The woman had unwittingly conjured up a vision that thrilled the imagination of the listener. “Oh!” she cried with a sudden gesture of repulsion and weariness, “I am sick of this mean and miserable life. Would to God I had gone to him as I vowed to do. Do not tell me he would have laughed at my rage! No, no! a man could not laugh at the girl who accused him of the murder of her father; who stood before him to remind him of all his secret and unnatural crimes! Ah, I cannot endure this silent, creeping enmity[enmity]. Three times already by our means he has been tracked and driven from his stronghold; once but for Pepé he would have been killed,—Ruiz himself would have killed him!”
“Fox against tiger!” cried Dolores, contemptuously. “Bah! the idiot might have known that with the smell of blood in the air, not even the shadow of the cross would save him if he fell into the hands of Ramirez; yet he rushed on his fate. And for Ramirez there waits for him a doom more just than death on the battlefield,—though you, who warned Pepé to save him, are but a faint-hearted weakling.”
“Would you have him die without knowing the revenge that followed him?” cried Chinita. “What would death alone be to such a man as he? It was you, yourself, who first urged Pepé to leave us,—not that he might kill, but if need were save, Ramirez.”
“It is true,” answered Dolores, mollified; yet she fixed upon Chinita a long and penetrating gaze, which seemed to read her very soul. “But you are a strange, strange creature,—a peasant for all your pride. He is still more a grand gentleman to stare at with fear than a murderer and robber to you.”
Chinita’s face turned white. The reproach of the woman stung her, yet she felt it was just. “Oh, if I were a man!” she presently muttered; “oh, if I were a man!”
“Yes, the way would have been short then,” said Dolores. “Just a knife-thrust, and the debt would have been paid. But the revenge of women can be a thousand times more deep, more sweet, if one has the patience to wait.”
“Patience!” exclaimed Chinita in that shrill, metallic voice that indicates a mental tension so violent and long continued that every chord of the nervous system vibrates painfully at a word. “Have I not had patience? Have I not waited at your bidding until I seem to live in a frenzy of fear lest he should escape, and never hear, never see me, never know who I am? And what have I gained? Ruiz is dead; Pepé perhaps is dead. Ah, if I had spoken! Had Ramirez known that I live, it might have saved them both!”
The woman’s answering laugh had more of scorn than mirth in it. “Be quiet, child!” she said. “You are young. You think Ramirez has a conscience, and that you would have roused it to torment him. Pshaw! I will arm you with a better weapon; a little patience—perhaps to-morrow—and you will see!”
“Mysteries! always mysteries!” exclaimed Chinita, with increased impatience. “Santa Maria! why do you not push back that black kerchief from your brows? Have you the mark of a jealous woman’s knife across your forehead? Is your hair white, or—or—” She paused, with a horrid suspicion flashing through her mind. Was this woman, with whom she had daily and nightly associated for weeks, a victim of that species of leprosy known as the “painted”? Was some dread trace of it to be seen upon that constantly covered head? Dolores with careless grace had raised and clasped her hands above the unsightly kerchief. The bared arms were clear and fair; only the deep-lined face they encircled looked old, but care, not disease, had marked it. She looked at Chinita through the growing dusk with an inscrutable expression in her almond-shaped and beautiful eyes. They were eyes that still might fascinate at will. Chinita drew a little nearer to her, and sighed deeply. There was a sense of guilt upon the girl’s mind since she had heard of the death of Ruiz; a sickening apprehension, too, for the fate of Pepé Ortiz.
Dolores read her thoughts. She dropped one hand from her head upon the young girl’s shoulder. There seemed something magnetic in the touch. Chinita, though she would rather have resisted, yielded to it,—like a nettle grasped in a strong hand. “Silly one,” said the woman soothingly, “fret not yourself for Ruiz. Ramirez knew him better than did you. He had had long years to con the lesson in. It is well for the weak defenceless creatures of the earth that these wild beasts attack and destroy one another!”