“I have no direct evidence to explain why I was in that chain gang,” Grant began, honestly enough; then he told the story of the fight in the gambling palace after the discovery of the counterfeit dollars in his pocket, reserving only all reference to Colonel Urgo. His host heard him through with a grave face.
“Perhaps,” he ventured, “you were on some mission to the Border which ran counter to the interests of a scheming official on the Mexican side.”
“To be honest, I do not know yet on what mission I came to Arizora,” Grant conceded with a laugh. “A friend of mine wrote me in New York he wanted me to join him in ’a whale of a proposition’ out here along the Border. I was fool enough to come just on that, and when I had an interview with a Dr. Stooder—”
“Ah!” The interjection escaped Don Padraic against instant reflex of judgment, as his hand part way raised to his lips betrayed. Grant caught the other’s quickly covered confusion and suddenly was sensible of his careless garrulity. Here he was bandying names in a matter his friend Bagley had surrounded with unexplained secrecy. He finished lamely:
“And so on my first night in Arizora I fell into a trap.”
When Don Padraic left the chamber Grant still was dwelling upon his host’s involuntary exclamation at the name of Doc Stooder. What was there about the saturnine physician, what notorious reputation which could lead a hermit such as Don Padraic away off in this desert oasis to evince surprise that one under his roof had had dealings with him? More and more an undefined regret for his mention of the name of Stooder plagued him.
In truth, the whole reason for his coming to Arizora and whatever fantastic project might be at the bottom of it appeared now strangely linked with this latest turn of fate, his coming to the Casa O’Donoju. Grant became aware of a duty long overlooked and wrote a brief and non-committal note to Bim Bagley, in Arizora, saying only he had suffered an accident and would return to the Border town as soon as he was able. This Benicia took from him to give to Quelele when he should go to the nearest railroad town.
Two days thereafter befell a boon the wounded man had dreamed of during many yearning hours. Two male servants of the household came to dress him in one of Don Padraic’s white suits—his own clothes were rags—and assisted him down a long hall which turned into the green paradise of the patio. There under the royal date palm they sat him, with the fountain pool and its magic purple sails of the hyacinth at his feet, behind and on either hand the green and crimson glory of the geraniums.
Benicia was awaiting him there alone. The girl, in a simple green frock which revealed bare arms and the warm round of her shoulders, was the embodiment of the garden’s fairy essence. She was a sprite of this green and glowing place. Hot sunlight falling upon her head made it a great exotic flower.