A Deal in Wheat and Other Stories of the New and Old West, Page 2

  THE WIFE OF CHINO

  I. CHINO'S WIFE

  On the back porch of the "office," young Lockwood--his boots, stainedwith the mud of the mines and with candle-drippings, on the rail--satsmoking his pipe and looking off down the canyon.

  It was early in the evening. Lockwood, because he had heard the laughterand horseplay of the men of the night shift as they went down the canyonfrom the bunk-house to the tunnel-mouth, knew that it was a little afterseven. It would not be necessary to go indoors and begin work on thecolumns of figures of his pay-roll for another hour yet. He knocked theashes out of his pipe, refilled and lighted it--stoppering with hismatch-box--and shot a wavering blue wreath out over the porch railing.Then he resettled himself in his tilted chair, hooked his thumbs intohis belt, and fetched a long breath.

  For the last few moments he had been considering, in that comfortablespirit of relaxed attention that comes with the after-dinner tobacco,two subjects: first, the beauty of the evening; second, the temperament,character, and appearance of Felice Zavalla.

  As for the evening, there could be no two opinions about that. It wascharming. The Hand-over-fist Gravel Mine, though not in the higherSierras, was sufficiently above the level of the mere foot-hills to bein the sphere of influence of the greater mountains. Also, it wasremote, difficult of access. Iowa Hill, the nearest post-office, was agood eight miles distant, by trail, across the Indian River. It wassixteen miles by stage from Iowa Hill to Colfax, on the line of theOverland Railroad, and all of a hundred miles from Colfax to SanFrancisco.

  To Lockwood's mind this isolation was in itself an attraction. Tuckedaway in this fold of the Sierras, forgotten, remote, the littlecommunity of a hundred souls that comprised the _personnel_ of theHand-over-fist lived out its life with the completeness of anindependent State, having its own government, its own institutions andcustoms. Besides all this, it had its own dramas as well--littlecomplications that developed with the swiftness of whirlpools, and thattrended toward culmination with true Western directness. Lockwood,college-bred--he was a graduate of the Columbia School of Mines--foundthe life interesting.

  On this particular evening he sat over his pipe rather longer thanusual, seduced by the beauty of the scene and the moment. It was veryquiet. The prolonged rumble of the mine's stamp-mill came to his ears ina ceaseless diapason, but the sound was so much a matter of course thatLockwood no longer heard it. The millions of pines and redwoods thatcovered the flanks of the mountains were absolutely still. No wind wasstirring in their needles. But the chorus of tree-toads, dry, staccato,was as incessant as the pounding of the mill. Far-off--thousands ofmiles, it seemed--an owl was hooting, three velvet-soft notes at exactintervals. A cow in the stable near at hand lay down with a long breath,while from the back veranda of Chino Zavalla's cabin came the clearvoice of Felice singing "The Spanish Cavalier" while she washed thedishes.

  The twilight was fading; the glory that had blazed in cloudlessvermilion and gold over the divide was dying down like receding music.The mountains were purple-black. From the canyon rose the night mist,pale blue, while above it stood the smoke from the mill, a motionlessplume of sable, shot through by the last ruddiness of the afterglow.

  The air was full of pleasant odours--the smell of wood fires from thecabins of the married men and from the ovens of the cookhouse, theammoniacal whiffs from the stables, the smell of ripening apples from"Boston's" orchard--while over all and through all came the perfume ofthe witch-hazel and tar-weed from the forests and mountain sides, aspungent as myrrh, as aromatic as aloes.

  "And if I should fall, In vain I would call,"

  sang Felice.

  Lockwood took his pipe from his teeth and put back his head to listen.Felice had as good a voice as so pretty a young woman should have had.She was twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, and was incontestablythe beauty of the camp. She was Mexican-Spanish, tall and very slender,black-haired, as lithe as a cat, with a cat's green eyes and with all ofa cat's purring, ingratiating insinuation.

  Lockwood could not have told exactly just how the first familiaritybetween him and Felice had arisen. It had grown by almost imperceptibledegrees up to a certain point; now it was a chance meeting on the trailbetween the office and the mill, now a fragment of conversation aproposof a letter to be mailed, now a question as to some regulation of thecamp, now a detail of repairs done to the cabin wherein Felice lived. Assaid above, up to a certain point the process of "getting acquainted"had been gradual, and on Lockwood's part unconscious; but beyond thatpoint affairs had progressed rapidly.

  At first Felice had been, for Lockwood, a pretty woman, neither more norless; but by degrees she emerged from this vague classification: shebecame a very pretty woman. Then she became a personality; she occupieda place within the circle which Lockwood called his world, his life. Forthe past months this place had, perforce, to be enlarged. Lockwoodallowed it to expand. To make room for Felice, he thrust aside, orallowed the idea of Felice to thrust aside, other objects which long hadsat secure. The invasion of the woman into the sphere of his existencedeveloped at the end into a thing veritably headlong. Deep-seatedconvictions, old-established beliefs and ideals, even the two landmarksright and wrong, were hustled and shouldered about as the invasionwidened and penetrated. This state of affairs was further complicated bythe fact that Felice was the wife of Chino Zavalla, shift-boss of No. 4gang in the new workings.

  II. MADNESS

  It was quite possible that, though Lockwood could not have told when andhow the acquaintance between him and Felice began and progressed, theyoung woman herself could. But this is guesswork. Felice being a woman,and part Spanish at that, was vastly more self-conscious, moredisingenuous, than the man, the Anglo-Saxon. Also she had thatfearlessness that very pretty women have. In her more refined andcity-bred sisters this fearlessness would be called poise, or, at themost, "cheek."

  And she was quite capable of making young Lockwood, the superintendent,her employer, and nominally the ruler of her little world, fall in lovewith her. It is only fair to Felice to say that she would not do thisdeliberately. She would be more conscious of the business than the man,than Lockwood; but in affairs such as this, involving women like Felice,there is a distinction between deliberately doing a thing andconsciously doing it.

  Admittedly this is complicated, but it must be understood that Feliceherself was complex, and she could no more help attracting men to herthan the magnet the steel filings. It made no difference whether the manwas the "breed" boy who split logging down by the engine-house or theyoung superintendent with his college education, his white hands anddominating position; over each and all who came within range of herinfluence Felice, with her black hair and green eyes, her slim figureand her certain indefinite "cheek"--which must not by any manner ofmeans be considered as "boldness"--cast the weird of her kind.

  If one understood her kind, knew how to make allowances, knew just howseriously to take her eyes and her "cheek," no great harm was done.Otherwise, consequences were very apt to follow.

  Hicks was one of those who from the very first had understood. Hicks wasthe manager of the mine, and Lockwood's chief--in a word, _the boss_. Hewas younger even than Lockwood, a boy virtually, but a wonderful boy--aboy such as only America, western America at that, could produce,masterful, self-controlled, incredibly capable, as taciturn as a sphinx,strong of mind and of muscle, and possessed of a cold gray eye that wasas penetrating as chilled steel.

  To this person, impersonal as force itself, Felice had once, by somemysterious feminine art, addressed, in all innocence, her littlemaneuver of fascination. One lift of the steady eyelid, one quiet glintof that terrible cold gray eye, that poniarded her every tissue ofcomplexity, inconsistency, and coquetry, had been enough. Felice hadfled the field from this young fellow, so much her junior, and thenafterward, in a tremor of discomfiture and distress, had kept herdistance.

  Hicks understood Felice. Also the great majority of theminers--shift-bosses, chuck-tenders, bed-rock clea
ners, and thelike--understood. Lockwood did not.

  It may appear difficult of belief that the men, the crude, simpleworkmen, knew how to take Felice Zavalla, while Lockwood, with all hiseducation and superior intelligence, failed in his estimate of her. Theexplanation lies no doubt in the fact that in these man-and-womanaffairs instinct is a surer guide than education and intelligence,unless, indeed, the intelligence is preternaturally keen. Lockwood'sstudent life had benumbed the elemental instinct, which in the miners,the "men," yet remained vigorous and unblunted, and by means of whichthey assessed Felice and her harmless blandishments at their true worth.For all Lockwood's culture, his own chuck-tenders, unlettered fellows,cumbersome, slow-witted, "knew women"--at least, women of their ownworld, like Felice--better than he. On the other hand, his intelligencewas no such perfected instrument as Hicks's, as exact as logarithms, aspenetrating as a scalpel, as uncoloured by emotions as a steel trap.

  Lockwood's life had been a narrow one. He had studied too hard atColumbia to see much of the outside world, and he had come straight fromhis graduation to take his first position. Since then his life had beenspent virtually in the wilderness, now in Utah, now in Arizona, now inBritish Columbia, and now, at last, in Placer County, California. Hislot was the common lot of young mining engineers. It might lead one dayto great wealth, but meanwhile it was terribly isolated.

  Living thus apart from the world, Lockwood very easily allowed hisjudgment to get, as it were, out of perspective. Class distinctions losttheir sharpness, and one woman--as, for instance, Felice--was very likeanother--as, for instance, the girls his sisters knew "back home" in NewYork.

  As a last result, the passions were strong.

  Things were done "for all they were worth" in Placer County, California.When a man worked, he worked hard; when he slept, he slept soundly; whenhe hated, he hated with primeval intensity; and when he loved he grewreckless.

  It was all one that Felice was Chino's wife. Lockwood swore between histeeth that she should be _his_ wife. He had arrived at this conclusionon the night that he sat on the back porch of his office and watched themoon coming up over the Hog Back. He stood up at length and thrust hispipe into his pocket, and putting an arm across the porch pillar, leanedhis forehead against it and looked out far in the purple shadows.

  "It's madness," he muttered; "yet, I know it--sheer madness; but, by theLord! I _am_ mad--and I don't care."

  III. CHINO GOES TO TOWN

  As time went on the matter became more involved. Hicks was away. ChinoZavalla, stolid, easy-going, came and went about his work on the nightshift, always touching his cap to Lockwood when the two crossed eachother's paths, always good-natured, always respectful, seeing nothingbut his work.

  Every evening, when not otherwise engaged, Lockwood threw a saddle overone of the horses and rode in to Iowa Hill for the mail, returning tothe mine between ten and eleven. On one of these occasions, as he drewnear to Chino's cabin, a slim figure came toward him down the road andpaused at his horse's head. Then he was surprised to hear Felice's voiceasking, "'Ave you a letter for me, then, Meester Lockwude?"

  Felice made an excuse of asking thus for her mail each night thatLockwood came from town, and for a month they kept up appearances; butafter that they dropped even that pretense, and as often as he met herLockwood dismounted and walked by her side till the light in the cabincame into view through the chaparral.

  At length Lockwood made a mighty effort. He knew how very far he hadgone beyond the point where between the two landmarks called right andwrong a line is drawn. He contrived to keep away from Felice. He sentone of the men into town for the mail, and he found reasons to be in themine itself whole half-days at a time. Whenever a moment's leisureimpended, he took his shotgun and tramped the mine ditch for leagues,looking for quail and gray squirrels. For three weeks he so managed thathe never once caught sight of Felice's black hair and green eyes, neveronce heard the sound of her singing.

  But the madness was upon him none the less, and it rode and roweled himlike a hag from dawn to dark and from dark to dawn again, till in hiscomplete loneliness, in the isolation of that simple, primitive life,where no congenial mind relieved the monotony by so much as a word,morbid, hounded, tortured, the man grew desperate--was ready foranything that would solve the situation.

  Once every two weeks Lockwood "cleaned up and amalgamated"--that is tosay, the mill was stopped and the "ripples" where the gold was caughtwere scraped clean. Then the ore was sifted out, melted down, and pouredinto the mould, whence it emerged as the "brick," a dun-colouredrectangle, rough-edged, immensely heavy, which represented anywhere fromtwo to six thousand dollars. This was sent down by express to thesmelting-house.

  But it was necessary to take the brick from the mine to the expressoffice at Iowa Hill.

  This duty devolved upon Lockwood and Chino Zavalla. Hicks had from thevery first ordered that the Spaniard should accompany the superintendentupon this mission. Zavalla was absolutely trustworthy, as honest as thedaylight, strong physically, cool-headed, discreet, and--to Hicks's minda crowning recommendation--close-mouthed. For about the mine it wasnever known when the brick went to town or who took it. Hicks hadimpressed this fact upon Zavalla. He was to tell nobody that he wasdelegated to this duty. "Not even"--Hicks had leveled a forefinger atChino, and the cold eyes drove home the injunction as the steam-hammerdrives the rivet--"not even your wife." And Zavalla had promised. Hewould have trifled with dynamite sooner than with one of Hicks's orders.

  So the fortnightly trips to town in company with Lockwood were explainedin various fashions to Felice. She never knew that the mail-bag strappedto her husband's shoulders on those occasions carried some five thousanddollars' worth of bullion.

  On a certain Friday in early June Lockwood had amalgamated, and thebrick, duly stamped, lay in the safe in the office. The following nighthe and Chino, who was relieved from mine duty on these occasions, wereto take it in to Iowa Hill.

  Late Saturday afternoon, however, the engineer's boy brought word toChino that the superintendent wanted him at once. Chino found Lockwoodlying upon the old lounge in the middle room of the office, his foot inbandages.

  "Here's luck, Chino," he exclaimed, as the Mexican paused on thethreshold. "Come in and--shut the door," he added in a lower voice.

  "_Dios!_" murmured Chino. "An accident?"

  "Rather," growled Lockwood. "That fool boy, Davis's kid--the car-boy,you know--ran me down in the mine. I yelled at him. Somehow he couldn'tstop. Two wheels went over my foot--and the car loaded, too."

  Chino shuddered politely.

  "Now here's the point," continued Lockwood. "Um--there's nobody roundoutside there? Take a look, Chino, by the window there. All clear, eh?Well, here's the point. That brick ought to go in to-night just thesame, hey?"

  "Oh--of a surety, of a surety." Chino spoke in Spanish.

  "Now I don't want to let any one else take my place--you never cantell--the beggars will talk. Not all like you, Chino."

  "_Gracias, signor_. It is an honour."

  "Do you think you can manage alone? I guess you can, hey? No reason whyyou couldn't."

  Chino shut his eyes tight and put up a palm. "Rest assured of that,Signor Lockwude. Rest assured of that."

  "Well, get around here about nine."

  "It is understood, signor."

  Lockwood, who had a passable knowledge of telegraphy, had wired to theHill for the doctor. About suppertime one appeared, and Lockwood borethe pain of the setting with such fortitude as he could command. He hadhis supper served in the office. The doctor shared it with him and kepthim company.

  During the early hours of the evening Lockwood lay on the sofa trying toforget the pain. There was no easier way of doing this than by thinkingof Felice. Inevitably his thoughts reverted to her. Now that he washelpless, he could secure no diversion by plunging into the tunnel,giving up his mind to his work. He could not now take down his gun andtramp the ditch. Now he was supine, and the longing to break through themesh
, wrestle free from the complication, gripped him and racked himwith all its old-time force.

  Promptly at nine o'clock the faithful Chino presented himself at theoffice. He had one of the two horses that were used by Lockwood assaddle animals, and as he entered he opened his coat and tapped the hiltof a pistol showing from his trousers pocket, with a wink and a grin.Lockwood took the brick from the safe, strapped it into the mail-bag,and Chino, swinging it across his shoulders, was gone, leaving Lockwoodto hop back to the sofa, there to throw himself down and face once morehis trouble.

  IV. A DESPATCH FROM THE EXPRESS MESSENGER

  What made it harder for Lockwood just now was that even on that veryday, in spite of all precaution, in spite of all good resolutions, hehad at last seen Felice. Doubtless the young woman herself had contrivedit; but, be that as it may, Lockwood, returning from a tour ofinspection along the ditch, came upon her not far from camp, but in aremote corner, and she had of course demanded why he kept away from her.What Lockwood said in response he could not now remember; nor, for thatmatter, was any part of the conversation very clear to his memory. Thereason for this was that, just as he was leaving her, something of moreimportance than conversation had happened. Felice had looked at him.

  And she had so timed her look, had so insinuated it into the little,brief, significant silences between their words, that its meaning hadbeen very clear. Lockwood had left her with his brain dizzy, his teethset, his feet stumbling and fumbling down the trail, for now he knewthat Felice wanted him to know that she regretted the circumstance ofher marriage to Chino Zavalla; he knew that she wanted him to know thatthe situation was as intolerable for her as for him.

  All the rest of the day, even at this moment, in fact, this new phase ofthe affair intruded its pregnant suggestions upon his mind, to theexclusion of everything else. He felt the drift strong around him; heknew that in the end he would resign himself to it. At the same time hesensed the abyss, felt the nearness of some dreadful, namelesscataclysm, a thing of black shadow, bottomless, terrifying.

  "Lord!" he murmured, as he drew his hand across his forehead, "Lord! Iwonder where this thing is going to fetch up."

  As he spoke, the telegraph key on his desk, near at hand, began all atonce to click off his call. Groaning and grumbling, Lockwood heavedhimself up, and, with his right leg bent, hobbled from chair-back tochair-back over to the desk. He rested his right knee on his desk chair,reached for his key, opened the circuit, and answered. There was aninstant's pause, then the instrument began to click again. The messagewas from the express messenger at Iowa Hill.

  Word by word Lockwood took it off as follows:

  "Reno--Kid--will--attempt--hold-up--of-- brick--on--trail-to-night--do--not--send-- till--advised--at--this--end."_

  Lockwood let go the key and jumped back from the desk, lips compressed,eyes alight, his fists clenched till the knuckles grew white. The wholefigure of him stiffened as tense as drawn wire, braced rigid like afinely bred hound "making game."

  Chino was already half an hour gone by the trail, and the Reno Kid was adesperado of the deadliest breed known to the West. How he came to turnup here there was no time to inquire. He was on hand, that was thepoint; and Reno Kid always "shot to kill." This would be no merehold-up; it would be murder.

  Just then, as Lockwood snatched open a certain drawer of his desk wherehe kept his revolver, he heard from down the road, in the direction ofChino's cabin, Felice's voice singing:

  "To the war I must go, To fight for my country and you, dear."

  Lockwood stopped short, his arm at full stretch, still gripping tightthe revolver that he had half pulled from the drawer--stopped short andlistened.

  The solution of everything had come.

  He saw it in a flash. The knife hung poised over the knot--even at thatmoment was falling. Nothing was asked of him--nothing but inertia.

  For an instant, alone there in that isolated mining-camp, high above theworld, lost and forgotten in the gloom of the canyons and redwoods,Lockwood heard the crisis of his life come crashing through the air uponhim like the onslaught of a whirlwind. For an instant, and no more, heconsidered. Then he cried aloud:

  "No, no; I can't, I _can't_--not this way!" And with the words he threwthe belt of the revolver about his hips and limped and scampered fromthe room, drawing the buckle close.

  How he gained the stable he never knew, nor how he backed the horse fromthe building, nor how, hopping on one leg, he got the headstall on anddrew the cinches tight.

  But the wrench of pain in his foot as, swinging up at last, he tried tocatch his off stirrup was reality enough to clear any confusion ofspirit. Hanging on as best he might with his knees and one foot,Lockwood, threshing the horse's flanks with the stinging quirt thattapered from the reins of the bridle, shot from the camp in a swirl ofclattering hoofs, flying pebbles and blinding clouds of dust.

  V. THE TRAIL

  The night was black dark under the redwoods, so impenetrable that hecould not see his horse's head, and braced even as he was for greaterperils it required all his courage to ride top-speed at this vast slabof black that like a wall he seemed to charge head down with every leapof his bronco's hoofs.

  For the first half-hour the trail mounted steadily, then, by the oldgravel-pits, it topped the divide and swung down over more open slopes,covered only with chaparral and second growths. Here it was lighter, andLockwood uttered a fervent "Thank God!" when, a few moments later, themoon shouldered over the mountain crests ahead of him and melted theblack shadows to silver-gray. Beyond the gravel-pits the trail turnedand followed the flank of the slope, level here for nearly a mile.Lockwood set his teeth against the agony of his foot and gave the broncothe quirt with all his strength.

  In another half-hour he had passed Cold Canyon, and twenty minutes afterthat had begun the descent into Indian River. He forded the river at agallop, and, with the water dripping from his very hat-brim, drovelabouring under the farther slope.

  Then he drew rein with a cry of bewilderment and apprehension. Thelights of Iowa Hill were not two hundred yards distant. He had coveredthe whole distance from the mine, and where was Chino?

  There was but one answer: back there along the trail somewhere, at somepoint by which Lockwood had galloped headlong and unheeding, lying upthere in the chaparral with Reno's bullets in his body.

  There was no time now to go on to the Hill. Chino, if he was not pasthelp, needed it without an instant's loss of time. Lockwood spun thehorse about. Once more the ford, once more the canyon slopes, once morethe sharp turn by Cold Canyon, once more the thick darkness under theredwoods. Steadily he galloped on, searching the roadside.

  Then all at once he reined in sharply, bringing the horse to astandstill, one ear turned down the wind. The night's silence was brokenby a multitude of sounds--the laboured breathing of the spent bronco,the saddle creaking as the dripping flanks rose and fell, the touch ofwind in the tree-tops and the chorusing of the myriad tree-toads. Butthrough all these, distinct, as precise as a clock-tick, Lockwood hadheard, and yet distinguished, the click of a horse's hoof drawing near,and the horse was at a gallop: Reno at last.

  Lockwood drew his pistol. He stood in thick shadow. Only some twentyyards in front of him was there any faintest break in the darkness; butat that point the blurred moonlight made a grayness across the trail,just a tone less deep than the redwoods' shadows.

  With his revolver cocked and trained upon this patch of grayness,Lockwood waited, holding his breath.

  The gallop came blundering on, sounding in the night's silence as loudas the passage of an express train; and the echo of it, flung back fromthe canyon side, confused it and distorted it till, to Lockwood's morbidalertness, it seemed fraught with all the madness of flight, all thehurry of desperation.

  Then the hoof-beats rose to a roar, and a shadow just darker than thedarkness heaved against the grayness that Lockwood held covered with hispistol. Instantly he shouted aloud:

  "Halt! Throw up your hands!"<
br />
  His answer was a pistol shot.

  He dug his heels to his horse, firing as the animal leaped forward. Thehorses crashed together, rearing, plunging, and Lockwood, as he felt thebody of a man crush by him on the trail, clutched into the clothes ofhim, and, with the pistol pressed against the very flesh, fired again,crying out as he did so:

  "Drop your gun, Reno! I know you. I'll kill you if you move again!"

  And then it was that a wail rose into the night, a wail of agony andmortal apprehension:

  "Signor Lockwude, Signor Lockwude, for the love of God, don't shoot!'Tis I--Chino Zavalla."

  VI. THE DISCOVERY OF FELICE

  An hour later, Felice, roused from her sleep by loud knocking upon herdoor, threw a blanket about her slim body, serape fashion, and openedthe cabin to two gaunt scarecrows, who, the one, half supported by theother, himself far spent and all but swooning, lurched by her across thethreshold and brought up wavering and bloody in the midst of the cabinfloor.

  "_Por Dios! Por Dios!_" cried Felice. "Ah, love of God! what misfortunehas befallen Chino!" Then in English, and with a swift leap of surpriseand dismay: "Ah, Meester Lockwude, air you hurt? Eh, tell me-a! Ah, itis too draidful!"

  "No, no," gasped Lockwood, as he dragged Chino's unconscious body to thebed Felice had just left. "No; I--I've shot him. We met--there on thetrail." Then the nerves that had stood strain already surprisingly longsnapped and crisped back upon themselves like broken harp-strings.

  "_I've shot him! I've shot him!_" he cried. "Shot him, do youunderstand? Killed him, it may be. Get the doctor, quick! He's at theoffice. I passed Chino on the trail over to the Hill. He'd hid in thebushes as he heard me coming from behind, then when I came back I tookhim. Oh, I'll explain later. Get the doctor, quick."

  Felice threw on such clothes as came to her hand and ran over to theoffice, returning with the doctor, half dressed and blinking in thelantern-light. He went in to the wounded man at once, and Lockwood, atthe end of all strength, dropped into the hammock on the porch,stretching out his leg to ease the anguish of his broken foot. He leanedback and closed his eyes wearily, aware only of a hideous swirl of pain,of intolerable anxiety as to Chino's wound, and, most of all, of a mereblur of confusion wherein the sights and sounds of the last few hourstore through his brain with the plunge of a wild galloping such asseemed to have been in his ears for years and years.

  But as he lay thus he heard a step at his side. Then came the touch ofFelice's long brown hand upon his face. He sat up, opening his eyes.

  "You aisk me-a," she said, "eef I do onderstaind, eh? Yais, Ionderstaind. You--" her voice was a whisper--"you shoot Chino, eh? Iknow. You do those thing' for me-a. I am note angri, no-a. You ver'sharp man, eh? All for love oaf Felice, eh? Now we be happi, maybe; nowwe git married soam day byne-by, eh? Ah, you one brave man, SignorLockwude!"

  She would have taken his hand, but Lockwood, the pain all forgot, theconfusion all vanishing, was on his feet. It was as though a curtainthat for months had hung between him and the blessed light of clearunderstanding had suddenly been rent in twain by her words. The womanstood revealed. All the baseness of her tribe, all the degraded savageryof a degenerate race, all the capabilities for wrong, for sordidtreachery, that lay dormant in her, leaped to life at this unguardedmoment, and in that new light, that now at last she had herself let in,stood pitilessly revealed, a loathsome thing, hateful as malevolenceitself.

  "What," shouted Lockwood, "you think--think that I--that I_could_--oh-h, it's monstrous--_you_----" He could find no words tovoice his loathing. Swiftly he turned away from her, the last spark ofan evil love dying down forever in his breast.

  It was a transformation, a thing as sudden as a miracle, as conclusiveas a miracle, and with all a miracle's sense of uplift and power. In asecond of time the scales seemed to fall from the man's eyes, fettersfrom his limbs; he saw, and he was free.

  At the door Lockwood met the doctor:

  "Well?"

  "He's all right; only a superficial wound. He'll recover. But you--howabout you? All right? Well, that is a good hearing. You've had a luckyescape, my boy."

  "I _have_ had a lucky escape," shouted Lockwood. "You don't know justhow lucky it was."