"Senorita," said Blanch at last, breaking the silence that ensued, "I believe you are still at heart the savage, or better, the nomad you were when you lived in the wilderness."

"When I lived in the Garden of Eden, in G.o.d's world, not man's, is what you mean," she replied.

"Do you never have a desire to return to it?" asked Bessie.

"The old days can never be effaced," answered Chiquita. "My thoughts continually revert to them when, as a little girl, I used to set meat and drink before my father and his guests as they sat in a circle about the fire in the center of his lodge or in our house and smoked the long red clay pipes, or, after the crops were harvested, roamed through the land during the hunting season; sometimes afoot, at other times in canoes or on horseback. There are times when such an insatiable longing for the old life seizes me that I become almost unmanageable. I long to throw myself down in the open--lie close in the embrace of Mother Earth, and breathe the smoke of the camp-fire. My unrest is like that of the birds when the spell of the spring and the autumn comes upon them and the migratory instinct seizes them, or like that of the great herds of reindeer in the North which travel each year to the sea to drink of its salty waters, and which, if prevented, die."

"Do you know," said Bessie to Blanch a little later, when they were alone in their room, "she's fascinating when she talks like that."

"Ah! that's just where the danger lies," answered Blanch. "Think of what might happen if she starts talking like that to Jack--it's just what he's waiting to hear."

XX

Juan must have fallen asleep. As he lay stretched upon the bench, he was awakened suddenly by the sound of vehement, pa.s.sionate words.

Peering cautiously through the bushes, he beheld Chiquita and Don Felipe standing facing one another in the same spot where the three women had been but a short time before. He was not near enough to overhear the conversation, but judging from the vehemence of their gestures and high-pitched voices, he rightly conjectured that their meeting was anything but an amicable one.

On seeing Chiquita with Blanch and Bessie, Don Felipe had discreetly refrained from joining them as he had promised; he would make his apologies to them in the evening. The opportunity for which he had been waiting since his return had come--he must see Chiquita alone. So he withdrew to a far corner of the garden, where he could observe the women without being seen, and when Blanch and Bessie returned to the house, he intercepted her. Although she had hourly expected to meet him ever since she had been apprised of his return, his appearance was so sudden she was taken unawares. She had reseated herself after Blanch and Bessie left and sat leaning with one elbow on the table and her head resting in her hand, lost in thought. She did not hear his approach from behind, but at the first sound of his voice she started to her feet, turning like a flash and facing him. Her movement was so sudden and unexpected that he too was taken aback.

"You evidently did not expect to see me this afternoon," he began with some hesitancy.

"I did not," she replied coldly. "I should have thought," she continued, looking him full in the eyes, "that the manhood in you would have forever prevented your return." Felipe winced under her words. A dark flush of anger suffused his face, and his lips quivered in an effort to frame the hot words he was about to utter in reply, but he checked himself.

"One is sometimes forced to follow the bidding of an instinct or desire even against one's will," he said, controlling himself with difficulty.

She drew her glove on her right hand without replying and took a step in the direction of the _patio_, as though to depart.

"Chiquita!" he exclaimed, stepping quickly in front of her and barring her way, "I have tried my best to remain away, but in spite of myself, I've been drawn irresistibly back to you--I could not help it. Besides,"

he added, "you must realize what it costs me."

"Better had you spared yourself the humiliation, Don Felipe," she answered.

"Listen, Chiquita, to what I have to say!"

"Spare yourself the pain, Don Felipe Ramirez. Nothing you can say can alter my att.i.tude toward you," she interrupted.

"You must hear what I have to say!" he cried pa.s.sionately, without heeding her impatience. "Ever since we parted, I have done nothing but travel, travel, over the face of the earth, in the vain hope of forgetting you. And if, during that time, I have committed excesses, it was the love of you that drove me to it in order that I might efface you from my memory forever. But, as you see, I cannot do it, and--I have come back again." It was easy to read the agony in his heart, divine the suffering which his humiliation caused him, and yet his words did not move her; not an atom of pity did they arouse within her, knowing as she did the arrogant, selfish being that he was.

"Chiquita, I love you still!" he burst forth.

"How dare you speak of love to me?" she cried. "Have you forgotten Pepita Delaguerra, whom you ruined, for whose death you are responsible?

You laughed and went on your way; she was only a flower to be broken and tossed aside. Well, I've not forgotten the day on which I found her alone and deserted, nor the hour of her death."

"Chiquita," he interrupted, "if suffering can atone for that misdeed--"

"Ah! not so fast, Don Felipe Ramirez," she answered, cutting him short.

"Let us understand one another once and for all! She forgave you with her dying breath, but as I knelt over her dead body, I vowed that if ever you crossed my path and made advances to me that, as sure as there's a G.o.d in heaven, I would encourage you, lead you on until you were mad, and then fling you from me like the dog that you are in order that you, too, might learn what it is to live without the one you love!"

Had she spat in his face, she could not have aroused the tiger in him more effectually.

"Chiquita!" he cried, gasping, his face livid with rage, "you're a devil!"

"No, I'm only a woman who had the courage to avenge another woman's wrong," she answered quietly. "Don't imagine that a wrong committed can ever be atoned for. It may be condoned by the world, or even forgiven by the one who was wronged, but that is all; the deed stands forever written against one." She watched him as he paced back and forth with clenched hands and teeth, his face ashen, his lips quivering, his whole being convulsed with emotion and remorse. For some minutes he was quite unable to speak, the longing to scream and seize her by the throat and throttle her was so overpowering.

"I understand," he said at length, in the calmest tone he could command, "you love Captain Forest; you think to marry him."

"That's no concern of yours!" she retorted, hotly.

"Listen, Chiquita," he said, fiercely. "The cold blood that flows in his veins can never satisfy the warm pa.s.sion of the South--a woman of your nature. I am richer than he is; I can strew your path with gold. I will make amends for the past; I was young, then. My one desire in life will be to fulfill your slightest wish, to live for your happiness only. Any sacrifice you name, I will make. I will make over my entire fortune to you if you will consent to our marriage."

"It makes me sick to hear you talk of love and marriage," she answered.

"Your idea of love is solely that of possession. What sort of love could one like you give me in comparison to his?"

"Ah! you do love him! But you will never marry him," he retorted furiously. "If I do not possess you, no one else shall!"

"Ah! you will kill me, perhaps?" she said, divining his thought. "Well, then, be it so! What greater felicity could there be for me than to die in the knowledge that he loves me--perhaps in his arms?" She drew back a pace and placing both hands on her breast, said: "Strike, Don Felipe, when and where the moment pleases you best!"

"Ha! ha! ha!" he laughed. "How could you take me to be so simple, so foolish? Oh, no, Senorita, not until the hour that you have exchanged vows and, intoxicated by love's first kiss, he presses you to his heart, then--then, Senorita, will I lay him dead at your feet in order that you also may realize what it is to live without the one you love," he said with a sneer, a faint smile wreathing his cruel lips as he watched the effect his words had upon her. There was a malicious gleam of exultation in his eyes as he saw her draw herself together suddenly and shudder as though struck by a knife.

"What say you to that, Senorita?" and he laughed in her face.

"What, dead at my feet? Such a one as you come between me and my happiness?" The rich red bronze of her face faded to a livid hue, almost white in its intensity. A strange, terrible light came into her eyes and, as she glided close up to him, he recoiled from her in terror as though from a panther about to spring. Don Felipe had never stood so near to death before. She halted and raised her right hand as if to strike him across the face, then paused and lowered it.

"Don Felipe Ramirez," she hissed in an almost inaudible voice, "if you so much as harm a hair of his head, I'll tear you limb from limb!"

"Bah!" he replied, recovering his equilibrium. "Do you think I fear a woman?"

"Don Felipe," she began slowly, controlling with effort the violent emotions that swept over her, "it is no idle boast if I remind you that no one in Chihuahua shoots better than I do."

"Ha!" he laughed, snapping his fingers. "You think to kill me?"

"And if I did," she replied slowly, her voice vibrant with pa.s.sion, "you would not be the first man I have killed, Don Felipe Ramirez. And what's more, if it comes to a question of you or him, I'll kill you as I would a snake or sage-rabbit." He started. He began to see her in a new light.

With her subtle wit, her grace and alluring beauty, she was far more dangerous than a man; but he was not intimidated. Craven though his soul might be, he could not be accused of cowardice in the face of danger.

Besides, what had he to live for? Better be dead than forced to live without her.

"Hearken, Don Felipe Ramirez," she continued calmly, her eyes riveted on his face. "I have ridden many times in battle by the side of my father before his death. The last time came very near being my end; it was when the Government sent troops against my people, and we were surrounded in the hills. That day my horse was killed under me twice. All day long we fought and charged the enemy's lines, but to no avail--we could not break them. The young officer in command of the Government's troops not only outgeneraled all our maneuvers, but his life seemed charmed, for, fire at him as often as we liked, we could not hit him. Finally realizing that there was no hope of escape so long as he remained in command, I rode forth alone between the lines and challenged him to single combat. He accepted the challenge, but when he drew near and saw that I was a woman, he refused to fight, for he was gallant as he was brave. But I was too quick for him; I forced him to fight. His bullet went through my shoulder, mine through his heart." She paused for an instant, then resumed. "So, just as we that day pa.s.sed over that brave young officer's body, so shall I pa.s.s over yours, Don Felipe Ramirez, if you persist in standing in my way."

For the first time he saw her in her true light--the Amazon, the woman who had been trained to fight as men fight, and who had fought shoulder to shoulder with men. He was silent. Never had she appeared so beautiful, so terrible, so alluring and irresistible as during her recital. The hour had come; the circle of death had closed about them, and he knew now for a certainty that it meant either his life or hers; that there was no longer any hope of a reconciliation, no longer room for them both in this life.

"Do you imagine that I fear the threats of a woman?" he said at last, in the same sneering tone as before, in which she, too, read his unmistakable answer.

"You have been warned," she answered quietly, and giving him a last searching look, she turned and left him abruptly. Had ever mortal drunk deeper of the cup of humiliation than he? The sound of her footsteps and tinkle of her spurs died away along the pathway as she disappeared around the corner of the house. He noted that she carried herself as erect as ever; every movement bespoke the unconquerable pride of her race. G.o.d! how he hated her! What would he not give to break that pride--that pride which seemed to enable her to surmount every obstacle.

It was not enough to kill Captain Forest. No, she must be broken completely, humiliated in the eyes of the world, humbled to the dust as he had been humbled; nothing short of that could satisfy him now. But how, how was her ruin to be accomplished? he asked himself as he paced back and forth, almost suffocating with rage. Suddenly an idea flashed through his mind, causing him to stop short.

"Ah!" he cried aloud, "why did she dance; why has she concealed her motive so carefully from the world? It must be the clew to some mystery in her life! G.o.d! if I could but learn the reason--"