Well, she said. Speak up. Am I goin to stop here, or have I got to get up and get?
You can stay, said the young man quietly; but as Ive got my provisions and ammunition here, and havent any other place to go to just now, I suppose well have to share it together.
She glanced at him under her eyelids, and a half-bitter, half-contemptuous smile passed across her face. All right, old man, she said, holding out her hand, its a go. Well start in housekeeping at once, if you like.
Ill have to come here once or twice a day, he said, quite composedly, to look after my things, and get something to eat; but Ill be away most of the time, and what with camping out under the trees every night I reckon my share wont incommode you.
She opened her black eyes upon him, at this original proposition. Then she looked down at her torn dress. I suppose this style of thing aint very fancy, is it? she said, with a forced laugh.
I think I know where to beg or borrow a change for you, if you cant get any, he replied simply.
She stared at him again. Are you a family man?
No.
She was silent for a moment. Well, she said, you can tell your girl Im not particular about its being in the latest fashion.
There was a slight flush on his forehead as he turned toward the little cupboard, but no tremor in his voice as he went on: Youll find tea and coffee here, and, if youre bored, theres a book or two. You read, dont youI mean English?
She nodded, but cast a look of undisguised contempt upon the two worn, coverless novels he held out to her. You havent got last weeks Sacramento Union, have you? I hear they have my case all in; only them lying reporters made it out against me all the time.
I dont see the papers, he replied curtly.
They say theres a picture of me in the Police Gazette, taken in the act, and she laughed.
He looked a little abstracted, and turned as if to go. I think youll do well to rest a while just now, and keep as close hid as possible until afternoon. The trail is a mile away at the nearest point, but some one might miss it and stray over here. Youre quite safe if youre careful, and stand by the tree. You can build a fire here, he stepped under the chimney-like opening, without its being noticed. Even the smoke is lost and cannot be seen so high.
The light from above was falling on his head and shoulders, as it had on hers. She looked at him intently.
You travel a good deal on your figure, pardner, dont you? she said, with a certain admiration that was quite sexless in its quality; but I dont see how you pick up a living by it in the Carquinez Woods. So youre going, are you? You might be more sociable. Good-by.
Good-by! He leaped from the opening.
I say pardner!
He turned a little impatiently. She had knelt down at the entrance, so as to be nearer his level, and was holding out her hand. But he did not notice it, and she quietly withdrew it.
If anybody dropped in and asked for you, what name will they say?
He smiled. Dont wait to hear.
But suppose I wanted to sing out for you, what will I call you?
He hesitated. Call meLo.
Lo, the poor Indian? 1
Exactly.
It suddenly occurred to the woman, Teresa, that in the young mans height, supple, yet erect carriage, color, and singular gravity of demeanor there was a refined, aboriginal suggestion. He did not look like any Indian she had ever seen, but rather as a youthful chief might have looked. There was a further suggestion in his fringed buckskin shirt and moccasins; but before she could utter the half-sarcastic comment that rose to her lips he had glided noiselessly away, even as an Indian might have done.
She readjusted the slips of hanging bark with feminine ingenuity, dispersing them so as to completely hide the entrance. Yet this did not darken the chamber, which seemed to draw a purer and more vigorous light through the soaring shaft that pierced the roof than that which came from the dim woodland aisles below. Nevertheless, she shivered, and drawing her shawl closely around her began to collect some half-burnt fragments of wood in the chimney to make a fire. But the preoccupation of her thoughts rendered this a tedious process, as she would from time to time stop in the middle of an action and fall into an attitude of rapt abstraction, with far-off eyes and rigid mouth. When she had at last succeeded in kindling a fire and raising a film of pale blue smoke, that seemed to fade and dissipate entirely before it reached the top of the chimney shaft, she crouched beside it, fixed her eyes on the darkest corner of the cavern, and became motionless.
What did she see through that shadow?
Nothing at first but a confused medley of figures and incidents of the preceding night; things to be put away and forgotten; things that would not have happened but for another thingthe thing before which everything faded! A ball-room; the sounds of music; the one man she had cared for insulting her with the flaunting ostentation of his unfaithfulness; herself despised, put aside, laughed at, or worse, jilted. And then the moment of delirium, when the light danced; the one wild act that lifted her, the despised one, above them allmade her the supreme figure, to be glanced at by frightened women, stared at by half-startled, half-admiring men! Yes, she laughed; but struck by the sound of her own voice, moved twice round the cavern nervously, and then dropped again into her old position.
As they carried him away he had laughed at herlike a hound that he was; he who had praised her for her spirit, and incited her revenge against others; he who had taught her to strike when she was insulted; and it was only fit he should reap what he had sown. She was what he, what other men, had made her. And what was she now? What had she been once?
She tried to recall her childhood: the man and woman who might have been her father and mother; who fought and wrangled over her precocious little life; abused or caressed her as she sided with either; and then left her with a circus troupe, where she first tasted the power of her courage, her beauty, and her recklessness. She remembered those flashes of triumph that left a fever in her veinsa fever that when it failed must be stimulated by dissipation, by anything, by everything that would keep her name a wonder in mens mouths, an envious fear to women. She recalled her transfer to the strolling players; her cheap pleasures, and cheaper rivalries and hatredbut always Teresa! the daring Teresa! the reckless Teresa! audacious as a woman, invincible as a boy; dancing, flirting, fencing, shooting, swearing, drinking, smoking, fighting Teresa! Oh, yes; she had been loved, perhapswho knows?but always feared. Why should she change now? Ha, he should see.
She had lashed herself in a frenzy, as was her wont, with gestures, ejaculations, oaths, adjurations, and passionate apostrophes, but with this strange and unexpected result. Heretofore she had always been sustained and kept up by an audience of some kind or quality, if only perhaps a humble companion; there had always been some one she could fascinate or horrify, and she could read her power mirrored in their eyes. Even the half-abstracted indifference of her strange host had been something. But she was alone now. Her words fell on apathetic solitude; she was acting to viewless space. She rushed to the opening, dashed the hanging bark aside, and leaped to the ground.
She ran forward wildly a few steps, and stopped.