I heard a chorus of exclamations in Spanish: "Don Enrique! Patroncito! Ay, Dios Mio!" and the voice of old Juana, the white-haired woman who had nursed him as a child, sobbing aloud as she murmured over and over: "My child, my child—you have not forgotten old Juana, no?" He had an almost uncanny faculty for winning people's love.
We sat late that evening about the fire of oak logs in the living-room. Even to-day the scent of wood smoke brings back the picture of that long, dim-lit room, with its ceiling, so lofty that parts of it were lost in shadow, crossed by great roughhewn beams, blackened by half a century of smoke. The heads of antelope and deer and bighorn looked down from the walls, and close to the chimney my grandfather's silver-mounted spurs and old Sharp's rifle hung from a peg. The floor was covered with the skins of animals that he had shot: wildcat and mountain lion; grizzlies from San Gorgonio and Temescal; a moth-eaten buffalo-robe from the days when he had crossed the plains.
At last we rose to bid my mother and Marion good-night. Eager to hear what my uncle would have to say, I seated myself inconspicuously in a high-backed chair, and at that moment my father turned and noticed me. "Bedtime, Charlie," he said in his firm, kindly way. But Uncle Harry was of a different mind.
"Let him sit up for once," he put in, with a twinkle in his dark eyes; "I want to have a yarn with you, and I want Charlie to hear what I have to say. Don't complain if I keep you up the best part of the night, for this is my only chance. I am going to tell you a story, which will explain why I must leave to-morrow, and why I ask you to let Charlie go with me when I sail."
"Sailing to-morrow!" exclaimed my father, sitting up suddenly in his chair; "and you want to take Charlie away! That's a deuce of a thing to tell me the first time I've seen you for ten years! Why in the world must you rush away so fast?"
My uncle smiled a wry smile.
"It's hard to leave so soon," he said. "I wish I could spend a month or two with you, wandering over the old place and having a bit of sport. But I'm short of time. I've been in San Francisco, having a motor installed in the Tara, and the people at the shipyard were slow. I would have communicated with you, but I didn't want to make any rash promises, and it began to look as if I wouldn't have time to put in here at all. I'll be up next year for a real visit—on my word; but to-morrow I must sail; I'm going to take Charlie with me if I have to sit up all night persuading you."
Uncle Harry gave me one of his brilliant glances, tempered with a wink, and I felt my heart beat with excitement at the prospect opening suddenly before me. He rose to his feet, took a pair of long thin cigars from his case, offered one to my father, and sank back into his chair, cocking his heels high against the rough stone of the fireplace.
"Now," he went on, blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, "if you're not too sleepy, I'm going to tell you how I came to hear of the pearls in Iriatai Lagoon."