“I was thinking of the girl I left down there.” She expressed the feeling common to new-made wives in looking back on the place where they have left their girlhood. “She meant well, but—was so foolish. I was just wondering if—if—”
“Lee Nevil will be different from Lee Carleton.” He helped her out. “If she isn’t the same contrary little tyrant that gave me my first taste of heaven”—he paused, grinning—“and hell—”
“You didn’t make me suffer, of course!” She flashed up in quite the old manner. “The way you carried on with that dreadful girl. But there goes Lee Carleton again! and after the lecture I gave her this morning. Yes, sir, I awoke her at dawn and gave her a real good talking to. Henceforth she is to be kind and quiet and sympathetic, and never lose her temper and—What are you laughing at? Don’t you want me to reform?”
“There! there!” Her distress was genuine, and he repressed a second laugh. “If I thought there was the slightest chance of it, I’d—I’d march you straight down the hill again and have the padre say the service backward.” Quite illogically he went on: “I, too, had a serious hour with myself. I made up my mind—”
He got no further, because of the small hand that closed his mouth. “Not to change? Don’t dare to say it!”
Perhaps her alarm rooted in the age-long experience of woman that change is the law for man. At any rate, she fought the very suggestion.
“You won’t, will you?”
He assured her, of course, that he wouldn’t—and believed it, no doubt. So, this mighty business settled, each being duly bound to the other to remain as they were and attempt no reforms, however well intended, they turned their bright faces to the future; rode on, planning as they went with the brilliant optimism of youth. While the dusty miles slid underneath and the trail heaved them up and down over the mountains and valleys, they built up and tore down and reconstructed. By the time, midway of the afternoon, they looked down from the plateau into the mountain pastures they had settled the revolution, placed the country on a basis of peace from which it should never be moved thereafter.
In this, the dry season, the giant bowl of jade was transmuted by sun-scorched grasses into living amber bisected by a thin, green veining along the stream. From its rim the trail dropped like a yellow snake in many convolutions as it fell down, down, down into the chaparral. It looked, and was, dangerous. A stone dislodged by Gordon’s beast dropped hundreds of feet sheer, then rebounded and plunged forward on a still longer leap. Following its staircase windings, they had under their eyes Pedro’s jacal in its little garden, splashed now with the vermilion of ripening peppers. A white patch presently resolved into the camisa and calzones of Pedro himself, and as they reined in at his door the old fellow came out of the garden, his wrinkles and pouches drawn into a welcoming grin.
“He’s really part of the scenery”—Lee communed aloud with herself—“almost as much as that old dead tree. We might let him stay. But, no!” She shook her head. “I don’t want any human being here but ourselves. Oh, I know! We’ll send him in to Los Arboles with a note to Sliver and Jake.”