But Billy’s jaw only set the harder. While he might easily have been persuaded out of his idyl, he was not to be driven. Out of pure obstinacy he growled: “What of it? I reckon her morals won’t spoil the food. She’s proved she can cook, and that is all I want. She’s going to stay.”
“She’s not.”
“She is.”
For a pause they eyed each other. Though their friendship had survived, nay, had been cemented by many a quarrel, never before had a disagreement gone such lengths.
“Look here, Billy.” Seyd spoke more mildly. “This won’t do. She’s got to go.”
“Not till you’ve shown me—not now,” he hastily added, as Seyd began to strip. “I’d hate to hit a cripple, and—”
“Come on.”
But, ducking a swing, Billy gave ground, genuine concern on his face. “No, no, old man! You are still weak. Let it go for another week. That left fin of yours—”
Landing at that precise moment on his ear, however, the member in question proved its convalescence and ended the argument by toppling him sideways. Up in a second, he closed, and for the next ten minutes they went at it, clinching and breaking, jabbing and hooking, with an energy and science that would have filled the respective souls of a moralist and a prizefighter with disgust and delight. Avoiding both of these extreme viewpoints, the account may very well be given in the terms used by Caliban in describing the affair next day to one of his compañeros, a charcoal-burner.
“Like mad bulls they go at it, grappling and tearing, each striking the other so that the thud of their blows raise the echoes. It is in the very beginning that the Red Cabeza fells Don Roberto, but instead of splitting his head with the spade that stands close by—was ever such folly!—he helps him up from the ground. I then think it the finish, but no, they go at it again, hailing blows in the face hard as the kick of a mule, and so it continues for a time with only pauses to catch their breath. I am beginning to wonder will it ever come to an end when—crack! sharp as the snap of thy whip and so swift that I do not see the blow, it comes. The Red Cabeza lies there quietly on the ground. Believe it or not, Pedro, he is knocked senseless by a blow of the hand.”
The immediate consequences may also be left to Caliban. “Their quarrel, as I have said, is over Carmelita, the dove of Chilpancin, and I now expect to see Don Roberto take her for his own. That she is of the same mind is proven when she comes running with her knife for him to finish up the Red Cabeza. But again, no! who shall understand these gringos?—he gives her the sharpest of looks.
“ ‘Vamos!’ He shouts it with such anger that she stumbles and falls, running back to the house. Also she makes such a quick packing that she is driving her burro out to the trail before the Red Cabeza comes to his senses.”
Billy’s eyes, indeed, opened on the departing flash of her garments. “You didn’t lose much time,” he commented, with a quizzical glance upward. “Well, to the victor the spoils—or the rejection thereof. That was a peach of a punch—the bum left, too, wasn’t it?” The old merry look flashing out again from the blood and bruises, he asked: “How’ll you trade? In exchange for one admission from you I’m willing to grant you’re right.”
“Shoot!” Seyd grinned.
“Would you have been as careful of the proprieties if the señorita were out of the case?”
Smiling, Seyd raised doubtful shoulders. “Quién sabe, señor?”
“Ahem!” Billy coughed. “Now you justify the continuance of my wretched existence. All the same, while it may be correct in theory your darned morality is mighty uncomfortable practice. That girl could cook. The next time you fall in love please—”
“Now, what are you talking about?”
“What have I done?”
Before his look of hopeless surprise Seyd’s anger faded. “I beg your pardon. Of course you didn’t know, but—I’m already married.”
“You?”
“Me.” With grim sarcasm he added, “And you know that it is against the law of both God and man for a married man to fall in love.”
Feeling dimly that something was expected of him, but debarred from congratulations by the other’s irony, Billy floundered, bringing several attempts at speech to a lame conclusion. “When—when did it—happen?”
“Happen? That’s it.” Seyd jumped at the word. “It happened in New Mexico three years ago when I was down there ‘experting’ the Calumet group. She was the daughter of a mine foreman, pretty and neat as a grouse in the fall, but of the hopelessly common type. I don’t have to describe her. You’ve seen them, in pairs, swinging their skirts along the boardwalks of any small town, their eyes on every man and a burst of giggles always on tap. I should never have paid her any serious attention if several of her admirers hadn’t done me the honor of getting jealous. Until one big lout warned me to leave her alone under penalty of broken bones it was never more than a mild flirtation, but after that I went deeper—so deep that it was soon impossible for me to withdraw. At least, I thought it was then, though I have since come to regard my marriage with her almost as a crime. You see, I thought it would break her heart, but in less than a week after the marriage I discovered that she was nothing but a bundle of small vanities bound up in a pretty skin, that she hadn’t a thought above the money and position she expected to gain through me. And how she changed! As a girl she was soft, fluffy, and innocent as a kitten,
