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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Susy, A Story of the Plains, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Susy, A Story of the Plains
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #2495]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUSY, A STORY OF THE PLAINS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+SUSY, A STORY OF THE PLAINS
+
+
+By Bret Harte
+
+
+From: "ARGONAUT EDITION" OF THE WORKS OF BRET HARTE, VOL. 7
+
+P. F. COLLIER & SON
+
+NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+SUSY, A STORY OF THE PLAINS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Where the San Leandro turnpike stretches its dusty, hot, and
+interminable length along the valley, at a point where the heat and dust
+have become intolerable, the monotonous expanse of wild oats on either
+side illimitable, and the distant horizon apparently remoter than ever,
+it suddenly slips between a stunted thicket or hedge of "scrub oaks,"
+which until that moment had been undistinguishable above the long,
+misty, quivering level of the grain. The thicket rising gradually in
+height, but with a regular slope whose gradient had been determined
+by centuries of western trade winds, presently becomes a fair wood of
+live-oak, and a few hundred yards further at last assumes the aspect of
+a primeval forest. A delicious coolness fills the air; the long, shadowy
+aisles greet the aching eye with a soothing twilight; the murmur
+of unseen brooks is heard, and, by a strange irony, the enormous,
+widely-spaced stacks of wild oats are replaced by a carpet of
+tiny-leaved mosses and chickweed at the roots of trees, and the minutest
+clover in more open spaces. The baked and cracked adobe soil of the now
+vanished plains is exchanged for a heavy red mineral dust and gravel,
+rocks and boulders make their appearance, and at times the road is
+crossed by the white veins of quartz. It is still the San Leandro
+turnpike,--a few miles later to rise from this canada into the upper
+plains again,--but it is also the actual gateway and avenue to the
+Robles Rancho. When the departing visitors of Judge Peyton, now owner
+of the rancho, reach the outer plains again, after twenty minutes'
+drive from the house, the canada, rancho, and avenue have as completely
+disappeared from view as if they had been swallowed up in the plain.
+
+A cross road from the turnpike is the usual approach to the casa or
+mansion,--a long, low quadrangle of brown adobe wall in a bare but
+gently sloping eminence. And here a second surprise meets the stranger.
+He seems to have emerged from the forest upon another illimitable plain,
+but one utterly trackless, wild, and desolate. It is, however, only
+a lower terrace of the same valley, and, in fact, comprises the three
+square leagues of the Robles Rancho. Uncultivated and savage as it
+appears, given over to wild cattle and horses that sometimes sweep in
+frightened bands around the very casa itself, the long south wall of the
+corral embraces an orchard of gnarled pear-trees, an old vineyard, and
+a venerable garden of olives and oranges. A manor, formerly granted by
+Charles V. to Don Vincente Robles, of Andalusia, of pious and ascetic
+memory, it had commended itself to Judge Peyton, of Kentucky, a modern
+heretic pioneer of bookish tastes and secluded habits, who had bought it
+of Don Vincente's descendants. Here Judge Peyton seemed to have
+realized his idea of a perfect climate, and a retirement, half-studious,
+half-active, with something of the seignioralty of the old slaveholder
+that he had been. Here, too, he had seen the hope of restoring his
+wife's health--for which he had undertaken the overland emigration--more
+than fulfilled in Mrs. Peyton's improved physical condition, albeit
+at the expense, perhaps, of some of the languorous graces of ailing
+American wifehood.
+
+It was with a curious recognition of this latter fact that Judge Peyton
+watched his wife crossing the patio or courtyard with her arm around the
+neck of her adopted daughter "Suzette." A sudden memory crossed his mind
+of the first day that he had seen them together,--the day that he had
+brought the child and her boy-companion--two estrays from an emigrant
+train on the plains--to his wife in camp. Certainly Mrs. Peyton was
+stouter and stronger fibred; the wonderful Californian climate had
+materialized her figure, as it had their Eastern fruits and flowers, but
+it was stranger that "Susy"--the child of homelier frontier blood and
+parentage, whose wholesome peasant plumpness had at first attracted
+them--should have grown thinner and more graceful, and even seemed to
+have gained the delicacy his wife had lost. Six years had imperceptibly
+wrought this change; it had never struck him before so forcibly as on
+this day of Susy's return from the convent school at Santa Clara for the
+holidays.
+
+The woman and child had reached the broad veranda which, on one side of
+the patio, replaced the old Spanish corridor. It was the single modern
+innovation that Peyton had allowed himself when he had broken the
+quadrangular symmetry of the old house with a wooden "annexe" or
+addition beyond the walls. It made a pleasant lounging-place, shadowed
+from the hot midday sun by sloping roofs and awnings, and sheltered from
+the boisterous afternoon trade winds by the opposite side of the court.
+But Susy did not seem inclined to linger there long that morning, in
+spite of Mrs. Peyton's evident desire for a maternal tete-a-tete. The
+nervous preoccupation and capricious ennui of an indulged child showed
+in her pretty but discontented face, and knit her curved eyebrows, and
+Peyton saw a look of pain pass over his wife's face as the young girl
+suddenly and half-laughingly broke away and fluttered off towards the
+old garden.
+
+Mrs. Peyton looked up and caught her husband's eye.
+
+"I am afraid Susy finds it more dull here every time she returns," she
+said, with an apologetic smile. "I am glad she has invited one of her
+school friends to come for a visit to-morrow. You know, yourself, John,"
+she added, with a slight partisan attitude, "that the lonely old house
+and wild plain are not particularly lively for young people, however
+much they may suit YOUR ways."
+
+"It certainly must be dull if she can't stand it for three weeks in
+the year," said her husband dryly. "But we really cannot open the San
+Francisco house for her summer vacation, nor can we move from the rancho
+to a more fashionable locality. Besides, it will do her good to run
+wild here. I can remember when she wasn't so fastidious. In fact, I was
+thinking just now how changed she was from the day when we picked her
+up"--
+
+"How often am I to remind you, John," interrupted the lady, with some
+impatience, "that we agreed never to speak of her past, or even to think
+of her as anything but our own child. You know how it pains me! And the
+poor dear herself has forgotten it, and thinks of us only as her own
+parents. I really believe that if that wretched father and mother of
+hers had not been killed by the Indians, or were to come to life again,
+she would neither know them nor care for them. I mean, of course,
+John," she said, averting her eyes from a slightly cynical smile on
+her husband's face, "that it's only natural for young children to be
+forgetful, and ready to take new impressions."
+
+"And as long, dear, as WE are not the subjects of this youthful
+forgetfulness, and she isn't really finding US as stupid as the rancho,"
+replied her husband cheerfully, "I suppose we mustn't complain."
+
+"John, how can you talk such nonsense?" said Mrs. Peyton impatiently.
+"But I have no fear of that," she added, with a slightly ostentatious
+confidence. "I only wish I was as sure"--
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Of nothing happening that could take her from us. I do not mean death,
+John,--like our first little one. That does not happen to one twice; but
+I sometimes dread"--
+
+"What? She's only fifteen, and it's rather early to think about the only
+other inevitable separation,--marriage. Come, Ally, this is mere fancy.
+She has been given up to us by her family,--at least, by all that we
+know are left of them. I have legally adopted her. If I have not made
+her my heiress, it is because I prefer to leave everything to YOU, and
+I would rather she should know that she was dependent upon you for the
+future than upon me."
+
+"And I can make a will in her favor if I want to?" said Mrs. Peyton
+quickly.
+
+"Always," responded her husband smilingly; "but you have ample time to
+think of that, I trust. Meanwhile I have some news for you which may
+make Susy's visit to the rancho this time less dull to her. You remember
+Clarence Brant, the boy who was with her when we picked her up, and who
+really saved her life?"
+
+"No, I don't," said Mrs. Peyton pettishly, "nor do I want to! You know,
+John, how distasteful and unpleasant it is for me to have those dreary,
+petty, and vulgar details of the poor child's past life recalled, and,
+thank Heaven, I have forgotten them except when you choose to drag
+them before me. You agreed, long ago, that we were never to talk of the
+Indian massacre of her parents, so that we could also ignore it before
+her; then why do you talk of her vulgar friends, who are just as
+unpleasant? Please let us drop the past."
+
+"Willingly, my dear; but, unfortunately, we cannot make others do it.
+And this is a case in point. It appears that this boy, whom we brought
+to Sacramento to deliver to a relative"--
+
+"And who was a wicked little impostor,--you remember that yourself,
+John, for he said that he was the son of Colonel Brant, and that he was
+dead; and you know, and my brother Harry knew, that Colonel Brant was
+alive all the time, and that he was lying, and Colonel Brant was not his
+father," broke in Mrs. Peyton impatiently.
+
+"As it seems you do remember that much," said Peyton dryly, "it is only
+just to him that I should tell you that it appears that he was not an
+impostor. His story was TRUE. I have just learned that Colonel Brant WAS
+actually his father, but had concealed his lawless life here, as well
+as his identity, from the boy. He was really that vague relative to whom
+Clarence was confided, and under that disguise he afterwards protected
+the boy, had him carefully educated at the Jesuit College of San Jose,
+and, dying two years ago in that filibuster raid in Mexico, left him a
+considerable fortune."
+
+"And what has he to do with Susy's holidays?" said Mrs. Peyton, with
+uneasy quickness. "John, you surely cannot expect her ever to meet this
+common creature again, with his vulgar ways. His wretched associates
+like that Jim Hooker, and, as you yourself admit, the blood of an
+assassin, duelist, and--Heaven knows what kind of a pirate his father
+wasn't at the last--in his veins! You don't believe that a lad of this
+type, however much of his father's ill-gotten money he may have, can be
+fit company for your daughter? You never could have thought of inviting
+him here?"
+
+"I'm afraid that's exactly what I have done, Ally," said the smiling but
+unmoved Peyton; "but I'm still more afraid that your conception of his
+present condition is an unfair one, like your remembrance of his past.
+Father Sobriente, whom I met at San Jose yesterday, says he is very
+intelligent, and thoroughly educated, with charming manners and refined
+tastes. His father's money, which they say was an investment for him in
+Carson's Bank five years ago, is as good as any one's, and his father's
+blood won't hurt him in California or the Southwest. At least, he is
+received everywhere, and Don Juan Robinson was his guardian. Indeed, as
+far as social status goes, it might be a serious question if the actual
+daughter of the late John Silsbee, of Pike County, and the adopted
+child of John Peyton was in the least his superior. As Father Sobriente
+evidently knew Clarence's former companionship with Susy and her
+parents, it would be hardly politic for us to ignore it or seem to be
+ashamed of it. So I intrusted Sobriente with an invitation to young
+Brant on the spot."
+
+Mrs. Peyton's impatience, indignation, and opposition, which had
+successively given way before her husband's quiet, masterful good humor,
+here took the form of a neurotic fatalism. She shook her head with
+superstitious resignation.
+
+"Didn't I tell you, John, that I always had a dread of something
+coming"--
+
+"But if it comes in the shape of a shy young lad, I see nothing
+singularly portentous in it. They have not met since they were quite
+small; their tastes have changed; if they don't quarrel and fight they
+may be equally bored with each other. Yet until then, in one way or
+another, Clarence will occupy the young lady's vacant caprice, and
+her school friend, Mary Rogers, will be here, you know, to divide
+his attentions, and," added Peyton, with mock solemnity, "preserve the
+interest of strict propriety. Shall I break it to her,--or will you?"
+
+"No,--yes," hesitated Mrs. Peyton; "perhaps I had better."
+
+"Very well, I leave his character in your hands; only don't prejudice
+her into a romantic fancy for him." And Judge Peyton lounged smilingly
+away.
+
+Then two little tears forced themselves from Mrs. Peyton's eyes. Again
+she saw that prospect of uninterrupted companionship with Susy, upon
+which each successive year she had built so many maternal hopes and
+confidences, fade away before her. She dreaded the coming of Susy's
+school friend, who shared her daughter's present thoughts and intimacy,
+although she had herself invited her in a more desperate dread of the
+child's abstracted, discontented eyes; she dreaded the advent of the boy
+who had shared Susy's early life before she knew her; she dreaded the
+ordeal of breaking the news and perhaps seeing that pretty animation
+spring into her eyes, which she had begun to believe no solicitude or
+tenderness of her own ever again awakened,--and yet she dreaded still
+more that her husband should see it too. For the love of this recreated
+woman, although not entirely materialized with her changed fibre, had
+nevertheless become a coarser selfishness fostered by her loneliness and
+limited experience. The maternal yearning left unsatisfied by the loss
+of her first-born had never been filled by Susy's thoughtless acceptance
+of it; she had been led astray by the child's easy transference of
+dependence and the forgetfulness of youth, and was only now dimly
+conscious of finding herself face to face with an alien nature.
+
+She started to her feet and followed the direction that Susy had taken.
+For a moment she had to front the afternoon trade wind which chilled her
+as it swept the plain beyond the gateway, but was stopped by the
+adobe wall, above whose shelter the stunted treetops--through years of
+exposure--slanted as if trimmed by gigantic shears. At first, looking
+down the venerable alley of fantastic, knotted shapes, she saw no trace
+of Susy. But half way down the gleam of a white skirt against a thicket
+of dark olives showed her the young girl sitting on a bench in a
+neglected arbor. In the midst of this formal and faded pageantry she
+looked charmingly fresh, youthful, and pretty; and yet the unfortunate
+woman thought that her attitude and expression at that moment suggested
+more than her fifteen years of girlhood. Her golden hair still hung
+unfettered over her straight, boy-like back and shoulders; her short
+skirt still showed her childish feet and ankles; yet there seemed to be
+some undefined maturity or a vague womanliness about her that stung Mrs.
+Peyton's heart. The child was growing away from her, too!
+
+"Susy!"
+
+The young girl raised her head quickly; her deep violet eyes seemed also
+to leap with a sudden suspicion, and with a half-mechanical, secretive
+movement, that might have been only a schoolgirl's instinct, her right
+hand had slipped a paper on which she was scribbling between the leaves
+of her book. Yet the next moment, even while looking interrogatively
+at her mother, she withdrew the paper quietly, tore it up into small
+pieces, and threw them on the ground.
+
+But Mrs. Peyton was too preoccupied with her news to notice the
+circumstance, and too nervous in her haste to be tactful. "Susy, your
+father has invited that boy, Clarence Brant,--you know that creature
+we picked up and assisted on the plains, when you were a mere baby,--to
+come down here and make us a visit."
+
+Her heart seemed to stop beating as she gazed breathlessly at the girl.
+But Susy's face, unchanged except for the alert, questioning eyes,
+remained fixed for a moment; then a childish smile of wonder opened her
+small red mouth, expanded it slightly as she said simply:--
+
+"Lor, mar! He hasn't, really!"
+
+Inexpressibly, yet unreasonably reassured, Mrs. Peyton hurriedly
+recounted her husband's story of Clarence's fortune, and was even
+joyfully surprised into some fairness of statement.
+
+"But you don't remember him much, do you, dear? It was so long ago,
+and--you are quite a young lady now," she added eagerly.
+
+The open mouth was still fixed; the wondering smile would have been
+idiotic in any face less dimpled, rosy, and piquant than Susy's. After
+a slight gasp, as if in still incredulous and partly reminiscent
+preoccupation, she said without replying:--
+
+"How funny! When is he coming?"
+
+"Day after to-morrow," returned Mrs. Peyton, with a contented smile.
+
+"And Mary Rogers will be here, too. It will be real fun for her."
+
+Mrs. Peyton was more than reassured. Half ashamed of her jealous fears,
+she drew Susy's golden head towards her and kissed it. And the young
+girl, still reminiscent, with smilingly abstracted toleration, returned
+the caress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+It was not thought inconsistent with Susy's capriciousness that she
+should declare her intention the next morning of driving her pony buggy
+to Santa Inez to anticipate the stage-coach and fetch Mary Rogers from
+the station. Mrs. Peyton, as usual, supported the young lady's whim and
+opposed her husband's objections.
+
+"Because the stage-coach happens to pass our gate, John, it is no reason
+why Susy shouldn't drive her friend from Santa Inez if she prefers it.
+It's only seven miles, and you can send Pedro to follow her on horseback
+to see that she comes to no harm."
+
+"But that isn't Pedro's business," said Peyton.
+
+"He ought to be proud of the privilege," returned the lady, with a toss
+of her head.
+
+Peyton smiled grimly, but yielded; and when the stage-coach drew up the
+next afternoon at the Santa Inez Hotel, Susy was already waiting in her
+pony carriage before it. Although the susceptible driver, expressman,
+and passengers generally, charmed with this golden-haired vision,
+would have gladly protracted the meeting of the two young friends, the
+transfer of Mary Rogers from the coach to the carriage was effected with
+considerable hauteur and youthful dignity by Susy. Even Mary Rogers,
+two years Susy's senior, a serious brunette, whose good-humor did not,
+however, impair her capacity for sentiment, was impressed and even
+embarrassed by her demeanor; but only for a moment. When they had driven
+from the hotel and were fairly hidden again in the dust of the outlying
+plain, with the discreet Pedro hovering in the distance, Susy dropped
+the reins, and, grasping her companion's arm, gasped, in tones of
+dramatic intensity:--
+
+"He's been heard from, and is coming HERE!"
+
+"Who?"
+
+A sickening sense that her old confidante had already lost touch with
+her--they had been separated for nearly two weeks--might have passed
+through Susy's mind.
+
+"Who?" she repeated, with a vicious shake of Mary's arm, "why, Clarence
+Brant, of course."
+
+"No!" said Mary, vaguely.
+
+Nevertheless, Susy went on rapidly, as if to neutralize the effect of
+her comrade's vacuity.
+
+"You never could have imagined it! Never! Even I, when mother told me, I
+thought I should have fainted, and ALL would have been revealed!"
+
+"But," hesitated the still wondering confidante, "I thought that was all
+over long ago. You haven't seen him nor heard from him since that day
+you met accidentally at Santa Clara, two years ago, have you?"
+
+Susy's eyes shot a blue ray of dark but unutterable significance into
+Mary's, and then were carefully averted. Mary Rogers, although perfectly
+satisfied that Susy had never seen Clarence since, nevertheless
+instantly accepted and was even thrilled with this artful suggestion
+of a clandestine correspondence. Such was the simple faith of youthful
+friendship.
+
+"Mother knows nothing of it, of course, and a word from you or him would
+ruin everything," continued the breathless Susy. "That's why I came
+to fetch you and warn you. You must see him first, and warn him at any
+cost. If I hadn't run every risk to come here to-day, Heaven knows what
+might have happened! What do you think of the ponies, dear? They're
+my own, and the sweetest! This one's Susy, that one Clarence,--but
+privately, you know. Before the world and in the stables he's only
+Birdie."
+
+"But I thought you wrote to me that you called them 'Paul and
+Virginie,'" said Mary doubtfully.
+
+"I do, sometimes," said Susy calmly. "But one has to learn to suppress
+one's feelings, dear!" Then quickly, "I do so hate deceit, don't you?
+Tell me, don't you think deceit perfectly hateful?"
+
+Without waiting for her friend's loyal assent, she continued rapidly:
+"And he's just rolling in wealth! and educated, papa says, to the
+highest degree!"
+
+"Then," began Mary, "if he's coming with your mother's consent, and if
+you haven't quarreled, and it is not broken off, I should think you'd be
+just delighted."
+
+But another quick flash from Susy's eyes dispersed these beatific
+visions of the future. "Hush!" she said, with suppressed dramatic
+intensity. "You know not what you say! There's an awful mystery hangs
+over him. Mary Rogers," continued the young girl, approaching her small
+mouth to her confidante's ear in an appalling whisper. "His father
+was--a PIRATE! Yes--lived a pirate and was killed a pirate!"
+
+The statement, however, seemed to be partly ineffective. Mary Rogers was
+startled but not alarmed, and even protested feebly. "But," she said,
+"if the father's dead, what's that to do with Clarence? He was always
+with your papa--so you told me, dear--or other people, and couldn't
+catch anything from his own father. And I'm sure, dearest, he always
+seemed nice and quiet."
+
+"Yes, SEEMED," returned Susy darkly, "but that's all you know! It was in
+his BLOOD. You know it always is,--you read it in the books,--you
+could see it in his eye. There were times, my dear, when he was
+thwarted,--when the slightest attention from another person to me
+revealed it! I have kept it to myself,--but think, dearest, of the
+effects of jealousy on that passionate nature! Sometimes I tremble to
+look back upon it."
+
+Nevertheless, she raised her hands and threw back her lovely golden mane
+from her childish shoulders with an easy, untroubled gesture. It was
+singular that Mary Rogers, leaning back comfortably in the buggy, also
+accepted these heart-rending revelations with comfortably knitted
+brows and luxuriously contented concern. If she found it difficult to
+recognize in the picture just drawn by Susy the quiet, gentle, and sadly
+reserved youth she had known, she said nothing. After a silence, lazily
+watching the distant wheeling vacquero, she said:--
+
+"And your father always sends an outrider like that with you? How nice!
+So picturesque--and like the old Spanish days."
+
+"Hush!" said Susy, with another unutterable glance.
+
+But this time Mary was in full sympathetic communion with her friend,
+and equal to any incoherent hiatus of revelation.
+
+"No!" she said promptly, "you don't mean it!"
+
+"Don't ask me, I daren't say anything to papa, for he'd be simply
+furious. But there are times when we're alone, and Pedro wheels down so
+near with SUCH a look in his black eyes, that I'm all in a tremble. It's
+dreadful! They say he's a real Briones,--and he sometimes says something
+in Spanish, ending with 'senorita,' but I pretend I don't understand."
+
+"And I suppose that if anything should happen to the ponies, he'd just
+risk his life to save you."
+
+"Yes,--and it would be so awful,--for I just hate him!"
+
+"But if I was with you, dear, he couldn't expect you to be as grateful
+as if you were alone. Susy!" she continued after a pause, "if you just
+stirred up the ponies a little so as to make 'em go fast, perhaps he
+might think they'd got away from you, and come dashing down here. It
+would be so funny to see him,--wouldn't it?"
+
+The two girls looked at each other; their eyes sparkled already with
+a fearful joy,--they drew a long breath of guilty anticipation. For a
+moment Susy even believed in her imaginary sketch of Pedro's devotion.
+
+"Papa said I wasn't to use the whip except in a case of necessity,"
+she said, reaching for the slender silver-handled toy, and setting
+her pretty lips together with the added determination of disobedience.
+"G'long!"--and she laid the lash smartly on the shining backs of the
+animals.
+
+They were wiry, slender brutes of Mojave Indian blood, only lately
+broken to harness, and still undisciplined in temper. The lash sent
+them rearing into the air, where, forgetting themselves in the slackened
+traces and loose reins, they came down with a succession of bounds that
+brought the light buggy leaping after them with its wheels scarcely
+touching the ground. That unlucky lash had knocked away the bonds of
+a few months' servitude and sent the half-broken brutes instinctively
+careering with arched backs and kicking heels into the field towards the
+nearest cover.
+
+Mary Rogers cast a hurried glance over her shoulder. Alas, they had
+not calculated on the insidious levels of the terraced plain, and the
+faithful Pedro had suddenly disappeared; the intervention of six inches
+of rising wild oats had wiped him out of the prospect and their possible
+salvation as completely as if he had been miles away. Nevertheless,
+the girls were not frightened; perhaps they had not time. There was,
+however, the briefest interval for the most dominant of feminine
+emotions, and it was taken advantage of by Susy.
+
+"It was all YOUR fault, dear!" she gasped, as the forewheels of the
+buggy, dropping into a gopher rut, suddenly tilted up the back of the
+vehicle and shot its fair occupants into the yielding palisades of dusty
+grain. The shock detached the whiffletree from the splinter-bar, snapped
+the light pole, and, turning the now thoroughly frightened animals again
+from their course, sent them, goaded by the clattering fragments, flying
+down the turnpike. Half a mile farther on they overtook the gleaming
+white canvas hood of a slowly moving wagon drawn by two oxen, and,
+swerving again, the nearer pony stepped upon a trailing trace and
+ingloriously ended their career by rolling himself and his companion in
+the dust at the very feet of the peacefully plodding team.
+
+Equally harmless and inglorious was the catastrophe of Susy and her
+friend. The strong, elastic stalks of the tall grain broke their fall
+and enabled them to scramble to their feet, dusty, disheveled, but
+unhurt, and even unstunned by the shock. Their first instinctive cries
+over a damaged hat or ripped skirt were followed by the quick reaction
+of childish laughter. They were alone; the very defection of Pedro
+consoled them, in its absence of any witness to their disaster; even
+their previous slight attitude to each other was forgotten. They groped
+their way, pushing and panting, to the road again, where, beholding
+the overset buggy with its wheels ludicrously in the air, they suddenly
+seized and shook each other, and in an outburst of hilarious ecstasy,
+fairly laughed until the tears came into their eyes.
+
+Then there was a breathless silence.
+
+"The stage will be coming by in a moment," composedly said Susy. "Fix
+me, dear."
+
+Mary Rogers calmly walked around her friend, bestowing a practical
+shake there, a pluck here, completely retying one bow and restoring an
+engaging fullness to another, yet critically examining, with her head on
+one side, the fascinating result. Then Susy performed the same function
+for Mary with equal deliberation and deftness. Suddenly Mary started and
+looked up.
+
+"It's coming," she said quickly, "and they've SEEN US."
+
+The expression of the faces of the two girls instantly changed. A
+pained dignity and resignation, apparently born of the most harrowing
+experiences and controlled only by perfect good breeding, was distinctly
+suggested in their features and attitude as they stood patiently by the
+wreck of their overturned buggy awaiting the oncoming coach. In sharp
+contrast was the evident excitement among the passengers. A few rose
+from their seats in their eagerness; as the stage pulled up in the road
+beside the buggy four or five of the younger men leaped to the ground.
+
+"Are you hurt, miss?" they gasped sympathetically.
+
+Susy did not immediately reply, but ominously knitted her pretty
+eyebrows as if repressing a spasm of pain. Then she said, "Not at all,"
+coldly, with the suggestion of stoically concealing some lasting or
+perhaps fatal injury, and took the arm of Mary Rogers, who had, in the
+mean time, established a touching yet graceful limp.
+
+Declining the proffered assistance of the passengers, they helped each
+other into the coach, and freezingly requesting the driver to stop at
+Mr. Peyton's gate, maintained a statuesque and impressive silence. At
+the gates they got down, followed by the sympathetic glances of the
+others.
+
+To all appearance their escapade, albeit fraught with dangerous
+possibilities, had happily ended. But in the economy of human affairs,
+as in nature, forces are not suddenly let loose without more or less
+sympathetic disturbance which is apt to linger after the impelling
+cause is harmlessly spent. The fright which the girls had unsuccessfully
+attempted to produce in the heart of their escort had passed him to
+become a panic elsewhere. Judge Peyton, riding near the gateway of his
+rancho, was suddenly confronted by the spectacle of one of his vacqueros
+driving on before him the two lassoed and dusty ponies, with a face that
+broke into violent gesticulating at his master's quick interrogation.
+
+"Ah! Mother of God! It was an evil day! For the bronchos had run away,
+upset the buggy, and had only been stopped by a brave Americano of an
+ox-team, whose lasso was even now around their necks, to prove it, and
+who had been dragged a matter of a hundred varas, like a calf, at their
+heels. The senoritas,--ah! had he not already said they were safe, by
+the mercy of Jesus!--picked up by the coach, and would be here at this
+moment."
+
+"But where was Pedro all the time? What was he doing?" demanded Peyton,
+with a darkened face and gathering anger.
+
+The vacquero looked at his master, and shrugged his shoulders
+significantly. At any other time Peyton would have remembered that
+Pedro, as the reputed scion of a decayed Spanish family, and claiming
+superiority, was not a favorite with his fellow-retainers. But the
+gesture, half of suggestion, half of depreciation, irritated Peyton
+still more.
+
+"Well, where is this American who DID something when there wasn't a
+man among you all able to stop a child's runaway ponies?" he said
+sarcastically. "Let me see him."
+
+The vacquero became still more deprecatory.
+
+"Ah! He had driven on with his team towards San Antonio. He would not
+stop to be thanked. But that was the whole truth. He, Incarnacion, could
+swear to it as to the Creed. There was nothing more."
+
+"Take those beasts around the back way to the corral," said Peyton,
+thoroughly enraged, "and not a word of this to any one at the casa, do
+you hear? Not a word to Mrs. Peyton or the servants, or, by Heaven, I'll
+clear the rancho of the whole lazy crew of you at once. Out of the way
+there, and be off!"
+
+He spurred his horse past the frightened menial, and dashed down the
+narrow lane that led to the gate. But, as Incarnacion had truly said,
+"It was an evil day," for at the bottom of the lane, ambling slowly
+along as he lazily puffed a yellow cigarette, appeared the figure of
+the erring Pedro. Utterly unconscious of the accident, attributing the
+disappearance of his charges to the inequalities of the plain, and,
+in truth, little interested in what he firmly believed was his purely
+artificial function, he had even made a larger circuit to stop at a
+wayside fonda for refreshments.
+
+Unfortunately, there is no more illogical sequence of human emotion than
+the exasperation produced by the bland manner of the unfortunate object
+who has excited it, although that very unconcern may be the convincing
+proof of innocence of intention. Judge Peyton, already influenced, was
+furious at the comfortable obliviousness of his careless henchman, and
+rode angrily towards him. Only a quick turn of Pedro's wrist kept the
+two men from coming into collision.
+
+"Is this the way you attend to your duty?" demanded Peyton, in a thick,
+suppressed voice, "Where is the buggy? Where is my daughter?"
+
+There was no mistaking Judge Peyton's manner, even if the reason of
+it was not so clear to Pedro's mind, and his hot Latin blood flew
+instinctively to his face. But for that, he might have shown some
+concern or asked an explanation. As it was, he at once retorted with the
+national shrug and the national half-scornful, half-lazy "Quien sabe?"
+
+"Who knows?" repeated Peyton, hotly. "I do! She was thrown out of her
+buggy through your negligence and infernal laziness! The ponies ran
+away, and were stopped by a stranger who wasn't afraid of risking
+his bones, while you were limping around somewhere like a slouching,
+cowardly coyote."
+
+The vacquero struggled a moment between blank astonishment and
+inarticulate rage. At last he burst out:--
+
+"I am no coyote! I was there! I saw no runaway!"
+
+"Don't lie to me, sir!" roared Peyton. "I tell you the buggy was
+smashed, the girls were thrown out and nearly killed"--He stopped
+suddenly. The sound of youthful laughter had come from the bottom of the
+lane, where Susy Peyton and Mary Rogers, just alighted from the coach,
+in the reaction of their previous constrained attitude, were flying
+hilariously into view. A slight embarrassment crossed Peyton's face; a
+still deeper flush of anger overspread Pedro's sullen cheek.
+
+Then Pedro found tongue again, his native one, rapidly, violently,
+half incoherently. "Ah, yes! It had come to this. It seems he was not
+a vacquero, a companion of the padrone on lands that had been his own
+before the Americanos robbed him of it, but a servant, a lackey of
+muchachas, an attendant on children to amuse them, or--why not?--an
+appendage to his daughter's state! Ah, Jesus Maria! such a state! such a
+muchacha! A picked-up foundling--a swineherd's daughter--to be
+ennobled by his, Pedro's, attendance, and for whose vulgar, clownish
+tricks,--tricks of a swineherd's daughter,--he, Pedro, was to be brought
+to book and insulted as if she were of Hidalgo blood! Ah, Caramba! Don
+Juan Peyton would find he could no more make a servant of him than he
+could make a lady of her!"
+
+The two young girls were rapidly approaching. Judge Peyton spurred his
+horse beside the vacquero's, and, swinging the long thong of his bridle
+ominously in his clenched fingers, said, with a white face:--
+
+"Vamos!"
+
+Pedro's hand slid towards his sash. Peyton only looked at him with a
+rigid smile of scorn.
+
+"Or I'll lash you here before them both," he added in a lower voice.
+
+The vacquero met Peyton's relentless eyes with a yellow flash of hate,
+drew his reins sharply, until his mustang, galled by the cruel bit,
+reared suddenly as if to strike at the immovable American, then,
+apparently with the same action, he swung it around on its hind legs, as
+on a pivot, and dashed towards the corral at a furious gallop.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Meantime the heroic proprietor of the peaceful ox-team, whose valor
+Incarnacion had so infelicitously celebrated, was walking listlessly in
+the dust beside his wagon. At a first glance his slouching figure, taken
+in connection with his bucolic conveyance, did not immediately suggest
+a hero. As he emerged from the dusty cloud it could be seen that he was
+wearing a belt from which a large dragoon revolver and hunting knife
+were slung, and placed somewhat ostentatiously across the wagon seat
+was a rifle. Yet the other contents of the wagon were of a singularly
+inoffensive character, and even suggested articles of homely barter.
+Culinary utensils of all sizes, tubs, scullery brushes, and clocks, with
+several rolls of cheap carpeting and calico, might have been the wares
+of some traveling vender. Yet, as they were only visible through a flap
+of the drawn curtains of the canvas hood, they did not mitigate the
+general aggressive effect of their owner's appearance. A red bandanna
+handkerchief knotted and thrown loosely over his shoulders, a slouched
+hat pulled darkly over a head of long tangled hair, which, however,
+shadowed a round, comfortable face, scantily and youthfully bearded,
+were part of these confusing inconsistencies.
+
+The shadows of the team wagon were already lengthening grotesquely over
+the flat, cultivated fields, which for some time had taken the place of
+the plains of wild oats in the branch road into which they had turned.
+The gigantic shadow of the proprietor, occasionally projected before it,
+was in characteristic exaggeration, and was often obliterated by a puff
+of dust, stirred by the plodding hoofs of the peaceful oxen, and swept
+across the field by the strong afternoon trades. The sun sank lower,
+although a still potent presence above the horizon line; the creaking
+wagon lumbered still heavily along. Yet at intervals its belligerent
+proprietor would start up from his slouching, silent march, break out
+into violent, disproportionate, but utterly ineffective objurgation
+of his cattle, jump into the air and kick his heels together in some
+paroxysm of indignation against them,--an act, however, which was
+received always with heavy bovine indifference, the dogged scorn of
+swaying, repudiating heads, or the dull contempt of lazily flicking
+tails.
+
+Towards sunset one or two straggling barns and cottages indicated their
+approach to the outskirts of a country town or settlement. Here the team
+halted, as if the belligerent-looking teamster had felt his appearance
+was inconsistent with an effeminate civilization, and the oxen were
+turned into an open waste opposite a nondescript wooden tenement, half
+farmhouse and half cabin, evidently of the rudest Western origin. He may
+have recognized the fact that these "shanties" were not, as the ordinary
+traveler might infer, the first rude shelter of the original pioneers
+or settlers, but the later makeshifts of some recent Western immigrants
+who, like himself, probably found themselves unequal to the settled
+habits of the village, and who still retained their nomadic instincts.
+It chanced, however, that the cabin at present was occupied by a New
+England mechanic and his family, who had emigrated by ship around Cape
+Horn, and who had no experience of the West, the plains, or its people.
+It was therefore with some curiosity and a certain amount of fascinated
+awe that the mechanic's only daughter regarded from the open door of her
+dwelling the arrival of this wild and lawless-looking stranger.
+
+Meantime he had opened the curtains of the wagon and taken from its
+interior a number of pots, pans, and culinary utensils, which he
+proceeded to hang upon certain hooks that were placed on the outer ribs
+of the board and the sides of the vehicle. To this he added a roll of
+rag carpet, the end of which hung from the tailboard, and a roll of pink
+calico temptingly displayed on the seat. The mystification and curiosity
+of the young girl grew more intense at these proceedings. It looked
+like the ordinary exhibition of a traveling peddler, but the gloomy
+and embattled appearance of the man himself scouted so peaceful and
+commonplace a suggestion. Under the pretense of chasing away a marauding
+hen, she sallied out upon the waste near the wagon. It then became
+evident that the traveler had seen her, and was not averse to her
+interest in his movements, although he had not changed his attitude of
+savage retrospection. An occasional ejaculation of suppressed passion,
+as if the memory of some past conflict was too much for him, escaped him
+even in this peaceful occupation. As this possibly caused the young girl
+to still hover timidly in the distance, he suddenly entered the
+wagon and reappeared carrying a tin bucket, with which he somewhat
+ostentatiously crossed her path, his eyes darkly wandering as if seeking
+something.
+
+"If you're lookin' for the spring, it's a spell furder on--by the
+willows."
+
+It was a pleasant voice, the teamster thought, albeit with a dry, crisp,
+New England accent unfamiliar to his ears. He looked into the depths
+of an unlovely blue-check sunbonnet, and saw certain small, irregular
+features and a sallow check, lit up by a pair of perfectly innocent,
+trustful, and wondering brown eyes. Their timid possessor seemed to be a
+girl of seventeen, whose figure, although apparently clad in one of her
+mother's gowns, was still undeveloped and repressed by rustic hardship
+and innutrition. As her eyes met his she saw that the face of this
+gloomy stranger was still youthful, by no means implacable, and, even at
+that moment, was actually suffused by a brick-colored blush! In matters
+of mere intuition, the sex, even in its most rustic phase, is still our
+superior; and this unsophisticated girl, as the trespasser stammered,
+"Thank ye, miss," was instinctively emboldened to greater freedom.
+
+"Dad ain't tu hum, but ye kin have a drink o' milk if ye keer for it."
+
+She motioned shyly towards the cabin, and then led the way. The
+stranger, with an inarticulate murmur, afterwards disguised as a cough,
+followed her meekly. Nevertheless, by the time they had reached the
+cabin he had shaken his long hair over his eyes again, and a dark
+abstraction gathered chiefly in his eyebrows. But it did not efface from
+the girl's mind the previous concession of a blush, and, although it
+added to her curiosity, did not alarm her. He drank the milk awkwardly.
+But by the laws of courtesy, even among the most savage tribes, she
+felt he was, at that moment at least, harmless. A timid smile fluttered
+around her mouth as she said:--
+
+"When ye hung up them things I thought ye might be havin' suthing to
+swap or sell. That is,"--with tactful politeness,--"mother was wantin'
+a new skillet, and it would have been handy if you'd had one. But"--with
+an apologetic glance at his equipments--"if it ain't your business, it's
+all right, and no offense."
+
+"I've got a lot o' skillets," said the strange teamster, with marked
+condescension, "and she can have one. They're all that's left outer a
+heap o' trader's stuff captured by Injuns t'other side of Laramie. We
+had a big fight to get 'em back. Lost two of our best men,--scalped at
+Bloody Creek,--and had to drop a dozen redskins in their tracks,--me and
+another man,--lyin' flat in er wagon and firin' under the flaps o'
+the canvas. I don't know ez they waz wuth it," he added in gloomy
+retrospect; "but I've got to get rid of 'em, I reckon, somehow, afore I
+work over to Deadman's Gulch again."
+
+The young girl's eyes brightened timidly with a feminine mingling of
+imaginative awe and personal, pitying interest. He was, after all, so
+young and amiable looking for such hardships and adventures. And with
+all this, he--this Indian fighter--was a little afraid of HER!
+
+"Then that's why you carry that knife and six-shooter?" she said. "But
+you won't want 'em now, here in the settlement."
+
+"That's ez mebbe," said the stranger darkly. He paused, and then
+suddenly, as if recklessly accepting a dangerous risk, unbuckled his
+revolver and handed it abstractedly to the young girl. But the sheath
+of the bowie-knife was a fixture in his body-belt, and he was obliged
+to withdraw the glittering blade by itself, and to hand it to her in all
+its naked terrors. The young girl received the weapons with a smiling
+complacency. Upon such altars as these the skeptical reader will
+remember that Mars had once hung his "battered shield," his lance, and
+"uncontrolled crest."
+
+Nevertheless, the warlike teamster was not without embarrassment.
+Muttering something about the necessity of "looking after his stock,"
+he achieved a hesitating bow, backed awkwardly out of the door, and
+receiving from the conquering hands of the young girl his weapons again,
+was obliged to carry them somewhat ingloriously in his hands across
+the road, and put them on the wagon seat, where, in company with the
+culinary articles, they seemed to lose their distinctively aggressive
+character. Here, although his cheek was still flushed from his peaceful
+encounter, his voice regained some of its hoarse severity as he drove
+the oxen from the muddy pool into which they had luxuriantly wandered,
+and brought their fodder from the wagon. Later, as the sun was setting,
+he lit a corn-cob pipe, and somewhat ostentatiously strolled down the
+road, with a furtive eye lingering upon the still open door of the
+farmhouse. Presently two angular figures appeared from it, the farmer
+and his wife, intent on barter.
+
+These he received with his previous gloomy preoccupation, and a slight
+variation of the story he had told their daughter. It is possible
+that his suggestive indifference piqued and heightened the bargaining
+instincts of the woman, for she not only bought the skillet, but
+purchased a clock and a roll of carpeting. Still more, in some effusion
+of rustic courtesy, she extended an invitation to him to sup with them,
+which he declined and accepted in the same embarrassed breath, returning
+the proffered hospitality by confidentially showing them a couple of
+dried scalps, presumably of Indian origin. It was in the same moment
+of human weakness that he answered their polite query as to "what they
+might call him," by intimating that his name was "Red Jim,"--a title of
+achievement by which he was generally known, which for the present must
+suffice them. But during the repast that followed this was shortened to
+"Mister Jim," and even familiarly by the elders to plain "Jim." Only
+the young girl habitually used the formal prefix in return for the "Miss
+Phoebe" that he called her.
+
+With three such sympathetic and unexperienced auditors the gloomy
+embarrassment of Red Jim was soon dissipated, although it could hardly
+be said that he was generally communicative. Dark tales of Indian
+warfare, of night attacks and wild stampedes, in which he had always
+taken a prominent part, flowed freely from his lips, but little else
+of his past history or present prospects. And even his narratives of
+adventure were more or less fragmentary and imperfect in detail.
+
+"You woz saying," said the farmer, with slow, matter of fact, New
+England deliberation, "ez how you guessed you woz beguiled amongst the
+Injins by your Mexican partner, a pow'ful influential man, and yet you
+woz the only one escaped the gen'ral slarterin'. How came the Injins to
+kill HIM,--their friend?"
+
+"They didn't," returned Jim, with ominously averted eyes.
+
+"What became of him?" continued the farmer.
+
+Red Jim shadowed his eyes with his hand, and cast a dark glance of
+scrutiny out of the doors and windows. The young girl perceived it with
+timid, fascinated concern, and said hurriedly:--
+
+"Don't ask him, father! Don't you see he mustn't tell?"
+
+"Not when spies may be hangin' round, and doggin' me at every step,"
+said Red Jim, as if reflecting, with another furtive glance towards
+the already fading prospect without. "They've sworn to revenge him," he
+added moodily.
+
+A momentary silence followed. The farmer coughed slightly, and looked
+dubiously at his wife. But the two women had already exchanged feminine
+glances of sympathy for this evident slayer of traitors, and were
+apparently inclined to stop any adverse criticism.
+
+In the midst of which a shout was heard from the road. The farmer and
+his family instinctively started. Red Jim alone remained unmoved,--a
+fact which did not lessen the admiration of his feminine audience. The
+host rose quickly, and went out. The figure of a horseman had halted
+in the road, but after a few moments' conversation with the farmer they
+both moved towards the house and disappeared. When the farmer returned,
+it was to say that "one of them 'Frisco dandies, who didn't keer
+about stoppin' at the hotel in the settlement," had halted to give his
+"critter" a feed and drink that he might continue his journey. He had
+asked him to come in while the horse was feeding, but the stranger had
+"guessed he'd stretch his legs outside and smoke his cigar;" he might
+have thought the company "not fine enough for him," but he was "civil
+spoken enough, and had an all-fired smart hoss, and seemed to know how
+to run him." To the anxious inquiries of his wife and daughter he added
+that the stranger didn't seem like a spy or a Mexican; was "as young
+as HIM," pointing to the moody Red Jim, "and a darned sight more
+peaceful-like in style."
+
+Perhaps owing to the criticism of the farmer, perhaps from some still
+lurking suspicion of being overheard by eavesdroppers, or possibly from
+a humane desire to relieve the strained apprehension of the women, Red
+Jim, as the farmer disappeared to rejoin the stranger, again dropped
+into a lighter and gentler vein of reminiscence. He told them how, when
+a mere boy, he had been lost from an emigrant train in company with a
+little girl some years his junior. How, when they found themselves alone
+on the desolate plain, with the vanished train beyond their reach, he
+endeavored to keep the child from a knowledge of the real danger of
+their position, and to soothe and comfort her. How he carried her on
+his back, until, exhausted, he sank in a heap of sage-brush. How he was
+surrounded by Indians, who, however, never suspected his hiding-place;
+and how he remained motionless and breathless with the sleeping child
+for three hours, until they departed. How, at the last moment, he had
+perceived a train in the distance, and had staggered with her thither,
+although shot at and wounded by the trainmen in the belief that he
+was an Indian. How it was afterwards discovered that the child was the
+long-lost daughter of a millionaire; how he had resolutely refused
+any gratuity for saving her, and she was now a peerless young heiress,
+famous in California. Whether this lighter tone of narrative suited him
+better, or whether the active feminine sympathy of his auditors
+helped him along, certain it was that his story was more coherent and
+intelligible and his voice less hoarse and constrained than in his
+previous belligerent reminiscences; his expression changed, and even his
+features worked into something like gentler emotion. The bright eyes
+of Phoebe, fastened upon him, turned dim with a faint moisture, and
+her pale cheek took upon itself a little color. The mother, after
+interjecting "Du tell," and "I wanter know," remained open-mouthed,
+staring at her visitor. And in the silence that followed, a pleasant,
+but somewhat melancholy voice came from the open door.
+
+"I beg your pardon, but I thought I couldn't be mistaken. It IS my old
+friend, Jim Hooker!"
+
+Everybody started. Red Jim stumbled to his feet with an inarticulate and
+hysteric exclamation. Yet the apparition that now stood in the doorway
+was far from being terrifying or discomposing. It was evidently the
+stranger,--a slender, elegantly-knit figure, whose upper lip was faintly
+shadowed by a soft, dark mustache indicating early manhood, and whose
+unstudied ease in his well-fitting garments bespoke the dweller of
+cities. Good-looking and well-dressed, without the consciousness of
+being either; self-possessed through easy circumstances, yet without
+self-assertion; courteous by nature and instinct as well as from an
+experience of granting favors, he might have been a welcome addition
+to even a more critical company. But Red Jim, hurriedly seizing his
+outstretched hand, instantly dragged him away from the doorway into the
+road and out of hearing of his audience.
+
+"Did you hear what I was saying?" he asked hoarsely.
+
+"Well, yes,--I think so," returned the stranger, with a quiet smile.
+
+"Ye ain't goin' back on me, Clarence, are ye,--ain't goin' to gimme away
+afore them, old pard, are ye?" said Jim, with a sudden change to almost
+pathetic pleading.
+
+"No," returned the stranger, smiling. "And certainly not before that
+interested young lady, Jim. But stop. Let me look at you."
+
+He held out both hands, took Jim's, spread them apart for a moment with
+a boyish gesture, and, looking in his face, said half mischievously,
+half sadly, "Yes, it's the same old Jim Hooker,--unchanged."
+
+"But YOU'RE changed,--reg'lar war paint, Big Injin style!" said Hooker,
+looking up at him with an awkward mingling of admiration and envy.
+"Heard you struck it rich with the old man, and was Mister Brant now!"
+
+"Yes," said Clarence gently, yet with a smile that had not only a tinge
+of weariness but even of sadness in it.
+
+Unfortunately, the act, which was quite natural to Clarence's
+sensitiveness, and indeed partly sprang from some concern in his old
+companion's fortunes, translated itself by a very human process to
+Hooker's consciousness as a piece of rank affectation. HE would have
+been exalted and exultant in Clarence's place, consequently any other
+exhibition was only "airs." Nevertheless, at the present moment Clarence
+was to be placated.
+
+"You didn't mind my telling that story about your savin' Susy as my own,
+did ye?" he said, with a hasty glance over his shoulder. "I only did it
+to fool the old man and women-folks, and make talk. You won't blow on
+me? Ye ain't mad about it?"
+
+It had crossed Clarence's memory that when they were both younger
+Jim Hooker had once not only borrowed his story, but his name and
+personality as well. Yet in his loyalty to old memories there was
+mingled no resentment for past injury. "Of course not," he said, with a
+smile that was, however, still thoughtful. "Why should I? Only I ought
+to tell you that Susy Peyton is living with her adopted parents not ten
+miles from here, and it might reach their ears. She's quite a young lady
+now, and if I wouldn't tell her story to strangers, I don't think YOU
+ought to, Jim."
+
+He said this so pleasantly that even the skeptical Jim forgot what he
+believed were the "airs and graces" of self-abnegation, and said,
+"Let's go inside, and I'll introduce you," and turned to the house. But
+Clarence Brant drew back. "I'm going on as soon as my horse is fed,
+for I'm on a visit to Peyton, and I intend to push as far as Santa Inez
+still to-night. I want to talk with you about yourself, Jim," he
+added gently; "your prospects and your future. I heard," he went on
+hesitatingly, "that you were--at work--in a restaurant in San Francisco.
+I'm glad to see that you are at least your own master here,"--he glanced
+at the wagon. "You are selling things, I suppose? For yourself, or
+another? Is that team yours? Come," he added, still pleasantly, but in
+an older and graver voice, with perhaps the least touch of experienced
+authority, "be frank, Jim. Which is it? Never mind what things you've
+told IN THERE, tell ME the truth about yourself. Can I help you in any
+way? Believe me, I should like to. We have been old friends, whatever
+difference in our luck, I am yours still."
+
+Thus adjured, the redoubtable Jim, in a hoarse whisper, with a furtive
+eye on the house, admitted that he was traveling for an itinerant
+peddler, whom he expected to join later in the settlement; that he
+had his own methods of disposing of his wares, and (darkly) that his
+proprietor and the world generally had better not interfere with him;
+that (with a return to more confidential lightness) he had already
+"worked the Wild West Injin" business so successfully as to dispose of
+his wares, particularly in yonder house, and might do even more if not
+prematurely and wantonly "blown upon," "gone back on," or "given away."
+
+"But wouldn't you like to settle down on some bit of land like this, and
+improve it for yourself?" said Clarence. "All these valley terraces are
+bound to rise in value, and meantime you would be independent. It could
+be managed, Jim. I think I could arrange it for you," he went on, with a
+slight glow of youthful enthusiasm. "Write to me at Peyton's ranch,
+and I'll see you when I come back, and we'll hunt up something for
+you together." As Jim received the proposition with a kind of gloomy
+embarrassment, he added lightly, with a glance at the farmhouse, "It
+might be near HERE, you know; and you'd have pleasant neighbors, and
+even eager listeners to your old adventures."
+
+"You'd better come in a minit before you go," said Jim, clumsily evading
+a direct reply. Clarence hesitated a moment, and then yielded. For an
+equal moment Jim Hooker was torn between secret jealousy of his old
+comrade's graces and a desire to present them as familiar associations
+of his own. But his vanity was quickly appeased.
+
+Need it be said that the two women received this fleck and foam of
+a super-civilization they knew little of as almost an impertinence
+compared to the rugged, gloomy, pathetic, and equally youthful hero of
+an adventurous wilderness of which they knew still less? What availed
+the courtesy and gentle melancholy of Clarence Brant beside the
+mysterious gloom and dark savagery of Red Jim? Yet they received him
+patronizingly, as one who was, like themselves, an admirer of manly
+grace and power, and the recipient of Jim's friendship. The farmer alone
+seemed to prefer Clarence, and yet the latter's tacit indorsement of Red
+Jim, through his evident previous intimacy with him, impressed the man
+in Jim's favor. All of which Clarence saw with that sensitive perception
+which had given him an early insight into human weakness, yet still had
+never shaken his youthful optimism. He smiled a little thoughtfully, but
+was openly fraternal to Jim, courteous to his host and family, and,
+as he rode away in the faint moonlight, magnificently opulent in his
+largess to the farmer,--his first and only assertion of his position.
+
+The farmhouse, straggling barn, and fringe of dusty willows, the white
+dome of the motionless wagon, with the hanging frying pans and kettles
+showing in the moonlight like black silhouettes against the staring
+canvas, all presently sank behind Clarence like the details of a dream,
+and he was alone with the moon, the hazy mystery of the level, grassy
+plain, and the monotony of the unending road. As he rode slowly along he
+thought of that other dreary plain, white with alkali patches and brown
+with rings of deserted camp-fires, known to his boyhood of deprivation,
+dependency, danger, and adventure, oddly enough, with a strange delight;
+and his later years of study, monastic seclusion, and final ease
+and independence, with an easy sense of wasted existence and useless
+waiting. He remembered his homeless childhood in the South, where
+servants and slaves took the place of the father he had never known,
+and the mother that he rarely saw; he remembered his abandonment to a
+mysterious female relation, where his natural guardians seemed to
+have overlooked and forgotten him, until he was sent, an all too young
+adventurer, to work his passage on an overland emigrant train across the
+plains; he remembered, as yesterday, the fears, the hopes, the dreams
+and dangers of that momentous journey. He recalled his little playmate,
+Susy, and their strange adventures--the whole incident that the
+imaginative Jim Hooker had translated and rehearsed as his own--rose
+vividly before him. He thought of the cruel end of that pilgrimage,
+which again left him homeless and forgotten by even the relative he was
+seeking in a strange land. He remembered his solitary journey to the
+gold mines, taken with a boy's trust and a boy's fearlessness, and
+the strange protector he had found there, who had news of his missing
+kinsman; he remembered how this protector--whom he had at once
+instinctively loved--transferred him to the house of this new-found
+relation, who treated him kindly and sent him to the Jesuit school, but
+who never awakened in him a feeling of kinship. He dreamed again of his
+life at school, his accidental meeting with Susy at Santa Clara, the
+keen revival of his boyish love for his old playmate, now a pretty
+schoolgirl, the petted adopted child of wealthy parents. He recalled
+the terrible shock that interrupted this boyish episode: the news of the
+death of his protector, and the revelation that this hard, silent, and
+mysterious man was his own father, whose reckless life and desperate
+reputation had impelled him to assume a disguise.
+
+He remembered how his sudden accession to wealth and independence had
+half frightened him, and had always left a lurking sensitiveness that
+he was unfairly favored, by some mere accident, above his less lucky
+companions. The rude vices of his old associates had made him impatient
+of the feebler sensual indulgences of the later companions of
+his luxury, and exposed their hollow fascinations; his sensitive
+fastidiousness kept him clean among vulgar temptations; his clear
+perceptions were never blinded by selfish sophistry. Meantime his
+feeling for Susy remained unchanged. Pride had kept him from seeking the
+Peytons. His present visit was as unpremeditated as Peyton's invitation
+had been unlooked for by him. Yet he had not allowed himself to be
+deceived. He knew that this courtesy was probably due to the change in
+his fortune, although he had hoped it might have been some change in
+their opinion brought about by Susy. But he would at least see
+her again, not in the pretty, half-clandestine way she had thought
+necessary, but openly and as her equal.
+
+In his rapid ride he seemed to have suddenly penetrated the peaceful
+calm of the night. The restless irritation of the afternoon trade winds
+had subsided; the tender moonlight had hushed and tranquilly possessed
+the worried plain; the unending files of wild oats, far spaced and
+distinct, stood erect and motionless as trees; something of the sedate
+solemnity of a great forest seemed to have fallen upon their giant
+stalks. There was no dew. In that light, dry air, the heavier dust no
+longer rose beneath the heels of his horse, whose flying shadow passed
+over the field like a cloud, leaving no trail or track behind it. In the
+preoccupation of his thought and his breathless retrospect, the young
+man had ridden faster than he intended, and he now checked his panting
+horse. The influence of the night and the hushed landscape stole over
+him; his thoughts took a gentler turn; in that dim, mysterious horizon
+line before him, his future seemed to be dreamily peopled with airy,
+graceful shapes that more or less took the likeness of Susy. She was
+bright, coquettish, romantic, as he had last seen her; she was older,
+graver, and thoughtfully welcome of him; or she was cold, distant, and
+severely forgetful of the past. How would her adopted father and mother
+receive him? Would they ever look upon him in the light of a suitor to
+the young girl? He had no fear of Peyton,--he understood his own sex,
+and, young as he was, knew already how to make himself respected; but
+how could he overcome that instinctive aversion which Mrs. Peyton had
+so often made him feel he had provoked? Yet in this dreamy hush of earth
+and sky, what was not possible? His boyish heart beat high with daring
+visions.
+
+He saw Mrs. Peyton in the porch, welcoming him with that maternal smile
+which his childish longing had so often craved to share with Susy.
+Peyton would be there, too,--Peyton, who had once pushed back his torn
+straw hat to look approvingly in his boyish eyes; and Peyton, perhaps,
+might be proud of him.
+
+Suddenly he started. A voice in his very ear!
+
+"Bah! A yoke of vulgar cattle grazing on lands that were thine by right
+and law. Neither more nor less than that. And I tell thee, Pancho, like
+cattle, to be driven off or caught and branded for one's own. Ha! There
+are those who could swear to the truth of this on the Creed. Ay! and
+bring papers stamped and signed by the governor's rubric to prove it.
+And not that I hate them,--bah! what are those heretic swine to me? But
+thou dost comprehend me? It galls and pricks me to see them swelling
+themselves with stolen husks, and men like thee, Pancho, ousted from
+their own land."
+
+Clarence had halted in utter bewilderment. No one was visible before
+him, behind him, on either side. The words, in Spanish, came from the
+air, the sky, the distant horizon, he knew not which. Was he still
+dreaming? A strange shiver crept over his skin as if the air had grown
+suddenly chill. Then another mysterious voice arose, incredulous, half
+mocking, but equally distinct and clear.
+
+"Caramba! What is this? You are wandering, friend Pancho. You are still
+smarting from his tongue. He has the grant confirmed by his brigand
+government; he has the POSSESSION, stolen by a thief like himself; and
+he has the Corregidors with him. For is he not one of them himself, this
+Judge Peyton?"
+
+Peyton! Clarence felt the blood rush back to his face in astonishment
+and indignation. His heels mechanically pressed his horse's flanks, and
+the animal sprang forward.
+
+"Guarda! Mira!" said the voice again in a quicker, lower tone. But
+this time it was evidently in the field beside him, and the heads and
+shoulders of two horsemen emerged at the same moment from the tall ranks
+of wild oats. The mystery was solved. The strangers had been making
+their way along a lower level of the terraced plain, hidden by the
+grain, not twenty yards away, and parallel with the road they were now
+ascending to join. Their figures were alike formless in long striped
+serapes, and their features undistinguishable under stiff black
+sombreros.
+
+"Buenas noches, senor," said the second voice, in formal and cautious
+deliberation.
+
+A sudden inspiration made Clarence respond in English, as if he had not
+comprehended the stranger's words, "Eh?"
+
+"Gooda-nighta," repeated the stranger.
+
+"Oh, good-night," returned Clarence. They passed him. Their spurs
+tinkled twice or thrice, their mustangs sprang forward, and the next
+moment the loose folds of their serapes were fluttering at their sides
+like wings in their flight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+After the chill of a dewless night the morning sun was apt to look
+ardently upon the Robles Rancho, if so strong an expression could
+describe the dry, oven-like heat of a Californian coast-range valley.
+Before ten o'clock the adobe wall of the patio was warm enough to permit
+lingering vacqueros and idle peons to lean against it, and the exposed
+annexe was filled with sharp, resinous odors from the oozing sap of
+unseasoned "redwood" boards, warped and drying in the hot sunshine. Even
+at that early hour the climbing Castilian roses were drooping against
+the wooden columns of the new veranda, scarcely older than themselves,
+and mingling an already faded spice with the aroma of baking wood and
+the more material fragrance of steaming coffee, that seemed dominant
+everywhere.
+
+In fact, the pretty breakfast-room, whose three broad windows, always
+open to the veranda, gave an al fresco effect to every meal, was a
+pathetic endeavor of the Southern-bred Peyton to emulate the soft,
+luxurious, and open-air indolence of his native South, in a climate that
+was not only not tropical, but even austere in its most fervid moments.
+Yet, although cold draughts invaded it from the rear that morning, Judge
+Peyton sat alone, between the open doors and windows, awaiting the
+slow coming of his wife and the young ladies. He was not in an entirely
+comfortable mood that morning. Things were not going on well at Robles.
+That truculent vagabond, Pedro, had, the night before, taken himself off
+with a curse that had frightened even the vacqueros, who most hated him
+as a companion, but who now seemed inclined to regard his absence as an
+injury done to their race. Peyton, uneasily conscious that his own anger
+had been excited by an exaggerated conception of the accident, was
+now, like most obstinate men, inclined to exaggerate the importance of
+Pedro's insolence. He was well out of it to get rid of this quarrelsome
+hanger-on, whose presumption and ill-humor threatened the discipline of
+the rancho, yet he could not entirely forget that he had employed him
+on account of his family claims, and from a desire to placate racial
+jealousy and settle local differences. For the inferior Mexicans and
+Indian half-breeds still regarded their old masters with affection;
+were, in fact, more concerned for the integrity of their caste than
+the masters were themselves, and the old Spanish families who had made
+alliances with Americans, and shared their land with them, had rarely
+succeeded in alienating their retainers with their lands. Certain
+experiences in the proving of his grant before the Land Commission had
+taught Peyton that they were not to be depended upon. And lately
+there had been unpleasant rumors of the discovery of some unlooked-for
+claimants to a division of the grant itself, which might affect his own
+title.
+
+He looked up quickly as voices and light steps on the veranda at last
+heralded the approach of his tardy household from the corridor. But, in
+spite of his preoccupation, he was startled and even awkwardly impressed
+with a change in Susy's appearance. She was wearing, for the first time,
+a long skirt, and this sudden maturing of her figure struck him, as a
+man, much more forcibly than it would probably have impressed a woman,
+more familiar with details. He had not noticed certain indications of
+womanhood, as significant, perhaps, in her carriage as her outlines,
+which had been lately perfectly apparent to her mother and Mary, but
+which were to him now, for the first time, indicated by a few inches of
+skirt. She not only looked taller to his masculine eyes, but these few
+inches had added to the mystery as well as the drapery of the goddess;
+they were not so much the revelation of maturity as the suggestion that
+it was HIDDEN. So impressed was he, that a half-serious lecture on her
+yesterday's childishness, the outcome of his irritated reflections that
+morning, died upon his lips. He felt he was no longer dealing with a
+child.
+
+He welcomed them with that smile of bantering approbation, supposed to
+keep down inordinate vanity, which for some occult reason one always
+reserves for the members of one's own family. He was quite conscious
+that Susy was looking very pretty in this new and mature frock, and that
+as she stood beside his wife, far from ageing Mrs. Peyton's good looks
+and figure, she appeared like an equal companion, and that they mutually
+"became" one another. This, and the fact that they were all, including
+Mary Rogers, in their freshest, gayest morning dresses, awakened a
+half-humorous, half-real apprehension in his mind, that he was now
+hopelessly surrounded by a matured sex, and in a weak minority.
+
+"I think I ought to have been prepared," he began grimly, "for this
+addition to--to--the skirts of my family."
+
+"Why, John," returned Mrs. Peyton quickly; "do you mean to say
+you haven't noticed that the poor child has for weeks been looking
+positively indecent?"
+
+"Really, papa, I've been a sight to behold. Haven't I, Mary?" chimed in
+Susy.
+
+"Yes, dear. Why, Judge, I've been wondering that Susy stood it so well,
+and never complained."
+
+Peyton glanced around him at this compact feminine embattlement. It was
+as he feared. Yet even here he was again at fault.
+
+"And," said Mrs. Peyton slowly, with the reserved significance of the
+feminine postscript in her voice, "if that Mr. Brant is coming here
+to-day, it would be just as well for him to see that SHE IS NO LONGER A
+CHILD, AS WHEN HE KNEW HER."
+
+An hour later, good-natured Mary Rogers, in her character of "a
+dear,"--which was usually indicated by the undertaking of small errands
+for her friend,--was gathering roses from the old garden for Susy's
+adornment, when she saw a vision which lingered with her for many a
+day. She had stopped to look through the iron grille in the adobe wall,
+across the open wind-swept plain. Miniature waves were passing over
+the wild oats, with glittering disturbances here and there in the
+depressions like the sparkling of green foam; the horizon line was
+sharply defined against the hard, steel-blue sky; everywhere the
+brand-new morning was shining with almost painted brilliancy; the vigor,
+spirit, and even crudeness of youth were over all. The young girl was
+dazzled and bewildered. Suddenly, as if blown out of the waving grain,
+or an incarnation of the vivid morning, the bright and striking figure
+of a youthful horseman flashed before the grille. It was Clarence Brant!
+Mary Rogers had always seen him, in the loyalty of friendship, with
+Susy's prepossessed eyes, yet she fancied that morning that he had
+never looked so handsome before. Even the foppish fripperies of his
+riding-dress and silver trappings seemed as much the natural expression
+of conquering youth as the invincible morning sunshine. Perhaps it
+might have been a reaction against Susy's caprice or some latent
+susceptibility of her own; but a momentary antagonism to her friend
+stirred even her kindly nature. What right had Susy to trifle with such
+an opportunity? Who was SHE to hesitate over this gallant prince?
+
+But Prince Charming's quick eyes had detected her, and the next moment
+his beautiful horse was beside the grating, and his ready hand of
+greeting extended through the bars.
+
+"I suppose I am early and unexpected, but I slept at Santa Inez last
+night, that I might ride over in the cool of the morning. My things are
+coming by the stage-coach, later. It seemed such a slow way of coming
+one's self."
+
+Mary Rogers's black eyes intimated that the way he had taken was the
+right one, but she gallantly recovered herself and remembered her
+position as confidante. And here was the opportunity of delivering
+Susy's warning unobserved. She withdrew her hand from Clarence's frank
+grasp, and passing it through the grating, patted the sleek, shining
+flanks of his horse, with a discreet division of admiration.
+
+"And such a lovely creature, too! And Susy will be so delighted! and
+oh, Mr. Brant, please, you're to say nothing of having met her at Santa
+Clara. It's just as well not to begin with THAT here, for, you see"
+(with a large, maternal manner), "you were both SO young then."
+
+Clarence drew a quick breath. It was the first check to his vision of
+independence and equal footing! Then his invitation was NOT the outcome
+of a continuous friendship revived by Susy, as he had hoped; the Peytons
+had known nothing of his meeting with her, or perhaps they would not
+have invited him. He was here as an impostor,--and all because Susy had
+chosen to make a mystery of a harmless encounter, which might have
+been explained, and which they might have even countenanced. He thought
+bitterly of his old playmate for a brief moment,--as brief as Mary's
+antagonism. The young girl noticed the change in his face, but
+misinterpreted it.
+
+"Oh, there's no danger of its coming out if you don't say anything," she
+said, quickly. "Ride on to the house, and don't wait for me. You'll find
+them in the patio on the veranda."
+
+Clarence moved on, but not as spiritedly as before. Nevertheless there
+was still dash enough about him and the animal he bestrode to stir into
+admiration the few lounging vacqueros of a country which was apt to
+judge the status of a rider by the quality of his horse. Nor was the
+favorable impression confined to them alone. Peyton's gratification rang
+out cheerily in his greeting:--
+
+"Bravo, Clarence! You are here in true caballero style. Thanks for the
+compliment to the rancho."
+
+For a moment the young man was transported back again to his boyhood,
+and once more felt Peyton's approving hand pushing back the worn straw
+hat from his childish forehead. A faint color rose to his cheeks; his
+eyes momentarily dropped. The highest art could have done no more! The
+slight aggressiveness of his youthful finery and picturesque good looks
+was condoned at once; his modesty conquered where self-assertion might
+have provoked opposition, and even Mrs. Peyton felt herself impelled
+to come forward with an outstretched hand scarcely less frank than her
+husband's. Then Clarence lifted his eyes. He saw before him the woman
+to whom his childish heart had gone out with the inscrutable longing and
+adoration of a motherless, homeless, companionless boy; the woman who
+had absorbed the love of his playmate without sharing it with him; who
+had showered her protecting and maternal caresses on Susy, a waif like
+himself, yet had not only left his heart lonely and desolate, but had
+even added to his childish distrust of himself the thought that he
+had excited her aversion. He saw her more beautiful than ever in her
+restored health, freshness of coloring, and mature roundness of outline.
+He was unconsciously touched with a man's admiration for her without
+losing his boyish yearnings and half-filial affection; in her new
+materialistic womanhood his youthful imagination had lifted her to
+a queen and goddess. There was all this appeal in his still boyish
+eyes,--eyes that had never yet known shame or fear in the expression of
+their emotions; there was all this in the gesture with which he lifted
+Mrs. Peyton's fingers to his lips. The little group saw in this act only
+a Spanish courtesy in keeping with his accepted role. But a thrill of
+surprise, of embarrassment, of intense gratification passed over her.
+For he had not even looked at Susy!
+
+Her relenting was graceful. She welcomed him with a winning smile. Then
+she motioned pleasantly towards Susy.
+
+"But here is an older friend, Mr. Brant, whom you do not seem to
+recognize,--Susy, whom you have not seen since she was a child."
+
+A quick flush rose to Clarence's cheek. The group smiled at this evident
+youthful confession of some boyish admiration. But Clarence knew that
+his truthful blood was merely resenting the deceit his lips were sealed
+from divulging. He did not dare to glance at Susy; it added to the
+general amusement that the young girl was obliged to present herself.
+But in this interval she had exchanged glances with Mary Rogers, who had
+rejoined the group, and she knew she was safe. She smiled with gracious
+condescension at Clarence; observed, with the patronizing superiority
+of age and established position, that he had GROWN, but had not greatly
+changed, and, it is needless to say, again filled her mother's heart
+with joy. Clarence, still intoxicated with Mrs. Peyton's kindliness,
+and, perhaps, still embarrassed by remorse, had not time to remark the
+girl's studied attitude. He shook hands with her cordially, and then,
+in the quick reaction of youth, accepted with humorous gravity the
+elaborate introduction to Mary Rogers by Susy, which completed this
+little comedy. And if, with a woman's quickness, Mrs. Peyton detected a
+certain lingering glance which passed between Mary Rogers and Clarence,
+and misinterpreted it, it was only a part of that mystification into
+which these youthful actors are apt to throw their mature audiences.
+
+"Confess, Ally," said Peyton, cheerfully, as the three young people
+suddenly found their tongues with aimless vivacity and inconsequent
+laughter, and started with unintelligible spirits for an exploration of
+the garden, "confess now that your bete noir is really a very manly as
+well as a very presentable young fellow. By Jove! the padres have made a
+Spanish swell out of him without spoiling the Brant grit, either!
+Come, now; you're not afraid that Susy's style will suffer from HIS
+companionship. 'Pon my soul, she might borrow a little of his courtesy
+to his elders without indelicacy. I only wish she had as sincere a way
+of showing her respect for you as he has. Did you notice that he really
+didn't seem to see anybody else but you at first? And yet you never were
+a friend to him, like Susy."
+
+The lady tossed her head slightly, but smiled.
+
+"This is the first time he's seen Mary Rogers, isn't it?" she said
+meditatively.
+
+"I reckon. But what's that to do with his politeness to you?"
+
+"And do her parents know him?" she continued, without replying.
+
+"How do I know? I suppose everybody has heard of him. Why?"
+
+"Because I think they've taken a fancy to each other."
+
+"What in the name of folly, Ally"--began the despairing Peyton.
+
+"When you invite a handsome, rich, and fascinating young man into the
+company of young ladies, John," returned Mrs. Peyton, in her severest
+manner, "you must not forget you owe a certain responsibility to the
+parents. I shall certainly look after Miss Rogers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Although the three young people had left the veranda together, when they
+reached the old garden Clarence and Susy found themselves considerably
+in advance of Mary Rogers, who had become suddenly and deeply interested
+in the beauty of a passion vine near the gate. At the first discovery of
+their isolation their voluble exchange of information about themselves
+and their occupations since their last meeting stopped simultaneously.
+Clarence, who had forgotten his momentary irritation, and had recovered
+his old happiness in her presence, was nevertheless conscious of some
+other change in her than that suggested by the lengthened skirt and the
+later and more delicate accentuation of her prettiness. It was not her
+affectation of superiority and older social experience, for that was
+only the outcome of what he had found charming in her as a child, and
+which he still good-humoredly accepted; nor was it her characteristic
+exaggeration of speech, which he still pleasantly recognized. It was
+something else, vague and indefinite,--something that had been unnoticed
+while Mary was with them, but had now come between them like some
+unknown presence which had taken the confidante's place. He remained
+silent, looking at her half-brightening cheek and conscious profile.
+Then he spoke with awkward directness.
+
+"You are changed, Susy, more than in looks."
+
+"Hush," said the girl in a tragic whisper, with a warning gesture
+towards the blandly unconscious Mary.
+
+"But," returned Clarence wonderingly, "she's your--our friend, you
+know."
+
+"I DON'T know," said Susy, in a still deeper tone, "that is--oh, don't
+ask me! But when you're always surrounded by spies, when you can't say
+your soul is your own, you doubt everybody!" There was such a pretty
+distress in her violet eyes and curving eyebrows, that Clarence, albeit
+vague as to its origin and particulars, nevertheless possessed himself
+of the little hand that was gesticulating dangerously near his own, and
+pressed it sympathetically. Perhaps preoccupied with her emotions, she
+did not immediately withdraw it, as she went on rapidly: "And if you
+were cooped up here, day after day, behind these bars," pointing to the
+grille, "you'd know what I suffer."
+
+"But"--began Clarence.
+
+"Hush!" said Susy, with a stamp of her little foot.
+
+Clarence, who had only wished to point out that the whole lower end of
+the garden wall was in ruins and the grille really was no prevention,
+"hushed."
+
+"And listen! Don't pay me much attention to-day, but talk to HER,"
+indicating the still discreet and distant Mary, "before father and
+mother. Not a word to her of this confidence, Clarence. To-morrow ride
+out alone on your beautiful horse, and come back by way of the woods,
+beyond our turning, at four o'clock. There's a trail to the right of the
+big madrono tree. Take that. Be careful and keep a good lookout, for she
+mustn't see you."
+
+"Who mustn't see me?" said the puzzled Clarence.
+
+"Why, Mary, of course, you silly boy!" returned the girl impatiently.
+"She'll be looking for ME. Go now, Clarence! Stop! Look at that lovely
+big maiden's-blush up there," pointing to a pink-suffused specimen
+of rose grandiflora hanging on the wall. "Get it, Clarence,--that
+one,--I'll show you where,--there!" They had already plunged into the
+leafy bramble, and, standing on tiptoe, with her hand on his shoulder
+and head upturned, Susy's cheek had innocently approached Clarence's
+own. At this moment Clarence, possibly through some confusion of color,
+fragrance, or softness of contact, seemed to have availed himself of the
+opportunity, in a way which caused Susy to instantly rejoin Mary Rogers
+with affected dignity, leaving him to follow a few moments later with
+the captured flower.
+
+Without trying to understand the reason of to-morrow's rendezvous, and
+perhaps not altogether convinced of the reality of Susy's troubles, he,
+however, did not find that difficulty in carrying out her other commands
+which he had expected. Mrs. Peyton was still gracious, and, with
+feminine tact, induced him to talk of himself, until she was presently
+in possession of his whole history, barring the episode of his meeting
+with Susy, since he had parted with them. He felt a strange satisfaction
+in familiarly pouring out his confidences to this superior woman,
+whom he had always held in awe. There was a new delight in her womanly
+interest in his trials and adventures, and a subtle pleasure even in her
+half-motherly criticism and admonition of some passages. I am afraid he
+forgot Susy, who listened with the complacency of an exhibitor; Mary,
+whose black eyes dilated alternately with sympathy for the performer and
+deprecation of Mrs. Peyton's critical glances; and Peyton, who, however,
+seemed lost in thought, and preoccupied. Clarence was happy. The softly
+shaded lights in the broad, spacious, comfortably furnished drawing-room
+shone on the group before him. It was a picture of refined domesticity
+which the homeless Clarence had never known except as a vague,
+half-painful, boyish remembrance; it was a realization of welcome that
+far exceeded his wildest boyish vision of the preceding night. With that
+recollection came another,--a more uneasy one. He remembered how that
+vision had been interrupted by the strange voices in the road, and their
+vague but ominous import to his host. A feeling of self-reproach came
+over him. The threats had impressed him as only mere braggadocio,--he
+knew the characteristic exaggeration of the race,--but perhaps he ought
+to privately tell Peyton of the incident at once.
+
+The opportunity came later, when the ladies had retired, and Peyton,
+wrapped in a poncho in a rocking-chair, on the now chilly veranda,
+looked up from his reverie and a cigar. Clarence casually introduced the
+incident, as if only for the sake of describing the supernatural effect
+of the hidden voices, but he was concerned to see that Peyton was
+considerably disturbed by their more material import. After questioning
+him as to the appearance of the two men, his host said: "I don't mind
+telling you, Clarence, that as far as that fellow's intentions go he is
+quite sincere, although his threats are only borrowed thunder. He is
+a man whom I have just dismissed for carelessness and insolence,--two
+things that run in double harness in this country,--but I should be more
+afraid to find him at my back on a dark night, alone on the plains; than
+to confront him in daylight, in the witness box, against me. He was
+only repeating a silly rumor that the title to this rancho and the nine
+square leagues beyond would be attacked by some speculators."
+
+"But I thought your title was confirmed two years ago," said Clarence.
+
+"The GRANT was confirmed," returned Peyton, "which means that the
+conveyance of the Mexican government of these lands to the ancestor of
+Victor Robles was held to be legally proven by the United States Land
+Commission, and a patent issued to all those who held under it. I and my
+neighbors hold under it by purchase from Victor Robles, subject to the
+confirmation of the Land Commission. But that confirmation was only
+of Victor's GREAT-GRANDFATHER'S TITLE, and it is now alleged that as
+Victor's father died without making a will, Victor has claimed and
+disposed of property which he ought to have divided with his SISTERS. At
+least, some speculating rascals in San Francisco have set up what they
+call 'the Sisters' title,' and are selling it to actual settlers on
+the unoccupied lands beyond. As, by the law, it would hold possession
+against the mere ordinary squatters, whose only right is based, as you
+know, on the presumption that there is NO TITLE CLAIMED, it gives the
+possessor immunity to enjoy the use of the property until the case is
+decided, and even should the original title hold good against his, the
+successful litigant would probably be willing to pay for improvements
+and possession to save the expensive and tedious process of ejectment."
+
+"But this does not affect YOU, who have already possession?" said
+Clarence quickly.
+
+"No, not as far as THIS HOUSE and the lands I actually OCCUPY AND
+CULTIVATE are concerned; and they know that I am safe to fight to the
+last, and carry the case to the Supreme Court in that case, until
+the swindle is exposed, or they drop it; but I may have to pay them
+something to keep the squatters off my UNOCCUPIED land."
+
+"But you surely wouldn't recognize those rascals in any way?" said the
+astonished Clarence.
+
+"As against other rascals? Why not?" returned Peyton grimly. "I only pay
+for the possession which their sham title gives me to my own land. If by
+accident that title obtains, I am still on the safe side." After a pause
+he said, more gravely, "What you overheard, Clarence, shows me that the
+plan is more forward than I had imagined, and that I may have to fight
+traitors here."
+
+"I hope, sir," said Clarence, with a quick glow in his earnest
+face, "that you'll let me help you. You thought I did once, you
+remember,--with the Indians."
+
+There was so much of the old Clarence in his boyish appeal and eager,
+questioning face that Peyton, who had been talking to him as a younger
+but equal man of affairs, was startled into a smile, "You did, Clarence,
+though the Indians butchered your friends, after all. I don't know,
+though, but that your experiences with those Spaniards--you must have
+known a lot of them when you were with Don Juan Robinson and at the
+college--might be of service in getting at evidence, or smashing their
+witnesses if it comes to a fight. But just now, MONEY is everything.
+They must be bought OFF THE LAND if I have to mortgage it for the
+purpose. That strikes you as a rather heroic remedy, Clarence, eh?"
+he continued, in his old, half-bantering attitude towards Clarence's
+inexperienced youth, "don't it?"
+
+But Clarence was not thinking of that. Another more audacious but
+equally youthful and enthusiastic idea had taken possession of his mind,
+and he lay awake half that night revolving it. It was true that it was
+somewhat impractically mixed with his visions of Mrs. Peyton and Susy,
+and even included his previous scheme of relief for the improvident and
+incorrigible Hooker. But it gave a wonderful sincerity and happiness
+to his slumbers that night, which the wiser and elder Peyton might have
+envied, and I wot not was in the long run as correct and sagacious as
+Peyton's sleepless cogitations. And in the early morning Mr. Clarence
+Brant, the young capitalist, sat down to his traveling-desk and wrote
+two clear-headed, logical, and practical business letters,--one to his
+banker, and the other to his former guardian, Don Juan Robinson, as
+his first step in a resolve that was, nevertheless, perhaps as wildly
+quixotic and enthusiastic as any dream his boyish and unselfish heart
+had ever indulged.
+
+At breakfast, in the charmed freedom of the domestic circle, Clarence
+forgot Susy's capricious commands of yesterday, and began to address
+himself to her in his old earnest fashion, until he was warned by
+a significant knitting of the young lady's brows and monosyllabic
+responses. But in his youthful loyalty to Mrs. Peyton, he was more
+pained to notice Susy's occasional unconscious indifference to her
+adopted mother's affectionate expression, and a more conscious disregard
+of her wishes. So uneasy did he become, in his sensitive concern for
+Mrs. Peyton's half-concealed mortification, that he gladly accepted
+Peyton's offer to go with him to visit the farm and corral. As the
+afternoon approached, with another twinge of self-reproach, he was
+obliged to invent some excuse to decline certain hospitable plans
+of Mrs. Peyton's for his entertainment, and at half past three stole
+somewhat guiltily, with his horse, from the stables. But he had to pass
+before the outer wall of the garden and grille, through which he had
+seen Mary the day before. Raising his eyes mechanically, he was startled
+to see Mrs. Peyton standing behind the grating, with her abstracted gaze
+fixed upon the wind-tossed, level grain beyond her. She smiled as she
+saw him, but there were traces of tears in her proud, handsome eyes.
+
+"You are going to ride?" she said pleasantly.
+
+"Y-e-es," stammered the shamefaced Clarence.
+
+She glanced at him wistfully.
+
+"You are right. The girls have gone away by themselves. Mr. Peyton has
+ridden over to Santa Inez on this dreadful land business, and I suppose
+you'd have found him a dull riding companion. It is rather stupid here.
+I quite envy you, Mr. Brant, your horse and your freedom."
+
+"But, Mrs. Peyton," broke in Clarence, impulsively, "you have a horse--I
+saw it, a lovely lady's horse--eating its head off in the stable. Won't
+you let me run back and order it; and won't you, please, come out with
+me for a good, long gallop?"
+
+He meant what he said. He had spoken quickly, impulsively, but with the
+perfect understanding in his own mind that his proposition meant the
+complete abandonment of his rendezvous with Susy. Mrs. Peyton was
+astounded and slightly stirred with his earnestness, albeit unaware of
+all it implied.
+
+"It's a great temptation, Mr. Brant," she said, with a playful smile,
+which dazzled Clarence with its first faint suggestion of a refined
+woman's coquetry; "but I'm afraid that Mr. Peyton would think me going
+mad in my old age. No. Go on and enjoy your gallop, and if you should
+see those giddy girls anywhere, send them home early for chocolate,
+before the cold wind gets up."
+
+She turned, waved her slim white hand playfully in acknowledgment of
+Clarence's bared head, and moved away.
+
+For the first few moments the young man tried to find relief in furious
+riding, and in bullying his spirited horse. Then he pulled quickly up.
+What was he doing? What was he going to do? What foolish, vapid deceit
+was this that he was going to practice upon that noble, queenly,
+confiding, generous woman? (He had already forgotten that she had always
+distrusted him.) What a fool he was not to tell her half-jokingly that
+he expected to meet Susy! But would he have dared to talk half-jokingly
+to such a woman on such a topic? And would it have been honorable
+without disclosing the WHOLE truth,--that they had met secretly before?
+And was it fair to Susy?--dear, innocent, childish Susy! Yet something
+must be done! It was such trivial, purposeless deceit, after all; for
+this noble woman, Mrs. Peyton, so kind, so gentle, would never object
+to his loving Susy and marrying her. And they would all live happily
+together; and Mrs. Peyton would never be separated from them, but always
+beaming tenderly upon them as she did just now in the garden. Yes, he
+would have a serious understanding with Susy, and that would excuse the
+clandestine meeting to-day.
+
+His rapid pace, meantime, had brought him to the imperceptible incline
+of the terrace, and he was astonished, in turning in the saddle, to find
+that the casa, corral, and outbuildings had completely vanished, and
+that behind him rolled only the long sea of grain, which seemed to have
+swallowed them in its yellowing depths. Before him lay the wooded ravine
+through which the stagecoach passed, which was also the entrance to
+the rancho, and there, too, probably, was the turning of which Susy had
+spoken. But it was still early for the rendezvous; indeed, he was in
+no hurry to meet her in his present discontented state, and he made a
+listless circuit of the field, in the hope of discovering the phenomena
+that had caused the rancho's mysterious disappearance. When he had
+found that it was the effect of the different levels, his attention was
+arrested by a multitude of moving objects in a still more distant
+field, which proved to be a band of wild horses. In and out among
+them, circling aimlessly, as it seemed to him, appeared two horsemen
+apparently performing some mystic evolution. To add to their singular
+performance, from time to time one of the flying herd, driven by the
+horsemen far beyond the circle of its companions, dropped suddenly and
+unaccountably in full career. The field closed over it as if it had been
+swallowed up. In a few moments it appeared again, trotting peacefully
+behind its former pursuer. It was some time before Clarence grasped the
+meaning of this strange spectacle. Although the clear, dry atmosphere
+sharply accented the silhouette-like outlines of the men and horses, so
+great was the distance that the slender forty-foot lasso, which in
+the skillful hands of the horsemen had effected these captures, was
+COMPLETELY INVISIBLE! The horsemen were Peyton's vacqueros, making a
+selection from the young horses for the market. He remembered now
+that Peyton had told him that he might be obliged to raise money by
+sacrificing some of his stock, and the thought brought back Clarence's
+uneasiness as he turned again to the trail. Indeed, he was hardly in
+the vein for a gentle tryst, as he entered the wooded ravine to seek the
+madrono tree which was to serve as a guide to his lady's bower.
+
+A few rods further, under the cool vault filled with woodland spicing,
+he came upon it. In its summer harlequin dress of scarlet and green,
+with hanging bells of poly-tinted berries, like some personified sylvan
+Folly, it seemed a fitting symbol of Susy's childish masquerade of
+passion. Its bizarre beauty, so opposed to the sober gravity of the
+sedate pines and hemlocks, made it an unmistakable landmark. Here he
+dismounted and picketed his horse. And here, beside it, to the right,
+ran the little trail crawling over mossy boulders; a narrow yellow track
+through the carpet of pine needles between the closest file of trees;
+an almost imperceptible streak across pools of chickweed at their roots,
+and a brown and ragged swath through the ferns. As he went on, the
+anxiety and uneasiness that had possessed him gave way to a languid
+intoxication of the senses; the mysterious seclusion of these woodland
+depths recovered the old influence they had exerted over his boyhood. He
+was not returning to Susy, as much as to the older love of his youth, of
+which she was, perhaps, only an incident. It was therefore with an odd
+boyish thrill again that, coming suddenly upon a little hollow, like
+a deserted nest, where the lost trail made him hesitate, he heard the
+crackle of a starched skirt behind him, was conscious of the subtle odor
+of freshly ironed and scented muslin, and felt the gentle pressure of
+delicate fingers upon his eyes.
+
+"Susy!"
+
+"You silly boy! Where were you blundering to? Why didn't you look around
+you?"
+
+"I thought I would hear your voices."
+
+"Whose voices, idiot?"
+
+"Yours and Mary's," returned Clarence innocently, looking round for the
+confidante.
+
+"Oh, indeed! Then you wanted to see MARY? Well, she's looking for me
+somewhere. Perhaps you'll go and find her, or shall I?"
+
+She was offering to pass him when he laid his hand on hers to detain
+her. She instantly evaded it, and drew herself up to her full height,
+incontestably displaying the dignity of the added inches to her skirt.
+All this was charmingly like the old Susy, but it did not bid fair
+to help him to a serious interview. And, looking at the pretty, pink,
+mocking face before him, with the witchery of the woodland still upon
+him, he began to think that he had better put it off.
+
+"Never mind about Mary," he said laughingly. "But you said you wanted to
+see me, Susy; and here I am."
+
+"Said I wanted to see you?" repeated Susy, with her blue eyes lifted in
+celestial scorn and wonderment. "Said I wanted to see you? Are you not
+mistaken, Mr. Brant? Really, I imagined that you came here to see ME."
+
+With her fair head upturned, and the leaf of her scarlet lip temptingly
+curled over, Clarence began to think this latest phase of her
+extravagance the most fascinating. He drew nearer to her as he said
+gently, "You know what I mean, Susy. You said yesterday you were
+troubled. I thought you might have something to tell me."
+
+"I should think it was YOU who might have something to tell me after all
+these years," she said poutingly, yet self-possessed. "But I suppose you
+came here only to see Mary and mother. I'm sure you let them know that
+plainly enough last evening."
+
+"But you said"--began the stupefied Clarence.
+
+"Never mind what I said. It's always what I say, never what YOU say; and
+you don't say anything."
+
+The woodland influence must have been still very strong upon Clarence
+that he did not discover in all this that, while Susy's general
+capriciousness was unchanged, there was a new and singular insincerity
+in her manifest acting. She was either concealing the existence of some
+other real emotion, or assuming one that was absent. But he did not
+notice it, and only replied tenderly:--
+
+"But I want to say a great deal to you, Susy. I want to say that if you
+still feel as I do, and as I have always felt, and you think you could
+be happy as I would be if--if--we could be always together, we need not
+conceal it from your mother and father any longer. I am old enough to
+speak for myself, and I am my own master. Your mother has been very kind
+to me,--so kind that it doesn't seem quite right to deceive her,--and
+when I tell her that I love you, and that I want you to be my wife, I
+believe she will give us her blessing."
+
+Susy uttered a strange little laugh, and with an assumption of coyness,
+that was, however, still affected, stooped to pick a few berries from a
+manzanita bush.
+
+"I'll tell you what she'll say, Clarence. She'll say you're frightfully
+young, and so you are!"
+
+The young fellow tried to echo the laugh, but felt as if he had received
+a blow. For the first time he was conscious of the truth: this girl,
+whom he had fondly regarded as a child, had already passed him in the
+race; she had become a woman before he was yet a man, and now stood
+before him, maturer in her knowledge, and older in her understanding, of
+herself and of him. This was the change that had perplexed him; this
+was the presence that had come between them,--a Susy he had never known
+before.
+
+She laughed at his changed expression, and then swung herself easily to
+a sitting posture on the low projecting branch of a hemlock. The act
+was still girlish, but, nevertheless, she looked down upon him in
+a superior, patronizing way. "Now, Clarence," she said, with a
+half-abstracted manner, "don't you be a big fool! If you talk that way
+to mother, she'll only tell you to wait two or three years until you
+know your own mind, and she'll pack me off to that horrid school again,
+besides watching me like a cat every moment you are here. If you want
+to stay here, and see me sometimes like this, you'll just behave as you
+have done, and say nothing. Do you see? Perhaps you don't care to come,
+or are satisfied with Mary and mother. Say so, then. Goodness knows, I
+don't want to force you to come here."
+
+Modest and reserved as Clarence was generally, I fear that bashfulness
+of approach to the other sex was not one of these indications. He walked
+up to Susy with appalling directness, and passed his arm around her
+waist. She did not move, but remained looking at him and his intruding
+arm with a certain critical curiosity, as if awaiting some novel
+sensation. At which he kissed her. She then slowly disengaged his arm,
+and said:--
+
+"Really, upon my word, Clarence," in perfectly level tones, and slipped
+quietly to the ground.
+
+He again caught her in his arms, encircling her disarranged hair and
+part of the beribboned hat hanging over her shoulder, and remained
+for an instant holding her thus silently and tenderly. Then she freed
+herself with an abstracted air, a half smile, and an unchanged color
+except where her soft cheek had been abraded by his coat collar.
+
+"You're a bold, rude boy, Clarence," she said, putting back her hair
+quietly, and straightening the brim of her hat. "Heaven knows where
+you learned manners!" and then, from a safer distance, with the same
+critical look in her violet eyes, "I suppose you think mother would
+allow THAT if she knew it?"
+
+But Clarence, now completely subjugated, with the memory of the kiss
+upon him and a heightened color, protested that he only wanted to make
+their intercourse less constrained, and to have their relations, even
+their engagement, recognized by her parents; still he would take her
+advice. Only there was always the danger that if they were discovered
+she would be sent back to the convent all the same, and his banishment,
+instead of being the probation of a few years, would be a perpetual
+separation.
+
+"We could always run away, Clarence," responded the young girl calmly.
+"There's nothing the matter with THAT."
+
+Clarence was startled. The idea of desolating the sad, proud, handsome
+Mrs. Peyton, whom he worshiped, and her kind husband, whom he was just
+about to serve, was so grotesque and confusing, that he said hopelessly,
+"Yes."
+
+"Of course," she continued, with the same odd affectation of coyness,
+which was, however, distinctly uncalled for, as she eyed him from under
+her broad hat, "you needn't come with me unless you like. I can run away
+by myself,--if I want to! I've thought of it before. One can't stand
+everything!"
+
+"But, Susy," said Clarence, with a swift remorseful recollection of her
+confidence yesterday, "is there really anything troubles you? Tell me,
+dear. What is it?"
+
+"Oh, nothing--EVERYTHING! It's no use,--YOU can't understand! YOU like
+it, I know you do. I can see it; it's your style. But it's stupid, it's
+awful, Clarence! With mamma snooping over you and around you all day,
+with her 'dear child,' 'mamma's pet,' and 'What is it, dear?' and 'Tell
+it all to your own mamma,' as if I would! And 'my own mamma,' indeed! As
+if I didn't know, Clarence, that she ISN'T. And papa, caring for nothing
+but this hideous, dreary rancho, and the huge, empty plains. It's worse
+than school, for there, at least, when you went out, you could see
+something besides cattle and horses and yellow-faced half-breeds! But
+here--Lord! it's only a wonder I haven't run away before!"
+
+Startled and shocked as Clarence was at this revelation, accompanied as
+it was by a hardness of manner that was new to him, the influence of
+the young girl was still so strong upon him that he tried to evade it as
+only an extravagance, and said with a faint smile, "But where would you
+run to?"
+
+She looked at him cunningly, with her head on one side, and then said:--
+
+"I have friends, and"--
+
+She hesitated, pursing up her pretty lips.
+
+"And what?"
+
+"Relations."
+
+"Relations?"
+
+"Yes,--an aunt by marriage. She lives in Sacramento. She'd be overjoyed
+to have me come to her. Her second husband has a theatre there."
+
+"But, Susy, what does Mrs. Peyton know of this?"
+
+"Nothing. Do you think I'd tell her, and have her buy them up as she has
+my other relations? Do you suppose I don't know that I've been bought up
+like a nigger?"
+
+She looked indignant, compressing her delicate little nostrils, and yet,
+somehow, Clarence had the same singular impression that she was only
+acting.
+
+The calling of a far-off voice came faintly through the wood.
+
+"That's Mary, looking for me," said Susy composedly. "You must go, now,
+Clarence. Quick! Remember what I said,--and don't breathe a word of
+this. Good-by."
+
+But Clarence was standing still, breathless, hopelessly disturbed, and
+irresolute. Then he turned away mechanically towards the trail.
+
+"Well, Clarence?"
+
+She was looking at him half reproachfully, half coquettishly, with
+smiling, parted lips. He hastened to forget himself and his troubles
+upon them twice and thrice. Then she quickly disengaged herself,
+whispered, "Go, now," and, as Mary's call was repeated, Clarence heard
+her voice, high and clear, answering, "Here, dear," as he was plunging
+into the thicket.
+
+He had scarcely reached the madrono tree again and remounted his horse,
+before he heard the sound of hoofs approaching from the road. In
+his present uneasiness he did not care to be discovered so near the
+rendezvous, and drew back into the shadow until the horseman should
+pass. It was Peyton, with a somewhat disturbed face, riding rapidly.
+Still less was he inclined to join or immediately follow him, but he was
+relieved when his host, instead of taking the direct road to the rancho,
+through the wild oats, turned off in the direction of the corral.
+
+A moment later Clarence wheeled into the direct road, and presently
+found himself in the long afternoon shadows through the thickest of the
+grain. He was riding slowly, immersed in thought, when he was suddenly
+startled by a hissing noise at his ear, and what seemed to be the
+uncoiling stroke of a leaping serpent at his side. Instinctively he
+threw himself forward on his horse's neck, and as the animal shied
+into the grain, felt the crawling scrape and jerk of a horsehair lariat
+across his back and down his horse's flanks. He reined in indignantly
+and stood up in his stirrups. Nothing was to be seen above the level of
+the grain. Beneath him the trailing riata had as noiselessly vanished
+as if it had been indeed a gliding snake. Had he been the victim of a
+practical joke, or of the blunder of some stupid vacquero? For he made
+no doubt that it was the lasso of one of the performers he had watched
+that afternoon. But his preoccupied mind did not dwell long upon it, and
+by the time he had reached the wall of the old garden, the incident was
+forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Relieved of Clarence Brant's embarrassing presence, Jim Hooker did not,
+however, refuse to avail himself of that opportunity to expound to the
+farmer and his family the immense wealth, influence, and importance of
+the friend who had just left him. Although Clarence's plan had suggested
+reticence, Hooker could not forego the pleasure of informing them
+that "Clar" Brant had just offered to let him into an extensive land
+speculation. He had previously declined a large share or original
+location in a mine of Clarence's, now worth a million, because it was
+not "his style." But the land speculation in a country of unsettled
+titles and lawless men, he need not remind them, required some
+experience of border warfare. He would not say positively, although he
+left them to draw their own conclusions with gloomy significance, that
+this was why Clarence had sought him. With this dark suggestion, he took
+leave of Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins and their daughter Phoebe the next day,
+not without some natural human emotion, and peacefully drove his team
+and wagon into the settlement of Fair Plains.
+
+He was not prepared, however, for a sudden realization of his
+imaginative prospects. A few days after his arrival in Fair Plains,
+he received a letter from Clarence, explaining that he had not time to
+return to Hooker to consult him, but had, nevertheless, fulfilled his
+promise, by taking advantage of an opportunity of purchasing the Spanish
+"Sisters'" title to certain unoccupied lands near the settlement. As
+these lands in part joined the section already preempted and occupied by
+Hopkins, Clarence thought that Jim Hooker would choose that part for the
+sake of his neighbor's company. He inclosed a draft on San Francisco,
+for a sum sufficient to enable Jim to put up a cabin and "stock" the
+property, which he begged he would consider in the light of a loan, to
+be paid back in installments, only when the property could afford it.
+At the same time, if Jim was in difficulty, he was to inform him. The
+letter closed with a characteristic Clarence-like mingling of enthusiasm
+and older wisdom. "I wish you luck, Jim, but I see no reason why you
+should trust to it. I don't know of anything that could keep you from
+making yourself independent of any one, if you go to work with a LONG
+AIM and don't fritter away your chances on short ones. If I were you,
+old fellow, I'd drop the Plains and the Indians out of my thoughts, or
+at least out of my TALK, for a while; they won't help you in the long
+run. The people who believe you will be jealous of you; those who don't,
+will look down upon you, and if they get to questioning your little
+Indian romances, Jim, they'll be apt to question your civilized facts.
+That won't help you in the ranching business and that's your only real
+grip now." For the space of two or three hours after this, Jim was
+reasonably grateful and even subdued,--so much so that his employer, to
+whom he confided his good fortune, frankly confessed that he believed
+him from that unusual fact alone. Unfortunately, neither the practical
+lesson conveyed in this grim admission, nor the sentiment of gratitude,
+remained long with Jim. Another idea had taken possession of his fancy.
+Although the land nominated in his bill of sale had been, except on the
+occasion of his own temporary halt there, always unoccupied,
+unsought, and unclaimed, and although he was amply protected by legal
+certificates, he gravely collected a posse of three or four idlers from
+Fair Plains, armed them at his own expense, and in the dead of night
+took belligerent and forcible possession of the peaceful domain which
+the weak generosity and unheroic dollars of Clarence had purchased for
+him! A martial camp-fire tempered the chill night winds to the pulses of
+the invaders, and enabled them to sleep on their arms in the field they
+had won. The morning sun revealed to the astonished Hopkins family
+the embattled plain beyond, with its armed sentries. Only then did Jim
+hooker condescend to explain the reason of his warlike occupation, with
+dark hints of the outlying "squatters" and "jumpers," whose incursions
+their boldness alone had repulsed. The effect of this romantic situation
+upon the two women, with the slight fascination of danger imported
+into their quiet lives, may well be imagined. Possibly owing to some
+incautious questioning by Mr. Hopkins, and some doubts of the discipline
+and sincerity of his posse, Jim discharged them the next day; but
+during the erection of his cabin by some peaceful carpenters from the
+settlement, he returned to his gloomy preoccupation and the ostentatious
+wearing of his revolvers. As an opulent and powerful neighbor, he took
+his meals with the family while his house was being built, and generally
+impressed them with a sense of security they had never missed.
+
+Meantime, Clarence, duly informed of the installation of Jim as his
+tenant, underwent a severe trial. It was necessary for his plans that
+this should be kept a secret at present, and this was no easy thing for
+his habitually frank and open nature. He had once mentioned that he had
+met Jim at the settlement, but the information was received with such
+indifference by Susy, and such marked disfavor by Mrs. Peyton, that
+he said no more. He accompanied Peyton in his rides around the rancho,
+fully possessed himself of the details of its boundaries, the debatable
+lands held by the enemy, and listened with beating pulses, but a hushed
+tongue, to his host's ill-concealed misgivings.
+
+"You see, Clarence, that lower terrace?" he said, pointing to a
+far-reaching longitudinal plain beyond the corral; "it extends from my
+corral to Fair Plains. That is claimed by the sisters' title, and, as
+things appear to be going, if a division of the land is made it will be
+theirs. It's bad enough to have this best grazing land lying just on
+the flanks of the corral held by these rascals at an absurd prohibitory
+price, but I am afraid that it may be made to mean something even worse.
+According to the old surveys, these terraces on different levels were
+the natural divisions of the property,--one heir or his tenant taking
+one, and another taking another,--an easy distinction that saved the
+necessity of boundary fencing or monuments, and gave no trouble to
+people who were either kinsmen or lived in lazy patriarchal concord.
+That is the form of division they are trying to reestablish now. Well,"
+he continued, suddenly lifting his eyes to the young man's flushed face,
+in some unconscious, sympathetic response to his earnest breathlessness,
+"although my boundary line extends half a mile into that field, my house
+and garden and corral ARE ACTUALLY UPON THAT TERRACE OR LEVEL." They
+certainly appeared to Clarence to be on the same line as the long field
+beyond. "If," went on Peyton, "such a decision is made, these men will
+push on and claim the house and everything on the terrace."
+
+"But," said Clarence quickly, "you said their title was only valuable
+where they have got or can give POSSESSION. You already have yours. They
+can't take it from you except by force."
+
+"No," said Peyton grimly, "nor will they dare to do it as long as I live
+to fight them."
+
+"But," persisted Clarence, with the same singular hesitancy of manner,
+"why didn't you purchase possession of at least that part of the land
+which lies so dangerously near your own house?"
+
+"Because it was held by squatters, who naturally preferred buying what
+might prove a legal title to their land from these impostors than to
+sell out their possession to ME at a fair price."
+
+"But couldn't you have bought from them both?" continued Clarence.
+
+"My dear Clarence, I am not a Croesus nor a fool. Only a man who was
+both would attempt to treat with these rascals, who would now, of
+course, insist that THEIR WHOLE claim should be bought up at their own
+price, by the man who was most concerned in defeating them."
+
+He turned away a little impatiently. Fortunately he did not observe that
+Clarence's averted face was crimson with embarrassment, and that a faint
+smile hovered nervously about his mouth.
+
+Since his late rendezvous with Susy, Clarence had had no chance to
+interrogate her further regarding her mysterious relative. That that
+shadowy presence was more or less exaggerated, if not an absolute myth,
+he more than half suspected, but of the discontent that had produced it,
+or the recklessness it might provoke, there was no doubt. She might be
+tempted to some act of folly. He wondered if Mary Rogers knew it. Yet,
+with his sensitive ideas of loyalty, he would have shrunk from any
+confidence with Mary regarding her friend's secrets, although he
+fancied that Mary's dark eyes sometimes dwelt upon him with mournful
+consciousness and premonition. He did not imagine the truth, that this
+romantic contemplation was only the result of Mary's conviction that
+Susy was utterly unworthy of his love. It so chanced one morning that
+the vacquero who brought the post from Santa Inez arrived earlier than
+usual, and so anticipated the two girls, who usually made a youthful
+point of meeting him first as he passed the garden wall. The letter bag
+was consequently delivered to Mrs. Peyton in the presence of the others,
+and a look of consternation passed between the young girls. But
+Mary quickly seized upon the bag as if with girlish and mischievous
+impatience, opened it, and glanced within it.
+
+"There are only three letters for you," she said, handing them to
+Clarence, with a quick look of significance, which he failed to
+comprehend, "and nothing for me or Susy."
+
+"But," began the innocent Clarence, as his first glance at the letters
+showed him that one was directed to Susy, "here is"--
+
+A wicked pinch on his arm that was nearest Mary stopped his speech, and
+he quickly put the letters in his pocket.
+
+"Didn't you understand that Susy don't want her mother to see that
+letter?" asked Mary impatiently, when they were alone a moment later.
+
+"No," said Clarence simply, handing her the missive.
+
+Mary took it and turned it over in her hands.
+
+"It's in a man's handwriting," she said innocently.
+
+"I hadn't noticed it," returned Clarence with invincible naivete, "but
+perhaps it is."
+
+"And you hand it over for me to give to Susy, and ain't a bit curious to
+know who it's from?"
+
+"No," returned Clarence, opening his big eyes in smiling and apologetic
+wonder.
+
+"Well," responded the young lady, with a long breath of melancholy
+astonishment, "certainly, of all things you are--you really ARE!" With
+which incoherency--apparently perfectly intelligible to herself--she
+left him. She had not herself the slightest idea who the letter was
+from; she only knew that Susy wanted it concealed.
+
+The incident made little impression on Clarence, except as part of the
+general uneasiness he felt in regard to his old playmate. It seemed
+so odd to him that this worry should come from HER,--that she herself
+should form the one discordant note in the Arcadian dream that he had
+found so sweet; in his previous imaginings it was the presence of Mrs.
+Peyton which he had dreaded; she whose propinquity now seemed so full
+of gentleness, reassurance, and repose. How worthy she seemed of any
+sacrifice he could make for her! He had seen little of her for the last
+two or three days, although her smile and greeting were always ready
+for him. Poor Clarence did not dream that she had found from certain
+incontestable signs and tokens, both in the young ladies and himself,
+that he did not require watching, and that becoming more resigned to
+Susy's indifference, which seemed so general and passive in quality, she
+was no longer tortured by the sting of jealousy.
+
+Finding himself alone that afternoon, the young man had wandered
+somewhat listlessly beyond the low adobe gateway. The habits of the
+siesta obtained in a modified form at the rancho. After luncheon, its
+masters and employees usually retired, not so much from the torrid
+heat of the afternoon sun, but from the first harrying of the afternoon
+trades, whose monotonous whistle swept round the walls. A straggling
+passion vine near the gate beat and struggled against the wind. Clarence
+had stopped near it, and was gazing with worried abstraction across the
+tossing fields, when a soft voice called his name.
+
+It was a pleasant voice,--Mrs. Peyton's. He glanced back at the gateway;
+it was empty. He looked quickly to the right and left; no one was there.
+
+The voice spoke again with the musical addition of a laugh; it seemed
+to come from the passion vine. Ah, yes; behind it, and half overgrown
+by its branches, was a long, narrow embrasured opening in the wall,
+defended by the usual Spanish grating, and still further back, as in the
+frame of a picture, the half length figure of Mrs. Peyton, very handsome
+and striking, too, with a painted picturesqueness from the effect of the
+checkered light and shade.
+
+"You looked so tired and bored out there," she said. "I am afraid you
+are finding it very dull at the rancho. The prospect is certainly not
+very enlivening from where you stand."
+
+Clarence protested with a visible pleasure in his eyes, as he held back
+a spray before the opening.
+
+"If you are not afraid of being worse bored, come in here and talk
+with me. You have never seen this part of the house, I think,--my own
+sitting-room. You reach it from the hall in the gallery. But Lola or
+Anita will show you the way."
+
+He reentered the gateway, and quickly found the hall,--a narrow, arched
+passage, whose black, tunnel-like shadows were absolutely unaffected
+by the vivid, colorless glare of the courtyard without, seen through an
+opening at the end. The contrast was sharp, blinding, and distinct;
+even the edges of the opening were black; the outer light halted on
+the threshold and never penetrated within. The warm odor of verbena
+and dried rose leaves stole from a half-open door somewhere in the
+cloistered gloom. Guided by it, Clarence presently found himself on the
+threshold of a low-vaulted room. Two other narrow embrasured windows
+like the one he had just seen, and a fourth, wider latticed casement,
+hung with gauze curtains, suffused the apartment with a clear, yet
+mysterious twilight that seemed its own. The gloomy walls were warmed
+by bright-fringed bookshelves, topped with trifles of light feminine
+coloring and adornment. Low easy-chairs and a lounge, small fanciful
+tables, a dainty desk, gayly colored baskets of worsteds or mysterious
+kaleidoscopic fragments, and vases of flowers pervaded the apartment
+with a mingled sense of grace and comfort. There was a womanly
+refinement in its careless negligence, and even the delicate wrapper of
+Japanese silk, gathered at the waist and falling in easy folds to the
+feet of the graceful mistress of this charming disorder, looked a part
+of its refined abandonment.
+
+Clarence hesitated as on the threshold of some sacred shrine. But Mrs.
+Peyton, with her own hands, cleared a space for him on the lounge.
+
+"You will easily suspect from all this disorder, Mr. Brant, that I spend
+a greater part of my time here, and that I seldom see much company. Mr.
+Peyton occasionally comes in long enough to stumble over a footstool or
+upset a vase, and I think Mary and Susy avoid it from a firm conviction
+that there is work concealed in these baskets. But I have my books
+here, and in the afternoons, behind these thick walls, one forgets the
+incessant stir and restlessness of the dreadful winds outside. Just
+now you were foolish enough to tempt them while you were nervous, or
+worried, or listless. Take my word for it, it's a great mistake. There
+is no more use fighting them, as I tell Mr. Peyton, than of fighting the
+people born under them. I have my own opinion that these winds were
+sent only to stir this lazy race of mongrels into activity, but they are
+enough to drive us Anglo-Saxons into nervous frenzy. Don't you think
+so? But you are young and energetic, and perhaps you are not affected by
+them."
+
+She spoke pleasantly and playfully, yet with a certain nervous tension
+of voice and manner that seemed to illustrate her theory. At least,
+Clarence, in quick sympathy with her slightest emotion, was touched by
+it. There is no more insidious attraction in the persons we admire, than
+the belief that we know and understand their unhappiness, and that our
+admiration for them is lifted higher than a mere mutual instinctive
+sympathy with beauty or strength. This adorable woman had suffered. The
+very thought aroused his chivalry. It loosened, also, I fear, his quick,
+impulsive tongue.
+
+Oh, yes; he knew it. He had lived under this whip of air and sky for
+three years, alone in a Spanish rancho, with only the native peons
+around him, and scarcely speaking his own tongue even to his guardian.
+He spent his mornings on horseback in fields like these, until the
+vientos generales, as they called them, sprang up and drove him nearly
+frantic; and his only relief was to bury himself among the books in his
+guardian's library, and shut out the world,--just as she did. The smile
+which hovered around the lady's mouth at that moment arrested Clarence,
+with a quick remembrance of their former relative positions, and a
+sudden conviction of his familiarity in suggesting an equality of
+experience, and he blushed. But Mrs. Peyton diverted his embarrassment
+with an air of interested absorption in his story, and said:--
+
+"Then you know these people thoroughly, Mr. Brant? I am afraid that WE
+do not."
+
+Clarence had already gathered that fact within the last few days, and,
+with his usual impulsive directness, said so. A slight knitting of Mrs.
+Peyton's brows passed off, however, as he quickly and earnestly went on
+to say that it was impossible for the Peytons in their present relations
+to the natives to judge them, or to be judged by them fairly. How they
+were a childlike race, credulous and trustful, but, like all credulous
+and trustful people, given to retaliate when imposed upon with a larger
+insincerity, exaggeration, and treachery. How they had seen their houses
+and lands occupied by strangers, their religion scorned, their customs
+derided, their patriarchal society invaded by hollow civilization or
+frontier brutality--all this fortified by incident and illustration,
+the outcome of some youthful experience, and given with the glowing
+enthusiasm of conviction. Mrs. Peyton listened with the usual divided
+feminine interest between subject and speaker.
+
+Where did this rough, sullen boy--as she had known him--pick up this
+delicate and swift perception, this reflective judgment, and this odd
+felicity of expression? It was not possible that it was in him while he
+was the companion of her husband's servants or the recognized "chum" of
+the scamp Hooker. No. But if HE could have changed like this, why not
+Susy? Mrs. Peyton, in the conservatism of her sex, had never been quite
+free from fears of her adopted daughter's hereditary instincts; but,
+with this example before her, she now took heart. Perhaps the change was
+coming slowly; perhaps even now what she thought was indifference and
+coldness was only some abnormal preparation or condition. But she only
+smiled and said:--
+
+"Then, if you think those people have been wronged, you are not on our
+side, Mr. Brant?"
+
+What to an older and more worldly man would have seemed, and probably
+was, only a playful reproach, struck Clarence deeply, and brought his
+pent-up feelings to his lips.
+
+"YOU have never wronged them. You couldn't do it; it isn't in your
+nature. I am on YOUR side, and for you and yours always, Mrs. Peyton.
+From the first time I saw you on the plains, when I was brought, a
+ragged boy, before you by your husband, I think I would gladly have
+laid down my life for you. I don't mind telling you now that I was even
+jealous of poor Susy, so anxious was I for the smallest share in your
+thoughts, if only for a moment. You could have done anything with me you
+wished, and I should have been happy,--far happier than I have been ever
+since. I tell you this, Mrs. Peyton, now, because you have just doubted
+if I might be 'on your side,' but I have been longing to tell it all to
+you before, and it is that I am ready to do anything you want,--all you
+want,--to be on YOUR SIDE and at YOUR SIDE, now and forever."
+
+He was so earnest and hearty, and above all so appallingly and
+blissfully happy, in this relief of his feelings, smiling as if it were
+the most natural thing in the world, and so absurdly unconscious of his
+twenty-two years, his little brown curling mustache, the fire in
+his wistful, yearning eyes, and, above all, of his clasped hands and
+lover-like attitude, that Mrs. Peyton--at first rigid as stone, then
+suffused to the eyes--cast a hasty glance round the apartment, put her
+handkerchief to her face, and laughed like a girl.
+
+At which Clarence, by no means discomposed, but rather accepting her
+emotion as perfectly natural, joined her heartily, and added:--
+
+"It's so, Mrs. Peyton; I'm glad I told you. You don't mind it, do you?"
+
+But Mrs. Peyton had resumed her gravity, and perhaps a touch of her
+previous misgivings.
+
+"I should certainly be very sorry," she said, looking at him critically,
+"to object to your sharing your old friendship for your little playmate
+with her parents and guardians, or to your expressing it to THEM as
+frankly as to her."
+
+She saw the quick change in his mobile face and the momentary arrest of
+its happy expression. She was frightened and yet puzzled. It was not the
+sensitiveness of a lover at the mention of the loved one's name, and yet
+it suggested an uneasy consciousness. If his previous impulsive outburst
+had been prompted honestly, or even artfully, by his passion for Susy,
+why had he looked so shocked when she spoke of her?
+
+But Clarence, whose emotion had been caused by the sudden recall of his
+knowledge of Susy's own disloyalty to the woman whose searching eyes
+were upon him, in his revulsion against the deceit was, for an instant,
+upon the point of divulging all. Perhaps, if Mrs. Peyton had shown more
+confidence, he would have done so, and materially altered the evolution
+of this story. But, happily, it is upon these slight human weaknesses
+that your romancer depends, and Clarence, with no other reason than the
+instinctive sympathy of youth with youth in its opposition to wisdom and
+experience, let the opportunity pass, and took the responsibility of it
+out of the hands of this chronicler.
+
+Howbeit, to cover his confusion, he seized upon the second idea that was
+in his mind, and stammered, "Susy! Yes, I wanted to speak to you about
+her." Mrs. Peyton held her breath, but the young man went on, although
+hesitatingly, with evident sincerity. "Have you heard from any of her
+relations since--since--you adopted her?"
+
+It seemed a natural enough question, although not the sequitur she had
+expected. "No," she said carelessly. "It was well understood, after the
+nearest relation--an aunt by marriage--had signed her consent to Susy's
+adoption, that there should be no further intercourse with the family.
+There seemed to us no necessity for reopening the past, and Susy herself
+expressed no desire." She stopped, and again fixing her handsome eyes on
+Clarence, said, "Do you know any of them?"
+
+But Clarence by this time had recovered himself, and was able to answer
+carelessly and truthfully that he did not. Mrs. Peyton, still regarding
+him closely, added somewhat deliberately, "It matters little now what
+relations she has; Mr. Peyton and I have complete legal control over her
+until she is of age, and we can easily protect her from any folly of
+her own or others, or from any of the foolish fancies that sometimes
+overtake girls of her age and inexperience."
+
+To her utter surprise, however, Clarence uttered a faint sigh of relief,
+and his face again recovered its expression of boyish happiness. "I'm
+glad of it, Mrs. Peyton," he said heartily. "No one could understand
+better what is for her interest in all things than yourself. Not," he
+said, with hasty and equally hearty loyalty to his old playmate, "that
+I think she would ever go against your wishes, or do anything that she
+knows to be wrong, but she is very young and innocent,--as much of a
+child as ever, don't you think so, Mrs. Peyton?"
+
+It was amusing, yet nevertheless puzzling, to hear this boyish young man
+comment upon Susy's girlishness. And Clarence was serious, for he had
+quite forgotten in Mrs. Peyton's presence the impression of superiority
+which Susy had lately made upon him. But Mrs. Peyton returned to
+the charge, or, rather, to an attack upon what she conceived to be
+Clarence's old position.
+
+"I suppose she does seem girlish compared to Mary Rogers, who is a much
+more reserved and quiet nature. But Mary is very charming, Mr. Brant,
+and I am really delighted to have her here with Susy. She has such
+lovely dark eyes and such good manners. She has been well brought up,
+and it is easy to see that her friends are superior people. I must
+write to them to thank them for her visit, and beg them to let her stay
+longer. I think you said you didn't know them?"
+
+But Clarence, whose eyes had been thoughtfully and admiringly wandering
+over every characteristic detail of the charming apartment, here raised
+them to its handsome mistress, with an apologetic air and a "No" of such
+unaffected and complete abstraction, that she was again dumbfounded.
+Certainly, it could not be Mary in whom he was interested.
+
+Abandoning any further inquisition for the present, she let the talk
+naturally fall upon the books scattered about the tables. The young
+man knew them all far better than she did, with a cognate knowledge of
+others of which she had never heard. She found herself in the attitude
+of receiving information from this boy, whose boyishness, however,
+seemed to have evaporated, whose tone had changed with the subject, and
+who now spoke with the conscious reserve of knowledge. Decidedly, she
+must have grown rusty in her seclusion. This came, she thought bitterly,
+of living alone; of her husband's preoccupation with the property; of
+Susy's frivolous caprices. At the end of eight years to be outstripped
+by a former cattle-boy of her husband's, and to have her French
+corrected in a matter of fact way by this recent pupil of the priests,
+was really too bad! Perhaps he even looked down upon Susy! She smiled
+dangerously but suavely.
+
+"You must have worked so hard to educate yourself from nothing, Mr.
+Brant. You couldn't read, I think, when you first came to us. No? Could
+you really? I know it has been very difficult for Susy to get on with
+her studies in proportion. We had so much to first eradicate in the way
+of manners, style, and habits of thought which the poor child had
+picked up from her companions, and for which SHE was not responsible.
+Of course, with a boy that does not signify," she added, with feline
+gentleness.
+
+But the barbed speech glanced from the young man's smoothly smiling
+abstraction.
+
+"Ah, yes. But those were happy days, Mrs. Peyton," he answered, with an
+exasperating return of his previous boyish enthusiasm, "perhaps because
+of our ignorance. I don't think that Susy and I are any happier for
+knowing that the plains are not as flat as we believed they were, and
+that the sun doesn't have to burn a hole in them every night when it
+sets. But I know I believed that YOU knew everything. When I once saw
+you smiling over a book in your hand, I thought it must be a different
+one from any that I had ever seen, and perhaps made expressly for you.
+I can see you there still. Do you know," quite confidentially, "that you
+reminded me--of course YOU were much younger--of what I remembered of my
+mother?"
+
+But Mrs. Peyton's reply of "Ah, indeed," albeit polite, indicated some
+coldness and lack of animation. Clarence rose quickly, but cast a long
+and lingering look around him.
+
+"You will come again, Mr. Brant," said the lady more graciously. "If you
+are going to ride now, perhaps you would try to meet Mr. Peyton. He is
+late already, and I am always uneasy when he is out alone,--particularly
+on one of those half-broken horses, which they consider good enough for
+riding here. YOU have ridden them before and understand them, but I am
+afraid that's another thing WE have got to learn."
+
+When the young man found himself again confronting the glittering light
+of the courtyard, he remembered the interview and the soft twilight of
+the boudoir only as part of a pleasant dream. There was a rude awakening
+in the fierce wind, which had increased with the lengthening shadows.
+It seemed to sweep away the half-sensuous comfort that had pervaded
+him, and made him coldly realize that he had done nothing to solve the
+difficulties of his relations to Susy. He had lost the one chance of
+confiding to Mrs. Peyton,--if he had ever really intended to do so.
+It was impossible for him to do it hereafter without a confession of
+prolonged deceit.
+
+He reached the stables impatiently, where his attention was attracted
+by the sound of excited voices in the corral. Looking within, he was
+concerned to see that one of the vacqueros was holding the dragging
+bridle of a blown, dusty, and foam-covered horse, around whom a dozen
+idlers were gathered. Even beneath its coating of dust and foam and
+the half-displaced saddle blanket, Clarence immediately recognized the
+spirited pinto mustang which Peyton had ridden that morning.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Clarence, from the gateway.
+
+The men fell apart, glancing at each other. One said quickly in
+Spanish:--
+
+"Say nothing to HIM. It is an affair of the house."
+
+But this brought Clarence down like a bombshell among them, not to be
+overlooked in his equal command of their tongue and of them. "Ah! come,
+now. What drunken piggishness is this? Speak!"
+
+"The padron has been--perhaps--thrown," stammered the first speaker.
+"His horse arrives,--but he does not. We go to inform the senora."
+
+"No, you don't! mules and imbeciles! Do you want to frighten her to
+death? Mount, every one of you, and follow me!"
+
+The men hesitated, but for only a moment. Clarence had a fine assortment
+of Spanish epithets, expletives, and objurgations, gathered in his rodeo
+experience at El Refugio, and laid them about him with such fervor
+and discrimination that two or three mules, presumably with guilty
+consciences, mistaking their direction, actually cowered against the
+stockade of the corral in fear. In another moment the vacqueros had
+hastily mounted, and, with Clarence at their head, were dashing down the
+road towards Santa Inez. Here he spread them in open order in the grain,
+on either side of the track, himself taking the road.
+
+They did not proceed very far. For when they had reached the gradual
+slope which marked the decline to the second terrace, Clarence, obeying
+an instinct as irresistible as it was unaccountable, which for the last
+few moments had been forcing itself upon him, ordered a halt. The casa
+and corral had already sunk in the plain behind them; it was the spot
+where the lasso had been thrown at him a few evenings before! Bidding
+the men converge slowly towards the road, he went on more cautiously,
+with his eyes upon the track before him. Presently he stopped. There
+was a ragged displacement of the cracked and crumbling soil and the
+unmistakable scoop of kicking hoofs. As he stooped to examine them, one
+of the men at the right uttered a shout. By the same strange instinct
+Clarence knew that Peyton was found!
+
+He was, indeed, lying there among the wild oats at the right of the
+road, but without trace of life or scarcely human appearance. His
+clothes, where not torn and shredded away, were partly turned inside
+out; his shoulders, neck, and head were a shapeless, undistinguishable
+mask of dried earth and rags, like a mummy wrapping. His left boot was
+gone. His large frame seemed boneless, and, except for the cerements of
+his mud-stiffened clothing, was limp and sodden.
+
+Clarence raised his head suddenly from a quick examination of the body,
+and looked at the men around him. One of them was already cantering
+away. Clarence instantly threw himself on his horse, and, putting spurs
+to the animal, drew a revolver from his holster and fired over the man's
+head. The rider turned in his saddle, saw his pursuer, and pulled up.
+
+"Go back," said Clarence, "or my next shot won't MISS you."
+
+"I was only going to inform the senora," said the man with a shrug and a
+forced smile.
+
+"I will do that," said Clarence grimly, driving him back with him
+into the waiting circle; then turning to them he said slowly, with
+deliberate, smileless irony, "And now, my brave gentlemen,--knights
+of the bull and gallant mustang hunters,--I want to inform YOU that I
+believe that Mr. Peyton was MURDERED, and if the man who killed him is
+anywhere this side of hell, I intend to find him. Good! You understand
+me! Now lift up the body,--you two, by the shoulders; you two, by the
+feet. Let your horses follow. For I intend that you four shall carry
+home your master in your arms, on foot. Now forward to the corral by the
+back trail. Disobey me, or step out of line and"--He raised the revolver
+ominously.
+
+If the change wrought in the dead man before them was weird and
+terrifying, no less distinct and ominous was the change that, during the
+last few minutes, had come over the living speaker. For it was no longer
+the youthful Clarence who sat there, but a haggard, prematurely worn,
+desperate-looking avenger, lank of cheek, and injected of eye, whose
+white teeth glistened under the brown mustache and thin pale lips that
+parted when his restrained breath now and then hurriedly escaped them.
+
+As the procession moved on, two men slunk behind with the horses.
+
+"Mother of God! Who is this wolf's whelp?" said Manuel.
+
+"Hush!" said his companion in a terrified whisper. "Have you not heard?
+It is the son of Hamilton Brant, the assassin, the duelist,--he who
+was fusiladed in Sonora." He made the sign of the cross quickly. "Jesus
+Maria! Let them look out who have cause, for the blood of his father is
+in him!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+What other speech passed between Clarence and Peyton's retainers was not
+known, but not a word of the interview seemed to have been divulged by
+those present. It was generally believed and accepted that Judge Peyton
+met his death by being thrown from his half-broken mustang, and dragged
+at its heels, and medical opinion, hastily summoned from Santa Inez
+after the body had been borne to the corral, and stripped of its
+hideous encasings, declared that the neck had been broken, and death had
+followed instantaneously. An inquest was deemed unnecessary.
+
+Clarence had selected Mary to break the news to Mrs. Peyton, and the
+frightened young girl was too much struck with the change still visible
+in his face, and the half authority of his manner, to decline, or even
+to fully appreciate the calamity that had befallen them. After the first
+benumbing shock, Mrs. Peyton passed into that strange exaltation of
+excitement brought on by the immediate necessity for action, followed by
+a pallid calm, which the average spectator too often unfairly accepts as
+incongruous, inadequate, or artificial. There had also occurred one
+of those strange compensations that wait on Death or disrupture by
+catastrophe: such as the rude shaking down of an unsettled life, the
+forcible realization of what were vague speculations, the breaking of
+old habits and traditions, and the unloosing of half-conscious bonds.
+Mrs. Peyton, without insensibility to her loss or disloyalty to her
+affections, nevertheless felt a relief to know that she was now really
+Susy's guardian, free to order her new life wherever and under what
+conditions she chose as most favorable to it, and that she could dispose
+of this house that was wearying to her when Susy was away, and which
+the girl herself had always found insupportable. She could settle this
+question of Clarence's relations to her daughter out of hand without
+advice or opposition. She had a brother in the East, who would be
+summoned to take care of the property. This consideration for the living
+pursued her, even while the dead man's presence still awed the hushed
+house; it was in her thoughts as she stood beside his bier and adjusted
+the flowers on his breast, which no longer moved for or against these
+vanities; and it stayed with her even in the solitude of her darkened
+room.
+
+But if Mrs. Peyton was deficient, it was Susy who filled the popular
+idea of a mourner, and whose emotional attitude of a grief-stricken
+daughter left nothing to be desired. It was she who, when the house was
+filled with sympathizing friends from San Francisco and the few near
+neighbors who had hurried with condolences, was overflowing in her
+reminiscences of the dead man's goodness to her, and her own undying
+affection; who recalled ominous things that he had said, and strange
+premonitions of her own, the result of her ever-present filial anxiety;
+it was she who had hurried home that afternoon, impelled with vague
+fears of some impending calamity; it was she who drew a picture of
+Peyton as a doting and almost too indulgent parent, which Mary Rogers
+failed to recognize, and which brought back vividly to Clarence's
+recollection her own childish exaggerations of the Indian massacre. I
+am far from saying that she was entirely insincere or merely acting at
+these moments; at times she was taken with a mild hysteria, brought on
+by the exciting intrusion of this real event in her monotonous life,
+by the attentions of her friends, the importance of her suffering as an
+only child, and the advancement of her position as the heiress of the
+Robles Rancho. If her tears were near the surface, they were at least
+genuine, and filmed her violet eyes and reddened her pretty eyelids
+quite as effectually as if they had welled from the depths of her being.
+Her black frock lent a matured dignity to her figure, and paled her
+delicate complexion with the refinement of suffering. Even Clarence was
+moved in that dark and haggard abstraction that had settled upon him
+since his strange outbreak over the body of his old friend.
+
+The extent of that change had not been noticed by Mrs. Peyton, who
+had only observed that Clarence had treated her grief with a grave and
+silent respect. She was grateful for that. A repetition of his boyish
+impulsiveness would have been distasteful to her at such a moment. She
+only thought him more mature and more subdued, and as the only man now
+in her household his services had been invaluable in the emergency.
+
+The funeral had taken place at Santa Inez, where half the county
+gathered to pay their last respects to their former fellow-citizen and
+neighbor, whose legal and combative victories they had admired, and whom
+death had lifted into a public character. The family were returning to
+the house the same afternoon, Mrs. Peyton and the girls in one carriage,
+the female house-servants in another, and Clarence on horseback. They
+had reached the first plateau, and Clarence was riding a little in
+advance, when an extraordinary figure, rising from the grain beyond,
+began to gesticulate to him wildly. Checking the driver of the first
+carriage, Clarence bore down upon the stranger. To his amazement it
+was Jim Hooker. Mounted on a peaceful, unwieldy plough horse, he was
+nevertheless accoutred and armed after his most extravagant fashion.
+In addition to a heavy rifle across his saddle-bow he was weighted down
+with a knife and revolvers. Clarence was in no mood for trifling, and
+almost rudely demanded his business.
+
+"Gord, Clarence, it ain't foolin'. The Sisters' title was decided
+yesterday."
+
+"I knew it, you fool! It's YOUR title! You were already on your land and
+in possession. What the devil are you doing HERE?"
+
+"Yes,--but," stammered Jim, "all the boys holding that title moved up
+here to 'make the division' and grab all they could. And I followed. And
+I found out that they were going to grab Judge Peyton's house, because
+it was on the line, if they could, and findin' you was all away, by Gord
+THEY DID! and they're in it! And I stoled out and rode down here to warn
+ye."
+
+He stopped, looked at Clarence, glanced darkly around him and then down
+on his accoutrements. Even in that supreme moment of sincerity, he could
+not resist the possibilities of the situation.
+
+"It's as much as my life's worth," he said gloomily. "But," with a dark
+glance at his weapons, "I'll sell it dearly."
+
+"Jim!" said Clarence, in a terrible voice, "you're not lying again?"
+
+"No," said Jim hurriedly. "I swear it, Clarence! No! Honest Injin this
+time. And look. I'll help you. They ain't expectin' you yet, and they
+think ye'll come by the road. Ef I raised a scare off there by the
+corral, while you're creepin' ROUND BY THE BACK, mebbe you could get in
+while they're all lookin' for ye in front, don't you see? I'll raise a
+big row, and they needn't know but what ye've got wind of it and brought
+a party with you from Santa Inez."
+
+In a flash Clarence had wrought a feasible plan out of Jim's fantasy.
+
+"Good," he said, wringing his old companion's hand. "Go back quietly
+now; hang round the corral, and when you see the carriage climbing the
+last terrace raise your alarm. Don't mind how loud it is, there'll be
+nobody but the servants in the carriages."
+
+He rode quickly back to the first carriage, at whose window Mrs.
+Peyton's calm face was already questioning him. He told her briefly and
+concisely of the attack, and what he proposed to do.
+
+"You have shown yourself so strong in matters of worse moment than
+this," he added quietly, "that I have no fears for your courage. I have
+only to ask you to trust yourself to me, to put you back at once in your
+own home. Your presence there, just now, is the one important thing,
+whatever happens afterwards."
+
+She recognized his maturer tone and determined manner, and nodded
+assent. More than that, a faint fire came into her handsome eyes; the
+two girls kindled their own at that flaming beacon, and sat with flushed
+checks and suspended, indignant breath. They were Western Americans, and
+not over much used to imposition.
+
+"You must get down before we raise the hill, and follow me on foot
+through the grain. I was thinking," he added, turning to Mrs. Peyton,
+"of your boudoir window."
+
+She had been thinking of it, too, and nodded.
+
+"The vine has loosened the bars," he said.
+
+"If it hasn't, we must squeeze through them," she returned simply.
+
+At the end of the terrace Clarence dismounted, and helped them from the
+carriage. He then gave directions to the coachmen to follow the road
+slowly to the corral in front of the casa, and tied his horse behind
+the second carriage. Then, with Mrs. Peyton and the two young girls, he
+plunged into the grain.
+
+It was hot, it was dusty, their thin shoes slipped in the crumbling
+adobe, and the great blades caught in their crape draperies, but they
+uttered no complaint. Whatever ulterior thought was in their minds, they
+were bent only on one thing at that moment,--on entering the house at
+any hazard. Mrs. Peyton had lived long enough on the frontier to know
+the magic power of POSSESSION. Susy already was old enough to feel the
+acute feminine horror of the profanation of her own belongings by alien
+hands. Clarence, more cognizant of the whole truth than the others, was
+equally silent and determined; and Mary Rogers was fired with the zeal
+of loyalty.
+
+Suddenly a series of blood-curdling yells broke from the direction
+of the corral, and they stopped. But Clarence at once recognized the
+well-known war-whoop imitation of Jim Hooker,--infinitely more gruesome
+and appalling than the genuine aboriginal challenge. A half dozen shots
+fired in quick succession had evidently the same friendly origin.
+
+"Now is our time," said Clarence eagerly. "We must run for the house."
+
+They had fortunately reached by this time the angle of the adobe wall of
+the casa, and the long afternoon shadows of the building were in their
+favor. They pressed forward eagerly with the sounds of Jim Hooker's sham
+encounter still in their ears, mingled with answering shouts of defiance
+from strange voices within the building towards the front.
+
+They rapidly skirted the wall, even passing boldly before the back
+gateway, which seemed empty and deserted, and the next moment stood
+beside the narrow window of the boudoir. Clarence's surmises were
+correct; the iron grating was not only loose, but yielded to a vigorous
+wrench, the vine itself acting as a lever to pull out the rusty bars.
+The young man held out his hand, but Mrs. Peyton, with the sudden
+agility of a young girl, leaped into the window, followed by Mary and
+Susy. The inner casement yielded to her touch; the next moment they
+were within the room. Then Mrs. Peyton's flushed and triumphant face
+reappeared at the window.
+
+"It's all right; the men are all in the courtyard, or in the front of
+the house. The boudoir door is strong, and we can bolt them out."
+
+"It won't be necessary," said Clarence quietly; "you will not be
+disturbed."
+
+"But are you not coming in?" she asked timidly, holding the window open.
+
+Clarence looked at her with his first faint smile since Peyton's death.
+
+"Of course I am, but not in THAT way. I am going in by THE FRONT GATE."
+
+She would have detained him, but, with a quick wave of his hand, he left
+her, and ran swiftly around the wall of the casa toward the front. The
+gate was half open; a dozen excited men were gathered before it and in
+the archway, and among them, whitened with dust, blackened with powder,
+and apparently glutted with rapine, and still holding a revolver in his
+hand, was Jim Hooker! As Clarence approached, the men quickly retreated
+inside the gate and closed it, but not before he had exchanged a meaning
+glance with Jim. When he reached the gate, a man from within roughly
+demanded his business.
+
+"I wish to see the leader of this party," said Clarence quietly.
+
+"I reckon you do," returned the man, with a short laugh. "But I
+kalkilate HE don't return the compliment."
+
+"He probably will when he reads this note to his employer," continued
+Clarence still coolly, selecting a paper from his pocketbook. It was
+addressed to Francisco Robles, Superintendent of the Sisters' Title, and
+directed him to give Mr. Clarence Brant free access to the property and
+the fullest information concerning it. The man took it, glanced at it,
+looked again at Clarence, and then passed the paper to a third man among
+the group in the courtyard. The latter read it, and approached the gate
+carelessly.
+
+"Well, what do you want?"
+
+"I am afraid you have the advantage of me in being able to transact
+business through bars," said Clarence, with slow but malevolent
+distinctness, "and as mine is important, I think you had better open the
+gate to me."
+
+The slight laugh that his speech had evoked from the bystanders was
+checked as the leader retorted angrily:--
+
+"That's all very well; but how do I know that you're the man represented
+in that letter? Pancho Robles may know you, but I don't."
+
+"That you can find out very easily," said Clarence. "There is a man
+among your party who knows me,--Mr. Hooker. Ask him."
+
+The man turned, with a quick mingling of surprise and suspicion, to the
+gloomy, imperturbable Hooker. Clarence could not hear the reply of that
+young gentleman, but it was evidently not wanting in his usual dark,
+enigmatical exaggeration. The man surlily opened the gate.
+
+"All the same," he said, still glancing suspiciously at Hooker, "I don't
+see what HE'S got to do with you."
+
+"A great deal," said Clarence, entering the courtyard, and stepping into
+the veranda; "HE'S ONE OF MY TENANTS."
+
+"Your WHAT?" said the man, with a coarse laugh of incredulity.
+
+"My tenants," repeated Clarence, glancing around the courtyard
+carelessly. Nevertheless, he was relieved to notice that the three
+or four Mexicans of the party did not seem to be old retainers of the
+rancho. There was no evidence of the internal treachery he had feared.
+
+"Your TENANTS!" echoed the man, with an uneasy glance at the faces of
+the others.
+
+"Yes," said Clarence, with business brevity; "and, for the matter of
+that, although I have no reason to be particularly proud of it, SO ARE
+YOU ALL. You ask my business here. It seems to be the same as yours,--to
+hold possession of this house! With this difference, however," he
+continued, taking a document from his pocket. "Here is the certificate,
+signed by the County Clerk, of the bill of sale of the entire Sisters'
+title to ME. It includes the whole two leagues from Fair Plains to
+the old boundary line of this rancho, which you forcibly entered this
+morning. There is the document; examine it if you like. The only shadow
+of a claim you could have to this property you would have to derive from
+ME. The only excuse you could have for this act of lawlessness would
+be orders from ME. And all that you have done this morning is only the
+assertion of MY legal right to this house. If I disavow your act, as I
+might, I leave you as helpless as any tramp that was ever kicked from
+a doorstep,--as any burglar that was ever collared on the fence by a
+constable."
+
+It was the truth. There was no denying the authority of the document,
+the facts of the situation, or its ultimate power and significance.
+There was consternation, stupefaction, and even a half-humorous
+recognition of the absurdity of their position on most of the faces
+around him. Incongruous as the scene was, it was made still more
+grotesque by the attitude of Jim Hooker. Ruthlessly abandoning the
+party of convicted trespassers, he stalked gloomily over to the side
+of Clarence, with the air of having been all the time scornfully in
+the secret and a mien of wearied victoriousness, and thus halting, he
+disdainfully expectorated tobacco juice on the ground between him
+and his late companions, as if to form a line of demarcation. The
+few Mexicans began to edge towards the gateway. This defection of his
+followers recalled the leader, who was no coward, to himself again.
+
+"Shut the gate, there!" he shouted.
+
+As its two sides clashed together again, he turned deliberately to
+Clarence.
+
+"That's all very well, young man, as regards the TITLE. You may have
+BOUGHT up the land, and legally own every square inch of howling
+wilderness between this and San Francisco, and I wish you joy of
+your d--d fool's bargain; you may have got a whole circus like that,"
+pointing to the gloomy Jim, "at your back. But with all your money and
+all your friends you've forgotten one thing. You haven't got possession,
+and we have."
+
+"That's just where we differ," said Clarence coolly, "for if you take
+the trouble to examine the house, you will see that it is already in
+possession of Mrs. Peyton,--MY TENANT."
+
+He paused to give effect to his revelations. But he was, nevertheless,
+unprepared for an unrehearsed dramatic situation. Mrs. Peyton, who had
+been tired of waiting, and was listening in the passage, at the mention
+of her name, entered the gallery, followed by the young ladies. The
+slight look of surprise upon her face at the revelation she had just
+heard of Clarence's ownership, only gave the suggestion of her having
+been unexpectedly disturbed in her peaceful seclusion. One of the
+Mexicans turned pale, with a frightened glance at the passage, as if he
+expected the figure of the dead man to follow.
+
+The group fell back. The game was over,--and lost. No one recognized it
+more quickly than the gamblers themselves. More than that, desperate and
+lawless as they were, they still retained the chivalry of Western men,
+and every hat was slowly doffed to the three black figures that stood
+silently in the gallery. And even apologetic speech began to loosen the
+clenched teeth of the discomfited leader.
+
+"We--were--told there was no one in the house," he stammered.
+
+"And it was the truth," said a pert, youthful, yet slightly affected
+voice. "For we climbed into the window just as you came in at the gate."
+
+It was Susy's words that stung their ears again; but it was Susy's
+pretty figure, suddenly advanced and in a slightly theatrical attitude,
+that checked their anger. There had been a sudden ominous silence,
+as the whole plot of rescue seemed to be revealed to them in those
+audacious words. But a sense of the ludicrous, which too often was the
+only perception that ever mitigated the passions of such assemblies,
+here suddenly asserted itself. The leader burst into a loud laugh, which
+was echoed by the others, and, with waving hats, the whole party swept
+peacefully out through the gate.
+
+"But what does all this mean about YOUR purchasing the land, Mr. Brant?"
+said Mrs. Peyton quickly, fixing her eyes intently on Clarence.
+
+A faint color--the useless protest of his truthful blood--came to his
+cheek.
+
+"The house is YOURS, and yours alone, Mrs. Peyton. The purchase of the
+sisters' title was a private arrangement between Mr. Peyton and myself,
+in view of an emergency like this."
+
+She did not, however, take her proud, searching eyes from his face, and
+he was forced to turn away.
+
+"It was SO like dear, good, thoughtful papa," said Susy. "Why, bless
+me," in a lower voice, "if that isn't that lying old Jim Hooker standing
+there by the gate!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Judge Peyton had bequeathed his entire property unconditionally to his
+wife. But his affairs were found to be greatly in disorder, and his
+papers in confusion, and although Mrs. Peyton could discover no actual
+record of the late transaction with Mr. Brant, which had saved her the
+possession of the homestead, it was evident that he had spent large sums
+in speculative attempts to maintain the integrity of his estate. That
+enormous domain, although perfectly unencumbered, had been nevertheless
+unremunerative, partly through the costs of litigation and partly
+through the systematic depredations to which its great size and long
+line of unprotected boundary had subjected it. It had been invaded
+by squatters and "jumpers," who had sown and reaped crops without
+discovery; its cattle and wild horses had strayed or been driven beyond
+its ill-defined and hopeless limits. Against these difficulties the
+widow felt herself unable and unwilling to contend, and with the advice
+of her friends and her lawyer, she concluded to sell the estate, except
+that portion covered by the Sisters' title, which, with the homestead,
+had been reconveyed to her by Clarence. She retired with Susy to the
+house in San Francisco, leaving Clarence to occupy and hold the casa,
+with her servants, for her until order was restored. The Robles Rancho
+thus became the headquarters of the new owner of the Sisters' title,
+from which he administered its affairs, visited its incumbencies,
+overlooked and surveyed its lands, and--occasionally--collected its
+rents. There were not wanting critics who averred that these were
+scarcely remunerative, and that the young San Francisco fine gentleman,
+who was only Hamilton Brant's son, after all, yet who wished to ape
+the dignity and degree of a large landholder, had made a very foolish
+bargain. I grieve to say that one of his own tenants, namely, Jim
+Hooker, in his secret heart inclined to that belief, and looked upon
+Clarence's speculation as an act of far-seeing and inordinate vanity.
+
+Indeed, the belligerent Jim had partly--and of course darkly--intimated
+something of this to Susy in their brief reunion at the casa during
+the few days that followed its successful reoccupation. And Clarence,
+remembering her older caprices, and her remark on her first recognition
+of him, was quite surprised at the easy familiarity of her reception
+of this forgotten companion of their childhood. But he was still more
+concerned in noticing, for the first time, a singular sympathetic
+understanding of each other, and an odd similarity of occasional action
+and expression between them. It was a part of this monstrous peculiarity
+that neither the sympathy nor the likeness suggested any particular
+friendship or amity in the pair, but rather a mutual antagonism and
+suspicion. Mrs. Peyton, coldly polite to Clarence's former COMPANION,
+but condescendingly gracious to his present TENANT and retainer, did not
+notice it, preoccupied with the annoyance and pain of Susy's frequent
+references to the old days of their democratic equality.
+
+"You don't remember, Jim, the time that you painted my face in the
+wagon, and got me up as an Indian papoose?" she said mischievously.
+
+But Jim, who had no desire to recall his previous humble position before
+Mrs. Peyton or Clarence, was only vaguely responsive. Clarence, although
+joyfully touched at this seeming evidence of Susy's loyalty to the past,
+nevertheless found himself even more acutely pained at the distress
+it caused Mrs. Peyton, and was as relieved as she was by Hooker's
+reticence. For he had seen little of Susy since Peyton's death, and
+there had been no repetition of their secret interviews. Neither had he,
+nor she as far as he could judge, noticed the omission. He had been more
+than usually kind, gentle, and protecting in his manner towards her,
+with little reference, however, to any response from her, yet he was
+vaguely conscious of some change in his feelings. He attributed it, when
+he thought of it at all, to the exciting experiences through which he
+had passed; to some sentiment of responsibility to his dead friend; and
+to another secret preoccupation that was always in his mind. He believed
+it would pass in time. Yet he felt a certain satisfaction that she was
+no longer able to trouble him, except, of course, when she pained Mrs.
+Peyton, and then he was half conscious of taking the old attitude of
+the dead husband in mediating between them. Yet so great was his
+inexperience that he believed, with pathetic simplicity of perception,
+that all this was due to the slow maturing of his love for her, and
+that he was still able to make her happy. But this was something to
+be thought of later. Just now Providence seemed to have offered him a
+vocation and a purpose that his idle adolescence had never known. He did
+not dream that his capacity for patience was only the slow wasting of
+his love.
+
+Meantime that more wonderful change and recreation of the Californian
+landscape, so familiar, yet always so young, had come to the rancho. The
+league-long terrace that had yellowed, whitened, and wasted for half a
+year beneath a staring, monotonous sky, now under sailing clouds, flying
+and broken shafts of light, and sharply defined lines of rain, had taken
+a faint hue of resurrection. The dust that had muffled the roads and
+byways, and choked the low oaks that fringed the sunken canada, had
+long since been laid. The warm, moist breath of the southwest trades had
+softened the hard, dry lines of the landscape, and restored its color as
+of a picture over which a damp sponge had been passed. The broad expanse
+of plateau before the casa glistened and grew dark. The hidden woods of
+the canada, cleared and strengthened in their solitude, dripped along
+the trails and hollows that were now transformed into running streams.
+The distinguishing madrono near the entrance to the rancho had changed
+its crimson summer suit and masqueraded in buff and green.
+
+Yet there were leaden days, when half the prospect seemed to be seen
+through palisades of rain; when the slight incline between the terraces
+became a tumultuous cascade, and the surest hoofs slipped on trails of
+unctuous mud; when cattle were bogged a few yards from the highway, and
+the crossing of the turnpike road was a dangerous ford. There were
+days of gale and tempest, when the shriveled stalks of giant oats were
+stricken like trees, and lay across each other in rigid angles, and
+a roar as of the sea came up from the writhing treetops in the sunken
+valley. There were long weary nights of steady downpour, hammering
+on the red tiles of the casa, and drumming on the shingles of the
+new veranda, which was more terrible to be borne. Alone, but for the
+servants, and an occasional storm-stayed tenant from Fair Plains,
+Clarence might have, at such times, questioned the effect of this
+seclusion upon his impassioned nature. But he had already been
+accustomed to monastic seclusion in his boyish life at El Refugio, and
+he did not reflect that, for that very reason, its indulgences might
+have been dangerous. From time to time letters reached him from the
+outer world of San Francisco,--a few pleasant lines from Mrs. Peyton, in
+answer to his own chronicle of his half stewardship, giving the news of
+the family, and briefly recounting their movements. She was afraid that
+Susy's sensitive nature chafed under the restriction of mourning in the
+gay city, but she trusted to bring her back for a change to Robles when
+the rains were over. This was a poor substitute for those brief, happy
+glimpses of the home circle which had so charmed him, but he accepted
+it stoically. He wandered over the old house, from which the perfume
+of domesticity seemed to have evaporated, yet, notwithstanding Mrs.
+Peyton's playful permission, he never intruded upon the sanctity of the
+boudoir, and kept it jealously locked.
+
+He was sitting in Peyton's business room one morning, when Incarnacion
+entered. Clarence had taken a fancy to this Indian, half steward, half
+vacquero, who had reciprocated it with a certain dog-like fidelity,
+but also a feline indirectness that was part of his nature. He had been
+early prepossessed with Clarence through a kinsman at El Refugio, where
+the young American's generosity had left a romantic record among the
+common people. He had been pleased to approve of his follies before
+the knowledge of his profitless and lordly land purchase had commended
+itself to him as corroborative testimony. "Of true hidalgo blood, mark
+you," he had said oracularly. "Wherefore was his father sacrificed by
+mongrels! As to the others, believe me,--bah!"
+
+He stood there, sombrero in hand, murky and confidential, steaming
+through his soaked serape and exhaling a blended odor of equine
+perspiration and cigarette smoke.
+
+"It was, perhaps, as the master had noticed, a brigand's own day!
+Bullying, treacherous, and wicked! It blew you off your horse if you so
+much as lifted your arms and let the wind get inside your serape; and as
+for the mud,--caramba! in fifty varas your forelegs were like bears, and
+your hoofs were earthen plasters!"
+
+Clarence knew that Incarnacion had not sought him with mere
+meteorological information, and patiently awaited further developments.
+The vacquero went on:--
+
+"But one of the things this beast of a weather did was to wash down the
+stalks of the grain, and to clear out the trough and hollows between,
+and to make level the fields, and--look you! to uncover the stones and
+rubbish and whatever the summer dust had buried. Indeed, it was even as
+a miracle that Jose Mendez one day, after the first showers, came upon
+a silver button from his calzas, which he had lost in the early summer.
+And it was only that morning that, remembering how much and with what
+fire Don Clarencio had sought the missing boot from the foot of the
+Senor Peyton when his body was found, he, Incarnacion, had thought he
+would look for it on the falda of the second terrace. And behold, Mother
+of God it was there! Soaked with mud and rain, but the same as when the
+senor was alive. To the very spur!"
+
+He drew the boot from beneath his serape and laid it before Clarence.
+The young man instantly recognized it, in spite of its weather-beaten
+condition and its air of grotesque and drunken inconsistency to the
+usually trim and correct appearance of Peyton when alive. "It is the
+same," he said, in a low voice.
+
+"Good!" said Incarnacion. "Now, if Don Clarencio will examine the
+American spur, he will see--what? A few horse-hairs twisted and caught
+in the sharp points of the rowel. Good! Is it the hair of the horse that
+Senor rode? Clearly not; and in truth not. It is too long for the flanks
+and belly of the horse; it is not the same color as the tail and the
+mane. How comes it there? It comes from the twisted horsehair rope of a
+riata, and not from the braided cowhide thongs of the regular lasso of a
+vacquero. The lasso slips not much, but holds; the riata slips much and
+strangles."
+
+"But Mr. Peyton was not strangled," said Clarence quickly.
+
+"No, for the noose of the riata was perhaps large,--who knows? It
+might have slipped down his arms, pinioned him, and pulled him off.
+Truly!--such has been known before. Then on the ground it slipped again,
+or he perhaps worked it off to his feet where it caught on his spur, and
+then he was dragged until the boot came off, and behold! he was dead."
+
+This had been Clarence's own theory of the murder, but he had only
+half confided it to Incarnacion. He silently examined the spur with the
+accusing horse-hair, and placed it in his desk. Incarnacion continued:--
+
+"There is not a vacquero in the whole rancho who has a horse-hair riata.
+We use the braided cowhide; it is heavier and stronger; it is for
+the bull and not the man. The horse-hair riata comes from over the
+range--south."
+
+There was a dead silence, broken only by the drumming of the rain upon
+the roof of the veranda. Incarnacion slightly shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Don Clarencio does not know the southern county? Francisco Robles,
+cousin of the 'Sisters,'--he they call 'Pancho,'--comes from the south.
+Surely when Don Clarencio bought the title he saw Francisco, for he was
+the steward?"
+
+"I dealt only with the actual owners and through my bankers in San
+Francisco," returned Clarence abstractedly.
+
+Incarnacion looked through the yellow corners of his murky eyes at his
+master.
+
+"Pedro Valdez, who was sent away by Senor Peyton, is the foster-brother
+of Francisco. They were much together. Now that Francisco is rich from
+the gold Don Clarencio paid for the title, they come not much together.
+But Pedro is rich, too. Mother of God! He gambles and is a fine
+gentleman. He holds his head high,--even over the Americanos he gambles
+with. Truly, they say he can shoot with the best of them. He boasts and
+swells himself, this Pedro! He says if all the old families were like
+him, they would drive those western swine back over the mountains
+again."
+
+Clarence raised his eyes, caught a subtle yellow flash from
+Incarnacion's, gazed at him suddenly, and rose.
+
+"I don't think I have ever seen him," he said quietly. "Thank you for
+bringing me the spur. But keep the knowledge of it to yourself, good
+Nascio, for the present."
+
+Nascio nevertheless still lingered. Perceiving which, Clarence handed
+him a cigarette and proceeded to light one himself. He knew that the
+vacquero would reroll his, and that that always deliberate occupation
+would cover and be an excuse for further confidence.
+
+"The Senora Peyton does not perhaps meet this Pedro in the society of
+San Francisco?"
+
+"Surely not. The senora is in mourning and goes not out in society, nor
+would she probably go anywhere where she would meet a dismissed servant
+of her husband."
+
+Incarnacion slowly lit his cigarette, and said between the puffs, "And
+the senorita--she would not meet him?"
+
+"Assuredly not."
+
+"And," continued Incarnacion, throwing down the match and putting his
+foot on it, "if this boaster, this turkey-cock, says she did, you could
+put him out like that?"
+
+"Certainly," said Clarence, with an easy confidence he was, however, far
+from feeling, "if he really SAID it--which I doubt."
+
+"Ah, truly," said Incarnacion; "who knows? It may be another Senorita
+Silsbee."
+
+"The senora's adopted daughter is called MISS PEYTON, friend Nascio. You
+forget yourself," said Clarence quietly.
+
+"Ah, pardon!" said Incarnacion with effusive apology; "but she was born
+Silsbee. Everybody knows it; she herself has told it to Pepita. The
+Senor Peyton bequeathed his estate to the Senora Peyton. He named
+not the senorita! Eh, what would you? It is the common cackle of the
+barnyard. But I say 'Mees Silsbee.' For look you. There is a Silsbee of
+Sacramento, the daughter of her aunt, who writes letters to her. Pepita
+has seen them! And possibly it is only that Mees of whom the brigand
+Pedro boasts."
+
+"Possibly," said Clarence, "but as far as this rancho is concerned,
+friend Nascio, thou wilt understand--and I look to thee to make the
+others understand--that there is no Senorita SILSBEE here, only the
+Senorita PEYTON, the respected daughter of the senora thy mistress!" He
+spoke with the quaint mingling of familiarity and paternal gravity of
+the Spanish master--a faculty he had acquired at El Refugio in a like
+vicarious position, and which never failed as a sign of authority. "And
+now," he added gravely, "get out of this, friend, with God's blessing,
+and see that thou rememberest what I told thee."
+
+The retainer, with equal gravity, stepped backwards, saluted with his
+sombrero until the stiff brim scraped the floor, and then solemnly
+withdrew.
+
+Left to himself, Clarence remained for an instant silent and thoughtful
+before the oven-like hearth. So! everybody knew Susy's real relations to
+the Peytons, and everybody but Mrs. Peyton, perhaps, knew that she
+was secretly corresponding with some one of her own family. In other
+circumstances he might have found some excuse for this assertion of her
+independence and love of her kindred, but in her attitude towards Mrs.
+Peyton it seemed monstrous. It appeared impossible that Mrs. Peyton
+should not have heard of it, or suspected the young girl's disaffection.
+Perhaps she had,--it was another burden laid upon her shoulders,--but
+the proud woman had kept it to herself. A film of moisture came across
+his eyes. I fear he thought less of the suggestion of Susy's secret
+meeting with Pedro, or Incarnacion's implied suspicions that Pedro was
+concerned in Peyton's death, than of this sentimental possibility. He
+knew that Pedro had been hated by the others on account of his position;
+he knew the instinctive jealousies of the race and their predisposition
+to extravagant misconstruction. From what he had gathered, and
+particularly from the voices he had overheard on the Fair Plains Road,
+it seemed to him that Pedro was more capable of mercenary intrigue than
+physical revenge. He was not aware of the irrevocable affront put upon
+Pedro by Peyton, and he had consequently attached no importance to
+Peyton's own half-scornful intimation of the only kind of retaliation
+that Pedro would be likely to take. The unsuccessful attempt upon
+himself he had always thought might have been an accident, or if it was
+really a premeditated assault, it might have been intended actually for
+HIMSELF and not Peyton, as he had first thought, and his old friend had
+suffered for HIM, through some mistake of the assailant. The purpose,
+which alone seemed wanting, might have been to remove Clarence as a
+possible witness who had overheard their conspiracy--how much of it they
+did not know--on the Fair Plains Road that night. The only clue he held
+to the murderer in the spur locked in his desk, merely led him beyond
+the confines of the rancho, but definitely nowhere else. It was,
+however, some relief to know that the crime was not committed by one of
+Peyton's retainers, nor the outcome of domestic treachery.
+
+After some consideration he resolved to seek Jim Hooker, who might be
+possessed of some information respecting Susy's relations, either from
+the young girl's own confidences or from Jim's personal knowledge of the
+old frontier families. From a sense of loyalty to Susy and Mrs. Peyton,
+he had never alluded to the subject before him, but since the young
+girl's own indiscretion had made it a matter of common report, however
+distasteful it was to his own feelings, he felt he could not plead the
+sense of delicacy for her. He had great hopes in what he had always
+believed was only her exaggeration of fact as well as feeling. And he
+had an instinctive reliance on her fellow poseur's ability to detect it.
+A few days later, when he found he could safely leave the rancho alone,
+he rode to Fair Plains.
+
+The floods were out along the turnpike road, and even seemed to have
+increased since his last journey. The face of the landscape had changed
+again. One of the lower terraces had become a wild mere of sedge and
+reeds. The dry and dusty bed of a forgotten brook had reappeared, a
+full-banked river, crossing the turnpike and compelling a long detour
+before the traveler could ford it. But as he approached the Hopkins
+farm and the opposite clearing and cabin of Jim Hooker, he was quite
+unprepared for a still more remarkable transformation. The cabin, a
+three-roomed structure, and its cattle-shed had entirely disappeared!
+There were no traces or signs of inundation. The land lay on a gentle
+acclivity above the farm and secure from the effects of the flood, and
+a part of the ploughed and cleared land around the site of the cabin
+showed no evidence of overflow on its black, upturned soil. But
+the house was gone! Only a few timbers too heavy to be removed,
+the blighting erasions of a few months of occupation, and the dull,
+blackened area of the site itself were to be seen. The fence alone was
+intact.
+
+Clarence halted before it, perplexed and astonished. Scarcely two weeks
+had elapsed since he had last visited it and sat beneath its roof with
+Jim, and already its few ruins had taken upon themselves the look of
+years of abandonment and decay. The wild land seemed to have thrown off
+its yoke of cultivation in a night, and nature rioted again with all its
+primal forces over the freed soil. Wild oats and mustard were springing
+already in the broken furrows, and lank vines were slimily spreading
+over a few scattered but still unseasoned and sappy shingles. Some
+battered tin cans and fragments of old clothing looked as remote as if
+they had been relics of the earliest immigration.
+
+Clarence turned inquiringly towards the Hopkins farmhouse across the
+road. His arrival, however, had already been noticed, as the door of the
+kitchen opened in an anticipatory fashion, and he could see the slight
+figure of Phoebe Hopkins in the doorway, backed by the overlooking heads
+and shoulders of her parents. The face of the young girl was pale and
+drawn with anxiety, at which Clarence's simple astonishment took a shade
+of concern.
+
+"I am looking for Mr. Hooker," he said uneasily. "And I don't seem to be
+able to find either him or his house."
+
+"And you don't know what's gone of him?" said the girl quickly.
+
+"No; I haven't seen him for two weeks."
+
+"There, I told you so!" said the girl, turning nervously to her parents.
+"I knew it. He hasn't seen him for two weeks." Then, looking almost
+tearfully at Clarence's face, she said, "No more have we."
+
+"But," said Clarence impatiently, "something must have happened. Where
+is his house?"
+
+"Taken away by them jumpers," interrupted the old farmer; "a lot of
+roughs that pulled it down and carted it off in a jiffy before our very
+eyes without answerin' a civil question to me or her. But he wasn't
+there, nor before, nor since."
+
+"No," added the old woman, with flashing eyes, "or he'd let 'em have
+what ther' was in his six-shooters."
+
+"No, he wouldn't, mother," said the girl impatiently, "he'd CHANGED, and
+was agin all them ideas of force and riotin'. He was for peace and
+law all the time. Why, the day before we missed him he was tellin' me
+California never would be decent until people obeyed the laws and the
+titles were settled. And for that reason, because he wouldn't fight
+agin the law, or without the consent of the law, they've killed him, or
+kidnapped him away."
+
+The girl's lips quivered, and her small brown hands twisted the edges of
+her blue checked apron. Although this new picture of Jim's peacefulness
+was as astounding and unsatisfactory as his own disappearance, there was
+no doubt of the sincerity of poor Phoebe's impression.
+
+In vain did Clarence point out to them there must be some mistake; that
+the trespassers--the so-called jumpers--really belonged to the same
+party as Hooker, and would have no reason to dispossess him; that, in
+fact, they were all HIS, Clarence's, tenants. In vain he assured them of
+Hooker's perfect security in possession; that he could have driven the
+intruders away by the simple exhibition of his lease, or that he could
+have even called a constable from the town of Fair Plains to protect him
+from mere lawlessness. In vain did he assure them of his intention to
+find his missing friend, and reinstate him at any cost. The conviction
+that the unfortunate young man had been foully dealt with was fixed in
+the minds of the two women. For a moment Clarence himself was staggered
+by it.
+
+"You see," said the young girl, with a kindling face, "the day before
+he came back from Robles, ther' were some queer men hangin' round his
+cabin, but as they were the same kind that went off with him the day the
+Sisters' title was confirmed, we thought nothing of it. But when he
+came back from you he seemed worried and anxious, and wasn't a bit like
+himself. We thought perhaps he'd got into some trouble there, or been
+disappointed. He hadn't, had he, Mr. Brant?" continued Phoebe, with an
+appealing look.
+
+"By no means," said Clarence warmly. "On the contrary, he was able to do
+his friends good service there, and was successful in what he attempted.
+Mrs. Peyton was very grateful. Of course he told you what had happened,
+and what he did for us," continued Clarence, with a smile.
+
+He had already amused himself on the way with a fanciful conception
+of the exaggerated account Jim had given of his exploits. But the
+bewildered girl shook her head.
+
+"No, he didn't tell us ANYTHING."
+
+Clarence was really alarmed. This unprecedented abstention of Hooker's
+was portentous.
+
+"He didn't say anything but what I told you about law and order,"
+she went on; "but that same night we heard a good deal of talking and
+shouting in the cabin and around it. And the next day he was talking
+with father, and wanting to know how HE kept his land without trouble
+from outsiders."
+
+"And I said," broke in Hopkins, "that I guessed folks didn't bother a
+man with women folks around, and that I kalkilated that I wasn't quite
+as notorious for fightin' as he was."
+
+"And he said," also interrupted Mrs. Hopkins, "and quite in his nat'ral
+way, too,--gloomy like, you remember, Cyrus," appealingly to her
+husband,--"that that was his curse."
+
+The smile that flickered around Clarence's mouth faded, however, as he
+caught sight of Phoebe's pleading, interrogating eyes. It was really too
+bad. Whatever change had come over the rascal it was too evident that
+his previous belligerent personality had had its full effect upon the
+simple girl, and that, hereafter, one pair of honest eyes would be
+wistfully following him.
+
+Perplexed and indignant, Clarence again closely questioned her as to the
+personnel of the trespassing party who had been seen once or twice since
+passing over the field. He had at last elicited enough information to
+identify one of them as Gilroy, the leader of the party that had invaded
+Robles rancho. His cheek flushed. Even if they had wished to take a
+theatrical and momentary revenge on Hooker for the passing treachery to
+them which they had just discovered, although such retaliation was
+only transitory, and they could not hold the land, it was an insult
+to Clarence himself, whose tenant Jim was, and subversive of all their
+legally acquired rights. He would confront this Gilroy at once; his
+half-wild encampment was only a few miles away, just over the boundaries
+of the Robles estate. Without stating his intention, he took leave of
+the Hopkins family with the cheerful assurance that he would probably
+return with some news of Hooker, and rode away.
+
+The trail became more indistinct and unfrequented as it diverged from
+the main road, and presently lost itself in the slope towards the east.
+The horizon grew larger: there were faint bluish lines upon it which he
+knew were distant mountains; beyond this a still fainter white line--the
+Sierran snows. Presently he intersected a trail running south, and
+remarked that it crossed the highway behind him, where he had once met
+the two mysterious horsemen. They had evidently reached the terrace
+through the wild oats by that trail. A little farther on were a
+few groups of sheds and canvas tents in a bare and open space, with
+scattered cattle and horsemen, exactly like an encampment, or the
+gathering of a country fair. As Clarence rode down towards them he could
+see that his approach was instantly observed, and that a simultaneous
+movement was made as if to anticipate him. For the first time he
+realized the possible consequences of his visit, single-handed, but it
+was too late to retrace his steps. With a glance at his holster, he rode
+boldly forward to the nearest shed. A dozen men hovered near him, but
+something in his quiet, determined manner held them aloof. Gilroy was
+on the threshold in his shirtsleeves. A single look showed him that
+Clarence was alone, and with a careless gesture of his hand he warned
+away his own followers.
+
+"You've got a sort of easy way of droppin' in whar you ain't invited,
+Brant," he said with a grim smile, which was not, however, without a
+certain air of approval. "Got it from your father, didn't you?"
+
+"I don't know, but I don't believe HE ever thought it necessary to warn
+twenty men of the approach of ONE," replied Clarence, in the same tone.
+"I had no time to stand on ceremony, for I have just come from Hooker's
+quarter section at Fair Plains."
+
+Gilroy smiled again, and gazed abstractedly at the sky.
+
+"You know as well as I do," said Clarence, controlling his voice with
+an effort, "that what you have done there will have to be undone, if you
+wish to hold even those lawless men of yours together, or keep yourself
+and them from being run into the brush like highwaymen. I've no fear for
+that. Neither do I care to know what was your motive in doing it; but I
+can only tell you that if it was retaliation, I alone was and still am
+responsible for Hooker's action at the rancho. I came here to know just
+what you have done with him, and, if necessary, to take his place."
+
+"You're just a little too previous in your talk, I reckon, Brant,"
+returned Gilroy lazily, "and as to legality, I reckon we stand on the
+same level with yourself, just here. Beginnin' with what you came for:
+as we don't know where your Jim Hooker is, and as we ain't done anythin'
+to HIM, we don't exackly see what we could do with YOU in his place.
+Ez to our motives,--well, we've got a good deal to say about THAT.
+We reckoned that he wasn't exackly the kind of man we wanted for a
+neighbor. His pow'ful fightin' style didn't suit us peaceful folks, and
+we thought it rather worked agin this new 'law and order' racket to have
+such a man about, to say nuthin' of it prejudicin' quiet settlers.
+He had too many revolvers for one man to keep his eye on, and was
+altogether too much steeped in blood, so to speak, for ordinary washin'
+and domestic purposes! His hull get up was too deathlike and clammy; so
+we persuaded him to leave. We just went there, all of us, and exhorted
+him. We stayed round there two days and nights, takin' turns, talkin'
+with him, nuthin' more, only selecting subjects in his own style to
+please him, until he left! And then, as we didn't see any use for his
+house there, we took it away. Them's the cold facts, Brant," he added,
+with a certain convincing indifference that left no room for doubt, "and
+you can stand by 'em. Now, workin' back to the first principle you laid
+down,--that we'll have to UNDO what we've DONE,--we don't agree with
+you, for we've taken a leaf outer your own book. We've got it here
+in black and white. We've got a bill o' sale of Hooker's house and
+possession, and we're on the land in place of him,--AS YOUR TENANTS."
+He reentered the shanty, took a piece of paper from a soap-box on the
+shell, and held it out to Clarence. "Here it is. It's a fair and square
+deal, Brant. We gave him, as it says here, a hundred dollars for it! No
+humbuggin', but the hard cash, by Jiminy! AND HE TOOK THE MONEY."
+
+The ring of truth in the man's voice was as unmistakable as the
+signature in Jim's own hand. Hooker had sold out! Clarence turned
+hastily away.
+
+"We don't know where he went," continued Gilroy grimly, "but I reckon
+you ain't over anxious to see him NOW. And I kin tell ye something to
+ease your mind,--he didn't require much persuadin'. And I kin tell ye
+another, if ye ain't above takin' advice from folks that don't pertend
+to give it," he added, with the same curious look of interest in his
+face. "You've done well to get shut of him, and if you got shut of a few
+more of his kind that you trust to, you'd do better."
+
+As if to avoid noticing any angry reply from the young man, he reentered
+the cabin and shut the door behind him. Clarence felt the uselessness of
+further parley, and rode away.
+
+But Gilroy's Parthian arrow rankled as he rode. He was not greatly
+shocked at Jim's defection, for he was always fully conscious of
+his vanity and weakness; but he was by no means certain that Jim's
+extravagance and braggadocio, which he had found only amusing and,
+perhaps, even pathetic, might not be as provocative and prejudicial
+to others as Gilroy had said. But, like all sympathetic and unselfish
+natures, he sought to find some excuse for his old companion's weakness
+in his own mistaken judgment. He had no business to bring poor Jim on
+the land, to subject his singular temperament to the temptations of
+such a life and such surroundings; he should never have made use of his
+services at the rancho. He had done him harm rather than good in his
+ill-advised, and, perhaps, SELFISH attempts to help him. I have said
+that Gilroy's parting warning rankled in his breast, but not ignobly.
+It wounded the surface of his sensitive nature, but could not taint or
+corrupt the pure, wholesome blood of the gentleman beneath it. For in
+Gilroy's warning he saw only his own shortcomings. A strange fatality
+had marked his friendships. He had been no help to Jim; he had brought
+no happiness to Susy or Mrs. Peyton, whose disagreement his visit seemed
+to have accented. Thinking over the mysterious attack upon himself, it
+now seemed to him possible that, in some obscure way, his presence at
+the rancho had precipitated the more serious attack on Peyton. If, as
+it had been said, there was some curse upon his inheritance from his
+father, he seemed to have made others share it with him. He was riding
+onward abstractedly, with his head sunk on his breast and his eyes fixed
+upon some vague point between his horse's sensitive ears, when a sudden,
+intelligent, forward pricking of them startled him, and an apparition
+arose from the plain before him that seemed to sweep all other sense
+away.
+
+It was the figure of a handsome young horseman as abstracted as himself,
+but evidently on better terms with his own personality. He was dark
+haired, sallow cheeked, and blue eyed,--the type of the old Spanish
+Californian. A burnt-out cigarette was in his mouth, and he was riding
+a roan mustang with the lazy grace of his race. But what arrested
+Clarence's attention more than his picturesque person was the narrow,
+flexible, long coil of gray horse-hair riata which hung from his
+saddle-bow, but whose knotted and silver-beaded terminating lash he
+was swirling idly in his narrow brown hand. Clarence knew and instantly
+recognized it as the ordinary fanciful appendage of a gentleman rider,
+used for tethering his horse on lonely plains, and always made the
+object of the most lavish expenditure of decoration and artistic
+skill. But he was as suddenly filled with a blind, unreasoning sense
+of repulsion and fury, and lifted his eyes to the man as he approached.
+What the stranger saw in Clarence's blazing eyes no one but himself
+knew, for his own became fixed and staring; his sallow cheeks grew
+lanker and livid; his careless, jaunty bearing stiffened into rigidity,
+and swerving his horse to one side he suddenly passed Clarence at a
+furious gallop. The young American wheeled quickly, and for an instant
+his knees convulsively gripped the flanks of his horse to follow. But
+the next moment he recalled himself, and with an effort began to collect
+his thoughts. What was he intending to do, and for what reason! He had
+met hundreds of such horsemen before, and caparisoned and accoutred like
+this, even to the riata. And he certainly was not dressed like either of
+the mysterious horsemen whom he had overheard that moonlight evening. He
+looked back; the stranger had already slackened his pace, and was slowly
+disappearing. Clarence turned and rode on his way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Without disclosing the full extent of Jim's defection and desertion,
+Clarence was able to truthfully assure the Hopkins family of his
+personal safety, and to promise that he would continue his quest, and
+send them further news of the absentee. He believed it would be found
+that Jim had been called away on some important business, but that not
+daring to leave his new shanty exposed and temptingly unprotected, he
+had made a virtue of necessity by selling it to his neighbors, intending
+to build a better house on its site after his return. Having comforted
+Phoebe, and impulsively conceived further plans for restoring Jim to
+her,--happily without any recurrence of his previous doubts as to his
+own efficacy as a special Providence,--he returned to the rancho. If he
+thought again of Jim's defection and Gilroy's warning, it was only to
+strengthen himself to a clearer perception of his unselfish duty and
+singleness of purpose. He would give up brooding, apply himself more
+practically to the management of the property, carry out his plans
+for the foundation of a Landlords' Protective League for the southern
+counties, become a candidate for the Legislature, and, in brief, try
+to fill Peyton's place in the county as he had at the rancho. He would
+endeavor to become better acquainted with the half-breed laborers on
+the estate and avoid the friction between them and the Americans; he was
+conscious that he had not made that use of his early familiarity with
+their ways and language which he might have done. If, occasionally, the
+figure of the young Spaniard whom he had met on the lonely road obtruded
+itself on him, it was always with the instinctive premonition that he
+would meet him again, and the mystery of the sudden repulsion be in some
+way explained. Thus Clarence! But the momentary impulse that had driven
+him to Fair Plains, the eagerness to set his mind at rest regarding Susy
+and her relatives, he had utterly forgotten.
+
+Howbeit some of the energy and enthusiasm that he breathed into these
+various essays made their impression. He succeeded in forming the
+Landlords' League; under a commission suggested by him the straggling
+boundaries of Robles and the adjacent claims were resurveyed, defined,
+and mutually protected; even the lawless Gilroy, from extending an
+amused toleration to the young administrator, grew to recognize and
+accept him; the peons and vacqueros began to have faith in a man who
+acknowledged them sufficiently to rebuild the ruined Mission Chapel on
+the estate, and save them the long pilgrimage to Santa Inez on Sundays
+and saints' days; the San Francisco priest imported from Clarence's
+old college at San Jose, and an habitual guest at Clarence's hospitable
+board, was grateful enough to fill his flock with loyalty to the young
+padron.
+
+He had returned from a long drive one afternoon, and had just thrown
+himself into an easy-chair with the comfortable consciousness of a rest
+fairly earned. The dull embers of a fire occasionally glowed in the
+oven-like hearth, although the open casement of a window let in the
+soft breath of the southwest trades. The angelus had just rung from the
+restored chapel, and, mellowed by distance, seemed to Clarence to lend
+that repose to the wind-swept landscape that it had always lacked.
+
+Suddenly his quick ear detected the sound of wheels in the ruts of the
+carriage way. Usually his visitors to the casa came on horseback, and
+carts and wagons used only the lower road. As the sound approached
+nearer, an odd fancy filled his heart with unaccountable pleasure. Could
+it be Mrs. Peyton making an unexpected visit to the rancho? He held his
+breath. The vehicle was now rolling on into the patio. The clatter of
+hoofs and a halt were followed by the accents of women's voices. One
+seemed familiar. He rose quickly, as light footsteps ran along the
+corridor, and then the door opened impetuously to the laughing face of
+Susy!
+
+He came towards her hastily, yet with only the simple impulse of
+astonishment. He had no thought of kissing her, but as he approached,
+she threw her charming head archly to one side, with a mischievous
+knitting of her brows and a significant gesture towards the passage,
+that indicated the proximity of a stranger and the possibility of
+interruption.
+
+"Hush! Mrs. McClosky's here," she whispered.
+
+"Mrs. McClosky?" repeated Clarence vaguely.
+
+"Yes, of course," impatiently. "My Aunt Jane. Silly! We just cut away
+down here to surprise you. Aunty's never seen the place, and here was a
+good chance."
+
+"And your mother--Mrs. Peyton? Has she--does she?"--stammered Clarence.
+
+"Has she--does she?" mimicked Susy, with increasing impatience. "Why, of
+course she DOESN'T know anything about it. She thinks I'm visiting Mary
+Rogers at Oakland. And I am--AFTERWARDS," she laughed. "I just wrote to
+Aunt Jane to meet me at Alameda, and we took the stage to Santa Inez
+and drove on here in a buggy. Wasn't it real fun? Tell me, Clarence! You
+don't say anything! Tell me--wasn't it real fun?"
+
+This was all so like her old, childlike, charming, irresponsible self,
+that Clarence, troubled and bewildered as he was, took her hands and
+drew her like a child towards him.
+
+"Of course," she went on, yet stopping to smell a rosebud in his
+buttonhole, "I have a perfect right to come to my own home, goodness
+knows! and if I bring my own aunt, a married woman, with me,--although,"
+loftily, "there may be a young unmarried gentleman alone there,--still I
+fail to see any impropriety in it!"
+
+He was still holding her; but in that instant her manner had completely
+changed again; the old Susy seemed to have slipped away and evaded him,
+and he was retaining only a conscious actress in his arms.
+
+"Release me, Mr. Brant, please," she said, with a languid affected
+glance behind her; "we are not alone."
+
+Then, as the rustling of a skirt sounded nearer in the passage, she
+seemed to change back to her old self once more, and with a lightning
+flash of significance whispered,--
+
+"She knows everything!"
+
+To add to Clarence's confusion, the woman who entered cast a quick
+glance of playful meaning on the separating youthful pair. She was an
+ineffective blonde with a certain beauty that seemed to be gradually
+succumbing to the ravages of paint and powder rather than years;
+her dress appeared to have suffered from an equally unwise excess of
+ornamentation and trimming, and she gave the general impression of
+having been intended for exhibition in almost any other light than the
+one in which she happened to be. There were two or three mud-stains
+on the laces of her sleeve and underskirt that were obtrusively
+incongruous. Her voice, which had, however, a ring of honest intention
+in it, was somewhat over-strained, and evidently had not yet adjusted
+itself to the low-ceilinged, conventual-like building.
+
+"There, children, don't mind me! I know I'm not on in this scene, but I
+got nervous waiting there, in what you call the 'salon,' with only those
+Greaser servants staring round me in a circle, like a regular chorus.
+My! but it's anteek here--regular anteek--Spanish." Then, with a glance
+at Clarence, "So this is Clarence Brant,--your Clarence? Interduce me,
+Susy."
+
+In his confusion of indignation, pain, and even a certain conception of
+the grim ludicrousness of the situation, Clarence grasped despairingly
+at the single sentence of Susy's. "In my own home." Surely, at least, it
+was HER OWN HOME, and as he was only the business agent of her adopted
+mother, he had no right to dictate to her under what circumstances
+she should return to it, or whom she should introduce there. In her
+independence and caprice Susy might easily have gone elsewhere with this
+astounding relative, and would Mrs. Peyton like it better? Clinging to
+this idea, his instinct of hospitality asserted itself. He welcomed Mrs.
+McClosky with nervous effusion:--
+
+"I am only Mrs. Peyton's major domo here, but any guest of her
+DAUGHTER'S is welcome."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. McClosky, with ostentatious archness, "I reckon Susy
+and I understand your position here, and you've got a good berth of it.
+But we won't trouble you much on Mrs. Peyton's account, will we, Susy?
+And now she and me will just take a look around the shanty,--it is real
+old Spanish anteek, ain't it?--and sorter take stock of it, and you
+young folks will have to tear yourselves apart for a while, and play
+propriety before me. You've got to be on your good behavior while
+I'm here, I can tell you! I'm a heavy old 'doo-anna.' Ain't I, Susy?
+School-ma'ms and mother superiors ain't in the game with ME for
+discipline."
+
+She threw her arms around the young girl's waist and drew her towards
+her affectionately, an action that slightly precipitated some powder
+upon the black dress of her niece. Susy glanced mischievously at
+Clarence, but withdrew her eyes presently to let them rest with
+unmistakable appreciation and admiration on her relative. A pang shot
+through Clarence's breast. He had never seen her look in that way at
+Mrs. Peyton. Yet here was this stranger, provincial, overdressed, and
+extravagant, whose vulgarity was only made tolerable through her good
+humor, who had awakened that interest which the refined Mrs. Peyton had
+never yet been able to touch. As Mrs. McClosky swept out of the room
+with Susy he turned away with a sinking heart.
+
+Yet it was necessary that the Spanish house servants should not suspect
+this treason to their mistress, and Clarence stopped their childish
+curiosity about the stranger with a careless and easy acceptance of
+Susy's sudden visit in the light of an ordinary occurrence, and with a
+familiarity towards Mrs. McClosky which became the more distasteful to
+him in proportion as he saw that it was evidently agreeable to her. But,
+easily responsive, she became speedily confidential. Without a single
+question from himself, or a contributing remark from Susy, in half an
+hour she had told him her whole history. How, as Jane Silsbee, an elder
+sister of Susy's mother, she had early eloped from the paternal home
+in Kansas with McClosky, a strolling actor. How she had married him
+and gone on the stage under his stage name, effectively preventing any
+recognition by her family. How, coming to California, where her husband
+had become manager of the theatre at Sacramento, she was indignant to
+find that her only surviving relation, a sister-in-law, living in the
+same place, had for a money consideration given up all claim to the
+orphaned Susy, and how she had resolved to find out "if the poor child
+was happy." How she succeeded in finding out that she was not happy.
+How she wrote to her, and even met her secretly at San Francisco and
+Oakland, and how she had undertaken this journey partly for "a lark,"
+and partly to see Clarence and the property. There was no doubt of the
+speaker's sincerity; with this outrageous candor there was an equal
+obliviousness of any indelicacy in her conduct towards Mrs. Peyton that
+seemed hopeless. Yet he must talk plainly to her; he must say to her
+what he could not say to Susy; upon HER Mrs. Peyton's happiness--he
+believed he was thinking of Susy's also--depended. He must take the
+first opportunity of speaking to her alone.
+
+That opportunity came sooner than he had expected. After dinner, Mrs.
+McClosky turned to Susy, and playfully telling her that she had "to talk
+business" with Mr. Brant, bade her go to the salon and await her. When
+the young girl left the room, she looked at Clarence, and, with that
+assumption of curtness with which coarse but kindly natures believe they
+overcome the difficulty of delicate subjects, said abruptly:--
+
+"Well, young man, now what's all this between you and Susy? I'm looking
+after her interests--same as if she was my own girl. If you've got
+anything to say, now's your time. And don't you shilly-shally too long
+over it, either, for you might as well know that a girl like that can
+have her pick and choice, and be beholden to no one; and when she don't
+care to choose, there's me and my husband ready to do for her all the
+same. We mightn't be able to do the anteek Spanish Squire, but we've got
+our own line of business, and it's a comfortable one."
+
+To have this said to him under the roof of Mrs. Peyton, from whom, in
+his sensitiveness, he had thus far jealously guarded his own secret, was
+even more than Clarence's gentleness could stand, and fixed his wavering
+resolution.
+
+"I don't think we quite understand each other, Mrs. McClosky," he said
+coldly, but with glittering eyes. "I have certainly something to say to
+you; if it is not on a subject as pleasant as the one you propose,
+it is, nevertheless, one that I think you and I are more competent to
+discuss together."
+
+Then, with quiet but unrelenting directness, he pointed out to her that
+Susy was a legally adopted daughter of Mrs. Peyton, and, as a minor,
+utterly under her control; that Mrs. Peyton had no knowledge of any
+opposing relatives; and that Susy had not only concealed the fact from
+her, but that he was satisfied that Mrs. Peyton did not even know of
+Susy's discontent and alienation; that she had tenderly and carefully
+brought up the helpless orphan as her own child, and even if she had not
+gained her affection was at least entitled to her obedience and respect;
+that while Susy's girlish caprice and inexperience excused HER
+conduct, Mrs. Peyton and her friends would have a right to expect more
+consideration from a person of Mrs. McClosky's maturer judgment. That
+for these reasons, and as the friend of Mrs. Peyton, whom he could alone
+recognize as Susy's guardian and the arbiter of her affections, he must
+decline to discuss the young girl with any reference to himself or his
+own intentions.
+
+An unmistakable flush asserted itself under the lady's powder.
+
+"Suit yourself, young man, suit yourself," she said, with equally direct
+resentment and antagonism; "only mebbee you'll let me tell you that
+Jim McClosky ain't no fool, and mebbee knows what lawyers think of an
+arrangement with a sister-in-law that leaves a real sister out! Mebbee
+that's a 'Sister's title' you ain't thought of, Mr. Brant! And mebbee
+you'll find out that your chance o' gettin' Mrs. Peyton's consent ain't
+as safe to gamble on as you reckon it is. And mebbee, what's more to the
+purpose, if you DID get it, it might not be just the trump card to fetch
+Susy with! And to wind up, Mr. Brant, when you DO have to come down to
+the bed-rock and me and Jim McClosky, you may find out that him and me
+have discovered a better match for Susy than the son of old Ham Brant,
+who is trying to play the Spanish grandee off his father's money on a
+couple of women. And we mayn't have to go far to do it--or to get THE
+REAL THING, Mr. Brant!"
+
+Too heartsick and disgusted to even notice the slur upon himself or the
+import of her last words, Clarence only rose and bowed as she jumped up
+from the table. But as she reached the door he said, half appealingly:--
+
+"Whatever are your other intentions, Mrs. McClosky, as we are both
+Susy's guests, I beg you will say nothing of this to her while we are
+here, and particularly that you will not allow her to think for a moment
+that I have discussed MY relations to her with anybody."
+
+She flung herself out of the door without a reply; but on entering the
+dark low-ceilinged drawing-room she was surprised to find that Susy was
+not there. She was consequently obliged to return to the veranda, where
+Clarence had withdrawn, and to somewhat ostentatiously demand of the
+servants that Susy should be sent to her room at once. But the young
+girl was not in her own room, and was apparently nowhere to be found.
+Clarence, who had now fully determined as a last resource to make a
+direct appeal to Susy herself, listened to this fruitless search with
+some concern. She could not have gone out in the rain, which was again
+falling. She might be hiding somewhere to avoid a recurrence of the
+scene she had perhaps partly overheard. He turned into the corridor
+that led to Mrs. Peyton's boudoir. As he knew that it was locked, he was
+surprised to see by the dim light of the hanging lamp that a duplicate
+key to the one in his desk was in the lock. It must be Susy's, and the
+young girl had probably taken refuge there. He knocked gently. There was
+a rustle in the room and the sound of a chair being moved, but no reply.
+Impelled by a sudden instinct he opened the door, and was met by a cool
+current of air from some open window. At the same moment the figure of
+Susy approached him from the semi-darkness of the interior.
+
+"I did not know you were here," said Clarence, much relieved, he knew
+not why, "but I am glad, for I wanted to speak with you alone for a few
+moments."
+
+She did not reply, but he drew a match from his pocket and lit the two
+candles which he knew stood on the table. The wick of one was still
+warm, as if it had been recently extinguished. As the light slowly
+radiated, he could see that she was regarding him with an air of
+affected unconcern, but a somewhat heightened color. It was like her,
+and not inconsistent with his idea that she had come there to avoid an
+after scene with Mrs. McClosky or himself, or perhaps both. The room was
+not disarranged in any way. The window that was opened was the casement
+of the deep embrasured one in the rear wall, and the light curtain
+before it still swayed occasionally in the night wind.
+
+"I'm afraid I had a row with your aunt, Susy," he began lightly, in his
+old familiar way; "but I had to tell her I didn't think her conduct to
+Mrs. Peyton was exactly the square thing towards one who had been as
+devoted to you as she has been."
+
+"Oh, for goodness' sake, don't go over all that again," said Susy
+impatiently. "I've had enough of it."
+
+Clarence flashed, but recovered himself.
+
+"Then you overheard what I said, and know what I think," he said calmly.
+
+"I knew it BEFORE," said the young girl, with a slight supercilious toss
+of the head, and yet a certain abstraction of manner as she went to the
+window and closed it. "Anybody could see it! I know you always wanted
+me to stay here with Mrs. Peyton, and be coddled and monitored and
+catechised and shut up away from any one, until YOU had been coddled and
+monitored and catechised by somebody else sufficiently to suit her
+ideas of your being a fit husband for me. I told aunty it was no use our
+coming here to--to"--
+
+"To do what?" asked Clarence.
+
+"To put some spirit into you," said the young girl, turning upon him
+sharply; "to keep you from being tied to that woman's apron-strings. To
+keep her from making a slave of you as she would of me. But it is of
+no use. Mary Rogers was right when she said you had no wish to please
+anybody but Mrs. Peyton, and no eyes for anybody but her. And if it
+hadn't been too ridiculous, considering her age and yours, she'd say you
+were dead in love with her."
+
+For an instant Clarence felt the blood rush to his face and then sink
+away, leaving him pale and cold. The room, which had seemed to
+whirl around him, and then fade away, returned with appalling
+distinctness,--the distinctness of memory,--and a vision of the first
+day that he had seen Mrs. Peyton sitting there, as he seemed to see her
+now. For the first time there flashed upon him the conviction that the
+young girl had spoken the truth, and had brusquely brushed the veil from
+his foolish eyes. He WAS in love with Mrs. Peyton! That was what his
+doubts and hesitation regarding Susy meant. That alone was the source,
+secret, and limit of his vague ambition.
+
+But with the conviction came a singular calm. In the last few moments
+he seemed to have grown older, to have loosed the bonds of old
+companionship with Susy, and the later impression she had given him of
+her mature knowledge, and moved on far beyond her years and experience.
+And it was with an authority that was half paternal, and in a voice he
+himself scarcely recognized, that he said:--
+
+"If I did not know you were prejudiced by a foolish and indiscreet
+woman, I should believe that you were trying to insult me as you have
+your adopted mother, and would save you the pain of doing both in HER
+house by leaving it now and forever. But because I believe you are
+controlled against your best instinct by that woman, I shall remain
+here with you to frustrate her as best I can, or until I am able to lay
+everything before Mrs. Peyton except the foolish speech you have just
+made."
+
+The young girl laughed. "Why not THAT one too, while you're about it?
+See what she'll say."
+
+"I shall tell her," continued Clarence calmly, "only what YOU yourself
+have made it necessary for me to tell her to save you from folly and
+disgrace, and only enough to spare her the mortification of hearing it
+first from her own servants."
+
+"Hearing WHAT from her own servants? What do you mean? How dare you?"
+demanded the young girl sharply.
+
+She was quite real in her anxiety now, although her attitude of virtuous
+indignation struck him as being like all her emotional expression,
+namely, acting.
+
+"I mean that the servants know of your correspondence with Mrs.
+McClosky, and that she claims to be your aunt," returned Clarence. "They
+know that you confided to Pepita. They believe that either Mrs. McClosky
+or you have seen"--
+
+He had stopped suddenly. He was about to say that the servants
+(particularly Incarnacion) knew that Pedro had boasted of having met
+Susy, when, for the first time, the tremendous significance of what he
+had hitherto considered as merely an idle falsehood flashed upon him.
+
+"Seen whom?" repeated Susy in a higher voice, impatiently stamping her
+foot.
+
+Clarence looked at her, and in her excited, questioning face saw a
+confirmation of his still half-formed suspicions. In his own abrupt
+pause and knitted eyebrows she must have read his thoughts also. Their
+eyes met. Her violet pupils dilated, trembled, and then quickly shifted
+as she suddenly stiffened into an attitude of scornful indifference,
+almost grotesque in its unreality. His eyes slowly turned to the window,
+the door, the candles on the table and the chair before it, and then
+came back to her face again. Then he drew a deep breath.
+
+"I give no heed to the idle gossip of servants, Susy," he said slowly.
+"I have no belief that you have ever contemplated anything worse than an
+act of girlish folly, or the gratification of a passing caprice. Neither
+do I want to appeal to you or frighten you, but I must tell you now,
+that I know certain facts that might make such a simple act of folly
+monstrous, inconceivable in YOU, and almost accessory to a crime! I can
+tell you no more. But so satisfied am I of such a possibility, that I
+shall not scruple to take any means--the strongest--to prevent even
+the remotest chance of it. Your aunt has been looking for you; you had
+better go to her now. I will close the room and lock the door. Meantime,
+I should advise you not to sit so near an open window with a candle at
+night in this locality. Even if it might not be dangerous for you, it
+might be fatal to the foolish creatures it might attract."
+
+He took the key from the door as he held it open for her to pass out.
+She uttered a shrill little laugh, like a nervous, mischievous child,
+and, slipping out of her previous artificial attitude as if it had been
+a mantle, ran out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+As Susy's footsteps died away, Clarence closed the door, walked to the
+window, and examined it closely. The bars had been restored since he had
+wrenched them off to give ingress to the family on the day of recapture.
+He glanced around the room; nothing seemed to have been disturbed.
+Nevertheless he was uneasy. The suspicions of a frank, trustful nature
+when once aroused are apt to be more general and far-reaching than the
+specific distrusts of the disingenuous, for they imply the overthrow of
+a whole principle and not a mere detail. Clarence's conviction that Susy
+had seen Pedro recently since his dismissal led him into the wildest
+surmises of her motives. It was possible that without her having reason
+to suspect Pedro's greater crime, he might have confided to her his
+intention of reclaiming the property and installing her as the mistress
+and chatelaine of the rancho. The idea was one that might have appealed
+to Susy's theatrical imagination. He recalled Mrs. McClosky's sneer
+at his own pretensions and her vague threats of a rival of more lineal
+descent. The possible infidelity of Susy to himself touched him lightly
+when the first surprise was over; indeed, it scarcely could be called
+infidelity, if she knew and believed Mary Rogers's discovery; and the
+conviction that he and she had really never loved each other now enabled
+him, as he believed, to look at her conduct dispassionately. Yet it was
+her treachery to Mrs. Peyton and not to himself that impressed him most,
+and perhaps made him equally unjust, through his affections.
+
+He extinguished the candles, partly from some vague precautions he could
+not explain, and partly to think over his fears in the abstraction and
+obscurity of the semi-darkness. The higher windows suffused a faint
+light on the ceiling, and, assisted by the dark lantern-like glow
+cast on the opposite wall by the tunnel of the embrasured window,
+the familiar outlines of the room and its furniture came back to him.
+Somewhat in this fashion also, in the obscurity and quiet, came back
+to him the events he had overlooked and forgotten. He recalled now some
+gossip of the servants, and hints dropped by Susy of a violent quarrel
+between Peyton and Pedro, which resulted in Pedro's dismissal, but which
+now seemed clearly attributable to some graver cause than inattention
+and insolence. He recalled Mary Rogers's playful pleasantries with Susy
+about Pedro, and Susy's mysterious air, which he had hitherto
+regarded only as part of her exaggeration. He remembered Mrs. Peyton's
+unwarrantable uneasiness about Susy, which he had either overlooked or
+referred entirely to himself; she must have suspected something. To his
+quickened imagination, in this ruin of his faith and trust, he believed
+that Hooker's defection was either part of the conspiracy, or that he
+had run away to avoid being implicated with Susy in its discovery.
+This, too, was the significance of Gilroy's parting warning. He and
+Mrs. Peyton alone had been blind and confiding in the midst of this
+treachery, and even HE had been blind to his own real affections.
+
+The wind had risen again, and the faint light on the opposite wall grew
+tremulous and shifting with the movement of the foliage without. But
+presently the glow became quite obliterated, as if by the intervention
+of some opaque body outside the window. He rose hurriedly and went to
+the casement. But at the same moment he fancied he heard the jamming of
+a door or window in quite another direction, and his examination of
+the casement before him showed him only the silver light of the thinly
+clouded sky falling uninterruptedly through the bars and foliage on the
+interior of the whitewashed embrasure. Then a conception of his mistake
+flashed across him. The line of the casa was long, straggling, and
+exposed elsewhere; why should the attempt to enter or communicate
+with any one within be confined only to this single point? And why not
+satisfy himself at once if any trespassers were lounging around the
+walls, and then confront them boldly in the open? Their discovery and
+identification was as important as the defeat of their intentions.
+
+He relit the candle, and, placing it on a small table by the wall beyond
+the visual range of the window, rearranged the curtain so that, while
+it permitted the light to pass out, it left the room in shadow. He then
+opened the door softly, locked it behind him, and passed noiselessly
+into the hall. Susy's and Mrs. McClosky's rooms were at the further end
+of the passage, but between them and the boudoir was the open patio, and
+the low murmur of the voices of servants, who still lingered until he
+should dismiss them for the night. Turning back, he moved silently down
+the passage, until he reached the narrow arched door to the garden.
+This he unlocked and opened with the same stealthy caution. The rain had
+recommenced. Not daring to risk a return to his room, he took from a
+peg in the recess an old waterproof cloak and "sou'wester" of Peyton's,
+which still hung there, and passed out into the night, locking the
+door behind him. To keep the knowledge of his secret patrol from the
+stablemen, he did not attempt to take out his own horse, but trusted to
+find some vacquero's mustang in the corral. By good luck an old "Blue
+Grass" hack of Peyton's, nearest the stockade as he entered, allowed
+itself to be quickly caught. Using its rope headstall for a bridle,
+Clarence vaulted on its bare back, and paced cautiously out into the
+road. Here he kept the curve of the long line of stockade until he
+reached the outlying field where, half hidden in the withered, sapless,
+but still standing stalks of grain, he slowly began a circuit of the
+casa.
+
+The misty gray dome above him, which an invisible moon seemed to have
+quicksilvered over, alternately lightened and darkened with passing
+gusts of fine rain. Nevertheless he could see the outline of the broad
+quadrangle of the house quite distinctly, except on the west side,
+where a fringe of writhing willows beat the brown adobe walls with their
+imploring arms at every gust. Elsewhere nothing moved; the view was
+uninterrupted to where the shining, watery sky met the equally shining,
+watery plain. He had already made a half circuit of the house, and was
+still noiselessly picking his way along the furrows, muffled with soaked
+and broken-down blades, and the velvety upspringing of the "volunteer"
+growth, when suddenly, not fifty yards before him, without sound or
+warning, a figure rode out of the grain upon the open crossroad, and
+deliberately halted with a listless, abstracted, waiting air. Clarence
+instantly recognized one of his own vacqueros, an undersized half-breed,
+but he as instantly divined that he was only an outpost or confederate,
+stationed to give the alarm. The same precaution had prevented each
+hearing the other, and the lesser height of the vacquero had rendered
+him indistinguishable as he preceded Clarence among the grain. As the
+young man made no doubt that the real trespasser was nearer the casa,
+along the line of willows, he wheeled to intercept him without alarming
+his sentry. Unfortunately, his horse answered the rope bridle clumsily,
+and splashed in striking out. The watcher quickly raised his head, and
+Clarence knew that his only chance was now to suppress him. Determined
+to do this at any hazard, with a threatening gesture he charged boldly
+down upon him.
+
+But he had not crossed half the distance between them when the man
+uttered an appalling cry, so wild and despairing that it seemed to chill
+even the hot blood in Clarence's veins, and dashed frenziedly down the
+cross-road into the interminable plain. Before Clarence could determine
+if that cry was a signal or an involuntary outburst, it was followed
+instantly by the sound of frightened and struggling hoofs clattering
+against the wall of the casa, and a swaying of the shrubbery near the
+back gate of the patio. Here was his real quarry! Without hesitation he
+dug his heels into the flanks of his horse and rode furiously towards
+it. As he approached, a long tremor seemed to pass through the
+shrubbery, with the retreating sound of horse hoofs. The unseen
+trespasser had evidently taken the alarm and was fleeing, and Clarence
+dashed in pursuit. Following the sound, for the shrubbery hid the
+fugitive from view, he passed the last wall of the casa; but it soon
+became evident that the unknown had the better horse. The hoof-beats
+grew fainter and fainter, and at times appeared even to cease, until
+his own approach started them again, eventually to fade away in the
+distance. In vain Clarence dug his heels into the flanks of his heavier
+steed, and regretted his own mustang; and when at last he reached the
+edge of the thicket he had lost both sight and sound of the fugitive.
+The descent to the lower terrace lay before him empty and desolate. The
+man had escaped!
+
+He turned slowly back with baffled anger and vindictiveness. However,
+he had prevented something, although he knew not what. The principal had
+got away, but he had identified his confederate, and for the first time
+held a clue to his mysterious visitant. There was no use to alarm the
+household, which did not seem to have been disturbed. The trespassers
+were far away by this time, and the attempt would hardly be repeated
+that night. He made his way quietly back to the corral, let loose his
+horse, and regained the casa unobserved. He unlocked the arched door in
+the wall, reentered the darkened passage, stopped a moment to open
+the door of the boudoir, glance at the closely fastened casement, and
+extinguish the still burning candle, and, relocking the door securely,
+made his way to his own room.
+
+But he could not sleep. The whole incident, over so quickly, had
+nevertheless impressed him deeply, and yet like a dream. The strange
+yell of the vacquero still rang in his ears, but with an unearthly and
+superstitious significance that was even more dreamlike in its meaning.
+He awakened from a fitful slumber to find the light of morning in the
+room, and Incarnacion standing by his bedside.
+
+The yellow face of the steward was greenish with terror, and his lips
+were dry.
+
+"Get up, Senor Clarencio; get up at once, my master. Strange things have
+happened. Mother of God protect us!"
+
+Clarence rolled to his feet, with the events of the past night
+struggling back upon his consciousness.
+
+"What mean you, Nascio?" he said, grasping the man's arm, which
+was still mechanically making the sign of the cross, as he muttered
+incoherently. "Speak, I command you!"
+
+"It is Jose, the little vacquero, who is even now at the padre's house,
+raving as a lunatic, stricken as a madman with terror! He has seen
+him,--the dead alive! Save us!"
+
+"Are you mad yourself, Nascio?" said Clarence. "Whom has he seen?"
+
+"Whom? God help us! the old padron--Senor Peyton himself! He rushed
+towards him here, in the patio, last night--out of the air, the sky, the
+ground, he knew not,--his own self, wrapped in his old storm cloak and
+hat, and riding his own horse,--erect, terrible, and menacing, with an
+awful hand upholding a rope--so! He saw him with these eyes, as I see
+you. What HE said to him, God knows! The priest, perhaps, for he has
+made confession!"
+
+In a flash of intelligence Clarence comprehended all. He rose grimly and
+began to dress himself.
+
+"Not a word of this to the women,--to any one, Nascio, dost thou
+understand?" he said curtly. "It may be that Jose has been partaking too
+freely of aguardiente,--it is possible. I will see the priest myself.
+But what possesses thee? Collect thyself, good Nascio."
+
+But the man was still trembling.
+
+"It is not all,--Mother of God! it is not all, master!" he stammered,
+dropping to his knees and still crossing himself. "This morning, beside
+the corral, they find the horse of Pedro Valdez splashed and spattered
+on saddle and bridle, and in the stirrup,--dost thou hear? the
+STIRRUP,--hanging, the torn-off boot of Valdez! Ah, God! The same as
+HIS! Now do you understand? It is HIS vengeance. No! Jesu forgive me! it
+is the vengeance of God!"
+
+Clarence was staggered.
+
+"And you have not found Valdez? You have looked for him?" he said,
+hurriedly throwing on his clothes.
+
+"Everywhere,--all over the plain. The whole rancho has been out since
+sunrise,--here and there and everywhere. And there is nothing! Of course
+not. What would you?" He pointed solemnly to the ground.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Clarence, buttoning his coat and seizing his hat.
+"Follow me."
+
+He ran down the passage, followed by Incarnacion, through the excited,
+gesticulating crowd of servants in the patio, and out of the back gate.
+He turned first along the wall of the casa towards the barred window of
+the boudoir. Then a cry came from Incarnacion.
+
+They ran quickly forward. Hanging from the grating of the window, like
+a mass of limp and saturated clothes, was the body of Pedro Valdez, with
+one unbooted foot dangling within an inch of the ground. His head was
+passed inside the grating and fixed as at that moment when the first
+spring of the frightened horse had broken his neck between the bars as
+in a garrote, and the second plunge of the terrified animal had carried
+off his boot in the caught stirrup when it escaped.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+The winter rains were over and gone, and the whole long line of
+Californian coast was dashed with color. There were miles of yellow and
+red poppies, leagues of lupines that painted the gently rounded hills
+with soft primary hues, and long continuous slopes, like low mountain
+systems, of daisies and dandelions. At Sacramento it was already summer;
+the yellow river was flashing and intolerable; the tule and marsh
+grasses were lush and long; the bloom of cottonwood and sycamore
+whitened the outskirts of the city, and as Cyrus Hopkins and his
+daughter Phoebe looked from the veranda of the Placer Hotel, accustomed
+as they were to the cool trade winds of the coast valleys, they felt
+homesick from the memory of eastern heats.
+
+Later, when they were surveying the long dinner tables at the table
+d'hote with something of the uncomfortable and shamefaced loneliness of
+the provincial, Phoebe uttered a slight cry and clutched her father's
+arm. Mr. Hopkins stayed the play of his squared elbows and glanced
+inquiringly at his daughter's face. There was a pretty animation in it,
+as she pointed to a figure that had just entered. It was that of a young
+man attired in the extravagance rather than the taste of the prevailing
+fashion, which did not, however, in the least conceal a decided
+rusticity of limb and movement. A long mustache, which looked unkempt,
+even in its pomatumed stiffness, and lank, dark hair that had bent but
+never curled under the barber's iron, made him notable even in that
+heterogeneous assembly.
+
+"That's he," whispered Phoebe.
+
+"Who?" said her father.
+
+Alas for the inconsistencies of love! The blush came with the name and
+not the vision.
+
+"Mr. Hooker," she stammered.
+
+It was, indeed, Jim Hooker. But the role of his exaggeration was no
+longer the same; the remorseful gloom in which he had been habitually
+steeped had changed into a fatigued, yet haughty, fastidiousness more
+in keeping with his fashionable garments. He was more peaceful, yet not
+entirely placable, and, as he sat down at a side table and pulled down
+his striped cuffs with his clasped fingers, he cast a glance of critical
+disapproval on the general company. Nevertheless, he seemed to be
+furtively watchful of his effect upon them, and as one or two whispered
+and looked towards him, his consciousness became darkly manifest.
+
+All of which might have intimidated the gentle Phoebe, but did not
+discompose her father. He rose, and crossing over to Hooker's table,
+clapped him heartily on the back.
+
+"How do, Hooker? I didn't recognize you in them fine clothes, but Phoebe
+guessed as how it was you."
+
+Flushed, disconcerted, irritated, but always in wholesome awe of Mr.
+Hopkins, Jim returned his greeting awkwardly and half hysterically. How
+he would have received the more timid Phoebe is another question. But
+Mr. Hopkins, without apparently noticing these symptoms, went on:--
+
+"We're only just down, Phoebe and me, and as I guess we'll want to talk
+over old times, we'll come alongside o' you. Hold on, and I'll fetch
+her."
+
+The interval gave the unhappy Jim a chance to recover himself, to regain
+his vanished cuffs, display his heavy watch-chain, curl his mustache,
+and otherwise reassume his air of blase fastidiousness. But the transfer
+made, Phoebe, after shaking hands, became speechless under these
+perfections. Not so her father.
+
+"If there's anything in looks, you seem to be prospering," he said
+grimly; "unless you're in the tailorin' line, and you're only showin'
+off stock. What mout ye be doing?"
+
+"Ye ain't bin long in Sacramento, I reckon?" suggested Jim, with
+patronizing pity.
+
+"No, we only came this morning," returned Hopkins.
+
+"And you ain't bin to the theatre?" continued Jim.
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor moved much in--in--gin'ral fash'nable sassiety?"
+
+"Not yet," interposed Phoebe, with an air of faint apology.
+
+"Nor seen any of them large posters on the fences, of 'The Prairie
+Flower; or, Red-handed Dick,'--three-act play with five tableaux,--just
+the biggest sensation out,--runnin' for forty nights,--money turned
+away every night,--standin' room only?" continued Jim, with prolonged
+toleration.
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I play Red-handed Dick. I thought you might have seen it and
+recognized me. All those people over there," darkly indicating the long
+table, "know me. A fellow can't stand it, you know, being stared at by
+such a vulgar, low-bred lot. It's gettin' too fresh here. I'll have to
+give the landlord notice and cut the whole hotel. They don't seem to
+have ever seen a gentleman and a professional before."
+
+"Then you're a play-actor now?" said the farmer, in a tone which did
+not, however, exhibit the exact degree of admiration which shone in
+Phoebe's eyes.
+
+"For the present," said Jim, with lofty indifference. "You see I was
+in--in partnership with McClosky, the manager, and I didn't like the
+style of the chump that was doin' Red-handed Dick, so I offered to take
+his place one night to show him how. And by Jinks! the audience, after
+that night, wouldn't let anybody else play it,--wouldn't stand even the
+biggest, highest-priced stars in it! I reckon," he added gloomily, "I'll
+have to run the darned thing in all the big towns in Californy,--if I
+don't have to go East with it after all, just for the business. But it's
+an awful grind on a man,--leaves him no time, along of the invitations
+he gets, and what with being run after in the streets and stared at in
+the hotels he don't get no privacy. There's men, and women, too, over
+at that table, that just lie in wait for me here till I come, and don't
+lift their eyes off me. I wonder they don't bring their opery-glasses
+with them."
+
+Concerned, sympathizing, and indignant, poor Phoebe turned her brown
+head and honest eyes in that direction. But because they were honest,
+they could not help observing that the other table did not seem to be
+paying the slightest attention to the distinguished impersonator of
+Red-handed Dick. Perhaps he had been overheard.
+
+"Then that was the reason ye didn't come back to your location. I always
+guessed it was because you'd got wind of the smash-up down there, afore
+we did," said Hopkins grimly.
+
+"What smash-up?" asked Jim, with slightly resentful quickness.
+
+"Why, the smash-up of the Sisters' title,--didn't you hear that?"
+
+There was a slight movement of relief and a return of gloomy hauteur in
+Jim's manner.
+
+"No, we don't know much of what goes on in the cow counties, up here."
+
+"Ye mout, considerin' it concerns some o' your friends," returned
+Hopkins dryly. "For the Sisters' title went smash as soon as it was
+known that Pedro Valdez--the man as started it--had his neck broken
+outside the walls o' Robles Rancho; and they do say as this yer Brant,
+YOUR friend, had suthin' to do with the breaking of it, though it was
+laid to the ghost of old Peyton. Anyhow, there was such a big skeer
+that one of the Greaser gang, who thought he'd seen the ghost, being a
+Papist, to save his everlasting soul went to the priest and confessed.
+But the priest wouldn't give him absolution until he'd blown the
+hull thing, and made it public. And then it turned out that all the
+dockyments for the title, and even the custom-house paper, were FORGED
+by Pedro Valdez, and put on the market by his confederates. And that's
+just where YOUR friend, Clarence Brant, comes in, for HE had bought up
+the whole title from them fellers. Now, either, as some say, he was in
+the fraud from the beginnin', and never paid anything, or else he was an
+all-fired fool, and had parted with his money like one. Some allow
+that the reason was that he was awfully sweet on Mrs. Peyton's adopted
+daughter, and ez the parents didn't approve of him, he did THIS so as
+to get a holt over them by the property. But he's a ruined man, anyway,
+now; for they say he's such a darned fool that he's goin' to pay for all
+the improvements that the folks who bought under him put into the land,
+and that'll take his last cent. I thought I'd tell you that, for I
+suppose YOU'VE lost a heap in your improvements, and will put in your
+claim?"
+
+"I reckon I put nearly as much into it as Clar Brant did," said Jim
+gloomily, "but I ain't goin' to take a cent from him, or go back on him
+now."
+
+The rascal could not resist this last mendacious opportunity, although
+he was perfectly sincere in his renunciation, touched in his sympathy,
+and there was even a film of moisture in his shifting eyes.
+
+Phoebe was thrilled with the generosity of this noble being, who could
+be unselfish even in his superior condition. She added softly:--
+
+"And they say that the girl did not care for him at all, but was
+actually going to run off with Pedro, when he stopped her and sent for
+Mrs. Peyton."
+
+To her surprise, Jim's face flushed violently.
+
+"It's all a dod-blasted lie," he said, in a thick stage whisper. "It's
+only the hogwash them Greasers and Pike County galoots ladle out to
+each other around the stove in a county grocery. But," recalling himself
+loftily, and with a tolerant wave of his be-diamonded hand, "wot kin
+you expect from one of them cow counties? They ain't satisfied till they
+drive every gentleman out of the darned gopher-holes they call their
+'kentry.'"
+
+In her admiration of what she believed to be a loyal outburst for his
+friend, Phoebe overlooked the implied sneer at her provincial home. But
+her father went on with a perfunctory, exasperating, dusty aridity:--
+
+"That mebbee ez mebbee, Mr. Hooker, but the story down in our precinct
+goes that she gave Mrs. Peyton the slip,--chucked up her situation as
+adopted darter, and went off with a queer sort of a cirkiss woman,--one
+of her own KIN, and I reckon one of her own KIND."
+
+To this Mr. Hooker offered no further reply than a withering rebuke of
+the waiter, a genteel abstraction, and a lofty change of subject. He
+pressed upon them two tickets for the performance, of which he seemed to
+have a number neatly clasped in an india-rubber band, and advised
+them to come early. They would see him after the performance and sup
+together. He must leave them now, as he had to be punctually at the
+theatre, and if he lingered he should be pestered by interviewers. He
+withdrew under a dazzling display of cuff and white handkerchief,
+and with that inward swing of the arm and slight bowiness of the leg
+generally recognized in his profession as the lounging exit of high
+comedy.
+
+The mingling of awe and an uneasy sense of changed relations which that
+meeting with Jim had brought to Phoebe was not lessened when she entered
+the theatre with her father that evening, and even Mr. Hopkins seemed to
+share her feelings. The theatre was large, and brilliant in decoration,
+the seats were well filled with the same heterogeneous mingling she had
+seen in the dining-room at the Placer Hotel, but in the parquet were
+some fashionable costumes and cultivated faces. Mr. Hopkins was not
+altogether so sure that Jim had been "only gassing." But the gorgeous
+drop curtain, representing an allegory of Californian prosperity and
+abundance, presently uprolled upon a scene of Western life almost as
+striking in its glaring unreality. From a rose-clad English cottage in
+a subtropical landscape skipped "Rosalie, the Prairie Flower." The
+briefest of skirts, the most unsullied of stockings, the tiniest of
+slippers, and the few diamonds that glittered on her fair neck and
+fingers, revealed at once the simple and unpretending daughter of the
+American backwoodsman. A tumult of delighted greeting broke from the
+audience. The bright color came to the pink, girlish cheeks, gratified
+vanity danced in her violet eyes, and as she piquantly bowed her
+acknowledgments, this great breath of praise seemed to transfigure and
+possess her. A very young actor who represented the giddy world in
+a straw hat and with an effeminate manner was alternately petted and
+girded at by her during the opening exposition of the plot, until the
+statement that a "dark destiny" obliged her to follow her uncle in an
+emigrant train across the plains closed the act, apparently extinguished
+him, and left HER the central figure. So far, she evidently was the
+favorite. A singular aversion to her crept into the heart of Phoebe.
+
+But the second act brought an Indian attack upon the emigrant train, and
+here "Rosalie" displayed the archest heroism and the pinkest and most
+distracting self-possession, in marked contrast to the giddy worldling
+who, having accompanied her apparently for comic purposes best known to
+himself, cowered abjectly under wagons, and was pulled ignominiously out
+of straw, until Red Dick swept out of the wings with a chosen band and
+a burst of revolvers and turned the tide of victory. Attired as a
+picturesque combination of the Neapolitan smuggler, river-bar miner,
+and Mexican vacquero, Jim Hooker instantly began to justify the plaudits
+that greeted him and the most sanguinary hopes of the audience. A gloomy
+but fascinating cloud of gunpowder and dark intrigue from that moment
+hung about the stage.
+
+Yet in this sombre obscuration Rosalie had passed a happy six months,
+coming out with her character and stockings equally unchanged and
+unblemished, to be rewarded with the hand of Red Dick and the discovery
+of her father, the governor of New Mexico, as a white-haired, but
+objectionable vacquero, at the fall of the curtain.
+
+Through this exciting performance Phoebe sat with a vague and increasing
+sense of loneliness and distrust. She did not know that Hooker had added
+to his ordinary inventive exaggeration the form of dramatic composition.
+But she had early detected the singular fact that such shadowy outlines
+of plot as the piece possessed were evidently based on his previous
+narrative of his OWN experiences, and the saving of Susy Peyton--by
+himself! There was the episode of their being lost on the plains, as
+he had already related it to her, with the addition of a few years to
+Susy's age and some vivid picturesqueness to himself as Red Dick. She
+was not, of course, aware that the part of the giddy worldling was
+Jim's own conception of the character of Clarence. But what, even to
+her provincial taste, seemed the extravagance of the piece, she felt, in
+some way, reflected upon the truthfulness of the story she had heard. It
+seemed to be a parody on himself, and in the laughter which some of the
+most thrilling points produced in certain of the audience, she heard
+an echo of her own doubts. But even this she could have borne if Jim's
+confidence had not been given to the general public; it was no longer
+HERS alone, she shared it with them. And this strange, bold girl, who
+acted with him,--the "Blanche Belville" of the bills,--how often he must
+have told HER the story, and yet how badly she had learned it! It was
+not her own idea of it, nor of HIM. In the last extravagant scene she
+turned her weary and half-shamed eyes from the stage and looked around
+the theatre. Among a group of loungers by the wall a face that
+seemed familiar was turned towards her own with a look of kindly and
+sympathetic recognition. It was the face of Clarence Brant. When the
+curtain fell, and she and her father rose to go, he was at their side.
+He seemed older and more superior looking than she had ever thought him
+before, and there was a gentle yet sad wisdom in his eyes and voice that
+comforted her even while it made her feel like crying.
+
+"You are satisfied that no harm has come to our friend," he said
+pleasantly. "Of course you recognized him?"
+
+"Oh, yes; we met him to-day," said Phoebe. Her provincial pride impelled
+her to keep up a show of security and indifference. "We are going to
+supper with him."
+
+Clarence slightly lifted his brows.
+
+"You are more fortunate than I am," he said smilingly. "I only arrived
+here at seven, and I must leave at midnight."
+
+Phoebe hesitated a moment, then said with affected carelessness:--
+
+"What do you think of the young girl who plays with him? Do you know
+her? Who is she?"
+
+He looked at her quickly, and then said, with some surprise:--
+
+"Did he not tell you?"
+
+"She WAS the adopted daughter of Mrs. Peyton,--Miss Susan Silsbee," he
+said gravely.
+
+"Then she DID run away from home as they said," said Phoebe impulsively.
+
+"Not EXACTLY as they said," said Clarence gently. "She elected to make
+her home with her aunt, Mrs. McClosky, who is the wife of the manager
+of this theatre, and she adopted the profession a month ago. As it
+now appears that there was some informality in the old articles of
+guardianship, Mrs. Peyton would have been powerless to prevent her from
+doing either, even if she had wished to."
+
+The infelicity of questioning Clarence regarding Susy suddenly flashed
+upon the forgetful Phoebe, and she colored. Yet, although sad, he did
+not look like a rejected lover.
+
+"Of course, if she is here with her own relatives, that makes all the
+difference," she said gently. "It is protection."
+
+"Certainly," said Clarence.
+
+"And," continued Phoebe hesitatingly, "she is playing with--with--an old
+friend--Mr. Hooker!"
+
+"That is quite proper, too, considering their relations," said Clarence
+tolerantly.
+
+"I--don't--understand," stammered Phoebe.
+
+The slightly cynical smile on Clarence's face changed as he looked into
+Phoebe's eyes.
+
+"I've just heard that they are married," he returned gently.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Nowhere had the long season of flowers brought such glory as to the
+broad plains and slopes of Robles Rancho. By some fortuitous chance of
+soil, or flood, or drifting pollen, the three terraces had each taken a
+distinct and separate blossom and tint of color. The straggling line of
+corral, the crumbling wall of the old garden, the outlying chapel, and
+even the brown walls of the casa itself, were half sunken in the tall
+racemes of crowding lupines, until from the distance they seemed to be
+slowly settling in the profundity of a dark-blue sea. The second terrace
+was a league-long flow of gray and gold daisies, in which the cattle
+dazedly wandered mid-leg deep. A perpetual sunshine of yellow dandelions
+lay upon the third. The gentle slope to the dark-green canada was a
+broad cataract of crimson poppies. Everywhere where water had stood,
+great patches of color had taken its place. It seemed as if the rains
+had ceased only that the broken heavens might drop flowers.
+
+Never before had its beauty--a beauty that seemed built upon a cruel,
+youthful, obliterating forgetfulness of the past--struck Clarence as
+keenly as when he had made up his mind that he must leave the place
+forever. For the tale of his mischance and ill-fortune, as told by
+Hopkins, was unfortunately true. When he discovered that in his desire
+to save Peyton's house by the purchase of the Sisters' title he himself
+had been the victim of a gigantic fraud, he accepted the loss of the
+greater part of his fortune with resignation, and was even satisfied by
+the thought that he had at least effected the possession of the property
+for Mrs. Peyton. But when he found that those of his tenants who had
+bought under him had acquired only a dubious possession of their
+lands and no title, he had unhesitatingly reimbursed them for their
+improvements with the last of his capital. Only the lawless Gilroy had
+good-humoredly declined. The quiet acceptance of the others did
+not, unfortunately, preclude their settled belief that Clarence had
+participated in the fraud, and that even now his restitution was making
+a dangerous precedent, subversive of the best interests of the State,
+and discouraging to immigration. Some doubted his sanity. Only one,
+struck with the sincerity of his motive, hesitated to take his money,
+with a look of commiseration on his face.
+
+"Are you not satisfied?" asked Clarence, smiling.
+
+"Yes, but"--
+
+"But what?"
+
+"Nothin'. Only I was thinkin' that a man like you must feel awful
+lonesome in Calforny!"
+
+Lonely he was, indeed; but his loneliness was not the loss of fortune
+nor what it might bring. Perhaps he had never fully realized his wealth;
+it had been an accident rather than a custom of his life, and when it
+had failed in the only test he had made of its power, it is to be feared
+that he only sentimentally regretted it. It was too early yet for him
+to comprehend the veiled blessings of the catastrophe in its merciful
+disruption of habits and ways of life; his loneliness was still the
+hopeless solitude left by vanished ideals and overthrown idols. He was
+satisfied that he had never cared for Susy, but he still cared for the
+belief that he had.
+
+After the discovery of Pedro's body that fatal morning, a brief but
+emphatic interview between himself and Mrs. McClosky had followed. He
+had insisted upon her immediately accompanying Susy and himself to
+Mrs. Peyton in San Francisco. Horror-stricken and terrified at the
+catastrophe, and frightened by the strange looks of the excited
+servants, they did not dare to disobey him. He had left them with Mrs.
+Peyton in the briefest preliminary interview, during which he spoke only
+of the catastrophe, shielding the woman from the presumption of having
+provoked it, and urging only the importance of settling the question
+of guardianship at once. It was odd that Mrs. Peyton had been less
+disturbed than he imagined she would be at even his charitable version
+of Susy's unfaithfulness to her; it even seemed to him that she had
+already suspected it. But as he was about to withdraw to leave her to
+meet them alone, she had stopped him suddenly.
+
+"What would you advise me to do?"
+
+It was his first interview with her since the revelation of his own
+feelings. He looked into the pleading, troubled eyes of the woman he now
+knew he had loved, and stammered:--
+
+"You alone can judge. Only you must remember that one cannot force an
+affection any more than one can prevent it."
+
+He felt himself blushing, and, conscious of the construction of his
+words, he even fancied that she was displeased.
+
+"Then you have no preference?" she said, a little impatiently.
+
+"None."
+
+She made a slight gesture with her handsome shoulders, but she only
+said, "I should have liked to have pleased you in this," and turned
+coldly away. He had left without knowing the result of the interview;
+but a few days later he received a letter from her stating that she had
+allowed Susy to return to her aunt, and that she had resigned all claims
+to her guardianship.
+
+"It seemed to be a foregone conclusion," she wrote; "and although I
+cannot think such a change will be for her permanent welfare, it is her
+present WISH, and who knows, indeed, if the change will be permanent?
+I have not allowed the legal question to interfere with my judgment,
+although her friends must know that she forfeits any claim upon the
+estate by her action; but at the same time, in the event of her suitable
+marriage, I should try to carry out what I believe would have been Mr.
+Peyton's wishes."
+
+There were a few lines of postscript: "It seems to me that the change
+would leave you more free to consult your own wishes in regard to
+continuing your friendship with Susy, and upon such a footing as may
+please you. I judge from Mrs. McClosky's conversation that she believed
+you thought you were only doing your duty in reporting to me, and that
+the circumstances had not altered the good terms in which you all three
+formerly stood."
+
+Clarence had dropped the letter with a burning indignation that seemed
+to sting his eyes until a scalding moisture hid the words before him.
+What might not Susy have said? What exaggeration of his affection was
+she not capable of suggesting? He recalled Mrs. McClosky, and remembered
+her easy acceptance of him as Susy's lover. What had they told Mrs.
+Peyton? What must be her opinion of his deceit towards herself? It was
+hard enough to bear this before he knew he loved her. It was intolerable
+now! And this is what she meant when she suggested that he should
+renew his old terms with Susy; it was for HIM that this ill-disguised,
+scornful generosity in regard to Susy's pecuniary expectations was
+intended. What should he do? He would write to her, and indignantly deny
+any clandestine affection for Susy. But could he do that, in honor,
+in truthfulness? Would it not be better to write and confess all?
+Yes,--EVERYTHING.
+
+Fortunately for his still boyish impulsiveness, it was at this time that
+the discovery of his own financial ruin came to him. The inquest on the
+body of Pedro Valdez and the confession of his confidant had revealed
+the facts of the fraudulent title and forged testamentary documents.
+Although it was correctly believed that Pedro had met his death in an
+escapade of gallantry or intrigue, the coroner's jury had returned a
+verdict of "accidental death," and the lesser scandal was lost in the
+wider, far-spreading disclosure of fraud. When he had resolved to assume
+all the liabilities of his purchase, he was obliged to write to Mrs.
+Peyton and confess his ruin. But he was glad to remind her that it did
+not alter HER status or security; he had only given her the possession,
+and she would revert to her original and now uncontested title. But as
+there was now no reason for his continuing the stewardship, and as he
+must adopt some profession and seek his fortune elsewhere, he begged her
+to relieve him of his duty. Albeit written with a throbbing heart and
+suffused eyes, it was a plain, business-like, and practical letter. Her
+reply was equally cool and matter of fact. She was sorry to hear of his
+losses, although she could not agree with him that they could logically
+sever his present connection with the rancho, or that, placed upon
+another and distinctly business footing, the occupation would not be as
+remunerative to him as any other. But, of course, if he had a preference
+for some more independent position, that was another question, although
+he would forgive her for using the privilege of her years to remind
+him that his financial and business success had not yet justified his
+independence. She would also advise him not to decide hastily, or, at
+least, to wait until she had again thoroughly gone over her husband's
+papers with her lawyer, in reference to the old purchase of the Sisters'
+title, and the conditions under which it was bought. She knew that Mr.
+Brant would not refuse this as a matter of business, nor would that
+friendship, which she valued so highly, allow him to imperil the
+possession of the rancho by leaving it at such a moment. As soon as she
+had finished the examination of the papers, she would write again. Her
+letter seemed to leave him no hope, if, indeed, he had ever indulged
+in any. It was the practical kindliness of a woman of business, nothing
+more. As to the examination of her husband's papers, that was a
+natural precaution. He alone knew that they would give no record of
+a transaction which had never occurred. He briefly replied that his
+intention to seek another situation was unchanged, but that he would
+cheerfully await the arrival of his successor. Two weeks passed. Then
+Mr. Sanderson, Mrs. Peyton's lawyer, arrived, bringing an apologetic
+note from Mrs. Peyton. She was so sorry her business was still delayed,
+but as she had felt that she had no right to detain him entirely at
+Robles, she had sent to Mr. Sanderson to TEMPORARILY relieve him, that
+he might be free to look around him or visit San Francisco in reference
+to his own business, only extracting a promise from him that he would
+return to Robles to meet her at the end of the week, before settling
+upon anything.
+
+The bitter smile with which Clarence had read thus far suddenly changed.
+Some mysterious touch of unbusiness-like but womanly hesitation, that
+he had never noticed in her previous letters, gave him a faint sense of
+pleasure, as if her note had been perfumed. He had availed himself of
+the offer. It was on this visit to Sacramento that he had accidentally
+discovered the marriage of Susy and Hooker.
+
+"It's a great deal better business for her to have a husband in the
+'profesh' if she's agoin' to stick to it," said his informant, Mrs.
+McClosky, "and she's nothing if she ain't business and profesh, Mr.
+Brant. I never see a girl that was born for the stage--yes, you might
+say jess cut out o' the boards of the stage--as that girl Susy is! And
+that's jest what's the matter; and YOU know it, and I know it, and there
+you are!"
+
+It was with these experiences that Clarence was to-day reentering the
+wooded and rocky gateway of the rancho from the high road of the canada;
+but as he cantered up the first slope, through the drift of scarlet
+poppies that almost obliterated the track, and the blue and yellow
+blooms of the terraces again broke upon his view, he thought only of
+Mrs. Peyton's pleasure in this changed aspect of her old home. She had
+told him of it once before, and of her delight in it; and he had once
+thought how happy he should be to see it with her.
+
+The servant who took his horse told him that the senora had arrived that
+morning from Santa Inez, bringing with her the two Senoritas Hernandez
+from the rancho of Los Canejos, and that other guests were expected. And
+there was the Senor Sanderson and his Reverence Padre Esteban. Truly an
+affair of hospitality, the first since the padron died. Whatever dream
+Clarence might have had of opportunities for confidential interview was
+rudely dispelled. Yet Mrs. Peyton had left orders to be informed at once
+of Don Clarencio's arrival.
+
+As he crossed the patio and stepped upon the corridor he fancied he
+already detected in the internal arrangements the subtle influence of
+Mrs. Peyton's taste and the indefinable domination of the mistress. For
+an instant he thought of anticipating the servant and seeking her in the
+boudoir, but some instinct withheld him, and he turned into the study
+which he had used as an office. It was empty; a few embers glimmered on
+the hearth. At the same moment there was a light step behind him,
+and Mrs. Peyton entered and closed the door behind her. She was
+very beautiful. Although paler and thinner, there was an odd sort of
+animation about her, so unlike her usual repose that it seemed almost
+feverish.
+
+"I thought we could talk together a few moments before the guests
+arrive. The house will be presently so full, and my duties as hostess
+commence."
+
+"I was--about to seek you--in--in the boudoir," hesitated Clarence.
+
+She gave an impatient shiver.
+
+"Good heavens, not there! I shall never go there again. I should fancy
+every time I looked out of the window that I saw the head of that man
+between the bars. No! I am only thankful that I wasn't here at the time,
+and that I can keep my remembrance of the dear old place unchanged." She
+checked herself a little abruptly, and then added somewhat irrelevantly
+but cheerfully, "Well, you have been away? What have you done?"
+
+"Nothing," said Clarence.
+
+"Then you have kept your promise," she said, with the same nervous
+hilarity.
+
+"I have returned here without making any other engagement," he said
+gravely; "but I have not altered my determination."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders again, or, as it seemed, the skin of her
+tightly fitting black dress above them, with the sensitive shiver of a
+highly groomed horse, and moved to the hearth as if for warmth; put her
+slim, slippered foot upon the low fender, drawing, with a quick hand,
+the whole width of her skirt behind her until it clingingly accented the
+long, graceful curve from her hip to her feet. All this was so unlike
+her usual fastidiousness and repose that he was struck by it. With her
+eyes on the glowing embers of the hearth, and tentatively advancing her
+toe to its warmth and drawing it away, she said:--
+
+"Of course, you must please yourself. I am afraid I have no right except
+that of habit and custom to keep you here; and you know," she added,
+with an only half-withheld bitterness, "that they are not always very
+effective with young people who prefer to have the ordering of their own
+lives. But I have something still to tell you before you finally decide.
+I have, as you know, been looking over my--over Mr. Peyton's papers very
+carefully. Well, as a result, I find, Mr. Brant, that there is no record
+whatever of his wonderfully providential purchase of the Sisters' title
+from you; that he never entered into any written agreement with you, and
+never paid you a cent; and that, furthermore, his papers show me that
+he never even contemplated it; nor, indeed, even knew of YOUR owning
+the title when he died. Yes, Mr. Brant, it was all to YOUR foresight and
+prudence, and YOUR generosity alone, that we owe our present possession
+of the rancho. When you helped us into that awful window, it was YOUR
+house we were entering; and if it had been YOU, and not those wretches,
+who had chosen to shut the doors on us after the funeral, we could never
+have entered here again. Don't deny it, Mr. Brant. I have suspected it a
+long time, and when you spoke of changing YOUR position, I determined to
+find out if it wasn't I who had to leave the house rather than you. One
+moment, please. And I did find out, and it WAS I. Don't speak, please,
+yet. And now," she said, with a quick return to her previous nervous
+hilarity, "knowing this, as you did, and knowing, too, that I would know
+it when I examined the papers,--don't speak, I'm not through yet,--don't
+you think that it was just a LITTLE cruel for you to try to hurry me,
+and make me come here instead of your coming to ME in San Francisco,
+when I gave you leave for that purpose?"
+
+"But, Mrs. Peyton," gasped Clarence.
+
+"Please don't interrupt me," said the lady, with a touch of her old
+imperiousness, "for in a moment I must join my guests. When I found you
+wouldn't tell me, and left it to me to find out, I could only go away
+as I did, and really leave you to control what I believed was your own
+property. And I thought, too, that I understood your motives, and, to be
+frank with you, that worried me; for I believed I knew the disposition
+and feelings of a certain person better than yourself."
+
+"One moment," broke out Clarence, "you MUST hear me, now. Foolish and
+misguided as that purchase may have been, I swear to you I had only one
+motive in making it,--to save the homestead for you and your husband,
+who had been my first and earliest benefactors. What the result of it
+was, you, as a business woman, know; your friends know; your lawyer will
+tell you the same. You owe me nothing. I have given you nothing but the
+repossession of this property, which any other man could have done, and
+perhaps less stupidly than I did. I would not have forced you to come
+here to hear this if I had dreamed of your suspicions, or even if I had
+simply understood that you would see me in San Francisco as I passed
+through."
+
+"Passed through? Where were you going?" she said quickly.
+
+"To Sacramento."
+
+The abrupt change in her manner startled him to a recollection of Susy,
+and he blushed. She bit her lips, and moved towards the window.
+
+"Then you saw her?" she said, turning suddenly towards him. The inquiry
+of her beautiful eyes was more imperative than her speech.
+
+Clarence recognized quickly what he thought was his cruel blunder in
+touching the half-healed wound of separation. But he had gone too far to
+be other than perfectly truthful now.
+
+"Yes; I saw her on the stage," he said, with a return of his boyish
+earnestness; "and I learned something which I wanted you to first
+hear from me. She is MARRIED,--and to Mr. Hooker, who is in the same
+theatrical company with her. But I want you to think, as I honestly do,
+that it is the best for her. She has married in her profession, which is
+a great protection and a help to her success, and she has married a man
+who can look lightly upon certain qualities in her that others might
+not be so lenient to. His worst faults are on the surface, and will wear
+away in contact with the world, and he looks up to her as his superior.
+I gathered this from her friend, for I did not speak with her myself; I
+did not go there to see her. But as I expected to be leaving you soon,
+I thought it only right that as I was the humble means of first bringing
+her into your life, I should bring you this last news, which I suppose
+takes her out of it forever. Only I want you to believe that YOU have
+nothing to regret, and that SHE is neither lost nor unhappy."
+
+The expression of suspicious inquiry on her face when he began changed
+gradually to perplexity as he continued, and then relaxed into a faint,
+peculiar smile. But there was not the slightest trace of that pain,
+wounded pride, indignation, or anger, that he had expected to see upon
+it.
+
+"That means, I suppose, Mr. Brant, that YOU no longer care for her?"
+
+The smile had passed, yet she spoke now with a half-real, half-affected
+archness that was also unlike her.
+
+"It means," said Clarence with a white face, but a steady voice, "that
+I care for her now as much as I ever cared for her, no matter to what
+folly it once might have led me. But it means, also, that there was no
+time when I was not able to tell it to YOU as frankly as I do now"--
+
+"One moment, please," she interrupted, and turned quickly towards
+the door. She opened it and looked out. "I thought they were calling
+me,--and--I--I--MUST go now, Mr. Brant. And without finishing my
+business either, or saying half I had intended to say. But wait"--she
+put her hand to her head in a pretty perplexity, "it's a moonlight
+night, and I'll propose after dinner a stroll in the gardens, and you
+can manage to walk a little with me." She stopped again, returned, said,
+"It was very kind of you to think of me at Sacramento," held out her
+hand, allowed it to remain for an instant, cool but acquiescent, in his
+warmer grasp, and with the same odd youthfulness of movement and gesture
+slipped out of the door.
+
+An hour later she was at the head of her dinner table, serene,
+beautiful, and calm, in her elegant mourning, provokingly inaccessible
+in the sweet deliberation of her widowed years; Padre Esteban was at
+her side with a local magnate, who had known Peyton and his wife, while
+Donna Rosita and a pair of liquid-tongued, childlike senoritas were near
+Clarence and Sanderson. To the priest Mrs. Peyton spoke admiringly of
+the changes in the rancho and the restoration of the Mission Chapel, and
+together they had commended Clarence from the level of their superior
+passionless reserve and years. Clarence felt hopelessly young and
+hopelessly lonely; the naive prattle of the young girls beside him
+appeared infantine. In his abstraction, he heard Mrs. Peyton allude to
+the beauty of the night, and propose that after coffee and chocolate
+the ladies should put on their wraps and go with her to the old garden.
+Clarence raised his eyes; she was not looking at him, but there was
+a slight consciousness in her face that was not there before, and
+the faintest color in her cheek, still lingering, no doubt, from the
+excitement of conversation.
+
+It was a cool, tranquil, dewless night when they at last straggled out,
+mere black and white patches in the colorless moonlight. The brilliancy
+of the flower-hued landscape was subdued under its passive, pale
+austerity; even the gray and gold of the second terrace seemed dulled
+and confused. At any other time Clarence might have lingered over this
+strange effect, but his eyes followed only a tall figure, in a long
+striped burnous, that moved gracefully beside the soutaned priest. As he
+approached, it turned towards him.
+
+"Ah! here you are. I just told Father Esteban that you talked of leaving
+to-morrow, and that he would have to excuse me a few moments while you
+showed me what you had done to the old garden."
+
+She moved beside him, and, with a hesitation that was not unlike a more
+youthful timidity, slipped her hand through his arm. It was for the
+first time, and, without thinking, he pressed it impulsively to his
+side. I have already intimated that Clarence's reserve was at times
+qualified by singular directness.
+
+A few steps carried them out of hearing; a few more, and they seemed
+alone in the world. The long adobe wall glanced away emptily beside
+them, and was lost; the black shadows of the knotted pear-trees were
+beneath their feet. They began to walk with the slight affectation of
+treading the shadows as if they were patterns on a carpet. Clarence was
+voiceless, and yet he seemed to be moving beside a spirit that must be
+first addressed.
+
+But it was flesh and blood nevertheless.
+
+"I interrupted you in something you were saying when I left the office,"
+she said quietly.
+
+"I was speaking of Susy," returned Clarence eagerly; "and"--
+
+"Then you needn't go on," interrupted Mrs. Peyton quickly. "I understand
+you, and believe you. I would rather talk of something else. We have not
+yet arranged how I can make restitution to you for the capital you sank
+in saving this place. You will be reasonable, Mr. Brant, and not leave
+me with the shame and pain of knowing that you ruined yourself for the
+sake of your old friends. For it is no more a sentimental idea of mine
+to feel in this way than it is a fair and sensible one for you to imply
+that a mere quibble of construction absolves me from responsibility. Mr.
+Sanderson himself admits that the repossession you gave us is a fair and
+legal basis for any arrangement of sharing or division of the property
+with you, that might enable you to remain here and continue the work you
+have so well begun. Have you no suggestion, or must it come from ME, Mr.
+Brant?"
+
+"Neither. Let us not talk of that now."
+
+She did not seem to notice the boyish doggedness of his speech, except
+so far as it might have increased her inconsequent and nervously pitched
+levity.
+
+"Then suppose we speak of the Misses Hernandez, with whom you scarcely
+exchanged a word at dinner, and whom I invited for you and your fluent
+Spanish. They are charming girls, even if they are a little stupid.
+But what can I do? If I am to live here, I must have a few young people
+around me, if only to make the place cheerful for others. Do you know I
+have taken a great fancy to Miss Rogers, and have asked her to visit me.
+I think she is a good friend of yours, although perhaps she is a little
+shy. What's the matter? You have nothing against her, have you?"
+
+Clarence had stopped short. They had reached the end of the pear-tree
+shadows. A few steps more would bring them to the fallen south wall
+of the garden and the open moonlight beyond, but to the right an olive
+alley of deeper shadow diverged.
+
+"No," he said, with slow deliberation; "I have to thank Mary Rogers for
+having discovered something in me that I have been blindly, foolishly,
+and hopelessly struggling with."
+
+"And, pray, what was that?" said Mrs. Peyton sharply.
+
+"That I love you!"
+
+Mrs. Peyton was fairly startled. The embarrassment of any truth is
+apt to be in its eternal abruptness, which no deviousness of tact or
+circumlocution of diplomacy has ever yet surmounted. Whatever had been
+in her heart, or mind, she was unprepared for this directness. The bolt
+had dropped from the sky; they were alone; there was nothing between the
+stars and the earth but herself and this man and this truth; it could
+not be overlooked, surmounted, or escaped from. A step or two more would
+take her out of the garden into the moonlight, but always into this
+awful frankness of blunt and outspoken nature. She hesitated, and turned
+the corner into the olive shadows. It was, perhaps, more dangerous;
+but less shameless, and less like truckling. And the appallingly direct
+Clarence instantly followed.
+
+"I know you will despise me, hate me; and, perhaps, worst of all,
+disbelieve me; but I swear to you, now, that I have always loved
+you,--yes, ALWAYS! When first I came here, it was not to see my old
+playmate, but YOU, for I had kept the memory of you as I first saw
+you when a boy, and you have always been my ideal. I have thought of,
+dreamed of, worshiped, and lived for no other woman. Even when I found
+Susy again, grown up here at your side; even when I thought that I
+might, with your consent, marry her, it was that I might be with YOU
+always; that I might be a part of YOUR home, your family, and have a
+place with her in YOUR heart; for it was you I loved, and YOU only.
+Don't laugh at me, Mrs. Peyton, it is the truth, the whole truth, I am
+telling you. God help me!"
+
+If she only COULD have laughed,--harshly, ironically, or even mercifully
+and kindly! But it would not come. And she burst out:--
+
+"I am not laughing. Good heavens, don't you see? It is ME you are making
+ridiculous."
+
+"YOU ridiculous?" he said in a momentarily choked, half-stupefied voice.
+"You--a beautiful woman, my superior in everything, the mistress
+of these lands where I am only steward--made ridiculous, not by my
+presumption, but by my confession? Was the saint you just now admired in
+Father Esteban's chapel ridiculous because of the peon clowns who were
+kneeling before it?"
+
+"Hush! This is wicked! Stop!"
+
+She felt she was now on firm ground, and made the most of it in voice
+and manner. She must draw the line somewhere, and she would draw it
+between passion and impiety.
+
+"Not until I have told you all, and I MUST before I leave you. I loved
+you when I came here,--even when your husband was alive. Don't be angry,
+Mrs. Peyton; HE would not, and need not, have been angry; he would have
+pitied the foolish boy, who, in the very innocence and ignorance of his
+passion, might have revealed it to him as he did to everybody but ONE.
+And yet, I sometimes think you might have guessed it, had you thought of
+me at all. It must have been on my lips that day I sat with you in the
+boudoir. I know that I was filled with it; with it and with you; with
+your presence, with your beauty, your grace of heart and mind,--yes,
+Mrs. Peyton, even with your own unrequited love for Susy. Only, then, I
+knew not what it was."
+
+"But I think I can tell you what it was then, and now," said Mrs.
+Peyton, recovering her nervous little laugh, though it died a moment
+after on her lips. "I remember it very well. You told me then that
+I REMINDED YOU OF YOUR MOTHER. Well, I am not old enough to be your
+mother, Mr. Brant, but I am old enough to have been, and might have
+been, the mother of your wife. That was what you meant then; that
+is what you mean now. I was wrong to accuse you of trying to make me
+ridiculous. I ask your pardon. Let us leave it as it was that day in the
+boudoir, as it is NOW. Let me still remind you of your mother,--I know
+she must have been a good woman to have had so good a son,--and when
+you have found some sweet young girl to make you happy, come to me for
+a mother's blessing, and we will laugh at the recollection and
+misunderstanding of this evening."
+
+Her voice did not, however, exhibit that exquisite maternal tenderness
+which the beatific vision ought to have called up, and the persistent
+voice of Clarence could not be evaded in the shadow.
+
+"I said you reminded me of my mother," he went on at her side, "because
+I knew her and lost her only as a child. She never was anything to me
+but a memory, and yet an ideal of all that was sweet and lovable in
+woman. Perhaps it was a dream of what she might have been when she was
+as young in years as you. If it pleases you still to misunderstand me,
+it may please you also to know that there is a reminder of her even
+in this. I have no remembrance of a word of affection from her, nor a
+caress; I have been as hopeless in my love for her who was my mother, as
+of the woman I would make my wife."
+
+"But you have seen no one, you know no one, you are young, you scarcely
+know your own self! You will forget this, you will forget ME! And
+if--if--I should--listen to you, what would the world say, what would
+YOU yourself say a few years hence? Oh, be reasonable. Think of it,--it
+would be so wild,--so mad! so--so--utterly ridiculous!"
+
+In proof of its ludicrous quality, two tears escaped her eyes in
+the darkness. But Clarence caught the white flash of her withdrawn
+handkerchief in the shadow, and captured her returning hand. It was
+trembling, but did not struggle, and presently hushed itself to rest in
+his.
+
+"I'm not only a fool but a brute," he said in a lower voice. "Forgive
+me. I have given you pain,--you, for whom I would have died."
+
+They had both stopped. He was still holding her sleeping hand. His arm
+had stolen around the burnous so softly that it followed the curves
+of her figure as lightly as a fold of the garment, and was presumably
+unfelt. Grief has its privileges, and suffering exonerates a
+questionable situation. In another moment her fair head MIGHT have
+dropped upon his shoulder. But an approaching voice uprose in the
+adjoining broad allee. It might have been the world speaking through the
+voice of the lawyer Sanderson.
+
+"Yes, he is a good fellow, and an intelligent fellow, too, but a perfect
+child in his experience of mankind."
+
+They both started, but Mrs. Peyton's hand suddenly woke up and grasped
+his firmly. Then she said in a higher, but perfectly level tone:--
+
+"Yes, I think with you we had better look at it again in the sunlight
+to-morrow. But here come our friends; they have probably been waiting
+for us to join them and go in."
+
+* * * * *
+
+The wholesome freshness of early morning was in the room when Clarence
+awoke, cleared and strengthened. His resolution had been made. He would
+leave the rancho that morning, to enter the world again and seek his
+fortune elsewhere. This was only right to HER, whose future it should
+never be said he had imperiled by his folly and inexperience; and if, in
+a year or two of struggle he could prove his right to address her again,
+he would return. He had not spoken to her since they had parted in the
+garden, with the grim truths of the lawyer ringing in his ears, but he
+had written a few lines of farewell, to be given to her after he
+had left. He was calm in his resolution, albeit a little pale and
+hollow-eyed for it.
+
+He crept downstairs in the gray twilight of the scarce-awakened house,
+and made his way to the stables. Saddling his horse, and mounting,
+he paced forth into the crisp morning air. The sun, just risen, was
+everywhere bringing out the fresh color of the flower-strewn terraces,
+as the last night's shadows, which had hidden them, were slowly beaten
+back. He cast a last look at the brown adobe quadrangle of the quiet
+house, just touched with the bronzing of the sun, and then turned his
+face towards the highway. As he passed the angle of the old garden he
+hesitated, but, strong in his resolution, he put the recollection of
+last night behind him, and rode by without raising his eyes.
+
+"Clarence!"
+
+It was HER voice. He wheeled his horse. She was standing behind the
+grille in the old wall as he had seen her standing on the day he had
+ridden to his rendezvous with Susy. A Spanish manta was thrown over her
+head and shoulders, as if she had dressed hastily, and had run out to
+intercept him while he was still in the stable. Her beautiful face was
+pale in its black-hooded recess, and there were faint circles around her
+lovely eyes.
+
+"You were going without saying 'goodby'!" she said softly.
+
+She passed her slim white hand between the grating. Clarence leaped to
+the ground, caught it, and pressed it to his lips. But he did not let it
+go.
+
+"No! no!" she said, struggling to withdraw it. "It is better as it
+is--as--as you have decided it to be. Only I could not let you go
+thus,--without a word. There now,--go, Clarence, go. Please! Don't you
+see I am behind these bars? Think of them as the years that separate
+us, my poor, dear, foolish boy. Think of them as standing between us,
+growing closer, heavier, and more cruel and hopeless as the years go
+on."
+
+Ah, well! they had been good bars a hundred and fifty years ago, when it
+was thought as necessary to repress the innocence that was behind them
+as the wickedness that was without. They had done duty in the convent
+at Santa Inez, and the monastery of Santa Barbara, and had been brought
+hither in Governor Micheltorrenas' time to keep the daughters of Robles
+from the insidious contact of the outer world, when they took the air
+in their cloistered pleasance. Guitars had tinkled against them in vain,
+and they had withstood the stress and storm of love tokens. But, like
+many other things which have had their day and time, they had retained
+their semblance of power, even while rattling loosely in their sockets,
+only because no one had ever thought of putting them to the test, and,
+in the strong hand of Clarence, assisted, perhaps, by the leaning
+figure of Mrs. Peyton, I grieve to say that the whole grille suddenly
+collapsed, became a frame of tinkling iron, and then clanked, bar by
+bar, into the road. Mrs. Peyton uttered a little cry and drew back, and
+Clarence, leaping the ruins, caught her in his arms.
+
+For a moment only, for she quickly withdrew from them, and although
+the morning sunlight was quite rosy on her cheeks, she said gravely,
+pointing to the dismantled opening:--
+
+"I suppose you MUST stay now, for you never could leave me here alone
+and defenseless."
+
+He stayed. And with this fulfillment of his youthful dreams the romance
+of his young manhood seemed to be completed, and so closed the second
+volume of this trilogy. But what effect that fulfillment of youth
+had upon his maturer years, or the fortunes of those who were nearly
+concerned in it, may be told in a later and final chronicle.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Susy, A Story of the Plains, by Bret Harte
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