"What would Don Felipe Ramirez give to know?" came a voice from behind him, causing him to start and turn around just in time to see Juan emerge from the lilac bushes.

"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 a.s.sure 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, Senor!" 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 a.s.sist 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 antic.i.p.ated.

XXI

d.i.c.k 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 Senor d.i.c.k, who was on the best of terms with every man, woman and child and dog in Santa Fe?" 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 s.p.a.ce 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 Fe. The mere suggestion that the Senor d.i.c.k 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 quant.i.ties 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 Senor 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 ap.r.o.n 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 Senor like this before? Has he not completely spoiled the Senoritas 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 Senor 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 Senor 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 Senor to meet. That is, if she is clever," she added. "But have we not all heard how clever and beautiful the _Americana_ Senoritas 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 Senor 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 compa.s.sionately 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, d.i.c.k 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.

Fair prospects! The secret was almost too good to keep, and he laughed softly to himself as he mused upon it. It was truly an inspiration; just the sort of thing to hand out to one of Newport's smart-set. Although he had not yet proposed to her, he regarded their marriage as a foregone conclusion; an event of the near future. She certainly had led him to infer as much, and the plan he had conceived regarding it was highly ingenious--one worthy of his fertile imagination. Directly they were married, they would spend the first fortnight of their honeymoon camping in the mountains in a style worthy of a grand Mogul, after which he would suggest that they pa.s.s the night at a near-by _rancho_ belonging to a friend, and in this wise introduce her to her future home.

The rapture of the picture fairly dazzled him, and he lay awake whole nights contemplating it--the _patio_ palely illumined by the moonlight, the murmur of the fountain in its center, the perfume of flowers, the melodious voices of the dark-skinned Indian attendants, bearing flaming torches, and chanting the time-honored welcome to their new mistress, and her insistent demands to be introduced to their host; and then the delightful denouement, the surprise she must experience when the truth finally dawned upon her. Truly poet never dreamed a fairer dream. It had taken him a whole week to conceive the idea in detail, and on the morning of the seventh day on which he had decided to ask her to become his wife, he stood with the horses before the _Posada_ expectantly awaiting her appearance to take the ride they had agreed upon the night before. At the end of an hour, during which he fretted over the undue delay with the same impatience as did the horses, Rosita appeared and informed him that the Senorita Van Ashton would not ride that morning; she was not feeling well. A wild alarm seized him. The thought that she might have been stricken suddenly with some serious illness, quite unnerved him for the moment. "_Caramba!_" he cried, quite forgetting his English. "What has happened? Is it serious? Is anything being done?" But all inquiries concerning the actual state of the Senorita's health proving fruitless, he was left to pa.s.s the remainder of the day wandering aimlessly about the garden in the vain hope of finding something to divert his mind. Had he been in possession of his usual calm, he might have noticed the amused expression on Rosita's face, but the extent of one's concern being the measure of one's love for a person, he saw only the vivid mental picture of his consuming pa.s.sion, Bessie, suffering Bessie!

It was the first jarring note in that state of uninterrupted bliss which he had been enjoying, and as the day wore painfully on he began to realize how much she had become to him. He was haunted by misgivings, and finally, late in the afternoon, having convinced himself that he had exhausted the resources of the garden, he decided to pa.s.s the time until the dinner hour upon the veranda on the other side of the house. Thither he repaired, but oddly enough and greatly to his astonishment, as he stepped out upon the veranda, he came face to face with Miss Van Ashton returning from a walk in the town. She was charmingly gowned in a soft, clinging creation of pale lavender and white lace, with long white suede gloves and low lavender shoes and silk stockings, an inch or so of which she flashed before his eyes, proclaiming the society belle's prerogative. She carried a parasol of the same color and material as her dress, while her head was crowned with a sweeping, rakishly plumed Rembrandtesque hat worn at a killing angle. The gold in her hair and the exquisite pink and white of her throat and cheeks blended perfectly with a color scheme, the attractiveness of which was greatly enhanced by her natural charm and the delicate scent of lavender and rose leaves which emanated from her person, the combined effects of which were not lost upon an over-wrought imagination.

To use the current vernacular of the times, so familiar to the world in which she moved, Miss Van Ashton's appearance was decidedly fetching, and strongly suggestive of the things of which poets, in their madness, are continually harping--flower gardens flooded with moonlight and the song of nightingales. Although not modeled on heroic lines, she nevertheless possessed the qualifications which most men seek in women and therefore became quite as formidable as Delilah when she chose to a.s.sert herself. To say that Mr. Yankton was dazzled but mildly expresses his feelings; he was ravished, though in no mood for banter. Had their meeting occurred under more auspicious circ.u.mstances, he undoubtedly would have complimented her on her charming appearance; but for one who had been eating his heart out during eight consecutive hours solely on her account, it was hardly to be expected. The sight of her, though a relief to his mind, gave rise to thoughts the nature of which he found it difficult to conceal.

"What!" he cried, furious and aghast, scarcely believing his eyes as the truth slowly began to dawn upon him. "They told me you were ill--that you couldn't appear to-day!"

"Ill? How very strange!" she answered in feigned surprise, with a far away, vacant look in her eyes, as though she had just met him for the first time, rendering him quite speechless. "Really, Mr. Yankton," she continued in the coldest, most distant manner she could command, "I never felt better in my life!" And without allowing him time to catch his breath, she pa.s.sed by him and slammed the door in his face, from the other side of which he fancied he heard her silvery, rippling laughter, the nature of which sounded suspiciously like a t.i.tter.

Woman never delivered a more crushing blow. In that instant Mr. Yankton saw more stars than the firmament contains. It was like being thrown suddenly into a river on a cold morning. Miss Van Ashton's methods might be regarded as somewhat harsh by certain persons, but realizing that heroic measures were the only cure for the dangerous distemper that threatened her peace of mind, she had acted without hesitancy. Besides, was she not in a measure justified in wishing to even up their scores?

Oh, the fickleness of woman! How cleverly she had deceived him, and what an a.s.s he had been! She had been playing with him all the while, and as he paced the floor, revolving what course to pursue, he wondered how he could have been so simple. True, she was different from any woman he had ever met, but dazed though he was by her sudden change of front, he was not disheartened. On the contrary, she had become more attractive than ever. His blood fairly boiled at the thought of his defeat, but he would profit by the experience--change his tactics completely. The more she avoided him, the more persistent he would become. If she did not see him, she would be kept a prisoner in the house. He would give her no peace, day or night. He would dog her footsteps, confront her at every turn, pursue her with the most reckless and relentless ardor and utter disregard of what the world might think; treat her as he would an unbroken horse--give her no rest, but keep her on the jump until he had worn her out, and then close with her.

XXII

The situation was becoming intolerable. Something must be done and done at once to clear the atmosphere. Captain Forest's apparent indifference to all things, including herself, aroused Blanch to a pitch of exasperation which might best be likened to that of a high-strung, thoroughbred horse that has been ignominiously hitched to a plow and compelled to drag it. At the end of a week he either drops dead in the furrow or becomes a broken-spirited hack for the rest of his days.

Nothing short of love or hatred could satisfy her. It was a new experience. Never had she suffered such ignominy. It was like being coerced. One could respect an enemy, but this exasperating indifference was unendurable. The more she thought of it, the more convinced she became, that it was just such an antagonistic att.i.tude which had prompted the beautiful, though wicked Borgia, to administer certain love potions to numerous unappreciative gallants. Deliberate, cold-blooded murder committed under such extenuating circ.u.mstances began to appear more in the light of justice than of crime.

Captain Forest offered an entirely new front. Not that he had changed so much, she knew better than that, but she marveled at his self-control.

The dash and spirit of the soldier, which every one admired so much in him, had given way to the most insulting, good-humored complacency; the frame of mind one looks for in an aged sinner whose terror of an uncertain future has driven him to prepare for heaven. She knew well enough that his att.i.tude was a.s.sumed for a purpose only, until he had made up his mind what to do; waiting to make up his mind as to which of them, she or Chiquita, was preferable. This, of course, was merely a jealous supposition on her part.

She had hoped to arouse his jealousy, or, failing in that, at least his enthusiasm. Thus far she had failed to accomplish either and she could not understand it. Surely he was flesh and blood like other men, yet nothing seemed to move him. He appeared like one at peace with all the world, calm and serene as a summer's day, and smoked incessantly. She could endure it no longer. The depression from which she suffered was crushing her slowly and irresistibly to earth. She was at her wits' end to know what to do to relieve the tension, until she finally hit upon the idea of giving an old-fashioned Spanish _fandango_--a _fiesta_.

The thought was a happy one. It was not only one of those things she had always wanted to see, but it would be a break--something to relieve the strain of her daily existence; she pursuing, he avoiding her. The novelty of the scene--the bright, gay costumes of the Mexicans, music and twinkling lights, dancing and wine and laughter and song, and the stars overhead, mellowed by the light of the full moon, must infuse new life into them all--recall memories of other days to him. With such a setting, a woman of her beauty, refinement and attraction, and an adept at the game of flattery and intrigue, must shine with new l.u.s.ter--become doubly dangerous and irresistible to a man. Though this was her chief motive for giving the _fiesta_, she had still another in view.