He strove to draw her nearer to him, but again she slipped away, this time escaping the circle of his eager arms. For the first time her face was turned toward him, but her eyes were cast down, her long lashes sweeping her cheeks. "But I must be pretty bad to get called the Black Pearl," she said in that same low voice; all of its sliding, drawling inflections were gone; it was strangely tense.

"I guess so, d.a.m.n it!" he cried; "but I'm past caring, Pearl. I got a hunger and thirst for you, honey, such as men die of out there in the desert. Before G.o.d, I don't care anything about your past or your present, if you'll only love me for a while."

With that low, harsh laugh of hers that sounded in his ears afterward like the first muttering menace of the sand wind over the desert, the storm broke. Her eyes had an odd green glitter, her face was white, a dusky white, and her upper lip was drawn back from her teeth at each corner of the mouth.

"You fool!" Her voice was a m.u.f.fled scream. "Oh, you fool! Sweeney could have told you better, any man on the desert could have told you better.

The Black Pearl! Why, I've been called the Black Pearl since I was a baby, almost. It's my hair and my skin and my eyes."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I'll show you what I'll do.'"]

He didn't believe her, but he saw his blunder at once; cursed himself for it, and, mad to retrieve himself, began incoherent explanations and excuses. "Of course," he stammered, "of course, I--I--was just fooling, you know. But, well, what does it matter, anyway? Oh, Pearl, girl! Don't look at me like that. Don't!"

"I'll do worse than look at you, if you come any nearer me," she threatened. "Do you think I ride all over the desert where I've a mind to without protection? I guess not." She lifted her skirt with a quick movement and drew a long knife, keen as a stiletto, from her boot.

Hanson went a little whiter, but he was no coward. "Come on then, finish it for me," he said. "Your eyes are doing it anyway. Oh, Pearl!" he fell again to desperate pleading, "you won't turn me down just for a mistake?"

"Me, the Black Pearl, held cheap!" she muttered and raised her stag-like head superbly, "and by you! You that pick up women and drop them when you're tired of them. Me, the Black Pearl." She turned quickly and ran to her waiting horse, loosening the tether with quick, nervous fingers.

Hanson followed her.

"Pearl, you ain't going to leave me?"

But she was already in the saddle.

He caught at her bridle and held her so. "Pearl, I made a mistake"--he was talking wildly, rapidly--"but you ain't going to throw me down just for that--you can't. Think how happy we've been this last week--think how we've loved each other. Why, you can't turn me down, just for one break, you can't."

"Can't I?" she said, her teeth still showing in that unpleasant way.

"Can't I? Well--if you don't get out of my way I'll show you what I'll do. Slash you across your lying face." Her arm was already uplifted, riding crop in hand. "Let me go!" Her voice was so low that he hardly heard it, but full of a thousand threats. Then, swerving her horse quickly to one side, she jerked the bridle from his slack fingers and was off across the desert.

CHAPTER VII

It was about an hour after Pearl had ridden away to meet Hanson among the palms that Bob Flick joined Mr. Gallito, who sat, as usual, upon the porch of his home, smoking innumerable cigarrettes. He was his composed and imperturbable self, exhibiting outwardly, at least, no trace of anxiety, but Flick looked worn, almost haggard.

Gallito had just told him of Pearl's early departure and also of the fact that she had left no word intimating when she might return or in what direction she was riding; but when Flick expressed regret that this had been permitted, he merely lifted his s.h.a.ggy brows. "What is done is done," he said. "She slipped away before either Hugh or myself knew that she was gone, and what could we or you, for that matter, have done to prevent her?"

"I wish I'd been here," muttered Flick uneasily. "I'd have done something." But his tone did not bear out the confidence of his words.

"I am too old and, I hope, too wise," returned the Spaniard, "to attempt to tame the whirlwind. But cheer up, my friend. Although she rode off to meet this Hanson, without a doubt, still, the day is not over."

"You know what she is when her head is set," murmured Flick.

"I! Have I not cause?" exclaimed Gallito, a depth of meaning in his tone. "Who so much? But, nevertheless, she has not gone for good. She would not leave without some of her clothes, especially her dancing dresses and slippers, if she went with him. And her jewels, oh, certainly, not without her jewels!" he smiled wisely. "There are, as you know, certain ornaments about which she has her superst.i.tions; she will not dance without her emeralds. Oh, no, console yourself, as I do. She has not gone for good."

But Flick was not so easily rea.s.sured. "I almost wish she had," he said gloomily. "If she don't go to-day, she will to-morrow or next day."

"In that case they will not go far," returned Gallito and rubbed his hands. His reply had been quick and sharp as the beat of a hammer on an anvil; but now he spoke more softly: "But will she go at all, my friend?

You, like myself, have ever played for high stakes. Then you know and I know that this is a world where a man may never look ahead and calculate and say, 'because there is this combination of circ.u.mstances, these results will certainly follow,'" he emphasized his words by tapping on the table with his long, gnarled forefinger. "The wise man never predicts, because he is always aware of that interfering something which we call the unexpected." He blew great wreaths of smoke from his mouth and watched them float out on the sun-gilded air. "We know that my daughter is as obstinate as a pig and as wilful as a burro, therefore we conclude that she will follow her mad heart and go with this fellow. But there we take no account of the unexpected, eh, Lolita!" welcoming the parrot who waddled out of the open door and came clucking and muttering across the porch toward the two men.

Flick stirred uneasily. He was in no mood to stand Gallito's philosophizing, and the Spaniard, seeing it, smiled as he scratched Lolita's head. "Two people can not be thrown much together and not show to each other what is in them," he continued. "You know that my daughter is proud," he lifted his own head haughtily here, "and you know that above everything her pride lies in the fact that no man can scorn her.

But this that Hanson does not believe."

This roused Flick to a sudden interest, some light came into his heavy eyes, a dull flush rose on his cheek. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"This: Yesterday morning when that hound sat there and talked to me there was something I said which made him forget himself in anger, and he said: 'Me! The Black Pearl smirched by me!'"

"He said that?" Flick's tones had never been more drawlingly soft, but there was a quality in them, an electric and ominous vibration, which boded ill for Hanson.

Gallito nodded. "It is in his mind. It is his thought about her. If he said it to me when he forgot himself he will surely say it to her."

"And you let him say it, Gallito? You let him go away safe after saying it?" Flick looked at him amazed.

"I think far ahead," replied the older man. "It is the custom of a lifetime. To act on the moment is to continually regret. Do you think I want my daughter's tears and reproaches for the rest of my life? No, I wish to spend my old age free of women and their mischief. This Hanson must talk, talk, talk. Therefore, if you give him rope enough he will hang himself before any woman's eyes."

"But when?" asked Flick, and that vibration still lingered in his voice.

"I am not so patient as you, Gallito."

The Spaniard made no reply to this and silence fell between them for a few minutes.

"Oh!" said Flick, as if suddenly remembering something, something in which he was not particularly interested, but which would serve as a topic of conversation during these tense moments of waiting; "Nitschkan is up at Colina, and Mrs. Thomas."

"Nitschkan!" A faintly humorous smile crept from Gallito's mouth up to his eyes.

He was genuinely interested if Flick was not. "What is she doing there?"

"She came up to look after those prospects of hers, nurse them along a little, I guess, and to hunt and fish some, I guess, particularly hunt and fish. She says she's going to take a bear-skin or so back with her."

"She sure will, if she says so," returned Gallito confidently.

"Of course, she got wise to Jose right away." Flick spoke rather anxiously.

"Of course, being Nitschkan." Gallito's tone was quite composed and equable. "Well, she's safe, and she'll keep him in order if anybody can." Again that grimly humorous smile played about his mouth. "Why did she bring Mrs. Thomas?"

Flick laughed. "To keep her in order, too. Mrs. Thomas is big and pretty, with no mind of her own, and she got tangled up in some fool love affair that her friends didn't approve of, so when Nitschkan started off on this last gipsy expedition of hers they sent Mrs. Thomas with her."

Gallito was about to answer and then, suddenly, he seemed to stiffen, his hand, which was conveying a match to his cigarette, remained motionless, the flame of the match flared up and then went out in a gust of wind. "Look, Bob, look," he said, in a low voice. "What do you see out there?"

Flick's eyes, keener even than his, swept the desert. "By George!" he whispered huskily; "it's her, her alone, and coming like the wind."

"I hope," cried Gallito and gnawed his lip, "that she has done nothing that will get us into trouble."

"I hope to G.o.d she has," said Flick. "The desert'll take care that she gets into no trouble. It'll be as silent as the grave. Just another case of a reckless tenderfoot getting lost out there in the sand, that's all."

It was indeed Pearl, and, as Flick had said, coming like the wind. She pulled her horse up as she neared the gate and, when she reached it, stopped him abruptly, slipped down from the saddle, threw the bridle over the fence paling and ran toward the two men on the porch. Her face had changed but little since she had left Hanson among the palms. Even her wild ride had failed to bring back its color, and the curl of her upper lip still revealed her teeth.

She stood for a moment before them, slashing her skirt with her riding crop, then she cast it from her and sank down on the porch as if suddenly exhausted. Bob Flick quickly poured out a gla.s.s of her father's cognac and held it to her lips. She took a sip of it and it seemed to revive her.