He followed her through a firelit room, where the elderly man he had seen in the patio in the morning, arose and bowed with courtly grace, and from behind him the faded-faced woman smiled in the manner of far-off times. A wooden table, a pitcher of milk, corn-bread and rubbery cheese of goat’s milk—but Elbert hardly tasted what he put in his mouth.
Horsemen had ridden by in the early morning to Fonseca, the señorita told him, an unusual thing, but they had not stopped, and others had passed later, going the opposite way.
She left the room and returned, dragging a small sack of grain for the horses, which Bart had asked her to procure, and there was a package of food for Elbert’s need of to-morrow—all this spoken of with frequent gestures toward the wounded man in the little room; her every thought and sentence apparently blent with something Bart had said or wished. Yes, he would live, she repeated, but his recovery would take many days. Then Elbert heard his own words in careful Spanish of the book:
‘Tell him I shall be waiting—that I will come again to-morrow night or the next night—that I shall wait for him until he is ready to travel—’
‘You mean to leave now—at once?’
‘Yes, I see that he is being well taken care of. The horses might call to any horses traveling by—’
His words were getting slower and quieter, but there was in his body and brain an intolerable burden having to do with the thought of to-morrow—not only to-morrow, but ‘many days.’ It had been all he could do to live through to-day. Now he left her, knowing she would steal back to the little room at once. He crossed the inner garden, the room of the harp, nodding to the elders, crossed the yard, passed out through the dobe gate—in unbroken darkness, moving toward the alders of the creek-bed.
His feet dragged; the early night, so dark that he had to keep constant thought to the road, burdened by the sack of grain over his shoulder. Still distant from the alders, he began to listen for Mamie’s signal, but the sound of trotting hoofs came instead.
One horse only, coming his way, no accompaniment of wheels. He let down the grain-bag at the side of the road, instinctively aware that if either of his horses had pulled loose a hunch like this on his shoulder would make any effort at capture practically impossible in the dark.
‘Hoo-ooo, baby, easy, little one!’ he softly intoned. He could see no movement yet; the hoofs were still. Then like an explosion, a snorting blast of fright from the horse ahead—not Mamie. He well knew her protest of fear. ‘Come in, kid—easy, old-timer!’ from his lips, as he moved forward very slowly, his fingers closing at last upon the broken bridle-rein of the sorrel.