“It’s not so easy as you think.” He could see Forestier leave his tent, glance toward the ramada. Then he saw him join MacLean by the mesquits. This was no time to argue a petty question. It would do no harm to try. “Why, of course, anything you want, Mrs. Hardin.” And, remembering her former position, he added: “The camp’s yours as much as mine.”
A glad smile rewarded him. She went out, reluctantly. She knew the ways of those half-breeds! She could understand a little Spanish, so she made her step drag. The silence behind her was disquieting. The brown woman with the wreck of beauty in her tragic eyes was staring after her; she did not see Rickard’s gesture.
There was a new significance in MacLean’s absence from the ramada. What could that woman have to say that MacLean must not hear? She did not see the mewling babes, half naked, who gaped at her as she passed the squaws. The stolid groups parted for her, and she moved through, oblivious to their color and charm, to the historic import of it all. For the first time, the weak tenure on her old lover came to her. Not a sign had he yet given of their understanding, of the piquant situation. Themselves, old sweethearts, thrown together in this wilderness. What had she built her hopes on? A word here, a translated phrase, or magnified glance. She would not harbor the new worry. Why, it would be all right. She used Tom’s phrase, the one she hated, in solemn unconsciousness. Life had evidently planned that from the first. Fate insisted on repairing her mad mistake.
At her tent, letters were waiting to be written; letters to her grocer in Los Angeles, one to Coulter, in Calexico. She was going to begin her régime by serving good butter—iced butter. No more oily horror melting on a warm plate. She remembered a new brand of olives put up in tins; Rickard, she remembered, loved ripe olives. She would show them all what a woman with executive ability could do.
CHAPTER XXVIII
BETRAYAL
“SIT down, señora. Don’t be frightened. We won’t let him hurt you.” Rickard vulgarized his Castilian to the reach of her rude dialect.
Her work-sharpened fingers moved restlessly under her reboso. She pulled it together as though the day were not scorching. Her eyes questioned his sympathy. A flash of desperate courage had left her weak and tremulous. She stood by the long pine table looking hopelessly down on the señor whose eyes had twice looked kindly at her.
“Sit down,” he repeated, and motioned to a chair.
For long years her misery had been silent; her tongue could not tell her story. She shook her head. “Take your time, take your time,” counseled the manager. He feared a burst of hysteria.
There was a sound of feet outside the ramada. The Indians, passing and repassing, brought a gleam of anger to her eyes. She recalled her wrongs; they lashed her into fury. Familiar as was Rickard with the peons’ speech in their own country, he could not keep up with her history. Lurid words ran past his ears. Out of the jumble of abuse, of shame and misery, he caught a new note.