XXXVI: "IN THE MIDST OF LIFE--"
Out of the midst of these terrors and alarms, through the tragic nightthat was sweeping over the land, broke a solitary beam of light, gleamof romance that was destined to burn brightly for two love-illumineddays before obscured by gathering dangers.
Just about the time that Bull, with the wounded correspondent in hisarms, was swept along the mad battle rout, Gordon and Lee reined intheir beasts and looked back and down on the little town of San Carlosnestling in a valley below. Sequestered in the hills, far from therailroad along which the red tides of revolution ebbed and flowed, ithad so far escaped the prevailing destruction. Its painted adobes glowedlike a great opal within the setting of warm-brown hills, as happy apicture as bride and groom ever gazed upon, for, helped out by the wisecounsel of Lee's good friends, the _jefe_ and priest, Gordon hadprevailed.
"These wicked days a young girl may not expect to hold her own," thepriest had advised. "Los Arboles needs a man's hardness."
To which the _jefe_ had added his little joke, "Managing thee, nina,will not be his lightest work."
No doubt, because Cupid rides like a mad racer through the sunny lands,taking bolts and bars, duennas and like obstacles in his stride, Mexicanlaw gives him pause at the last; places the bars so high that thewildest of lovers must needs take breath. Ordinarily two weeks wouldhave been required to fulfil the forms; but where both law and churchare on Cupid's side--well, there is no country on earth where hisbusiness receives greater despatch. Accordingly, from the church thatshoved its square gold tower out of the rainbow mass of the town Lee andGordon had ridden away, man and wife, an hour ago, to honeymoon,according to her plan, in the great bowl of the mountain pastures.
Now, as she looked back, a certain wistfulness crept into the girl'sexpression; a shadow slight yet sufficient to attract Gordon's notice.Working his beast alongside, he laid his arm across her shoulder.
"I was thinking of the girl I left down there." She expressed thefeeling common to new-made wives in looking back on the place where theyhave left their girlhood. "She meant well, but--was _so_ foolish. I wasjust wondering if--if--"
"Lee Nevil will be different from Lee Carleton." He helped her out. "Ifshe isn't the same contrary little tyrant that gave me my first taste ofheaven"--he paused, grinning--"and hell--"
"You didn't make _me_ suffer, of course!" She flashed up in quite theold manner. "The way you carried on with that _dreadful_ girl. But theregoes Lee Carleton again! and after the lecture I gave her this morning.Yes, sir, I awoke her at dawn and gave her a real good talking to.Henceforth she is to be kind and quiet and sympathetic, and never loseher temper and--What are you laughing at? Don't you _want_ me toreform?"
"There! there!" Her distress was genuine, and he repressed a secondlaugh. "If I thought there was the slightest chance of it, I'd--I'dmarch you straight down the hill again and have the padre say theservice backward." Quite illogically he went on: "I, too, had a serioushour with myself. I made up my mind--"
He got no further, because of the small hand that closed his mouth. "Notto change? Don't dare to say it!"
Perhaps her alarm rooted in the age-long experience of woman that changeis the law for man. At any rate, she fought the very suggestion.
"You won't, will you?"
He assured her, of course, that he wouldn't--and believed it, no doubt.So, this mighty business settled, each being duly bound to the other toremain as they were and attempt no reforms, however well intended, theyturned their bright faces to the future; rode on, planning as they wentwith the brilliant optimism of youth. While the dusty miles slidunderneath and the trail heaved them up and down over the mountains andvalleys, they built up and tore down and reconstructed. By the time,midway of the afternoon, they looked down from the plateau into themountain pastures they had settled the revolution, placed the country ona basis of peace from which it should never be moved thereafter.
In this, the dry season, the giant bowl of jade was transmuted bysun-scorched grasses into living amber bisected by a thin, green veiningalong the stream. From its rim the trail dropped like a yellow snake inmany convolutions as it fell down, down, down into the chaparral. Itlooked, and was, dangerous. A stone dislodged by Gordon's beast droppedhundreds of feet sheer, then rebounded and plunged forward on a stilllonger leap. Following its staircase windings, they had under their eyesPedro's _jacal_ in its little garden, splashed now with the vermilion ofripening peppers. A white patch presently resolved into the _camisa_ and_calzones_ of Pedro himself, and as they reined in at his door the oldfellow came out of the garden, his wrinkles and pouches drawn into awelcoming grin.
"He's really part of the scenery"--Lee communed aloud withherself--"almost as much as that old dead tree. We might let him stay.But, no!" She shook her head. "I don't want any human being here butourselves. Oh, I know! We'll send him in to Los Arboles with a note toSliver and Jake."
Neither would she--after Pedro had saddled up and departed, have anycommerce with the _jacal_. "It isn't that it's dirty. Old Pedro is asclean in his habits as any white man, and quite fussy over hishousekeeping. But it has been lived in. We'll camp by the stream at thefar end of the valley."
She did borrow a few clay drinking and cooking bowls; also appropriateda savory stew of _frijoles_ which Pedro had ready for supper, adding itto the supplies they had brought from San Carlos. On his part Gordoncommandeered an old shot-gun.
"What for?" Though he laughed, repeating her question, the glow in hiseye proved him at one with her in spirit. "To kill the meat for ourfirst meal, Mrs. Stone-Hatchet. Also protect you against the attack ofany saber-toothed tiger or dinosaurus that may be roaming at night inthis neck of the woods."
"That will be fine!" Her hands being full of clay dishes, she could notclap them; but her shining eyes supplied the applause. "The wood at theend of the valley is alive with wild pigeon. They're just lovely broiledover hot coals."
"Broiled over hot coals?" he teased her. "Wild doves, the symbol oflove? What desecration!"
"I don't care," she pouted. "One has to eat--and they're awfully good."
Nevertheless, after they had pitched camp where the stream plunged downa small rapid into a long, still pool, he shouldered the gun and wentafter wild pigeon without compunction.
After he departed she looked around and took a deep breath.
It was all as it should be. In anticipation of their coming, a great oakhad spread a leafy carpet under its wide branches. It required only togather them and spread their serapes to form the softest of couches.First she brought water and built a fire; then, after a shy glancearound, she followed down-stream to a spot where the pool curved into anatural arbor of alders. When Gordon returned, half an hour later, witha half-dozen pigeons he found her all red and rosy from her swim.
"Your turn, Dirty Man," she rallied him. "Go and take your bath."
When he came back she had the pigeons plucked and spitted on willowwands. While he broiled them over hot coals she made the coffee andserved the _frijoles_ on golden husks of corn from Pedro's garden.Nature supplied the other utensils--fingers for forks, their sharp youngteeth for knives, bits of _tortilla_ to scoop up the stew. Both in itspreparation and when, sitting side by side, they ate this, the firstmeal of their wedded life, they were very quiet, lived in a dream; adream too happy for speech, in which the message of eye to eye was allsufficient. There was little clearing away to do, but when he essayed tohelp she took him by the shoulders and made him sit down.
"Like a good hunter, you provided the meat. This is _my_ work. You canwatch and smoke."
Fishing his papers and sack out of his shirt pocket, she rolled him acigarette with dexterity that demanded explanation.
"I used to do it for my father. Not that I haven't tried." Theconfession was nullified by a little sigh. "But it always makes me sick.You don't know how I envy Maria and Teresa!" Lighting it, she took acouple of small puffs, then passed it on. "I always tried to get Bulland the boys to smoke in the house,
but they seemed to prefer their ownquarters. I liked it even as a child. I would curl up in my father's denand watch the smoke from his pipe while he read or wrote. Once, when hewent away for some weeks on a hard trip without me, I used to go intohis room and bury my face in his old smoking-jacket; it smelled sotobaccery and strong and--_manny_. It gave me the oddest sense ofcomfort and protection."
Unconsciously, she had touched on the most powerful motive of sex, theattraction of opposite qualities; the same that drew his gaze when,rolling her sleeves above dimpled elbows, she began cleansing the fewutensils. He watched the fluttering small hands that invested even asquat and grimy coffee-pot with esthetic values; the graceful bend ofthe fair head as she peered into its depths to make sure it was reallyclean; the soft flexures of her waist; the ease with which she rose orrelaxed like a small girl-child on widespread knees. Lastly, mostpowerful of all, a certain shy quiet, the more noticeable because soentirely different from her usual confidence. Her smile, catching hiseye, had a new grace, was set in flooding color. When, after cleansingher hands at the stream, she came and stood looking down at the fire, herose with sympathetic understanding, holding out his hands.
She came on a little run and thereafter--it was as she had wished it inher girl's dreams--as far as dawn and dark from the conventionalmarriage. Here only the ancient law prevailed--the law older thantheologies, custom, judicial sanctions, and the blessings of the church.In the bubble and chatter of the stream through its worn brown boulders,in the whisper of the wind among the grasses, in the lazy drift of pinkcloud toward the sunset behind the rim, in bird call and the eveningsong of the insects, its sanctions were recited.
In their absorption in each other, blind belief in the goodness of allthings, they were, no doubt, a scoff for the misogynist, spectacle for acynic. A scoff in their utter ignorance of the fact that all this glory,supreme bliss, was merely an illusion, a rainbow mirage spread by Natureto lure her human creatures on to perpetuate themselves in a world ofpain! A spectacle in their unconscious innocence of the _blase_ modernviewpoint that examines Cupid through a microscope, tears away hisroseate veils, exposing him for a small licentiate. Surely a pair ofyoung fools! yet happy with that joy which cynic and misogynist maynever know; and--your real philosopher will admit it--most divinely inaccord with the scheme of things.
Yes, perfectly unconscious of the fact that Nature, the cunning fowler,had caught their feet in her lime, enmeshed them in her webs, they sat,her fair head pillowed on his shoulder, watching while the crimsonlights faded through pink to steel gray; watched the first pale starswax and increase and lay their pattern of fire across the darkeningvault above; watched till night closed her doors and locked them in fromthe rest of the world.
Life and Death, the two great Mysteries, each inscrutable as the other!"In the midst of one we are in the other," and the friendly night thatwrapped the lovers in its dark bosom was troubled, far away, by the roarof the fleeing trains. As these dribbled their foul freight in trickleswhose course across the land was marked as though by acid blight,incendiary fires blossomed in the darkness. Rising, later, the moondropped a checker of dew-light down through the oak on the sleepers. Italso lit the march of Gonzales's bandits across the desert.
Life and Death! Evil and Good! Inextricably mixed and, above it all, thestars shedding their dear, cold light. Dawn broke with its customarysplendors of crimson and gold. Later the sun raised a red, friendly faceand peeped over the mountain rim at Lee and Gordon, happy in thepreparation of their breakfast.
In ignorance of all the night had shrouded, that the sun now shone on,of the horror even then in course a few miles away, they pursued theirsecond day, fished and swam, walked among the pasturing horses, had thegayest of times concocting a tasty lunch out of their crude supplies.Thereafter Gordon was lying in luxurious content, head pillowed on Lee'sknee, when he first spied a slender smoke column rising far away beyondthe rim.
"Look!"
Though he sat up, pointing, he did not comprehend till Lee cried out:"It's the Millses' beacon! Oh, they are attacked! Get the horses!Quick!"