-nights, interrupted by the dog's frenzied barking. As the boat pulled out into the stream, the ferryman called back above the noise of the water:

"Looks like he had somethin' on you. I ain't ever seen him act so ugly before." Then to the dog, "Quit that, Tim, or I'll bust your jaw."

Garland mounted the slope. The sound of the river behind him was drowned by the roar of the Lizzie J's mill. Its rampart-like wall towered above him, cut by the orange squares of windows, the thunder of its stamps, a giant's feet crushing out the gold, pounding tremendous on the nocturnal solitude. As the horse snorted upward, digging its hoofs among the loosened stones, he looked up at it. Millions had been made there; millions were still making. Men in distant cities were being enriched by the golden grains beaten free by those giant feet. Once he had thought that he, too, might ravish the earth's treasure, become as they were by honest labor.

An unexpected surge of depression suddenly rose upon him. He set it down to the barking of the dog, for, after the manner of those who lead the lonely lives of the outlawed, he was superstitious. He believed in signs and portents, lucky streaks, the superior instinct of animals, and as he rode he brooded uneasily. Did it simply mean menace, or had the brute known him for what he was and tried to warn his master?

He muttered an oath and told himself, as he had done often of late, that he was growing old. Time and disappointment were wearing on the nerve that had once been unbreakable. In the past he had seen his path going unimpeded to its goal; now he recognized the possibility of failure, saw obstructions, crept cautious where he had formerly strode undismayed, hesitated where he had once leaped. He jerked himself upright and expelled his breath in an angry snort. This was no time for such musings. At Sheeps Bar, ten miles farther on, he was to meet Knapp and plan for the holdup of the stage that tomorrow night would carry treasure to the Cimarroon Mine at North Fork.

It was after midnight when the few faint lights of Sheeps Bar came into view. The place was small, a main street flanked by frame houses, a wooden arcade jutting over the sagging sidewalk. Sleep held it; blank windowpanes looked over the arcade's roof, the one bright spot the oblong of light that shone from the transom over the door of the Planters Hotel. Mindful of dogs he kept to the soft earth near the sidewalk, shooting glances left and right. But Sheeps Bar was dead; there was not a stir of life as he passed, not the click of a latch, not a face at door or window.

Beyond the arcade the town broke into a scattering of detached houses. The last of these, a one-story cabin staggering to its fall on the edge of a stream, sent forth a pale ray from a wide, uncurtained window. Across the pane, painted in blue, were the words "Hop Sing, Chinese Restaurant," and within the light of a kerosene lamp showed a bare whitewashed room set forth in tables and having at one end a small counter and cash register. On the window ledge stood a platter of tomales and a pile of oranges.

Garland drew up, listened, then dropped off his horse and led it toward the hovel. Before he reached it a side door opened and a head was thrust out. A whispered hail passed and the owner of the head emerged—a Chinaman, shadow-thin and shadow-noiseless. He slipped through the wet grass and with an "All 'ighty, boss," that might have been a murmur of the stirred leaves, took the horse and disappeared with it toward a rear shed.

Garland went to the cabin. The room which he entered opened into the restaurant and was the Chinaman's den. Its only furniture was a bunk with a coil of dirty blankets, a chair and table, on which stood an adding machine, the balls running on wires. Near it was the ink well and bamboo pen and small squares of paper covered with Chinese characters. One door led into the restaurant and another into the kitchen. In this room, lit by a wall lamp, its window giving on a tangled growth of shrubs, sat Knapp sprawled before the stove.

Their greetings were brief, and drawing up to the table they began the plans for the next night's work. Through the window the air came cool and moist, fighting with the odors of cooking and the rank, stifling Chinese smell. On the silence without rose the horses' soft whinnyings to one another and then the Chinaman's returning passage through the grass and the rasp of the closing door. He put a bottle and glasses before the men, slipped speechless into the restaurant, and returned, an animated shadow, with the lamp in his hand. This he set on the table in his own room, and sitting before it, began moving the balls in the adding machine. Upon the low voices in the kitchen, the dry click of the shifted balls broke in sharp staccato, followed by pauses when, with a hand as delicate as a woman's, he traced the Chinese characters on the paper.

It was he who heard first. His hand, raised to move a line of the balls, hung suspended, his eyes riveted in an agate-bright stare on the wall opposite. He half rose; his meager body stiffened as if the muscles had suddenly become steel; his face turned in wild question to the room beyond. He was up and had hissed a terrified, "Look out, boss, someone come!" when a rending blow fell on the door.

For a breath there was stillness, then pandemonium—a sudden burst of action following on a moment of paralysis, an explosion of sound and movement. It all came together—the breaking in of the door, the rat-like rush of the men, the crash of falling furniture, of shivered glass, of dark, scrambling figures, and the blinding flash of a revolver. The Chinaman's face, ape-like in its terror, showed above the blankets of his bunk, Knapp lay on the ground caught by the falling table, and in the window jagged edges of glass and a trail of blood on the sill showed the way Garland had gone. In the doorway the sheriff stood with his leveled revolver, while the voices and trampling of men came from the shrubs outside.



CHAPTER XV

THE LAST DINNER

It was depressing weather, rain, rain, and then again rain. For two weeks now, off and on, people had looked out through windows lashed with fine spears or glazed with watery skins which endlessly slipped down the pane. Muddy pools collected and spread across the street, the cars that drove through them sending the water in fan-like spurts from their wheels. Down the high, cobbled hills rivulets felt their way and grass sprouted between the granite blocks. A gray wall shut in the city, which showed dimly under the downpour, gardens blossoming, roof shining beyond roof, wet wall dripping on wet wall.

From his parlor window in the Argonaut Hotel, Boye Mayer looked down on the street's swimming length, and then up at the sky's leaden pall. It was not raining now but there was no knowing when it might begin again. He yawned and stretched, then looked at his watch—half-past four. What should he do for the rest of the afternoon?

Several times during the last month this problem of time to be passed had presented itself. The rain had cut him off from stately promenades on the sunny side of the street and the diversions of San Francisco had grown stale from familiarity. The bloom of his adventure was tarnished; he was becoming used to riches, and comfort had lost its first, fine, careless rapture. It was not that he was actually bored, but he saw, as things were going, he might eventually become so, especially if the rain continued. So far, the green tables and Pancha had held off this undesired state, but like all attractive pastimes both had their dangers. His luck at the green tables had been so bad that he had resolved to give them up, and that made the menace of boredom loom larger. Life in San Francisco in the height of the wet season, with cards denied him and Pancha only to be visited occasionally, was not what it had promised to be.

He had thought of leaving, going to the South, and then decided against it. There were several reasons why it was better for him to stay. One was the money in Sacramento. This had become an intruding matter of worry and indecision. It was not only that the store was so greatly diminished—his losses had made astonishing inroads in it—but he feared its discovery and he hated his trips there. He always spent a night in the place, on a stone-hard bed in a dirty, unaired room, and in his shabby clothes was forced to patronize cheap eating houses where the fare sickened him. He managed it very adroitly, carrying in his old suitcase the hat, coat, shoes and tie he had bought in Sacramento, changing into them in the men's washroom in the Sacramento depot, and emerging therefrom the Harry Romaine who rented room 19 in the Whatcheer House.

Of course there was danger of detection, and faced by this and the memory of his discomfort on the train down, he told himself he would certainly move the money. But back in the Argonaut Hotel his resolution weakened. Where would he move it to? He could bank it in San Francisco, but here again there were perils, of a kind he dreaded even more than the Sacramento trips. There was that question of references, and he feared the eyes of men, honest men, business men. He kept away from them; they were shrewd, bitterly hostile to such as he. So he invariably slipped back into a state where he said he must do something, waited until he had only a few dollars left, then, cursing and groaning, pulled the old clothes out of his trunk, packed his battered suitcase and told Ned Murphy he was going into the interior "on business."

But outside all these lesser boredoms and anxieties there was another bigger than all the rest and growing every day: After the money was gone, what?

It was a question that, in the past, he would have sheered away from as a horse shies from an obstacle intruding on a pleasant road. But time had taught him [Note: last word, 'far-righted' must be a typo] many things—the picaroon was becoming far-sighted; the grasshopper had learned of the ant. The spring of his youth was gone; the renewal of the old struggle too horrible to contemplate. And he would have to contemplate it or decide on something to forestall it. That was what he had been thinking about for the past week, shut up in his hotel room, his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes morosely fixed on space.

At the Alston dinner an idea had germinated in his mind. It was only a seed at first, then it began to grow and had now assumed a definite shape. At first he had toyed with it, viewed it from different angles as something fantastic and irrelevant, but nevertheless having a piquancy of its own. Then his ill-luck and that necessary facing of the situation made him regard it more closely, compelled him to award it a serious consideration. He did not like it; it had almost no point of appeal; it was not the sort of thing, had chance been kinder, he would ever have contemplated. But it was inescapable, the angel with the flaming sword planted in his path.

Reluctant, with dragging feet, he had gone to call on the Alston girls. There had been several visits before that in return for continued hospitalities; but this was the first of what might be called a second series, the first after the acceptance of his idea. It had driven him to it, hounded him on like Orestes hounded by the furies. When he got there he saw behind the hounding the hand of fate, for instead of finding both sisters at home or both sisters out, he found Chrystie in and alone. She had talked bashfully, a shy-eyed novice with blush-rose cheeks and fingers feeling cold in the pressure of farewell. The hand of fate pointed to her. If it had been the other sister the hand would have pointed in vain. From the start he had felt the fundamental thing in Lorry—character, brain, vision, whatever you like to call it—upon which his flatteries and blandishments would have been fruitless, arrows falling blunted against a glittering armor. But this child, this blushing, perturbed, unformed creature, as soft and fiberless as a skein of her own hair, was fruit for his plucking.

That was his idea.

He had brooded on it all the week, hearing the rain drumming on the roof outside, smoking countless cigarettes, harassed, balky and beaten. He thought of it now, his hands deep in his pockets, his chest hollowed, his sullen eyes surveying the hill opposite, up which a cable car crawled like a large wet beetle. He watched the car till it dipped over the summit and there was nothing to see but the two shining rails, and the glistening roofs and the shrouded distance. It was like his idea, inexpressibly dreary, a forlorn, monotonous, gray shutting out what once had been a bright, engaging prospect.

He looked again at his watch—not yet half past five—at least an hour to pass before dinner. The green tables began to call, and he turned from the window to the dusk of the room, tempted and restless. He must do something or he would answer the call, and he searched his resources for a diversion at once enlivening and inexpensive. The search brought up on Pancha. She and her mysteries were always amusing; her love flattered him; blues and boredom died in her presence. Dangerous she could be, but dangerous he would not let her be—his was the master mind, cold, self-governing, and self-sure. One more swing around the circle with Pancha and then good-by. Soon he "would give his bridle rein a shake beside the river shore." At that he laughed—"river shore" aptly described San Francisco under present conditions—and laughing went to the telephone and called her up. He caught her at rehearsal and made a rendezvous for dinner in the banquet room at Solari's.

Solari's was a small Italian restaurant in the business quarter which had gained fame by the patronage of the local illuminati known to press and public as "Bohemians." They foregathered nightly there, the plate glass window giving a view of them, conspicuously herded at a large central table, to interested passersby. To the right of the window was a door, giving on a narrow staircase which led up to the second floor and what Solari called his "banquet room." Here on state occasions the Bohemians entertained celebrities, secretly fretted by the absence of their accustomed audience. They had decorated the walls with samples of their art, and when Eastern visitors came to Solari's, they were always taken up there, and expected to say that San Francisco reminded them of Paris. Mayer liked the place and had dined there several times with Pancha, always in the banquet room. There were newspaper men among the Bohemians who would have found material in the simultaneous appearance of the picturesque Mr. Mayer and the Albion's star.

He had ordered the dinner, had the fire lighted and the table spread when she came. She had run up the stairs and was out of breath, bringing in a whiff of the night's fresh dampness, and childishly glad to be there. She made no attempt to hide it, laughing as she slid out of her coat and tossed her hat on a chair. With her feet in their worn, high-heeled shoes held out to the fire, her hands rosily transparent against the blaze, she filled the room with a new magic and charm, sent waves of well-being through it. They warmed and lifted Mayer from his worries, and he was nearly as glad that he had asked her to come as she was to obey his summons. In his relief that she was able to dissipate his gloom, he forgot his caution and laughed with her, the laugh of the lover rejoicing in the sight of his lady.

The dinner was good and they were merry over it. Under the shaded light above the table he could see her color fluctuate and the quick droop of her eyes as they met his, and these evidences of his power added to his enjoyment. The inhibition he had put upon himself was for the time lifted, and he spoke softly, caressingly, words that made the rose in her cheeks burn deeper and her voice tremble in its low response. Always keener in his chase of money than of women, his cold blood was warmed and he permitted himself to grow tender, safe in the thought that this would be their last dinner.

At seven she had to go, frankly reluctant, making no pretense to hide her disinclination. She rose and went to where her coat lay over a chair, but he was before her, and snatching it up held it spread for her enveloping. With her arms outstretched she slid into it, then felt him suddenly clasp her. Weakened, like a body from which the strength has fled, she drooped against him, her head fallen back on his shoulder. He leaned his cheek against hers, rubbing it softly, then bending lower till he found her lips.

Out of his arms she steadied herself with a hand on the mantelpiece, the room blurred, no breath left her for speech. For a moment the place was noiseless save for the small, friendly sounds of the fire. Then she asked the woman's eternal question,

"Do you love me?"

"What do you think?" he said, surprised to hear his voice shaken and husky.

"Oh, Boye," she cried and turned on him, clasping her hands against her heart, a figure of tragic intensity, "is it true? Do you mean it?"

He nodded, silent because he was not sure of what to say.

"It's not a lie? It's not just to get me because I'm Pancha Lopez who's never had a lover?"

"My dear girl!" he gave his foreign shrug. "Why all this unbelief?"

"Because it's natural, because I can't help it. I want to trust, I want to believe—but I'm afraid, I'm afraid of being hurt." She raised her clasped hands and covered her face with them. From behind their shield her voice came muffled and broken, "I couldn't stand that. I've never cared before, I never thought I would—anyway not like this. It's come and got me—it's got me down to the depths of my heart."

"Why, Pancha," he said, exceedingly uneasy, sorry now he'd asked her, sorry he'd come. "What's the sense of talking that way—don't be so tragic. This isn't the stage of the Albion."

"No, it's not." She dropped her hands and faced him. "It's real life—it's my real life. It's the first I've ever had." And suddenly she went to him, caught his arm, and pressing against it looked with impassioned eyes into his.

"Do you love me—not just to flirt and pay compliments, but truly—to want me more than any woman in the world? Tell me the truth."

Her eyes held his, against his arm he could feel the beating of her heart. Just at that moment the truth was the last thing he could tell.

"Little fool," he said softly, "I love you more than you deserve."

Her breath came with a sob; she drooped her head and, resting her face against his shoulder, was still.

Over her head he looked at the fire, with his free hand gently caressing her arm. He did not want to say any more. What he wanted was to get away, slide out of range of her eyes and her questions. It was his own fault that the interview had developed in a manner undesired and unintended, but that did not make him any the less anxious to end it. Presently she lifted her head and drew back from him. Stealing a look at her, he saw she was pale and that her eyes were wet. She put her fingers on them, pressing on the lids, her lips set close, her breast shaken.

In dread of another emotional outburst he looked at his watch and said in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone,

"Look here, young woman, this is awfully jolly, but I don't want to be the means of making trouble for you at the Albion. Won't you be late?"

She started and came to life, throwing a bewildered glance about her for her hat.

"Yes, I'd forgotten. I must hurry. It takes me an hour to make up."

Immensely relieved, he handed her the hat, saw her put it on with indifferent pulls and pats, and followed her to the door. At the top of the stairs he pushed by her with a laughing,

"Here, let me go first. It's my job to lead."

She drew aside, and as he passed her he caught her eyes, lighted with a soul-deep tenderness, the woman's look of surrender. Then as he descended a step below her, she leaned down and brushed her cheek along his shoulder, a touch light as the passage of a bird's wing.

"It's my job to follow where you lead," she whispered.

They went down the narrow staircase crowded close together, arm against arm, silent. In the doorway she turned to him.

"Don't come with me. I want to be alone. I want to understand what's happened to me. You can think of me going through the streets and saying over and over, 'I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy—' And you can think it's because of you I'm saying it."

She was gone, a small, dark figure, flitting away against the glistening splotches of light that broke on the street's wet vista.

Not knowing what else to do, Mayer walked home. He was angry with everything—with Pancha, with himself, with life. He thought of her without pity, savage toward her because he had to put her away from him. Joy came to him with outstretched hands, and he had to turn his back on it; it made him furious. He was exasperated with himself because so much of his money was gone, and he had to do what he didn't want to do. The money instead of making things easier had messed them into an enraging tangle. Life always went against him—he saw the past as governed by a malevolent fate whose business had been a continual creating of pitfalls for his unwary feet.

One thing was certain, he must have done with Pancha. Fortunately for him, it would not be hard. He would give his bridle rein a shake beside the river shore, and let the fact that he had gone sink into her, not in a break of brutal suddenness, but by slow, illuminating degrees. For if he was to carry out his idea—and there was nothing else to be done—there must be no entanglements with such as Pancha. He must be foot-loose and free, no woman clinging to that shaken bridle rein with passionate, restraining hands.

Cross and dispirited he entered the hotel and mounted to his room. He was beginning to hate it, its hideous hotel furniture, the memory of hours of ennui spent there. Against his doorsill the evening paper lay, and picking it up he let himself in and lighted the gas. On the mantel the small nickel clock seemed to start out at him, insolently proclaiming the hour, half past seven. He groaned in desperation and cast the paper on the table. It had been folded once over, and as it struck the marble, fell open. Across the front page in glaring black letters he read the words,

"Knapp, the bandit, caught at Sheeps Bar."



CHAPTER XVI

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

That night Mayer could not sleep. He kept assuring himself there was nothing to fear, yet he did fear. Dark possibilities rose on his imagination—in his excitement at finding the treasure he might have left something, some betraying mark or object. Was there any way in which the bandits could have obtained a clew to his identity; could they have guessed, or discovered by some underground channel of espionage, that he was the man who had robbed them? Over and over he told himself it was impossible, but he could not lift from his spirit a dread that made him toss in restless torment. With the daylight, his nerves steadied, and a perusal of the morning papers still further calmed him. Only one man had been caught—Knapp. Garland had broken through the window, and with the darkness and his knowledge of the country to aid him, had made his escape. The sheriff's bullet had not done its work; no man seriously wounded could have eluded the speed and vigilance of the pursuit. A posse was now out beating the hills, but with the long stretch of night in his favor he had slipped through their fingers and was safe somewhere in the chaparral or the mountains beyond. If his friends could not help him, a force more implacable than sheriff or deputy would bring him to justice: hunger.

The paper minutely described Knapp—young, thirty he said, a giant in strength, and apparently simple and dull-witted. The game up, he accepted the situation stoically and was ready to tell all he knew. Then followed a summary of his career, his meeting with Garland six years before and their joint activities. Of his partner's life where it did not touch his he had no information to give. They met up at intervals, planned their raids, executed them and then separated. He knew of Garland by no other name, had no knowledge of his habitats or of what friends he had among the ranchers and townspeople. His description of the elder man was meager; all he seemed sure of was that Garland had once been a miner, that he wanted to quit "the road," and that he was middle-aged, somewhere around forty-five or it might be even fifty. Hop Sing, the Chinaman, was equally in the dark as to the man who, the papers decided, had been the brains of the combination. The restaurant keeper had merely been a humble instrument in his strong and unscrupulous hand.

So far there was no mention of the cache in the tules. The reporters, spilled out in the damp discomfort of the county seat, were filling their columns with anything they could scrape together, but it was still too early for them to have scraped more than the obvious, surface facts. Mayer would have to wait. As he sat at the table, picking at his breakfast, his mind darkly disturbed, he wondered if he had not better get out, and then called himself a fool. He was secure, absolutely secure. The man of the two who had had some capacity had escaped, and if he had had the capacity of Napoleon how could he possibly have anything to say that would involve Boye Mayer?

So he soothed himself and, braced by a cup of coffee and a cold bath, began to feel at ease. But he decided to keep to his room till he knew more. If anything should happen he could break away quickly and he felt safer under cover. Now, more than ever, he feared the eyes of honest men.

He had reached this decision when he suddenly remembered Pancha. The thought of her came with an impact, causing him to stiffen and give forth a low ejaculation. His mind ran with lightning speed over what he had been reading, then flashed back to her. Was this man, this hulking country Hercules, her "best beau," or was it the other one, Garland, the one who had the brains, and who was old? It was more likely Knapp. He could have come to the city, seen her play, been inspired by a passion that made him daring, been her choice till Mayer had come and conquered.

Her place in the affair, overlooked in the first shock of his own alarms, rose before him, formidable and threatening. A desire to see her, deeper than any he had yet experienced, seized him. Her guard would be down; with all her sly skill she could not deceive him now. She would be frightened, she was in danger, she would betray herself. Even if she had long ceased to care for the man, she might have some fears for him, and how much more fears for herself? As he realized the perils of her position, a faint, slow smile curved his lips. It was not of derision but of a cynical comprehension. He saw her scared to the soul, scared of discovery as Knapp's girl, who was aware of his business, who kept tab on his comings and goings. For all anyone knew some of that money of hers, so thriftily hoarded, might be part of the bandit's unlawful gains.

"Whew!" he breathed out. "She must be frozen to the marrow!"

But he did not dare go to her till he was more certain of how he himself stood.

The next day was Sunday, and on the Despatch's front page appeared Knapp's picture and his story of the rifled cache. Licking along his dry lips with a leathern tongue, Mayer read it and then cast the paper on the floor and sank back in his chair in a collapse of relief. Neither man had had any suspicion of the identity of the robber; all they knew was that their hiding place had been discovered and the treasure stolen.

He was safe, safer than he had ever felt before. As the tramp, only two people had seen him near the marshes, a child and a boy in a ranch yard. Even if either of them should remember and speak of him in relation to the theft, was there a human being who would connect that tramp with Boye Mayer, gentleman of leisure, in California for his health? He raised his eyes and encountered his reflection in the mirror. Gathering himself into an upright posture, he studied it, aristocratic, cold, immeasurably superior; then, closing his eyes, he called up the image of himself as he had been when he crossed the tules. No one, unless gifted with second sight, could have recognized the one in the other. Dropping back in his chair, he raised his glance to the floriated cement molding on the ceiling, from which the chandelier depended, feeling as if borne by a peaceful current into a shining, sunlit sea.

There was a performance at the Albion on Sunday night, but no rehearsal, and in the gray of the afternoon he went across town to see Pancha.

He found her in a litter of dressmaking—lengths of material, old costumes, bits of stage jewelry, patterns, gold lace, were outspread on chairs, hung from the table, lay in bright rich heaps on the floor. The shabby room, glowing with the lights on lustrous fabrics, the gloss of crumpled silks, the glints and sweeps and sparklings of color, looked as if in the process of transformation at the touch of a magician's wand. In the midst of it—the enchanted princess still waiting for the wand's touch—sat Pancha, in a faded blouse and patched skirt, sewing. Part of her transformation was accomplished when she saw Mayer. If her clothes remained the same, the radiance of her face was as complete as if the spell was lifted and she found herself again a princess encountering her long-lost prince.

His first glance fell away startled from that radiant face. There was nothing on it or behind it but joy. He pressed a hand soft and clinging, encircled a body that trembled under his arm and in which he could feel the thudding of a suddenly leaping heart. Her eyes, searching his, shone with a deep, pervasive happiness. She was nothing but glad, quiveringly, passionately glad, moving in his embrace toward a chair, babbling breathless greetings; she had not expected him, she was surprised, she was—and the words trailed off, her face hidden against his arm.

It was far from what he had expected and he was thankful for that moment when she stopped looking at him and he could master his surprise. It nearly flooded up again when he saw the paper, news sheet on top, in a pile by the sofa where it had evidently been thrown as she lay reading.

Presently he was in the armchair and she was moving about clearing things away in a futile, incapable manner, darting like a perturbed bird for a piece of silk, then dropping it and making a dive for a coil of chiffon, which she pressed half into a drawer and left hanging over the edge in a misty trail. As she moved, she continued her broken babblings—excuses for the room's disorder, costumes for the new piece to be made, all the time flashing looks at him, watchful, humble, adoring, ready to come at his summons of word or hand. Finally, the materials thrown into hiding places, the dresses heaped on the sofa, she came toward him—a lithe, feline stealing across the carpet—and slipped down on the floor at his feet.

"Well," he said, "what's the news?"

"There isn't any, except that I'm glad to see you."

She curled her legs under her tailor-fashion, and looked up at him.

"Nothing's happened to disturb the even tenor of your way?"

"Only rehearsals for the new piece and they don't bother me now. That's all that ever happens to me, except for a gentleman caller now and again."

She caught his eye, and, her hands clasped round one knee, swayed gently, laughing in pure joy. He did not join in, adjusting his thoughts to this new puzzle. Leaning against the chair back, the afternoon light yellow on his high, receding temples and the backward brush of his hair, his look was that of a fond, rather absent-minded amusement such as one awards to the antics of a playful child. To anyone watching him his lack of response would have suggested a preoccupation in more pregnant matters. Receiving no answer, she went on:

"Only one gentleman caller, one sole alone gentleman, named Mayer, who, I think, likes to come here." She paused, but again there was no answer and she finished, addressing the carpet, "Or maybe I just imagine it, and he only comes dull Sunday afternoons when there's nowhere else to go."

"Oh, silly, unbelieving child!" came his voice, slightly distrait it is true, but containing sufficient of the lover's chiding tenderness to fill her with delight.

But this was not what had brought him. The interview started, it was his business now or never to solve the enigma. He stirred in his chair and, raising a languid hand, pointed to the paper.

"I see you've been reading the Despatch."

"Um-um—this morning."

"Very good story, that one on the front page, about the bandit chap."

"Knapp? Yes, bully. They've got him at last. It was exciting, wasn't it? Like a novel. I don't often read the papers, but I did read that."

She gave no evidence, either of agitation, or of any especial interest. Unclasping her hands from about her knee, she turned a gold bracelet that hung loose on her wrist, watching the light slide on its surface. Her face was gently unconcerned, serene, almost pensive. The man's eyes explored it, searched, scanned it for a betraying sign.

"Did you notice his picture? A pretty hard-looking customer."

She nodded, absently looking at the bracelet.

"He sure was, but they're not all as bad as that. Once down at Bakersfield I saw a bandit. They caught him near a place where I lived and the sheriff brought him in there. He looked like a rough sort of rancher, nothing dangerous about him."

The expression of pensiveness deepened, increased by a sudden, disturbing thought. Would she tell him about Bakersfield and the horrible life there with Maria Lopez?

The temptation to be frank with him, to have no secrets, to let him know her as she was, assailed her. She resolved upon it, drew a deep breath and said,

"I never told you that I once lived in Bakersfield."

"There are lots of things you never told me. They seem to think the other fellow—what's his name—Garland—has really made his escape."

The confession died on her lips. She was glad of it; she would tell him later, some other time, he was too engrossed in the bandits now.

"I guess that's right. He's got up in the hills where there are ranchers that'll help him."

"Would any rancher dare to help him now—wouldn't they be afraid to?"

"Not his kind. Country people aren't as dull as you'd think. I've seen a lot of them, when I was a kid and lived round in small places. They act sort of dumb, but some of them are awful smart behind it."

"Probably get their share of the loot."

"Sure. That would be the natural thing to keep them quiet, wouldn't it?"

Mayer murmured an assent and drew himself to the edge of his chair.

"I'd hate to be one of them the way things stand now! The law, when it gets busy, has a pretty long arm."

"I guess it has," she agreed, toying with the bracelet.

"Anyone who has had any sort of dealings, been a friend or a confederate of either of those fellows, is in a desperately ugly position."

She nodded. He leaned still further forward, his elbows on his knees, his glance riveted on her.

"Suppose either of them had a wife or a sweetheart—and it's probable they have—that's the person the authorities will be after."

"Yes," she dropped the bracelet and looked away from him, her expression dreamy, "it would be. They'll start right in to hunt for them. If they got them, what would they do to them?"

"Do?" He suddenly stretched an index finger at her, pointing into her face. "If they find a woman or a girl who's had any acquaintance or intimacy with either Knapp or Garland they'll land her in jail so quick she won't have time to think. Jail, young woman, and after that the third degree. And if she's stood in with them—well, it'll be jail for a home till she's served her term."

She pondered for a moment, then said softly,

"It wouldn't matter if she loved him."

"Jail wouldn't matter?"

Her glance had been fastened in meditation on the shadows of the room. Now it shifted to him, rapt and luminous. She raised herself to her knees and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Nothing would matter if he was her man. It would be great to stand by him and suffer for him. It would be happiness to go to jail for him, to die for him. There'd be only one thing that she'd be thinking about—that would make her glad to do it—to know that he loved her, Boye."

Eye holding eye, she drew him closer till her black-fringed lids lowered and her face, held up to his, offered itself—a symbol of a fuller gift.

Gathering her in his arms, he rose and drew her to her feet. Pressed against him, shaken by the beating of the heart that leaped at his touch, she again breathed the eternal question, "Do you love me"—words that come from under-layers of doubt in the despairingly impassioned.

He reassured her as the unloving man does, lying to get away, soothing with kisses, eager to break loose from arms that are unwelcome and yet tempt. He played his part like a true lover and at the door was genuinely stirred when he saw there were tears in her eyes. He had not guessed she could be so tender, that her hard exterior hid such depths of sweetness. His parting embrace might have deceived a more love-learned woman, and he left her with a slight, unwonted sense of shame in his heart.

Away from her, where he could think, he pushed the shame aside as he was ready to push her. The fire she had kindled in him died; the woman he had clasped and kissed ceased to figure as a being to desire and became an enigma to solve.

The fate of the bandits had touched no vulnerable spot in her. She had been unmoved by it. Even did she adore Mayer so ardently and completely that his presence was an anodyne for every other thought, she would have shown, she must have shown, some disturbance. He had known women who lived so utterly in the moment that the past lost its reality, was as dissevered from the present as though it had never existed. Was she one of these? Could her relation—whatever it was—with either of the outlaws have been so erased from her consciousness that she could talk of his danger with a face as unconcerned as the one she had presented to Mayer's vigilant eye?

It was impossible. There would have been a betrayal, a quiver of memory, a flash of apprehension—And suddenly, gripped by conviction, he stopped in the street and stood staring down its length.

Night was coming, the gray spotted with lamps. Each globe a sphere of pinkish yellow, they stretched before him in a line that marched into a distance of mingled lights and more accentuated shadows. He looked along them as if they were bearing his thoughts back over the past, every globe a station in the retrospect, stage by stage advancing him toward a final point of certainty.

She didn't know!

It formed in a sentence, detached and exclamatory, in his mind, and he stood staring at the lamps, people jostling him and some of them turning to look back.

Now that he had guessed it everything became clear. It was like a piece of machinery suddenly supplied with a lacking wheel which moved it to instant action. He walked forward, seeing all the disconnected elements take their places, seeing the whole, harmonious, intelligently related and extremely simple. That was what had led him astray. He was not used to simple solutions; intricate byways, complex turnings and doublings, were what he was trained to. Working along the familiar lines, he had overlooked what should have been easily discerned.

The man loved her, wanted to stand well with her and had deceived her as to his occupation. And it was the older one—Knapp's picture had been in the paper, she had seen it and it had meant nothing to her. So it was Garland, the chap with the brains, on toward fifty—but these mountain men with their outdoor life and unspent energies held their youth long. His imagination, stirred to unwonted activity, pictured him, an outcast, hunted and hiding in the mountain wilderness. As he had smiled at the thought of Pancha's terrors, he smiled now, and again it was a curving of the lips that had no humor behind it. It was the bitter smile of an understanding that has no sympathy and yet has power to comprehend.

As for himself, he was out of it, the mystery was solved and he could go his way in peace of mind. It was a fortunate ending, come just in time. There was no need now for any more folly or philandering. They were cut off short, romance snipped by Fate's shears, a full stop put at the last word of the sentence. He had no fears of Pancha, she knew too much to make trouble, and anyway there was nothing for her to make trouble about. He had treated her with a consideration that was nothing short of chivalrous. Even if there had been anyone belonging to her to take him to task he could defend his conduct as that of a Sir Galahad—and there wasn't anyone.

He felt brisk, light, mettlesome. Troubles that had threatened were dispersed; the future lay fair before him. Relieved of all encumbering obstacles, it extended in clear perspective toward his idea. With keen, contemplative eye he viewed it at the end of the vista, calculating his distance, gathering his powers to cover it in a swift dash, sure of his success.



CHAPTER XVII

THE WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING

One afternoon, a week later, Chrystie Alston was crossing Union Square Plaza. It was beautiful weather, the kind that comes to San Francisco after long spells of rain. Across the bay the distances were deep-hued and crystal-clear, the hills clean-edged against a turquoise sky. Green slopes showed below the dense olive of eucalyptus woods and around the shore were the white clusterings of little towns. Where the water filled in the end of a street's vista it was like an insert of blue enameling, and from the city's high places Mount Diavolo could be seen, a pointed gem, surmounting in final sharpness the hill's carven skyline.

Chrystie felt the exhilaration of the air and the sun, and walked with a bounding, long-limbed swing. She was a glad and prosperous figure, silk skirts swept by scintillant lights eddying back from the curves of her hips, glossy new furs lying soft on her shoulders, and on her bosom—a spot of purple—a bunch of violets. Her eyes were as clear as the sky, and her hair, pressed down by the edge of a French hat, hung in a misty golden tangle to her brows. No one needed to be told she was rich and carefree. Her expensive clothes revealed the former, her buoyant step and happy expression, the latter condition.

She was halfway across the Plaza when her progress suffered a check. There was a drop in her swift faring, a poised moment of indecision. During the halt her face lost its blithe serenity, showed a faltering uncertainty, then stiffened into resolution. Inside her muff her hands gripped, inside her bodice her heart jumped. Both these evidences of agitation were hidden and that gave her confidence. Assuming an air of nonchalance she moved forward, her gait slackened, her eyes abstractedly shifting from the sky to the shrubs.

Boye Mayer, advancing up the path, saw she had seen him and drew near, watchfully amused. Almost abreast of him she directed her glance from the shrubs to his face. Surprise at the encounter was conveyed by a slight lifting of her brows, pleasure and greeting by a smile and inclination of the head. Then she would have passed on, but he came to a stop in front of her.

"Oh, don't go by as if you didn't want to speak to me," he said, and pressed a hand that slid warm out of the new muff.

Standing thus in the remorseless sunshine she was really very handsome, her skin flawless, her lips as red and smooth as cherries. And yet in spite of such fineness of finish there was no magic about her, no allure, no subtlety. Achieving graceful greetings he inwardly deplored it, noting as he spoke how shy she was and how she sought to hide it under a crude sprightliness. There was a shyness full of charm, a graceful gaucherie delightful to watch as the gambolings of young animals. But Chrystie was too conscious of herself and of him to be anything but awkward and constrained.

She was going shopping, but when he claimed a moment—just a moment, he saw her so seldom—went to the bench he indicated and dropped down on it. Here, a little breathless, sitting very upright, her burnished skirts falling deep-folded to the ground, she tried to assume the worldly lightness of tone befitting a lady of her looks in such an encounter.

"Do you often go this way, through the Plaza?" he asked after they had disposed of the fine weather.

"Yes, quite often. When it's a nice day like this I always walk downtown, and it's shorter going through here."

"It's odd I haven't met you before. This is my regular beat, across here about three and then out toward the Park."

"That's a long walk," Chrystie said. "You must like exercise."

"I do, but I also like taking little rests on the way. That is, when I meet a lady"—his eye swept her, respectfully admiring—"who looks like a goddess dressed by Worth."

She moved in her flashing silks, making them rustle.

"Oh, Mr. Mayer, how silly," was the best she could offer in response.

"Silly! But why?" His shoulders went up with that foreignness Chrystie thought so bewitching. "Why is it silly to say what's true?"

"But you know it's not—it's just—er—" She wanted to retort with the witty brilliance that the occasion demanded, and what she said was, "It's just hot air and you oughtn't to."

Then she felt her failure so acutely that she blushed, and to hide it buried her chin in her fur and sniffed at the violets on her breast.

His voice came, close to her ear, very kind, as if he hadn't noticed the blush,

"Well, then, I'll express it differently. I'll say you're just charming. Will that do?"

"I don't think I am. It sounds like someone smaller. I'm too big to be charming."

That made him laugh, a jolly ringing note.

"Whatever you think you are, I think you're the most delightful person in San Francisco."

The silks rustled again. Chrystie lifted her eyes from the violets to the bench opposite from which two Italian women were watching with deep interest this coquetting of the lordlings.

"Now you're making fun of me," she said, like a wounded child.

"Oh, dear lady," it was he who was wounded, misunderstood, hurt, "how unkind and how untrue. Could I make fun of anyone I admired, I respected, I—er—thought as much of as I do of you?"

She looked down at her muff. Just for a moment he thought her shyness was quite winning.

"I don't know—I don't know you well enough. But you've been everywhere and seen everything, and I must seem so—so—sort of stupid and like a kid. I don't know what you think, but I know that's the way I feel when I'm with you."

The Italian women were aware of a slight movement on the part of the aristocratic gentleman which suggested an intention of laying his hand upon that of the golden-haired lady. Then he evidently thought better of it, and his hand dropped to the head of his cane. The golden-haired lady had seen it, too, and affrighted slid her own into the shelter of her muff. With down-drooped head she heard the cultured accents of the only perfect nugget she had ever met murmur reproachfully.

"Now it's you who are making fun of me. Why, I'm the one who feels stupid and tongue-tied. I'm the one who comes away from you abashed and embarrassed. And why, do you suppose? Because I feel I've been with someone who's so much finer than all the others. Not the pert, smart girl of dinners and dances, but someone genuine and sincere and sweet"—his glance touched the bunch of violets—"as sweet as those violets you're wearing."

Chrystie experienced a feeling of astonishment, mixed with an uplifting exaltation. Staring before her she struggled to adjust the familiar sense of her shortcomings with this revelation of herself as a creature of compelling charm. She was so thrilled she forgot her pose and murmured incredulously,

"Really?"

"Very really. Why are you so modest, little Miss Alston?"

"I didn't know I was."

"Wonderfully so—amazingly so. But perhaps it's part of you. It is so sometimes with a beautiful woman."

"Beautiful? Oh, no, Mr. Mayer."

"Oh, yes, Miss Alston."

Chrystie began to feel as if she was coming to life after a long period of deadness. She had a consciousness of sudden growth, of expanding and outflowering, of bursting into glowing bloom. A smile that she tried to repress broke out on her lips, the repression causing it to be one-sided, which gave it piquancy. She was invaded by a heady sense of exhilaration and a new confidence, daring, almost reckless. It made it possible for her to quell a rush of embarrassment and lead the conversation like a woman of the world:

"You're mistaken about my being modest. Everybody who knows me well says I'm spoiled."

"Who's spoiled you?"

"Lorry and Aunt Ellen and Fong."

She gave him a quick side glance, met his eyes, and they both laughed, a light-hearted mingling of treble and bass.

The Italian women breathed deeply on their bench, aware that the interchanged glances and chimed laughter had advanced the romance on its happy way.

"Three people can't do any serious spoiling—there should be at least four. Who's Fong?"

"Our Chinaman; he's been with us for centuries."

"Let me make the fourth. Put me on the list."

"I think you've put yourself there without being invited. Since we sat down you've done nothing but pay me compliments."

"Never mind that. Here's a sensible suggestion: I'll judge myself if you're spoiled and if I think you are I won't pay you one more. Isn't that fair?"

"I think so."

"Very well. Of course I must know you better, have a talk with you before I can be sure. How can we arrange that? Ah—I have it! Some bright afternoon like this we might take a walk together."

"Yes, we could do that."

"We might go to the park—it's wonderful there on days like this."

She nodded and said slowly,

"And we could take Lorry."

"To be sure, if she'd care to come."

There was a slight pause and he saw by her profile there was doubt in her mind.

"I don't know about her caring. Lorry doesn't like walking much."

"Then why ask her to do it?"

She stroked her muff, evidently discomfited.

"Well, you see, it's this way, I don't think Lorry'd like me to go with you alone."

"But why?" He drew himself up from the bench's back, his tone surprised, slightly offended. "Surely having invited me to her house, she could have no objection to my going for a stroll with you?"

"No, no—" Her discomfort was obvious now. "It isn't you. It's just that father was very particular and Lorry always tries to do what he would have liked."

"My dear young lady, your father's been dead a good many years. Things have changed since then; the customs of his day are not the customs of ours. Of course I wouldn't suggest that you go counter to your sister's wishes, but"—he turned away from her, huffy, head high, a gentleman flouted in his pride—"it's rather absurd from my point of view. Oh, well, we'll say no more about it."

Chrystie was distracted. It was not only the humiliation of appearing out of date and provincial; it was something much worse than that. She saw Boye Mayer retiring in majestic indignation and not coming back, leaving her at this first real blossoming of their friendship because Lorry had ideas that the rest of the world had abandoned with hoop skirts and chignons.

"Why, why," she stammered, alarm pushing her to the recklessness of the desperate, "couldn't we go and not tell her? It's—it's—just a prejudice of Lorry's—no one else feels that way. The Barlow girls, who've been very strictly brought up, go walking and even go to the theater with"—she was going to say "their nuggets" and then changed with a gasp to—"the men their mother asks to her parties."

So Chrystie, guileless and subjugated, assisted in the development of the Idea. She made an engagement to meet Mr. Mayer four days later in the Plaza and go with him to see the orchids in the park greenhouse. The Holy Spirit orchid was in bloom and she had never seen it. A flower with such a name as the Holy Spirit seemed to Chrystie in some way to shed an element of propriety if not righteousness over the adventure.

It was when they were sauntering toward the end of the Plaza that a woman, coming up a side street, saw them. She was about to cross when her eye, ranging over the green lawns, brought up on them and she stopped, one foot advanced, its heel knocking softly against the curbstone. As the two tall figures moved her glance followed them, her head slowly turning. She watched them cross the intersection of the streets, lights chasing each other up and down the lady's waving skirt and gilding the web of golden hair; she watched them pass by a show window, its glassy surface holding their bright reflections; she watched their farewells at the door of a large shop which finally absorbed the lady. Then she faced about, and walked toward the Albion, where a rehearsal was awaiting her.

That afternoon a week had passed since Pancha had seen her lover.

During the first three days of it she experienced a still and perfect peace. She did not want to see him; she had reached a point of complete assurance and was glad to wait there, rest in the joy that had come to her, dwell, awed, on its wonderfulness. In her short periods of leisure she sat motionless, recalling lovely moments, living them over, sometimes asking herself why he cared for her, then throwing the question aside—that he did was all that concerned her now.

On the fourth day her serenity was disturbed very slightly, but she could not banish a faint, intruding surprise that she had not heard from him. She tried to smother it by a return to her old interests, but her work had lost its power to engross and she went through it mechanically without enthusiasm. By the fifth her mental state had changed. She would not admit that she was uneasy, but in spite of her efforts a queer, upsetting restlessness invaded her. Everything was all right, she knew it, but she seemed to be dodging a shadow that fell thinly across the brightness. That evening she played badly, missed a cue and had no snap. She realized it, saw it in the faces of her fellows, and knew she must do better or there would be complaints.

On the way home she argued it out with herself. She was thinking too much of Mayer—worrying about nothing—and it was interfering with her work. She oughtn't to be such a fool, but her place at the Albion was important, and a word from him—a line or a phone message—would tone her up, and she would go on even better than before. At an "all night" drug store she bought a box of pink notepaper and a sachet, and before she went to bed put the scented envelope in the box and covered them both with a sofa pillow to draw out the perfume.

In the morning, after sniffing delicately at the paper, which exhaled a powerful smell of musk, she sat at her table and wrote him a letter. She made several drafts before she attained the tone, jocose and tender, that would save her pride and draw from him the line that was to dissipate her foolish fancies.

"DEAREST BOYE:

"No one has knocked at my door for nearly six days now. Not even sent me a telephone message. But I'm not complaining as maybe the caller may have a lot of things to keep him busy. But I would like a word just so I won't forget you. I don't want to do that but you know these stage dames do have sort of tricky memories. So it might be a good idea to give mine a jolt. A post card will do it and a letter do it better, and I guess yourself would do it best of all.

"Thine,

"PANCHITA."

The next morning his answer came and she forgot that she ever had been uneasy. The world shone, the air was as intoxicating as wine, the sun a benediction. She kissed the letter and pinned it in her blouse, where it lay against her heart, from which it had lifted all care. The second floor of the Vallejo rang to her singing, warbling runs and high, crystal notes, gushes of melody, and tones clear as a bird's held exultingly. People passing stopped to listen, looking up at the open windows. And yet it was far from a love letter:

"DEAR PANCHA:

"What a brute I must seem. I've been out of town, that's all. I have to go every now and then—business I'm meditating in the interior. I forgot to tell you about it, but it will take up a good deal of my time from now on. I won't be able to see you as often as I'd like, but as soon as I have a spare moment there'll be a knock at your door, or someone waiting in the alley to the stage entrance. Until then au revoir, or in your own beautiful language, hasta manana,

"B."

If she had seen Mayer and the blonde lady before the receipt of this missive her alarms would have increased. But the letter with one violent push had sent her to the top of the golden moment again. She was poised there firmly; it would take more than the sight of Mayer in casual confab with a woman to dislodge her. He knew many people, went to many places; she was proud of his social progress. So undisturbed was she that as she walked to the theatre she smiled to herself, a sly, soft smile. How surprised the lady would be if she knew that the shabby girl unnoticed on the curb was Boye Mayer's choice—the Rosamund of his bower, the inmate of his secret garden.