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Page 16
One must have had far less discernment than she not to have felt
instinctively that the great bulk of human conventions would shrivel
and vanish before they could come this far across the desert lands.
Besides, the man standing over her looked straight and honestly into
her eyes and for a little she glimpsed again the youth of him veiled by
the sternness his life had set into his soul and upon his face.
"It is kind of you to have pity upon me in my isolation," she answered
lightly and without hesitation. "And, to tell the truth, I never was
so terribly lonesome in all my life."
He made two trips back and forth to bring his plate and coffee cup and
auxiliary sauce dishes and plated silver, while she wondered idly that
he did not instruct the Indian girl to perform the service for him.
Even then she half formulated the thought that it was much more natural
for this man to do for himself what he wanted than for him to sit down
to be waited upon. A small matter, no doubt; but then mountains are
made up of small particles and character of just such small
characteristics as this.
During the half hour which they spent together over their meal they got
to know each other rather better than chance acquaintances are likely
to do in so brief a time. For from the moment of Norton's coming to
her table the bars were down between them. She was plainly eager to
supplement Ignacio Chavez's information of "_la gente_" of San Juan
and its surrounding country, evincing a curiosity which he readily
understood to be based upon the necessities of her profession. In
return for all that he told her she sketchily spoke of her own plans,
very vague plans, to be sure, she admitted with one of her quick, gay
smiles. She had come prepared to accept what she found, she was
playing no game of hide-and-seek with her destiny, but had wandered
thus far from the former limits of her existence to meet life half way,
hoping to do good for others, a little imperiously determined to
achieve her own measure of success and happiness.
From the beginning each was ready, perhaps more than ready, to like the
other. Her eyes, whether they smiled or grew suddenly grave, pleased
him; always were they fearless. He sensed that beneath the external
soft beauty of a very lovely young woman there was a spirit of
hardihood in every sense worthy of the success which she had planned
bare-handed to make for herself, and in the man's estimation no quality
stood higher than a superb independence. On her part, there was first
a definite surprise, then a glow of satisfaction that in this virile
arm of the law there was nothing of the blusterer. She set him down as
a quiet gentleman first, as a sheriff next. She enjoyed his low,
good-humored laugh and laughed back with him, even while she
experienced again the unaccustomed thrill at the sheer physical bigness
of him, the essentially masculine strength of a hardy son of the
southwestern outdoors. Not once had he referred to the affair at the
Casa Blanca or to his part in it; not a question did she ask him
concerning it. He told himself that so utterly human, so perfectly
feminine a being as she must be burning with curiosity; she marvelled
that he could think, speak of anything else. When together they rose
from the table they were alike prepared, should circumstance so direct,
to be friends.
She was going now to call upon the Engles. She had told him that she
had a letter to Mrs. Engle from a common friend in Richmond.
"I don't want to appear to be riding too hard on your trail," he smiled
at her. "But I was planning dropping in on the Engles myself this
evening. They're friends of mine, you know."
She laughed, and as they left the hotel, propounded a riddle for him to
answer: Should Mr. Norton introduce her to Mrs. Engle so that she might
present her letter, or, after the letter was presented, should Mrs.
Engle introduce her to Mr. Norton?
It did not suggest itself to her until they had passed from the street,
through the cottonwoods and into the splendid living-room of the Engle
home, that her escort was not dressed as she had imagined all civilized
mankind dressed for a call. Walking through the primitive town his
boots and soft shirt and travel-soiled hat had been in too perfect
keeping with the environment for her to be more than pleasurably
conscious of them.
At the Engles', however, his garb struck her for a moment of the first
shock of contrast, as almost grotesquely out of place.
At the broad front door Norton had rapped. The desultory striking of a
piano's keys ceased abruptly, a girl's voice crying eagerly: "It's
Roddy!" hinted at the identity of the listless player, a door flung
open flooded the broad entrance hall with light. And then the outer
door framed banker Engle's daughter, a mere girl in her middle teens,
fair-haired, fair-skinned, fluffy-skirted, her eyes bright with
expectation, her two hands held out offering themselves in doubled
greetings. But, having seen the unexpected guest at the sheriff's
side, the bright-haired girl paused for a brief moment of uncertainty
upon the threshold, her hands falling to her sides.
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