Children of the Desert. Louis Dodge

a year ago, my father and I.”

      His glance wandered up the brick walk to the cottage door, but if Sylvia perceived this and knew it for a hint, she did not respond.

      Harboro thought of other possibilities. He turned toward the desert. “There, the sun’s dipping down beyond that red ridge,” he said. “It will be cooler now. Won’t you walk with me?—I’m not going far.”

      She smiled happily. “I’d like to,” she admitted.

      And so Sylvia and Harboro walked together out toward the desert. It was, in fact, the beginning of a series of walks, all taken quite as informally and at about the same hour each day.

      CHAPTER II

      Some of the cruder minds of Eagle Pass made a sorry jest over the fact that nobody “gave the bride away” when she went to the altar—either then or during the brief period of courtship. Her father went to the wedding, of course; but he was not the kind of person you would expect to participate conspicuously in a ceremony of that sort. He was so decidedly of the black-sheep type that the people who assumed management of the affair considered it only fair to Sylvia (and to Harboro) to keep him in the background. Sylvia had never permitted Harboro to come to the house to see her. She had drawn a somewhat imaginary figure in lieu of a father to present to Harboro’s mind’s eye. Her father (she said) was not very well and was inclined to be disagreeable. He did not like the idea of his daughter getting married. She was all he had, and he was fearfully lonesome at times.

      Harboro had accepted all this readily. He had asked no questions.

      And so Little went to the wedding. He went early so that he could get a seat over against the wall, where he wouldn’t be too conspicuous. He looked decidedly like an outsider, and, as a matter of fact, a good many people did not recognize him as Sylvia’s father. He was probably regarded as a stranger who had drifted into the church to enjoy the familiar yet interesting spectacle of a man and a maid bound together by a rite which was the more interesting because it seemed so ephemeral, yet meant so much.

      Several of the young women of Eagle Pass had aided Sylvia in getting ready to meet her husband-to-be at the altar. They were well-known girls, acting with the aid (and in the company) of their mothers. They did not admit even to one another what it was that separated Sylvia from their world. Perhaps they did not fully understand. They did know that Sylvia was not one of them; but they felt sorry for her, and they enjoyed the experience of arraying her as a bride and of constituting, for the moment, a pretty and irreproachable setting for her wistful person. They were somewhat excited, too. They had the feeling that they were helping to set a mouse-trap to catch a lion—or something like that.

      And after the wedding Mr. and Mrs. Harboro emerged from the church into the clear night, under the stars, and went afoot in the direction of their new home—an attractive structure which Harboro had had erected on what was called the Quemado Road.

      A good many of the guests looked after them, and then at each other, but of definite comment there was mighty little.

      Sylvia’s father went back to his house alone. He was not seen in the Maverick Bar that night, nor for quite a number of succeeding nights. He had never had any experiences in Eagle Pass which proved him to be a courageous man—or to lack courage; but in all probability a sensation akin to fear bothered him more or less during those first days and nights after his daughter had got married.

      Perhaps it would have been better for Sylvia if he had brazened it out just at that time, for on the very night of the wedding there was talk in the Maverick Bar. Not open or general comment, certainly. The border folk were not loose of speech. But two young fellows whose social versatility included membership in the Mesquite Club, on the one side, and a free and easy acquaintance with habitués of the Maverick Bar on the other, sat over against the wall behind a card-table and spoke in lowered tones. They pretended to be interested in the usual movements of the place. Two or three cowboys from Thompson’s ranch were “spending” and pressing their hospitality upon all and sundry. A group of soldiers from the post were present, and Jesus Mendoza, a Mexican who had accumulated a competency by corralling his inebriated fellow countrymen at election times, and knowing far more about the ticket they voted than they could ever have learned, was resting a spurred boot on the bar railing, and looking through dreamy eyes and his own cloud of cigarette smoke at the front door. Mendoza always created the impression of being interested in something that was about to happen, or somebody who was about to appear—but never in his immediate surroundings.

      “It’s too bad somebody couldn’t have told him,” Blanchard, of the Eagle Pass bank, was saying to the other man behind the card-table. The conversation had begun by each asking the other why he wasn’t up at the wedding.

      “Yes,” assented Dunwoodie, the other man. He was a young lawyer whose father had recently died in Belfast, leaving him money enough to quench a thirst which always flourished, but which never resulted in even partial disqualification, either for business or pleasure. “Yes, but Harboro is. … Say, Blanchard, did you ever know another chap like Harboro?”

      “I can’t say I know him very well.”

      “Of course—that’s it. Nobody does. He won’t let you.”

      “I don’t see that, quite. I have an idea there just isn’t much to know. His size and good looks mislead you. He doesn’t say much, probably because he hasn’t much to say. I’ve never thought of there being any mystery. His behavior in this affair proves that there isn’t much of the right kind of stuff in him. He’s had every chance. The railroad people pushed him right along into a good thing, and the women across the river—the best of them—were nice to him. I have an idea the—er—new Mrs. Harboro will recall some of us to a realization of a truth which we’re rather proud of ignoring, down here on the river: I mean, that we’ve no business asking people about their antecedents.”

      Dunwoodie shook his head. “I figure it out differently. I think he’s really a big chap. He won all the fellows over in the railroad offices—and he was pushed over the heads of some of them when he was given that chief clerkship. And then the way he’s got of standing up to the General Manager and the other magnates. And you’ll notice that if you ever ask him a question he’ll give you an answer that sets you to thinking. He seems to work things out for himself. His mind doesn’t just run along the channel of traditions. I like him all the better because he’s not given to small talk. If there was anything worth while to talk about, I’ll bet you’d always find him saying something worth while.”

      “You’re right about his not being strong about traditions. There’s the matter of his marriage. Maybe he knows all about Sylvia—and doesn’t care. He must know about her.”

      “Don’t make a mistake on that score. I’ve seen them together. He reveres her. You can imagine his wanting to spread a cloak for her at every step—as if she were too pure to come into contact with the earth.”

      “But good God, man! There’s a path to her back door, worn there by fellows who would tremble like a colt in the presence of a lady.”

      Dunwoodie frowned whimsically. “Don’t say a path. It must be just a trail—a more or less indistinct trail.”

      Blanchard looked almost excited. “It’s a path, I tell you!”

      And then both men laughed suddenly—though in Dunwoodie’s laughter there was a note of deprecation and regret.

      CHAPTER III

      And so Harboro and Sylvia went home to the house on the Quemado Road without knowing that the town had washed its hands of them.

      Harboro had made certain arrangements which were characteristic of him, perhaps, and which nobody knew anything about. For example, he had employed the most presentable Mexican woman he could find, to make the house homelike. He had taken a little sheaf of corn-husks away from her so that she could not make any cigarettes for a day or two, and he had read her a patient lecture upon ways and means of making a lot of furniture look as if it had some direct relationship