Days of '49/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
1
Night and day the Magnolia ran its games and bar; and at midnight, though the crowd of loafers had thinned, men still hovered thickly about the tables.
In the city gold and silver coins were plentiful, though there were not nearly enough for the commerce; with the increase of miners gold dust became even in the city the medium of exchange as it was in the mines, where a gold coin was rarely seen.
When gambling with dust, a man put his bag on the table, stated the amount of his wager, and the lookout placed a marker against it. If the player was unlucky this bag would lie on the table until the number of markers showed that the entire contents of the bag had been lost. Gamblers, by the weight in their hands, were expert at guessing the amount and value of the dust.
Heavy play was on at the table where Stewart Dawes dealt. The betting of two men attracted the attention of many on lookers.
One of these was Col. Nevinson, a man of middle age, of striking appearance, smooth shaven except for a long black mustache. He wore a black soft hat, black cutaway coat, and flowing bow tie, and his height was accentuated by a haughty erectness.
He had reached San Francisco in the early spring of'49, and was, therefore, an old-timer. No man had more diversified business interests than Nevinson; he speculated audaciously, particularly in the lumber trade; he owned the controlling interest in stores throughout the mines, had money invested in gambling houses and city property. Yet his chief interest was in politics. When California became a State he expected to be United States Senator. Nevinson was domineering, generous with his friends, high-handed, and regarded any man who opposed him as an enemy.
He was almost constantly attended, some people said "guarded," by a slump-shouldered cadaverous fellow by the name of Bruce Brace, who usually held his hands behind him.
Now he stood beside the colonel, but did not at all watch the play. He looked vaguely about over the heads of the onlookers. His eyes were dull as if covered with a sort of film, and he stared here and there with a seeming lack of interest.
Col. Nevinson was drinking heavily, but with no apparent effect beyond a slight flush. Every few minutes a Chinaman came with a tray and bottle.
Low conversation went on, for some man was saying that somebody had just gone into Washington Hall, ordered the doors closed, and had all the inmates paraded. A pretty dollar such sport would cost!
Col. Nevinson, overhearing, demanded:
"Who is the fool?"
Nearly always he spoke with an air of anger, even to friends.
"Don't know, Colonel. A Spanish-looking fellow, they say, that just rode in today. Made a winning at somebody's table. Then went crazy, I guess."
Stewart Dawes glanced toward the talebearer, but said nothing.
At the other side of the table another man of striking appearance was also playing heavily, and losing after a run of good luck. He was a young slender Spaniard, straight as a tent pole. His name was a proud one, Don José Roderigo Velazquez de Sola. Except for the shadow of a smile, in which there was nothing pleasant, his face was a mask. In two hours he had not said a word.
He was richly dressed. His high sombrero was overlaid with gold braid; his velvet jacket fronted with gold buttons. From the top of his right boot the handle of a knife stuck up and, slung from his hip, in a way that a Spaniard seldom wore a gun, he carried a heavy ivory-handled revolver in a greasy holster, on his thigh, handle pointing backward.
2
Near midnight Martin O'Day wriggled through the onlookers and emerged at the elbow of the Spaniard.
"Make your game, gentlemen," said the lookout in a bored voice. Bets were placed. Martin did not catch just what was the reason, but Dawes, placing aside his deck, moved his hand slightly toward the derringer at his elbow and said quietly to the Spaniard:
"Change your bet."
"Pardon, señor, my bet eet was down firs'."
"I said, 'Change' your bet!'" and the edge of Dawes' voice grew sharper, his hand moving nearer his gun.
The next instant he was looking into the muzzle of the heavy Colt's revolver.
Onlookers to right and left ducked, some going so far as the floor. Col. Nevinson pressed back, but did not dodge. Only Stewart Dawes remained indifferently motionless as the smile on the face of the young Spaniard deepened, and his voice, soft as a girl's, said:
"Pardon, señor, I have not the wish to change the bet. You will plees deal!"
Dawes smiled coolly, and with a movement of wrist only turned his hand up, beaten. He had made a bad play; he was gambler enough to lose coolly.
The Spaniard, with a smooth quick movement, returned the revolver to its holster, and the little cockney gaped at him in open-mouthed admiration.
"I," said Col. Nevinson angrily, though speaking to no one in particular, "have seen greasers whipped for less!"
The Spaniard's eyes gleamed. His lips parted over teeth tightly clenched. For a moment, as if too full of rage for words, he glared at Nevinson. Bruce Brace noticed, his slack body stiffened, and the film seemed to leave his eyes; but his right hand remained behind him.
"Where, señor, where deed you see that? A Spaniard wheeped! Where?"
Nevinson looked at him contemptuously: "I just came down from the mines a few days ago, and they tell of one of your Dons who was pegged out and soundly whipped, sir!"
"Who, señor?" The Spaniard seemed almost beside himself; his voice had the menace of pain and anger. "Do you know who did that thing?"
Bruce Brace glanced expectantly toward the colonel; but Nevinson said only:
"Who are you, sir, to question me! Damn your soul, sir, what is it you want?"
"And you, señor, have you ever done that theeng?"
"I", said Nevinson haughtily, "have struck whom I pleased, and when!"
"Ah, " the Spaniard answered softly, "perhaps you plees, now!"
"If I did, you would have known it before this, sir!"
"So, then you do not plees. Ah!"
"Aw, make your bets, gentlemen, make your bets," said the lookout.
Martin O'Day, from under his coat, raised a heavy buckskin bag and cautiously edged it on to the table.
"I'm playin' the free spot, wiv the gentleman' ere." He gestured with a thumb at the Spaniard.
Dawes glanced steadily for a moment at the small cockney, his large cap awry, his coat too large, upturned at the sleeves, his face underfed.
Dawes said nothing. There was much thievery in the city, and nimble fingers pulled many a pouch from the pockets of half-drunken miners. With his eyes on the cockney, Dawes lifted the sack, weighing it in his hand. He glanced down without interest. There was a rich sprinkling of gold dust on the mouth of the sack.
"Just under fifty ounces," said Dawes with expert carelessness.
"'Ow much it wurf?"
Dawes stared penetratingly, then again glanced at the sack:
"About eight hundred. All of it on the tray?"
Martin nearly collapsed. He had had no idea of weight, or of weight translated into dollars.
"Arf' of it! Arf' of it!" he exclaimed anxiously.
"The game is made," droned the lookout, laying markers against Martin's sack.
The cards fell. In a moment the lookout swept the Spaniard's coins into the bank's pile, and shifted the markers to show that half of Martin's sack belonged to the bank.
"'Oly 'eaven!" said Martin, looking up reproachfully at the Spaniard.
In a state of chills-and-fever tenseness, Martin began to play against what remained of his sack. Twice he had to bet the last ten dollars allowed him by the lookout's accounting, but he won. Then he kept on winning. The Spaniard lost, Nevinson lost, but the cockney won until he had the bag on his side of the table and some gold coins in his hand. At last, desperately, for he was not getting anywhere by small bets, he risked the sack, all of it, on the deuce.
The Spaniard, with his last dollar gone, lifted the band from his sombrero and with no haste or irritation laid it on the table.
Dawes picked it up, idly examined it, said indifferently:
"Fifty dollars."
The Spaniard bet against the deuce, and lost. Martin won. His eager hands scraped in the gold, gold pieces, all of it; he stuffed his capacious pockets until they were weighted with gold. He crammed the buckskin bag into a coat pocket.
The Spaniard glanced idly, with a faint suggestion of contempt at the cockney, then rolled a cigaret neatly, lighted it, and without a gesture or change of expression, turned away.
"Just a minute!" said Stewart Dawes.
The Spaniard turned with a flash of movement, but Dawes' hands were empty, though his right hand lay so close that it touched the butt of the derringer. From his chair he looked up coolly, without a sign of what he meant to say.
"Greaser," Dawes began evenly, "the next time you draw a gun on me, shoot! Because if—"
"Si, señor, with pleasure!" the Spaniard interrupted softly, his dark eyes brightly aglow. He smiled slightly and stood motionless, waiting.
Dawes eyed him dangerously, but being a thorough gambler, and patient, for the second time that night he realized that he had been beaten. This greaser was not like others, who could be humiliated because half the time they hardly understood what was being said and knew, besides, that they were unpopular with the crowd. This fellow seemed ready for a fight with anybody and, if Dawes' memory served him right, the gun this fellow carried was, even to the holster, much like that of the Spanish-looking man who, earlier in the day, had hit his bank hard.
Dawes had the good judgment to accept his luck, however much it hurt. Nonchalantly he cut his cards and began shuffling.
There was hardly any one left at the table to play. The corpse-like Bruce Brace, having at last seen something on which his eyes rested with interest, had bent forward and whispered to Nevinson, who instantly stopped playing, reassuringly reached under his coat, touching something there; then, with Brace at his heels, pushed hurriedly through the crowd, toward the bar.
Martin followed the Spaniard, and a few yards from the table caught at his arm.
The Spaniard whirled, eyes narrowed, hand to hip; but his hand fell away and his eyes lost the glint of fierceness as he waited, but not as if likely to be interested.
"I sy, do yer need some chink, matey?"
The Spaniard looked puzzled and repeated doubtfully:
"Cheeink? Cheeink?"
"Blimey, sure!" said Martin, jingling his heavy pockets and grinning generously.
"No, señor, I do not borrow from Americanos."
"But 'ye re broke. An' sy I, ain't no Amircan-ho.I'm Henglish. Stryght! I been lucky. You ain't. An' I like yer."
"Your pardon, señor, no. With your luck an'a leetle courage, señor—the bank, you would break eet. You queet while winning!"
"Huhn? Sy, look'ere.Iain't no bloomin' 'ero, but I sy—I'll show yer wot I done!"
He nervously yanked at his buckskin pouch, dragged it from his pocket, opened it, thrust it out.
"Look 'ere! Nothin' but"
It was dust all right, just plain dust off the street mixed with bullets which gave the sack weight.
"Ah yes, señor. Veree clevar. You had nothing to lose."
"Nothin' to lose! Yer crazy. That gambler bloke 'e'd 'ave shot me quicker'n 'ell! I was bettin' me bloody life. I'm hofferin' to loan—"
"Pardon, señor, no," said the Spaniard firmly, but, in a reserved way, friendly.
Even as they talked together high voices, raw with anger, came from across the room.
Col. Nevinson's voice, high pitched and menacing, could be heard.
"—you sir, damn your soul, have interfered with my affairs on every side"
"And you," a forceful contemptuous voice answered, "don't keep your affairs clean enough to welcome having them looked into, do you?"
"Damn your soul, sir, apologize!"
"You, sir, can go to the devil!"
"Draw and defend yourself!" cried Nevinson.
The words were not fully spoken before shots were fired, again and again and again.
Men whooped in alarm and threw themselves to the floor, under tables and benches as shot followed shot.
Then, through the smoke, two men were seen standing upright Col. Nevinson and Bruce Brace. Nevinson erect, gun at his side, his left hand fumbling absently at his right shoulder, where he had been hit.
On the floor, before the bar, sprawled full length, face down, dead, with a gun that still smoked in his fingers, lay Hubert Lee.
Suddenly in the tense silence that followed the reverberant crashing of the guns Monsieur Max sent up a torrent of French profanity and lamentation. His voice crackled. His hands smote and clawed the air. And the crowd that rose from under benches and reappeared through doorways, pressed in close to the bar and stared—not at the body of Hubert Lee, but at the great mirror, hopelessly marred with a star-like blot, almost in the center.
Monsieur Max abruptly stopped cursing. With a flourish he pulled a silk handkerchief from his sash and, grinning, shouted triumphantly:
"Oh oh oh-pooh! It is not for me to give one damn! At ze twelve o'clock tonight, messieurs, ze Magnolia I sold him to ze gentleman, Monsieur Tesla. It is for Monsieur Tesla to do ze cuss words!
3
A few minutes later Col. Nevinson appeared at the rooms of Doña Elvira Eton. He pushed by the negro girl who opened the door, and, stormy with excitement and triumph, cried:
"I've settled with Lee!"
"Lee! I didn't know he was in town!" Elvira exclaimed from the high-backed teak chair where she had been reading a Spanish novel. She did not rise, but her dark eyes widened with a moment's look of pleasurable excitement as Nevinson continued, striding toward her:
"It had to come! He got me here—" touching his right shoulder, as yet undressed—"but I put a piece of lead into his heart!"
Nevinson, with frowns and a manner of angry tenseness, together with some harsh names for Lee, remained standing and told of the encounter. He mentioned too that Bruce Brace had fired.
"—Brace missed. Hit the new mirror. Thunder strike his soul! That glass cost money, and now I mean to have an interest in the Magnolia! By God, I get what I want! I'd told Bruce not to draw—not unless I was down. But when he saw me stagger—touched here," he gestured at his shoulder—" he drew. That gun of his, no bigger than a toy! Can almost cover it in his palm. He just grins when I laugh at the thing—a toy! Yet he's done work with it—two men. Good friend, Brace. Lee and I had to have it out, blast his soul! Dressed like a greaser—that hat! Pah! I thoroughly hated the man"
Nevinson appeared to hate everything Spanish, except herself. Hubert Lee had worn a sombrero. She thought of that other man, Hales, who too wore a sombrero and had inquired for Hubert Lee.
Nevinson strode here and there about the room, at times putting his hand for a moment to his shoulder; he talked, justifying his grievances with a detailed recital of the many things Lee had done and tried to do. Lee had shouldered him out of the deal to buy the Magnolia; or tried to. He had put Lee—blast his greaser soul!—out of the way!
Elvira, a little bored by the colonel's long recital, picked up a silver-backed mirror, formerly her mother's. Preoccupiedly, she examined her face, her hair, her pendant earrings; she touched a stray wisp here and there, rubbed at what appeared to be the beginning of a wrinkle, then laid the mirror aside, or rather to one side, face up. Listlessly she began to roll a corn husk cigaret, and leaned over a little, absently looking at herself in the mirror.
Elvira knew nothing of her father, except that his name was Eton and he had been English; there the matter ended, and she was not curious. But her mother had been a remarkable woman, understanding the intricacies of a man-owned world; and was long and well known, if not entirely reputably, in Havana. The mother spoke English fluently. About the only scholastic requirement she imposed on Elvira was that tongue, the reason being that, as Señora Eton said, the English and Yankee are such men as give, give, give—if the woman is beautiful.
Among much else that was priceless, though hardly scholastic, the mother had taught Elvira that the only things worth while to a woman were her beauty, other people's money, and that men should be kept underfoot—where they belonged.
This remarkable mother had been blessed with courage as well as with wisdom. Smallpox crept into the city, terrifying everybody; Señora Eton's face was irreparably blighted; then the redoubtable woman who had taught her daughter to live, showed her how to die. Quite calmly, with a mirror in her hand, as if from it receiving the fatal sentence, Señora Eton drank a glass of poisoned wine, and so departed from a world where, according to her simple beliefs, a woman's face was more to be valued than her life.
The news of gold in California, at the time regarded as a Spanish country, had reached Havana when Elvira was ready to leave the city. She had lost favor with certain persons of municipal importance; and an immediate departure was, if not necessary, at least desirable. She had been accompanied by Tota, a pretty negress who spoke Spanish only, and by an odd scoundrel who went under the name of Ferdinand. He was some sort of Spaniard, but could make himself understood in almost any tongue.
4
This Ferdinand was a broad-chested, shaggy-headed, but beardless rascal; a world wanderer, who had been on slave ships, in theatrical troupes, as musician and performer, with robbers ashore and afloat, and in many prisons. In his youth the officials of Cadiz had clipped his ears, the better to know him if they should meet again. Frenchmen had branded his shoulder and sent him to the hulks; but, as he said, this was no place for a man of a roving nature so, having filed his chains in secret, he departed headlong into the water at night and was reported drowned.
It would take more than water, apparently more than rope, to end his life.
In Havana one afternoon, Elvira, attended by a rather elderly military personage, sat on a balcony to witness the hanging of a half-dozen rogues. Executions fascinated her, and at that time they were something of a holiday event in Havana, as formerly in London and Paris. The prisoners were being brought to the gallows in a wooden cart drawn by oxen. One of these was a powerful fellow, who, though his hands and feet were tied, stood upright against the wooden railing of the cart, joked with the crowd and sang snatches from a witty ballad about Sweet Mistress Hemp who had a ready caress for good stout men.
"Don't let them garrote that man!" said Doña Elvira to the important personage who at the time was much interested in pleasing her.
He was a gallant man, this official, with authority. He wrote a dozen words on a small pad taken from his pocket and gave the paper to an orderly. A few minutes later, amid the noisy joy of the crowd, Ferdinand was led away, reprieved.
Later, Elvira, accompanied by the official, visited Ferdinand in his small cell where he was ironed to the wall. Learning what she had done for him, he fell on his knees before her, called her an angel, and swore that he was persecuted only because he was an honest man and the world was full of rogues. There was, even then, a vague, good-natured insincerity, a kind of twinkling, in his tone that interested her and caused even the official to smile tolerantly.
"My poor man, how could you sing on your way to death!"
"Queen of Angels, only evil men fear death!"
Elvira learned from authoritative sources that he was a thorough rogue; and some said that he was not a Spaniard at all, but a Basque. He sang well and could play any stringed instrument that was placed in his hands. But his most distinctive accomplishment, unless it was breaking prison, was that of knife-thrower. He had once traveled about Europe with mountebanks, going from fair to fair. At ten paces he could send knives rapidly, one after the other, into a playing card, and sink the steel of each an inch or more into solid oak.
At this time Doña Elvira had money and friends of importance. She was pleased to slip a little gold and a few smiles here and there among certain persons who looked after the welfare of the city and, though a notorious rogue, Ferdinand passed from a reprieve to a pardon.
At first she tried to make a sort of house servant of him; but though always, or nearly always, cheerful, he was untamable. She did not grow tired of him so much as almost afraid of him. He was enigmatic, talkative, but, in a way that she could not penetrate, secretive. He never asked her for anything, and more than once he gave her money—as if trying to pay his debt. She did not dare ask how he got it. Always he spoke of her as "the good Doña"; always he was respectful, even at such times as she, in a passion, might call him a thief and gallows fruit, and he would greatly frighten her by his steady stare and rapid speech that ran inflectionally, all in a breath, from humbleness to menace and back again. He spoke Spanish even with a slight accent, as he did English and French. She felt that he ought to be more of a grateful slave than he was.
But Elvira had been very glad that he was at hand when she wished to leave Havana. He, too, was ready and eager to reach California.
They had no sooner got to San Francisco than Ferdinand, with a guitar over his shoulders and a knife in his belt, set out for the mines. He returned shortly without callouses on his hands and with much gold. In a little while he was off for the mines again, returning soon. California, he said, was a great country. He placed a sum of money in the good Doña's hands and asked her to buy for him a certain portion of this wonderful land, naming the place an old Spanish ranch known as Cowden's,—not far from San Francisco. Ferdinand could not read nor write. He was very insistent about this ranch. Whatever it cost, he said that he would get the money. She even visited the rancho, and found it an isolated and rather dilapidated place.
She inquired what on earth he could want of it, and learned that Ferdinand was, or at least said he was, preparing a home for his old age; this being about as near the truth as anybody could ever get out of him.
She had, as usual with anything like business, turned to Col. Nevinson in the matter of buying this ranch; and he always put himself out to accommodate his friends.
Elvira also thought California a great country, but she did not look so far forward as to see old age. Old age, like her own death, was something of which she would never let herself think.
She restlessly craved excitement. Her instincts were, if not dramatic, at least theatrical. She spent her idleness in reading Spanish novels, revengeful of plot, through which women moved, artful and unforgiving, with jeweled daggers, worn secretly.
Even here in San Francisco, where there was little to buy and much gold, she was wasteful of money, but resourceful, very resourceful. For instance, at a time when the city was bare of furniture she had been able to get nearly all the furnishings she wanted—the king's palace would hardly have supplied her with all that she wanted, at least for any length of time—through Col. Nevinson, who bought the stuff from the captains and caretakers of the crewless ships out on the bay.
5
Now, having lighted a second cigaret, Doña Elvira sat back, blew the smoke upward and with slumbrous-eyed disinterest listened to Col. Nevinson.
"—I found out that he was telling here and there that I brought her to California—"
"Her! Who?" Elvira asked quickly, with something of jealous alarm. "Who are you talking about?"
"Ann Hales."
"Oh!" She sprang up, alert, interested, sensitively ready to be jealous.
"Oh, what?" demanded the Colonel bruskly. "What do you know of her?"
"Nothing, my Colonel. But somewhere—oh, quite vaguely—it seems I have heard—that name, haven't I? I wonder where?"
"Lee told two or three persons. By God, sir, I'll call any man to account for lies about me! Or woman, sir! Or woman! She lied about me, too."
"What did she say, my Colonel?"
Elvira, watching his lips as if to catch the words before she heard their sound, stroked tenderly at his coat collar. Her fingers touched something moist. She jerked her hand back, then hastily rubbed her fingers on his sleeve. She felt a pleasurable slight shudder, and for a moment hardly listened to what he was saying, but looked intently at the moist red stain she had touched.
"Why, sir, she said—or at least that blasted greaser of a Lee claimed she said that I, I, sir! brought her to California. She happened to be on the ship, that was all. I swear to—I won't swear to anybody, sir. I simply state the truth. She was on the ship. True, I had known her before, but I had nothing to do, nothing at all, with bringing her to California, or with what happened to her after she got here. No, sir!"
"Ah," said Elvira, inscrutably.
Col. Nevinson looked at her with suspicion:
"Why do you say that, 'Ah'?"
"Ah, no reason, my Colonel. What happened to her after she got here? Tell me more of her. Where is she now?"
"There is little to tell. She was married to a man she did not love. An Army officer who left her much alone—with good reason, too. Any man would soon have left her. She was crazy!"
"Ah-ah? Continue, my Colonel, dear. What became of her? Where is she now?"
"Fire and Hell, woman! You are not jealous!"
"I? Jealous? Of who? No, no! I like romances, to read them—to hear them. Tell me more. This husband of hers, what of him? May he not come to California too—looking for her—for you?"
"He is dead—not that I would care," Col. Nevinson added quickly, giving one end of his mustache an upward twist. "I did not bring her. She had gone to the devil long before. Drank. I soon lost sight of her, here."
"So fickle, you men," Elvira murmured playfully. "But now, where is she?"
"Why do you care?"
"When I read a novel I read to the end, even the dull ones, my Colonel."
"She went from bad to worse, and is now in some sort of lodging house. Sydney woman keeps it, I hear, down by Clark's Point. She was for a time in Washington Hall. Got thrown out of there." Col. Nevinson shook his head as he said it. Wretched indeed was the woman who must fall lower than the lowest of those in Washington Hall.
"And she was beautiful, once?"
"Once, yes. I should say she was! But never a good woman, never! Her husband was killed during the war and—"
"Ah, perhaps that's how I have heard the name? There was much in the newspapers at one time—I read of it in Havana—about a Captain Hales who fought a duel between the armies. Yes, yes, I remember. He was a scout and—"
At any time it rather irritated Col. Nevinson to hear other men praised.
"All I know of him is that he was killed."
"But many men have been reported dead that lived, and everybody comes to California. What if he should appear?" asked Elvira slowly, but thrilled.
"I don't take a step backward from any man, sir!"
"I wonder—" Elvira murmured, thinking of the dark horseman.
"You what!"
"I wonder, is he dead? Are you sure?"
"She gota pension. He was a captain, but not—" this a little contemptuously—"of a military family. Leather merchants. Lee was a hide buyer here in California for the firm. Somehow he found out who she was, that she was here—and meddled. Damn his soul!"
"I see," said Elvira.
"What do you see?" he asked sharply.
"Many things, my Colonel. Hubert Lee may have sent word East, to her people to the husband's people I mean and—"
"What are you talking about? Why would Lee do that, anyhow?"
"Oh, to make trouble for you! Don't you see? Supposing, just supposing, the husband should come?"
"Let him come!"
"Ah," admiringly, or seemingly so—"you fear no man!"
"No man, sir!"
"But women, ah?" she asked, teasingly.
"You—yes, of course," he said, twisting one side of his mouth into a sort of smile, meant pleasantly.
"Where is she, this Ann Hales? Where, did you say?"
"Why do you care? She is nothing."
"May I not be curious?"
"The place is called the Red Lamb. So Lee said. He told a fellow that. The fellow told me. I don't know."
"Red Lamb, what a name! And I am curious. You say she was once beautiful?"
"She was. Yes. No doubt about it. She was, once."
"And rich? Her husband was rich? Rich family, now?"
"Very rich. Very. So I heard," he said without interest, putting his hand to his injured shoulder.
"And this husband, was he handsome, Colonel? What did he look like?"
"Never saw him."
"The name Hales, Colonel, is it a common name in this country?"
"Why the devil are you so full of questions?"
"I am curious. I have nothing to do with myself but be curious. Hales is a common name, Colonel?"
"There are Hales in the East. Lots of them."
"It is so common then that—ah, you don't jump when you hear it?"
"Jump! Jump? No, I don't jump! Not when I hear any man's name!"
"Not—" at times with playful malice she struck the chords that made him explosive—"when you know he is dead."
"What's the matter with you tonight? How dare you, woman, say a thing like that to me!"
"Ah—" humbly—"pardon, my Colonel. I but played. Come, we will sit over here, close together, and you shall tell me about this woman you once loved, when she was pretty."
"No," he said, a little soothed, but still irritated. "No, you're in one of your womanish moods tonight. I'm going to a doctor."
She went to the door so graciously with him, was so soothingly tender, that he was tempted to linger.
"Don't, my Colonel, remember when your Elvira has been naughty and teased."
She kissed him with the clinging insistence of a woman who means to be loved whether or not the man is willing; and he broke away good-naturedly, saying—"Devil!"
Elvira pushed the door closed and stared excitedly, at nothing:
"Devil I am, and can call the dead! Jealous? Ah-ah, of him? Ho, what a fool to think it! Let him take care how he calls the Spaniard Greaser! But Señor Dick Hales—ah? Rich, very rich and handsome. What a fool she must have been! Tota! Tota!"
"Yes, Doña—yes!" said Tota, entering anxiously.
Elvira picked up the mirror and looked into it as she spoke:
"Get me to bed, Tota. I must sleep well. Tomorrow is important. When we meet a second time the Señor Dick will be more polite! And she, that Hales woman, was once beautiful. I wonder, blonde or brunette? I forgot to ask."