"And Pearl saw right off. You see, she ain't so soft-hearted like me,"

again she wiped the furtive tear from her eye. "Pearl's hard. She ain't no conscience about some things. She'll lead a man on and on, when she don't care beans for him, and take all he'll give her, not money, you know, but awful handsome presents. I've seen her let some poor boy that was crazy about her blow in all the dust that he'd saved for a year. Oh, yes, she's like her father in more'n one way, both awful ambitious and terrible fond of making money. Why," she added navely, "I've seen Pearl look at a bank note like I never saw her look at a love letter."

"Well, she won't make much money up in those mountains, not dancing, anyway," he laughed briefly and unmirthfully.

"It surprised me a lot, her going," admitted Mrs. Gallito; "she hates the mountains."

"Then she won't stay long," put in Hanson quickly.

Mrs. Gallito was uncertain about this. "But," she confided presently, "she took on awful to her father and Bob Flick. I didn't dare come out, but I heard her through the door there. 'Where can I go,' she cried, 'where he won't come?' And she kept on saying she'd got to go somewhere where you would never find her, because she didn't dare trust herself, and she cried right out: 'I love him, I love him.'"

With these words, the confirmation of his hope, Hanson's blithe self-confidence returned. He threw back his head and straightened his shoulders, the light of an exultant purpose flashing in the steel of his eye. "Pleasant for Bob!" he remarked in vindictive satisfaction; but as he had still an end to gain, he did not permit his mind to gloat long upon the agreeable picture Mrs. Gallito's words had suggested.

"Now, just let me talk a minute, Mrs. Gallito," leaning forward and speaking in his most persuasive manner. "This whole thing is a misunderstanding, that's all. Pearl didn't understand what I was trying to say to her, and she lost her temper and wouldn't let me finish. Now taking all the blame to myself for everything, admitting that I haven't acted right in any particular, still I haven't had a square deal. You've got the sand and the fairness to admit that, Mrs. Gallito, and I may say in pa.s.sing that you're the only one that has, and you've got to admit that I haven't had a square deal; not from the Pearl, G.o.d bless her, and certainly not from her Pop and that Flick," his eyes flashed viciously.

Mrs. Gallito filled up his waiting pause with a murmur of confused but sympathetic a.s.sent.

"I'm telling you now what I'd told them if they'd given me a chance, and it's this," emphasizing his words by striking the palm of one hand with the forefinger of the other, "I'm going back to Los Angeles and I'm going to move heaven and earth to get free; but in the meantime, Mrs.

Gallito, I got to hear from her, I've got to keep in touch with her, and I believe you've got too much heart and too much common sense not to help me."

She drew back with feeble, inarticulate murmurs of fright and protest.

"I wouldn't dare," she began.

"Wait a moment," said Hanson soothingly. "I'm not suggesting anything that could get you into trouble. Mercy, no! All I want you to do is this, just write me now and then and let me know how things are going, and maybe, once in a while, slip a letter of mine in one of yours to Pearl; but," as she gasped a little and opened her eyes widely, "not till you're sure it's quite safe."

"Well," she agreed, still in evident perturbation of mind, "maybe--"

"Oh, Mrs. Gallito," pleadingly, "can't you see that me and Pearl are born for one another? You know that she can't live away from the footlights. She just can't. And you know that I can put her where she belongs. You know that our hearts are better guides than all Bob Flick and her Pop can plan for her."

His efforts were not wasted. As he had foreseen, his arguments were of a nature to appeal to Mrs. Gallito, and it required only a little more persuasion to win her promise of a.s.sistance. He further flattered her self-esteem by interlarding his profuse thanks with vague hints of the extreme lengths to which his despair might have led him had it not been for the saving power of her sympathy and understanding.

He had already risen and was halfway to the door before he appeared to remember something. "Oh," halting, his hand on the latch, "where is that--that Jose? Pearl could not go up there with him about."

Mrs. Gallito, all timorousness again, beat her hands lightly together, in a distressful flurry. "No, he's there," she whispered, and glanced anxiously about her. Then she came nearer. "I heard Gallito and Bob talking about him only yesterday and Bob said there was some mischief brewing among Jose's pals down on the coast, and Gallito said, yes, and if he let Jose leave the mountain he'd be right back there again and in the thick of it and sure to be taken and that he, Gallito, meant to keep Jose in Colina all year, if necessary."

So great was Hanson's satisfaction at this news that he had difficulty in concealing it, but Mrs. Gallito was not an observant person, fortunately, and, hastily changing the subject, he again expressed his thanks and departed.

He left the next morning for Los Angeles to the regret of his benefactress, Jimmy and the station agent.

CHAPTER VIII

The train which bore Pearl and her father to Colina had already completed its smooth progress through smiling foot hills and had begun a steep and winding ascent among wild gorges and great overhanging rocks before she noticed the change.

For the greater part of the journey she had sat motionless, huddled in a corner of the seat, a thick veil covering her face; but now she began to observe the physical changes in the landscape with a somber satisfaction, and, for the first time, accepted the mountains listlessly, almost gratefully, instead of rebelliously. In truth any change was grateful to her; she did not want to think of the desert or be reminded of it, and this transition, so marked, so sharply defined as to make the brief railway journey from the plains below seem the pa.s.sage to another world, was especially welcome.

The human desire for change is rooted in the conviction, a vain and deceptive one, that an entirely different environment must include or create a new world of thought and emotion. So for once the Pearl's desire was for the hills. She who had ever exulted in the wide, free s.p.a.ces of the desert, who had found the echo of her own heart in its eternal mutation, its luring illusions, its mystery and its beauty, now turned to the austere, shadowed, silent mountains as if begging them to enfold her and hold her and hide her.

It was dark when they reached Colina, but a station wagon awaited them and in this they drove through the village, a straggling settlement, the narrow plateau permitting only two streets, both of them continuations of the mountain roads, and surrounded by high mountains. Scattering lights showed here and there from lamps shining through cabin windows, but the silence, differing in kind if not in degree from the desert silence, was only broken at this hour of the night by the desolate, mocking bark of the coyotes.

Clear of the village, the horses turned and began to mount the hill which led to Gallito's isolated cabin. Their progress was necessarily slow, for the road was rough and full of deep ruts. The velvety blackness of a mountain night was all about them and even the late spring air seemed icy cold. Pearl had begun to shiver in spite of her wraps when the light from a cabin window gleamed across the road and the driver pulled up his horses.

"Somebody's waiting for you," said the driver.

"Yes, Saint Harry," answered Gallito. "He's getting supper for us."

The door, however, was not opened for them and it was not until the driver had turned his horses down the hill that they heard a bolt withdrawn. Then Gallito pushed in and Pearl followed, stepping wearily across the threshold.

The room, a large one for a mountain cabin, was warm and clean; some logs burned brightly on the hearth; a table set for supper was placed within the radius of that glow and a man was bending over a stove at one side of the fireplace, while two women, who had evidently been seated on the other side of the fire, rose and stood smiling a welcome. The air was full of appetizing odors mingled with the fragrance of coffee.

As they entered the man turned with a quick movement. He was an odd-looking creature, brown as a nut, with glinting, changing, glancing eyes which can see what seem to be immeasurable distances to those possessed of ordinary sight. He had a curiously crooked face, one eye was higher than the other and his nose was not in the middle, but set on one side; its sharp, inquisitive point almost at right angles with the bridge. He had the wide, mobile mouth of the born comedian, and his chin was as much to the right as his nose was to the left. He was extremely light and slender in figure and his movements were like quicksilver. His hair was black and straight and long, especially over the ears, and he had long, slender, delicate hands, which one noticed at once for their uncommon flexibility and deftness.

"Supper ready?" asked Gallito, without other greeting.

"Now," replied the other man. He began lifting the food he had been preparing from the pans, arranging it on various dishes and slipping them upon the table with a rapidity and noiselessness which suggested sleight of hand.

Gallito gave a brief nod and advanced toward the two women, bowing low with Spanish courtesy. A smile, a blending of pleasure and amus.e.m.e.nt, softened his grim mouth and keen eyes as he shook hands with one, whom he introduced to his daughter as Mrs. Nitschkan. About medium height, she was a powerfully built creature, her open flannel shirt disclosing the great muscles of her neck and chest. Rings of short, curly brown hair covered her round head; and small, twinkling blue eyes shone oddly bright in her deeply tanned face, while her frequent smile displayed small, milk-white teeth. A short, weather-stained skirt showed her miner's boots and a man's coat was thrown over her shoulders. A bold, freebooting Amazon she appeared, standing there in the fire-glow, and one to whom hardihood was a birth-right.

The other woman towered above her and even above Gallito. She was a colossal Venus, with a face pink and white as a may-blossom. Tremulous smiles played about her soft, babyish mouth and a joyous excitement shone in her wide, blue eyes. Upon her head was a small, lop-sided bonnet, from which depended a rusty crepe veil of which she seemed inordinately conscious, and at the throat of her black gown was a large, pink bow.

"Make you acquainted with Mis' Thomas, Miss Gallito," said Mrs.

Nitschkan heartily. "Marthy's one of my oldest friends an' one of my newest converts. She's all right if she could let the boys alone, an'

not be always tangled up in some flirtation that her friends has got to sit up nights scheming to get her out of. That pink bow an' that crepe veil shows she ain't got the right idea of her responsibilities as a widow. So I brought her up to my little cabin, just a quarter of a mile through the trees there, hopin' I'd get her mind turned on more sensible things than men. Gosh a'mighty! She's got a chance to shoot bear here."

"I don't think you got any call to introduce me to the Black Pearl that-a-way, Sadie." Mrs. Thomas's eyes filled with ready tears. "It ain't manners. I wouldn't have come with her, Miss Gallito, but I got to see pretty plain that the gentleman," here she blushed and bridled, "that was courting me was awful anxious to get hold of the money and the cabin that my last husband, in his grave 'most six months now, left me."

She wiped the tears from her eyes on the back of her hand, a movement hampered somewhat by the fact that her handkerchief had been fashioned into a bag to hold some chocolate creams and was tied tightly to her thumb.

"That's what you get for cavorting around with a spindle-shanked, knock-kneed, mush-brained jack-rabbit of a man," muttered Mrs. Nitschkan scornfully.

But this thrust was ignored by Mrs. Thomas. The color had risen on her cheeks and there was a light in her eyes. Shyly, yet gleefully, she drew a letter from her pocket. "I got a letter from him to-day with an awful cute motto in it. Look!" She showed it proudly to Pearl, Jose and Gallito. "It's on cream-tinted paper, with a red and blue border, an',"

simpering consciously, "it says in black and gold letters, 'A Little Widow Is a Dangerous Thing.'"

The little group seemed for the moment too stunned to speak. Mrs.

Nitschkan was the first to recover herself. "Gosh a'mighty!" she murmured in an awed whisper, and allowed her glance to travel slowly over Mrs. Thomas's well-cushioned, six feet of womanhood, "A--little--widow!" huskily.

Gallito seized the opportunity here to direct Pearl's attention to the bandit, who had been nudging him and whispering to him for the last moment or so.

"Pearl, this is--" he hesitated a moment, "Jose."

Mrs. Nitschkan looked up at him in quick astonishment. "Gosh a'mighty,"

she cried, "ain't that kind o' reckless?"

But Jose nodded a quick, cynical approval and, with a sudden turn, executed a deep bow to the Pearl, one hand on the heart, expressing gallantry, fealty, the humblest admiration; all these sincere and yet permeated with a subtle and volatile mockery.

"Better so, Francisco," he said in a voice which scarcely betrayed an accent, and indeed this was not strange considering that he spoke the patois of many people, being a born linguist. His father had been a Frenchman, a Gascon, but his mother was a daughter of Seville. "But you have not said all." He drew himself up with haughty and self-conscious pride and, with a sweeping gesture of his long fingers, lifted the hair from his ears and stood thus, leering like Pan.

"Crop-eared Jose!" cried Pearl, falling back a pace or two and looking from her father to the two women in wide-eyed astonishment. "Why, they are still looking for him. Are you not afraid?" She looked from one to the other as if asking the question of all. She was not shocked, nor, to tell the truth, particularly surprised after the first moment of wonder.