“No, that is a mistake, begging your pardon, dear Sutro, though it looks so. For my father says that it is only seeming; and that if I were to sail ’way, ’way over ever so far, it would be just as it is here,—the water so low down and the sky so high up above my reach. But, dearie me, I s’pose you will never tell me anything, Sutro! I must find out all things for myself. I wish my father wasn’t so busy. I wish my mother hadn’t died when I was a baby. I wish I knew what makes the road-runners such silly birds. Why should they keep always in front of one in a chase after them? Why don’t they fly up out of the way? But, of course, you can’t tell. And I wish—I wish—What makes people grow wrinkley when they get old? You can’t help being wrinkley, I know that, dear Sutro, but what makes it?”
“En verdad! It may be answering thy idle questions, Little Un; yet there is one thing I would have thee know, and remember it. My soul! if thou dost not, I will be—”
“Not angry, please, Sutro!” cried Steenie, in sudden alarm.
“Maybe no. Not angry, truly. But wilt thou remember? I cannot be a hundred till the Natividad (Christmas) comes round five-and-ten times more. When I am a hundred years, thou wilt be a woman. This I know, because I asked Father Antonio when I was last at his house. My father was a hundred and ten when he died; and his father even more than that. The Vives’ family lives long in this world, and—Guay! wouldst thou lie down without thy blanket?”
For Steenie had thrown herself full length on the mass of sea-pink vines, and would have been asleep in another moment; but kind old Sutro spread his gay Navajo blanket further up, under the shelter of the rocks, and, after the child had curled herself upon it, arranged with utmost care the branches of the chaparral till she was wholly screened from sunlight. Next, he whistled for the horses, who came obediently back to the mouth of the cañon; and then he went speedily to sleep, as Steenie had done. But for himself he made no screen, save his arm across his eyes, nor any bed softer than the warm sand.
During the next half hour these two odd comrades slumbered so peacefully that the teal in the pool beyond the rocks, and the sand-pipers in the rushes, went on about their business as fearlessly as if no human intruders were near; but when the half-hour was up, the girl awoke as suddenly as she had slept. Sitting on her blanket, she pushed her brown curls from her blue eyes, and looked mischievously around at old Sutro, whom she began to pelt with the crimson-rayed pinks, aiming so deftly that one gold-hearted blossom landed plump in the open mouth of the sleeper. “Hola! hola! that was well sent!” shouted she.
Sputtering the flower from his lips, the Spaniard retorted, “In verity, I—”
But if he meant to scold his darling he was not allowed; for she leaned over him, patted his brown cheeks, and kissed him squarely on the forehead, in the very thickest tangle of the wrinkles she so disliked. “There, there, that will do, Señor Sutro Vives! If I was rude, you will forgive me; and if I hurt you, the wound will heal.”
“Thou hast healed it already, Little Un, and hast gladdened the heart of thy slave!” answered the other, with the extravagance of expression to which his tongue was prone.
“Pooh, my Sutro, you my slave,—the proudest of proud on all Santa Felisa ranch! My father says that the blood of three races runs in your veins, and that you have kept the best part of each. What does he mean by that? I heard him talking thus, once, with some strangers, who came to see the place. It was when you rode away on Mazan´, there; and one of the gentlemen said you were a very picture-y, or something, kind of a man, and—”