'I am forbidden.'
His answer was gentle, but its very gentleness breathed of his battle over himself, of allegiance to something beyond earthly duty. 'We'll drive the cattle to Silver Cup,' he decided, 'and then go home. I give up Seeping Springs. Perhaps this valley and water will content Holderness.'
When they reached the oasis Hare was surprised to find that it was the day before Christmas. The welcome given the long-absent riders was like a celebration. Much to Hare's disappointment Mescal did not appear; the homecoming was not joyful to him because it lacked her welcoming smile.
Christmas Day ushered in the short desert winter; ice formed in the ditches and snow fell, but neither long resisted the reflection of the sun from the walls. The early morning hours were devoted to religious services. At midday dinner was served in the big room of August Naab's cabin. At one end was a stone fireplace where logs blazed and crackled.
In all his days Hare had never seen such a bountiful board. Yet he was unable to appreciate it, to share in the general thanksgiving. Dominating all other feeling was the fear that Mescal would come in and take a seat by Snap Naab's side. When Snap seated himself opposite with his pale little wife Hare found himself waiting for Mescal with an intensity that made him dead to all else. The girls, Judith, Esther, Rebecca, came running gayly in, clad in their best dresses, with bright ribbons to honor the occasion. Rebecca took the seat beside Snap, and Hare gulped with a hard contraction of his throat. Mescal was not yet a Mormon's wife! He seemed to be lifted upward, to grow light-headed with the blessed assurance. Then Mescal entered and took the seat next to him. She smiled and spoke, and the blood beat thick in his ears.
That moment was happy, but it was as nothing to its successor. Under the table-cover Mescal's hand found his, and pressed it daringly and gladly. Her hand lingered in his all the time August Naab spent in carving the turkey–lingered there even though Snap Naab's hawk eyes were never far away. In the warm touch of her hand, in some subtle thing that radiated from her Hare felt a change in the girl he loved. A few months had wrought in her some indefinable difference, even as they had increased his love to its full volume and depth. Had his absence brought her to the realization of her woman's heart?
In the afternoon Hare left the house and spent a little while with Silvermane; then he wandered along the wall to the head of the oasis, and found a seat on the fence. The next few weeks presented to him a situation that would be difficult to endure. He would be near Mescal, but only to have the truth forced cruelly home to him every sane moment– that she was not for him. Out on the ranges he had abandoned himself to dreams of her; they had been beautiful; they had made the long hours seem like minutes; but they had forged chains that could not be broken, and now he was hopelessly fettered.
The clatter of hoofs roused him from a reverie which was half sad, half sweet. Mescal came tearing down the level on Black Bolly. She pulled in the mustang and halted beside Hare to hold out shyly a red scarf embroidered with Navajo symbols in white and red beads.
'I've wanted a chance to give you this,' she said, 'a little Christmas present.'
For a few seconds Hare could find no words.
'Did you make it for me, Mescal?' he finally asked. 'How good of you! I'll keep it always.'
'Put it on now–let me tie it–there!'
'But, child. Suppose he–they saw it?'
'I don't care who sees it.'
She met him with clear, level eyes. Her curt, crisp speech was full of meaning. He looked long at her, with a yearning denied for many a day. Her face was the same, yet wonderfully changed; the same in line and color, but different in soul and spirit. The old sombre shadow lay deep in the eyes, but to it had been added gleam of will and reflection of thought. The whole face had been refined and transformed.
'Mescal! What's happened? You're not the same. You seem almost happy. Have you–has heaven you up?'
'Don't you know Mormons better than that? The thing is the same–so far as they're concerned.'
'But Mescal–are you going to marry him? For God's sake, tell me.'
'Never.' It was a woman's word, instant, inflexible, desperate. With a deep breath Hare realized where the girl had changed.
'Still you're promised, pledged to him! How'll you get out of it?'
'I don't know how. But I'll cut out my tongue, and be dumb as my poor peon before I'll speak the word that'll make me Snap Naab's wife.'
There was a long silence. Mescal smoothed out Bolly's mane, and Hare gazed up at the walls with eyes that did not see them.
Presently he spoke.' I'm afraid for you. Snap watched us to-day at dinner.'
'He's jealous.'
'Suppose he sees this scarf?'
Mescal laughed defiantly. It was bewildering for Hare to hear her.
'He'll–Mescal, I may yet come to this.' Hare's laugh echoed Mescal's as he pointed to the enclosure under the wall, where the graves showed bare and rough.
Her warm color fled, but it flooded back, rich, mantling brow and cheek and neck.
'Snap Naab will never kill you,' she said impulsively.
'Mescal.'
She swiftly turned her face away as his hand closed on hers.
'Mescal, do you love me?'
The trembling of her fingers and the heaving of her bosom lent his hope conviction. 'Mescal,' he went on, 'these past months have been years, years of toiling, thinking, changing, but always loving. I'm not the man you knew. I'm wild– I'm starved for a sight of you. I love you! Mescal, my desert flower!'
She raised her free hand to his shoulder and swayed toward him. He held her a moment, clasped tight, and then released her.
'I'm quite mad!' he exclaimed, in a passion of self-reproach.' What a risk I'm putting on you! But I couldn't help it. Look at me– Just once–please– Mescal, just one look. ... Now go.'
The drama of the succeeding days was of absorbing interest. Hare had liberty; there was little work for him to do save to care for Silvermane. He tried to hunt foxes in the caves and clefts; he rode up and down the broad space under the walls; he sought the open desert only to be driven in by the bitter, biting winds. Then he would return to the big living-room of the Naabs and sit before the burning logs. This spacious room was warm, light, pleasant, and was used by every one in leisure hours. Mescal spent most of her time there. She was engaged upon a new frock of buckskin, and over this she bent with her needle and beads. When there was a chance Hare talked with her, speaking one language with his tongue, a far different one with his eyes. When she was not present he looked into the glowing red fire and dreamed of her.
In the evenings when Snap came in to his wooing and drew Mescal into a corner, Hare watched with covert glance and smouldering jealousy. Somehow he had come to see all things and all people in the desert glass, and his symbol for Snap Garb was the desert-hawk. Snap's eyes were as wild and piercing as those of a hawk; his nose and mouth were as the beak of a hawk; his hands resembled the claws of a hawk; and the spurs he wore, always bloody, were still more significant of his ruthless nature. Then Snap's courting of the girl, the cool assurance, the unhastening ease, were like the slow rise, the sail, and the poise of a desert-hawk before the downward lightning- swift swoop on his quarry.
It was intolerable for Hare to sit there in the evenings, to try to play with the children who loved him, to talk to August Naab when his eye seemed ever drawn to the quiet couple in the corner, and his ear was unconsciously strained to catch a passing word. That hour was a miserable one for him, yet he could not bring himself to leave the room. He never saw Snap touch her; he never heard Mescal's voice; he believed that she spoke very little. When the hour was over and Mescal rose to pass to her room, then his doubt, his fear, his misery, were as though they had never been, for as Mescal said good-night she would give him one look, swift as a flash, and in it were womanliness and purity, and something beyond his comprehension. Her Indian serenity and mysticism veiled yet suggested some secret, some power by which she might yet escape the iron band of this Mormon rule. Hare could not fathom it. In that good-night glance was a meaning for him alone, if meaning ever shone in woman's eyes, and it said: 'I will be true to you and to myself!'
Once the idea struck him that as soon as spring returned it would be an easy matter, and probably wise, for
