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Page 38
"Galloway?" queried Virginia uneasily. "You know him too, already?"
"Sure," replied Elmer. "He's a good sort, too, You'll like him. I
asked him around."
"For goodness' sake, Elmer, when did you get to San Juan? Have you
been here a week or just a few hours?"
"Got in on the stage at noon, of course. But it doesn't take a man all
year to get acquainted in a town this size."
"A man!" giggled Florrie.
"I can see," laughed Virginia, "that you two are going to be more kin
than kind to each other; you'll be quarrelling in another moment."
Florrie looked delighted at the prospect; Elmer yawned and brooded over
his pipe. But out of the tail of his eye he took stock again of her
blonde prettiness, and she, ready from the beginning to make fun of
him, repeated to herself the words she had used to Virginia:
"But he is handsome . . . and distinguished looking!"
CHAPTER X
A BRIBE AND A THREAT
Virginia Page found time passing swiftly in San Juan. Within two weeks
she came almost to forget how she had heard a rattle of pistol-shots,
how the slow sobbing of a bell in the Mission garden had bemoaned a
life gone and a fresh crime upon a man's soul; at the end of a month it
seemed to her that she had dreamed that ride through the night with
Roderick Norton, climbing the cliffs, ministering to a stricken man in
the forsaken abode of ancient cliff-dwellers. She was like one
marooned upon a tiny island in an immense sea who has experienced the
crisis of shipwreck and now finds existence suddenly resolved into a
quiet struggle for the maintenance of life . . . that and a placid
expectation. As another might have waited through the long, quiet
hours for the sign of a white sail or a black plume of smoke, so did
she wait for the end of a tale whose beginning had included her.
That the long days did not drag was due not so much to that which
happened about her, as to that which occurred within her. She carried
responsibility upon each shoulder; her life was in the shaping and she
and none other must make it what it would be; her brother's character
was at that unstable stage when it was ready to run into the mould.
She had brought him here, from the city to the rim of the desert--the
step had been her doing, nobody's but hers. And she had come here far
less for the sake of Elmer Page's cough than for the sake of his
manhood. She wanted him to grow to be a man one could be proud of;
there were times when his eyes evaded her and she feared the outcome.
"He is just a boy," she told herself, seeking courage. It seemed such
a brief time ago that she had blown his nose for him and washed his
face. She made excuses for him, but did not close her eyes to the
truth. The good old saw that boys will be boys failed to make of Elmer
all that she would have him.
Further to this consideration was another matter which filled the hours
for her. The few dollars with which she had established herself in San
Juan marched in steady procession out of her purse and fewer other
dollars came to take their places. The Indian Ramorez whose stomach
trouble she had mitigated came full of gratitude and Casa Blanca
whiskey and paid La Se�orita Doctor as handsomely as he could; he gave
her his unlimited and eternal thanks and a very beautiful hair rope.
Neither helped her very greatly to pay for room and board. Another
Indian offered her a pair of chickens; a third paid her seventy-five
cents on account and promised the rest soon. When she came to know his
type better she realized that he had done exceptionally well by her.
She went often to the Engles', growing to love all three of them, each
in a different way. Florrie she found vain, spoiled, selfish, but all
in so frank a fashion that in return for an admittedly half-jealous
admiration she gave a genuine affection. And she was glad to see how
Elmer made friends with them, always appearing at his best in their
home. He and Florrie were already as intimate as though they had grown
up with a back-yard fence separating their two homes; they criticised
each other with terrible outspokenness, they made fun of each other,
they very frequently "hated and despised" each other and, utterly
unknown to either Florrie Engle or Elmer Page, were the best of friends.
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