My stay in Animas Valley was drawing to a close when I returned to the Gray Place one afternoon, bringing with me an antelope that I had shot, and having parted with Jake, who had followed a fresh trail down into the Skeleton Cañon, to turn back a small band of cattle that were straying in that direction. The house was empty. Don Cabeza had gone over to the neighbouring camp to chat with the officers; Murray and Joe were still out; and Squito was not seated, as was generally the case, on the bench by the door, her curly black head bent over a dime novel. While I was yet in the distance, I had noticed her little figure on one of the hillocks behind the house, where she would often stand for an hour at a time, shading her eyes, and scanning the valley for "old man Murray," of whom she was passionately fond. But she had vanished now. Unsaddling my horse, I turned him loose to join his fellows on the cienega, and, lighting a cigarette, strolled up towards Squito's favourite coigne of observation to enjoy the stillness which the great expanse of the view from thence seemed to accentuate always.
The sky was fretted with the faint fires of a sunset, delicate in its colours as pale orchids—colours that might have been conceived by a fairy, and broadcast by a gale. The soft air mused and mused in the dry crowsfoot gramma grass that clothed the country, making a music that seemed a very air-treasured echo and tradition of sweet old-world sounds become transiently audible again in the silence of the moment. From the yellow slopes around its base, old Animas towered king-like above the valley; and dim blue, mystic peaks and crests, like a company of ghosts, low down on the horizon to the south, marked the commencement of the Sierra Madre.
I was surmounting the brow of the first knoll, when involuntarily I stopped. In a little hollow before me, Squito was dancing by herself—a dance that probably had its origin in some old Spanish bolero, seen by her in her early childhood, and partly retained in memory. But the gestures, poses, motive and method of the dance were her own, and it seemed that her mind was filled with some theme as she danced. The hot blood of her race had sway over her, and totally unconscious of my presence (for only my head and shoulders were visible, and these partly concealed amidst cacti and rocks), she abandoned herself entirely to the impulse of the moment. The slant, rosy gleams from heaven played upon her, as she danced, partly in light and partly in shadow, turning and swaying, and swiftly moving over the little flat that served her for a floor. Pliant as a willow wand, lissom as a rabbit, her light form changed its poise rapidly or slowly, but always with swimming ease and continuity of motion. Where did her actions begin—where end? It was impossible to say. They were, and they were not. They came, they passed away; merged into one another, but measurable, distinctly, as little as is the sound of something that travels. With steps small, or for a moment boldly prolonged, she came and went. And now her little figure seemed to dilate with passion, now droop in exquisite languor, her arms and head moving in unison with the spirit of her mood—beseeching now, now beckoning, scoffing, defying, imperiously commanding.
Oh, Squito, Squito! how many a première danseuse would pledge her jewels to acquire a tithe of the natural gift that you possess, of the very existence of which you cannot be said to be fully conscious, and the evidence of which, only old Animas, and the cacti, and the scored, purple boulders of the hills, or, perchance, a select circle of cow-boy familiars are permitted to witness.
Breathless she paused, her brown eyes flashing fire, and in a second she caught sight of me. She started, halted, then turned precipitously and fled. From that moment until when I left, a few days later, she never addressed me unless forced to do so, and then only in the brusquest monosyllables. However, when the Colonel and I were preparing to start, she hovered round us restlessly for some time, and finally conquered her shyness sufficiently to speak to me.
"The boys say that you're going down into Mexico—Chihuahua and there?"
"Yes, I shall run down there again shortly, Squito."
"Likely you'll see Sam somewheres."
"Sam? Who is Sam?"
"Sam," she repeated simply, in the glorious egotism of first love taking it for granted that all the world knew her Sam. "Sam Rider, who used to work in the Animas," and her increasing confusion suddenly reminded me of the man she had taken up the cudgels for, on my first evening in the valley, and who I had since heard had got into some shooting scrape and fled into Mexico.