The Light of Western Stars

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"Miss Hammond, she's safe an' almost well, an' what I feared most
ain't so, thank God," he cried. "Sure I'll never be able to pay
you for all you've done for her. She's told me how she was
dragged down here, how Gene tried to save her, how you spoke up
for Gene an' her, too, how Monty at the last throwed his guns.
Poor Monty! We were good friends, Monty an' I. But it wasn't
friendship for me that made Monty stand in there. He would have
saved her, anyway. Monty Price was the whitest man I ever knew.
There's Nels an' Nick an' Gene, he's been some friend to me; but
Monty Price was--he was grand. He never knew, any more than you
or Bill, here, or the boys, what Bonita was to me."

Stillwell's kind and heavy hand fell upon the cowboy's shoulder.

"Danny, what's all this queer gab?" he asked. "An' you're takin'
some liberty with Miss Hammond, who never seen you before. Sure
I'm makin' allowance fer amazin' strange talk. I see you're not
drinkin'. Mebbe you're plumb locoed. Come, ease up now an' talk
sense."

The cowboy's fine, frank face broke into a smile. He dashed the
tears from his eyes. Then he laughed. His laugh had a pleasant,
boyish ring--a happy ring.

"Bill, old pal, stand bridle down a minute, will you?" Then he
bowed to Madeline. "I beg your pardon, Miss Hammond, for seemin'
rudeness. I'm Danny Mains. An' Bonita is my wife. I'm so crazy
glad she's safe an' unharmed--so grateful to you that--why, sure
it's a wonder I didn't kiss you outright."

"Bonita's your wife!" ejaculated Stillwell.

"Sure. We've been married for months," replied Danny, happily.
"Gene Stewart did it. Good old Gene, he's hell on marryin'. I
guess maybe I haven't come to pay him up for all he's done for
me! You see, I've been in love with Bonita for two years. An'
Gene--you know, Bill, what a way Gene has with girls--he was--
well, he was tryin' to get Bonita to have me."

Madeline's quick, varying emotions were swallowed up in a
boundless gladness. Something dark, deep, heavy, and somber was
flooded from her heart. She had a sudden rich sense of gratitude
toward this smiling, clean-faced cowboy whose blue eyes flashed
through tears.

"Danny Mains!" she said, tremulously and smilingly. "If you are
as glad as your news has made me--if you really think I merit
such a reward--you may kiss me outright."

With a bashful wonder, but with right hearty will, Danny Mains
availed himself of this gracious privilege. Stillwell snorted.
The signs of his phenomenal smile were manifest, otherwise
Madeline would have thought that snort an indication of furious
disapproval.

"Bill, straddle a chair," said Danny. "You've gone back a heap
these last few months, frettin' over your bad boys, Danny an'
Gene. You'll need support under you while I'm throwin' my yarn.
Story of my life, Bill." He placed a chair for Madeline. "Miss
Hammond, beggin' your pardon again, I want you to listen, also.
You've the face an' eyes of a woman who loves to hear of other
people's happiness. Besides, somehow, it's easy for me to talk
lookin' at you."

His manner subtly changed then. Possibly it took on a little
swagger; certainly he lost the dignity that he had shown under
stress of feeling; he was now more like a cowboy about to boast
or affect some stunning maneuver. Walking off the porch, he
stood before the weary horse and burro.

"Played out!" he exclaimed.

Then with the swift violence so characteristic of men of his
class he slipped the pack from the burro and threw saddle and
bridle from the horse.

"There! See 'em! Take a look at the last dog-gone weight you
ever packed! You've been some faithful to Danny Mains. An'
Danny Mains pays! Never a saddle again or a strap or a halter or
a hobble so long as you live! So long as you live nothin' but
grass an' clover, an' cool water in shady places, an' dusty
swales to roll in an' rest an' sleep!"

Then he untied the pack and, taking a small, heavy sack from it,
he came back upon the porch. Deliberately he dumped the contents
of the sack at Stillwell's feet. Piece after piece of rock
thumped upon the floor. The pieces were sharp, ragged, evidently
broken from a ledge; the body of them was white in color, with
yellow veins and bars and streaks. Stillwell grasped up one rock
after another, stared and stuttered, put the rocks to his lips,
dug into them with his shaking fingers; then he lay back in his
chair, head against the wall, and as he gaped at Danny the old
smile began to transform his face.

"Lord, Danny if you hevn't been an' gone an' struck it rich!"

Danny regarded Stillwell with lofty condescension.

"Some rich," he said. "Now, Bill, what've we got here, say,
offhand?"

"Oh, Lord, Danny! I'm afraid to say. Look, Miss Majesty, jest
look at the gold. I've lived among prospectors an' gold-mines
fer thirty years, an' I never seen the beat of this."

"The Lost Mine of the Padres!" cried Danny, in stentorian voice.
"An' it belongs to me!"

Stillwell made some incoherent sound as he sat up fascinated,
quite beside himself.

"Bill, it was some long time ago since you saw me," said Danny.
"Fact is, I know how you felt, because Gene kept me posted. I
happened to run across Bonita, an' I wasn't goin' to let her ride
away alone, when she told me she was in trouble. We hit the
trail for the Peloncillos. Bonita had Gene's horse, an' she was
to meet him up on the trail. We got to the mountains all right,
an' nearly starved for a few days till Gene found us. He had got
in trouble himself an' couldn't fetch much with him.

"We made for the crags an' built a cabin. I come down that day
Gene sent his horse Majesty to you. Never saw Gene so
broken-hearted. Well, after he sloped for the border Bonita an'
I were hard put to it to keep alive. But we got along, an' I
think it was then she began to care a little for me. Because I
was decent. I killed cougars an' went down to Rodeo to get
bounties for the skins, an' bought grub an' supplies I needed.
Once I went to El Cajon an' run plumb into Gene. He was back
from the revolution an' cuttin' up some. But I got away from him
after doin' all I could to drag him out of town. A long time
after that Gene trailed up to the crags an' found us. Gene had
stopped drinkin', he'd changed wonderful, was fine an' dandy. It
was then he began to pester the life out of me to make me marry
Bonita. I was happy, so was she, an' I was some scared of
spoilin' it. Bonita had been a little flirt, an' I was afraid
she'd get shy of a halter, so I bucked against Gene. But I was
all locoed, as it turned out. Gene would come up occasionally,
packin' supplies for us, an' always he'd get after me to do the
right thing by Bonita. Gene's so dog-gone hard to buck against!
I had to give in, an' I asked Bonita to marry me. Well, she
wouldn't at first--said she wasn't good enough for me. But I saw
the marriage idea was workin' deep, an' I just kept on bein' as
decent as I knew how. So it was my wantin' to marry Bonita--my
bein' glad to marry her--that made her grow soft an' sweet an'
pretty as--as a mountain quail. Gene fetched up Padre Marcos,
an' he married us."

Danny paused in his narrative, breathing hard, as if the memory
of the incident described had stirred strong and thrilling
feeling in him. Stillwell's smile was rapturous. Madeline leaned
toward Danny with her eyes shining.

"Miss Hammond, an' you, Bill Stillwell, now listen, for this is
strange I've got to tell you. The afternoon Bonita an' I were
married, when Gene an' the padre had gone, I was happy one minute
an' low-hearted the next. I was miserable because I had a bad
name. I couldn't buy even a decent dress for my pretty wife.
Bonita heard me, an' she was some mysterious. She told me the
story of the lost mine of the padres, an' she kissed me an made
joyful over me in the strangest way. I knew marriage went to
women's heads, an' I thought even Bonita had a spell.

"Well, she left me for a little, an' when she came back she wore
some pretty yellow flowers in her hair. Her eyes were big an'
black an' beautiful. She said some queer things about spirits
rollin' rocks down the canyon. Then she said she wanted to show
me where she always sat an' waited an' watched for me when I was
away.

"She led me around under the crags to a long slope. It was some
pretty there--clear an' open, with a long sweep, an' the desert
yawnin' deep an' red. There were yellow flowers on that slope,
the same kind she had in her hair--the same kind that Apache girl
wore hundreds of years ago when she led the padre to the
gold-mine.

"When I thought of that, an' saw Bonita's eyes, an' then heard
the strange crack of rollin' rocks--heard them rattle down an'
roll an' grow faint--I was some out of my head. But not for
long. Them rocks were rollin' all right, only it was the
weatherin' of the cliffs.

"An' there under the crags was a gold pocket.

"Then I was worse than locoed. I went gold-crazy. I worked like
seventeen burros. Bill, I dug a lot of goldbearin' quartz.
Bonita watched the trails for me, brought me water. That was how
she come to get caught by Pat Hawe an' his guerrillas. Sure!
Pat Hawe was so set on doin' Gene dirt that he mixed up with Don
Carlos. Bonita will tell you some staggerin' news about that
outfit. Just now my story is all gold."

Danny Mains got up and kicked back his chair. Blue lightning
gleamed from his eyes as he thrust a hand toward Stillwell.

"Bill, old pal, put her there--give me your hand," he said. "You
were always my friend. You had faith in me. Well, Danny Mains
owes you, an' he owes Gene Stewart a good deal, an' Danny Mains
pays. I want two pardners to help me work my gold-mine. You an'
Gene. If there's any ranch hereabouts that takes your fancy I'll
buy it. If Miss Hammond ever gets tired of her range an stock
an' home I'll buy them for Gene. If there's any railroad or town
round here that she likes I'll buy it. If I see anythin' myself
that I like I'll buy it. Go out; find Gene for me. I'm achin'
to see him, to tell him. Go fetch him; an' right here in this
house, with my wife an' Miss Hammond as witnesses, we'll draw up
a pardnership. Go find him, Bill. I want to show him this gold,
show him how Danny Mains pays! An' the only bitter drop in my
cup to-day is that I can't ever pay Monty Price."

* * *

Madeline's lips tremblingly formed to tell Danny Mains and
Stillwell that the cowboy they wanted so much had left the ranch;
but the flame of fine loyalty that burned in Danny's eyes, the
happiness that made the old cattleman's face at once amazing and
beautiful, stiffened her lips. She watched the huge Stillwell
and the little cowboy, both talking wildly, as they walked off
arm in arm to find Stewart. She imagined something of what
Danny's disappointment would be, of the elder man's consternation
and grief, when he learned Stewart had left for the border. At
this juncture she looked up to see a strange, yet familiar figure
approaching. Padre Marcos! Certain it was that Madeline felt
herself trembling. What did his presence mean on this day? He
had always avoided meeting her whenever possible. He had been
exceedingly grateful for all she had done for his people, his
church, and himself; but he had never thanked her in person.
Perhaps he had come for that purpose now. But Madeline did not
believe so.

Mention of Padre Marcos, sight of him, had always occasioned
Madeline a little indefinable shock; and now, as he stepped to
the porch, a shrunken, stooped, and sad-faced man, she was
startled.

The padre bowed low to her.

"Senora, will you grant me audience?" he asked, in perfect
English, and his voice was low-toned and grave.

"Certainly, Padre Marcos," replied Madeline; and she led him into
her office.

"May I beg to close the doors?" he asked. "It is a matter of
great moment, which you might not care to have any one hear."

Wonderingly Madeline inclined her head. The padre gently closed
one door and then the others.

"Senora, I have come to disclose a secret--my own sinfulness in
keeping it--and to implore your pardon. Do you remember that
night Senor Stewart dragged me before you in the waiting-room at
El Cajon?"

"Yes," replied Madeline.

"Senora, since that night you have been Senor Stewart's wife!"

Madeline became as motionless as stone. She seemed to feel
nothing, only to hear.

"You are Senor Stewart's wife. I have kept the secret under fear
of death. But I could keep it no longer. Senor Stewart may kill
me now. Ah, Senora, it is very strange to you. You were so
frightened that night, you knew not what happened. Senor Stewart
threatened me. He forced you. He made me speak the service. He
made you speak the Spanish yes. And I, Senora, knowing the deeds
of these sinful cowboys, fearing worse than disgrace to one so
beautiful and so good as you, I could not do less than marry you
truly. At least you should be his wife. So I married you,
truly, in the service of my church."

"My God!" cried Madeline, rising.

"Hear me! I implore you, Senora, hear me out! Do not leave me!
Do not look so--so-- Ah, Senora, let me speak a word for Senor
Stewart. He was drunk that night. He did not know what he was
about. In the morning he came to me, made me swear by my cross
that I would not reveal the disgrace he had put upon you. If I
did he would kill me. Life is nothing to the American vaquero,
Senora. I promised to respect his command. But I did not tell
him you were his wife. He did not dream I had truly married you.
He went to fight for the freedom of my country--Senora, he is one
splendid soldier--and I brooded over the sin of my secret. If he
were killed I need never tell you. But if he lived I knew that I
must some day.

"Strange indeed that Senor Stewart and Padre Marcos should both
come to this ranch together. The great change your goodness
wrought in my beloved people was no greater than the change in
Senor Stewart. Senora, I feared you would go away one day, go
back to your Eastern home, ignorant of the truth. The time came
when I confessed to Stewart--said I must tell you. Senor, the
man went mad with joy. I have never seen so supreme a joy. He
threatened no more to kill me. That strong, cruel vaquero begged
me not to tell the secret--never to reveal it. He confessed his
love for you--a love something like the desert storm. He swore
by all that was once sacred to him, and by my cross and my
church, that he would be a good man, that he would be worthy to
have you secretly his wife for the little time life left him to
worship at your shrine. You needed never to know. So I held my
tongue, half pitying him, half fearing him, and praying for some
God-sent light.

"Senora, it was a fool's paradise that Stewart lived in. I saw
him, often. When he took me up into the mountains to have me
marry that wayward Bonita and her lover I came to have respect
for a man whose ideas about nature and life and God were at a
variance with mine. But the man is a worshiper of God in all
material things. He is a part of the wind and sun and desert and
mountain that have made him. I have never heard more beautiful
words than those in which he persuaded Bonita to accept Senor
Mains, to forget her old lovers, and henceforth to be happy. He
is their friend. I wish I could tell you what that means. It
sounds so simple. It is really simple. All great things are so.
For Senor Stewart it was natural to be loyal to his friend, to
have a fine sense of the honor due to a woman who had loved and
given, to bring about their marriage, to succor them in their
need and loneliness. It was natural for him never to speak of
them. It would have been natural for him to give his life in
their defense if peril menaced them. Senora, I want you to
understand that to me the man has the same stability, the same
strength, the same elements which I am in the habit of
attributing to the physical life around me in this wild and
rugged desert."

Madeline listened as one under a spell. It was not only that
this soft-voiced, eloquent priest knew how to move the heart,
stir the soul; but his defense, his praise of Stewart, if they
had been couched in the crude speech of cowboys, would have been
a glory to her.

"Senora, I pray you, do not misunderstand my mission. Beyond my
confession to you I have only a duty to tell you of the man whose
wife you are. But I am a priest and I can read the soul. The
ways of God are inscrutable. I am only a humble instrument. You
are a noble woman, and Senor Stewart is a man of desert iron
forged anew in the crucible of love. Quien sabe? Senor Stewart
swore he would kill me if I betrayed him. But he will not lift
his hand against me. For the man bears you a very great and pure
love, and it has changed him. I no longer fear his threat, but I
do fear his anger, should he ever know I spoke of his love, of
his fool's paradise. I have watched his dark face turned to the
sun setting over the desert. I have watched him lift it to the
light of the stars. Think, my gracious and noble lady, think what
is his paradise? To love you above the spirit of the flesh; to
know you are his wife, his, never to be another's except by his
sacrifice; to watch you with a secret glory of joy and pride; to
stand, while he might, between you and evil; to find his
happiness in service; to wait, with never a dream of telling you,
for the hour to come when to leave you free he must go out and
get himself shot! Senora, that is beautiful, it is sublime, it
is terrible. It has brought me to you with my confession. I
repeat, Senora, the ways of God are inscrutable. What is the
meaning of your influence upon Senor Stewart? Once he was merely
an animal, brutal, unquickened; now he is a man--I have not seen
his like! So I beseech you in my humble office as priest, as a
lover of mankind, before you send Stewart to his death, to be
sure there is here no mysterious dispensation of God. Love, that
mighty and blessed and unknown thing, might be at work. Senora,
I have heard that somewhere in the rich Eastern cities you are a
very great lady. I know you are good and noble. That is all I
want to know. To me you are only a woman, the same as Senor
Stewart is only a man. So I pray you, Senora, before you let
Stewart give you freedom at such cost be sure you do not want his
love, lest you cast away something sweet and ennobling which you
yourself have created."

XXIII The Light of Western Stars

Blinded, like a wild creature, Madeline Hammond ran to her room.
She felt as if a stroke of lightning had shattered the shadowy
substance of the dream she had made of real life. The wonder of
Danny Mains's story, the strange regret with which she had
realized her injustice to Stewart, the astounding secret as
revealed by Padre Marcos--these were forgotten in the sudden
consciousness of her own love.

Madeline fled as if pursued. With trembling hands she locked the
doors, drew the blinds of the windows that opened on the porch,
pushed chairs aside so that she could pace the length of her
room. She was now alone, and she walked with soft, hurried,
uneven steps. She could be herself here; she needed no mask; the
long habit of serenely hiding the truth from the world and from
herself could be broken. The seclusion of her darkened chamber
made possible that betrayal of herself to which she was impelled.

She paused in her swift pacing to and fro. She liberated the
thought that knocked at the gates of her mind. With quivering
lips she whispered it. Then she spoke aloud:

"I will say it--hear it. I--I love him!"

"I love him!" she repeated the astounding truth, but she doubted
her identity.

"Am I still Madeline Hammond? What has happened? Who am I?"
She stood where the light from one unclosed window fell upon her
image in the mirror. "Who is this woman?"

She expected to see a familiar, dignified person, a quiet,
unruffled figure, a tranquil face with dark, proud eyes and calm,
proud lips. No, she did not see Madeline Hammond. She did not
see any one she knew. Were her eyes, like her heart, playing her
false? The figure before her was instinct with pulsating life.
The hands she saw, clasped together, pressed deep into a swelling
bosom that heaved with each panting breath. The face she saw--
white, rapt, strangely glowing, with parted, quivering lips, with
great, staring, tragic eyes--this could not be Madeline Hammond's
face.

Yet as she looked she knew no fancy could really deceive her,
that she was only Madeline Hammond come at last to the end of
brooding dreams. She swiftly realized the change in her, divined
its cause and meaning, accepted it as inevitable, and straightway
fell back again into the mood of bewildering amaze.

Calmness was unattainable. The surprise absorbed her. She could
not go back to count the innumerable, imperceptible steps of her
undoing. Her old power of reflecting, analyzing, even thinking
at all, seemed to have vanished in a pulse-stirring sense of one
new emotion. She only felt all her instinctive outward action
that was a physical relief, all her involuntary inner strife that
was maddening, yet unutterably sweet; and they seemed to be just
one bewildering effect of surprise.

In a nature like hers, where strength of feeling had long been
inhibited as a matter of training, such a transforming surprise
as sudden consciousness of passionate love required time for its
awakening, time for its sway.

By and by that last enlightening moment came, and Madeline
Hammond faced not only the love in her heart, but the thought of
the man she loved.

Suddenly, as she raged, something in her--this dauntless new
personality--took arms against indictment of Gene Stewart. Her
mind whirled about him and his life. She saw him drunk, brutal;
she saw him abandoned, lost. Then out of the picture she had of
him thus slowly grew one of a different man--weak, sick, changed
by shock, growing strong, strangely, spiritually altered, silent,
lonely like an eagle, secretive, tireless, faithful, soft as a
woman, hard as iron to endure, and at the last noble.

She softened. In a flash her complex mood changed to one wherein
she thought of the truth, the beauty, the wonder of Stewart's
uplifting. Humbly she trusted that she had helped him to climb.
That influence had been the best she had ever exerted. It had
wrought magic in her own character. By it she had reached some
higher, nobler plane of trust in man. She had received
infinitely more than she had given.

Her swiftly flying memory seemed to assort a vast mine of
treasures of the past. Of that letter Stewart had written to her
brother she saw vivid words. But ah! she had known, and if it
had not made any difference then, now it made all in the world.
She recalled how her loosened hair had blown across his lips that
night he had ridden down from the mountains carrying her in his
arms. She recalled the strange joy of pride in Stewart's eyes
when he had suddenly come upon her dressed to receive her Eastern
guests in the white gown with the red roses at her breast.

Swiftly as they had come these dreamful memories departed. There
was to be no rest for her mind. All she had thought and felt
seemed only to presage a tumult.

Heedless, desperate, she cast off the last remnant of
self-control, turned from the old proud, pale, cold,
self-contained ghost of herself to face this strange, strong,
passionate woman. Then, with hands pressed to her beating heart,
with eyes shut, she listened to the ringing trip-hammer voice of
circumstance, of truth, of fatality. The whole story was
revealed, simple enough in the sum of its complicated details,
strange and beautiful in part, remorseless in its proof of great
love on Stewart's side, in dreaming blindness on her own, and,
from the first fatal moment to the last, prophetic of tragedy.

Madeline, like a prisoner in a cell, began again to pace to and
fro.

"Oh, it is all terrible!" she cried. "I am his wife. His wife!
That meeting with him--the marriage--then his fall, his love, his
rise, his silence, his pride! And I can never be anything to
him. Could I be anything to him? I, Madeline Hammond? But I am
his wife, and I love him! His wife! I am the wife of a cowboy!
That might be undone. Can my love be undone? Ah, do I want
anything undone? He is gone. Gone! Could he have meant-- I
will not, dare not think of that. He will come back. No, he
never will come back. Oh, what shall I do?"

* * *

For Madeline Hammond the days following that storm of feeling
were leaden-footed, endless, hopeless--a long succession of weary
hours, sleepless hours, passionate hours, all haunted by a fear
slowly growing into torture, a fear that Stewart had crossed the
border to invite the bullet which would give her freedom. The
day came when she knew this to be true. The spiritual tidings
reached her, not subtly as so many divinations had come, but in a
clear, vital flash of certainty. Then she suffered. She burned
inwardly, and the nature of that deep fire showed through her
eyes. She kept to herself, waiting, waiting for her fears to be
confirmed.

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