"Then perhaps it is because I am an Indian and red, not white like yourselves?"

"Are you an Indian, Senorita?" asked Blanch. "I thought you were a Mexican."

"And if I were, I would not be ashamed of it!"

"What a strange creature!" thought Bessie.

"But why did the Senoritas laugh when they saw me?" persisted Chiquita, her expression softening a bit, a faint smile illumining her face.

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

"Ah, the Senor!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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, Senorita," 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 compa.s.sionately.

"Ah, you think I can't read your face," and Chiquita smiled in turn.

"Senorita," she continued with sudden emphasis, "you love the Senor!"

Blanch started, the attack was so sudden, her face coloring in spite of her endeavor to conceal her confusion.

"Yes, Senorita, 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, Senorita,"

she added with growing pa.s.sion, 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--"

"Senorita!" cried Blanch protestingly.

"It is the truth," continued Chiquita pa.s.sionately, "and what is more, I will tell you frankly that I--I, too, love the Senor!"

"I thought so!" exclaimed Blanch.

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

"What makes you think so?" asked Blanch, endeavoring to stifle the emotion Chiquita's pa.s.sionate 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. "n.o.body dies of love nowadays, Senorita," and she laughed lightly.

"Perhaps not among your people, but with Indians it is different. When we love it is terrible--our pa.s.sion becomes our life, our whole existence! Such a confession sounds absurd perhaps, but you a.s.sumed an air of superiority--racial superiority, I mean--a thing which I know to be as false as it is presumptuous. I might a.s.sume the airs and att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sion 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, a.s.sumed an att.i.tude 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 navete that seemed perfectly natural to her, "you women do not love as pa.s.sionately as your darker sisters?"

"Oh, I don't know about that, Senorita," 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: "Senorita, 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 circ.u.mstances; 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 pa.s.sions 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Senorita," 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."

"The Whirlwind?" echoed Blanch. "What an appropriate name for a savage!"

"Ah, but you should have seen him! He was the tallest man of the tribe."

"Do you know," said Blanch musingly, "I fancy you must be something like him, Senorita."

"In spirit perhaps, but only a little," she answered. "I often wish that I were more like him, for although he was a child in many things, he was a man nevertheless--civilization had not spoilt him."

Again that dreamy, far-away look came into her eyes and again she seemed to forget for the moment the presence of the two girls as her thoughts reverted to the past.

"Senorita," she said at last, "when one like me stands on the threshold midway between savagery and civilization and compares the crudities and at times barbarities of the one with the luxuries and vices of the other, he often asks himself which is preferable, civilization and its few virtues, or the simple life of the savage. Which, I ask, is the greater--the man who tells the time by the sun and the stars or he who gauges it with the watch? I have listened to your music and gazed upon your art and read your books, but what harmonies compare to nature's--what book contains her truths and hidden mysteries? When I came here I was taught to revere your civilization and I did for a time until the disillusionment came, when I was introduced to the great world of men and discovered how shallow and inadequate it was. Your mechanical devices are wonderful, but as regards your philosophies, the least said of them the better. Spiritually, you stand just where you began centuries ago, and I found that I should be obliged to deny the existence of G.o.d if I continued to revere your inst.i.tutions.

"Believe me, Senorita, for I speak as one who knows both worlds intimately, nature's and man's, that the great symphony of nature, the throb of our Mother Earth, the song of the forest, the voices of the winds and the waters, the mountains and plains, and the glory of the stars and the daily life of man in the fields, are grander by far, and more satisfying and enduring than all the foolish fancies and artificial harmonies ever created by civilized man."

Her words struck home. For the first time Blanch became thoroughly alive to the danger of the situation. This pa.s.sionate child of the South had changed suddenly to a mature woman, and a chill seized Blanch's heart as she began to realize her depth and power. Again she was all at sea, and in a vain effort to say something, she stammered:

"Senorita, you are certainly the strangest person I ever met!"

"Not strange, only different," laughed Chiquita, throwing back her head and meeting Blanch's full gaze. "Senorita," she continued, "you are beautiful--more beautiful than any woman I have ever beheld. My heart stands still with fear and admiration when I look at you, for men are often foolish enough to love the beautiful women best. I fear this is going to be a bitter struggle, but let us bear one another no malice in order that we may both know that she who triumphs is the better woman."

Frank though her words were, they caused Blanch to wince, while a flood of pa.s.sion which she could ill conceal dyed her cheeks a deep crimson.

"Life's usually as tragic as it is comic," laughed Chiquita lightly, slowly moving in the direction of the highroad. "It's strange, isn't it," she exclaimed, pausing and looking back, "that a queen and a beggar should dispute the affections of the same man? Such things occur in the fairy-tales one reads in the books in the old Mission, but seldom in real life," and she was gone.

IX