That had happened in August. Through September, pretty Carmelita cried whenever she remembered what a good baby the little Anastacia had been. Then Josefa began coming to the house again to play “coyote y gallos” with her, so that she forgot to cry so often.
As for Lucas, he worked harder than ever. Though, to be sure, there were only two now to work for where there had been three. With Anton, and Luciano, and Monico, he had been running in wild horses from the mountains; and among others which had fallen to his share was an old blaze-face roan stallion, unmanageable and full of vicious temper. They had been put—these wild ones—in a little pasture on the other side of the river; a pasture in the rancho of Señor Metcalf, the Americano. And the señor, who laughed much and liked fun, had said he wanted to see the sport when Lucas should come to ride the old roan.
Today, Lucas—on his sleek little cow-horse, Topo—was riding along the river road leading to the rancho; but not today would he rope the old blaze-face. There were others to be broken. Halfway from the bridge he met little Nicolás, who worked for the señor, and passed him with a pleasant “Buenos dias!” without stopping. The boy had been his good amigo since the time he got him away from the maddened steer that would have gored him to death. There was nothing ’Colás would not do for his loved Lucas. But the older man cared not to stop and talk to him today, as was his custom; for he was gravely thinking of the little dead ’Stacia, and rode on. A hundred yards farther, and he heard the clatter of a horse’s hoofs behind him, and Nicolás calling:
“Lucas! Lucas!”
He turned the rein on Topo’s neck, and waited till the boy came. In the pleasant, warm October sunlight he waited, while Nicolás told him that which would always make him shiver and feel cold when afterward he should remember that half-hour in the stillness and sunshine of the river road. He waited, even after Nicolás (frightened at having dared to tell his friend) had gone.
The señor and Carmelita! It was the truth—Nicolás would not lie. The truth; for the boy had listened behind the high fence of weather-beaten boards, and had heard them talk together. He, and the little stream that gurgled and laughed all day, had heard how they—the señor and Carmelita—would go away to the north when the month should end. For many months they two had loved—the Señor Metcalf and the wife of Lucas; had loved before Lucas had made her his wife—ay! even before the little ’Stacia had come. And the little ’Stacia was the señor’s—— Ah, Lucas would not say it of the dead pobrecita! For she was his—Lucas’s—by right of his love for her. Poor little Anastacia! And but that the little one would have been a trouble to the Americano, they—the woman and the man—would have gone away together before; but he would not have it so. Now that the little one was no longer to trouble them, he would take the mother and go away to the new rancho he had just bought far over on the other side of the mountains.
“Their eyes met.”—Page [65]
“Go!”—said Lucas, when the boy had finished telling all he had overheard—“Go and tell the señor that I go now to the corral to ride the roan stallion. And—’Colás, give to me thy riata for today.”