[Illustration: _A Prairie Infanta. --Frontispiece_

"THE DOCTOR SCOWLED OVER HIS GLASSES AS HE LISTENED. "

_See p. 79_]

APrairie Infanta

By

Eva Wilder Brodhead

Illustrated

PHILADELPHIA

HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY HENRY ALTEMUS

The pictures in this book have been reproduced by the courtesy of "TheYouth's Companion"

CONTENTS

 PAGE

 CHAPTER ONE

THE POWER OF CONSOLATION 13

 CHAPTER TWO

A SACRED CHARGE 37

 CHAPTER THREE

A TRUE BENEFACTRESS 61

 CHAPTER FOUR

WISE IMPULSES 85

 CHAPTER FIVE

DESTINY PRESSES 109

 CHAPTER SIX

BEWILDERING SATISFACTION 133

ILLUSTRATIONS

 PAGE

"The doctor scowled over his glasses as he listened" _Frontispiece_

"'I will not go with you!'" 29

"'He is Tesuque, the rain-god'" 55

"'I hoped you'd be able to lend me a hand'" 101

"'Do not make the thread short, Lolita'" 123

"'_Tia_, you are a lady of fortune'" 153

THEPOWER OF CONSOLATION

A PRAIRIE INFANTA

CHAPTER ONE

THE POWER OF CONSOLATION

At the first glance there appeared to be nothing unusual in the sceneconfronting Miss Jane Combs as she stood, broad and heavy, in herdoorway that May morning, looking up and down the single street of thelittle Colorado mining-town. 

Jane's house was broad and heavy also--a rough, paintless "shack, "which she had built after her own ideals on a treeless "forty" justbeyond the limits of Aguilar. It was like herself in having nothingabout it calculated to win the eye. 

Jane, with her rugged, middle-aged face, baggy blouse, hob-nailed shoesand man's hat, was so unfeminine a figure as she plowed and planted herlittle vega, that some village wag had once referred to her as "AnnieLaurie. " Because of its happy absurdity the name long clung to Jane;but despite such small jests every one respected her sterlingtraits, --every one, that is, except Señora Vigil, who lived hard by ina mud house like a bird's nest, and who cherished a grudge against herneighbor. 

For, years before, when Jane's "forty" was measured off by thesurveyor, it had been developed that the Vigil homestead was out ofbounds, and that a small strip of its back yard belonged in the Combstract. Jane would have waived her right, but the surveyor said that theland office could not "muddle up" the records in any such way; she musttake her land. And Jane had taken it, knowing, however, that thereaftereven the youngest Vigil, aged about ten months, would regard her as anenemy. 

Just now, too, as Alejandro Vigil, a ragged lad with a scarlet cap onhis black head, went by, driving his goats to pasture, he had said"rogue!" under his breath. Jane sighed at the word, and her eyesfollowed him sadly up the road, little thinking her glance was to takein something which should print itself forever in her memory, and makethis day different from all other days. 

In the clear sun everything was sharply defined. From the Mexican endof town, --the old "plaza, "--which antedated coal-mines andAmericanisms, gleamed the little gold cross of the adobe Church of SanAntonio. Around it were green, tall cottonwoods and the stragglingmud-houses and pungent goat-corrals of its people. Toward the cañonrose the tipple and fans of the Dauntless colliery, banked in slack andslate, and surrounded by paintless mine-houses, while to the rightswept the ugly shape of the company's store. The mine end of the townwas not pretty, nor was it quiet, like the plaza. Just at present thewhistle was blowing, and throngs of miners were gathering at the mouthof the slope. From above clamored the first "trip" of cars. Day and itswork had begun. 

Alejandro's red cap was a mere speck in the cañon, and his herd wassprinkled, like bread-crumbs, over the slaty hills. But over in theVigil yard the numberless other little Vigils were to be seen, andJane, as she looked, began to see that some sort of excitement wasstirring them. The señora herself stood staring, wide-eyed and curious. Ana Vigil, her eldest girl, was pointing. Attention seemed to bedirected toward something at the foot of the hill behind Jane's house, and she turned to see what was going on there. 

A covered wagon, of the prairie-schooner type, was drawn up at thefoot of the rise. Three horses were hobbled near by, and a little firesmoked itself out, untended. The whole thing meant merely the nighthalt of some farer to the mountains. Jane, about to turn away, sawsomething, however, which held her. In the shadow of the wagon thedoctor's buggy disclosed itself. Some one lay ill under the tunnel ofcanvas. 

She had just said this to herself when out upon the sunny stillnessrang a sharp, lamentable cry, such as a child might utter in anextremity of fear or pain. The sound seemed to strike a sudden horrorupon the day's bright face, and Jane shivered. She made an impulsivestep out into her corn-field, hardly knowing what she meant to do. Andthen she saw the doctor alighting from the wagon, and pausing to speakto a man who followed him. 

This man wore a broad felt hat, whose peaked crown was bound in asilver cord which glittered gaily above the startled whiteness of hisface. He had on buckskin trousers, and there was a dash of color at hiswaist, like a girdle, which gave a sort of theatric air to his gestureas he threw up his arms wildly and turned away. 

The doctor seemed perplexed. He looked distractedly about, and seeingJane Combs in her field, called to her and came running. He reached thefence breathless, for he was neither so young nor so slim as the manleaning weeping against the wagon-step. 

"Will you go over there, Miss Combs?" he panted. "There's a poor womanin that wagon breathing her last. They were on their way from Taos toCripple Creek--been camping along the way for some time. Probably theystruck bad water somewhere. She's had a low fever. The husband--Keene, his name is--came for me at daybreak, but it was too late. She seems tobe a Mexican, though the man isn't. What I want you to do is to lookafter a child--a little girl of ten or twelve--who is there with hermother. She must be brought away. Did you hear her cry out justnow?--that desperate wail? We'd just told her!"

"I guess everybody heard it, " said Jane. Mechanically she withdrew thebolt of the gate, which forthwith collapsed in a tangle of barbed wire. Tramping over this snare, Jane faced the doctor as he wiped his brows. "I aint much hand with children, " she reminded him. "You better sendSeñora Vigil, too. "

As she strode toward the wagon, the man in the sombrero looked up. Hewas good-looking, in a girlish sort of way, with a fair skin and blueeyes. A lock of damp, yellow hair fell over his forehead, and he keptpushing it back as if it confused and blinded him. 

"Go in, ma'am--go in!" he said, brokenly. "Though I do not reckon anyone can do much for her. Poor Margarita! I wish I'd made her lifeeasier--but luck was against me! Go in, ma'am!"

As Jane, clutching the iron brace, clambered up the step and pulledback the canvas curtain, the inner darkness struck blank upon hersun-blinded eyes. Then presently a stretch of red stuff, zigzagged witharrow-heads of white and orange and green, grew distinct, and under thethick sweep of the Navajo blanket, the impression of a long, stillshape. The face on the flat pillow was also still, with closed eyeswhose lashes lay dark upon the lucid brown of the cheek. A braid ofblack hair, shining like a rope of silk, hung over the Indian rug. Heavy it hung, in a lifeless fall, which told Jane that she was toolate for any last service to the stranger lying before her under thescarlet cover. 

Neither human kindness nor anything could touch her farther. "The taleof what we are" was ended for her; and from the peace of the quiet lipsit seemed as if the close had been entirely free of bitterness orpain. Jane moved toward the sleeper. She meant to lay the handstogether, as she remembered her mother's had been laid long ago in thestricken gloom of the Kansas farmhouse which had been her home; butsuddenly there was a movement at her feet, and she stopped, havingstumbled over some living thing in the shadows of the couch, somethingthat stirred and struggled and gasped passionately, "_Vamos! Vamos!_"

Such was the wrathful force of this voice which, with so littlecourtesy, bade the intruder begone, as fairly to stagger thewell-meaning visitor. 

"I want to help you, my poor child!" Jane said. And her bosom throbbedat the sight of the little, stony face now lifted upon her from thedusk of the floor--a face with a fierce gleam in its dark eyes, andclouded with a wild array of black hair in which was knotted andtwisted a fantastic _faja_ of green wool, narrowly woven. 

"I ask no help!" said the child, in very good English. "Only that yougo away! We--we want to be by ourselves, here--" suddenly she brokeoff, glancing piteously toward the couch, and crying out in a changed, husky voice, "_Madre mia! muerta! muerta!_"

A ray of sunshine sped into the wagon as some hand outside withdrew therear curtain a little. It shot a sharp radiance through the red andorange of the Indian blanket, and flashed across the array of tin andcopper cooking things hung against one of the arching ribs of thecanvas hood. Also it disclosed how slight and small a creature it waswho spoke so imperatively, asking solitude for her mourning. 

Jane, viewing the little, desperate thing, seemed to find in herself nopower of consolation. And as she stood wordless, with dimming eyes, there came from without a sound of mingling voices. Others were comewith offers of service and sympathy. A confusion of Spanish and Englishhurtled on Jane's uncomprehending ear; some one climbing the stepcried, "_Ave Maria!_" as his eyes fell on the couch. It was PabloVigil, a mild-eyed Mexican, with a miner's lamp burning blue in hiscap. 

Behind him rose the round, doughy visage of his wife, blank with awe. She muttered a saint's name as she dragged herself upward, and said, "Ay! ay! ay! the poor little one! Let me take her away! So you arehere, too, Mees Combs. But she will not speak to you, eh? _Lo se! lose!_ She will speak to one who is like herself, a Mexican!"

She seemed to gather up the child irresistibly, murmuring over her inlanguage Jane could not understand, "Tell me thy name, _pobrecita_!Maria de los Dolores, is it? A name of tears, but blessed. And theycall thee Lola, surely, as the custom is? Come, _querida_! Come withme to my house. It will please thy mother!"

It was not precisely clear to Jane how among them the half-dozenMexican women, who now thronged the wagon and filled it with wailingexclamations, managed to pass the little girl from hand to hand and outinto the air. Seeing, however, that this was accomplished, shedescended into the crowd of villagers now assembled outside. There wasa strange, dumb pain in her breast as she saw the little, green-trickedhead disappear in the press about the doctor's buggy. She was sensibleof wishing to carry the child home to her own dwelling; and there wasin her a kind of jealous pang that Señora Vigil should so easily haveaccomplished a task of which she herself had made a distinct failure. 

"If I'd only known how to call the poor little soul a lot of coaxingnames!" deplored Jane, "Then maybe she'd have come with me. She'd havebeen better off sleeping on my good feather bed than what she will onthose ragged Mexican mats over to Vigil's. " Then, observing that twoburros and several goats, taking advantage of the open gate, were nowgorging themselves on her alfalfa, she proceeded to make a stern end oftheir delight. 

Early in the morning of the stranger's burial, Mexicans from up thecañon and down the creek arrived in town in ramshackle wagons, attendedby dogs and colts. She who lay dead had been of their race. It was meetthat she should not go unfriended to the _Campo Santo_. Besides, theweather was fine, and it is good to see one's kinsfolk andacquaintances now and then. The church, too, would be open, althoughthe _padre_, who lived in another town, might not be there. Young andold, they crowded the narrow aisles, even up to the altar space, wherea row of tapers burned in the solemn gloom. Little children werethere, also, hushed with awe. And many a sad-faced Mexican motherpressed her baby closer to her heart that day, taking note of thelittle girl in the front pew, sitting so silent and stolid beside herweeping father. 

Jane Combs was in the back of the church. In their black _rebozos_, thepoorest class of poor Mexican women were clad with more fitness thanshe. For Jane, weighted with the gravity of the occasion, had donned anaustere black bonnet such as aged ladies wear, and its effect upon hershort locks was incongruous in the extreme. No one, however, thought ofher as being more queer than usual; for her sunburned cheeks were wetwith tears, and her eyes were deep with tenderness and pity as theyfixed themselves upon the small, rigid figure in the shadows of thealtar's dark burden. 

Upon the following day, as Miss Combs opened her ditch-gate for thetide of mine water which came in a flume across the arroyo, she sawthe doctor and Mr. Keene approaching. They had an absorbed air, and asshe opened the door for them the doctor said, "Miss Combs, we want youto agree to a plan of ours, if you can. "

Keene tilted his chair restlessly. He looked as if life was regainingits poise with him, and his voice seemed quite cheerful as he said, "Well, it's about my little girl! I'm bound for a mountain-camp, andit's no place for a motherless child. Lola's a kind of queer littlesoul, too! My wife made a great deal of her. She was from old Mexico, ma'am. She was a _mestizo_--not pure Indian, you know, but partSpanish. Her folks were _rancheros_, near Pachuca, where I worked inthe mines. I'm from Texas, myself. They weren't like these peons abouthere--they were good people. They never wanted Margarita to marry me. "He laughed a little. "But she did, and the old folks never let up onher. They're both dead now. We've lived hither and yon around NewMexico these ten years past, and I aint been very successful; thoughthings will be different now that I've decided to pull out for the goldregions!"

Keene paused with an air of growing good cheer. He seemed to forget hispoint. Whereupon the doctor said simply: "In view of these things, Mr. Keene would like to make some arrangement for leaving his daughter hereuntil he can look round. "

"And we thought of your taking her, ma'am, " broke in Keene, withrenewed anxiety. "Lola's delicate and high-strung, and I don't know howto manage her like my wife did. It'll hamper me terrible to take heralong. Of course she's bright, " he interpolated, hastily. "She wasalways picking up things everywhere, and speaks two languages well. Andshe'd be company for you, ma'am, living alone like you do. And I'd payany board you thought right. "

[Illustration: "'I WILL NOT GO WITH YOU!'"]

Jane's pulses had leaped at his suggestion. She was aware of making aresolute effort as she said, "Wouldn't Lola be happier with theVigils?"

"Her mother wouldn't rest in her grave, " cried Keene, "if she knew thechild was being brought up amongst a tribe of peons! And me--I want mychild to grow up an American citizen, ma'am!"

"Take the little girl, Miss Combs, " advised the doctor. "It'll be goodfor you to have her here. "

"I've got to think if it'll be good for her, " said Jane. 

"If that's all!" chorused the two men. They rose. The thing wassettled. "I'll go and tell the Vigil tribe, " said Keene, "and sendLola's things over here right off. " With a wave of the hand and arelieved look, he went down the road. 

That night a boy brought to Jane's door a queer little collapsibletrunk of sun-cured hide, thonged fast with leather loops. The Navajoblanket was outside. Jane surmised that Mr. Keene had sent it becausehe dreaded its saddening associations. A message from him conveyed theinformation that he expected to leave town early the next morning, andthat Lola would be sent over from the Vigils. 

All during the afternoon Jane waited with breathless expectancy. Theafternoon waned, but Lola did not come. Finally, possessed of fear andforeboding, Jane set forth to inquire into the matter. 

Upon opening the Vigil gate, she saw Lola herself sitting on thedoorstep, looking over toward the little wood crosses of the Mexicanburying-ground. The girl hardly noted Jane's approach, but behind her, Señora Vigil came forward, shaking her head at Jane and touching herlip significantly. 

"She does not know, " whispered the señora. "Her papa did not saygood-by. He said it was better for him to 'slip away. ' And me--I couldnot tell her! I am only a woman. "

"You think--she will not want--to live with me?"

The other's face grew very bland. "She said to-day 'how ugly' was yourhouse, " confessed Señora Vigil. "And when you was feeding your chickensshe cried out, '_Hola_, what a queer woman is yonder!' Children havefunny things in their heads. But it is for you to tell her you come tofetch her away!" And the señora called out, "_Lolita, ven aca!_"

The girl looked up startled. "_Que hay?_" she asked, coming toward themapprehensively. 

"Lola, " began Jane, "your papa wants you should stay with me for awhile. He--he saw how lonesome I was, " she continued, unwisely, "and--and so he decided to leave you here. Lola, I hope--I--" She couldnot go on for the strangeness in Lola's gaze. 

"Is he _gone_--my father? But no! he would not leave me behind! No! no!_Dejeme! dejeme!_ you do not say the truth! You shall not touch me! Iwill not--will not go with you!" She turned wildly, dizzily, as ifabout to run she knew not where; and then flung herself down beforeSeñora Vigil, clasping the Mexican woman's knees in a frantic, faintinggrasp. 

A SACRED CHARGE

CHAPTER TWO

A SACRED CHARGE

Jane helplessly regarded the child's despair, while Señora Vigilmaintained an attitude curiously significant of deep compassion and aprofound intention of neutrality. With the sound of Lola's distraughtrefusals in her ear, Jane felt upon her merely the instinct of flight. She rallied her powers of speech and set her hand on the gate, sayingsimply, "I'm going. She better stay here. "

But at this the señora's face, which had exhibited a kind of wofulpleasure in the excitement of the occasion, took on an anxious frown. 

"And the board-money?" she exclaimed, with instant eagerness. 

"I guess it'll be all right. Mr. Keene said he'd send it every month. "

The señora's eyes narrowed. "He said so! Ay, but who can say he shallremember? There are eight chickens to eat of our meal already. No, MeesCombs! The _muchacha_ was left to you. It is a charge very sacred. AveMaria! yes!"

Jane had closed the gate. "I can't force her, " she repeated. 

Señora Vigil, watching her go, fell a prey to lively dissatisfaction. "_Santo cielo!_" she thought. "What will my Pablo say to this? I mustrun to the mine for a word with him. It is most serious, thisbusiness!" And casting her apron over the whip-cord braids of hercoarse hair, she started hastily down toward the bridge. 

Lola, crouching on the ground, watched her go. It was very quiet in thegrassless yard. The Vigil children were playing in the _arroyo_ bed. Their voices came with a stifled sound. There was nothing else to hearsave the far-off moaning of a wild dove somewhere up Gonzales cañon. The echo was like a soft, sad voice. It sounded like the mournful cryof one who, looking out of heaven, saw her hapless little daughterbereaved and abandoned, and was moved, even among the blessed, to asobbing utterance. 

Lola sat up to listen. Her father had spoken of going through thatcañon from which the low call came. Even now he was traveling throughthe green hills, regretting that he had left his child behind him atthe instance of a strange woman! Even now he was doubtless deploringthat he should have been moved to consider another's loneliness beforehis own. 

"Wicked woman, " thought the girl, angrily, "to ask him to leave mehere--my poor papa!" She sprang to her feet, filled with an impetuousidea. She might follow her father!

There was the road, and no one by to hinder her. Even the hideouswooden house of the short-haired woman looked deserted. Lola, with anIndian's stealth of tread, crossed the bridge, and walked withoutsuspicious haste up the empty street. 

At the mouth of the cañon, taking heart of the utter wilderness allabout, she began to run. Before her the great Spanish Peaks heavedtheir blue pyramids against the desert sky. Shadows were falling overthe rough, winding road, and as she rushed on and on, many a gully andstone and tree-root took her foot unaware in the growing gray oftwilight. Presently a star came out, a strange-faced star. Othersfollowed in an unfamiliar throng, which watched her curiously when, breathless and exhausted, she dropped down beside a little spring todrink. The water refreshed her. She lay back on the cattle-tramped hillto rest. 

Dawn was rosy in the east when she awoke, dazed to find herself alonein a deep gorge. Her mission recurred to her, and again she took theclimbing road. Now, however, the way was hard, for it rose ever beforeher, and her feet were swollen. 

As the day advanced it grew sultry, with a menace of clouds to thewest. After a time the great peaks were lost in dark clouds, anddistant thunder boomed. A lance of lightning rent the nearer sky, andflashed its vivid whiteness into the gorge. This had narrowed so thatbetween the steep hills there was only room for the arroyo and thelittle roadway beside it. Before the rain began to fall on Lola's barehead, as it did shortly in sheets, the stream-bed had become a ragingtorrent, down which froth and spume and uprooted saplings werespinning. 

In an instant the cañon was a wild tumult of thunder and roaring water, and Lola, barely keeping her feet, had laid hold of a piñon on thelower slope and was burying her head in the spiked branches. Wind andrain buffeted the child. The ground began to slip and slide with thefurious downpour, but she held fast, possessed of a great fear of thetorrent sweeping down below her. 

As she listened to the crashing of the swollen tide, another noiseseemed to mingle with the sound of the mountain waters--a sound ofbellowing and trampling, as of a stampeded herd. A sudden horror ofgreat rolling eyes and rending horns and crazy hoofs hurtled throughthe girl's dizzy brain. Her hands loosened. She began to slip down. 

The rain had slackened when Bev Gribble, looking from his herder's hutup on the _mesa_, saw that his "bunch" of cattle had disappeared. Certain tracks on the left of the upland pasture exhibited traces of ahasty departure. That there had been a cloudburst over toward the Peakshe was as yet ignorant; nor did he discover this until he had caughthis cow-pony and descended into the ravine. 

The sun was shining now, and the arroyo was nothing more than a placid, though muddy stream. Its gleaming sides, however, spoke lucidly toBev's intelligence, and he set the pony at a smarter pace in the marshyroad. 

"_Sus! Sus!_" said Bev to his pony, who knew Spanish best, being abronco from the south. But Coco did not respond. Instead, he came backsuddenly on his haunches, as if the rope on the cow-puncher's saddlehad lurched to the leap of a steer. 

Coco knew well the precise instant when it is advisable for a cow-ponyto forestall the wrench of the lasso. But now the loop of hemp hunglimp on the saddle-horn, and Gribble, surprised at being nearly thrown, rose in the stirrups to see what was underfoot. 

A drenched thing it was which huddled at the roadside; very limp, indeed, and laxly lending itself to the motions of Gribble's hands ashe lifted and shook it. 

"Seems to be alive!" muttered the cow-puncher. "Where could she havedropped from? Aha! here's a broken arm! I better take her right to townto the doctor. Hi there, Coco!" He laid Lola over the saddle andmounted behind his dripping burden. 

When the coal-camp came in sight on the green skirt of the plains, withthe Apishapa scrolling the distance in a velvet ribbon, sunset wasalready forward, and the smoke of many an evening fire veined the latesky. 

A man coming toward the cañon stopped at sight of Gribble. He was thestore clerk going home to supper. He shouted, "Hullo, Bev! Why, whathave you struck? Bless me, it's the little girl they're all hunting!She belongs to Miss Combs, it seems. Her mother died here the otherday. Found her up the cañon, eh? They been all ranging north, thinkingshe'd taken after her pa. Maybe she thought he'd headed for La Vetapass? Looks sure 'nough bad, don't she?"

Jane, when she heard the pony cross the bridge, ran to the door, as shehad run so many times during the long, anxious day. She took the girlfrom Gribble without a word, and bore her into the house from which shehad fled with so much loathing. 

"Don't look so scared!" said Gribble, kindly. "It's only a broken boneor so. " As this consoling assurance seemed not to lessen Jane's alarm, he went on cheerfully to say, "There isn't one in my body hasn't beensplintered by these broncos! Tinker 'em up and they're better than new. Here's doc coming lickety-switch! He'll tell you the same. "

But the doctor was less encouraging. "It isn't merely a question ofbones, " he said, observing his patient finally in her splints andbandages. "It's the nervous strain she's lately undergone. She's beenovertaxed with so much excitement and sorrow. If she pulls through, it'll be the nursing. "

Jane drew a deep breath. "She won't die if nursing can save her!" saidshe. Her face shone with grave sacrificial tenderness, in the light ofwhich the shortcomings of her uncouth dress and looks were for oncewithout significance. 

"She's a good woman, " said the doctor, as he rode away, "though shewears her womanhood so ungraciously--as a rough husk rather than aflower. All the same, she's laying up misery for herself in herdevotion to this fractious child; I wish I'd had no hand in it!"

Jane early came to feel what burs were in the wind for her. Lola soonreturned to the world, staring wonderingly about; but even in the firstmoment she winced and turned her face away from Jane's eager gaze. Asthe girl shrank back into the pillows, Jane's lips quivered. 

"Goose that I am!" she thought. "Of course my looks are strange to her!It'd be funny if she took to me right off. I aint good-looking. And herma was real handsome!" For once in her life Jane sighed a little overher own plainness. "Children love their mothers even when they're plumbhomely!" she encouraged herself. "Maybe Lola'll like me, in spite of mynot being well-favored, when she finds how much I think of her. "

As time passed, and Lola, with her arm in a sling, began to sit up andto creep about, there was little in her manner to show the wisdom ofJane's cheerful forecast. The girl was still and reserved, as if someancient Aztec strain predominated in her over all others. She watchedthe Vigils playing, the kids gamboling, the magpies squabbling; butnever a lighter look stirred the chill calm of her little, russet-toned features, or the sombre depths of her dark, long eyes. 

Jane watched her in despair. "I'm afraid you aint very well contented, Lola, " she said, one day. "Is there anything any one can do?" Lola wassitting in the August sunshine. A little quiver passed through her. 

"I want to hear from my father, " she said. "Has he--written?" Her voicewas wishful, indeed, and Jane colored. 

"I guess he's been so busy he hasn't got round to it yet, " she said, lightly. 

"I thought he hadn't, " said Lola, quickly. "I--didn't expect it quiteyet. He hates to write. " Her accent was sharp with anxiety as sheadded, "But of course he sends the--board-money for me--he wouldremember that?" Evidently she recalled the Señora Vigil's questions anddoubts on this subject, for there was such intensity of apprehension inher look that Jane felt herself full of pain. 

"Of course he would remember it, my dear!" she said, on the instant;she consoled her conscience by reflecting that there was no untruth inher words. Although Mr. Keene had sent never a word or sign to Aguilar, it was measurably certain that he remembered his obligations. 

"It'd just about kill that child to find out the truth, " thought Jane. "She looks, anyhow, like she hadn't a friend on earth! I'm going to lether think the money comes as regular as clockwork! I d' know but I'mreal glad he don't send it. Makes me feel closer to the little thing, somehow. "

After a while the broken arm was pronounced whole again, and the slingwas taken off. 

"You're all right now, " said the doctor to Lola, "and you must runout-of-doors and get some Colorado tan on your cheeks. _Sabe?_ And eatmore. Get up an appetite. How do you say that in Spanish? _Tener buendiente_, eh? All right. See you do it. "

Lola stood at his knee, solemn and mute. She took his jests with an airof formal courtesy, barely smiling. She had a queer littlehalf-civilized look in the neat pigtails which Jane consideredappropriate to her age, and which were so tightly braided as fairly todraw up the girl's eyebrows. The emerald _fajas_ had been laid by. Togarland that viny strip in Lola's locks was beyond Jane's power. 

"What a little icicle it is!" mused the doctor. "If I had taken a thornfrom a dog's foot the creature would have been more grateful!"

Even as he was thinking this, he felt a sudden pressure upon his hand. Lola had seized it and was kissing the big fingers passionately, whileshe cried, "_Gracias! mil gracias, señor!_ You have made me well! Whenmy papa comes he will bless you! He will pour gold over you from headto foot!"

"That's all right, Lola, " laughed the doctor. "He'll have to thank MissJane more than me. She pulled you through. Have you thanked _her_ yet, Lola?"

Lola's face stiffened. "But for her I should not have been tramped bythe cattle--I should have been safe in my father's wagon!" she thought. "I--have not, but I will--soon, " she said. "And your housekeeper, too, for the ice-cream, and other things. "

Jane, in succeeding days, took high comfort in the fact that Lolaseemed to like being out-of-doors, and apparently amused herself theremuch after the fashion of ordinary children. She had establishedherself over by the ditch, and Jane could see her fetching water in acan and mixing it with a queer kind of adobe which she got half-way upthe hill. That Lola should be engaged with mud _casas_ was, indeed, hardly in accord with Jane's experience of the girl's dignity; but thatshe should be playing ever so foolishly in a slush of clay delightedJane as being a healthful symptom. 

"What you making down yonder, honey?" she ventured to ask. 

"I am making nothing; I am finished, " said Lola. "To-morrow you shallsee my work. " Jane felt taken aback. It had been work, then; not simpleplay. She awaited what should follow with curious interest. 

Upon the next morning Lola ran off through the alfalfa ratherexcitedly. After a little she reappeared, walking slowly, with an airof importance. She carried something carefully before her, holding itabove the reach of the alfalfa's snatching green fingers. 

It was a square pedestal of adobe, sun-baked hard as stone, upon whichsat a queer adobe creature, with a lean body and a great bulbous head. This personage showed the presence in his anatomy of an element offinely chopped straw. His slits of eyes were turned prayerfullyupward. From his widely open mouth hung a thirsty mud tongue, andbetween his knobby knees he held an empty bowl, toward the filling ofwhich his whole expression seemed an invocation. 

"He is for you, " said Lola, beaming artistic gratification. "He is toshow my thanks for your caring for me in my broken-bonedness. He isTesuque, the rain-god. You can let your ditches fill with weeds, if youlike. You won't need to irrigate your _vega_ any more. Tesuque willmake showers come. "

Jane trembled with surprised pleasure. The powers ascribed to Tesuquewere hardly accountable for the gratification with which she receivedhim. 

"I'll value him as long as I live!" she exclaimed. "He--he's realhandsome!"

"Not handsome, " corrected Lola, with a tone of modest pride, "but_good_! He makes the rain come. In Taos are many Tesuques. "

"I reckon it must rain considerable there, " surmised Jane, notunnaturally. 

Lola shook her head. "No. It's pretty dry--but it wouldn't rain at all, you see, if it wasn't for Tesuque!"

This logic was irresistible. Jane dwelt smilingly upon it as she setthe rain-god on the mantel, with a crockery bowl of yellow daisies tomaintain his state. Afterward, a dark, adder-like compunction glidedthrough the flowery expanse of her joy in Tesuque, as she wondered ifthere was not something heathenish in his lordly enshrinement upon aChristian mantelpiece. 

"Maybe he's an idol!" thought Jane. "Lola, " she asked, perturbed, "youdon't _pray_ to Tersookey, do you?" Lola looked horrified. 

"Me? _Maria Santissima!_ I am of the Church! Tesuque is not to pray to. I hope you have not been making your worship to him. It is like this, señora: You plant the seed and the leaf comes; you set out Tesuque andrain falls. It is quite simple. "

[Illustration: "'HE IS TESUQUE, THE RAIN-GOD. '"]

Jane rested in this easy and convincing philosophy. She saw the joke ofLola's advice to her not to misplace her devotions, and one day sherepeated the story to the doctor, showing him the rain-god. 

"Do you know, " said the doctor, handling Tesuque, "that this thing issurprisingly well-modeled? The Mexicans can do anything with adobe, butthis has something about it beyond the reach of most of them. "

After this, a pleasanter atmosphere spread in Jane's dwelling. Lolaoften unbent to talk. Sometimes she sewed a little on the frocks andaprons, preparing for her school career. Oftener she worked in herroofless pottery by the ditch, where many a queer jug and vase andbowl, gaudy with ochre and Indian red, came into being and passed earlyto dust again, for want of firing. Jane found these things engrossing. She liked to sit and watch them grow under Lola's fingers, while thepurple alfalfa flowers shed abroad sweet odors, and the ditch-watersang softly at her feet. As she sat thus one afternoon, Alejandro Vigilcame running across the field, waving a letter. 

"'Tis for you, Lolita!" he cried. "My father read the marks. It is fromCripple Creek!"

"Oh, give me! give me!" cried Lola, flinging down a mud dish. 

Jane had taken the letter. "It's for me, dear, " she said, beginning toopen it. "I'll read it aloud--" She paused. Her face had a gray color. 

Lola held out her hands in a passion of joy and eagerness. "What doeshe say? Oh, hurry! Oh, let me have it!"

Jane suddenly crushed the letter, and her eyes were stern as shewithdrew it resolutely from Lola's reaching fingers. 

"No, Lola, no!" she said, in a sharp tone. "I--can't let you have thisletter! I can't! I can't!"

A TRUE BENEFACTRESS

CHAPTER THREE

A TRUE BENEFACTRESS

Lola's breath was suspended in amazement. Indignation flashed from hereyes. She dropped her hands and Jane saw the fingers clench. 

"It is my father's letter--and you keep it from me? You are cruel!"said Lola, passionately. 

Jane's eyes, set on the ground, seemed to see there, in fiery type, thewords of the paper in her grasp. Those scrawling lines, roaming fromblot to blot across the soiled sheet, had communicated to Jane no painof a personal sort. So far, indeed, as their trend took her on thescore of feeling, she might even have found something satisfying in Mr. Keene's news, since this was merely a statement of his financialdisability. All along Jane had been dreading the hour when, instead ofthis frank disclosure of "hard luck, " there should come to her a parcelof money. Not to have any money to send might conjecturally bedistressing to Mr. Keene; but Jane felt that he would be able to endurehis embarrassment better than she herself any question of barterrespecting Lola. 

The very thought of being paid for what she had so freely given hurtJane. Without realizing its coldness and emptiness, her life had beentruly void of human warmth before the little, lonely girl stole in tofill it with her piteous, proud presence. A happier child, with morechildish ways, might not so fully have compassed Jane's awakening; forthis had been in proportion to the needs of the one who so forlornlymade plea for entrance. Having once thrown wide the door of her heart, Jane had begun to understand the blessedness that lies in generosity. Lola might never care for her, indeed; but to Lola she owed the impulseof loving self-bestowal, which is as shining sunlight in the bosom. 

Mr. Keene wrote that the claim he had been working had provedvalueless. He expected better luck next time; but just now he could notdo as he had intended for Lola; and in view of his unsettledcircumstances he thought it might be well if Miss Combs could place thegirl in some family where her services would be acceptable. 

"Life, " he wrote, was at best "a rough proposition, " and it woulddoubtless be good for Lola, who had sundry faults of temper, to learnthis fact early. For the present she would have to give up all idea ofgoing to school. Mr. Keene would be sorry if the prospect displeasedhis daughter, but people couldn't have everything their own way in thisworld. 

Such words as these Jane instinctively knew would fall crushingly uponLola, and leave her in a sorry plight of abject, hardening thought. Therefore, steeling herself to bear the girl's misinterpretation, shesaid, "Lola, your father wouldn't want you to see this letter. It's onbusiness. "

"Does he say I'm not to see it?" asked Lola. 

Jane's brows twisted painfully. "No, " she said, "but--"

Lola turned away. Every line of her figure was eloquent of grievance. She walked off without a glance to apprise her of the anguish in Jane'sface. Slowly Jane went toward the house; whereupon Alejandro Vigil, whohad continued an interested spectator, followed Lola to the ditch. 

"If thou hadst wept, she would have given thee the letter, " hesuggested. "My mother, she always gives up to us when we weep loudly. Astill baby gets no milk, " said Alejandro, wisely, as he hugged hisbare knees. 

"I am no baby!" retorted Lola. Nevertheless her voice was husky, andAlejandro watched her anxiously. 

"It's no good to cry now, " he advised her. "She's gone into the house. "

"_Tonto!_ Do you think I want her to see me?" wept Lola. "She is hardand cruel. O my father!"

"Come over and tell my mother about it!" urged the boy, troubled. "Youare Mexican like us, no? Your mother was Mexican? Come! My mother willsay what is best to do. "

Lola listened. She let herself be dragged up. An adviser might speaksome word of wisdom. "Come, then, " she agreed. 

But Señora Vigil, on hearing the story, only groaned and sighed. 

"These Americans have the heart of ice!" she said. "Doubtless there wasmoney in the letter and she did not want you to know. Serafita, leavethy sister alone, or I will beat thee! It will be best, Lolita, to saylittle. A close mouth catches no flies. "

"I may not stay here with you?" asked Lola. 

"Alas, no, little pigeon!" mourned the señora. "In the cage where thyfather has put thee thou must stay! But come and tell me everything. This shall be thy house when thou art in trouble!" and thus definingthe limits of her hospitality, she made a gesture toward the mud wallson which strings of goat meat were drying in a sanguinary fringe. 

Autumn fell bright on the foot-hills. The plains blazed with yellowflowers which seemed to run in streams of molten gold from every cañon, and linger in great pools on the flats and line all the ditches. Ricksof green and silver rose all along the Apishapa. Alfalfa was purple tothe last crop, and an air of affluence pervaded everything. 

The town was thronged with ranchers, coming in to trade; the mine hadstarted up for the winter. Men who had prospected for precious metalsall summer in the mountains now bundled their pots and pans andblankets back to shelter for the winter; the long-eared burros, lost ingreat rolls of bedding, stood about the tipple awaiting the result oftheir masters' interviews with the mine boss, concerning work and theoccupancy of any "shack" that might still be empty. 

Now, too, the bell of the red-brick school clamored loudly of mornings;and dark, taciturn Mexican children, and paler, noisier children fromthe mining end of town, bubbled out of every door. Seven Vigils obeyedthe daily summons, clad, boy and girl, in cotton stuff of precisely thehue of their skin. Bobbing through the gate, one after another, theywere like a family of little dun-colored prairie-dogs, of a hue withtheir adobe dwelling, shy and brown and bright-eyed. 

Among them Lola had an effect of tropical brilliancy, by reason of thered frock with which Jane had provided her. There were red ribbons alsoin Lola's braided hair; and the girl, although still aware of bitterwrongs, was sensible of being pleased with her raiment. More than onceon her way to school that first day she looked at the breadths of herscarlet cashmere with a gratified eye; and catching her at this, AnaVigil had sighed disapprovingly, saying, "It is too good for everyday--that dress. "

"It isn't too good for me!" flashed back Lola. "My father can do whathe likes!"

"True, " said Ana, "since he has a gold-mine. But even if I were rich, Ishould fear that the saints might punish me for wearing to school mybest clothes. I would wish to win their good-will by wearing nofinery, " said Ana, piously. She was a plump girl, with eyes likesplinters of coal in her suave brown face; despite the extremesoftness of her voice, these glittering splinters rested with no gentleray on Lola. 

Indeed, Jane's pride in having her charge well-dressed operated largelyagainst the girl's popularity with others of her mates than Ana. Primarily Lola's air of hauteur provoked resentment; but hauteur inpoor attire would have been only amusing, while in red cashmere it wasfelt to be a serious matter, entailing upon every one the sense of apersonal affront. Lola's quickness of retort was also against her. Theswift flash of her eye, the sudden quiver of her lip, affordedcontinual gratification to such as had it in mind to effect herdiscomposure. 

"They do not love you too well, Lolita, " said Ana Vigil, sadly. "Theysay you have a sharp tongue. They say you are too well pleased withyourself. Me, I tell you what I hear because I am your friend. "

"So long a tongue as yours, Ana, weaves a short web!" growledAlejandro, with a masculine distrust of his sister's friendlyassumptions. 

"Lola knows if I speak truth, " returned Ana, tranquilly. 

Lola maintained an impassive front, but she was hurt. The little tricksand taunts of her schoolfellows tormented her deeply. She had latelyrelapsed into the stolid indifference native to her blood, and this washer best shield, had she only known it, although it, too, for a timeleft her open to attack. For when she encased herself in cold silence, and stalked home with lifted head and unseeing eyes, often a littlethrong of Mexican children would walk behind her, imitating her statelygait and calling mockingly, "_Ea! ea!_ See the _madamisela_! See theprincess! She is sister to the king--that one! _Vah! vah! vah!_"

And mingling their voices they would sing, "_Infanta! Infanta Lolita!_"until Lola, stung to rage, turned upon them wildly; whereat theirdelighted cries served to send her flying homeward. 

"I guess not even Squire Baca's girls nor Edith May Jonas had betterthings than you, " said Jane, unaware of all this. Her own garmentsremained things of the baldest utility, but the village seamstress waskept busy feather-stitching and beribboning articles for Lola's wear. 

In these things Jane developed a most prodigal pride, freely expendingupon them the little patrimony which had been put in the Trinidad bankagainst her old age. Her usual good judgment quite failed her; and shewho, patternless and guideless, slashed brown denim fearlessly intouncouth vestures for herself, now had a pulse of trepidation at layingthe tissue-paper model of some childish garment for Lola upon a lengthof dainty wool. 

"Maybe, " said Lola, "the others would like me better if my fatherdidn't get me so many things. "

Jane's eyes shone with a fierce light. 

"Don't they like you?" she demanded, harshly. 

"Didn't you hear them calling 'infanta' after me just now?"

"Infanta--is it anything _bad_?" Jane's voice was so wroth that Lolalaughed. 

"It means princess. "

"Oh!" said Jane, mollified. "If it'd been anything _else_, I'd havegone straight down to see the marshal!" Lola flushed a little. Shethought, "How kind she is! If I could only forget--about that letter!"

The dislike of the Mexican children abated with time. They even came toadmire Lola's quickness. She went above them in class--yes! but alsoshe went above the Americans! The little Mexicans, aware of a certainmental apathy, had not enviously regarded the exploits of the "smart"Americans. If these others "went up, " what did it matter? All onecould do if one were Mexican was to accept defeat with dignity, andreflect upon the fact that things would be different if Spanish and notEnglish were the language of the school. 

When Lola, however, one of themselves by reason of her color and herfluency in their idiom, displayed an ability to master thoseremorseless obscurities of spelling and arithmetic which had seemedsufficient to dethrone reason in any but a Saxon mind, then the peonchildren began to find some personal satisfaction in her achievements. 

Whenever Lola went above Jimmy Adkins, the mine boss's boy, and EdithMay Jonas, the liveryman's only daughter, every Mexican face recorded aslow smile of triumph. "_'Sta 'ueno!_" they would whisper, watchingEdith May, who upon such occasions was wont to enliven things bybursting into tears, and who commonly brought upon the following day anote from her mother, stating that Edith May must be excused formissing in spelling because she had not been at all well and hadmisunderstood the word. 

The next two years also mitigated much of the constraint which hadmarked Miss Combs's relations with Lola. After the episode of theletter, Lola never asked news of her father. Insensibly she came tounderstand that if he wrote at all he wrote seldom, and solely upon thematter of her expenses. And naturally she ceased clinging warmly to thethought of his love for her. His silence and absence were not spurs toaffection, although she dwelt gratefully upon the fact that he shouldlavish so much upon her. 

Jane's money was lessening, but none of Lola's wishes had as yet beenbaffled. The girl had a sort of barbaric love of brightness andsoftness; and one day, as she looked over some fabrics for which Jane, spurred by the approach of the vacation and the fact that Lola was tohave a part in the closing exercises of school, had sent to Denver, thegirl said suddenly, "How good my father is to me, _tia_!"

Long before, she had asked Jane what she should call her, and Jane hadsaid, "Maybe you better call me aunt. "

"I will do it in Mexican, then, " said Lola. "It sounds more ripe. " Shemeant mellow, no doubt. Now, as she fingered the pretty muslin, sheseemed to gather resolution to speak of something which had itsdifficulties. "_Tia_, " she pursued, "he is well off--my father?"

Jane's voice had rather a feigned lightness as she replied, "You haveeverything you want, don't you?" No one but herself knew that for sometime she had been paying Mr. Keene a monthly stipend. He had writtenthat Lola ought not any longer to be giving her services just forboard. So great a girl must be very handy about a house; and as luckstill evaded him, he confessed that Lola's earnings would considerably"help him out. "

Jane had not combated his views. Many Mexican children younger thanLola earned a little tending the herds and helping about the fields. They were usually boys; but Jane did not dwell on this point. She hadnever clearly realized, on her own part, those distinctions in laborwhich appertain to the sexes; she had herself always done everythingthat had to be done, whether it were cooking or plowing. If she had anychoice, it was for pursuits of the field. Therefore, without comment, she had accepted Mr. Keene's theories as just, and began to pay himwhat he said would be "about right. "

"Because, " said Lola, "I want you to ask him something when you write. I am over fourteen now. There isn't much more for me to learn in thisschool. Señor Juarez and Miss Belton both tell me I ought to go toPueblo. Edith May Jonas is going. I should like to study manythings--drawing, for instance. They say I ought to study that. Mymother always said she hoped I would have a chance to learn. And myfather used to say, 'Oh, yes!' that he would soon have money foreverything. And now he has! Will you ask him?"

Jane was dusting the mantel on which Tesuque still sat open-mouthed, with his bowl. The room had lost its former barren aspect. There wasnow a carpet, while muslin shades softened the glare of the Coloradosun and the view of the sterile hills. Geraniums bloomed on thewindow-sills, and some young cottonwoods grew greenly at the door. Thescarlet Navajo blanket, which had been Lola's inheritance from theprairie-schooner, was spread across a couch, and gave a final note ofwarmth and comfort to the low room, now plastered in adobe from ceilingto floor. Everything that had been done was for Lola's sake, who lovedwarmth and color, as do all Southrons. 

Tesuque alone, divinely invariable amid so much change, now seemed towink the eye at Jane's uncertainty. For Jane knew that there was notenough money in the bank to pay for a year's schooling at Pueblo. Sofar she knew, yet she said simply, "I can ask him. "

If Lola wanted to go to Pueblo, she must go. It would be a pity ifEdith May Jonas should have better schooling than Lola, thought Jane. And as she pondered, it came forcibly to her that money need not belacking; she could mortgage her house. She shut her eyes to all futuredifficulties which this must involve, and, upon a certain June day, setresolutely out to see if the doctor were willing to make the loan. 

The doctor, sitting in the little office which he had built in thecorner of his shady yard, scowled over his glasses as he listened. 

"You're making a mistake, " he said, having heard all, "to let Lolabelieve that her father is providing for her. I know you began it allwith a view to charitable ends; but he who does evil that good may comesets his foot in a crooked path, of which none can see the close. "

"I didn't want to see her breaking her heart. "

"I know, but I do not believe it's ever well to compound and treat withwrong. If you'll be advised, you'll tell her the whole truth at once. "

Jane sat bolt upright before him. Her arms were folded across herbutternut waist, and under the man's hat a grim resolution seemed to beembodying itself. 

"She wouldn't go to school at Pueblo if I told her--nor feel like shehad any home--or anything in the world. And I aint going to tell her!"

"Miss Jane, Miss Jane, don't you see you're doing the girl a realinjury in letting her regard you, her true benefactor, merely as theagent of her father's generosity? You have simply sustained andencouraged her worst traits. She wouldn't have been so exacting, soresentful, so easily provoked if she had known all along that she wasonly a poor little pensioner on your bounty. The lesson of humilitywould have gone far with her. No, Miss Jane, it wouldn't have hurt herto be humbled. It won't now!"

"I don't believe it ever does any one any good to be humbled!"maintained Jane, stoutly and with reason. "Especially if it's a poor, frail little soul that aint got no mother! I did what I thought best, though I can't afford it no way in the world! To prune and dress a lieaint going to make it grow into a truth!" She rose. "I guess I'll seeif Henry Jonas'll be willing to take that mortgage!"

"I'm going to do it myself!" roared the doctor. "I don't want Jonas toown all the property in Aguilar!" Generosity and anger swayed himconfusedly; but as he watched Jane trudging down under the Dauntless'stipple he became clear enough to register with himself a vow. "Lola hasgot to know the truth!" he declared. "Maybe it's none of my business, but all the same she's going to know it, and know it now!" And he gotup, grimly resolute. 

WISE IMPULSES

CHAPTER FOUR

WISE IMPULSES

The next day was the last of the school term, and it afforded thedoctor an opportunity for carrying out his resolve. There was a base ofsound reason in his purposed action. It might give the girl pain, indeed, to hear what he felt impelled to tell her; it is not pleasantto have a broken bone set, yet the end is a good one. The doctor feltthat Lola's mind held a smoldering distrust of Jane, which not even theconsciousness of Jane's love could dispel. 

The girl, without directly formulating so strong a case against Jane, obscurely held her accountable for that division from her father whichshe deplored. Doubtless it was affection which had caused Jane to askMr. Keene to leave his child behind. Affection also might havejealously deterred Jane from giving Lola her father's infrequentletters. But affection cannot excuse what is unworthy; and Lola'sthoughts ran vaguely with a distrust which did something to embitterthe wholesome tides of life. 

"I am right to put an end to Miss Combs's unwise benevolence, " thoughtthe doctor, as he tied his horse outside the schoolhouse. 

Throngs of white-frocked girls were chattering about the yard. Rows ofMexican children squatted silent and stolid against the red walls, unmoved by those excitements of closing day which stirred theirAmerican mates to riotous glee. The wives of the miners and townmerchants were arriving in twos and threes. Gaunt Mexican women, holding quiet babies in their looped _rebozos_, stood about, hardlyever speaking. 

Señora Vigil, more lavishly built than the rest of her countrywomenand gayer of port than they, moved from group to group, talkingcheerfully. Jane also awaited the opening of the schoolhouse door, watching the scene with interest and having no conception of herself asan object of note, in her elderly black bonnet and short jean skirt. 

Presently Señor Juarez, the Mexican master, appeared. The bell in theslate dome rang loudly, and the throng filed indoors. There was theusual array of ceremonies appropriate to occasions like this. Smallboys spoke "pieces, " which they forgot, being audibly prompted, whilethe audience experienced untold pangs of sympathy and foreboding. Little beribboned girls exhibited their skill in dialogue, and readessays and filed through some patriotic drill, to which a forest oftiny flags gave splendid emphasis at impressive junctures. 

Then Edith May Jonas, solemn with anxiety and importance, rose tosing. She was a plain, flaxen-haired girl, with a Teutonic cast offeature and a thin voice; but every one, benumbed with speechlessadmiration of her blue silk dress, derived from her performance animpression of surpassing beauty and unbounded talent. 

"_Caramba!_ but she is like a vision!" sighed Señora Vigil in Jane'sear. "Look at Señora Jonas, the mother! Well may she weep tears ofpride! She is a great lady--Señora Jonas. Just now she havecondescended to say to me, ''Ow-de-do?' and me, I bow low. _'A los picsde V. Señora!'_ I say. _Ay Dios!_ if I but had a child with yellowhair, like the Señorita Edith May! _Que chula!_"

"Sh!" breathed Jane. "There's my Lola on the platform!"

Lola had grown tall in the past year. She was fairer than the Mexicans, although not fair in the fashion of Edith May, but with a faint citronhue which, better than pink and white, befitted the extreme darknessof her hair and eyes. She wore a dress of thin white, and around herslender neck was a curious old strand of turquoise beads which had beenfound carefully hidden away in the Mexican trunk. There was an air ofsimple reserve about her which touched the doctor. She was only a childfor all her stately looks, and he began to hate his task. 

Lola read a little address which had been assigned to her as arepresentative of the highest class. She read the farewell lines almostmonotonously, without effect, without inflection, almost coldly. Yet ashe listened, the doctor had an impression of vital warmth underlyingthe restraint of the girl's tone--an impression of feeling that lay farbelow the surface, latent and half-suspected. 

"There is something there to be reckoned with, " he decided. "But what?Is it a noble impulse which will spring to life in rich gratitude whenI tell her my story? Or will a mere hurt, passionate vanity rise tooverwhelm us all in its acrid swell? I shall soon know. "

In the buzz of gaiety and gossip which succeeded the final reading, heapproached Lola and beckoned her away from the crowd. She came runningto him smiling, saying, "Señor!"

"I want to say something to you, my dear. Come here where it's quiet. "The doctor was finding the simplicity and trustfulness of her gaze verytrying. "Lola, " he continued, desperately, "I--you must listen to me. "Just at this point something struck against his arm, and turningirritably, he saw Jane. 

"What's all this?" said she, placidly. "What are you saying to make mylittle girl so wide-eyed? Remember, she has a fierce old guardian--onethat expects every one to 'tend to his own affairs!" Jane spokejestingly, but the doctor knew he was worsted. Jane had been watchinghim. 

"But, _tia_!" interposed Lola, "the doctor was just going to tell mesomething very important!"

"He was maybe going to tell you that you are going to Pueblo next fall!Yes, honey, it's all fixed!" She turned a joyous, defiant face on thedoctor, who cast his hands abroad as if he washed them of the wholeaffair; while Lola, beaming with pleasure, rushed off to tell the newsto Señor Juarez. 

"You'll regret this!" said the doctor, somehow feeling glad of his ownfailure. 

"Well, _she_ won't!" cried Jane, watching Lola's flight with tendereyes. 

"Sometime she is going to find out all this deceit!" he added. 

"I know, " said Jane. "I know. And then she'll quit trusting me forever. But if I'm willing to stand it, nobody else need to worry. " With thistacit rebuke she left him, and thereafter the doctor respected herwishes. 

A month or so after Lola's departure northward, Jane's solicitude wasenlivened by an event of startling importance. She was notified by theDauntless Company that two entries, the fourth and fifth east, hadentered her property, in which she had never suspected the presence ofcoal, and that the owners were prepared to negotiate with her suitableterms for the right of working the vein in question. 

When the matter of royalties was settled and several hundred dollarspaid to Jane's account for coal already taken out, she had a suddenrush of almost tearful joy. Every month would come to her, while thecoal lasted, a determinate sum of money. She regarded the fact in asort of ecstasy, and resolved upon many things. 

First she banished from her house the shadow of the mortgage. Then, glowing with enterprise, she proceeded to extend and embellish herproperty in a way which speedily set the town by the ears, and arousedevery one to dark prophecies as to what must happen when her moneyshould all be gone, and nothing left her but to face poverty in thepalatial five-room dwelling now growing up around the pine homestead ofthe past. 

Lola liked adobe houses; and fortunately Enrique Diaz, the blacksmith, had a fine lot of adobes which he had made before frost, and put undercover against a possible extension of his shop, "to-morrow or some timeafter a while. " These Jane bought, and deftly the chocolate walls arosein her _vega_, crowned finally with a crimson roof, which could be seentwo miles off at Lynn. There was a porch, too, with snow-white pillars, and an open fireplace, all tiled with adobe, in which might blaze firesof piñon wood, full of resin and burning as nothing else can burn savedriftwood, sodden with salt and oil and the mystery of old ocean. 

Then, after a little, there arrived in town a vaulted box, in which thedullest fancy might conjecture a piano. Greatly indeed were headsshaken. If doom were easily invoked, Jane would hardly have lived tounpack the treasure and help to lift it up the porch steps. 

"_Por Dios!_" gasped Ana Vigil. "It must have cost fifty dollars! Andfor what good, señora?"

"Lola's taking music-lessons, " said Jane. "Her and Edith May Jonas islearning a duet. I want she should be able to go right on practising. "

"Ah!" said Ana, innocently. "She will not say your house now is 'ugly, 'will she? And you, señora, shall you get a longer dress and do yourhair up, so she will not say of you like she did, 'How queer'?"

Jane looked at Ana. Surely she could not mean to be ill-tempered--Ana, with a face as broad and placid as a standing pool? No, no, Ana was toosimple to wish to pain any one! Yet as Jane dwelt upon Ana's queries, it came slowly to Jane that certain changes in herself might be well. 

She obeyed this wise, if late, impulse, and when Lola came home in Juneshe had her reward. The girl cried out with surprise as she beheld onthe platform at Lynn that tall figure in a soft gray gown, fashionedwith some pretensions to the mode, but simple and dignified as befittedJane's stature and look. There was a bonnet to match, too elderly forJane's years, and of a Quakerish form. But this was less the cause forthe general difference in Jane's aspect than the fact that her brownhair, parted smoothly on the broad, benignant brow, now had its endstucked up in a neat knot. 

"_Tia! tia!_" exclaimed Lola, herself glowing like a prairie-rose, asshe dashed out of the train. "What have you done? You are good to lookat! Your hair--oh, _asombro!_"

But when the white burros of the mail wagon, wildly skimming theplains, brought them in sight of the new house, Lola's joy turned whiteon her cheeks, and she clutched Jane's arm. 

"_Tia_--our house! It is gone--gone!"

Then was Jane's time to laugh with sheer happiness, to throw open gateand door and usher her guest into the old room where Tesuque sat andthe Navajo blanket still covered the couch as of yore, and nothing wasaltered except that now other rooms opened brightly on all sides, andin one a piano displayed its white teeth in beaming welcome. 

Lola's blank face, whereon every moment printed a new delight, was toJane a sight hardly to be matched. The satisfaction grew also withtime, as the piano awoke to such strains as Lola had mastered, andpeople strolled up from the village ways to listen, and, to Jane's deepgratification, to praise the musician. The Mexicans came in throngs, filling the air with a chorus of "_Caspitas!_" and "_Carambas!_" Noneof them called Lola "_Infanta_" nowadays unless it were in a spirit offriendly pleasantry; and she herself had lost much of the air which hadbrought this contemptuous honor upon her childish head. 

"She is Mexican--yes!" they nodded to one another, deriving much simplesatisfaction from the circumstance. For was it not provocative ofracial pride that one of their compatriots should be able to maketunes--actual tunes!--issue from those keys which responded to theirown tentative touches merely with thin shrieks or a dull, rumblingnote?

"Lolita is like she was, " remarked Alejandro Vigil to his sister on themorning of the Fourth of July, as they wandered around the commonbeyond the _arroyo_. 

This space of desert had an air of festive import, for unwontedcelebrations of the day were forward. A pavilion roofed with greenboughs had been built for the occasion, on the skirts of an oval coursewhich was to be the ground of sundry feats of cowboy horsemanship, andof a foot-race between Piedro Cordova and the celebrated ValentinoCortés. There would be music, also, before long. Already the sound of aviolin in process of tuning rang cheerfully through the open. TheDeclaration of Independence was to be read by the lawyer, who might beseen in the pavilion wiping his brow in anticipation of this excitingduty. A tribe of little girls, who were to sing national airs, wereeven now climbing into the muslin-draped seats of the lumber-wagonallotted them. 

It was to be a great day for Aguilar! People from Santa Clara andHastings and Gulnare were arriving in all manner of equipages. Mexicanvehicles made a solid stockade along the west of the track. In theupper benches of the pavilion were ranged the flower and chivalry ofthe town--the families of the mine boss, the liveryman, the lawyer, theschoolmaster and several visiting personages. Jane, in her gray gown, was among them; beside her sat Lola, with Edith May Jonas. 

"And did you think going away to school would make her different?"inquired Ana of her brother. "What should it do to her, 'Andro? Makeher white like Miss Jonas? _Vaya!_ Lola is only a Mexican!"

"She is not ashamed to be one, either!" cried Alejandro, acceptingAna's tacit imputation of some inferiority in their race. "And she iswhite enough, " he added, regarding Lola as she sat smiling and talking, with the boughy eaves making little shadows across the rim of herbroad straw hat. 

"Who said she was ashamed?" asked Ana, with suspicious suavity. "Youhear words that have not been spoken. I tell you of your faults, _hermano mio_, because I love you!"

Alejandro turned off in a sulk, and, leaving Ana to her own resources, went toward the place where the ponies and burros were tethered. It wascomparatively lonely here, and Alejandro began to make friends with adisconsolate burro who was bewailing his fate in a series of lamentablesounds. 

"Ha, _bribon!_" he said, pinching the burro's ears. "What is the use ofwasting breath? _Sus, sus, amigo!_" The burro began to buck andAlejandro stepped back. As he did so he saw approaching him from behindthe wagons a man in tattered garments, with a hat dragged over hiseyes, and a great mass of furzy yellow beard. 

"Here, you!" said this person. "Oh, you're Mexican! _Ya lo veo_--"

[Illustration: "'I HOPED YOU'D BE ABLE TO LEND ME A HAND. '"]

"Me, I spik English all ri'!" retorted Alejandro, with dignity. "SpikEnglish if you want. I it onnerstan'. "

"I see. Well, look here!" He withdrew a folded paper from his pocket. "I want you to take this note over to that lady in the gray dress inthe pavilion. _Sabe_ 'pavilion'? All right! Don't let any one else seeit. Just hand it to her quietly and tell her the gentleman's waiting. "

Alejandro took the note reluctantly. Why should he put himself at thebehest of this _vagabundo_ who impeached his English? The man, however, had an eye on him. It was an eye which Alejandro felt to be impelling. He decided to take the note to the lady in gray. 

Jane, as Alejandro smuggled the paper into her hand, caught a glimpseof the writing and felt her heart sink. Lola and Edith May Jonas werewhispering together. They had not noticed Alejandro. 

"The man is waiting, " said the boy, in her ear. 

Jane touched Lola. "Keep my seat, dear, " she said. "Some one wants tospeak to me. " And she followed Alejandro across the field. 

Alejandro's _vagabundo_ came forward to meet her with an air of lightcordiality. His voice was the voice which had greeted her first fromthe steps of the prairie-schooner in which Lola's mother lay dead. 

"It's me!" conceded Mr. Keene, pleasantly. "In rather poor shape, asyou see. It's always darkest before dawn! You're considerable changed, ma'am--and to the better. I would hardly have known you. Is that girlin the big white hat Lola? Well, well! Now, ma'am I'll tell you why I'mhere. "

He proceeded to speak of an opportunity of immediate fortune which wasopen to him, after prolonged disaster, if only the sum of five hundreddollars might be forthcoming. A friend of his in Pony Gulch had senthim glowing reports of the region. "All I want is a grub-stake, " saidMr. Keene, "and I'm sure to win!"

"I haven't that much money in the world!" said Jane. 

Keene sighed. "Well, I hoped you'd be able to lend me a hand, but ifyou can't, you can't! There seems to be nothing for me but to go backNorth, and try to earn something to start on. I guess it'd be well forme to take Lola along. She's nearly grown now, and they need help theworst kind in the miners' boarding-house where I stay up in Cripple. Itold the folks that keep it--I owe 'em considerable--that I'd bringback my daughter with me to assist 'em in the dining-room, and theysaid all right, that'd suit 'em. Wages up there are about the highestthing in sight. Equal to the altitude. And it'll give me a chance tolook round. "

Jane was staring at him. "You would do that?" she breathed. "You'd takethat delicate girl up there to wait on a lot of rough miners? I'veworked for her and loved her and sheltered her from everything! She'snot fit for any such life! She sha'n't go!"

Keene had been touched at first. At Jane's last assertion, however, hebegan to look sulky. 

"Well, I guess it's for me to say what she shall do!" he signified. "Iguess it's not against the law or the prophets for a daughter to assisther father when he's in difficulties. And Lola'll recognize her duty. I'll just go over yonder to the pavilion, ma'am, and see what shesays. "

DESTINY PRESSES

CHAPTER FIVE

DESTINY PRESSES

Jane stood confounded. Her aghast mind, following Mr. Keene's project, seemed to see him rakishly ascending the pavilion steps, among awondering throng, and making way to Lola as she sat, happy and honored, with her friends. Jane had a sharp prevision of Lola's face when herfather should appear before her, so different from the tender ideal ofhim which she had cherished, so intent upon himself, so bent uponshattering with his first word to his child all those visions ofunselfish kindness and generosity which had made her thoughts of himbeautiful. 

Lola would go with him. She would rise and leave her home, friends andhappy prospects to follow him to whatever life he might judge best, however rough, however wild. In ordinary circumstances Jane could notdeny to herself that this course would be the right course for adaughter; that such an one would do well to succor a father's failings, to add hope to his despondency and love to the mitigation of histrials. But Mr. Keene was not despondent, nor were his trials of a sortwhich might not easily be tempered by something like industry on hisown part. He was frankly idle. He loved better than simple work theprecarious excitement of prospecting--an occupation which, except inisolated and accidental instances, cannot be pursued to any good savewith the aid of science and capital. 

Camp life might not be bad for Mr. Keene; but that it would be good fora girl so young and sensitive to every impression as Lola, Janedoubted. 

"I got to consider what's best for her, " thought Jane, while Keenehimself was beginning once more to sympathize with the silent misery inher face. 

"I never had no idea you thought so much of Lola!" he exclaimed. "Shewasn't the kind of child a stranger'd be apt to get attached to. I hopeyou don't think I'd do anything mean? That isn't my style! All is, I'mher father, and a father ought to have some say-so. Now aint that true, Miss Combs?"

Jane was thinking. "Would three hundred dollars help you out?" shedemanded. "I've got that much. I've been saving it toward Lola'sschooling next year. "

"What, have you been sending her to pay-school?" Keene lookedsurprised, and unexpectedly his eyes began to dim. "I'd have been abetter man if I'd had any luck, " he said, with apparent irrelevance. 

Jane made no moral observations. She did not point out that a man'svirtue ought not to depend altogether on his income. She said simply, "Will that much do?"

Mr. Keene, controlling his emotion, said it would, and they parted uponthe understanding that they should meet at Lynn two days later, for thetransference of the fund. 

Then Jane plodded wearily back to the pavilion, and mutely watched thecow-ponies rush and buck around the course. She beheld ValentinoCortés, a meteoric vision in white cotton trousers, girdled in crimson, flash by to victory amid the wild "_Vivas!_" of his compatriots. Shesaw the burros trot past in their little dog-trot of a race. 

But although she essayed a pleased smile at these things, and listenedwith enforced attention to the speeches and the music, there werepresent with her foreboding and unrest. For usually the Dauntlesspursued no vigorous labor in summer, but merely kept the water out ofits slope and "took up" and sold to various smelters such "slack" as ithad made during the winter. There would be no royalties coming in toJane, since no coal would be mined; and presently it would beSeptember, and no money for Lola's school. 

So Jane's cares were thickening. Not only did the mine soon enter onits summer inactivity, but worse befell. The mine boss came one day totell Jane that, because of a certain "roll" in the east entries, it wasdeemed inadvisable farther to work these levels. 

"The coal over there makes too much slack, anyhow, " said the mine boss, "so we intend hereafter to stick to the west. " Whereupon, unaware ofleaving doom behind him, he went cheerfully away. 

Jane's horizons had always lain close about her. She had never beenone to scent trouble afar off. To be content in the present, to betrustful in the future, was her unformulated creed. And now, as shemused, it came to her swiftly that she need not despair so long as shehad over her head a substantial dwelling. This abode, in its merecubhood, had afforded her financial succor. It would be queer if suchan office were beyond it now. Only this time the doctor must not beapproached; his reasoning before had been too searching. 

Jane therefore wrote to a lawyer in Trinidad, authorizing him to obtainfor her a certain amount of money. She felt assured of the outcome ofthis letter, but presently there came a reply which stupefied her. Thelawyer wrote that there happened to be in court a suit concerning theboundaries of an old Spanish land grant, which, it was claimed, extended north of the Purgatory River, and touched upon her own andother neighboring property. The lawyer wrote that matters wouldprobably be settled in favor of the present landholders, but that, solong as litigation pended, all titles were so clouded as to make anyquestions of loans untenable. 

Jane felt as if a ruthless destiny were pressing her home. She lookedat Lola, and her heart sank at the girl's air of springlike happinessand hope. Must these sweet hours be broken upon with a tale ofimpending penury?

Lola of late had seemed gentler, and the silent, stony moods wereleaving her, together with her childish impulse toward sudden anger. Somuch Jane saw. Lola herself was sensible of a changing sway of feelingwhich she did not seek to understand. To read of a noble deed broughtswift tears to her eyes in these days of mutation, and stirred her toemulative dreams. 

She did not know what power of action lay in her; but there seemed tobe some vital promise in the eager essence of spirit which spreadbefore her such visions of beautiful enterprise. Lola did not realizehow favorable to ripening character was the atmosphere in which shelived. She could not yet know how she had been impressed by the simplepage of plain, undramatic kindness and generosity which Jane's lifeopened daily to her eyes. 

One day Jane spoke to her sadly. 

"Lola, " she said, "I'm afraid there won't be enough money to send youaway to school this year. "

"But papa never denies me anything, _tia_. "

"I know, dear. "

"How funny you say that! Is--has he--lost his money, _tia_? You'rekeeping something from me!"

"Lola, " said Jane, in a moved voice, "I don't know a great deal aboutyour father's means. I can't say they're less than they were; butthere's reasons--why I'm afraid you can't--go to Pueblo this comingfall. No, Lola--don't ask me any questions--I can't speak out! I'vedone wrong! I can't say any more!" and to Lola's surprise she hurriedout of the room. 

Never before had Lola witnessed in Jane such confusion and distress. The sight bewildered and troubled her so sorely as for the moment toexclude from mind the bearing upon her own future of Jane's ambiguous, faltering words. Something was surely amiss; but the girl as yet fullyrealized only one fact--that tia, always so steadfast and strong andcheerful, had gone hastily from the room in the agitation of one whostruggled with unaccustomed tears. Lola hesitated to follow Jane. Someinward prompting withheld her. 

"She is like me, " mused the girl. "She would rather be alone whenanything troubles her. I will wait. Maybe she will come back soon andtell me everything. "

Outside it was as dry and bright as ever. The Peaks stood bald andpink against the flawless sky. Over in the Vigil yard Lola saw thesmaller Vigil boys lassoing one another with a piece of clothes-line, while, dozing over her sewing, Señora Vigil herself squatted in thedoorway. Propped against the house-wall, Diego Vigil sat munching acorn-cake and frugally dispersing crumbs to the magpies which hoveredabout him in short, blue-glancing flights. 

Diego was two years old--quite old enough to doff his ragged frock forthe "pantalones" which his mother was still working upon, after weeksof listless endeavor. The señora's thread was long enough to reachhalf-way across the yard, and it took time and patience to set astitch. For very weariness the señora nodded over her labor, and mademany little appeals to the saints that they might guide aright thetortuous course of her double cotton. 

"Life is hard!" sighed the señora, pausing over a knot in her endlessthread. "Ten children keep the needle hot. Ay, but this knot is a hardone! There are evil spirits about. "

She laid down her work to wipe her eyes, and, observing two of her sonsgrappling in fraternal war at the house corner, she arose to cuff eachone impartially, exclaiming, "_Ea, muchachos!_ You fight before my veryeyes, eh? Take that! and that!" Waddling reluctantly back to hersewing, she saw Lola standing in the white-pillared porch of the bigadobe house beyond, and a gleam of inspiration crossed the señora'sdark, fat face. 

"She shall take out this knot, " thought Señora Vigil. "Señorita!" shecalled. "Come here, I pray you! There is a tangle in my thread and allmy girls are away!"

And, as Lola came across the field, she added, "I am dead ofloneliness, Lolita. Ana and Benita and Ines and Marina and Alejandroare gone up the Trujillo to the wedding-party of their cousin, JuditaVasquez. To-morrow she marries the son of Juan Montoya. _Hola!_ Shedoes well to get so rich a one! He has twenty goats, a cow and sixdogs. His house has two rooms and a shed. They will live splendid! Itis to be hoped these earthly grandeurs will not turn Judita's thoughtsfrom heaven!" The señora shook her head cheerfully. "My Ana told Juditashe ought to be thankful so plain a face as hers should find favor withJosé Montoya. My Ana is full of loving thoughts! She never lets herfriends forget what poor, sinning mortals they are!"

"Indeed, no!" agreed Lola, feelingly, while she smoothed out thethread. 

"Take a stitch or two that I may be sure the cotton is really allright!" implored the señora. "Yes, truly Ana is a maid of rare charms. When she marries I shall be desolate!"

"Is there talk of that?" asked Lola, with interest. Ana was nowsixteen, and was nearly as heavy as her mother, and much more sedate. In true Mexican fashion the look of youth had left her betimes, and herswarthy plumpness had early hardened and settled to a look of maturityto which future years could add little. 

"There is Juan Suarez, " said the señora, in a mysterious whisper, "andif I would I could mention others; for, as you know, Lolita, my Ana isvery beautiful. "

Lola maintained a judicious silence, and the señora continued placidly, "Though she is my child, I am bound to admit it. Her nature is a rareone, too. And when suitors throng about her she only shakes her head. She is lofty. She will not listen. 'No, _caballeros_, ' she says, 'Ihave regarded your corral. It is too empty. ' And one by one they goaway weeping, the poor caballeros! She is cruel, my Ana, being sobeautiful! Me, I own it--though my heart aches to see the caballerosshedding tears!"

Lola, finding her own face expanding irresistibly, bent lower overDiego's small trousers. The picture of Ana, standing disdainful amongthe sorrowing caballeros and waving off their pleas with an imperioushand, was one to bring a smile to lips of deadliest gravity. Ana, withher hands on her broad hips, short and thick as a squat brown jug withits handles akimbo, --Ana, with her great clay-colored face and tiny, glittering eyes, with her thick, pale lips and coarse, blackhair, --surely none but a mother could view in Ana such charms asbedewed Señora Vigil's eyes only to think of!

"To see unhappiness is a very blade in my heart!" sighed Señora Vigil, recovering herself. "Do not make the thread short, Lolita! No, no! Ishall have to thread the needle again before the week is out, if youdo. Ah, yes! I wept much the day when you were lost, and Bev Gribble, the vaquero, brought you home on his horse. 'Twas long ago. And now youare grown tall and can play the piano. Shall you go on fretting yourpoor head with more schooling, _chiquita_?"

[Illustration: "'DO NOT MAKE THE THREAD SHORT LOLITA!'"]

At this question Lola's mind sharply reverted to the distressing scenewhich had by a moment preceded her neighbor's summons. There had beenin Jane's words a broken, yet oddly definite, assertion of impendingpoverty. She had spoken of the unlikelihood of another year in Pueblofor Lola, and the girl for the first time began to realize this factwith a sinking of the heart. Her voice had a tremor as she saidhesitatingly, "I'm afraid I can't go back to Pueblo this fall. "

"Not go back? The Jonas señorita goes back! Why not you? Has thy fatherlost money? I am thy friend, Lolita. Tell me!"

"I can't tell what I don't know, señora. I don't know if he has lostmoney. _Tia_ only said that--that I mightn't go back to school. Shedidn't say why, but she will, no doubt. "

Señora Vigil's eyes narrowed. She recalled certain rumors long afloatin town as to Jane's extravagance, and the inability of her means tosuch luxuries as pianos. Also, although half-consciously, the señora'sinner memory dwelt upon that corner of her back yard which it had beenJane's sad fortune to take away. 

The señora was not unkind or vindictive, but she had a mouse-trap sortof mind which only occasionally was open to the admittance of ideas, but which snapped fast forever upon such few notions as wandered intoit. Having once accepted the belief that Jane was not averse to snatchat any good in her way, even if it belonged to another, the señorafound herself still under the sway of this opinion. 

"The big house of Mees Combs has cost too much!" she asserted. "Wherehas the money come from? From the coal? Some, perhaps, yes; but for allof the great house, ah, it cannot be! Every one has been saying therewas not enough coal in her tract to pay for what she has done; and newdebts press, doubtless. What could be easier than to take the money ofthy father? I tell you, Lolita, that you cannot go to school becauseMees Combs has had to use your money to pay them! Eh, but your fatherwill be mad! He is not working himself to a bone that strangers shouldbuild themselves fine houses! My Pablo said a little time ago thatpeople said your father's riches were going astray. Me, I did notlisten. Now I know he spoke true. " The señora's tongue wagged on in adiatribe of accusation and pity. 

Lola let the sewing fall. Against her stoutest effort there prevailed avivid remembrance of Jane's manner and statements, of Jane'sself-impeachment and agitation, and, try as hard as she could toforget them, the words which Jane had used kept coming to mind. "I havedone wrong!" Had not Jane said this? Had she not covered herface--could it be _guiltily_--and gone away?

"No, " said Lola, hoarsely, half to herself, half to her hearer, "itisn't true! You make mistakes, Señora Vigil! Do you hear? You makemistakes!"

"Alas, for thy soft heart!" moaned the señora. "Thou art changed much!Me, I would not be hard on Mees Combs, though her sin is clear. Who amI to judge? Nay, even I try to forget that me she has also despoiled;that she took a corner of our back yard, and plants corn in it to thisday! I am all for forgiving. But the saints are not so easy!" said theseñora, unconscious of any disparagement to the saints, and referringmerely to a judicial quality in them. 

Lola was not listening. She had a burning wish to escape from the softbuzzing of the señora's words, which, a velvety, sting-infested swarm, whirred around her bee-like, seeking hive and home. 

"Don't think I believe anything against _tia_!" she heard herselfsaying sternly, as the gate slipped from her impetuous hand and sherushed away, the quarry of emotions which no speed, however swift, could outdistance. 

BEWILDERING SATISFACTION

CHAPTER SIX

BEWILDERING SATISFACTION

Lola found herself walking up the cañon, between the rocky hills besidethe dry _arroyo_. Summer dust whitened the road, and rose to her treadin alkaline clouds. It was warm, too, under the remorseless Coloradosun, but nothing touched Lola. She was struggling with a thing that washalf anguish and half anger, and that lifted upon her a face more andmore convincing in its ugliness. 

It seemed impossible to doubt that Jane had indeed worked the wrong ofwhich Señora Vigil accused her--although Jane's own word, and no wordof the señora's, bore this conviction to Lola's breast. Jane hadfaltered in the trust which she had assumed, and now, confronted withthe embarrassment of facing Lola's father in a plain confession of herdelinquency, she hesitated and was miserable and afraid and reluctant. Rather than state her situation she would even keep Lola from school. 

"It isn't that I care for that!" throbbed Lola. It was not the stoppageof her own course, indeed, although this was a misery, but the loss oftrust in all humanity which distrust of Jane seemed to the girl toinflict upon her. If Jane were not true, none could be; and thesuspicion and unrest rioted back again to the bosom which belief inJane and the world had softened and calmed. 

There was nothing to do. Lola's father could easily repair Jane'sshortcoming, but not without having an explanation of the facts of thecase. The facts of the case he must never know. Even in her pain andindignation, Lola never made a question of this. 

"Suppose it is true!" thought the girl, suddenly overcome by a new tideof feeling. "What am I blaming her for? She would never have fixed thehouse or bought things for herself! She did it all for me. And althoughI would rather have gone to school than have the piano, am I to blame_tia_ for not knowing this? She never thought where she was coming out. She just went on and on. And now that there is no more money, she isfrightened and sorry and ashamed. She has done everything for me--evenherself she has fairly made over to please me. Poor _tia_! Oh, ungrateful that I am to have been thinking unkindly of her!"

Suddenly all the bitterness left her, like an evil thing exorcised bythe first word of pitying tenderness. Tears stole sweetly to her eyes. Peace came upon her shaken spirit. The day had been full of strangerevelations; and now it showed her how good for the human heart it isto be able to pity weakness, to love, to forbear and to forgive. 

In the strange peacefulness which brooded over her she walked homebetween the piñon-sprinkled hills, where doves were crooning and thefar bleating of an upland herd echoed among the barren ridges. Shereflected quietly upon meeting Jane without a hint of any shadow in herface, but in such sunniness of humor as should gladden and reassure. And Jane would never dream of the dark hour which had visited herchild. She would never know that any slightest thought, unnurtured inaffection, had risen to cast between them the least passing shadow;although from Lola's heart might never pass away that little, inevitable sense of loss which those know whose love survives arevelation of weakness in one believed to be strong. 

As she came in sight of the hollow roof of the Dauntless she saw thedoctor riding toward her. 

"Hello!" he said. "What have you been doing up the cañon? BuildingSpanish castles?"

"Watching Spanish castles fall, " said Lola, smiling. "What would youdo, " she went on lightly, "if you had planned something worth while, and it became impossible?"

The doctor looked down at her young, questioning face. It was grave, although she spoke gaily, and looked so mere a slip of girlhood withher brown throat and cheek and lifted black-lashed eyes. 

Unexpectedly the doctor remembered when he, too, had meant to do thingsthat should be "worth while. " He thought of Berlin and Vienna andParis, and the clinics where he had meant to acquire such skill as, aiding his zeal, should write him among the first physicians of hisday. And here he was, practising among a few Mexicans and miners, tending their bruises, doling them out quinine, and taking pay of adollar a month from every man, sick or well, enrolled on the minebooks, and frequently getting nothing at all from such as were nottherein enrolled. Never a volume of his had startled the world ofscience. Surgery was bare of his exploits. Medical annals knew him not. All he had thought to do was undone by him; and yet here he was, contented, happy and healthy in a realm of little duties. In sounpretentious a life as this he had found satisfaction; and for thefirst time it came upon him that thus simply and calmly satisfactioncomes to the great mass of men who have nothing to do with glory orhope of glory. 

"When great things become impossible, what would you do?" said Lola, tossing back her long, braided hair. 

"I would do little things, " said the doctor, with whimsical soberness. 

An unusual equipage was turning in from the Trinidad road--an equipageon which leather and varnish shone, and harness brasses flashed, whilethe dust rolled pompously after it in a freakish fantasy of postilionsand outriders. The driver made a great business of his long whip. Thehorses were sleek and brown. Altogether the vehicle had a lordly air, easily matching that of the individual sitting alone on the purplecushions--a man whose features were not very clear at the distance, although the yellowness of his beard, the glitter of his studdedshirt-front, and whole consequential, expansive effect recalled to thedoctor's mind an image of the past, less ornate, indeed, and affluent, but of similar aspect. He narrowed his eyes, staring townward overLola's head, and wondering if yonder princely personage might not invery truth be Lola's father. 

But the girl's eyes were bent upon the ground. She did not see theequipage or the man on the purple cushions. 

"You do little things?" she said, raising her eyes gravely to thedoctor's. He had always seemed to her the man who did great things. "Iwill try, " she added, seriously. 

While she talked with the doctor the world seemed to Lola a pleasantplace, with a golden light on its long levels and a purple glamour onits hills. And after he had left her, she went with a light heart downthe unpaved street that she had lately traversed in unseeingbitterness. The very hum of the mine cars was full of good cheer;children splashed joyously in the ditch; magpies gossiped; theblacksmith-shop rang with a merry din of steel. 

Set emerald-like in the yellow circle of the prairies, the green youngcottonwood grove about Jane's house shone fresh and vivid. At the whitegate a carriage waited--a strange carriage which Lola scrutinizedwonderingly as she approached. With delighted eyes she noted thepurple cushions and the satin coats of the horses. Who could havecome? Whose voice was that which issued from the house in an unbrokenmonologue, genial, laughing, breathless?

Suddenly, as she mounted the porch steps, a persuasion of familiarityin those light accents overcame her. Could it be that her father hadcome at last? That, after all her waiting, she was to see him and talkwith him and sob out on his breast her appreciation of his long laborsin her behalf, his kindness, unselfishness and goodness?

She forgot that she had sometimes been hurt at his silence and absence. Her childhood swam before her; she recalled the sweetness of hermother's face, and in that memory he who awaited her in Jane'ssitting-room gathered a graciousness which exalted him, as if he, too, had been dead and was alive again. 

The talk broke off at her impetuous entrance. Upon a chair sat a manwith a round and ruddy face, with bright blue eyes and a curling spreadof yellow beard. Lola hesitated. She doubted if this richly arrayed, somewhat stout man could be the slim, boyish-looking father sheremembered. Then the unalterable joyousness of his glance reassuredher, and she rushed forward crying, "Oh, it's you! It's you!"

She had not noticed Jane, who sat opposite, mute and relaxed, like onein whom hope and resolution flag and fail; but Jane's deep eyesfollowed Lola's swift motion, and her look changed a little at thegirl's air of eager joy. As she saw Lola fling herself upon his breastand cling there, she winced, and her heart yearned at the sight of alove which she had somehow failed to win with all her efforts, andwhich now she should never win, since Lola was about to leave herforever. 

The hour so long dreaded by Jane seemed surely to have come atlast--the hour of her child's departure. Forth to life's best andbrightest Lola would go, as was meet. Happiness illimitable awaited thegirl she had cherished. It was right that this should be so; yet, alasfor the vast void gray of the empty heart which Lola would leavebehind!

"Well, this is a kind of surprise!" said Mr. Keene, holding hisdaughter away for a better sight of her radiant face. "You are tallerthan I expected. She's got real Spanish eyes, aint she, Miss Combs?Like her mother's. The Keenes are all sandy. I'm not sure I'd haveknown you, Lola. "

"Oh, papa, you've been away so long! You've been kind and good tome--yet--"

"We'll have to let bygones be bygones, " declared her father, gratifiedto learn that she had thought him good and kind--for this point hadrather worried him. "I've felt at times as if I hadn't done you justright. "

"Don't say so, papa!"

"Well, I won't, " agreed Mr. Keene, willingly. "Only I'm glad to findyou haven't cherished anything against me for leaving you like I did. When I persuaded Miss Jane to take you, I couldn't foresee what hardluck I was going to strike, could I?" As he paused he caught Jane's eyeupon him in a significance which he did not understand. 

"She doesn't know, " said Jane, in a sort of whisper, indicating Lola, whose back was toward her. 

"Doesn't know what?" asked Mr. Keene, unwitting and bewildered. "Ofcourse she doesn't know all I suffered, what with taking up oneworthless claim after another month in and out--if you mean that! Why, I actually thought one time of giving up prospecting and settling downto day's work! Yes'm! It was sure enough that grub-stake you gave melast Fourth of July that brought me my first luck! I put it right intoPony Gulch and my pick struck free-milling ore the first blow! Some ofthe stuff runs ninety dollars to the ton and some higher. I've alreadyhad good offers for my claim from an English syndicate, but I haven'tdecided to sell. Seems queer it should be such a little while ago thatI called you out of that pavilion, Miss Jane, and told you what a fix Iwas in! You remember you said you hadn't the money--and then afterwardyou turned in, real friendly, and raised me what I needed. "

Lola exclaimed, "You were here in town on the Fourth of July? O papa!Why didn't I see you? Oh--what--"

"You came near enough to seeing me, " laughed Mr. Keene, "and to goingaway with me, too! I'm glad things happened like they did. Thatboarding-house was no place for you, Lola. I realize it now! But I waspushed to the wall. But for Miss Jane's helping me out, I'd have had totake you away, sure enough! She told you, didn't she?"

"Told me? Told me what?"

"Why, about my idea of getting you that situation up in Cripple? Theyneeded help bad up in the boarding-house where I lived, and I'd made'em a promise to fetch you. It was easy work in the dining-room, andright good pay. "

"And--and--_tia_ fixed it--so--you decided to leave me here?"

"That's what she did! I'm mighty glad of it, too, for I see you're notcut out for any such work. I'm not forgetting what I owe Miss Jane. She's been a good friend to us both. I was sorry to hear down inTrinidad about your mortgaging your house that time, Miss Combs. Yes, I'm downright ashamed to think I've let you pay me month by month forLola's services, when really you were out of pocket for her schoolingand all. But I didn't realize how things were, and now we'll levelthings up. "

"My services!" Lola sprang to her feet. Everything was clear enoughnow. No need to summon charity for Jane's shortcomings! No need tooverlook, to palliate, to forgive! Jane's fault had been merely toolavish a generosity, too large a love. There had been no question withher of property. She had simply given everything she had to a forsaken, ungrateful child--home, food, raiment, schooling. 

These were the facts. The flood of unutterable feeling which swept overLola as the knowledge of it all flashed upon her was something deeperthan thought, something more moving than any mere matter of perception. A passionate gratitude throbbed in her heart, confused with apassionate self-reproach. She desired to speak, but somehow her lipsrefused utterance. She trembled and turned white, and stood wringingher hands. 

"I was always a generous man, " said Mr. Keene, lost to his daughter'slooks in pleasant introspection, "and I mean to do right by you, MissCombs. You'll find I'm not ungrateful. Lola'll always write to you, too, wherever we are. I'm thinking some of Paris. How'd that suit you, Lola? A person can pick up a mighty good time over there, they say. Andbonnets--how many bonnets can you manage, Lola? Why, she looks kind ofstunned, don't she, Miss Combs?"

Jane was gazing at the girl. She knew well with what force the blow solong averted had fallen at last. In her own breast she seemed to feelthe pain with which Lola had received her father's revelations. 

"Lola, " she cried, leaning forward, "don't feel so, my lamb! I'm sorryyou had to know this. I tried hard to keep it from you. But it's allout now, and you must try to bear it. Your father don't realize--hehasn't meant to hurt you. He's fond of you, dearie. And he's going totake you to foreign lands, and you can see all the great pictures andstatues, and have a chance to learn all the things you spokeof--designing and such. Don't look so, my child!"

Mr. Keene began to feel highly uncomfortable. Evidently, in his ownphrase, he had "put his foot into it;" he had said too much. He haddisclosed fallacies in himself of which Lola, it seemed, knew nothing. And now Lola, who had received him with such flattering warmth, wasturning her face away and looking strange and stern and stricken. 

Nor did Miss Combs seem fairly to have grasped the liberality of hisintentions. She, too, had a curious air of not being exalted in any wayby so much good fortune. She appeared to be engaged solely in trying toreconcile Lola to a situation which Mr. Keene considered dazzling. 

Altogether it was very disturbing, especially to a man who did notunderstand what he had done to bring about so unpleasant a turn. Hewas about to ask some explanation, when Lola said slowly, "And you, _tia_, you have done so much for me that you have nothing left? Is thatso?"

"I don't need much, Lola. I'll be all right. Don't you worry. "

"You won't mind living here alone and poor?"

"She won't be poor, Lola, " interpolated Mr. Keene. "Haven't I said so?And you can come and see her, you know. Everything will come out allright. "

Lola turned a little toward him, and he was glad to see that her eyeswere soft and gentle and that the stern look had disappeared. "Yes, "she said, "it will come out all right for tia, because I shall be hereto see that it does. "

She caught her breath and added, "You couldn't think I should bewilling to go away and leave her like this? Even if I hadn't heard howmuch more she has done for me than I dreamed? For I have been ignoranttill now of many things; but I shouldn't have forgotten that she lovedme and had reared me and cared for me when there was no one else. No, father, no! And now that you have let me find out what I owe her, doyou think I sha'n't remember it always with every beat of my heart? Oh, yes--although I can never repay her for all she has suffered in keepingme from knowing things which would have hurt me too much when I waslittle and--and could not make allowances--as I can now. My home ishere. My heart is here, father. You must let me stay!"

She had taken Jane's hand and was holding it closely--that happy handwhich for very blessedness and amazement trembled more than her own. And so holding it, she cried, "_Tia_, you want me to stay, don't you?Say yes! Tell him I may stay! It is my home where you are. And oh, howdifferent I will be!"

Jane, listening, could only press those slender, clinging fingers inspeechless comfort, and look up silently into the imploring eyes of herchild--eyes filled with tears and love. A moment of silence ensued. Then, clearing his throat suddenly, Mr. Keene rose and walked to thewindow. 

"Lola, " he said presently, turning to face the two others, "I don'tblame you one bit. Miss Jane's done a heap more for you than I had anynotion. 'Tisn't only that she's done all you say, but she's raised youto be a girl I'm proud of--a right-minded, right-hearted girl. I neverthought how it would look for you to be willing to rush off at thefirst word and leave behind you the person you owed most to in theworld! But I'm free to say I wouldn't have liked it when I come tothink of it. I wouldn't have felt proud of you like I do now. Knockingaround the foot-hills has shaken me up pretty well, but I know what'sright as well as any man. There's things in my life I'd like to forget;but they say it's never too late to mend. And I have hopes of myselfwhen I see what a noble girl my daughter's turned out. "

[Illustration: "'TIA, YOU ARE A LADY OF FORTUNE!'"]

He put his handkerchief away and came and stood before them, adding, "Ihaven't had a chance to finish my other story. When Miss Jane gave methat grub-stake she didn't know, I reckon, that half of anything Imight strike would belong to her--that in law, grub-stakes always meanshalves! But I never had any intention of not dealing fair and square. So when I said she wasn't going to be poor, I meant it! For half 'theLittle Lola' belongs to her. And if she's willing, I'll just run themine for the next year or so, and after that we can talk abouttraveling. "

Mr. Keene, during the past hour, had been made sensible of certaindeficiencies in himself. No one had accused him or reproached him, yethe felt chagrined as he saw his own conduct forcibly contrasted withthe conduct of a different sort. But now, as his daughter sent abeaming glance toward him, his spirits rose again, and he began oncemore to regard himself hopefully, as a man who, despite some failings, was honest in the main, and generous and well-meaning. 

"Oh, how glad I am!" said Lola. "_Tia, tia_, do you hear? You are alady of fortune and must have a velvet gown! And, oh, _tia_, a tall, silver comb in your hair!" She dropped a sudden kiss down upon thesmooth, brown bands, and added in a deeper tone, "But nothing, nothing, can make you better or dearer!"

Jane smiled uncertainly as if she were in a dream. Could thisunlooked-for, bewildering satisfaction be indeed real, and not avisionary thing which would presently fade? She looked about. Therewas actuality in the scene. The cottonwoods rustled crisply, AlejandroVigil was calling to his dog, and the tinkle of his herd stole softlyupon her ear. The great hills rose majestic as of old upon the gloriouswestern sky; the plains stretched off in silvery, sea-like waves to thevery verge of the world. And hard by many a familiar thing spoke of apast which she knew; pots of geraniums, muslin shades and open piano. There, too, was Mr. Keene, sitting at ease in his chair; there wasLola, bending over her in smiling reassurance. And finally, there wasTesuque himself regarding her from his shelf in an Olympian calm whichno merely mortal emotion could touch or stir. Tesuque's little bowl wasstill empty, but in his adobe glance Jane suddenly grew aware how trulyher own cup overflowed. 

[THE END]

A PRAIRIE INFANTA

By EVA WILDEER BRODHEAD

A clever Western story that develops in a little Colorado mining town. One is made to see the green, tall cottonwoods, the stragglingmud-houses and pungent goat-corrals of its people, among whom lived thewoman who took to her great heart the motherless Lola. 

The tropical brilliancy of the girl, by reason of her red frock and thered ribbons in her hair, excites the jealousy of the little Mexicansand the paler children from the mining end of the town, and in theirdisapproval they style her "Infanta. " The story of the girl's life ischarmingly told, and eventually, her father, a man who, despite somefailings, is generous and well-meaning, reappears in the character of awealthy mine owner, and brings the story to an unlooked for and happytermination. 

Cloth, ornamental, illustrated, 50 cents

WITCHERY WAYS

By AMOS R. WELLS

PICTURES BY L. J. BRIDGMAN

Children may well be grateful to the forgotten people who, long ago, first invented fairy tales. Mr. Wells confesses, in the preface to thisbook, that he has a very tender regard for the "Little People, " asfairies used to be called in those days, and now he has given us, underthe title of "Witchery Ways, " some fairy tales of his own which willprove a never-ending delight to every reader. 

Cloth, ornamental, illustrated, 50 cents

SONNY BOY

By SOPHIE SWETT

Sonny Boy was ten years old. His name was Peter, but his mother thoughtthat too large a name for a small boy. 

Aunt Kate, one of the "right kind, " is lonesome in her new housewithout any young people, and borrows Sonny Boy for six months. The ladhas a happy visit and many pleasant experiences, learning the whilesome helpful lessons. Delightedly one reads of Otto and the white mice;Lena and the parrot, the wild man of the circus, and Sonny Boy'sambition to command the Poppleton Guards, but Miss Swett tells thestory, and when that is said, nothing remains but to enjoy the book. 

Cloth, ornamental, handsomely illustrated, 50 cents

HENRY ALTEMUS CO. , PHILADELPHIA

A GOURD FIDDLE

By GRACE MACGOWAN COOKE

A little colored boy, the sole orphaned remainder of a long line ofmasters of the violin, alone of the army of negroes who had borne thefamily name, is left to wait upon the old mistress and Miss Patrice atthe "Great House. "

Miss Patrice teaches Orphy to sing the chants and anthems in theservice of the little church where he was baptized, and with her voicenew airs for his violin. Plantation songs he knew and rendered with apleasing coloring. 

After the death of his teacher Orphy falls upon hard times, buteventually his talent is recognized by a professor of music who takeshim to Europe, and there, under peculiar circumstances, he plays on hishome-made gourd fiddle before no less a personage than Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. 

Cloth, ornamental, handsomely illustrated, 50 cents

BUMPER AND BABY JOHN

By ANNA CHAPIN RAY

PICTURES BY CURTIS WAGER-SMITH

An irresistibly humorous relation of the haps and mishaps of thehomeliest, yet most dependable dog in the world, and a delightfulred-haired and freckled child, whose united ages did not exceed sevenyears. 

But apart from the humor of the book, it is alive with human interest, and there is pathos as well. And this is not to forget the artist inpraise of the author; the illustrations could not have been confided toa better hand. 

Cloth, ornamental, illustrated, 50 cents

A LITTLE ROUGH RIDER

By TUDOR JENKS

Author of "Galopoff, the Talking Pony, " "Gypsy, the Talking Dog, " etc. 

PICTURES BY REGINALD B. BIRCH

Under the title of "A Little Rough Rider" the author tells the story ofa little girl, who, as Señorita Finette, the _equestrienne_, saved thefortunes of a circus during the early years of the gold-fever inCalifornia. Her charming feats on the back of her trained horse, Blanco, win fame and fortune for herself as well, the latter beingaugmented later by the discovery of gold on certain lands. 

Cloth, ornamental, illustrated, 50 cents

HENRY ALTEMUS CO. , PHILADELPHIA

 * * * * *

Transcriber's Notes

Page 43: Changed Sanish to Spanish: (who knew Sanish best, being a bronco from the south).