“Would that I might see him! That blessed Master.”
“Oh! you will. When you come to Refugio, as we planned.”
Paula sighed. Then she caught up the little brown hand and laid it against her own, far browner from age and wrinkled like a shriveled fruit.
“To the grave is far, when one is young, but the way is short for me. However, is it flowers and gold? Hola! There is far better in these mountains. My husband often told me. Sometimes, also, he would bring me a bit of that stuff. With it he would make a brave fire, great heat and dancing flames. Ah! yes. He should be rich, he said; then he would take me back to my birth-town and we would sport it with the best. Then the cruel bull gored him to death and here am I. Ah! life is strange, but death is stranger. Else, had my husband, who was wise, have lived; and the son who knows naught but—”
More to divert the woman’s thoughts than because she had really heeded what had been said, Carlota begged for a further talk about the wondrous “stuff” which would burn and warm old blood to youth again and which painted flame-pictures for men to see.
“Ay de mi.[13] Cared I for that? Well, then, for love I had left that birth-town and with love I was content. Nothing else mattered. I—a woman is so foolish! Dearer to me were the flowers my husband brought and thrust in my dark hair than the ugly black stuff he burned.”
Paula observed that the young men had turned their faces homeward and were impatiently waiting for her to join them. They dared not hasten her by words, for their tribe held age in honor, and she was held to be wise beyond most. But she would delay just a bit longer and amuse the pretty child who begged a tale of a flower; then farewell! forever.
“What color had those blossoms, Paula? If red or yellow they must have been brave in your dark hair. Tell me, so that when I find one I can say: ‘This is for dear Paula,’ and put it in my own curls—if it will stay there.”
The woman laughed, well pleased.
“Will you, niña? I love you, for your own sweet face and because you are your mother’s child. The flowers? Si. Wear them, wear them, always. They are better for you than for me. They are blue and fit well your fairness. Blue and shaped—thus.”