The Mystery of The Barranca

This procedure on his part the girl watched with a certain astonishment which she vented on Caliban while giving him his breakfast next day. “I had thought differently of the gringos. Be they all like this one – ”

“Give time, give time!” the hunchback advised. “Big fish are ever slow at the hook, but when they once rise – ” The tortilla he used for illustration vanished at one gulp. “Wait till thou seest Don Roberto. There’s a man! Of his own strength he threw a burro off the trail into the Barranca and so turned the train that would otherwise have driven him and the ‘Red Head’ into the cañon. ’Tis so. The history of it was written by Don Sebastien’s whip on the shoulders of Mattias and Carlos. And what of the magic that turned my bullet fired at twenty yards, then found me and Calixto in black jungle and shot us down from the high cliff? Si, chief of the other is he, so waste not thy freshness.”

“Bah! am I a fool?” She elevated her nose.

This conversation undoubtedly explains the staidness of her demeanor that day. Not that it was necessary to keep Billy at his distance. Leaving his painful modesty out of the question, in his ignorance of the Mexican peon folk he placed her in his imagination on the same plane as a white girl, and as the color of a skin cuts no figure in the calculations of the little god, providing that it be fitted smoothly over a pretty body, she found favor in his sight. At work both the next and the following days he kept always an eye open for the flash of her white garments in the doorway. When, with the earthen jar on her head, she went to draw water from the spring his glance followed the swaying rhythms of her figure. If not actually in love by the time Don Luis and Francesca put in their appearance next morning, Billy was at least living a tropical idyl, one not a whit less beautiful because its object departed far from his ideal in all but her physical perfection.

The visit had been skilfully timed to miss lunch, and Billy was already back at his work. Crossing the bench, Don Luis’s eye went instantly to the girl who had been drawn to the door by the sound of hoofbeats. But his expression gave no hint of his grim amusement. The keenest ear would have found it difficult to detect sarcasm in his remark.

“I see, señor, that you have added to your family.”

Also it need not be said that Francesca’s woman’s eye had summed at a glance the smooth oval face, rounded arms, shapely figure; yet their undeniable comeliness brought no pleasure to her expression. If Billy had overlooked Don Luis’s sarcasm it was impossible to miss her scorn.

“A capable housekeeper – if one may judge from her looks – and quite at home. You are to be congratulated, Mr. Thornton.”

Looking up in quick surprise, Billy noticed the absence of the sympathy that she had shown him during her last visit. Feeling the cold anger behind, and sadly puzzled, he was not sorry when, after a few minutes of strained talk, Don Luis asked to be shown the vein. Judging by his backward glance from the mouth of the tunnel, it would appear that he had coined the request to pave the way for that which happened the instant they disappeared. For, walking her beast over to the house, Francesca spoke to the girl.

“Thy name?”

“Carmelita, señorita.”

“Of what village?”

“Chilpancin – I am the daughter to Candelario, the maker of hair ropes.”

Though she answered with the glib obsequiousness of her class, the appraising glance which swept Francesca from head to heel carried a mute challenge and conveyed her full knowledge that a battle was pitched such as women fight all the world over. Neither could Francesca’s patrician feeling smother equal recognition. It was revealed in her next question.

“How long hast thou been in this employment?”

The girl paused. Then, whether it was due to Sebastien’s tutoring or her own malice, she gave answer. “Eight days, señorita.”

“Who hired thee?”

Downcast lashes hid the sudden sparkle of cunning. “Don Roberto.” But they lifted in time for her to catch the sudden hardening of Francesca’s face.

“Then see that thou renderest good service, for these be friends of ours.”

As beforesaid, neither the cold patronage of the one nor the sullen obsequiousness of the other could hide the issue from either. Francesca’s calm, as she turned her beast, did not deceive. Malicious understanding flashed out as the girl called after, “Si, he shall have the best of service.”

Returning to the smelter, Francesca began to talk to Caliban, yet while questioning him concerning his new employment she could not be unconscious of Carmelita lolling in the doorway, hands on shapely hips, an attitude gracefully indolent and powerfully suggestive of possession. Perhaps it was her acute consciousness of it which injected an extra chill a few minutes later into her refusal of Billy’s invitation to dismount and rest. His suggestion that Seyd was likely to arrive any moment drew a still more decided shake of the head. Moreover meeting Seyd as they rode downgrade she passed with the slightest nods, nor even looked back to see if her uncle were following.

Doubtless because he felt that he could well afford it, Don Luis did stop, and before riding on he once more threatened Calixto, the rice-huller, who was with Seyd. “This fellow – he still gives good service?” His courtesy, however, did not remove the chill of Francesca’s snub. Hurt and wondering, Seyd passed on up to the bench – to have his eyes opened the instant that he saw the girl in the doorway. When, after dismounting, he walked across to where Billy was at work on the foundation, her big dark eyes took him in from tip to toe in a flashing embrace. She studied him while he stood there talking.

“What is she doing here?”

He cut off Billy’s welcome with the sharp question, and while listening to explanations his gray eyes drew into points of black. In the middle of it he burst out, “You don’t mean to say that you fell for it as easily as that?”

“Fell for what?”

Billy’s round eyes merely added to his irritation. “You chump! didn’t you see the trap?”

“The trap?”

“Yes, trap! T-r-a-p, trap! Got it into your fat head? Don’t you see that you have catalogued us with the San Nicolas people as a pair of blackguards forever? Oh, you fat head!”

That was not all. While he stormed on, saying things that he would willingly have taken back a minute later, every bit of its usual mercurial humor drained out of Billy’s face. Over Seyd’s shoulder he could see the girl in the doorway. A certain dark expectancy in her glance told that she knew herself to be the bone of contention. As a doe might watch the conflict of two bucks in the forest, she looked on, and, meeting Billy’s eye, her glance touched off his anger.

“Stop that!” he suddenly yelled. “Stop it or I’ll hand you one! I will, for sure! What do I care for your San Nicolas people? I didn’t come down here to do a social stunt, and why should the opinions of a lot of greasers cut any ice? Let ’em go hang. The girl looks all right to me.”

“All right! You innocent!” Shaking with anger, Seyd turned and spoke to Caliban, who was mixing mortar close by. “As I thought! If half he says is true her reputation would hang a cat.”

But Billy’s jaw only set the harder. While he might easily have been persuaded out of his idyl, he was not to be driven. Out of pure obstinacy he growled: “What of it? I reckon her morals won’t spoil the food. She’s proved she can cook, and that is all I want. She’s going to stay.”

“She’s not.”

“She is.”

For a pause they eyed each other. Though their friendship had survived, nay, had been cemented by many a quarrel, never before had a disagreement gone such lengths.

“Look here, Billy.” Seyd spoke more mildly. “This won’t do. She’s got to go.”

“Not till you’ve shown me – not now,” he hastily added, as Seyd began to strip. “I’d hate to hit a cripple, and – ”

“Come on.”

But, ducking a swing, Billy gave ground, genuine concern on his face. “No, no, old man! You are still weak. Let it go for another week. That left fin of yours – ”

Landing at that precise moment on his ear, however, the member in question proved its convalescence and ended the argument by toppling him sideways. Up in a second, he closed, and for the next ten minutes they went at it, clinching and breaking, jabbing and hooking, with an energy and science that would have filled the respective souls of a moralist and a prize-fighter with disgust and delight. Avoiding both of these extreme viewpoints, the account may very well be given in the terms used by Caliban in describing the affair next day to one of his compañeros, a charcoal-burner.

“Like mad bulls they go at it, grappling and tearing, each striking the other so that the thud of their blows raise the echoes. It is in the very beginning that the Red Cabeza fells Don Roberto, but instead of splitting his head with the spade that stands close by – was ever such folly! – he helps him up from the ground. I then think it the finish, but no, they go at it again, hailing blows in the face hard as the kick of a mule, and so it continues for a time with only pauses to catch their breath. I am beginning to wonder will it ever come to an end when – crack! sharp as the snap of thy whip and so swift that I do not see the blow, it comes. The Red Cabeza lies there quietly on the ground. Believe it or not, Pedro, he is knocked senseless by a blow of the hand.”

The immediate consequences may also be left to Caliban. “Their quarrel, as I have said, is over Carmelita, the dove of Chilpancin, and I now expect to see Don Roberto take her for his own. That she is of the same mind is proven when she comes running with her knife for him to finish up the Red Cabeza. But again, no! who shall understand these gringos? – he gives her the sharpest of looks.

“‘Vamos!’ He shouts it with such anger that she stumbles and falls, running back to the house. Also she makes such a quick packing that she is driving her burro out to the trail before the Red Cabeza comes to his senses.”

Billy’s eyes, indeed, opened on the departing flash of her garments. “You didn’t lose much time,” he commented, with a quizzical glance upward. “Well, to the victor the spoils – or the rejection thereof. That was a peach of a punch – the bum left, too, wasn’t it?” The old merry look flashing out again from the blood and bruises, he asked: “How’ll you trade? In exchange for one admission from you I’m willing to grant you’re right.”

“Shoot!” Seyd grinned.

“Would you have been as careful of the proprieties if the señorita were out of the case?”

Smiling, Seyd raised doubtful shoulders. “Quien sabe, señor?”

“Ahem!” Billy coughed. “Now you justify the continuance of my wretched existence. All the same, while it may be correct in theory your darned morality is mighty uncomfortable practice. That girl could cook. The next time you fall in love please – ”

”Now, what are you talking about?”

“What have I done?”