From a long distance in time and space his first insincerity had come home to roost. But, while he saw himself as the designer of his own undoing, he was by no means resigned. Presently hard, mutinous lights broke in his gloomy eyes. The stubborn fighter awoke. Throwing the traitorous sheet across the room, he picked up a pen and began to write.
Wasting no time in wonder at the fortuitous chance that had placed the paper in Francesca’s hands, he wrote steadily on the story of his love from the first doubtful beginnings to its actual consummation. Very clearly he explained his first natural dislike to intrude his personal affairs upon people for whom he had no reason to suppose they would have the slightest interest, the later honorable intention that had always been frustrated by unfavorable circumstances. And he finished with a statement that is never unwelcome in a woman’s ear:
“No matter what comes I shall always love you.”
Steady rain all that day and night had given the floods another lift and sent the river roaming wide through the jungle. Once again the valley opposite the mine was converted into a great lake dotted with wooded islands between which swift currents hurtled floating debris. Profiting by last year’s lesson, Seyd had had two roomy dugouts fitted with oars and rowlocks, and early the next morning he rowed Caliban across himself. Returning, he was to send a smoke signal to call the boat, and when, on the afternoon of the fourth day, Seyd spied the thin blue spiral through a break in the drifting rain he almost cracked his back rowing across the flood.
But his glowing hope died at the shake of the hunchback’s head. “The señorita is gone with her mother and Don Luis to San Nicolás, señor. But she is to return to El Quiss in a few days. The cousin of my woman had it from Roberta, the little maid. She is still there, and will deliver the letter when the señorita returns.”
The news was not altogether bad, for Francesca, at least, was now at San Nicolás. Within the hour Seyd crossed the river to the inn—where a horse was to be had for hire—and his purpose gained strength from a wire that he found waiting there from Billy.
San Francisco burned to the ground. Not a cent to be raised in California. Am going east.
In view of the aforesaid game of hide and seek he had been playing with Don Luis the situation looked very dark. But, serious as it was, when, halfway to San Nicolás, he met Paulo riding at the head of a mule train loaded with fagots it was wiped altogether out of his mind.
“We go to build beacons along the rim of the Barranca to give warning against the bursting of the gringo dam,” he answered Seyd. “Sí, Don Luis and the señora are at the casa. The señorita?” His creases drew into a malevolent grin. “The señora, you mean. She was married two hours ago to Don Sebastien.”
XX
“What!” In the language of the good old romances, Seyd roared the word.
In the main, Paulo was not a bad old chap. To further the interests of a García he would cheerfully have surrendered his old bones to be boiled in oil, and in his joy at the event he allowed his natural garrulity to dominate his prejudice against the gringo.
“Sí, señor, they were married at the hacienda by the priest of Chilpancin. On account of the death of Don Sebastien’s mother Don Luis and the señora only were present, and immediately afterward the young couple went home alone to El Quiss. A sensible practice, say I! When young hot blood mixes it should be left to cool and settle. Over there at El Quiss the fur will be flying before the end of a week, and put me down as a liar if Francesca do not keep him busy. She has run too long single not to kick at double harness. But she’ll settle to it, and like the fine wench she is, there is to be no European travel or such kickshaws as now are common with our rich young folk. No, in the good old Mexican fashion she goes from the church straight to her man’s home, there to stay till the first babe makes us all completely happy.”
Over and above his real joy in the event the old fellow was undoubtedly aware of its effect on Seyd. While speaking, his small red eyes searched his victim’s face for the pain beneath its confusion. But even under the spur of race hatred his imagination could not divine a tithe of the torture he was inflicting. Like all lovers, Seyd had dreamed long moving pictures of himself and Francesca as husband and wife, and now, with the speed of light, the reels spun backward, exhibiting her with another in the thousand and one intimacies of married life. Through all, his stiff Anglo-Saxon reserve persisted, and, finding egress at his heels, the pain that he tried to hide brought the situation to a ludicrous close. Springing from the unconscious pressure of his spurs, his horse, a mettled little beast, collided with Paulo and knocked him flat on his back.
More hurt in his pride than body, the old fellow scrambled up and stood shaking his fist and cursing. But Seyd rode on without attempt to check the animal, whose top speed ran slower than his own hot thought. Indeed, when, from sheer fatigue, it slowed he laid on with quirt and spur, and kept on at a gallop till violent exercise had withdrawn the blood from his swelling
