Part 35

"Juan Ramon!" he exclaimed.

"Aye, Caballero!" replied Juan lightly, raising his sombrero as he advanced.

"What do you know?" asked Felipe, half contemptuously, regarding him with keen, searching eyes.

"Don't worry about what I know; leave that to me for the present," answered Juan, his peculiarly cold smile lighting up his face. "But what will you give to know, Don Felipe Ramirez?" he continued, with the keen air of the tradesman who beholds a sure customer before him and is determined to drive a sharp bargain.

"What will I give?" repeated Felipe, slowly, relapsing into thought. For some time he was silent, during which he regarded Juan's features intently, as if to assure himself of the latter's good faith. Then suddenly and impetuously he cried: "I'll tell you, Juan Ramon! I'll give you gold enough to keep you drunk and your mistress clothed in silks and satins for the rest of your days! Aye, the finest pair of horses in all Mexico shall draw your carriage, and you shall have money to gamble."

"Then have patience for but a little while longer, Don Felipe Ramirez," replied Juan, rubbing the palms of his long, slim hands together, as though he already felt the magic touch of the gold and heard its musical clink in his ears.

"I hear that fortune has played you false of late, Juan Ramon," said Felipe.

"'Tis the very devil, Señor!" answered Juan with an oath.

"Here, take this," continued Felipe, handing him a roll of bank notes which he drew from his pocket. "You shall have as many men and horses to assist you in the work as you want," he added.

"Horses I will need, but no men, Don Felipe," replied Juan, jubilant over the return of fortune. The bargain was better than he had anticipated.

XXI

Dick Yankton had taken on a new lease of life. He no longer walked--he flew. Like Hermes of old his feet seemed to have become suddenly endowed with wings, with the result that his head was coming into dangerous proximity to the clouds.

"Dios! what had come over Señor Dick, who was on the best of terms with every man, woman and child and dog in Santa Fé?" So potent was the draught which he had imbibed, that he appeared to have been stricken suddenly with blindness and the loss of memory at one and the same instant. The salutations of his friends and acquaintances who greeted him when he walked abroad were left unnoticed; his gaze fixed dreamily on space before him. What had happened? Had he come into possession of a new mine, or was he engaged in locating one through means of that psychic sense or inner vision of the seer which he seemed to possess? Had the real cause of his perturbation been guessed--that a woman's smile had suddenly opened heaven's gates to him, a ripple of laughter would have gone the rounds of Santa Fé. The mere suggestion that the Señor Dick could be seriously in love was too absurd; his friends were too well acquainted with the flirtatious side of his nature ever to credit such a possibility. And yet, when Anita, his Indian housekeeper and wife of his overseer and general factotum, Concho, saw the amazing quantities of flowers, still wet with the morning's dew, that were daily transported to the Posada, her suspicions became aroused. She began to question Concho concerning them, and when he finally admitted that a woman was the recipient of them, she raised her eyebrows with the knowing look of a woman who has guessed the truth.

"I thought so," she answered quietly, a peculiar smile illumining her dark countenance as she seated herself in the doorway of the refectory which opened on the patio, and disposed herself comfortably, preparatory to the interesting bit of gossip which she intended to screw out of her husband.

She was of medium height, of the spare, slender type, and must have been attractive in her youth, for even now, in spite of middle age, she was comely to look upon. She wore a red rose in her black hair, while a partially drooping eyelid gave a piquant, coquettish expression to her face.

"Holy Virgin! but this is interesting!" she went on after a pause. "The Señor in love, really in love!" and she laughed quietly to herself, while she took a pinch of tobacco and a leaf of brown paper from the pocket of her apron and began rolling a cigarette.

"Bah!" said Concho, accompanying the exclamation with a shrug of the shoulders. "You women are always imagining things which do not exist. Have we not often seen the Señor like this before? Has he not completely spoiled the Señoritas of the town with his flowers? He's bored. He's trying to amuse himself, that's all."

"And didst thou not say," continued Anita, without heeding his remarks, regarding him out of the corners of her eyes while lighting her cigarette, "that she is not quite so tall as the other one, but equally beautiful in her way; that she is pink and white at one and the same moment, just like a half-blown rose, and soft and satiny as the down on a swan's neck?"

"It is all true, Anita mia, she is even that and more!" responded Concho with warmth. "She is worth a journey to the Posada to see, but then, what is that--what are a few wisps of flowers?"

"Wisps? Armfuls, thou meanest, Concho! When did the Señor ever lavish so many flowers upon one woman before? He told me they were for the hospital," she chuckled, "but I have always been able to tell whether the Señor was speaking the truth or not. Thou knowest the way he has of saying the opposite to that which he means," and she blew a ring of smoke into the still air and watched it as it floated upwards.

"Concho," she said after some moments' reflection, "thou art a fool! I always said thou wert, and now I know it. The hospital--bah! How could he have ever thought me so simple?" she exclaimed in a tone of mingled sarcasm and disgust. "I tell thee, Concho, all women are the same either on this side of the world or the other. The one thou hast just described to me is the most dangerous of all women for a man like the Señor to meet. That is, if she is clever," she added. "But have we not all heard how clever and beautiful the Americana Señoritas are?"

"Aye, there is nothing to compare with them in the whole land, with the exception of the Chiquita, of course," replied Concho.

"Exactly; just what I have been saying, Concho mio," Anita went on, surveying her spouse with a look of pitying superiority. "Why, only yesterday, when he was here, I knew instantly by his air of distraction that something unusual had happened. Never has he been so particular before. He went all over the place, inspecting everything to the minutest detail, just like a woman. Nothing pleased him; and when he came to the flowers, which everybody knows are the finest in all Chihuahua, he declared they were not fit for a dog to sniff at, and rated the gardeners soundly for their negligence.

"Ah!" she sighed, the expression of her countenance softening, "the place needs a mistress badly--it is the one thing it lacks. There was a time when I hoped it might be the Chiquita, but since fate has ordained that it should be otherwise, let us pray that it may be this one. In fact," she exclaimed, looking up and emphasizing her words, "from what thou hast told me of her, I know it will be she or none, and may heaven grant that it please the Saints either to give her to him or protect him from her, for the Señor is a man who can really love but once. Take a woman's word for it, Concho, these are the true symptoms of love." Having delivered herself thus forcibly, she tossed aside the end of her cigarette and rose from the doorsill.

"Thou wert always a fool, Concho," she added, regarding him compassionately with a smile and patting him on the cheek. Then turning, she disappeared in the house, leaving Concho to marvel at her astuteness, a thing he had never suspected.

Meanwhile, the subject under discussion was pacing the floor of his room in the Posada like a caged lion. For one whole week Bessie Van Ashton had seemingly thrown wide the portals of her heart and bade him enter, a privilege of which he was not slow to avail himself. Never had woman flirted to better advantage or succeeded more effectually in turning a man's head in so short a time as had this distracting, fair-haired witch. The only regret experienced by Mr. Yankton during these hours of unalloyed happiness, was the thought of the days he had lost--days which might have been spent in her society had he only known. How blind he had been not to have recognized her the instant he had set eyes on her, instead of compelling the Almighty to remind him that she was the woman that had been reserved for him by dropping her down out of a clear sky into his arms! How stupid of him, and how patient Providence was with some of us at times!

During the few short days which followed that happy accident--days that seemed like so many swift, fleeting seconds, Dick floated on a summer sea whose surface was unmarred by shadow or ripple. All the world had changed. He felt as though he had only just begun to live, and he spun a golden web of fancies out of the reality of things which, for one so deeply versed in the game of life, was a marvel of beauty, fair as a poet's dream, yet more substantial. And why not? Had not his life been one replete with adventure and romance from the cradle? His meeting with Bessie was no more remarkable than many other things that had occurred during his lifetime. It was now perfectly clear to him why he had built the hacienda in the face of adverse judgment. It was for her, of course. A place in which to enshrine and worship her during the years to come; for what else could it be?

That insane notion of a white-haired patriarch enjoying the solitude of the place was too absurd--a morbid fancy born of loneliness and melancholy. The walk back to the Posada on the day of their startling encounter and the hours spent in Bessie's society since then--strolling and chatting in the garden, or going for long rides over the plains together, had convinced him it was not intended that man should live alone. He had taken good care that she should learn nothing of the existence of the hacienda or of his wealth, and as little as possible concerning himself, except that he was an agreeable young man with fair prospects; and thus far, thanks to the Captain's silence and her ignorance of Spanish, he had succeeded admirably.