Shaking his big head, he spoke aloud. “’Tain’t safe for them here, ’tain’t safe!”
So vivid was that dread feeling, presage of evil, the sweat broke on his brow. Into his mind shot a vivid picture of the miner hanging limply from the sahuaro, face turned up to the torrid sun. Around it, as in a whirling nightmare, revolved all of the horrors, outrages, and murders of three awful years. Turning, he shook his big fist at the northern horizon in fierce rebuke of the political lethargy and executive indifference on the other side of the border that had not only made the long list of outrages possible, but almost set the seal of approval upon it. Anger choked him. With the growl of a furious dog he turned again and rode on.
It may be laid down as a general principle that a woman never forgets and a man seldom remembers anniversaries. These tendencies are due to the fact that a woman lives principally in the past and present, a man in the future; while she observes past occasions, he creates new ones. Whether she be looking forward with youthful joy, or looking back with increasing regret, a woman specializes upon her birthdays. But, accustomed to her father’s bad memory, Lee had not expected any one to remember; was accordingly astonished and pleased when, coming to breakfast that morning, she found the table decorated with trailing vines and a bouquet of wild flowers at her plate that had been picked by Sliver.
“Why—” she gave a little gasp. Then her shining glance accused the Three, whose sheepish grins loudly proclaimed their guilt. “How did you know? What’s this?”
While she was unwrapping the tissue-paper in which Mrs. Mills had wrapped the cake the Three looked on with eager expectance, and were treated to a second bath of sunshine. “A real cake! Where did you get it?”
In a country where cakes, if not actually hanging on every tree, may be either home-grown or plucked from the counter of any pastry cook, her joy might have seemed exaggerated. But in that alien desert, stripped of its substance to the bare hot bones by repeated revolutions, the conjunction of a sure-enough cake with a girl’s birthday verged on the miraculous. Nor was Lee’s pleasure lessened after she heard at what pains it had been produced.
It was, of course, merely the first of the day’s surprises, some of which were purely accidental, as when William Benson rode in at noon. As a matter of fact, his visit pertained to a defensive alliance against raiders, but, being warned in time, he straightway credited his visit to the birthday. A bluff Englishman, almost as big as Bull, hot-tempered and overbearing in manner, he fell with great joviality into the spirit of the occasion; kissed and congratulated Lee with the license of old friendship. His big, hearty laugh was resounding in the patio when the second irruption of the Lovells and their fiancés—for Phyllis had conquered the smelter man in record time—occurred midway of the afternoon. And they were no more than settled under the portales before, like some rich, dusky bird, Isabel Icarza came floating under the arched gateway into Lee’s arms.
“But you surely did not come alone?” Though that was exactly what she might have done herself, Lee looked at her in horror.
“Ah no, querida! Ramon escorted me, and will return to-morrow!”
“You don’t mean to say that he has—” Lee stopped, for she had caught, just then, a glimpse of him riding away.