Coat and hat were getting up the cañon’s side among the cactus, the little horse climbing the trail shrewdly with his light-weight rider; and dusty, unmusical Genesmere and sullen Lolita watched them till they went behind a bend, and nothing remained but the tin-pan song singing in Genesmere’s brain. The gadfly had stung more poisonously than he knew, and still Lolita and Genesmere stood watching nothing, while the sun—the sun of Arizona at the day’s transfigured immortal passing—became a crimson coal in a lake of saffron, burning and beating like a heart, till the desert seemed no longer dead, but only asleep, and breathing out wide rays of rainbow color that rose expanded over earth and sky.
Then Genesmere spoke his first volunteered word to Lolita. “I didn’t shoot because I was afraid of hitting you,” he said.
So now she too realized clearly. He had got off his horse above the Tinaja to kill Luis during that kiss. Complete innocence had made her stupid and slow.
“Are you going to eat?” she inquired.
“Oh yes. I guess I’ll eat.”
She set about the routine of fire-lighting and supper as if it had been Uncle Ramon, and this evening like all evenings. He, not so easily, and with small blunderings that he cursed, attended to his horse and mules, coming in at length to sit against the wall where she was cooking.
“It is getting dark,” said Lolita. So he found the lamp and lighted it, and sat down again.
“I’ve never hurt a woman,” he said, presently, the vision of his rifle’s white front sight held steady on the two below the ledge once more flooding his brain. He spoke slowly.
“Then you have a good chance now,” said Lolita, quickly, busy over her cooking. In her Southern ears such words sounded a threat. It was not in her blood to comprehend this Northern way of speaking and walking and sitting, and being one thing outside and another inside.