"How did I know about the woman?" She repeated the question and considered it, still with amused scorn, as if debating whether she would enlighten him or not. "Well--" drawling aggravatingly, "I knew you and Pop had the knife ready for Ru--Mr. Hanson." Flick's mouth twisted again. "That wasn't very hard to see. So when you hit the trail, Bob, I gave him the chance to clear out. I did so, tipped him off, you know.

Now I guess if he'd been wanted bad for anything that would--well, put him behind the bars, say, he'd have gotten out pretty quick. And, anyway, if he'd been wanted like that he wouldn't have stayed here so long, for they wouldn't have had any trouble in nailing a man as well known as him before, so, you see, I knew it wasn't any of the usual things. But," and here she stopped and, looking up into his face, spoke more emphatically, "I gave him the chance, too, to tell me all about himself and he didn't take it. Now, there isn't a man living that wouldn't have taken it--under the circ.u.mstances--" she spoke with a deliberately cruel emphasis, and Flick's shoulders contracted a little as the dart p.r.i.c.ked him--"unless it was some mix-up about a woman."

"It's about a woman, all right," grimly.

"What about her?" Pearl's voice cut the air like the swift, downward stroke of a whip.

"She's his wife," returned Flick. "She's been living up near Colina. She owns a part of a mine there and has been managing it."

Pearl took this in silence; and they had walked a dozen yards or so before they spoke again.

"Well, what of it?" she said at last, carelessly, almost gaily.

"Divorces are easy."

His expressionless face showed a cynical amus.e.m.e.nt, with just a hint of triumph in the lighting of his eye. He shook his head. "I talked to her," he said. "She's a good, decent woman, but she ain't quite straight in her head when it comes to Hanson. He lied to her right along about the others, even from the first; played fast and loose with her, and finally eloped with one of his burlesque head-liners. She took it. What else was there for her to do? But she spends about all of her time watching her fences to see that there's no divorce in question. He's done everything, tried to buy her off more than once, but it's no good.

Every place he goes she follows him up sooner or later, and she writes him letters, too, every once in so often, offering to come back to him.

And he can't get anything on her, for she lives as straight as a string.

Oh, no, Pearl, Mr. Rudolf Hanson'll never marry again as long as that lady's living, or I miss my guess."

It was evidently with difficulty that Pearl had controlled herself, her brow had darkened and her upper lip had curled back from her white teeth in a particularly unpleasant and disfiguring fashion. Again they walked in one of those silences in which she was wont to entrench herself, and then she looked up at him with a faintly scornful smile. "Well, you've sure done your duty, Bob, and I guess you've got just about as much thanks as folks usually do for that."

He drew his hand across his brow and looked before him a little drearily. "I didn't expect anything else," he said simply. "I knew what I'd get. But whether you like it or not," and here he caught her shoulder, his eyes holding hers, "as I told you before, I always got to do what seems the best for you, no matter what's the cost."

Her face did not soften. She merely accepted this as she did all else that he had to give her, himself included.

They had reached the end of a long alley, and now they turned and retraced their steps, but they had traversed almost half of the distance they had come before Pearl spoke again. "Well, now you've told me, what else are you and Pop planning to do?"

He weighed his answer for a few moments. "I guess nothing," he said at last. "I guess we'll leave it to you to send him about his business."

She stopped in the path and looked at him; her blue cotton gown fell in long lines of grace about her slender figure. "If you and Pop want to know what I'm going to do," she said, "I'll tell you. I'm going to accept Rudolf's offer and go out on the road, that's what. You know by this time that I can take care of myself."

He pondered this seriously, but without a change in the expression of his face. "Would you go with him," he asked, "if Sweeney offers you as much or more money?"

"Sweeney won't offer me more money. I know Sweeney and his limits,"

significantly, "and you won't make up the balance of what Sweeney lacks, either, do you hear? Now you, and Pop, too, can just keep your hands off. I manage this affair myself."

Flick merely shrugged his shoulders, and they walked on without further speech on the matter. Presently Bob's keen eyes descried some one walking down the mesquite avenue toward them. "Why, it's Hughie!" he exclaimed.

Even as he spoke the boy stopped and listened intently. He stood motionless, waiting until they drew nearer, and then he lifted his head, which he had bent sidewise the better to hear their almost soundless footsteps.

Pearl, seeing that her interview with Flick was soon to be interrupted, stopped short in the path and laid one hand detainingly upon his arm.

"Bob," she said, in her softest tone, "Bob, you and I have been pals for a good while; you aren't going against me now?"

He stopped, obedient to her touch, and looked at her unwillingly. He could always hold to his resolution in the face of her anger, but to withstand her when she chose to coax! That was another and more difficult matter. But if he met her gaze reluctantly there was no wavering in either his glance or his voice.

"I'm going to save you from Hanson, Pearl," he paused for the fraction of a second, "by any means I got to use."

She flashed one swift, violent glance of resentment, and then immediately controlled herself, as she could always do when she chose and when she was playing to win; so now she cast down her eyes and sighed.

The motes of the glancing sunbeams fell over her like a shower of gold, spangling the blue cotton frock until it appeared a more regal vesture than purple and ermine; her head was bent, her body drooped like a lily in the noonday heat, her whole att.i.tude was soft, and forlorn and appealing, as if she, this wilful, untamed creature, subdued herself to accept a wounding decree, and bore it with all the pathos of unmurmuring resignation.

Flick's heart smote him, he longed to clasp her to his breast and give her everything she impossibly craved. And now it was he who sighed, and then clinched his hands as if to steel his resolution.

She heard the sigh: she saw from the quick movement of his hands, the sudden, involuntary straightening of the shoulders that the struggle was on, so she lifted her eyes half wistfully, half doubtingly to his and thus gazed a moment and then smiled her faintly crooked heart-shattering smile:

"You and I have been friends too long for us to begin to quarrel now, isn't that so, Bob?" Again she laid her hand on his arm.

He caught it in both of his and pressed it hard. "I guess you know we'll never quarrel, Pearl. I guess you know that, no matter what you say or do, it'll never make any difference to me."

"'Course I know it. And you're not going against me now, Bob, either, are you?" She lifted his hand, and with one of her rare, caressing gestures laid it against her cheek for a moment and, turning her face a little, lightly brushed his palm with her lips.

He shivered and quickly drew his hand away. There was silence between them for a few moments and then he sighed again and more heavily than ever. "Oh, Pearl," he cried, "what do you want to make things so hard for? Let that dog--" he checked himself hastily, seeing her expression.

"I beg your pardon, you don't look at him that way. Let Hanson go. I know you about as well as anybody in the world, don't I?"

"Better," she nodded her head affirmatively, answering without hesitation.

"Well, won't you believe me when I tell you that you couldn't be happy with him. Won't you listen to me, Pearl?"

She looked at him a little slyly out of the corners of her eyes, a little one-sided, cynical smile on her lips. "We're always so dead sure what's going to make other people happy, ain't we, Bob? Always can see what's good for them so much better than they ever can see for themselves."

Flick looked away from her, down the long, shaded alley; once or twice he swallowed hard. "It ain't easy to say what I got to," a faint flush on his cheek, "'cause I hate to talk that-a-way to a lady, especially to you, Pearl; but I know you; and you can't be happy, you just naturally can't, with a man that's married for keeps to one woman, and that'll--G.o.d, Pearl! It hurts me to talk like this to you--that'll throw you over when he's tired of you just like he's thrown over several others."

She caught his arm and shook it violently, as if she scarcely knew what she did. "Throw me over! Me! the Black Pearl!" she cried hoa.r.s.ely, and broke into a torrent of Spanish oaths. "Dios!" she paused at last, panting for breath, "you must be crazy to talk to me like that, Bob Flick."

"I told you how I hated it," he answered, with that sad, unaltered patience with which he always took her unspared blame, "but I had to do it. You got to know these things, Pearl, and it's better for me to tell you than for your Pop to try."

"He wouldn't have gotten very far," she muttered.

"That's just it. You'd both have got to sc.r.a.pping and screaming at each other and nothing told."

"Better nothing told, as far as you are concerned," she flashed at him fiercely, and then lapsed into sullen silence.

"h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo!" Hughie's voice came to them from a side avenue or narrower path down which he had wandered.

"h.e.l.lo, yourself," Flick answered. "We'll wait for you right here."

"Bob." Pearl's soft voice held no evidence of rancor. "Tell me something quick, before he reaches us. Tell me true, and I'll be good friends, honest, I will."

"You know I'll tell you anything I can."

"Then--then--is she--that woman in Colina--pretty? As pretty as I am?"

He smiled bitterly. "No one's as pretty as you, Pearl. No, she ain't pretty."

"Well, what does she look like?" impatiently.

"Nothing much. Why, I don't know, just looks like most every other woman you see."

"Oh, Bob, quick! Is she little or big? Is she kind of saucy and quick, or is she quiet and slow? Quick, now, Hughie's almost here."