Part 16

"Believe me, Señorita," replied Blanch, "we were not laughing at you at all. We were laughing at Captain Forest."

"Ah, the Señor!" ejaculated Chiquita.

"Yes," continued Blanch, "we had already heard of you through Captain Forest, and--I--" she hesitated, "I really can't explain because you wouldn't understand, you know."

"But I do understand, Señorita," answered Chiquita quietly. "You do not deceive me, and since you refuse to tell me why you laughed, I shall be obliged to tell you. I think I can guess the truth."

"Really, I'm curious!" and Blanch smiled compassionately.

"Ah, you think I can't read your face," and Chiquita smiled in turn. "Señorita," she continued with sudden emphasis, "you love the Señor!" Blanch started, the attack was so sudden, her face coloring in spite of her endeavor to conceal her confusion.

"Yes, Señorita, you love him."

"How do you know I love him?" laughed Blanch lightly in turn, by this time thoroughly mistress of herself. "Why, you have only met me for the first time!"

"How do I know? Because I am a woman. I saw you as you spoke to him. Your whole manner betrayed you--your voice, your eyes. Yes, Señorita," she added with growing passion, fixing her dark piercing eyes on those of Blanch, "you laughed because a poor girl like me of a different race and color, a race despised by you white people, should have imagined that Captain Forest might possibly cast his eyes upon her--"

"Señorita!" cried Blanch protestingly.

"It is the truth," continued Chiquita passionately, "and what is more, I will tell you frankly that I--I, too, love the Señor!"

"I thought so!" exclaimed Blanch.

"Yes, I love him--love him as you do--love him as you can never love him, Señorita!"

"What makes you think so?" asked Blanch, endeavoring to stifle the emotion Chiquita's passionate words aroused within her.

"I know it," she answered quietly; "something tells me so. And should he not love me as I love him, my life will go out of me swiftly and silently like the waters of the streams in summer when the rains cease; my soul will become barren and parched like the desert, and I shall wither and die."

"Die?" echoed Blanch. "Nobody dies of love nowadays, Señorita," and she laughed lightly.

"Perhaps not among your people, but with Indians it is different. When we love it is terrible--our passion becomes our life, our whole existence! Such a confession sounds absurd perhaps, but you assumed an air of superiority--racial superiority, I mean--a thing which I know to be as false as it is presumptuous. I might assume the airs and attitude of one of your race if I chose, but you laughed, and the race-pride in me cries out that I should be to you what I really am--an Indian, not that which I have learned and borrowed from the white race."

"How extraordinary!" thought Blanch. Surely such passion was short lived and a weak admission on the part of her rival. She was a true character of melodrama--one which she had seen a hundred times on the stage. The battle was hers already--she would win. She heaved a sigh of relief, and drawing herself up to her full height, assumed an attitude of ease, an air of patronage and condescension that only Blanch Lennox could adopt. She could afford to be generous to a child, treat with lenience this clever ingenue who in this age could die, or at least imagine herself dying of love.

"Perhaps," resumed Chiquita, with an air of naïveté that seemed perfectly natural to her, "you women do not love as passionately as your darker sisters?"

"Oh, I don't know about that, Señorita," answered Blanch with warmth. "At any rate, you in all probability will have an opportunity to judge that for yourself."

Chiquita gave a little laugh, then said: "Señorita, you love Captain Forest and so do I. Let it, therefore, be a fair fight between us, and in order that you may know you can trust me, I give you this," and drawing a small silver-mounted dagger from out her hair, she handed it to Blanch who took it wonderingly.

"It is often safer," she added, "for a man to go unarmed in this land than for a woman. But as I said, I shall henceforth be to you what I am--an Indian. It is what a woman of my people would do were she to meet you in my country under similar circumstances; what I would have done had I met you before I came here. The knife signifies that, with it goes the sharp edge of my tongue--that I shall take no unfair advantage of you."

Blanch toyed musingly with the pretty two-edged knife, admiring its richly carved silver handle. Surely she was right after all. Chiquita was a true child of the South whose passions subsided as quickly as they burst into flame. And as for the knife, it would make an excellent paper-cutter.

"Oh, dear, this is too absurd!" she exclaimed. And no longer able to control herself, she burst into a peal of laughter in which was easily detected the scorn, good humor and pity she felt for her would-be rival.

Perhaps Chiquita was as much puzzled by Blanch's behavior as the latter was by hers, for all the while Blanch laughed, she also regarded her with an expression of mingled curiosity and amusement.

"Señorita," said Blanch at length, heaving a sigh, "who are you?"

The latter did not reply immediately. Her face took on an earnest expression and for some moments she stood silent, gazing straight out before her as though oblivious to her surroundings. Then, suddenly recollecting herself, she said:

"I am a Tewana, and am called the Chiquita. My father was the Whirlwind, the War Chief of my people."