Tucker would have liked to part more affectionately from her four-footed compatriot, and felt a sudden sense of loneliness at the loss of her new friend, but a recollection of certain cautions of Captain Poindexter's kept her mute.Nevertheless, the ostler's ostentatious adjuration of "Now then, aren't you going to bring out that mustang for the Senora?" puzzled her.It was not until the fresh horse was put to, and she had flung a piece of gold into the attendant's hand, that the "Gracias" of his unmistakable Saxon speech revealed to her the reason of the lawyer's caution.
Poindexter had evidently represented her to these people as a native Californian who did not speak English.In her inconsistency her blood took fire at this first suggestion of deceit, and burned in her face.Why should he try to pass her off as anybody else?
Why should she not use her own, her husband's name? She stopped and bit her lip.
It was but the beginning of an uneasy train of thought.She suddenly found herself thinking of her visitor, Calhoun Weaver, and not pleasantly.He would hear of their ruin tomorrow, perhaps of her own flight.He would remember his visit, and what would he think of her deceitful frivolity? Would he believe that she was then ignorant of the failure? It was her first sense of any accountability to others than herself, but even then it was rather owing to an uneasy consciousness of what her husband must feel if he were subjected to the criticisms of men like Calhoun.She wondered if others knew that he had kept her in ignorance of his flight.Did Poindexter know it, or had he only entrapped her into the admission? Why had she not been clever enough to make him think that she knew it already? For the moment she hated Poindexter for sharing that secret.Yet this was again followed by a new impatience of her husband's want of insight into her ability to help him.Of course the poor fellow could not bear to worry her, could not bear to face such men as Calhoun, or even Poindexter (she added exultingly to herself), but he might have sent her a line as he fled, only to prepare her to meet and combat the shame alone.It did not occur to her unsophisticated singleness of nature that she was accepting as an error of feeling what the world would call cowardly selfishness.
At midnight the storm lulled and a few stars trembled through the rent clouds.Her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and her country instincts, a little overlaid by the urban experiences of the last few years, came again to the surface.She felt the fresh, cool radiation from outlying, upturned fields, the faint, sad odors from dim stretches of pricking grain and quickening leaf, and wondered if at Los Cuervos it might be possible to reproduce the peculiar verdure of her native district.She beguiled her fancy by an ambitious plan of retrieving their fortunes by farming;her comfortable tastes had lately rebelled against the homeless mechanical cultivation of these desolate but teeming Californian acres, and for a moment indulged in a vision of a vine-clad cottage home that in any other woman would have been sentimental.Her cramped limbs aching, she took advantage of the security of the darkness and the familiar contiguity of the fields to get down from the vehicle, gather her skirts together, and run at the head of the mustang, until her chill blood was thawed, night drawing a modest veil over this charming revelation of the nymph and woman.But the sudden shadow of a coyote checked the scouring feet of this swift Camilla, and sent her back precipitately to the buggy.Nevertheless, she was refreshed and able to pursue her journey, until the cold gray of early morning found her at the end of her second stage.
Her route was changed again from the main highway, rendered dangerous by the approach of day and the contiguity of the neighboring rancheros.The road was rough and hilly, her new horse and vehicle in keeping with the rudeness of the route--by far the most difficult of her whole journey.The rare wagon tracks that indicated her road were often scarcely discernible; at times they led her through openings in the half-cleared woods, skirted suspicious morasses, painfully climbed the smooth, dome-like hills, or wound along perilous slopes at a dangerous angle.Twice she had to alight and cling to the sliding wheels on one of those treacherous inclines, or drag them from impending ruts or immovable mire.In the growing light she could distinguish the distant, low-lying marshes eaten by encroaching sloughs and insidious channels, and beyond them the faint gray waste of the Lower Bay.A darker peninsula in the marsh she knew to be the extreme boundary of her future home: the Rancho de los Cuervos.In another hour she began to descend to the plain, and once more to approach the main road, which now ran nearly parallel with her track.She scanned it cautiously for any early traveler; it stretched north and south in apparent unending solitude.She struck into it boldly, and urged her horse to the top of his speed, until she reached the cross road that led to the rancho.But here she paused and allowed the reins to drop idly on the mustang's back.A singular and unaccountable irresolution seized her.The difficulties of her journey were over; the rancho lay scarcely two miles away; she had achieved the most important part of her task in the appointed time, but she hesitated.What had she come for? She tried to recall Poindexter's words, even her own enthusiasm, but in vain.She was going to take possession of her husband's property, she knew, that was all.But the means she had taken seemed now so exaggerated and mysterious for that simple end that she began to dread an impending something, or some vague danger she had not considered, that she was rushing blindly to meet.Full of this strange feeling she almost mechanically stopped her horse as she entered the cross road.
