The girl, frankly amused at what appeared a turgid compliment, tossed back her head in a gust of laughter. But Grant could not join with her. As from some iceberg veiled in fog came to him the cold feel of malignity moving to some unguessed purpose. Was Urgo planning to strike at him through the girl he adored? Yet what possible obloquy could he call up against Benicia, whose soul was unsullied as the winds of the wastes? Urgo spoke on:
“Undoubtedly, my cousin, Señor Hickman has felt his heart snared by those burning meshes of yours or he is not a judge of beauty”—gesture of impatience from Benicia. “So it is for the benefit of the señor as well as for your own, fairest cousin, that I recite this legend of the red hair of the O’Donoju. Strange, is it not, that all Sonora knows it and has told the story to its children for a hundred years, yet you, chiquita”—a wave of the cigarette toward the girl—“who should be most interested are the only ignorant one.
“There was in the long ago, señor, a Michael O’Donohue—what you call of the wild Irish, who had flaming hair and an untamed spirit. A king in Spain gave him the whole district of Altar for his estate, and he came here to the Garden of Solitude with his Spanish lady and built him this house where we sit. He was a man who considered the safety of his soul, so he built a mission to the glory of the four evangelists out yonder by the Gulf where the Sand People needed the comfort of the Mother Church and—”
“He lived a life any one of his descendants might pattern after,” Benicia put in with a smile carrying a sting. Urgo touched his breast with delicate fingers and bowed. Then turning again to Grant:
“When the Apaches burned that mission, señor, a pious O’Donoju restored it and the family, then numerous, endowed that mission altar with much gold and silver. There was, too, a great string of pearls—pearls with a green light, legend says, which the Sand People brought from the shell beds of the Gulf to show their piety. You are following me, Señor Hickman, eh?”
Grant made no sign. His eyes were upon Benicia’s face, reading there a slow change. Now she, too, had begun to feel a nameless portent stealing over her like the chill from hidden ice. The wells of her eyes were deeper; faint colour came and went in her cheeks and throat. Grant, certain that Urgo was preparing torture for her under the innocent mask of narrative, was helpless to intervene; no diversion short of the work of fists was possible, and that his weakness denied him.
“There was of that generation which restored the mission, señor, a wild youth, true descendant of the original O’Donoju. He was known from Mexico City to Tucson as El Rojo—the Red One—for his hair was the veritable colour of that which our cousin possesses. And the devil rode his heart with spurs of fire. You have never been told of El Rojo, Benicia?”
The girl made no answer. Her level gaze was a mute challenge. The little colonel rerolled one of his eternal cigarettes, lighted it and drank smoke with a sensuous inhalation.
“At the feast of the re-dedication El Rojo, banished from the family, appeared out of nowhere. Conceive the consternation, señor! The red head of the devil’s own come to sanctified ground. This fiery head, so like our Benicia’s, swooping as a comet into the feasting place of the family; well might the pious O’Donojus be fearful.