"He thought that I," her voice was hoa.r.s.e and labored, "he thought that I was like those other women that he has picked up and got tired of and left, Selma Le Grand, and f.a.n.n.y Estrel, and others. I wonder where he thinks that I've been living that I wouldn't know about them. f.a.n.n.y Estrel! I went to see her once in vaudeville, and, before I'd hardly got my seat, someone next me began to whisper that she used to be one of Hanson's head-liners and that he was crazy about her once. And there she was, old, and fat and tired, playing in an ingenue sketch in a cheap house!" She laughed harshly. "That's what he was offering me," with a flare of pa.s.sion, "and I was too green to know it!"

"And he, where is he?" asked her father, speaking more quickly than was his wont and eyeing her closely.

"Out there, I suppose, I don't care. Oh, no," meeting his eye and catching his unspoken question. "He's safe enough; don't worry."

"Shall I make him shoot, Pearl?" asked Flick softly. "He won't have much chance with me, you know. I'll get him in Pete's place and pick a quarrel. He'll understand. You won't be in it."

"No, you won't, Bob, although I can see how you're wanting to," she said decisively. "The Black Pearl!" she broke out presently. "My name's an awful good advertis.e.m.e.nt. It gives me a reputation for being worse than I am." She laughed cynically. "But he believed it." Her whole face darkened again.

"He needn't go away believing it, Pearl." Once more Flick spoke softly, persuasively, and once more her father looked at her hopefully.

She looked quickly from one to the other as if about to accede, and then, dropping her head on her arms crossed on her knees, she fell into wild and tempestuous weeping. "No," she cried, "no, promise me you won't, Bob. Oh, Oh, Oh!" she wailed and rocked back and forth. "What shall I do? What shall I do?"

At last she lifted her heavy eyes and looked at the two men. "I want to go away from here, quick," she said, "quick."

"With Sweeney," said her father, well pleased.

"No." She threw out her hands as if putting the thought from her with abhorrence. "No, I can't dance and I won't. I never want to dance again.

I never will dance again," pa.s.sionately.

"But that is a feeling which will soon pa.s.s away, my daughter," urged her father.

"No, no," she wailed. "And anyway, I would never be safe from Ru--from him, that way. He would follow me about and try to meet me. He would. I know he would."

Gallito drew back and looked at her with uplifted head. "Afraid! You?"

he asked in surprise.

"No," she flashed at him scornfully, lifting her head, but again she dropped it brokenly on her arms. "I'm afraid of myself," she cried, suffering causing her to break down those barriers of self-repression which she usually erected between herself and everyone about her. "I'm afraid of myself, because I love him. Yes, I do. I love him just as much as ever--and I hate him, hate him, hate him." She hissed the words. Once more she sobbed wildly and then she broke into speech again. "Oh, I want to go somewhere and hide; somewhere where he'll never find me, where I'll be safe from him."

"What's the matter with Colina?" said Bob Flick suddenly. "He'll never come there. A good reason why!"

Pearl became perfectly still. It was evident that the suggestion had reached her, and that she was thinking it over. Her father, too, considered the matter. "Excellent," he cried; "excellent."

And Pearl looked up eagerly. "But when can we go, when?" she cried and stretched out an imploring hand to touch his knee. "To-morrow? No, to-day. You said yesterday, father, that you would be going back at once. Oh, to-day! The afternoon train--" She looked eagerly from one man to another.

"Yes, to-day," agreed Bob Flick. "You can go as well to-day as to-morrow, Gallito."

The Spaniard had been thinking with thrust-out jaw and narrowed eyes, now he threw out his hands and lifted his brows. "Have it so, then," he said. "The train leaves this afternoon. Go, Pearl, and pack your things.

I promised Hughie that he should go back with me, but he had better wait a few days until his mother can get her sister to stay with her. You had better tell him, Pearl."

After she had gone into the house the two men sat in silence for a few minutes and then Flick lifted his relieved face to the sky. "If there's any G.o.d up there," he said, "I'm thanking him for that unexpected you were talking about, Gallito."

"Ah, that unexpected!" returned Gallito. "It is more comforting than many religions. More than once when I have been in a tight place I have relied on it and not vainly. You will go with us this afternoon, Bob?"

Flick hesitated a moment. "I can't," he said. "I've got a lot to do at the mines here, but I can come up soon if you think it will be all right."

The old man smiled in his most saturnine fashion and sighed dismally. "I will make a special offering to the church if you come often," he said.

"I can see black days ahead of us. She does not like the mountains."

"Oh, she'll not stay long," Flick consoled him. "The summer, perhaps; but she will be ready to sign up with Sweeney before fall. She can't stay off the stage longer than that. You'll see."

Gallito sighed again and pessimistically shook his head. He was far from anxious to a.s.sume the responsibility of restoring his daughter's spirits, and had hoped that Flick would relieve him of that duty, but, since that was not to be, he accepted the situation with what philosophy and fort.i.tude he could muster and hurried the feminine preparations for departure so successfully that he and Pearl actually got away on the afternoon train.

This fact was communicated to Hanson by Jimmy early that evening. Hanson had returned to the San Gorgonio before noon and had remained in his room until nightfall. As the day wore on and he recovered in some measure his self-control, he began to view the situation in a different light from that in which it had first appeared to him, although, in strict adherence to fact, he could not be said to have viewed it in any light at all in that first hour or two. It was all dense darkness to him, a black despair not unmingled with anger and a sense of injury. But as he sat alone in his room with its windows looking out over the desert, his naturally confident and optimistic spirit gradually a.s.serted itself. Again and again, and each time more positively, he a.s.sured himself that all was not lost yet by any means. He had been unfortunate enough, yes, and fool enough, to make a bad break; a break that he, with all of his experience, should have known better than to make to any woman. Yet he felt that, even admitting that, he could not justly blame himself. The Pearl had not only surprised but frightened him by the way she had taken a fact which he thought she fully understood--that marriage was out of the question for him. He was so crazy about her that he had lost his head, that was the long and short of the matter, and had made a fool of himself and hash of the situation; but temporarily, only temporarily. For, and to this belief he clung more and more hopefully, the Pearl was too deeply in love with him definitely to close the affair between them for just one break. He would not, could not believe that. It was true enough that he had aroused her pa.s.sionate and violent anger, but the more violent the anger the sooner it will evaporate, and strange and complex as the Pearl was, she was yet a woman; and no woman on earth could long hold resentment against the man she loved. She had, he was able to convince himself, regretted her mad action in first threatening and then riding away from him long before she had reached home; and, without doubt, it was only that high and haughty pride of hers which kept her from returning to him before she had traversed half the distance. But the course of action he had decided upon was sure to win. He would give her a few hours to get over her anger, to regret it and to reproach herself for causing him pain, and then he would give her a little more time to long and ache for him to return to her. He would wait until evening, and then he would go boldly to the Gallito house and, no matter what efforts were made to frustrate their meeting, he would see her alone. Ah, and she would fly to him, if he knew her aright. All the opposition in the world could not keep them apart, it would only strengthen her determination. And then, how he would beg her forgiveness, how he would plead his love, with pa.s.sionate and irresistible eloquence; and, if he knew the heart of woman, she would yield.

But when the moment came for acting upon this decision he found that it took a certain amount of courage, considerable, in fact, to face not only a woman who had left him in hot anger that morning, but a gnarled and th.o.r.n.y father and also the soft-spoken Bob Flick; and he decided to stop at Pete's place and brace up his courage with a drink.

Jimmy could hardly wait to serve him. He was like a busy and important bird, hopping about on a bough and, literally, he twittered with excitement.

"Well," he exclaimed, "where you been keeping yourself, and why wasn't you down to see 'em off?"

A cold chill ran over Hanson. His impulse was to cry, "Who? What do you mean?" But with an effort he resisted the inclination. Resolutely, he held himself in check, and, although the hand with which he lifted the gla.s.s to his lips trembled a little, he drank off the whisky before he spoke.

"Couldn't make it," he said. "Who went beside--" he paused inviting Jimmy's further confidence.

"Just Pearl and her father," returned Jimmy volubly. "I guess that was the reason Bob went to Colina last week to kind of arrange for Pearl going up to make a visit to the old man. But shucks!" he broke off, "what am I telling you this for, when you know more than I do?" His bright, beady eyes rested on Hanson's with pleased and eager antic.i.p.ation as he awaited further revelations.

"Nothing more to tell," replied the other disappointedly. "It's all just as you say. Well, I got to go up and see Mrs. Gallito. I'm off myself early to-morrow morning. See you before that though. So long."

He walked away, feeling dazed for the moment and beaten. Not at once did he turn his steps in the direction of the Gallito home, but continued to tramp up and down the road, and presently, as the cool, fresh air restored his spirit, he was able to think clearly again. His world was in chaos, but, even so, he still held some winning cards. He had no intention, he gritted his teeth as he made this vow, of dropping out of the game. He meant to play it to a finish. Those cards! He ran over his hand mentally. There was that commanding trump--his knowledge, his unsuspected knowledge of the whereabouts of Crop-eared Jose. Then his next biggest trump--and here his heart lifted with a thrill--was the fact that Pearl loved him. Yes, in spite of her anger, in spite of the fact that she had rushed off to Colina, where she knew he could not follow her, she loved him; and his desire for her was but increased by the dangers and difficulties with which she surrounded herself. But he must keep in touch with her, and the question as to how this might best be accomplished rose in his mind. Mrs. Gallito was the almost immediate answer, and he determined, no matter what objections might be raised, to communicate with Pearl through that available source. Of one thing was he convinced and that was that not for long would Pearl linger in the gloomy mountains which he knew she abhorred. She belonged to the desert or to the world of men and admiration, the world of light and color and music. He couldn't see her in the mountains, he shivered a little at the thought of her among them; the cold, silent, austere mountains, so alien to this flower of the cactus.

His first poignant disappointment over, and his plan of action decided upon, he wasted no time in seeking Mrs. Gallito. He found her, to his satisfaction, quite alone, Hughie having, as she told him, gone to spend the evening with some friends. She had, before his arrival, been reading the Sunday supplement of an eastern newspaper, gazing with longing eyes at the portraits of the daughters of fashion and intently studying some of the elaborate and intricate coiffures presented, in the hope that she might achieve the same effects.

"Why, Mr. Hanson!" she cried in surprise at the sight of him. "I thought you'd gone sure, and Oh, mercy!" putting her hands to her head, "I ain't on my puffs."

"I wouldn't ever have known it," said Hanson truthfully. "The fact is I'm not noticing anything much, Mrs. Gallito, I got a lot on my mind."

He sighed unfeignedly and she noticed that he looked both tired and worried. "And say, I wish you'd sit down and talk to me a little."

She still stood looking at him hesitatingly, a distressed expression on her face. "I--I don't know as I'd better," she faltered. "Gallito, he said, the very last thing he said, was that if you come around--Oh, Mr.

Hanson," she sat down weakly in her chair and began to cry. "I thought you was just about the nicest man I'd met for many a day, and here I find you're a dreadful scamp. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I guess all men are alike!"

Hanson bent forward earnestly. He had an end to gain and he meant to gain it. "Now look here, Mrs. Gallito," he said. "You don't want to condemn me unheard. You're not that kind of a lady. I knew that the first minute I set eyes on you. Now understand I'm not trying to persuade you that I'm any better than I am, but I just want you to believe that I'm not quite so black as I'm painted, not as black as your husband and Bob Flick want to paint me, anyway."

She twisted a fold of her dress, already half-persuaded and yet still a little doubtful. "But you never gave us a hint that you were married,"

she ventured timidly.

"Honest to G.o.d, I forget it myself," he a.s.serted devoutly. "How can a man be always thinking to tell everyone he meets that he's still in a legal tie-up, when the only way he can remember it himself is by coming across his marriage certificate, now and then? Why, it's a good ten years since me and that woman parted. You don't call that married?"

His positive personality exerted its usual influence over Mrs. Gallito.

"'Course not," she agreed, although she still sat with downcast eyes and pleated her dress.

"I'm a pretty lonely man," pathos in his voice, "and I'd kind of gotten into the way of putting home and happiness and all like that away from me; and then I came here and saw Pearl," he was sincere enough now, "and honest, Mrs. Gallito, it was all up with me then, right from the first minute, and I was so plumb crazy about her that I guess I lost my head.

I knew all the time that I ought to tell you and her just how I was fixed, I knew it, but, someways, try as I would, I couldn't. I didn't have the nerve, so I just waited and let the cards fall as they would.

Maybe I was a fool and a coward. The way things have turned out, it sure looks like I was, but I just couldn't help it."

"I guess you ain't any different from most men," she answered, weakly sympathetic, "but you see Pearl has her notions, and they're mighty strong ones. It's the way she's been brought up," this with some pride.

"You see, me and her pop started out with the idea that we wasn't going to have the Pearl live one of those hand to mouth lives that we'd seen girls in the circus that didn't have much training or much ability live.

We saw right from the first that she was awful smart and awful pretty, and her Pop he had the knack of making money and holding on to it. Well, when he saw that she had her head set on the stage and we couldn't keep her off it, it's in her blood, you see, why her Pop says: 'Well, there's one thing, till she's of age, legal, on or off the stage, she's going to have a mother's care and a father showing up every now and then unexpected.' He's got awful Spanish ideas, you know. 'I don't want her kept innocent,' he says. 'My Lord, no. It's the innocent ones that have got to pay, and pay big in a world of bad knowledge where ignorance is not forgave and is punished worse than any crime. Let her see the seamy side,' he says, 'she's no fool. Let her see what those who thinks to live easy and gives themselves away easy gets.'