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VIII: “THE LEOPARD’S SPOTS”
It was not done with malice aforethought, for Sliver had not quite reached the point where “he couldn’t stan’ it any longer.” It just happened. Heavy drinkers may be divided into three classes – to wit, the sporadic, who break out in occasional wild debauches; the “steadies,” who sop, sop, sop all the time; and a third class which combines the traits of the other two. Of the Three, Bull represented the first, Jake the second, Sliver the last and worst.
If Sliver had not ridden his horse along the crest of a certain hog’s back on the chance that the cattle he was hunting might be in the ravine below, it might never have come to pass. If Napoleon Bonaparte, for matter of that, hadn’t developed indigestion at Waterloo; if Christopher Columbus had followed the Church instead of the sea; if Julius Cæsar had been born a girl; if all the cats on all the famous fences of history had happened to jump the other way – this world would be quite different. So let it suffice that Sliver rode along the hog’s back.
At its end the ridge ran out on a wide bench from which Sliver looked over the foot-hills, rolling tumultuously under a black blanket of chaparral out to the tawny valleys of the hacienda pastures. Below, he could see a path that ran with a silver stream at the bottom of the ravine. Its deep rut, no wider than the swing of a mule, marked it for one of those ancient highways whose place had been usurped by the Diaz railways. In its heyday the cañon had rung with the tinklings of the mule-trains that transported aguardiente, maize, tobacco, serapes, and cloths between Mexico City and Santa Fé. But of that great traffic there now remained barely enough to support the little fonda that lay with its mule patio almost at Sliver’s feet.
Though no one was in sight, he set down certain moving black dots as chickens, goats, or pigs. Thus assured of tenancy, and thinking that he might pick up some news of his strays, he rode on down a trail that zigzagged through the chaparral.
Looking down from above, Sliver had noted the resemblance of the place to the lair back on the miner’s bench in Sonora. The ramada of grass and cornstalks might have been the same. Only that she was younger and prettier, the Mexican girl who knelt before a metate grindingtortilla paste could have passed for Rosa herself. Though Mexican Indian, some vagrant Spanish strain had pushed up her brow, reduced her cheek-bones, shortened her waist, and lengthened her limbs. Masses of black hair framed her oval face. Her eyes were velvet pools; the nose small and well shaped. Her bare arms tapered from fine shoulders to small wrists, and if she followed Juno rather than Psyche in her luxurious molding she was pliant as a willow, carried her shapely poundage with an effect of slimness.
If Sliver noted these desirable personal assets, his interest therein disappeared after he had spied the sign, “Fonda,” over the door. True, the month which had now elapsed since they entered Lee’s service had not, however, been entirely “dry.” At the close of each day’s work the Three took their copa with the ancianos at the hacienda store in the Mexican fashion. But the application of liquor in such medicinal doses to a thirst like Sliver’s was equivalent to the squirting of gasolene upon a fire. Now, as he gazed at the sign, spirituous desires flamed within him. It was with difficulty that his dry lips formed his question to the girl.
Was there a copita of aguardiente to be had?
Nodding, she rose, and as she let down a small wooden door in the wall Sliver’s glance licked the rows of bottles within.
Tequila, anisette, aguardiente, mescal, every variety of liquid fire with which the Mexican peon burns out his stomach, stood there in deadly array. Beginning at one end, Sliver worked his way, during the next two hours, along the row, and had just started back again when, with some surprise, he noted a most curious phenomenon – to wit, the gray hair and deep wrinkles the girl had suddenly acquired. Quite unaware that she had resigned his thirst to her father, and was even then vigorously rubbing tortilla paste behind his back, he solemnly studied this startling metamorphosis. Drunk as he was, his cowman’s instinct had kept him warned of the sun’s declension. Sure, now, that he had had enough, he paid his score, gravely addressing his host, meanwhile, concerning his changed appearance.
“You she’dn’t do it. It’s – hard on the nerves. Keep it up an’ – you’ll drive your custom away.”
Having climbed into the saddle, he remained there because of that merciful provision of nature by which a man may ride long after he has lost the power to walk. Realizing his condition, he left the business of going home to his horse. While it carried him down the cañon and out across the plains he concentrated his remaining energies on “The Cowboy’s Lament,” howling its one hundred and one verses at the top of his voice, sending warning of his coming a full mile ahead.
In the mean time Bull with Lee, Jake “on his lonely,” had pursued the search for the strays in other directions. It chanced that luck rode with the former. Returning home at sundown, Jake saw them driving the cattle along a shallow valley.
During the month which had elapsed since her father’s death Lee had taken the only real panacea for grief – hard work. In addition to the management of the house criadas, she exercised a feudal overlordship over the hacienda peones. Besides hiring and letting, leasing of lands on charges, she acted as judge in their squabbles, adviser in their small affairs, comforter in trouble. In addition, her womanhood brought extra duties. She had to godmother the babes, attend christenings, doctor the sick, lend her patronage to the bailes and fiestas.
Most of these duties she discharged in the mornings. Afternoons she donned her man’s riding-togs and rode out with the Three, rounding up strays, new-born calves, and foals. At nights her fair head might be seen under a golden aureole lent by the lamp, while she mended or made for them and herself. If it lacked the stimulation and color of city life, it was, at least, a healthy and honest existence. Already it had restored her shocked nerves, given back her roses. She had never been prettier than when, reining in, she looked back at Jake as he came up!
“We found them! we found them!” Her pride in the fact provoked Jake’s smile. “They were up in the Cañon del Norte. Whatever in the world is that?”
It might have been anything from the last puff of a worn-out calliope to the yelp of a sick coyote, for at its best Sliver’s voice rarely came within a quarter of a mile of a specified tune, and an hour’s steady tearing into “The Cowboy’s Lament” had not improved its tone. As the raucous strains came floating down the wind Lee burst into a bubbling little laugh.
“Mr. Sliver isn’t hardly what you could call a singer. Is he – often taken like that?”
They could have answered quite easily, Sliver’s vocal efforts being ever timed by his potations. Instead, they looked at each other in blank disgust. Nor was answer necessary, for just then Lee dug in her spurs and shot after a wild steer that had taken a sudden notion to go back to the Cañon del Norte.
“Piously drunk!” Jake swore loudly, as soon as she passed beyond earshot. “Wonder where he got it!”
“Search me,” Bull shrugged. “The question is how to stop him. You know what to expect if he’s loose an’ drunk among all them peonas. You ride on an’ head him off. Don’t stan’ any nonsense. Bat him over the can if nec’ssary.”
The admonition was not required, for Jake was always thorough. Neither was it his habit to waste time on argument or persuasion. Having roped Sliver, ten minutes thereafter, from behind a convenient bush, he gagged and cinched him in his saddle, hustled him in by the back gate of the compound, had him lashed to his catre in their adobe before Lee and Bull arrived.
So far, all was well. Their real troubles began when at supper Bull replied to Lee’s inquiry concerning Sliver’s absence that he “wasn’t feeling well.”
She jumped up at once. “Oh, the poor fellow! I must go and see what he can eat!”
A vivid mental picture of the “poor fellow,” gagged and lashed to hiscatre, filled them with consternation. Bull inwardly cursed himself for not having reported Sliver absent. But while he floundered, beating his brains for a second excuse, the crafty Jake supplied it.
“I wouldn’t – really, Miss.”
She stopped, half-way along the portales. He had spoken so earnestly. “Why not? Is it – catching?”
Bull would have replied in the affirmative, regardless of further complications. Jake shook his head. “No, it’s just chills an’ fever, a sorter constitutional ague he’s taken with at this time o’ the year. But – well, Miss, it’s this way, Sliver’s that bashful, though you mightn’t think it to look at him, he’d die of shame if a young lady was to see him in his bunk.”
She hesitated, then came back. “But – he ought to be looked after.”
“He has been.” Jake clinched the victory. “A copa’s the finest thing in the world for chills. He’s had a couple an’ was sleeping like a babe when we came in.”
She gave in with a sigh. “Then we won’t wake him. But you must take him a tray when you go out.”
But if her dominant instinct was thus, for the time, frustrated, it broke out more violently the following morning. When Sliver would fain have carried his aching head and sick stomach out to some secluded portion of the range, to be wretched at his ease, Lee “shooed” him like a sick chicken into a corner of the patio, there to be coddled and doctored with slops and brews compounded by her brown maids, every mother’s daughter of whom had her own infallible “remedio.” His real contrition was made none the lighter by the veiled jestings of his companions at meals.
“Invalid looks a bit better,” Jake would opine.
“A week’s careful nursing orter bring him around,” Bull would add. Then while prodding him with secret gibes, they ate with a zest that turned his poor, burned-out stomach.
That night, moreover, he furnished the text for a rude sermon after they got him alone in the adobe. “I s’pose neither of you saints would ha’ stopped even to smell of it,” he sarcastically inquired, after confessing how and where he obtained the liquor.
“’Tain’t that,” Bull admonished him. “I’m pretty near due for a bust myself. But when it hits, you bet I’ll go somewheres so’s the sight of my hoggishness ain’t a-going to offend our girl. No, ’tain’t that you acquired a bun we’re kicking at, but that you toted it back here.”
“You bet y’u,” Jake added. “Next time you’re took that-a-way, have ’em hide your horse, then lie down with your nose in it an’ don’t budge till you’re through. Have you done, now, or is there anything out there you forgot to drink?”
“Through? Oh, Lordy! Lordy!” Sliver groaned. “My liver’s burned right out!”
“Bueno!” Jake nodded his satisfaction. “Then if you’ve finished I’m free to begin. My fingers has been itching to get into a game for a week. That’s where you fellows have me at a disadvantage. All you’ve gotter do is to find a bottle, but mine’s simply gotter have cards in it. I don’t get off short of El Paso. I reckon some of that important mining business of our’n calls for my presence there day after to-morrow.”
“All right, get it over,” Bull agreed, after a moment’s rumination. “Tell her at breakfast. She’ll fix you up with the fare.”
“‘Tell her at breakfast’?” Jake looked his scorn. “An’ have her running an’ fixing me out with socks an’ shirts an’ things like I was going off on honest business. Not on your life! When she looks at me, so amiable and trustful, like she felt I was straight grain through an’ through, I simply kain’t fix up my mouth for a good lie. No, you fellows can jest give me all you’ve got. With any kind of luck it’ll turn you big interest. You can tell her that I left in the night so’s to catch an early train.”
So real was his feeling, he did rise and leave before daylight. But thereby his moment of shame was merely postponed.
When Jake arrived in El Paso – But the less said about his sojourn there the better. His operations, which included the fleecing of some cattlemen, would not make edifying reading. He may be picked up again at the moment he was, as aforesaid, overtaken by shame, when Lee spied him, a week later, coming through the patio gateway.
“Oh, you poor man!” she exclaimed at the sight of his haggard face. “They must have worked you all night.”
“Which they did work me overtime,” he confessed to Bull, in the adobe that evening. “Five days an’ most of the nights I sat inter one game. Look at this!”
The roll he held up contained two thousand and some odd hundreds of American dollars. “When I seen how the luck was heading my way I pulled a side partner into the game, for I saw what a chance it was to fatten Miss Lee’s hand. He was a —
“What are you crinkling your nose at?” he hotly demanded of Bull. “This ain’t no tainted money. I took it from some sports that had been buying horses from Mexican raiders. Mebbe some of ’em came from this very ranch. Anyway, in default of finding the real owners, who has a better right to their money than the little girl?”
“’Tain’t that.” Bull shook his head. “I was on’y thinking that I’d liefer you tried to give it her than me. She don’t look like she’d take easily to charity.”
“That so?” Jake regarded him cynically. “Now kain’t you jest hear me a-saying, ‘Please, Miss, will you please take this, you need it so bad?’ But is there any reason why she should object to us investing a couple of thousand in horses?”
“No; but she will.”
And Bull was right. When, next morning, Jake, speaking for the Three, made his proposition, Lee shook her head. “It’s only a question of time before the revolutionists run off all the stock. Then where would be your two thousand dollars?”
“In the same box with yours – stowed safely away where we can’t spend or lose it, till Uncle Sam makes Mexico pay our claims,” Jake argued. “The risk we’re willing to take, because we expect to buy cheap on that account.”
At that she wavered; with a little more pressing, acceded. And thus by devious ways did the blind god of chance atone for many a former error, turning evil to good, if only for once.
IX: A PARTY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
“Lady-girl’s a-going to have a birthday.”
The remark issued from the blue tobacco reek that filled the bunk-house. So thick it was the lamp on the table sent forth a feeble golden glimmer that barely revealed the sketchy outlines of the Three stretched at ease on their catres. But the title “Lady-girl,” Sliver’s especial name for Lee, stamped the remark as coming from him.
“That so?” Bull and Jake spoke in chorus. “How’d you know?”
“She asked me to write a piece, t’other day, in her birthday-album, an’ looking through it I kem on her day.”
“She asked me, too,” Jake admitted. “What did you write?”
“‘Roses is red, violets is blue; sugar is sweet, an’ so air you.’”
“A real nice piece, too,” Jake commented upon this classic. “I like it better ’n mine.” Nevertheless, with the secret pride of your true poet, he gave his own:
Under pressure, Bull also admitted a descent into poetry. “I ked on’y think of a verse that a girl once wrote in my sister’s album when I was a kid. ’Tain’t near as good as yourn.
“My pen is dull, my ink is pale;
My love for you will never fail.”
“I think it’s pretty fine,” the others commended the effort.
After a thoughtful pause, consecrated by heavy smoking, Bull asked, “How old is she, Sliver?”
“Rising twenty, be the date.”
“Seems to me we orter raise a little hell in honor of the ’casion – if it’s on’y to keep her from feeling lonesome.”
“Little bit close on the funeral,” Jake tentatively suggested. “Jest about three months, ain’t it?”
“Yes, for a regular party. My idea was just to tip off the Lovells an’ have ’em drop in that day.”
“We might shoot things up a bit, too,” Sliver began, but Jake cut him off with utter scorn.
“This ain’t no cowman’s jamboree. Girls don’t like any shooting except what they do with their own pretty mouths. A cake with candles ’u’d be my idee.”
“‘Cake’?” Sliver now returned the scorn. “Kain’t you see these Mexican dames baking a real, sure-enough birthday cake made out of raisins an’ curran’s an’ cit-tron peel, an’ with spice fixin’s to it? An enchilada stuffed with store prunes ’u’d be the best they ked do.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Bull poured the oil of quiet counsel on the troubled waters. “What about Mrs. Mills?”
He referred to the widow of an American rancher who, with the aid of her young daughter and a few peones, had kept their rancho going since her husband’s death. “If one of us was to ride over to-morrow I’ll bet you she’d fix up a cake, if ’twas only a three-layer chocolate. As for candles, candles an’ beer-factories are the main products of Mexico.”
Thus was the ball set rolling, not only for the party, but also toward consequences unforeseen; and it received a second fillip when Bull delivered his invitation to the Lovells at San Miguel midway of the following afternoon. It chanced that Phoebe’s fiancé, a young mining engineer, had arrived the preceding evening, bringing with him a friend, a smelter man from El Paso. With the enthusiasm of youth they proceeded to enlarge upon the plan after Bull rode on.
“It would be a shame to leave out Isabel Icarza,” Phyllis warmly declared. “She and Lee have always been such good friends.”
Accordingly, a mozo delivered an invitation at the Hacienda del Solabout the same time that Bull dismounted at the widow’s rancho.
The widow, a woman of thirty-five or six, whose comeliness indicated former real beauty, fell at once for the plan. While Bull was eating supper she began on the cake. Having met her but once before, he developed a certain shyness. But if his communications with her bordered on the formal, he yielded himself captive without reserve to Betty, her small daughter.
Though nearly thirteen, with the promise of being as pretty in her flaxen whiteness as Lee herself, isolation had conserved, if anything, the girl’s childishness. Sitting on a chair opposite Bull, she prattled happily while they both seeded raisins, questioning him with an artless directness that sometimes proved embarrassing.
Had he a father, mother, sister? Where did they live? What was his business? Married? Why not? And when he returned the usual answer that no one would have him she brought him to sudden and utter confusion.
“Oh, I’m so glad! Mother would take you, I’m sure. I’d just love to have you for my father. Will you please marry her, then she will never be anxious or fearful again?”
Her mother’s merry laugh helped to cool Bull’s blushes. “Don’t be specially insulted. She says that to every one.” Then, brave little soul though she was, she lifted a corner of the curtain that veiled an ever-present fear. “It’s true that I get sometimes terribly anxious. Mexicans are lovely people when they’re kept in their place. But since Diaz was overthrown they’re like a school of naughty children, let loose without morality, discipline, or guidance to protect them from themselves. Sometimes I think we ought to leave, but if we did the place would be sacked and burned before we reached the railroad. So I’d rather take the risk than be a pauper in the United States. But there, I’m ungrateful talking this way instead of thanking Providence we’ve got along so well.”
“That’s the way to look at it, ma’am,” Bull encouraged her. While a wicked flash shot from under his black brows he added, “If any one bothers you jest send for us.”
“Oo-oh, but you looked fierce then!” the child gave a delighted shudder. “Do it again.” Though a humorous twinkle sterilized the rehearsal, she consoled herself with the reflection: “’Tisn’t the same. But I’ll bet you’re muy malo when you fight.”
“It’s a good thing if he is.” From the sink, where she was washing currants, her mother surveyed with approval Bull’s imposing bulk. “It was a great relief when we heard that you and your friends were staying with Lee.”
Later, when Bull’s shyness had somewhat abated, she spoke more intimately. From Ramon himself she had learned of his expulsion from Los Arboles. “Ramon is a nice boy, yet no one could blame Mr. Carleton,” she said. “Yet what is Lee to do? Before the revolution she could have taken her pick from scores of young Americans, but now they’re all gone.” Laughing, she finished with a remark which was destined, later, to produce unexpected results. “I guess we’ll have to import her a husband.”
Bull’s heavy rumble echoed her laugh. It broke out again when Betty cried out: “While you’re at it get one for me. I simply won’t marry a greaser.”
Because of the unusual proceedings she was allowed to sit up. Caught yawning while the cake was baking, she fled to Bull’s knee, from which strategic position she defeated her mother’s best efforts to coax her to bed. Whereafter she promptly celebrated her victory by falling asleep. Curled against him in trustful comfort, she slept with her fair head pillowed on his mighty chest till, the cake finished, he carried her to bed. A catre had been moved out for him under the portales. But after silence and sleep descended on the house he sat for a long time on its edge, softly musing, the warmth of the child’s body enwrapping his heart. Even Jake, whose sharp eyes had detected many an alien expression on that scarred visage of late, would have wondered at its tenderness.
Betty was still asleep when he mounted to leave next morning, but at the beat of hoofs she came running, bare feet and legs flying under her nightdress. Stooping, he swung her to the saddle before him. The pressure of her warm arms around his neck, soft lips on his cheek, put a thrill of earnestness into his farewell.
“Remember, ma’am, we’ll come whenever you call.”
A quarter-mile away he drew rein and looked back. Though smaller than Los Arboles, the rancho buildings grouped picturesquely in a pocket of the foot-hills. The rich purple and crimson blossoms of a bougainvillea vine that almost buried the house made a fine splash of color against the golden adobe walls and tawny pastures. Drenched in sunlight, roofed in by fleecy clouds sailing across the deep blue vault above, it seemed the abode of peace. But not so did Bull see it. It loomed through a dread mirage that squirmed with ugly fighting shapes.
Shaking his big head, he spoke aloud. “’Tain’t safe for them here, ’tain’t safe!”
So vivid was that dread feeling, presage of evil, the sweat broke on his brow. Into his mind shot a vivid picture of the miner hanging limply from the sahuaro, face turned up to the torrid sun. Around it, as in a whirling nightmare, revolved all of the horrors, outrages, and murders of three awful years. Turning, he shook his big fist at the northern horizon in fierce rebuke of the political lethargy and executive indifference on the other side of the border that had not only made the long list of outrages possible, but almost set the seal of approval upon it. Anger choked him. With the growl of a furious dog he turned again and rode on.
It may be laid down as a general principle that a woman never forgets and a man seldom remembers anniversaries. These tendencies are due to the fact that a woman lives principally in the past and present, a man in the future; while she observes past occasions, he creates new ones. Whether she be looking forward with youthful joy, or looking back with increasing regret, a woman specializes upon her birthdays. But, accustomed to her father’s bad memory, Lee had not expected any one to remember; was accordingly astonished and pleased when, coming to breakfast that morning, she found the table decorated with trailing vines and a bouquet of wild flowers at her plate that had been picked by Sliver.
“Why – ” she gave a little gasp. Then her shining glance accused the Three, whose sheepish grins loudly proclaimed their guilt. “How didyou know? What’s this?”
While she was unwrapping the tissue-paper in which Mrs. Mills had wrapped the cake the Three looked on with eager expectance, and were treated to a second bath of sunshine. “A real cake! Where did you get it?”
In a country where cakes, if not actually hanging on every tree, may be either home-grown or plucked from the counter of any pastry cook, her joy might have seemed exaggerated. But in that alien desert, stripped of its substance to the bare hot bones by repeated revolutions, the conjunction of a sure-enough cake with a girl’s birthday verged on the miraculous. Nor was Lee’s pleasure lessened after she heard at what pains it had been produced.
It was, of course, merely the first of the day’s surprises, some of which were purely accidental, as when William Benson rode in at noon. As a matter of fact, his visit pertained to a defensive alliance against raiders, but, being warned in time, he straightway credited his visit to the birthday. A bluff Englishman, almost as big as Bull, hot-tempered and overbearing in manner, he fell with great joviality into the spirit of the occasion; kissed and congratulated Lee with the license of old friendship. His big, hearty laugh was resounding in the patio when the second irruption of the Lovells and their fiancés– for Phyllis had conquered the smelter man in record time – occurred midway of the afternoon. And they were no more than settled under the portalesbefore, like some rich, dusky bird, Isabel Icarza came floating under the arched gateway into Lee’s arms.
“But you surely did not come alone?” Though that was exactly what she might have done herself, Lee looked at her in horror.
“Ah no, querida! Ramon escorted me, and will return to-morrow!”
“You don’t mean to say that he has – ” Lee stopped, for she had caught, just then, a glimpse of him riding away.
“Your father – you remember – he thought – ”
Isabel stopped in her embarrassed explanations for, like a scared white bird, Lee was flying through the gateway. Grabbing Isabel’s horse from the anciano who was just about to lead it around to the compound, she leaped into the saddle and went flying down the trail.
Turning at the sound of hoofs, Ramon waited for her. It was the first time they had met since the funeral, and though embarrassment would have been quite natural, Lee’s frank greeting put him at once at his ease.
“You were going away – on my saint’s day?”
“It was out of respect for – ”
She cut off his apology. “Yes, yes, but father was angry and unjust that day. He would have acknowledged it himself, had he lived. You must come back, at once, with me.”
Not knowing the cause of her sudden flight, Bull had followed to the gateway. As he stood there watching the two returning, Benson’s voice broke at his shoulder.
“That’s the hell of raising a girl in this country. I spoke often to Carleton about it, but he was a lonely man and couldn’t bear to have her away. I suppose that he felt she was perfectly safe with him.”
Knowing him for Lee’s sincere friend, Bull did not scruple to hand on the information he had gained from Mrs. Mills. Benson received it with a low, shocked whistle.
“And the poor man had to meet death with that on his mind? She hasn’t seen Ramon since the funeral, you say? That speaks well for him. He tried to go, just now, too. He’s not half bad. But when it’s a question of marrying Lee, no Mexican need apply. But come on back in. She’ll pick out in a second that we’re talking about them.”
During the lively chatter that whiled away the afternoon; at supper when the cake appeared in a glory of radiant candles; while the young folks laughed and chatted thereafter under the lighted portales, the two stealthily watched Lee and Ramon. Sliver and Jake having retired early, Bull and Benson engaged in an interminable game of poker which left them free to discuss the proposed defensive alliance without neglecting their watch.
Before night fell the girls had distributed candles here and there among the foliage which now transmuted their waxen gleam into a greenish incandescence. Behind the creeper that fell in a cascade from the roof, the lamplit portales gleamed in half-circles of gold. The massed cluster of a bougainvillea dripped clotted blood down the façade of the gate arch. As the girls moved under the golden arches opposite, their white dresses might easily have been the fluttering wings of giant tropical moths, and, noting it, Benson paused in filling his hand.
“It’s like a beautiful stage setting.”
Bull’s nod took in the bright faces, soft laughter, happy chatter. With a slow, indulgent smile he musingly watched the secret glances between the two pairs of lovers; artless subterfuges by which the girls achieved small personal contacts.
“Don’t take much to make ’em happy, does it? A little laughter an’ a little song; plenty of chatter an’ some pretty clothes; a baby to love and a man to boss; ’tain’t much, but Lordy, how many of ’em don’t get it. If men ’u’d on’y keep on admiring in their wives the things they liked in their sweethearts, the divorce courts ’u’d go out of business. If I had a daughter, I’d marry her to a boot-black that understood the nature of women ahead of a merchant prince; for a man that says to his wife at breakfast, ‘Why, how pretty you look this morning!’ is a-going to get a reward that can’t be bought with a million.”
Just then Phœbe Lovell’s clear voice floated across the patio. “What a lovely night! Let’s go for a walk.”
“All right. Wait till I get a shawl.”
As the others moved off, Lee ran back into her room. They had passed through the gateway when she came out again, except Ramon, who took the shawl and threw it over her shoulders. For a few moments they stood talking under the lamplit portal, and, though the conversation was quite ordinary, the glow in his big dark eyes was sufficiently revealing. As Lee’s back was turned toward them, her face told nothing. But just before they moved off she reached up and straightened the lapel of Ramon’s coat.
Bull frowned. “D’you really think she’s in love?”
