With Hoops of Steel

by Florence Finch Kelly

CHAPTER XI

After the round-up was finished Emerson Mead and his two friends started, with two vaqueros, to drive a band of cattle to Las Plumas for shipment. When they reached Juan Garcia’s ranch Mead remembered that he wished to see the old Mexican, and the two cow-boys were sent on with the cattle while he and Tuttle and Ellhorn tied their horses in the shade of the cottonwoods at the foot of the hill. They found Amada Garcia leaning on her folded arms across the window-sill and making a picture in the frame of the gray adobe walls that was very good to see.

It is not often that the señorita of the southwest can lay claim to any more of beauty than glows in midnight hair and eyes. But Amada Garcia was one of the favored few. Her short, plump figure was rounded into dainty curves and her oval face, with its smooth, brown skin, its dimples, its regular features, its little, rosebud, pouting mouth, and its soft, black, heavy-lidded eyes, was alluring with sensuous beauty. A red handkerchief tied into a saucy cap was perched on her shining, black hair, and her black dress, carelessly open a little at the neck, showed a full, soft, brown throat.

She received the three men with that dignified courtesy that is never forgotten in the humblest Mexican adobe hut, but she tempered its gravity with many coquettish glances of her great black eyes. They talked in Spanish, the only language Amada knew, which the men spoke as readily as they did their own. No, her father was not at home, she said. He had gone to Muletown and would not be back until night. But was it the wish of the señores to be seated and rest themselves from their travel and refresh themselves with a drink of cool water? Mead presented Tuttle, who had never seen the girl before, and Amada said, with many flashes of languorous light from under her heavy lids, ah, she had heard of the señor, a most brave caballero, a man whom all women must admire, so brave and skillful. Her carriage and the poise of her body as she stood, or sat down, or walked about the room, would have befitted a queen’s approach to her throne, so unconsciously regal and graceful were they. For ever since she was old enough Amada had carried every day to the house, up the hill from the spring, in an olla poised on her head, all the water for their domestic necessities. And in consequence she walked with a grace and carried her head with an air that not one American woman in a hundred thousand could equal.

She brought them water from an olla which stood in the portal, where it would be free to the breeze and shaded from the sun, and as she handed it to one after another she smiled and dimpled, her white teeth gleamed, her black eyes shone alluringly in sudden flashes from under their long-fringed covers, and her sweet, soft voice prattled airy, beguiling flatteries and dear little complimentary nothings. As she talked, she tossed her head and swayed her body and made graceful, eloquent little gestures with her hands and arms. There was unconscious coquetry in every movement and a mischievous “you dare not” in every glance of her eyes and in every dimpling smile. She was like a plump, saucy, sweet-throated bobolink, perched on a swaying bough and singing a joyous and daring “catch me if you can.”

She walked across the room to put the cup on the table and Ellhorn sprang to her side and threw his arm about her. She drew back a little, tossed her head, and looked at him with eyes gleaming “if you dare, if you dare,” from under their soft lids. She faced the door as she did so and as he bent his head to take the kiss she dared, a sudden, gray horror fell over her laughing face and changed it in a second to a wide-eyed, open-mouthed, drawn thing, pitiful in its helpless, ashen fear. The sudden change stopped him with his lips close to hers, and with his hand on his gun he wheeled toward the door to see what had frightened her. The other two, looking and laughing, saw the sudden horror transform her face and they also sprang toward the open entrance, revolvers in hand. But there was nothing there. The portal was empty of any living thing. And all across the gray-green plain the only sign of life was the drove of cattle far down the winding road. They turned to the girl in surprise and asked her what was the matter. She had recovered her smiling, coquettish self, and declared that Señor Ellhorn had frightened her. She scolded him prettily, in the soft, sweet, Mexican tones that are a caress in themselves, and, with a demure expression, to which only the black eyes would not lend themselves, she told him it was not right for a man to take advantage of a girl when she was all alone. If he wished to kiss her when her mother was present, ah, that was different. Yes, she would forgive him this one time if he truly were very sorry, but he must never, never frighten her so again. And her eyes flashed a smile at him that flouted every word she said.

As the three men rode away Tuttle asked:

“Emerson, did she really mean what she said about Nick’s frightening her?”

Mead looked at him with an indulgent smile: “Tom Tuttle, you’re the biggest maverick I ever saw. I reckon havin’ a man want to kiss her ain’t such an unusual thing that it’s goin’ to frighten Amada Garcia into a conniption fit.”