CHAPTER IV
It was almost a week before Bob Flick returned, and during that timePearl saw Hanson almost constantly, although to do so she hadcontinually to match her quickness and subtlety against that of herfather and Hughie; but even while she and her father met each other withmove and counter-move, check and checkmate, it was characteristic ofboth of them that Hanson's obvious infatuation and her equally obviousreturn of it were never mentioned between them.
With Hughie it was different, and Pearl met his petulant remonstrance,his boyish withdrawal of the usual confiding intimacy which existedbetween them, with laughter and caresses. As for Mrs. Gallito, she alonewas unchanged, apparently quite oblivious to storm conditions in themental atmosphere. But this was not unusual; when matters of importancewere transacted in the Gallito household Mrs. Gallito did not count.
But these disturbing conditions could not daunt Pearl's high spirits;she was like flame, and the light of her eye, the glow on her cheek, thebuoyancy of her step were not all due to the ardor of her loving and thejoy of being ardently loved. There was also the zest of intrigue.
And, oh! what a mad and splendid game she and Hanson played together!He rose to her every soaring audacity; they took almost impossiblechances as lightly as a hunter takes a hurdle. The lift of her eyelash,an imperceptibly significant gesture, a casual word spoken inconversation, these Hanson met with an incredible quickness ofunderstanding. It was a game at which he was master, and which he hadplayed many times before, but never had his intuitions been so keen, hisalways rapid comprehension been so stimulated.
Beneath the eye of another master of intrigue, Gallito, watchful as aspider, they met and loved until, it seemed to Hanson, that the whole,wide desert rang with their glorious laughter. And through it allFrancisco Gallito sat and smoked and sipped his cognac imperturbably;apparently unruffled by defeat, a defeat--the Pearl with subtlefemininity saw to that--which was not without its elements of ignominy.
But now Bob Flick had returned and had sat late with Gallito the nightbefore, talking, although Mrs. Gallito, who tendered this information toher daughter, had not been able to overhear any part of theirconversation, in spite of her truly persistent efforts to do so. Thesecircumstances, and results which would probably ensue when a definitecourse of action had been decided upon, occupied the Pearl's thoughts asshe stood at the gate gazing out on the gray wastes spread before her inthe broad morning sunshine. Lolita was perched on the fence beside her,swaying back and forth, muttering to herself and occasionally dippingdown perilously in a curious effort to see the garden upside downthrough the fence palings.
Pearl turned at last from her contemplation of the subject whichabsorbed her attention, and smiled as her glance fell upon the gaudytail, the only part of Lolita now visible, although, even then, thehorse-shoe frown, which showed faintly on her smooth forehead, afacsimile of the one graven deep on her father's wrinkled brow, did notdisappear.
"They've got it in for us, Lolita--Rudolf and me." She laughed outrightnow. Pearl's laughter was ever a disagreeable surprise; low, harsh,unpleasantly vibrant, and in strange dissonance to her soft, contraltovoice. "Lay you any odds you say, Lolita, that it's poor old Bob that'sgot to be the goat."
The parrot swung back to a normal position with surprising rapidity."Bob, Bob," she croaked. "Mi jasmin, Pearl, mi corazon," and she gazedat her mistress with wrinkled, cynical eyes.
"Yes, Bob's got to do the telling." Pearl confided more to Lolita thanshe ever did in her fellow beings. "Oh, Rudolf, this is where you getknifed! They've been laying for you right from the first. When Bob's gotto do a thing, he never wastes any time; he'll be along sure thismorning. I guess we'll just wait right here and catch him."
Lolita hopped clumsily on to Pearl's shoulder and tweaked her ear. "Helland damnation!" she muttered, and then sang:
"Love me to-day, Love me an hour."
Pearl shrugged impatiently. "Shut up!" she cried, and resting her chinin her cupped hands gazed over the sparkling, shimmering plain, whereall unshadowed day-beams seemed to gather as pure light and then, as iffused in some magic alembic, became color. There, the ineffable command:"Let there be light!" included all. It is only in the silence and lightof the desert that men may fully realize that the universe is one, thatlight is music and music is color and color is fragrance,undifferentiated in the eternal harmony of beauty.
Pearl's eyes drank the desert, unconsciously seeking there in itshaunting enigmas and unsolved mysteries an answer to the enigma of self.Like life, like truth, like love, like all realities viewed from theangle of human vision, the desert is a paradox. Its vast emptiness ismore than full; its unashamed sterility is but the simile for unmeasuredfecundity.
For an hour thus she leaned and gazed, Lolita restlessly walking backand forth, singing and croaking, until, at last, as Pearl had predicted,Bob Flick appeared, a fact not unheralded by Lolita's cries; but Pearldid not alter her languid pose, nor even turn her head to greet him. Shewas watching a whirling column of sand, polished and white as a colossalmarble pillar.
"It's kind of early for them to begin, ain't it, Bob?" she remarkedcasually.
"Yes." He paused by the gate, leaning one arm on it, and in the swiftglance she cast at him from the corners of her eyes she could see thathis expressionless face looked worn, the lines about the mouth seemedto have deepened and the eyes were heavy, as if he had not slept.
Lolita had, as usual, perched upon his shoulder, and was murmuring inhis ear.
"Say, Pearl," Flick spoke again after an interval of silence, "I wishyou'd take a walk with me. I--I got something on my mind that I want totalk about."
"All right," she acquiesced readily, the nicker of a smile about herlips quickly suppressed. "I'll be ready in a minute, as soon as I get myhat."
They walked through the village, the great broken wall of the mountainsrising before them, deceptively near, and yet austerely remote, dazzlingsnow domes and spires crowning the rock-buttressed slopes and appearingsometimes to float, as unsubstantial clouds, in an atmosphere of allcommingling and contrasting blues and purples. Presently they turnedinto a lane of mesquite trees. The growth of these trees was thick oneither side and the branches arched above their heads. They had steppedin a footfall's space into a new world. It was one of those surprising,almost unbelievable contrasts in which the desert abounds.
A moment before they had gazed upon the mountains, spectacularly vividin the clear atmosphere, white peaks and azure skies, green foothills,serrated with black shadows. Behind them the sun-flooded white glare ofthe great, waste place and behold! all these vanished as they set theirfeet in this garden inclosed, this bower as green and quiet as the laneof a distant and far softer and more fertile country.
Pearl never made any conventional attempts at conversation, and for atime they walked in silence through those fairy aisles where the lightfell golden-green and the sun only filtered in tiny broken disks throughthe delicate lace of the mesquite leaves. Then Flick spoke:
"Pearl, I got something to say to you, and it's about the hardest thingI ever tried to do, because I know," his mouth twisted a little, "thatyou're not going to like me any better for it."
"What do you do it for then, Bob?" she asked, and there was more than ahalf impatient mockery in her tone, there was wonder.
"I got to," he said doggedly. "I guess there's no sense in it, but,whether you like it or not, I always got to do what seems the best thingfor you."
It was an inflexible attitude, an ideal of conduct unfalteringly held,and uncompromisingly adhered to, and she knew it. Therefore, sheshrugged her shoulders resignedly, the faint horse-shoe frown againappearing in her forehead. "Well--go on, then," her voice as resigned asher shoulders, "and get it over."
"It's this--" he hesitated and looked down at her a moment, and thetenderness his glance expressed she did not lift her eyes to see andwould not have noticed if she had; "Pearl, Hanson ain't on the level."
She laughed that slightly grating, a
lmost unpleasant, laugh of hers."It's no secret to me, Bob, that several of you are thinking that."
"We got cause to," he answered moodily; and then, as if struck bysomething in her words, he looked at her quickly. "Has your Pop told youanything?" There was surprise in both glance and voice.
"Not a thing," she assured him, scornfully amused by the question, "butthere are some things that don't have to be told. Do you suppose Ihaven't caught on to the way you've all been acting?"
Again he looked his surprise. "We all been acting?" he repeated.
"Yes. I've seen things and I've felt them. Oh, you might just as wellout with it, Bob. What is it all about?"
He stared unseeing down the sun-sifted dusk of the green lane. Here thedesert silence was like a benediction of peace, broken now and then bythe faint, shrill note of an insect, or the occasional soft, mournfulplaint of a dove.
"Pearl, you can laugh at me if you want to, and say I'm jealous. That'strue, I am. I can't help it; but this time it wasn't all that. I got tosize up men quick; that was my business for a good many years, and thefirst minute I set eyes on Hanson I knew he wasn't straight. And then,Hughie--"
"And so you stirred up Pop to watch him?" she broke in quick as a flash.
"No," he answered patiently, "no, but Hughie's feelings got so strongabout him that your Pop kind of woke up and got to studying him, andthen he saw what--what neither of you tried to hide," there wasbitterness in his tone, "and then he kind of remembered something he'dheard up in Colina, and--"
"And so you've been up to Colina tracking round after a woman." Herverbal strokes were swift and hard as a flail. And again Flick startedin surprise. His cheeks flushed faintly, his jaw set.
"What you mean, Pearl? Has he been having me trailed? I don't believeit."
"No," she drawled, taking a malicious amusement in this unwontedperturbation on his part, "he hasn't. You slipped away so quiet and easythat you didn't stop to say good-by, even to me. Were you afraid I'd puthim on to it?"
She did not hesitate to plant her banderillos where they would stingmost, and Flick winced at this imputation which struck so near home."How did you know about the woman, then?" he asked quickly.
Pearl lifted her head and laughed aloud, and, at the unwonted soundbreaking the desert silence, three pairs of brilliant eyes gazingthrough the screening mesquite branches vanished and the gray, shadowyfigures of three coyotes disappeared as noiselessly as they had come.
"How did I know about the woman?" She repeated the question andconsidered it, still with amused scorn, as if debating whether she wouldenlighten him or not. "Well--" drawling aggravatingly, "I knew you andPop had the knife ready for Ru--Mr. Hanson." Flick's mouth twistedagain. "That wasn't very hard to see. So when you hit the trail, Bob, Igave him the chance to clear out. I did so, tipped him off, you know.Now I guess if he'd been wanted bad for anything that would--well, puthim behind the bars, say, he'd have gotten out pretty quick. And,anyway, if he'd been wanted like that he wouldn't have stayed here solong, for they wouldn't have had any trouble in nailing a man as wellknown as him before, so, you see, I knew it wasn't any of the usualthings. But," and here she stopped and, looking up into his face, spokemore emphatically, "I gave him the chance, too, to tell me all abouthimself and he didn't take it. Now, there isn't a man living thatwouldn't have taken it--under the circumstances--" she spoke with adeliberately cruel emphasis, and Flick's shoulders contracted a littleas the dart pricked him--"unless it was some mix-up about a woman."
"It's about a woman, all right," grimly.
"What about her?" Pearl's voice cut the air like the swift, downwardstroke of a whip.
"She's his wife," returned Flick. "She's been living up near Colina. Sheowns a part of a mine there and has been managing it."
Pearl took this in silence; and they had walked a dozen yards or sobefore they spoke again.
"Well, what of it?" she said at last, carelessly, almost gaily."Divorces are easy."
His expressionless face showed a cynical amusement, with just a hint oftriumph in the lighting of his eye. He shook his head. "I talked toher," he said. "She's a good, decent woman, but she ain't quite straightin her head when it comes to Hanson. He lied to her right along aboutthe others, even from the first; played fast and loose with her, andfinally eloped with one of his burlesque head-liners. She took it. Whatelse was there for her to do? But she spends about all of her timewatching her fences to see that there's no divorce in question. He'sdone everything, tried to buy her off more than once, but it's no good.Every place he goes she follows him up sooner or later, and she writeshim letters, too, every once in so often, offering to come back to him.And he can't get anything on her, for she lives as straight as a string.Oh, no, Pearl, Mr. Rudolf Hanson'll never marry again as long as thatlady's living, or I miss my guess."
It was evidently with difficulty that Pearl had controlled herself, herbrow had darkened and her upper lip had curled back from her white teethin a particularly unpleasant and disfiguring fashion. Again they walkedin one of those silences in which she was wont to entrench herself, andthen she looked up at him with a faintly scornful smile. "Well, you'vesure done your duty, Bob, and I guess you've got just about as muchthanks as folks usually do for that."
He drew his hand across his brow and looked before him a littledrearily. "I didn't expect anything else," he said simply. "I knew whatI'd get. But whether you like it or not," and here he caught hershoulder, his eyes holding hers, "as I told you before, I always got todo what seems the best for you, no matter what's the cost."
Her face did not soften. She merely accepted this as she did all elsethat he had to give her, himself included.
They had reached the end of a long alley, and now they turned andretraced their steps, but they had traversed almost half of the distancethey had come before Pearl spoke again. "Well, now you've told me, whatelse are you and Pop planning to do?"
He weighed his answer for a few moments. "I guess nothing," he said atlast. "I guess we'll leave it to you to send him about his business."
She stopped in the path and looked at him; her blue cotton gown fell inlong lines of grace about her slender figure. "If you and Pop want toknow what I'm going to do," she said, "I'll tell you. I'm going toaccept Rudolf's offer and go out on the road, that's what. You know bythis time that I can take care of myself."
He pondered this seriously, but without a change in the expression ofhis face. "Would you go with him," he asked, "if Sweeney offers you asmuch or more money?"
"Sweeney won't offer me more money. I know Sweeney and his limits,"significantly, "and you won't make up the balance of what Sweeney lacks,either, do you hear? Now you, and Pop, too, can just keep your handsoff. I manage this affair myself."
Flick merely shrugged his shoulders, and they walked on without furtherspeech on the matter. Presently Bob's keen eyes descried some onewalking down the mesquite avenue toward them. "Why, it's Hughie!" heexclaimed.
Even as he spoke the boy stopped and listened intently. He stoodmotionless, waiting until they drew nearer, and then he lifted his head,which he had bent sidewise the better to hear their almost soundlessfootsteps.
Pearl, seeing that her interview with Flick was soon to be interrupted,stopped short in the path and laid one hand detainingly upon his arm."Bob," she said, in her softest tone, "Bob, you and I have been pals fora good while; you aren't going against me now?"
He stopped, obedient to her touch, and looked at her unwillingly. Hecould always hold to his resolution in the face of her anger, but towithstand her when she chose to coax! That was another and moredifficult matter. But if he met her gaze reluctantly there was nowavering in either his glance or his voice.
"I'm going to save you from Hanson, Pearl," he paused for the fractionof a second, "by any means I got to use."
She flashed one swift, violent glance of resentment, and thenimmediately controlled herself, as she could always do when she choseand when she was playing to win; so now she cast down her eyes andsigh
ed.
The motes of the glancing sunbeams fell over her like a shower of gold,spangling the blue cotton frock until it appeared a more regal vesturethan purple and ermine; her head was bent, her body drooped like a lilyin the noonday heat, her whole attitude was soft, and forlorn andappealing, as if she, this wilful, untamed creature, subdued herself toaccept a wounding decree, and bore it with all the pathos of unmurmuringresignation.
Flick's heart smote him, he longed to clasp her to his breast and giveher everything she impossibly craved. And now it was he who sighed, andthen clinched his hands as if to steel his resolution.
She heard the sigh: she saw from the quick movement of his hands, thesudden, involuntary straightening of the shoulders that the struggle wason, so she lifted her eyes half wistfully, half doubtingly to his andthus gazed a moment and then smiled her faintly crooked heart-shatteringsmile:
"You and I have been friends too long for us to begin to quarrel now,isn't that so, Bob?" Again she laid her hand on his arm.
He caught it in both of his and pressed it hard. "I guess you know we'llnever quarrel, Pearl. I guess you know that, no matter what you say ordo, it'll never make any difference to me."
"'Course I know it. And you're not going against me now, Bob, either,are you?" She lifted his hand, and with one of her rare, caressinggestures laid it against her cheek for a moment and, turning her face alittle, lightly brushed his palm with her lips.
He shivered and quickly drew his hand away. There was silence betweenthem for a few moments and then he sighed again and more heavily thanever. "Oh, Pearl," he cried, "what do you want to make things so hardfor? Let that dog--" he checked himself hastily, seeing her expression."I beg your pardon, you don't look at him that way. Let Hanson go. Iknow you about as well as anybody in the world, don't I?"
"Better," she nodded her head affirmatively, answering withouthesitation.
"Well, won't you believe me when I tell you that you couldn't be happywith him. Won't you listen to me, Pearl?"
She looked at him a little slyly out of the corners of her eyes, alittle one-sided, cynical smile on her lips. "We're always so dead surewhat's going to make other people happy, ain't we, Bob? Always can seewhat's good for them so much better than they ever can see forthemselves."
Flick looked away from her, down the long, shaded alley; once or twicehe swallowed hard. "It ain't easy to say what I got to," a faint flushon his cheek, "'cause I hate to talk that-a-way to a lady, especially toyou, Pearl; but I know you; and you can't be happy, you just naturallycan't, with a man that's married for keeps to one woman, andthat'll--God, Pearl! It hurts me to talk like this to you--that'll throwyou over when he's tired of you just like he's thrown over severalothers."
She caught his arm and shook it violently, as if she scarcely knew whatshe did. "Throw me over! Me! the Black Pearl!" she cried hoarsely, andbroke into a torrent of Spanish oaths. "Dios!" she paused at last,panting for breath, "you must be crazy to talk to me like that, BobFlick."
"I told you how I hated it," he answered, with that sad, unalteredpatience with which he always took her unspared blame, "but I had to doit. You got to know these things, Pearl, and it's better for me to tellyou than for your Pop to try."
"He wouldn't have gotten very far," she muttered.
"That's just it. You'd both have got to scrapping and screaming at eachother and nothing told."
"Better nothing told, as far as you are concerned," she flashed at himfiercely, and then lapsed into sullen silence.
"Hello! Hello!" Hughie's voice came to them from a side avenue ornarrower path down which he had wandered.
"Hello, yourself," Flick answered. "We'll wait for you right here."
"Bob." Pearl's soft voice held no evidence of rancor. "Tell me somethingquick, before he reaches us. Tell me true, and I'll be good friends,honest, I will."
"You know I'll tell you anything I can."
"Then--then--is she--that woman in Colina--pretty? As pretty as I am?"
He smiled bitterly. "No one's as pretty as you, Pearl. No, she ain'tpretty."
"Well, what does she look like?" impatiently.
"Nothing much. Why, I don't know, just looks like most every other womanyou see."
"Oh, Bob, quick! Is she little or big? Is she kind of saucy and quick,or is she quiet and slow? Quick, now, Hughie's almost here."
"Why--why," he rubbed his hand across his brow, "she's kind of--kind ofmotherly."
Pearl threw back her head and laughed, then she took a few dancing stepsup and down the road.
"It's Pearl and Bob," called Hughie. "I knew it a while back when Istopped to listen, and then I heard a bird note down yonder," with awave of his hand toward the direction in which he had come, "and Iwanted to hear it closer, so I didn't wait for you. I can always tellyou two by the sound of your footsteps. Pearl walks in better rhythmthan you do, Bob."
"Of course. What do you expect?" It was Flick who spoke. "What are youdoing so far away from home, anyway, Hughie?"
The boy's wistful, delicate face clouded. "I had to go somewhere," hesaid. "That Hanson has been there all morning, and mother has beensitting with her head so close to his, talking, talking."
Pearl laughed a single note, like her father's. "Poor Rudolf!" shemuttered, "the men are all jealous of him, even Hugh."
Fortunately, the boy did not hear her, although Bob Flick did, as sheintended he should.
"I do love mother," Hugh added plaintively, "but I can't love the peopleshe mostly likes, so I came as far away as I could, and here," his facewas irradiated in one of its quick changes, "I've been walking up anddown and hearing and seeing things; listening to the quail and thedoves; and a while ago there was a humming-bird; and did you ever smellthe desert as sweet as it is this morning?" He lifted his head andsniffed ecstatically. "I've been turning the whole morning into music.It's all gold and green and gay with little silver trumpets through it,and now and again the moan of the doves. I'm going to work it out assoon as we get home. That is," he shrugged his shoulders impatiently,"if that Hanson has gone. He stops all the music and the color." Thiswas Hugh's invariable plaint when any one was about whom he disliked.
"Oh, forget him," cried Pearl. "Don't be a cross, Hughie." She spokewith a half impatient, half teasing tenderness. It was remarkable thatshe showed no resentment toward the boy for the difficulties in whichshe found herself entangled, although his intuitions and the almostsuperstitious respect which they were accorded in the Gallito householdmight be said to have caused the disturbing investigations into Hanson'spast. That Pearl herself disregarded these intuitions in this case wasto those about her the strongest proof of her infatuation; but she neverdreamed of blaming the boy or harboring rancor against him for thismischief he had done. On the contrary, she accepted it fatalistically.He never could account himself for these instinctive likes and dislikesof his; therefore, they were to be accepted and borne with as somethingof him, and yet apart from him; and that was all there was to it.
"I'll tell you what to do, Hugh. You help me work out some new dances,"she cried. "A lot has been coming to me. One shall be 'Night on theDesert.' We can get some great effects. Something really artistic forthe big cities, not the old waltz things we have to do for the desertand mountain villages. We might try that 'Desert Morning' that you'vejust been planning to compose, and I've been thinking of another one--aCactus Blossom Dance. Something like this." She began to dance.
"Tell me the steps, Pearl; tell me the steps," called the boyimpatiently. "Oh, that's a great idea!" His face was flushed; and thensuddenly it fell. "Oh!" he cried despairingly to Flick, "she always getsall sorts of ideas for new dances when she's in love--always. I neverknew it fail."
He flung himself away pettishly, and started off alone. Hugh never hadany difficulty about direction. In a locality with which he was familiarhe would walk about with the utmost confidence. Occasionally he wouldstop, rap his leg sharply with one hand, listen a moment, and then,apparently satisfied, walk on. Those who pressed hi
m for an explanationof this merely received the vague and unilluminating reply that he couldfeel the earth that way and tell from the sound of it, probably meaningthe vibration, just where he was.
Pearl and Flick followed him in a more leisurely way, although no wordwas spoken between them until they reached home. Pearl's eyes scannedthe house, but it was evident that Hanson had gone, for her mother satin a rocking-chair before the window, her head tilted back, fast asleep.
"What do you suppose your Pop'll say to your signing up with Hanson?"asked Flick, as they passed through the gate.
"I suppose we'll have a row that'll make the house rock," she answeredindifferently, dismissing him with a nod.