it was a bitterly cold january morning. there had been a rain in the night, and the clouds yet hung gray over mt. graham and the black gap. the wet wind went howling over the valley, so that the little flag at the top of the staff snapped and whipped as though it would be torn from the halyards. sunday inspection and guard mounting had been chilling ceremonies, performed in overcoats that were hardly more blue than the men's faces. having finished them, brewster hurried across the parade to captain campbell's quarters.
he found felipa curled on the blanket in front of a great fire, and reading by the glare of the flames, which licked and roared up the wide chimney, a history of the jesuit missionaries. it was in french, and she must have already known it by heart, for it seemed to be almost the only book she cared about. she had become possessed of its three volumes from a french priest who had passed through the post in the early winter and had held services there. he had been charmed with felipa and with her knowledge of his own tongue. it was a truly remarkable knowledge, considering that it had been gained at a boarding-school.
"you speak with the utmost fluency, my daughter,"[pg 47] he had commended, and she had explained that she found expression more easy in french.
"it is curious," she said, "but it has always seemed as though english were not my native tongue."
when the father returned to tucson, he had sent her the history, and she had read and reread it. in a way she was something of a linguist, for she had picked up a good deal of spanish from mexicans about the post, chiefly from the nurse of the campbell children.
there is a certain class of persons to whom it is always irritating to find any one reading a book. it rubs them the wrong way instantly. they will frequently argue that their own, and the best, manner of studying life is from nature—an excellent theory in sound, and commonly accepted as unanswerable, but about as practical in fact as the study of music on the instrument alone, without primer or method.
the mere sight of felipa on the buffalo robe before the fire, poring over the old history, exasperated brewster. "that book again?" he said crossly, as he drew up a chair and held out his hands to the flames; "you must know it by heart."
"i do," she answered, blinking lazily.
he reflected that it is a trait of the semi-civilized and of children that they like their tales often retold. but he did not say so. he was holding that in reserve. instead, he changed the subject, with an abrupt inquiry as to whether she meant to ride to-day. "i suppose not?" he added.
"i do, though," she said perversely, as she bent her[pg 48] head and tried to put into order the tumbled mass of her hair. "i am going at eleven o'clock."
"alone?"
"no, not alone."
"it is bitterly cold."
"i don't mind, and neither does captain landor." her guardian had recently gotten his captaincy.
brewster's irritation waxed. "landor again?" he queried suggestively.
"landor again," she yawned, ignoring his meaning-fraught tone. but she watched his face from under her long lashes.
he glanced over his shoulder at the door. it was closed; so he leaned forward and spoke in a lower voice. "felipa, are you going to marry landor, or are you not?"
it was more than a mere impertinent question, and she did not pretend to ignore it any longer. she clasped her hands slowly about her knees and looked straight at him.
but he was unabashed, "what is he to you?" he insisted.
she thought for a moment before she answered. then she spoke deliberately, and there was a purring snarl under her voice. "it is none of your business that i can see. but i will tell you this much, he is a man i respect; and that is more than i have said of you when i have been asked the same question."
"it is not only my business," he said, overlooking the last, and bending more eagerly forward, "it is not[pg 49] only my business, it is the business of the whole post. you are being talked about, my dear young lady."
she sprang to her feet so suddenly that her arm struck him a blow in the face, and stood close in front of him, digging her nails into her palms and breathing hard. "if you—if you dare to say that again, i will kill you. i can do it. you know that i can, and i will. i mean what i say, i will kill you." and she did mean what she said, for the moment, at any rate. there was just as surely murder in her soul as though those long, strong hands had been closed on his throat. her teeth were bared and her whole face was distorted with fury and the effort of controlling it. she drew up a chair, after a moment, and sat in it. it was she who was leaning forward now, and he had shrunk back, a little cowed. "i know what you are trying to do," she told him, more quietly, her lips quivering into a sneer, "you are trying to frighten me into marrying you. but you can't do it. i never meant to, and now i would die first."
he saw that the game had reached that stage where he must play his trump card, if he were to have any chance. "you are a mean little thing," he laughed. "it is the apache blood, i suppose."
she sat for a moment without answering. it was less astonishment than that she did not understand. she knitted her brow in a puzzled frown.
but he mistook her silence for dismay, and went on. "it is only what one might expect from the daughter of a drunken private and a mescalero squaw."
[pg 50]
she was still silent, but she leaned nearer, watching his face, her lips drawn away from her sharp teeth, and her eyes narrowing. she understood now.
in his growing uneasiness he blundered on rashly. "you didn't know it? but it is true. ask your guardian. do you think he would have you for a wife?" he gave a short laugh. "he hates an apache as he does a gila monster. very few men would be willing to risk it."
she leaned back in her chair, tapping her foot upon the floor. it was the only sign of excitement, but the look of her face was not good.
brewster avoided it, and became absorbed in making the tips of his fingers meet as he pressed his hands together.
"still," said felipa, too quietly, "i would rather be the daughter of a drunken private and a mescalero squaw than the wife of a coward and sneak."
he stood up and went nearer to her, shaking his finger in her face. he knew that he had lost, and he was reckless. "you had better marry me, or i will tell your birth from the housetops." but he was making the fatal mistake of dealing with the child that had been, instead of with the woman he had aroused.
she laughed at him—the first false laugh that had ever come from her lips. "you had better go now," she said, rising and standing with her arms at her side, and her head very erect.
he hesitated, opening his mouth to speak and shutting it again irresolutely.
[pg 51]
"i told you to go," she repeated, raising her brows.
he took up his cap from the table, and went.
when landor came in half an hour later he found her in her riding habit, sitting in front of the fire. she was still alone, and he felt instantly that there was more softness than ever before in the smile she gave him, more womanliness in the clinging of her hand. altogether in her attitude and manner there was less of the restlessly youthful. he drew a chair beside hers, and settled back comfortably.
"mr. brewster has just been here," she said at length, and she played with the lash of her whip, avoiding his eyes, which was also a new way for her.
"i wish brewster would not come so often," he said.
for answer she put out her hand and laid it upon his, not as she had often done it before, in the unattentive eagerness of some argument, but slowly, with a shadow of hesitation.
he was surprised, but he was pleased too, and he took the long fingers in his and held them gently.
"do you still want me to marry you?" she asked him.
he told her that he most certainly did, and she went on.
"is it because you think you ought to, or because you really want me?" she was looking at him steadily now, and he could not have lied to her. but the slender hand was warm and clinging, the voice low and sweet, the whole scene so cosey and domestic, and she[pg 52] herself seemed so much more beautiful than ever, that he answered that it was because he wanted her—and for the moment it was quite true. had so much as a blush come to her cheek, had she lowered her earnest gaze, had her voice trembled ever so little, it might have been true for all time. but she threw him back upon himself rudely, with an unfeminine lack of tact that was common with her. "then i will marry you whenever you wish," she said.
"i began to tell you," she resumed directly, "that mr. brewster was here, and that he informed me that my mother was a squaw and my father a drunken private."
landor jumped up from his chair. "felipa!" he cried. at first he was more shocked and sorry for her than angry with brewster.
"i don't mind," she began; and then her strict truthfulness coming uppermost, she corrected herself: "at least, i don't mind very much, not so much as you thought i would."
he strode up and down, his face black with rage, expressing his violent opinion of brewster. then he came to a stop, in front of her. "how did he happen to tell you?" he asked.
she explained. "he says he will tell it broadcast," she ended, "but he won't. it wouldn't be safe, and he knows it." her cool self-possession had its effect on him. he studied her curiously and began to calm down.
she asked him about her father and mother. going[pg 53] back to his chair he told her everything that he knew, save only the manner of cabot's death. "then i took you to yuma," he finished, "and from there to the east, via panama." there was a pause. and then came the question he had most dreaded.
"did my father leave me any money?" she asked.
there was nothing for it but to admit that from the day of her father's death she had been utterly landor's dependant,—at a cost to him of how many pleasures, she, who knew the inadequacy of a lieutenant's pay, could easily guess.
she sat thinking, with her chin in her palm, and a quite new look of loneliness deep in her eyes. he could see that in the last hour she had grasped almost the fulness of her isolation—almost, but not all; only the years could bring forth the rest. she gave a heavy sigh. "well, i am glad i love you," she said.
but he knew that she did not love him. she was grateful. it was sometimes an apache trait. he realized that it was his curse and hers that he could not for an instant forget the strain. he read her character by it, half unconsciously. he saw it in her honesty, her sinewy grace, her features, her fearlessness, her kindness with children,—they were all apache characteristics; and they were all repellent. from his youth on, he had associated the race with cruelty and every ghastly sight he had come upon, on the plains and in the mountains. it was a prejudice with more than the force of a heritage. he went on with his study of her, as she sat there. he was always studying her.[pg 54] but he could not decide whether it was that she lacked sensitiveness and was really not greatly disturbed, or a savage sort of pride in concealing emotions.
he rose to his feet, shaking off an impatience with her and with himself. "come," he said peremptorily; and they went out and mounted and rode away in the face of a whipping wind up the gradual slope to the mountains, black and weird beneath the heavy, low-hanging rain clouds.
felipa had taught her horse to make its average gait a run, and she would have started it running now, but that landor checked her. it was high time, he said, that he should teach her to ride. now she was more than a little proud of her horsemanship, so she was annoyed as well as surprised.
but he went on, instructing her how it was not all of riding to stick on, and rather a question of saving and seat and the bit.
"you give your horse a sore back whenever you go far, and you always bring him back in a lather."
it was half because she felt it would prick him, and half in humility, that she answered, "i suppose that is the indian in me."
his horse started. he had dug it with the rowels. then he reined it in with a jerk that made it champ its curb. "don't dwell on that all the time," he said angrily; "forget it." and then it flashed across him, the irreparable wrong he would be doing her if he taught her to consider the apache blood a taint.
she gave him an odd, furtive glance and did not[pg 55] answer for a time. he was never quite able to divine with her just how much of his thoughts she understood, and it put him at some disadvantage.
presently she said: "i can't forget. and you can't. as for other people—they don't matter anyway." in her scheme of things other people rarely did matter. she hedged herself round with a barrier of indifference that was very nearly contempt, and encouraged no intimacies—not even with landor. and he knew it.
she made it plainer to him by and by, as she went on to advise his course about brewster. "if i were you, i would ignore his having told me, jack. i ought to have pretended that i knew it, but i was taken by surprise. he must not think you resent it as though it were an insult, though. as for me, i won't have anything more to do with him; but that is for reasons of my own."
he demanded that he be told the reasons, but she refused very sweetly and very decidedly. and he was forced to accept the footing upon which she placed him, for all time.
* * * * * * * *
it was quite in keeping with everything that had gone before that, the day after a passing franciscan priest had married them, landor should have been ordered off upon a scout, and felipa should have taken it as a matter of course, shedding no tears, and showing no especial emotion beyond a decent regret.
they had not gone upon a wedding trip for the excellent reason that there was no place to go; and as[pg 56] they sat at dinner together in their sparsely furnished quarters, there was a timid ring at the door-bell, and landor's chinaman, the cook of his bachelor days, ushered in the commanding officer, who looked humble apology for the awkwardness of a visit he could not delay. he went straight to the matter in hand, in spite of the tactful intentions that had made him come himself instead of sending a subordinate.
"i say, landor," he began, after having outwardly greeted felipa and inwardly cursed his luck at being obliged to tear a man away from so fair a bride, "i say, there's been the dickens of a row up at the agency."
landor went on with his dinner coolly enough. "there's quite likely to be that at any time," he said, "so long as a pious and humane indian bureau sends out special agents of the devil who burn down the agency buildings of peaceful apaches as a means of inducing them to seek illness and death in malarious river bottoms."
"that," objected the major, testily, "is ancient history. this trouble started the way of most of the troubles of this age—whiskey." in his agitation he carefully spilled a spoonful of salt on the cloth and scraped it into a little mound with a knife. then recollecting that spilled salt causes quarrels, he hurriedly threw a pinch of it over his left shoulder. "and—and, the worst of the whole business is, old man, that you've got to go. your troop and one from apache are ordered out. i'm awfully sorry." he would not look at felipa at all. but he stared landor[pg 57] fairly out of countenance, as he waited for a storm of tears and protestations.
when, therefore, mrs. landor said, with the utmost composure, that it was too bad, his gasp was audible.
the captain knitted his thick brows and interposed quickly, talking against time. "if the tucson ring and the indian bureau had one head, i should like the detail of cutting it off." his annoyance seemed to be of an impersonal sort, and the commandant began to feel that he must have handled the thing rather well, after all. he gained in self-esteem and equanimity.
felipa rose from the table, and going over to her husband laid her hand on his shoulder. she asked when he must go. "to-night, my dear lady, i am afraid," soothed the commandant. but she appeared to be in no need of humoring, as she turned to landor and offered to do what she might to help him.
he had dreaded a scene, but he was not so sure that this was not worse. "you are the wife for a soldier," he said somewhat feebly; "no tears and fuss and—all that kind of thing."
landor winced as he folded his napkin and stood up. "i am ready," he said, and going into the long hallway took his cap from the rack and went with the major out into the night.
in half an hour he was back, and having produced his scouting togs from the depths of a sky-blue chest, smelling horribly of tobacco and camphor, he fell to dressing.
felipa sat on the edge of the bunk and talked to[pg 58] him, a little excited, and very anxious to try what a scout was like for herself.
as he put on his faded blouse he went and stood before her, holding out his arms. she moved over to him and laid her head on his shoulder. "are you not sorry to have me go?" he asked, in the tones of one having a grievance. he felt that he was entitled to something of the sort.
of course she was sorry, she protested, a little indignant that he should ask it. she would be horribly lonesome.
he tried hard to warm her to something more personal. "i might never come back, you know, dear." he realized that he was absolutely begging for affection, most futile and unavailing of all wastes of energy.
but she only answered that that was unlikely and slipped her arm around his neck, as she added that if anything were to happen to him, she would not have one real friend in the world. there was something pathetic in the quiet realization of her loneliness.
he stroked her hair pityingly. after all, she was only a half-savage creature bound to him by the ties of gratitude. he had seen the same thing in a chiricahua girl baby he had once rescued, horribly burned, from the fire of an abandoned indian camp, where she had been thrown by the fleeing hostiles, because she was sickly and hampered their progress. the hideous, scarred little thing had attached herself to him like a dog, and had very nearly pined herself to death when he had had to leave her for good. afterward she had[pg 59] married—at the ripe age of twelve—a buck of her own tribe. he thought of how she also had slipped her hard, seamed arm around his neck, and he drew away from felipa.
when, in the darkness of a cloudy night, he said good-by to her on the road before his quarters, bending to kiss the warm mouth he could not see, he knew that it would have been possible for him to have loved her, had she been nearly all that she was not.
then he mounted the horse the orderly held for him, and trotted off.
