Weeks, months, and years passed by, and Captain Fielding longed intensely to visit the gay world again. He had grown weary of his Indian wife, and his son in his eyes was only a young papoose, of whom he was very much ashamed.
At length the order came for his reprieve. He was summoned to return to the Atlantic States; but of this he said nothing to his wife. One bright spring morning he left her looking out after him from the door of the little adobe, holding her three-year old boy in her arms, smiling and telling him in her own soft language that dear papa would come back at evening.
The burning fingers of remorse pressed heavily upon the father's heart as he looked upon the pretty picture—but only for a moment. He turned away, saying with a sigh of relief: "She'll soon forget me, for some Indian Chief, perhaps," and was gone from her sight out into the distance, on toward the great busy world.
Night came on with its damps and darkness, wrapping the heart of the young wife in its shroud of shadows, never to be lifted till the brightness of the spirit land made glad morning shine about her.
Day by day she watched the shadows lengthen, hoping when the sun went down in the crimson west he would return; but the golden moonlight found her watching in vain, swaying her sleeping boy too and fro in her arms, and drearily singing the song of her heart, in a voice from which the gladness of hope was fast dying out.
She called him Dick, for his father, and with a perseverance which only deep love could give her, talked his father's language to him in her pretty, imperfect way.
The little one grew to be a strong, handsome boy, with a dark Spanish face, and eyes full of fire, or love as his mood moved them. In some things he was like his father; gay, dashing, and attractive in his disposition, he became a great favorite with the officers at Fort Tejon, who taught him to read and write and many other things, much to the delight of his mother, who would say with tears in her dark eyes: "If his father lives to return he will thank you better than I can."
In the spring she would say: "Before the orange-flowers ripen to golden fruit he will return," and in the autumn, "before the fair buds gladden the green hillsides he will be here!"
But springs and autumns passed, till the broken spirit, hopeless and weary with waiting, passed into the unknown future, and they buried her where the first rays of the morning sun fell upon the graveyard flowers.