A short distance east of the _Posada_, the highroad entered the long _Alameda_ which led to the plaza in the center of the town, overlooked by the old _Precedio_ or Governor's palace.

The widespreading branches of two immense cottonwood trees, the trunk of one of which was encircled by a rustic bench, cast an inviting shade in front of the house and wide veranda which stretched its length along two sides of the low, one storied adobe structure. Honeysuckle and white clematis and pink and scarlet pa.s.sion vines clambered up its slender pillars and hung in fragrant flowering festoons from the low bal.u.s.trades above. The fresh green leaves of the nasturtium, bright with variegated blossoms, ranging from deep scarlet to gold and pale yellow, trailed along the ground at the foot of the veranda and skirted the narrow pathway which led to the rear of the _Posada_ whose _patio_ looked out upon a garden interspersed with innumerable flowers and shrubs, fruit and cedar trees, and whose soft green lawn was intersected by narrow gravel pathways. Just back of the garden lay the vegetable patches which intervened between it and the stables and corrals, whence came the cackling of hens and cooing of pigeons in the early morning.

Originally the _Posada_ had been one of the large _haciendas_ adjoining Santa Fe, but its mistress, Senora Fernandez, had transformed it into an Inn after the death of her husband who had been killed accidentally by the fall of his horse. Finding herself in reduced circ.u.mstances incurred by her husband's gambling propensities, she resolved upon the change.

His chief legacy consisting of debts, she was obliged to part with the greater portion of the estate, but her natural executive ability stood her in good stead.

The new enterprise prospered, and the Inn became widely known throughout the country as a place at which to stop if only for a cup of chocolate or a chat with the Senora who always knew the latest gossip.

In her youth she had been noted for her beauty, and even now, in spite of middle-age and somewhat faded features, the latter the result of the struggle she had undergone to reestablish herself in the world, she was still considered buxom and fair to look upon by the majority of men. She carried her head high and with a coquettish air which plainly showed she had by no means relinquished her hold upon life.

On this particular morning she looked unusually well as she moved about the _patio_ engaged with her women in a.s.sorting a huge basket of freshly laundered household linen. Not a strand of silver was visible in her jet black hair, adorned with a large tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb and a single Castilian rose. Her gay, low-necked, short sleeved bodice, exposing her shapely neck and arms, harmonized well with her short, black silken _saya_ which rustled with every movement she made and from beneath which protruded a small pair of high instepped feet encased in black slippers ornamented with large quaint silver buckles.

It was the Senora's birthday. She had risen earlier than usual prepared to receive the congratulations of her friends who, she knew, would be sure to call during the day in honor of the occasion. A few of them would be asked to remain and dine with her in the evening.

It was on a similar occasion that Chiquita had danced in the _patio_ before her guests.

The innate vanity of the woman might have led one to suppose that she would let the years pa.s.s unnoticed, but not so. The old, time-honored custom of the country must be observed lest her friends might say: Senora Fernandez is already laying by for a ripe old age, the mere suggestion of which on the part of the world would have been enough to throw her into one of those uncontrollable fits of rage for which she was noted.

Artful, shrewd and scheming though she was, her susceptibility to flattery was her weak point, amounting almost to a mania. To be told that she still looked as young and handsome as in the days when the years justified the statement, was to win her immediate esteem. The lack of this servile att.i.tude and cringing civility on Chiquita's part, together with the knowledge of her own superiority which she never hesitated to show when occasion required, had drawn down the Senora's enmity upon her. Whereas, an occasional soft word or smile of acquiescence--she demanded so little--would have smoothed her ruffled spirit and taken the edge off her tongue, the sharpest in Santa Fe.

It was not easy for the inveterate coquette and one time reigning belle to resign the position she had held so long and undisputed, especially to an alien--one whom the full blooded Spaniard inwardly despises, regards as of an inferior race.

How she hated the dark woman, envied the glances and flatteries and attentions which she always received wherever she went. It was said, that on Chiquita's return from school, Senora Fernandez suddenly grew cold and haughty toward the world, but finding that a proud exterior availed her little, she sulked and pouted for a time like a spoiled child, only to warm again to the world which she loved so pa.s.sionately, which she felt slipping from her and without whose adulation she could not live.

_Dios de mi vida!_ but it was terrible to grow old! Not since the death of her husband, Don Carlos, had she endured so bitter a pang. The fact that she had never had any children accounted perhaps for a certain harshness in her nature.

It was a busy day for the Senora. Besides the care of her guests, the preparing of freshly killed fowl and baking of cakes and _tortillas_, there was the garden which must be hung with lanterns where there would be the usual dancing and merrymaking during the evening. All this and much more the Senora must superintend, but she was equal to the task.

As she issued her orders to the retinue of servants that came and went, she carried on a lively, though interrupted, conversation with her sister, Senora Rosario Sanchez, and her niece, Dolores, who had come to a.s.sist her in the preparations.

"It has come at last--I always said it would--I never trusted that double nature of hers!" she exclaimed triumphantly, pausing for an instant in her work of a.s.sorting the linen. The expression and gesture of Senora Sanchez plainly bespoke the shock she also had experienced.

"To think of it," she gasped. "How Padre Antonio can overlook such a breach of confidence and offense to the Church is more than I can understand!"

"Ah! that shows the extent of her influence over him," answered Senora.

"She has bewitched him with her wild ways--he simply dotes on her!"

"It's scandalous!" broke in her sister.

"To my mind, it shows signs of the Padre's failing," rejoined the Senora sharply.

"It does indeed--poor man!" sighed her sister. "And what's more--it never did seem proper that so handsome a woman should live with a priest even though she be his ward and he an old man."

"Handsome?" sneered the Senora, drawing herself together as though she had received an electric shock; the pleased and animated expression of her face changing suddenly to one of utmost frigidity. "I never could understand why people considered that Indian good looking," and her black eyes snapped as she turned to resume her work, plainly betraying the jealousy aroused. Senora Sanchez, knowing her sister's temper only too well, hastened to change the subject.

Strange to say, Padre Antonio did not share the public's sentiment, or rather that of his own particular flock, concerning Chiquita's latest escapade. Instead of being overwhelmed, broken in spirit and utterly cast down by grief and shame as had been confidently predicted, he, much to the disgust of his congregation, went calmly about his duties as though nothing unusual had occurred, referring jocosely to this lark of his madcap ward as he was pleased to term it.

Lark? Heavens! had the Padre lost his senses? Excommunication might be a little too severe, but a year's solitary confinement in a convent as a penance for her sin was the least penalty she could expect.

But Padre Antonio knew what the rest of the world did not. That his charming, irrepressible protegee would have snapped her fingers lightly at the mere suggestion of either. The days of mediaeval suppression of females had come to an end even in Mexico. Moreover, there existed a perfect understanding between the two.

During his long years of missionary work he had learned that the heathen often stood higher in the sight of Heaven than many a zealous devotee of the Church. Besides, dancing was not only a national pastime of the Spaniard, but among Indians, a part of their religion as well.

That Chiquita had some very good reason for dancing in public, he knew well enough. They understood one another perfectly, and he did not ask her her reason for dancing, knowing full well that some day she would tell him of her own accord.

Although Chiquita had accommodated herself marvelously well to the new conditions, imbibing the best civilization had to offer, she nevertheless remained the freeborn woman--the descendant of a freeborn race of men. The wild, free nomad whom experience and direct contact with nature had early taught to recognize the simple underlying truths and realities of life and their relations to one another, was not to be measured by the conventions or limited standards of a tamer race of men hedged about by superficial traditions and born and reared remote from the heart of nature beneath the roofs of houses. It was the cold, hard earth and equally cold and unrelenting stars that had nurtured Chiquita from earliest childhood, and to apply the petty restraints and conventions of modern society to her was like clipping the wings of an eagle and then expecting it to fly.

Ordinarily, life is dull enough without civilized man's efforts to reduce it to positive boredom, and although Chiquita's escapades had acted like a slap in the face, they had nevertheless done much to arouse the spirit of the otherwise sleepy old town. Her presence was fresh and invigorating as the north wind. Moreover, the very ones who criticised her most in secret, were usually the first to come to her for advice when in trouble. For who was so wise as the strange, beautiful woman?

True, it cost something to be hated as cordially as one was admired, nevertheless, Padre Antonio rightly conjectured that there was not a woman in Santa Fe who would not willingly exchange places with his ward were she able to. So, like the sensible man that he was, he only smiled at idle gossip and continued to watch with increasing interest the transformation of his protegee.

VI

Captain Forest had taken quarters at the _Posada_ for an indefinite period; at least until he learned the whereabouts of his friend, d.i.c.k Yankton, who had accompanied him on his former expeditions.

He had been aroused at an early hour by the cackling of affrighted fowl and the voices and footsteps of _peons_ as they came and went in the _patio_, their jests and laughter mingling with s.n.a.t.c.hes of song. Not being able to sleep, he arose, and after a hasty toilet, stepped out upon the veranda, bright with the morning sunlight. Save for his presence, the place was deserted; the empty chairs standing about just as their occupants of the previous evening had left them, a proof that he was the first of the guests to be abroad.

"I wonder where d.i.c.k is?" he soliloquized, leisurely descending the veranda steps and turning into the pathway that led to the garden at the rear of the house and thence to the corrals, whither he directed his steps for a look at his horse to see whether he had been properly cared for during the night. As he disappeared around the corner of the house, a woman turned in from the highroad and paused before the Inn beneath the great cottonwood encircled by the bench.

She was tall and slender and on one arm carried a basket of eggs concealed beneath a layer of freshly cut roses; Padre Antonio's annual birthday tribute to the Senora. Her heavy blue-black hair, loosely caught up at the back of the neck and adorned with a bunch of pink pa.s.sion flowers nestled about her neck and shoulders, on one of which was perched a small white dove that fluttered and cooed. From out the midst of the pa.s.sion flowers shone a faint glint of silver.

Her dull white shirt waist, low at the neck and with sleeves rolled back to the elbows, exposed her long, slender neck and well rounded forearms which, like her face, were a rich red bronze. A faded orange kerchief, loosely knotted, encircled her neck; the ends thrust carelessly into her breast. Her soft mauve _saya_, worn and patched and looped up at one side, disclosing a faded blue petticoat underneath, fell to her ankles, displaying a pair of small feet encased in dull blue stockings and low black shoes.

Depositing the basket on the bench, she extended her right hand upon the back of which the dove immediately hopped, cooing and fluttering as before.

"_Cara mia!_" she murmured fondly, raising it to her lips, kissing it and caressing it gently against her cheek.

"What wouldst thou--thou greedy little Jaquino? Knowest not thou hast had one more berry than thy sweet little Jaquina?" But the dove only continued to flutter and coo on her hand.

"Hearest thou not," she continued, "she already calls thee!" And extending her lips, between which she had inserted a fresh berry, the dove eagerly seized and devoured it.

"Ah, _querida mia_!" she murmured softly, kissing it again. "Now fly away quickly like a good little Jaquino before some wicked senor comes to catch thee for his breakfast!" And tossing the dove lightly into the air with an "_a Dios_," it hovered over her head for an instant, then flew straight away over the old _Posada_ back to Padre Antonio's garden where its mate awaited it.

A sigh escaped her as she watched the flight of the bird. How free of the cares and responsibilities of the world the winged creatures seemed.

She turned to the bench once more and was in the act of picking up her basket, when her attention was suddenly arrested by the sound of footsteps close at hand, and wheeling around, she came face to face with Captain Forest.

The little cry of surprise that escaped her interrupted the Captain's meditations who, with eyes cast on the ground, might otherwise have walked straight into her.

"A thousand pardons, Senorita!" he exclaimed in Spanish, stopping abruptly and raising his hat.

"I--" He paused as her full gaze met his which to his surprise was almost on a level with his own. What a face! Could his sensations have been a.n.a.lyzed, they might have coincided with those of Padre Antonio's on beholding his protegee when she stepped from the stagecoach on her return from the convent.

The broad sweep of her brow, her penetrating gaze, her straight nose, high cheek bones and delicately molded lips and chin and grace of her supple, sinuous body, together with the picturesqueness of her costume, presented a picture of striking beauty.

"Why," he continued abruptly, "you are the woman that danced at Carlos Moreno's! The Senorita Chiquita about whom the whole town is talking!"