But, as he told himself, twisting his shoulders irritably, there was something about this old Spaniard which got on his nerves. A quality of composed patience, as if he, at least, never doubted the successful outcome of his plans; a rock-like imperturbability against which violence or vituperation shattered itself and fell harmless.

"Look here, Gallito," again he adopted a conciliatory manner, leaning his elbows on the table, as if prepared for a long discussion, after first helping himself to another gla.s.s of cognac and a fresh cigarette, "what's the use of a row, anyway? Now, why can't we come to some agreement. What you say about your daughter's abilities is all true, every word of it. That's the reason I'm so keen to get her. I know, and I'm frank enough to confess it, that out here in the desert, with not much to think about, on a vacation, and all, why--I kind of lost my head about her. She's a beautiful woman, Gallito, no need to tell you that.

But you know, and I know, that a man can always shut down on that sort of thing if he's got to. My reputation ain't what it ought to be, no one knows that better than I, or feels it more; but, honest to G.o.d, Gallito, I ain't as black as I've been painted. No man is, probably. Now, what I got to say is this--"

"No need to say it, Mr. Hanson," interrupted Gallito, who had been twisting his mouth wryly during these remarks.

Again Hanson concealed his rising anger, although the color rose in his cheeks. "Now just let me talk a minute, Gallito." He spread out his hands placatingly. "The proposition I'm going to make you is this: Miss Gallito tells me that her mother traveled with her when she was younger, and even now, when she can spare the time from her farming, she goes out on the road with the young lady. Now, why not have a purely business arrangement. Let Miss Pearl sign up with me, and then we'll coax her mother to go with her. I should think that would satisfy you. It ought to satisfy any one, for a girl's mother to go with her."

"Of course," the Spaniard bowed with stately courtesy, but not before had his smile been so sardonic. "As you say, every one should be satisfied with such an arrangement and, let me say, it is one that would greatly please me, but as I told you before, Mr. Hanson, it cannot be.

My daughter must keep her contract with Sweeney."

At white heat, Hanson rose and pushed back his chair. "h.e.l.l!" he cried.

"What am I up against, anyway! Give some people the earth and it wouldn't suit 'em. But you can take this from me, Gallito," he leaned forward and pounded his fist on the table, "I don't take my answer from you. We'll see what the Black Pearl has got to say. The Black Pearl smirched by going out with me!" He laughed aloud.

He fell back frightened as Gallito half rose from his chair, and then, to his unbounded surprise, the Spaniard sat down again and softly rubbed his hands together. Hanson had a fleeting and most disturbing impression of the old man gloating over some secret and pleasant prospect.

Lolita had balanced herself on the edge of the table and Gallito bent forward and scratched her head, making little clucking noises in his throat the while: "Our guest is a great poker player, Lolita, he understands how to make a bluff, but," again that single grating note of a laugh, "a.s.sure him, my Lolita, that he will be cold-decked."

Again Hanson was almost betrayed into making his threat then and there.

He leaned forward and shook his forefinger under the Spaniard's eyes, his face was purple, but just in time he remembered himself, closed his mouth and drew back.

"Bob, Bob," croaked Lolita, "mi jasmin Pearl, mi corazon."

"A most intelligent bird, you see, Mr. Hanson," observed Gallito, with saturnine politeness.

Hanson turned away impatiently. "I will see your daughter this afternoon," he said.

Gallito had begun to roll a fresh cigarette, but now, checking himself abruptly, he threw a long comprehensive glance at the cloudless brazen sky, and then, squinting his eyes, studied for a second or two the equally brazen desert.

"I think not, Mr. Hanson," he said, with a.s.sured finality in his voice.

"I do not think you will see my daughter to-day. What? Going so soon?

Another gla.s.s of cognac? No. Adios, then. Adios."

CHAPTER VI

Hanson walked away, more disturbed in mind by his interview with Gallito than he would have thought possible an hour or two earlier. Something in the finality of the Spaniard's voice when making those last predictions, his evidently sincere belief that his daughter would not appear under Hanson's management, had impressed the latter in spite of himself, causing him seriously to question the extent of his influence over Pearl, a weakness which he had not previously permitted himself.

He strove with all the force of his optimistic will to throw off the depression which deepened with each moment, a.s.suring himself that he was tired, that all morning he had played a part, every faculty on the alert; and that this growing dissatisfaction and unrest were only the evidence of a natural reaction.

He attempted to b.u.t.tress his hope with mental argument, logical, even final, but singularly unconvincing where Pearl was concerned, as anything logical and final must ever be. He tried to recall in detail stories he had heard of her avarice and her coquetries; he thought of her jewels, her name, her wiles. Who was she to object to past peccadillos on his part? Then, uncomforted, he sought to rea.s.sure himself with the remembrance of her love for him, ardent and beautiful as the sun on the desert, but her image rose on the dark of his mind like a flame, veering and capricious, or as the wind, lingering, caressing, yet ever fleeing.

He was tormented by the remembrance also of strange phases of her which he divined but could not a.n.a.lyze. Again, he would in fancy look deep into her dark eyes, demanding that his imagination revive for him those moments when his heart had thrilled to the liquid languor of her gaze, and instead he saw only the world-weariness of that sphynx glance which seemed to brood on uncounted centuries, and far back in her eyes, illusive and brief as the faint, half seen shadow on a mirror, he discerned mockery and disdain.

He took off his hat, baring his brow to the air, and drew long breaths, unpleasantly conscious of an increasing heaviness and sultriness in the air, according well with the oppression of his thoughts. When he arrived at the San Gorgonio, he was glad to take refuge in his room and there, to relieve the tension of nerves strung almost unbearably high, he walked back and forth and, after his fashion, swore volubly and unintermittently.

At last, having exhausted his vocabulary as well as his breath, he turned to the window, struck by some impending change in the atmosphere which had now revealed itself by a slight obscuring of the light in the room. He looked out curiously, half fearfully, dimly but rebelliously aware that the world, his human world of personal desires and activities, as well as all external nature was threatened by vast, unseen, menacing forces. The great, gray desert lay in crouching stillness, a silence which filled the soul of man with horror. The sun, crimson as blood, hung in a sky over which seemed to have been drawn a veil of golden mist.

"Must be something doing," muttered Hanson, and even as he spoke his eye was taken by a movement on the horizon line, a billowing as if the desert were rising like the sea. And truly it did. It lifted in waves that mounted almost to the sky and swept forward with a savage eagerness as if to bear down upon and engulf and obliterate the little oasis of a village with its green productive fields, and reduce it again to the wastes of desolation from which it had been so painfully redeemed by man.

For nearly three days the storm lasted, raging by day and by night. The trees bowed to earth and lifted themselves to bow again with the sound of many waters in their leaves; and in the voice of the wind every savage, primeval menace alternated with every wail of human grief and anguish which has echoed through the ages. All desolation in the heart of man, "I am without refuge!" shrieked in its high cries, and, as if failing to find adequate expression in these, it summoned its chorus of demons and rang with the despairing fury of all d.a.m.ned and discordant things, until one bowed and covered the ears and muttered a prayer.

And the sand! It sifted constantly through doors and windows, and seemed to fall in a fine continuous shower from the very roof. It covered everything with a white rime; it sifted into the hair, the eyes; breathing was difficult, the air was so chokingly full of it.

The rooms, too, were ever paced by the restless feet of the wind, curtains swayed as if shaken by ghostly fingers; rugs and carpets rose and fell upon the floor, and, whether one sat alone or with others, the air seemed full of stealing presences, sad, and sometimes terrible; and of immemorial whispers that would not be stilled.

The desert knows no time, its past and present are one, a thousand years is as a single day, and when it chooses to find its voice all yesterdays and all to-morrows blend.

Some day, when grief and horror shall be abandoned by man as utterly as his dreams of cave-life; when his remembrances of wrestling with the forces of nature or commerce shall seem as remote as his warfare with beasts, and tribes as savage as beasts; when he lifts his dull eyes and dares to dream only joy and beauty, then he will know that the gray cries of the wind are but the emphasis to the singing of the sunlight, that the black storm-clouds are but the contrast Beauty offers to deepen and heighten the effect of her more ethereal hues, blue and rose and pearl.

Hanson had stood the storm badly; inactivity was always a hardship to him, also he was unused to such discomfort as he had to endure; and his depression and unrest induced by the suspense he suffered in continually wondering how Pearl would take Bob Flick's news were greatly increased by the fact that he could get no word to her, nor receive any from her.

But on the third night the storm stilled and in the morning the desert showed herself sparkling like an enchantress, exhibiting all of her marvelous illusions of color and wrapped in a golden garment of sunshine. She smiled with all the allurement of a radiant and beautiful woman.

Early in the morning, just as Hanson was preparing to send a note to Pearl, he received one from her, asking him to meet her again within an hour or two, amid the palms. She did not suggest his riding thither with her. The note was brief, a mere line, and, study it as he would, he found nothing in it to indicate what her att.i.tude was toward him, therefore it did not allay his nervousness in the least as to how she would meet him. But with the pa.s.sage of the storm his nerves had recovered their normal tone, and with the brilliance and freshness of the morning much of his optimism had returned.

He reached the approach to the foothills where the palms lifted their stately and magnificent height, long before Pearl, and there, walking restlessly back and forth, he watched the road with straining eyes. And then he saw her, at first a mere speck in the distance; then she became more and more distinct, for she rode fast. She waved her hand to him as she came nearer and his heart rose in a great bound. Slackening the speed of her horse, she leaped from the saddle while it was still going, ran by its side, throwing the bridle over her arm, stopped, laughing and breathless, and cast herself into Hanson's waiting arms.

"Pearl, Pearl," he cried, in a low voice, holding her close against him and kissing her upturned face again and again. "Oh, Pearl, it's been a thousand years in h.e.l.l since I saw you last."

She laughed and, gazing eagerly into her care-free eyes and unreproachful face, his heart rose again in a great sigh of relief.

"That's the way a tenderfoot always feels about a sand-storm," she said.

"Well, we sure gave you some nice theatrical effects, didn't we? It's the biggest I've seen for many a long day. But you were bound to see something like that before you went away." She spoke with a fatalism approaching Bob Flick's. "The desert never lets you go and forget her."

Her eyes dreamed a moment.

"She's like you in that, Pearl. My heavens! I wish you could see yourself this morning. Beautiful ain't the word."

"Am I beautiful, Rudolf?" She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him with a soft, childlike expression, as if longing for his praise.

"I guess you know it," he said adoringly, stroking her shining black hair, "but if you weren't, if you were as ugly as sin, it wouldn't make any difference, you'd get us all just the same. All women like you got to do is to look at a man and he'll follow you like a sheep. I don't know what it is, magnetism or something."

"But I'm glad I'm not as ugly as sin," she murmured, in smiling content.

"And I'm glad you're not, too." She reached up her arm and touched his hair caressingly. "I love that little touch of reddish gold in your hair, and, yes, just that sprinkling of gray, and I love your blue eyes.

I can't bear dark men. I am so dark myself."

"You sure are, Pearl, thank the Lord! I never was very poetic, but I never see one of these desert nights sparkling with their big stars, twice as big as natural, that I don't think of you."

She smiled, delighted at his praise.

"But, goodness!" he went on, "when ain't I thinking of you? I tell you, you been on my mind steady these last few days. Your Pop was so dead sure when I talked to him that you'd have nothing more to do with me that it got to worrying me, and I thought maybe you'd hold it against me that I hadn't told you about--about my being already tied up." He scanned her face as if fearful of seeing it cloud and change.

It did. The laughter faded from her eyes, her brow darkened. "I wish you had told me," she said, "then I'd been a little better prepared for Pop and Bob; but I guess they got as good as they gave."

"I know I ought to have told you, Pearl," he said miserably, "and I meant to, honey, but"--gathering her more closely in his arms--"I just couldn't spoil those first few days; and, anyway, you drove everything but you out of my head. I just determined every time it came into my mind to tell you, that I wasn't going to spoil Paradise with any recollections of h.e.l.l. Maybe I was all wrong, but that was the way I felt."

"No, you were all right, Rudolf," she wound her arms about his neck.