The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine
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“I'll not trouble you. It does not interest me.”
“But you will listen?” implored the other.
“I must ask to be excused.”
“Then you are a heartless, cruel woman,” flamed Frances. “I'm good—as good as you are.” The color patched her cheek and ebbed again. “I wouldn't treat a dog as you do me. Oh, cruel, cruel!”
The surprising extravagance of her protest, the despair that rang in the fresh young voice, caught the interest of the Mexican girl. Surely such a heart-broken cry did not consist with guilt. But the facts—when a young and pretty girl masquerades through the country in the garb of a boy with a handsome young man, not much room for doubt is left.
Frances was quick to see that the issue was reopened. “Oh, senorita, it isn't as you think. Do I look like—” She broke off to cover with her hands a face in which the pink and white warred with alternate success. “I ought not to have come. I ought never to have come. I see that now. But I didn't think he would know. You see, I had always passed as a boy when I wanted to.”
“A remarkably pretty one, child,” said Miss Carmencita, a smile dimpling her cheeks. “But how do you mean that you had passed as a boy?”
Frances explained, giving a rapid sketch of her life with the Hardmans during which she had appeared every night on the stage as a boy without the deception being suspected. She had cultivated the tricks and ways of boys, had tried to dress to carry out the impression, and had always succeeded until she had made the mistake of putting on a gypsy girl's dress a couple of days before.
Carmencita heard her out, but not as a judge. Very early in the story her doubts fled and she succumbed to the mothering instinct in her. She took the American girl in her arms and laughed and cried with her; for her imagination seized on the romance of the story and delighted in its fresh unconventionality. Since she had been born Carmencita's life had been ordered for her with precision by the laws of caste. Her environment wrapped her in so that she must follow a set and beaten path. It was, to be sure, a flower-strewn one, but often she impotently rebelled against its very orderliness. And here in her arms was a victim of that adventurous romance she had always longed so passionately to know. Was it wonder she found it in her heart to both love and envy the subject of it?
“And this young cavalier—the Senor Bucky, is it you call him?—surely you love him, my dear.”
“Oh, senorita!” The blushing face was buried on her new friend's shoulder. “You don't know how good he is.”
“Then tell me,” smiled the other. “And call me Carmencita.”
“He is so brave, and patient, and good. I know there was never a man like him.”
Miss Carmencita thought of one and demurred silently. “I'm sure this paragon of lovers is at least part of what you say. Does he love you? But I am sure he couldn't help it.”
“Sometimes I think he does, but once—” Frances broke off to ask, in a pink flame: “How does a lover act?”
Miss Carmencita's laughter rippled up. “Gracious me, have you never had one before.”
“Never.”
“Well, he should make verses to you and pretty speeches. He should sing serenades about undying love under your window. Bonbons should bombard you, roses make your rooms a bower. He should be ardent as Romeo, devoted as a knight of old. These be the signs of a true love,” she laughed.
Frances' face fell. If these were the tokens of true love, her ranger was none. For not one of the symptoms could fairly be said to fit him. Perhaps, after all, she had given him what he did not want.
“Must he do all that? Must he make verses?” she asked blankly, not being able to associate Bucky with poetasting.
“He must,” teased her tormentor, running a saucy eye over her boyish garb. “And why not with so fair a Rosalind for a subject?” She broke off to quote in her pretty, uncertain English, acquired at a convent in the United States, where she had attended school:
“From the east to western Ind,
No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures, fairest lin'd,
Are but black to Rosalind.
Let no face be kept in mind
But the fair of Rosalind.”
“So your Shakespeare has it, does he not?” she asked, reverting again to the Spanish language, in which they had been talking. But swift on the heels of her raillery came repentance. She caught the dispirited girl to her embrace laughingly. “No, no, child! Nonsense ripples from my tongue. These follies are but for a carpet lover. You shall tell me more of your Senor Bucky and I shall make no sport of it.”
When Bucky returned at the expiration of the time he had set himself, he found them with their arms twined about each other's waists, whispering the confidences that every girl on the threshold of womanhood has to tell her dearest friend.
“I reckon you like my pardner better than you do me,” smiled Bucky to Miss Carmencita.
“A great deal better, sir, but then I know him better.”
Bucky's eyes rested for a moment almost tenderly on Frances. “I reckon he is better worth knowing,” he said.
“Indeed! And you so brave, and patient, and good?” she mocked.
“Oh! Am I all that?” asked Bucky easily.
“So I have been given to understand.”
Out of the corner of his eye O'Connor caught the embarrassed, reproachful look that Frances gave her audacious friend, and he found it easy to fit quotation marks round the admirable qualities that had just been ascribed to him. He guessed himself blushing a deux with his little friend, and also divined Miss Carmencita's roguish merriment at their confusion.
“I AM all those things you mentioned and a heap more you forgot to say,” claimed the ranger boldly, to relieve the situation. “Only I didn't know for sure that folks had found it out. My mind's a heap easier to know I'm being appreciated proper at last.”
Under her long, dark lashes Miss Carmencita looked at him in gentle derision. “I'm of opinion, sir, that you get all the appreciation that is good for you.”
Bucky carried the war into the enemy's country. “Which same, I expect, might be said of Chihuahua's most beautiful belle. And, talking of Senor Valdez reminds me that I owe a duty to his father, who is confined here. I'll be saying good night ladies.”
“It's high time,” agreed Miss Megales. “Talking of Senor Valdez, indeed!”
“Good night, Curly said.”
“Good night, Bucky.”
To which, in mocking travesty, added, in English, Miss Carmencita, who seemed to have an acute attack of Shakespeare:
“Good night, good night; parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night till It be morrow.”
Chapter 16.
Juan Valdez Scores
The first thing Bucky did after leaving the two young women was to go down in person with one of the guards to the cell of David Henderson. The occupant of the cell was asleep, but he woke up when the two men entered.
“Who is it?” he demanded.
“Webb Mackenzie's man come to release you,” answered Bucky.