“Halloa, you youngsters, why don’t you hurry?” cried a nasal voice. “I’ve been waiting here an hour.”
“Coming,” said Patience. “It’s too bad he had to wait.”
“Oh, he smoked and swore, so he’s all right,” said Rosita, who had not taken the trouble to reply. None of the girls was allowed to visit Patience at her house; but Mrs. Thrailkill, who was fond of her daughter’s chosen friend, and pitiful in her indolent way, often allowed Patience to drive Rosita as far as the branching of the roads, where the Kentucky uncle met his niece and took her to his farm.
In the dusk below a wagon and two horses could be seen, and a big man under a wide straw hat, sitting on the upper rail of a fence, his heels hooked to the rail below. Patience inferred that he was chewing tobacco and expectorating upon the poppies.
“Well, I reckon!” he exclaimed as the buggy reached the foot of the hill. “You two do beat all. Do you s’pose I’ve got nothing better to do than moon round pikes waiting on kids like you? How’s your ma, Rosita? Well, Patience, I won’t keep you—much obliged for giving my lazy Spanish niece a lift. Come on now; supper’s ready ’n after.”
The two little girls kissed each other affectionately. Mr. Thrailkill lifted Rosita down, and Patience turned Billy in the direction of a fiery eye and a dim column of smoke under the mountain. The evening seemed very quiet after the rattle of Mr. Thrailkill’s team had become a part of the distance. Only the roar of the surf, the moaning of the pines, the harsh music of the frogs, the thousand vocal mysteries of night—not a sound of man. Patience, after her fashion, rehabilitated the Mission and peopled the valley with padres and Indians; but when Billy came to a sudden halt, she sprang prosaically to the ground and let down the bars of her mother’s ranch. After she had replaced them she took hold of Billy’s bridle, and endeavoured, by jerks and expostulation, to induce him to move more rapidly. The road now lay through a ploughed field stretching gloomily on the east to the horizon, where the stars seemed dropping into the dark. Cows roamed at will, or lay heavily in their first sleep. Here and there an oak thrust out its twisted arms, its trunk bent backward by ocean winds. The house soon became plainly outlined, a long unpainted wooden story-and-a-half structure, the type of ranch house of the second era. Castilian roses clambered up the unpainted front. Clumps of gladiolus, pinks, and fuschias struggled with weeds in the front garden. Beyond was a number of out-buildings.
When Patience reached the porch she dropped Billy’s bridle, lifted out the sugar, and stepping to the kitchen window, looked through it for a moment before opening the door. Her mother was very drunk.
II
The room into which Patience frowned was a large rough kitchen of the old familiar type. The rafters were festooned with cobwebs, through which tin cans and aged pails were visible, and an occasional bundle of rags. The board walls were unplastered and unpainted. Out of the uneven floor, knots had dropped to the cellar below. The door of a cupboard, built against the wall with primitive simplicity, stood open, revealing a motley collection of cans, bottles, and cracked dishes. Pots and pans were heaped on a shelf traversing two sides of the room. A table was loaded with odds and ends, in the midst of which place had been made for a lamp.
Over a large stove a woman was frying bacon and eggs. She wore a brown calico garment, torn and smudged. Her fine black hair, sprinkled with ashes, hung raggedly above magnificent dark eyes, blinking in a crimson face. The thin nostrils and full mouth were twitching. In her ruin she was still a beautiful woman, and she moved her tall bloated form with the pride of race, despite the alcohol in her veins.