Port O' Gold Part 8

"Getting tired of your task?" he questioned. But Inez shook her head.

"He protected me," she said. "It was while defending me that he was wounded." Her eyes searched the physician's face. "Where," she questioned fearfully, "is--"

"McTurpin?" returned the doctor. "Lord knows. He vamoosed, absquatulated. You'll hear no more of him, I think, Miss Windham."

For a moment the dark lashes of the patient rose as if something in the doctor's words had caught his attention; then they fell again over weary eyes and he appeared to sleep. But when Doctor Jones was gone, Inez found him regarding her with unusual interest.

"Did I hear him call you Windham?" he inquired, "Inez Windham?"

"Yes, that is my name," she answered.

"And your father's?"

"He is Don Roberto Windham of the Engineers," Inez leaned forward.

"Oh!" her eyes shone with a hope she dared not trust. "Tell me, quickly, have you news of him?"

"Yes," said Stanley. "He is ill, but will recover. He will soon return."

His eyes dwelt on the girl in silence, musingly.

"Tell me more!" she pleaded. "We believed him lost. Ah, how my mother's health will mend when she hears this. We have waited so long...."

"I was with him in the North," said Stanley. "Often, sitting at the camp-fire, while the others slept, he told me of his wife, his daughter, and his son, Benito. In my coat," he pointed to a garment hanging near the door, "you will find a letter--" He followed her swift, searching fingers, saw her press the envelope impulsively against her heart. While she read his eyes were on her dreamily, until at last he closed them with a little sigh.

CHAPTER XI

SAN FRANCISCO IS NAMED

Evening on the Windham rancho. Far below, across a vast green stretch of meadow sloping toward the sea, the sun sank into crimson canopies of cloud. It was one of those perfect days which come after the first rains, mellow and exhilarating. The Trio in the rose arbor of the patio were silent under the spell of its beauty. Don Roberto Windham, home again, after long months of wandering and hards.h.i.+p, stood beside the chair in which Senora Windham rested against a pillow. She had mended much since his return, and her eyes as she looked up at him held the same flas.h.i.+ng, fiery tenderness which in the long ago had caused her to renounce Castilian traditions and become the bride of an Americano. At her feet upon a low stool sat her daughter, Inez, and Windham, as he looked down, was a little startled at her likeness to the Spanish beauty he had met and married a generation before.

Conscious of his glance, her eyes turned upward and she held out her hand to him. "Father, mine," she said in English, "you have made the roses bloom again in mother's cheeks. And in my heart," she added with a quick, impulsive tenderness.

Robert Windham bent and kissed her wind-tossed hair. "I think another has usurped me in the latter task." He smiled, although not without a touch of sadness. "Ah, well, Adrian is a fine young fellow. You need not blush so furiously."

"I think he comes," said the Senora Anita, and, unconsciously, her arm went around the girl. "Is not that his high-stepping mare and his beanpole of a figure riding beside Benito in yon cloud of dust?"

She smiled down at Inez. "Do not mind your mother's jesting--Go now to smooth your locks and place a rose within them--as I used to do when Don Roberto came."

Inez rose and made her way into the casa. She heard a clatter of hoofs and voices. At the sound of one her heart leaped strangely.

"We have famous news," she heard her brother say. "The name of Yerba Buena has been changed to San Francisco. Here is an account of it in Brannan's _California Star_." She heard the rustle of a paper then, once more her brother's voice: "San Francisco!" he p.r.o.nounced it lovingly.

"Some day it will be a ciudad grande--perhaps even in my time."

"A great city!" repeated his mother. "Thus my father dreamed of it....

But you will pardon us, Don Adrian, for you have other things in mind than Yerb--than San Francisco's future. See, my little one! Even now she comes to bid you welcome."

Inez as she joined them gave her hand to Stanley. "Ah, Don Adrian, your color is high"--her tone was bantering, mock-anxious. "You have not, perchance, a touch of fever?"

He eyed her hungrily. "If I have," he spoke with that slow gentleness she loved so well, "it is no fever that requires roots or herbs....

Shall I," he came a little closer, "shall I put a name to it, Senorita?"

His words were for her ears alone. Her eyes smiled into his. "Come, let us show you the rose garden, Senor Stanley," she said with playful formality and placed her silk-gloved fingers on his arm.

Senora Windham's hand groped for her husband's. There were tears in her eyes, but he bent down and kissed them away. "Anita, mia, do not grieve.

He is a good lad."

"It is not that." She hid her face against his shoulder. "It is not that--"

"I understand," he whispered.

After a little time Benito spoke. "Mother, I learned something from the warring of the rancheros aganist Alcalde Bartlett." He came forward and picked up the newspaper which had fallen from his mother's lap. "I learned," his hand fell on his father's shoulder, "that I am an American."

"Benito!" said his mother quickly.

"I am Don Roberto's son, as well as thine, remember, madre mia!" he spoke with unusual gentleness. "Even with Sanchez, Vasquez and Guerrero at my side in battle, I did not shoot to kill. Something said within, 'These men are brothers. They are of the clan of Don Roberto, of thy father.' So I shot to miss. And when the commandante, Senor Hull, dismissed me with kind words--he who might have hanged me as a traitor--my heart was full of love for all his people. And contrition.

Mother, you will forgive? You, who have taught me all the pride of the Hidalgo. For I must say the truth, to you and everyone...." He knelt at her feet, impressing a kiss of love and reverence upon her outstretched hand.

"Rise, my son," she said, tremulously. "You are right, and it is well."

She smiled. "Who am I to say my boy is no Americano? I, who wed the best and n.o.blest of them all."

There was a little silence. Inez and Don Adrian, returning, paused a moment, half dismayed. "Come, my children," said Anita Windham.

"Ah," cried Inez, teasingly, "we are not the only ones who have been making love." She led her companion forward. "We have come to ask your blessing, mother, father mine," she whispered. "I," her eyes fell, "I am taken captive by a gringo."

"Do not use that name," her mother said reprovingly. But Don Roberto laughed. "You are the second to declare allegiance to the Stars and Stripes." He took Benito's hand. "My son's discovered he's American, Don Adrian."

Presently Benito spoke again. "That is not all, my father. There is soon to be a meeting for relief of immigrants lost in the Sierra Nevada snows. James Reed will organize an expedition from Yerb--from San Francisco. And I wish to go. There are women and children starving, perhaps."

"It is the Donner party. They tried a short cut and the winter overtook them. I, too, will go," said Don Roberto.

"And I," volunteered Stanley.

But the women had it otherwise. "You have been too long gone from me,"

Anita quavered. "I would fear your loss again." And Inez argued that her Adrian was not recovered from his wound or illness. Finally it was decided that Benito only would accompany the expedition. The talk fell upon other matters. Alcalde Bartlett had been discredited, though not officially, since his return from capture by the rancheros. He was soon to be displaced and there would be no further commandeering of horses and cattle.

"The commandante tells me," Windham said, "that there is still no news of the Warren's launch which was sent last December to pay the garrison at Sutter's Fort. Bob Ridley's men, who cruised the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, found nothing."

"But--the boat and its crew couldn't vanish completely?" Benito's tone held puzzled incredulity. "There would be Wreckage. Floating bodies--"

"Unless," said Adrian, "they had been hidden--buried secretly, perhaps."

"Adrian, what do you mean?" asked Inez in excitement. "It was about the time that--"

"McTurpin left," responded Stanley. "I've heard more than a whisper of his possible connection with the disappearance. McTurpin didn't leave alone. He rounded up half a dozen rough-looking fellows and they rode out of town together."

There was a silence. Then Benito spoke. "We haven't seen the last of him, I fear."