Chapter III: Part 3

"Mebbee so, mother; but New Year's Eve don't come every day; so let's have it out." And old man Sutton tipped back his chair, after filling his pipe, and looked contentedly up at the white ceiling of the "best room."

Johnny, the younger son of the family, whistled gleefully, threw more wood on the blazing pile in the fire-place, and then, resuming his oft-forbidden occupation of cracking walnuts in the best room, said:

"Don't the wind howl, though? Just drives the rain. Golly, ain't it nice here?"

"You're not to say bad words," broke out his mother, sharply. "Father, why don't you correct the boy? Such a night as this, too, when--"

"What's that?" interrupted the oldest son, springing from his seat, and showing a straight, manly form and clear, deep eyes, as he stood by the door in a listening attitude.

"Coyotes, brother Frank; the ghosts don't come round this early, do they?" laughed the younger.

"Hush, Johnny! It's some one crying for help--a woman's voice!"

"Tut, tut! where would a woman come from this time o' night, and not a house within miles of us?"

"A woman's voice, I'll stake my head," insisted Frank, after a moment's silence in the room.

The mother had laid down her glasses. "Wonder if the boy thinks Lolita is coming through the storm to watch the old year out with him?" She laughed as at something that gave her much pleasure, though the rest did not share her merriment.

They were all three listening at door and window now, and when Frank threw the one nearest him quickly open, there came a sound through the din and fury of the rain-storm that was neither the howling of the wind nor the yelp of the coyote.

"Now what do you say?" asked Frank; and he had already passed through an inner apartment, and in a moment stood on the porch again, swinging a lantern and peering out into the dark and rain, listening for that cry of distress. It came in a moment--nearer than they had expected it.

"Help! help! oh, please come and help!"

"The d--l!" was old man Sutton's exclamation; not that he really thought the slender little figure perched on the back of the tall horse was the personage mentioned--it was only a habit he had of apostrophizing.

The horse had stopped short and was breathing hard, and the prayer for help was frantically repeated by the rider. "Come quick, and help the poor fellow; I've been gone so long from him--oh! _do_ come!"

"What poor fellow--and where is he?" asked the old man, in bewilderment.

"The stage-driver--and he's lying near the old Mission, with his leg broken. The horses shied in the storm and overturned the stage, and I was the only passenger, and I crept out of it, and the driver couldn't move any more, and told me to unhitch the horses and come this way for help, and--oh! _do_ come now!" She ended her harangue, delivered with flying breath and little attention to rhetoric or inter-punctuation.

"And you came those nine miles all alone, gal?" asked the old man.

"Oh, I think I must have come a hundred miles," she replied, with a wild look at the faces on the porch and in the open doorway; "and it is so cold!" She drew the dripping garments closer about her, while father and son consulted together, with their eyes only, for a brief moment. Then the old man said she must be taken in, and they must get the wagon ready, and waken Pedro and Martin.

Without a word Frank gave a lantern to Johnny, lifted the girl from the horse and carried her into the room, brushing the drenched hair back from her face, when he sat her down, as he would have done a child's. But she pleaded excitedly, "Indeed I cannot stay--let me go back, and you can follow."

"So you shall go back, my gal," said Mr. Sutton, "as soon as the wagon is ready. See how she's shivering, mother; get her some hot tea, and give her your fur sack--for she'll go back with us or die."

"My fur sack?" repeated the old lady, incredulously; "my best sack--out in this rain!"

"Best sack be ----," he shouted, angrily; "I'll throw it in the fire in a minute!" And the best sack quickly made its appearance, in spite of the threat of speedy cremation.

The tea was brought by Johnny, hastily drank, and then the girl repeated her wish to move on. Frank's own cloak was thrown over "the best fur sack"--not, I fear, so much from a desire to save this garment as from the wish to keep the shrinking form in it from shivering so painfully.

It was New-Year's day--though the light had not yet dawned before the sufferer was comfortably lodged at the Yedral Ranch, and Hetty, as well as the Sutton family, slept later into the morning than usual. The sun had risen as serenely cloudless as though no storm had passed through the land but yesternight; and Father Sutton, thinking he was the first one up, was surprised to encounter Hetty with Johnny, her new-found cavalier. He hailed her in his unceremonious fashion: "I'm glad to see you up bright and early, gal--make a good farmer's wife some day. Did you come down this way to live on a ranch?"

"No, sir; I came to teach school. Your name is among those of the gentlemen who engaged me."

"The ----! Are you the new school-marm? Then you're Miss----"

"Hetty Dunlap is my name."

He held out both hands. "A happy New-Year to ye, Hetty Dunlap--and happy it'll be for all of us, I'm thinking; for a gal that's got so much pluck as you is sure to know something about teachin' school. Here, Johnny, how d'ye like your teacher?"

Now, Johnny had drawn back with some slight manifestation of disfavor when Hetty's true character came to light. But she laid her hand on his shoulder in her shy yet frank manner, and said quickly:

"I had already selected Johnny as a sort of assistant disciplinarian. I am so little that I shall want some one who is tall and strong to give me countenance;" which at once restored the harmony between them. They went in to breakfast together, during which meal it was decided by Father Sutton that Hetty was to live in his family, though "the Price's" was the place where, until now, the teachers had made their home, being nearest to the school.

"But then," said the old man, "if the Rancho Yedral can't afford a mustang for such a brave little rider every day of the year, then I'll give it up;" and he slapped his hat on and left the house.

"Yes," Frank commented rather timidly, "you are brave--a perfect heroine. And yet you are so very small." She was standing in just the spot where he had brushed the hair out of her face last night, and perhaps his words were an apology.

"True," she assented, "I am small; not much taller than my sister's oldest girl, and she is only twelve."

"You have a sister?"

"Yes, in the city; and she has six children." Her voice was raised a little, her nut-brown eyes looked into his with an unconscious appeal for sympathy, and her delicate nostrils quivered as in terror--which the bare recollection of the little heathens seemed to inspire her with.

"And did you live at her house?--have you neither father nor mother living?"

"Neither. How happy you must be--you have so kind a father and so good a mother--"

The "good mother" came in just then, shaking her best sack vigorously, and lamenting, in pointed words, the "ruination" of this expensive fur robe--calling a painful blush to Hetty's cheek as well as Frank's. The young man tried vainly to make it appear a pleasant joke. "Indeed, mother, you ought to look upon that piece of fur as a handsome New-Year's gift--you have my promise of a new fur sack as soon as I go to the city. And isn't my word good for a fur sack?" he asked, laughingly.

"Yes," said the good mother. "I know your extravagance well enough; but, to my notion, you can afford such things better after you've married Lolita, than before."

Frank bit his lips angrily, and turned away--but not before Hetty had seen the hot red that flushed his cheek.

Toward noon there was loud rejoicing on the porch, and Hetty, looking from her window, saw Mrs. Sutton welcoming a tall, dark-eyed girl of about twenty, whose companion--her brother, to all appearance--seemed several years her senior.

This girl, Lolita Selden, the daughter of an American father and a wealthy Spanish mother, was a fair specimen of the large class represented by her in California. Generous and impulsive, as all her Spanish half-sisters are, neither her piecemeal education, nor the foolish indulgence of the mother, had succeeded in making anything of her but an impetuous, though really kind-hearted woman. In the brother's darker, heavier face, there was less of candor and sympathy, and his figure--though he had all the grace and dignity of the Spaniard--was lacking in height and the breadth of shoulder that made Frank Sutton look a giant beside him.

It was some time before our heroine was introduced to the pair; not, indeed, till dinner was on the table, though Frank had repeatedly hinted to his mother that Hetty might not feel at liberty to make her appearance among them without being formally invited--to which he received the cheering response that "he was always botherin'."

When they met, it was hard to say whether Hetty was more charmed with Lolita's stately presence and simple kindness, or Lolita with Hetty's heroism. The brother, too, seemed lost in admiration of Hetty's heroic conduct or Hetty's pretty face--a fact which escaped neither Frank nor his mother, for she commented on it days afterward. "What a chance it would be for a poor girl like this 'ere one, if she could make a ketch of young Selden, and he married her!"

"What! that black-faced Spaniard?" but Frank's generous heart reproached him even while he spoke, and his mother took advantage of his penitence and charged him with a message to Lolita, that needed to be delivered the same day. When, therefore, after school-hours, Frank returned bringing with him both Hetty and Lolita--the latter was visiting her new friend at the school-house--the mother was well pleased, and spoke more kindly than she had yet spoken to the new teacher.

"Old man" Sutton, too, had many a pleasant word for both young girls; and altogether Hetty soon realized that home could be home away from her sister's house and the six plagues it held.

Spring came into the land, dressing in glossier green the grayish limbs of the white-oak in the valley, opening with balmy breath the blossoms of the buckeye by the stream, and covering with gayest flowers the plain and the hillside; while in some shady nook the laurel stood, shaking its evergreen leaves in daily wonderment at the dress changes and the youthful air all nature had put on. The wild rose creeping over the veranda of the Yedral Ranch shed its perfume through the house, and cast its bright sheen upon the very roof-tree, a passion-vine, in sombre contrast, rearing its symbolic blossom cheek to cheek with the rosy flower-face of the gay child of Castile.

Long since had the stage-driver left the Yedral Ranch, grateful for kind treatment received, his head and heart full of a firm conviction on two points: The first, that there was just one man good enough to be Hetty Dunlap's husband, and that that man was Frank Sutton: the second, that there was only one woman good enough to be Frank's wife, and she Hetty Dunlap.

He had resumed his old post, and many a pleasant word and startling bit of news did he call out to Hetty and her friends when they were down by the "big gate," as he drove by very slowly, so as to enjoy conversation as long as possible. George was a deal pleasanter when Hetty was there by herself, or at least without Lolita; and once, when, by chance, Hetty and Frank were there alone together, he called down, regardless of the staring passengers in the coach, "That's the way I like to see things; two's good company, and three's none. Don't see what you want to be luggin' that Spanish gal round with you for, Frank; she ain't none o' your'n nohow, and never will be, nuther."

Before the flush had died on her face, Hetty found her arm drawn through Frank's, and as they slowly bent their steps homeward, the mind of each seemed absorbed in the contemplation of some intricate puzzle, on the solving of which depended their whole future welfare. Then Frank raised his merry, twinkling eyes and charged her with being hopelessly enamored of George, the stage-driver, defying her to say that she had not just then been thinking of him, as he knew by her absent looks.

"I--I was only looking down that way, and thinking there is no lovelier spot on earth than Yedral Ranch." She stopped abruptly; what she was saying now to cover her confusion, she had said a few days ago, from the fulness of her heart, to Lolita, strolling along this same road; and the Spanish girl had answered impulsively, "Yes; and you shall always make your home here when I--" Then she had stopped, crimson in the face, and Hetty had not urged her to finish the sentence.

But Frank, with quickly altered tone, asked softly, "Do you like it so well, Hetty--really and truly? And have you not wanted often to go back to the city?"

"To the city?" she repeated, with a little shiver; "no--no!"

The call of a partridge from behind the nearest _manzanita_ bush warned them that young Johnny was there, and the next moment he appeared before them--his mother's ambassador to Hetty. "Would she be kind enough just for once to help with the cake? His mother had burnt her right hand, and she could not stir the batter with her left."

"And could not you have done it 'just for once' as well?" asked Frank, impatiently; at which question Johnny opened his eyes wide.

"She didn't ask me," he said; and then they all went silently to the house.

To do Mrs. Sutton justice, she was loud in her praises of Hetty's obliging disposition, and Hetty's proficiency in cake-baking, that evening at tea; and particularly to Julian Selden, who was there with his sister, did she untiringly sing Hetty's perfections. This seemed to have the effect of making the young Spaniard bolder and more desirous of pushing his suit, for the very next evening they came home from Hetty's school _a partie carrée_--Lolita, her brother, Hetty and Frank.

The facts of the case were that, following a suggestion of Frank's, Johnny, on Julian's second attempt to escort Hetty home, had kept close by her side during the whole ride, much more to Hetty's delight than Julian's. In consequence, Julian had been wise enough to bring Lolita with him; and Frank, though chagrined, was better pleased to find them both at Hetty's school than one alone.

Through the spring and far into the summer they met almost daily in this way; and sometimes, though Mother Sutton's invitations to Lolita and her brother to "come every day--every day," were loud and vociferous, the brother and sister would return to their own home after a protracted ride, leaving Hetty and Frank to find their way back to Yedral Ranch alone. Hetty thought she could see a cloud on Mrs. Sutton's brow whenever this happened; and dear as those rides were to her, she avoided them whenever she could. Unhappily (Frank did not consider it so), while out alone together one day, Hetty's saddle-girth broke, and though she sprang quickly to the ground, Frank's nerves were so unstrung, he declared, that he could not at once repair the damage, but had to convince himself, by slow degrees, that she really was not hurt or frightened. Consequently, it was later than usual when they reached home; and Mother Sutton, darting a quick look to see that the door had closed behind Frank, who had explained the cause of delay, muttered something about "cunning minxes, who had neither gratitude nor shame," and then tramped out of the room, leaving Hetty with cheeks burning and eyes strangely bright under the tears rising in them.

Next morning she made much ado over a sprained ankle, which was not so painful as to keep her at home, but just bad enough to cause her to ride slowly to school with Johnny and home again before school-hours were fairly over. I fear that she was a "designing minx," for, if she managed, by keeping her room to evade Frank's questioning glance and Mother Sutton's hostile looks, she managed no less to escape an honor which, according to this good lady's statement, corroborated by Lolita's more than usual tenderness, Julian Selden had meant to confer upon her. But she could not stay in her room forever; and Father Sutton dragged her out of it one day, challenging her to tell the truth ("and shame the devil"), by acknowledging that something had hurt her beside the sprained ankle. Had Mrs. Sutton shown no spite openly against "the gal" before, it broke out now, in little sharp speeches against women "tryin' to work on the sympathy of foolish young men. Her boys, she knew, couldn't never be ketched that way by no white-faced--"

"Will yer be still now!" thundered the old man, taking the pipe from between his lips and pointing with it to Hetty, who at this moment was really the white-faced thing the old lady had meant to call her.

"Johnny," said Hetty, next morning, on their way to school, "I think--I'll go home when vacation begins, and--"

"Why, what d'you mean?" asked the boy, startled out of all proper respect.

"Just what I say;" and she enumerated her reasons for considering it her duty to return to her lonely sister and the six pining children; and it was a matter of doubt whether Johnny's lips quivered more during the recital, or Hetty's. But when the school-house was reached, Johnny was a man again; and if he did blubber out loud when he told his elder brother of it, late in the evening, down by the big gate, nobody but Frank heard him, and _his_ lips were rather white when next he spoke.

"You asked me for that Mexican saddle of mine some time ago, Johnny. You are welcome to it."

"I don't want no Mexican saddle," replied Johnny, in a surly tone, and without grammar; but looking into his brother's face, he said, "Thank you, Frank. I'd say you're 'bully,' only Hetty said it wasn't a nice word."

In the course of the week Father Sutton, in his character as such, and as school director, was made acquainted with Hetty's intention. In both characters he protested at first, but yielded at last. He walked out with "the gal" one evening, as though to take her over the ranch for the last time, and then artfully dodged away when Frank--by the merest accident--came to join them. Left alone with this young man, Hetty trembled, as she had learned to tremble under his mother's scowling looks and half-spoken sentences. He spoke quietly, at first, of her going away; but her very quietness seemed after a while to set him all on fire.

"Hetty," he cried, "are you then so anxious to go--so unwilling to stay, even for a day, after the school closes? Is there nothing--is there no one here you regret to leave behind you?"

Poor little Hetty! How they had praised her for her heroism once. There was no praise due her then, as she had protested again and again. Now she was the heroine, when she answered, though with averted face and smothered voice, "Nothing--no one;" adding, quickly, "you have all been so kind to me that naturally I shall feel homesick for the Yedral Ranch, and shall be so glad to see any of you when you come to the city."

Frank had heard "the tears in her voice," and though he turned from her abruptly, it was not in anger, as she fancied.

"Father," he said, a day or two later, "I don't know but I'll take a run over the mountains, now harvesting is over, and there seems nothing particular for me to do."

"Please yourself and you'll please me, Frank," was the answer. "Got any money? You kin git it when you want it."

Then there was nothing more said about the journey, and Frank, making no further preparations, seemed to have forgotten all about it.

When Hetty was lifted into the little wagon that took herself and trunk to the big gate, she repeated her hope of sooner or later greeting the members of the Sutton family in San Francisco.

"Not soon, I'm afeard, Miss Hetty; me an' father and Johnny never goes to the city, and as for Frank--I reckon he'll want to git married first, and bring Lolita 'long with him."

Martin, who was driving, probably knew the meaning of the fire in the old man's eye, for he whipped up the horse and drove off, as though "fearing to miss the stage," as he explained at the turn of the road.

Altogether, George showed neither as much surprise nor pleasure as Hetty had faintly expected him to evince. When they reached the first town he came and stood by the open coach window, after the customary halt, drawing on his gloves first, and then pointing out, with great exactitude, where the old _adobe_ tavern had formerly stood, on the opposite side of the street.

During this interesting conversation, some tardy passengers came out of the hotel, with hasty steps, and mounted to the top of the stage with much hurried scrambling. Then George left Hetty's window, mounted his throne, and drove on.

We need not say how Hetty's heart sank with the sinking sun; and only when George came out of the station-house where they had taken supper, ready and equipped for the night's drive, did a light rise in her eyes.

"I thought you stopped at this station," she said, as he again leaned at her window, while the same hasty steps and confused scrambling on the top of the stage fell, half unconsciously, on her ear.

"Well--yes. As a general thing, I do. But me and Dick's changed off to-night, so't I can see you into the cars to-morrow morning."

"How tired you will be," she remonstrated.

"Well--mebbe so. Howsomever, Miss Hetty, you didn't stop to think whether you'd be tired when you started out to find help for me, last New-Year's eve." And Hetty blushed, as she always did, when her heroism was spoken of.

George's eyes did look heavy the next morning; but he still kept the lines, lounging up to the coach-window about the time the stage was ready to start, and always pointing out something of interest on these occasions. Once, indeed, when she fancied that her ear caught the sound of a familiar footfall on the porch of the tavern they were about to leave, he was so anxious she should see the owl just vanishing into the squirrel-hole, on the opposite side of the road, that he laid his hand on her arm to insure her quick attention, just as she was about to turn her head back in the direction of the porch. Then came the usual climbing and scrambling overhead, and directly George mounted, too, and drove on.

The shrill whistle of the locomotive seemed to cut right through Hetty's heart; and the loneliness she had never felt away down the country, now suddenly took possession of the girl's soul. No one could have been more attentive than George; the best seat in the cars was picked out for her; the daily papers laid beside her, and then--then she was left alone. George only, of all her down-country friends, had made the unconditional promise to visit her in San Francisco. She was thinking of this after he had left her, and she sat watching the cars filling with passengers for the city--travellers gathered together here from watering-place and pleasure-resort, from dairy-ranch and cattle-range. Was there another being among these all as lonely as she? And she turned her face to the window, and looked steadily over toward the hills, yellow and parched now, in the late summer--so fresh and green from the winter's rains when she had last seen them. It looked as if her life, too, were in the "sere and yellow;" the heavy, throbbing pain that was in her heart and rising to her throat--would it ever give place again to the bright fancies she had indulged in when coming this way--oh! how many weeks ago? She tried to count; but counting the weeks brought the events of each in turn before her, and she desisted; she must keep a calm face and a clear eye.

She heard the cry of the fruit-venders outside, and saw their baskets laden with fruits, tempting and delicious, raised to the car-windows, where passengers had signified their wish to purchase. Mechanically, her eyes followed the movements of the young man in front of her. Grapes, with the dew still on them; apples, with one red cheek, and peaches with two; plums, larger than either, and far more luscious, were transferred from the heavy basket into the lap of the lady beside him--evidently his new-made wife--who said, "Thanks, dear," with such a happy, grateful smile, that Hetty grew quite envious. She tried to think it was of the fruit; but pending the decision she laid her head on the back of the seat in front of her, and before she thought of what she was doing, the tears were trickling down her cheeks. Then her shoulders began to jerk quite ridiculously, and she was ready to die of shame, when a light hand was laid on them, and her name was spoken.

"Hetty!" the voice said again; but she did not raise her head, only answering, "Yes," as she would have done in a dream.

"Hetty!" once more, "see what I have brought you." Apples, and peaches, and plums--all these things were showered into her lap, and when she raised her head, she looked at them steadily a moment, and then said, with a long breath, "Oh, Frank!" before she turned to where he sat. As she stretched out both hands to meet his, the fruit, now forgotten, fell plump, plump, to the floor, and rolled all over the cars; and when the train moved slowly away from the depot a little later, Hetty, looking up at the lady in front of her, said to herself, that she envied her no longer--neither the apples nor--. She made a full stop here; perhaps because of George's sudden appearance, and the hilarity in which he and Frank indulged.

"Oh, Miss Hetty!" he laughed; "I couldn't make you see that owl this morning, could I?"

"No; but I think I must have been as blind as an owl myself, not to have seen whom you were hiding," she answered, taking the contagion.

Again shrieked the locomotive, but not with the "heart-rending" cry of a while ago; and George, bringing their hands quickly together in his parting clasp, sprang from the cars and left Frank and Hetty there.

Loud was the anger of good Mrs. Sutton on discovering that Frank had accompanied Hetty to San Francisco. In vain Father Sutton disclaimed all fore-knowledge of the young man's intention, and asserted that Frank had never mentioned a tour to the city. Mrs. Sutton said she knew the old man was in league with him. At the end of a week Frank returned without so much as bringing the fur sack as a peace-offering. In course of time he reconciled his mother to some extent by again carrying messages to Lolita, and sometimes bringing Lolita herself in return, just as in Hetty's time.

Autumn came; and still, to the determined schemer's dissatisfaction, Frank had not yet secured the prize she so coveted for him. The season brought with it many cares as well as pleasures to the ranchero. At a _rodeo_, looked upon by the young people generally as a pleasant entertainment, Frank was the admired of many eyes, as his lasso unfailingly singled out the animal "in demand," among the dense herds moving in a circle. The horse he rode was full of fire, and more impetuous, if possible, than his rider; and Lolita, who was among the guests at the Yedral Ranch, had never thought Frank so handsome and so well worth winning before.

To Hetty the white walls and the spacious rooms of the grammar-school, to which she had returned, seemed a prison and a wilderness in one. Her sister's house, with the six young Tartars, was more like Bedlam than ever; but Hetty had grown older and firmer, and she declared, to her sister's amazement, that unless she could withdraw herself from the mob unmolested, at her option, she should seek a home with more congenial associates. The sister opened her eyes wide, as if only now discovering that Hetty was full-grown; and she assented silently.

First, after her return, letters from Frank lighted up her life at intervals. But when the early rains of autumn, after an Indian summer full of sunny days and glorious memories of vanished springs, turned to the settled melancholy of "a wet winter," these letters ceased, leaving in Hetty's existence a blank that nothing else could fill. Christmas came, with its vacations and merry-makings, and beside the dull, deep pain in Hetty's heart, there was still the unselfish wish to give others pleasure, though she herself could never again feel that glad emotion. From morn to night her deft hands flew, sewing, stitching, sketching--busy always, yet never for herself.

It was very near Christmas now--so near that Hetty, eager to have all things ready for the joyous eve, had sat down to her work without the usual care for neat appearance. Perhaps it was because her curls were a little neglected, and her collar was not pinned on with the usual precision, that her face looked worn this morning; her eyes were languid, and the flush on her cheeks could not cover the deficiency of flesh which became painfully visible.

Thus she sat, stitching, ever stitching. The silent parlor, with its covered furniture and light carpeting, seemed the right place for ghosts to flit through, and peer, mayhap, with dull, glazed eyes into the fire, as Hetty caught herself just now. But she drove back the ghosts--are they not always our own memories, woven out of unfulfilled wishes, useless regrets, and profitless remorse?--and hastily resumed her work. The ringing of the door-bell seemed so much the doing of one of these ghosts, that she paid no attention to it, but kept on stitching, quietly stitching. Directly the parlor-door was thrown open, and the Mongolian servitor, looking with calm indifference on the little streams of muddy water oozing at every step from the boots of the new-comer, returned to the kitchen, heedless, to all appearances, of the scream with which Hetty flew to meet the stranger.

"George!" she cried, "oh! George!" and she clasped the damp arm of the man, gotten up on the grizzly-bear pattern, as though there could be no pleasure greater than this in all the world.

Though a man, George was wise enough to know that he was not indebted to his personal attractions for this affectionate greeting; but taking both her hands in his, he said, "Yes, Miss Hetty, I've come to tell you all about it."

At the fall _rodeo_ on the Yedral Ranch, Frank's horse had fallen, covering its rider with its weighty body. He recovered from a death-like swoon with wandering mind; and the spine being injured, according to the doctor's statement, it seemed doubtful that he would ever leave his bed, except as imbecile or cripple. Reason returning, Frank felt that his friends' fears of his remaining a cripple were not without foundation, and a hopeless gloom settled on his spirit. Many a time, when George had made "fast time" and spent the half-hour gained at Frank's bed, did Hetty's name rise to his lips; but it was never pronounced. Only this: looking up out of deep sunken eyes, one day, quite recently, Frank had said to him, "George, I shall get well, and not be a cripple. If only--" "It's all right," had been George's answer; and he had hurried from the house as though charged with the most urgent commission.

After an hour's conversation, Hetty had only one question to ask. Looking up with shy eagerness, she almost said below her breath, "And Lolita?"

For answer, George took the flushed face between his hands. "You've grown mighty thin, Miss Hetty," he simply said. Then he continued, with great _nonchalance_, "Lolita got stuck after the new schoolmaster--they've got a man in your place. But come, Miss Hetty, you 'peared to me last New-Year's eve like an angel, in my distress; suppose you do as much now for Frank Sutton. We can get down there on New-Year's eve, and give you lots of time to spend Christmas here first. What d'ye say?"

No lover could have pleaded more earnestly. All her objections were overruled, and when at last she said, almost breathlessly, "Oh, but his _mother_, George!" he answered, with all his honest heart: "It's my firm belief, Miss Hetty, that you were cut out for a real hero-ine; and a hero-ine you've got to be to the end of the chapter--which I don't say but the last trial of your hero-ism will be greater than the first."

And sure enough, on New-Year's eve, came the rumbling of wheels and the tramp of horses' hoofs close up to the veranda of the ranch-house on the Yedral. None of the inmates seemed startled, though none had expected company. Without a word Father Sutton sprang to the door--alas! that the old man was swifter of foot now than the young giant of a year ago--caught the lithe figure that sprang from the stage in his arms and set her down, as Frank had done, in the middle of the room. But she was not cold, dripping wet now, only blinded by the light one moment, and the next on her knees by the lounge, where a pale, haggard man lay stretched. He half raised himself to catch her in his arms, and for a wonder did not sink back with the moan that had become so painful to his father's ears. For once Hetty had cast aside all timidity, and she looked up brightly into Father Sutton's face, while one arm circled Frank's neck and the other hand lay unresistingly in his.

"Hey!" shouted the old man; "now we know whose gal you are; I used to call you mine once. Mother, get some supper; I reckon she is wellnigh starved and perished with the cold. Lively, Johnny! bring some more wood; Hetty'll stay for good, and you'll get time enough to hang 'round the gal to-morrow."

And what a bright to-morrow it was! Such a New-Year's day had never dawned on Yedral Ranch before. Every one seemed to have found a treasure, even to Mrs. Sutton. Together with Hetty's trunk had come a large, promising-looking box, and when Father Sutton presented this to his better-half, she almost screamed--

"Oh, I know! it's my new fur sack!"

_A WOMAN'S TREACHERY._

"How much you resemble Mrs. Arnold!" exclaimed the Doctor's wife, after an hour's acquaintance, the day we reached Fort ----. It was not the first time I had heard of my resemblance to this, to me, unknown lady remarked on. A portion of the regiment of colored troops to which Doctor Kline belonged, and which we met on their way in to the States, as we were coming out, had been camped near us one night; and a colored laundress, who had good-naturedly come over to our tent to take the place of my girl, who was sick, had broken into the same exclamation on first beholding me. Captain Arnold belonged to the same regiment, and was expecting, like all the volunteers then in the Territory, to be ordered home and mustered out of service, as soon as the body of regular troops, to which my husband belonged, could be assigned their respective posts. Their expectations were not to be realized for some time yet; and when I left the Territory, a year later, a part of these troops were still on the frontier.

Fort ---- was not our destination; to reach it, we should be obliged to pass through, and stop for a day or two at, the very post of which Captain Arnold had command--which would afford me excellent and ample opportunity for judging of the asserted likeness between this lady and myself. I must explain why we were, in a measure, compelled to stop at Fort Desolation (we will call it so). It was located in the midst of a desert--the most desolate and inhospitable that can be imagined--in the heart of an Indian country, and just so far removed from the direct route across the desert as to make it impracticable to turn in there with a command, or large number of soldiers; for which reason, troops crossing here always carried water-barrels filled with them. A small party, however, such as ours was then, could not with any safety camp out the one night they must, despite the best ambulance-mules, pass on the desert.

With most pardonable curiosity, I endeavored to learn something more of the woman who was so much like me in appearance; and I began straightway to question Mrs. Kline about her. The impression of a frank, open character, which this lady had made on me at first, vanished at once when she found that Mrs. Arnold was to be made the subject of conversation between us.

"Is she pretty?"

"Yes--quite so." Ahem! and looked like me. But my mother's saying, that there might be a striking resemblance between a very handsome and a very plain person, presented itself to my memory like an uninvited guest, and I concluded not to fall to imagining vain things on so slight a support.

"What kind of a man is Captain Arnold?"

"The most good-natured man in the world."

"Oh!" Something in the manner of her saying this in praise of Captain Arnold made me think she wanted to say nothing further; so I stopped questioning.

We left the Doctor and his wife early the next morning, and reached Fort Desolation at night-fall. The orderly had preceded us a short distance, and, when the ambulance stopped at the Captain's quarters, Mrs. Arnold appeared on the threshold, holding a lantern in her hand. She raised it, to let the light fall into the ambulance; and as the rays fell on her own face, I could see that she looked like--a sister I had. The Captain was absent, inspecting the picket-posts he had established along the river, and would return by morning, Mrs. Arnold said; and she busied herself with me in a pleasant, pretty manner. She could not resemble me in height or figure, I said to myself, for she was smaller and more delicately made; nor had any one in our family such deep-blue eyes, save mother--we children had to content ourselves with gray ones.

The night outside was dark and chilly; but in the Captain's house there were light and warmth, and it was bright with the fires that burned in the fireplaces of the different rooms--all opening one into the other. I was forcibly struck with the difference between the quarters at Fort ---- and Mrs. Arnold's home at Fort Desolation. Comforts (luxuries, in this country) of all kinds made it attractive: bright carpets were on the floors here; while at the Doctor's quarters at Fort ----, one was always reminded of cold feet and centipedes, when looking at the naked _adobe_ floors. Embroidered covers were spread on the tables and white coverlets on the beds; while at the Doctor's all these things were made hideous by hospital-linen and gray blankets. Easy-chairs and lounges, manufactured from flour-barrels, saw-bucks, and candle-boxes, were made gorgeous and comfortable with red calico and sheep's-wool; but the crowning glory of parlor, bed-room, and sitting-room was a dazzling toilet-set of china--gilt-edged, and sprinkled with delicate bouquets of moss-roses and foliage.

"Where _did_ you get it?" I asked, in astonishment--_not_ envy.

"Isn't it pretty?" she asked, triumphantly. "The Captain's quartermaster, Lieutenant Rockdale, brought it from Santa Fé for me, and paid, a mint of money for it, no doubt."

At the supper-table I saw Lieutenant Rockdale, who commanded the post in the Captain's absence, being the only officer there besides the Captain; and, as he messed with them altogether, I need not say that the table was well supplied with all the delicacies that New York and Baltimore send out to less highly favored portions of the universe, in tin cans. Lieutenant Rockdale was a handsome man--a trifle effeminate, perhaps, with languishing, brown eyes, and a soft voice. He seemed delighted with our visit, and took my husband off to his own quarters, while Mrs. Arnold and I looked over pictures of her friends, over albums, and at all the hundred little curiosities which she had accumulated while in the Territory. The cares of the household seemed to sit very lightly on her; a negro woman, Constantia, and a mulatto boy, of twelve or thirteen, sharing the labor between them. The boy seemed to be a favorite with Mrs. Arnold, though she tantalized and tormented him, as I afterwards found she tormented and tantalized every living creature over which she had the power.

I had noticed, while Constantia and Fred were clearing off the table, that she had cut him a slice from a very choice cake, toward which the child had cast longing looks. Placing it carefully on a plate, when he had to leave it for a moment to do something his mistress had bidden him, in the twinkling of an eye she had hidden it; and when the boy missed it, she expressed her regret at his carelessness, and artfully led his suspicions toward Constantia. Hearing him whimpering and sniffling as he went back and forth between dining-room and kitchen, his childish distress at losing the cake seemed to afford her the same amusement that a stage-play would, and she laughed till the tears rolled down her cheeks. Later, he was summoned to replenish the fire; and, knowing the little darkey's aversion for going out of the house bare-headed (he had an idea that his cap could prevent the Indian arrows from penetrating his skull), she hid the cap he had left in the adjoining room, and then laughed immoderately at his terror on leaving the house without it. The next morning, she led me out to the stables to show me her horse--a magnificent, black animal, wild-eyed, with a restless, fretful air. Crossing the space in front of the house, she called to a soldier with sergeant-chevrons on his arms--a man with just enough of negro blood in his veins to stamp him with the curse of his race.

"Harry!" she called to him, "Harry, come hold Black for me; I want to give him a piece of sugar." She opened her hand to let him see the pieces, and he touched his cap and followed us. He loosened the halter and led the horse up to us, but the animal started back when he saw Mrs. Arnold, and would not let her approach him. Harry patted his neck and soothed him, and Mrs. Arnold holding the sugar up to his view, the horse came to take it from her hand; but she quickly clutched his lip with her fingers, and blew into his face till the horse reared and plunged so that Harry could hold him no longer. Laughing like an imp, she called to Harry:

"Get on him and hold him, if you cannot manage him in that way: get on him anyhow, and let Mrs. ---- see him dance."

The mulatto's flashing black eyes were bent on her with a singularly reproachful look; but the next moment he was on the horse's back, the horse snorting and jumping in a perfectly frantic manner.

When Mrs. Arnold had sufficiently recovered from her merriment, she explained that the horse had not been ridden for a month; the last time she had ridden him he had thrown her--she had pricked him with a pin to urge him on faster.

About noon the Captain arrived; and I found him, as Mrs. Kline had described, "the most good-natured man in the world," and, to all appearances, loving his wife with the whole of his big heart. He was big in stature, too, with broad shoulders, pleasant face, and cheerful, ringing voice. The shaggy dog, who had slunk away from Mrs. Arnold, came leaping up on his master when he saw him; the horse he had ridden rubbed his nose against his master's shoulder before turning to go into his stable, and Constantia and Fred beamed on him with their white teeth and laughing eyes from the kitchen-door. Later in the afternoon, he asked what I thought of his quarters, and told me how hard his colored soldiers had worked to build the really pretty _adobe_ house in strict accordance with his wishes and directions. But I could not quite decide whether he was more proud of the house or of the affection his men all had for him. Then he told me the story of almost every piece of furniture in the house; and, moving from room to room, we came to where their bed stood. Resting beside it was his carbine, which the orderly had brought in. Taking it in his hand to examine it, he pointed it at his wife's head with the air of a brigand, and uttered, in unearthly tones:

"Your money, or your life!"

With a quick, cat-like spring, she was by the bed, had thrust her hands under the pillow, and the next instant was holding two Derringers close to his breast. Throwing back her head, like a heroine in velvet trousers on the stage, she returned, in the same strain:

"I can play a hand at that game, too, and go you one better!"

She laughed as she said it--the laugh that she laughed with her white teeth clenched--but there was a "glint" in her eye that I had never seen in a blue eye before.

When once more on the way, my husband asked me how I liked Mrs. Arnold. "Very well," said I; "but--," and I did not hesitate to tell him of the peculiarities I had noticed about her. He himself was charmed with her sprightliness, so he only responded with, "Pshaw! woman!" after which I maintained an offended (he said, offensive) silence on the subject.

Not quite four months later, my husband was recalled to Santa Fé, and we again crossed the desert, with only three men as escort. I had heard nothing from either Mrs. Arnold or the Captain in all this time, for our post was farther out than theirs; indeed, so far out that nothing belonging to the same military department passed by that way. It was midsummer, and the dreary hills shutting in Fort Desolation, and running down toward the river some distance back of the place, were baked hard and black in the sun; the little stream that had meandered along through the low inclosure of the fort in winter time was now a mere bed of slime, and the plateaux, which had been levelled for the purpose of erecting the Captain's house and the commissary buildings on them, could not boast of a single spear of grass or any other sign of vegetation. The Captain's house lay on the highest of these plateaux; lower down, across the creek, were the quartermaster and commissary buildings (here, too, were Lieutenant Rockdale's quarters); and to the left, on the other side of the men's quarters, was the guard-house--part _jacal_, part tent-cloth.

How _could_ any one live here and be happy? Black and bald the earth, as far as the eye could reach; black and dingy the tents and the huts that strewed the flat; murky and dark the ridge of fog that rose on the unseen river; murky and silent the clefts in the rocks where the sun left darkness forever.

It might have been the fading light of the waning day that cast the peculiarly sombre shadow on the Captain's house as we drew up to it; but I thought the same shadow must have fallen on the Captain's face, when he appeared in the door to greet us. Presently Mrs. Arnold fluttered up in white muslin and blue ribbons; and both did their best to make us comfortable. How my husband felt, I don't know; but they did not succeed in making me feel comfortable. Perhaps the absence of the bright fire made the rooms look so dark, even after the lights had been brought in--there was certainly a change. Supper was placed on the table, but I missed Constantia's round face in the dining-room. In answer to my question regarding her, I was told she had expressed so strong a desire to return to the States that she had been sent to Fort ----, there to await an opportunity to go in. Lieutenant Rockdale's absence I noticed also. He did not mess with them any more, I was informed.

My attention was attracted to a conversation between Captain Arnold and my husband. The guard-house, he told him, was at present occupied by two individuals who had made their appearance at Fort Desolation several days ago, and had tried to prevail on the Captain to sell them some of the government horses, and arms and ammunition, offering liberal payment, and promising secrecy. They were Americans; but as the number of American settlers, or white settlers, in this country is so small, it was easy for the Captain to determine that these were not of them, and their dress and general appearance led him to suspect that they belonged to that despicable class of white men who make common cause with the Indian, in order to rob and plunder, and, if need be, murder, those of their own race. Of course they had not made these proposals directly and openly to the Captain--at first representing themselves as members of a party of miners going to Pinos Altos; but they soon betrayed a familiarity with the country which only years of roaming through it could have given them. He had felt it his duty to arrest them at once, but had handcuffed them only to-day, and meant to send them, under strong escort, to Fort ----, where their regimental commander was stationed, as soon as some of the men from the picket-posts could be called in.

It was late when we arose from the supper-table, and the Captain and my husband left us, to go down to the guard-house, while Mrs. Arnold led me into the room where their bed stood. This room had but one window--of which window the Captain was very proud. It was a _French_ window, opening down to the ground. Throwing it open, Mrs. Arnold said:

"What a beautiful moon we have to-night; let us put out the candle and enjoy the moonshine"--with which she laughingly extinguished the light, and drew my chair to the window.

From where I sat I could just see the men's quarters and the guard-house, though it might have been difficult from there to see the window. We had not been seated long when I fancied I heard a noise, as though of some one stealthily approaching from somewhere in the direction to which my back was turned; then some one seemed to brush or scrape against the outside wall of the house, behind me. "What's that?" I asked in quick alarm. It had not remained a secret to Mrs. Arnold that I was an unmitigated coward; so she arose, and saying, "How timid you are!--it is the dog; but I will go and look," she stepped from the low window to the ground outside, and vanished around the corner of the house. Some time passed before she returned, and with a little shudder, sprang to light the candle.

"How chilly it is getting," she exclaimed; and then continued, "it was the dog we heard out there. Poor fellow; perhaps the cook had forgotten him, so I gave him his supper."

Rising from my seat to close the window on her remark about the cold, I stepped to the opposite side from where I had been sitting; and there, crossing the planks that lay over the slimy creek, and going towards the commissary buildings, was a man whose figure seemed familiar: I could not be mistaken--it was Lieutenant Rockdale. No doubt the man had a right to walk in any place he might choose; but, somehow, I could not help bringing him in connection with "the dog, poor fellow," for whom Mrs. Arnold had all at once felt such concern.