XVI
FINISHING TOUCHES

" Yet there be certain times in a young man's life when through great sorrow or sin all the boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood. "
--KIPLING.

The heat of midday was tempered by a light breeze up the San Christobal Valley, and there was not a single cloud in the June skies to throw a softening shadow on the yellow plain. A little group of Mexicans, riding northward with sullen faces, urged on their jaded ponies viciously as they thought of the gold that was to have been paid them for this morning's work, and of the gold that to-morrow night must go to pay the priest who should shrive them; and they had nothing gained wherewith to pay. Their leader, whom they had served, had been trapped in his own game, and they felt themselves abused and deceived.

Down by the brown sands of the river Father Josef waited at the door of the half-ruined little stone chapel for the strange group coming slowly toward him: Ferdinand Ramero, riding like a captured but unconquered king, his head erect, his flashing eyes seeing nobody; Jondo who could make the shabbiest piece of horseflesh take on grace when he mounted it, his tanned cheek flushed, and the spirit of supreme sacrifice looking out through his dark-blue eyes; Eloise, drooping like a white flower, but brave of spirit now, sure that her grief and anxiety would be lifted somehow. I rode beside her, glad to catch the faint smile in her eyes when she looked at me. And last of all, Rex Krane, with the same old Yankee spirit, quick to help a fellow-man and oblivious to personal danger. So we all came to the chapel, but at the door Rex wheeled and rode away, muttering, as he passed me:

"I've got business to look after, and not a darned thing to confess."

And Beverly! He was not with us.

When Rex Krane told his bride good-by up in the Clarenden home on the Missouri bluff, Mat had whispered one last request:

"Look after Bev. He never sees danger for himself, nor takes anything seriously, least of all an enemy, whom he will befriend, and make a joke of it."

And so it happened that Rex had stayed behind to care for Beverly's arrow wound when Bill Banney had gone out with Jondo on the Kiowa trail to search for me this side of Pawnee Rock.

So also it happened that Rex had strolled down from Fort Marcy the night before, in time to see Beverly and the girl in the Mexican dress loitering along the brown front of La Garita. And his keen eyes had caught sight of Santan crouching in an angle of the wall, watching them.

"Indians and Mexes don't mix a lot. And Bev oughtn't mix with either one," Rex commented. "I'll line the boy up for review to-morrow, so Mat won't say I've neglected him."

But the Yankee took the precaution to follow the trail to the Indian's possible abiding-place on the outskirts of Santa Fé. And it was Rex who most aided Jondo in finding that the Indian had gone with Ramero's men northward.

"That fellow is Santan, of Fort Bent, Rex," Jondo said.

"Yes, you thought he was Santa and I took him for Satan then. We missed out on which to knock out of him. Bev won't care nothin' about his name. He will knock hell out of him if he gets in that Clarenden boy's way," Rex had replied.

At the chapel door now the Yankee turned away and rode down the trail toward the little angle where an Indian arrow had whizzed at our party an hour before.

In the shadow of a fallen mass of rock below the cliff Little Blue Flower had spread her blanket, with Beverly's coat tucked under it in a roll for a pillow, and now she sat beside the dying nun, holding the crucifix to Sister Anita's lips. The Indian girl's hands were blood-stained and the nun's black veil and gown were disheveled, and her white head-dress and coif were soaked with gore. But her white face was full of peace as the light faded from her eyes.

And Beverly! The boy forgot the rest of the world when one of the Apache's arrows struck down the pony and the other pierced Sister Anita's neck. Tenderly as a mother would lift a babe he quickly carried the stricken woman to the shelter of the rock, and with one glance at her he turned away.

"You can do all that she needs done for her. Give her her cross to hold," he said, gently, to Little Blue Flower.

Then he sprang up and dashed across the river, splashing the bright waters as he leaped to the farther side where Santan stood concealed, waiting for the return of Ramero's Mexicans.

At the sound of Beverly's feet he leaped to the open just in time to meet Beverly's fist square between the eyes.

"Take that, you dirty dog, to shoot down an innocent nun. And that!" Beverly followed his first blow with another.

The Apache, who had reeled back with the weight of the boy's iron fist, was too quick for the second thrust, struggling to get hold of his arrows and his scalping-knife. But the space was too narrow and Beverly was upon him with a shout.

"I told you I'd make a sieve or you the next time you tried to see me, and I'm going to do it."

He seized the Indian's knife and flung it clear into the river, where it stuck upright in the sands of the bed, parting the little stream of water gurgling against it; and with a powerful grip on the Apache's shoulders he wrenched the arrows from their place and tramped on them with his heavy boot.

The Indian's surprise and submission were gone in a flash, and the two clinched in combat.

On the one hand, jealousy, the inherited hatred of a mistreated race, the savage instinct, a gloating joy in brute strife, blood-lust, and a dogged will to trample in the dirt the man who made the sun shine black for the Apache. On the other hand, a mad rage, a sense of insult, a righteous greed for vengeance for a cruel deed against an innocent woman, and all the superiority of a dominant people. The one would conquer a powerful enemy, the other would exterminate a despicable and dangerous pest.

Back and forth across the narrow space hidden from the trail by fallen rock they threshed like beasts of prey. The Apache had the swiftness of the snake, his muscles were like steel springs, and there was no rule of honorable warfare in his code. He bit and clawed and pinched and scratched and choked and wrenched, with the grim face and burning eyes of a murderer. But the Saxon youth, slower of motion, heavier of bone and muscle, with a grip like iron and a stony endurance, with pride in a conquest by sheer clean skill, and with a purpose, not to take life, but to humble and avenge, hammered back blow for blow; and there was nothing for many minutes to show which was offensive and which defensive.

As the struggle raged on, the one grew more furious and the other more self-confident.

"Oh, I'll make you eat dust yet!" Beverly cried, as Santan in triumph flung him backward and sprang upon his prostrate form.

They clinched again, and with a mighty surge of strength my cousin lifted himself, and the Indian with him, and in the next fall Beverly had his antagonist gripped and helpless.

"I can choke you out now as easy as you shot that arrow. Say your prayers." He fairly growled out the words.

"I didn't aim at her," the Apache half whined, half boasted. "I wanted you."

At that moment Beverly, spent, bruised, and bleeding with fighting and surcharged with the lust of combat, felt all the instinct of murder urging him on to utterly destroy a poison-fanged foe to humanity. At Santan's words he paused and, flinging back the hair from his forehead, he caught his breath and his better self in the same heart-beat. And the instinct of the gentleman--he was Esmond Clarenden's brother's son--held the destroying hand.

"You aimed at me! Well, learn your lesson on that right now. Promise never to play the fool that way again. Promise the everlasting God's truth, or here you go."

The boy's clutch tightened on Santan's throat. "By all that's holy, you'll go to your happy hunting-ground right now, unless you do !" He growled out the words, and his blazing eyes glared threateningly at his fallen enemy.

"I promise!" Santan muttered, gasping for breath.

"You didn't mean to kill the nun? Then you'll go with me and ask her to forgive you before she dies. You will. You needn't try to get away from me. I let you thrash your strength out before we came to this settlement. Be still!" Beverly commanded, as Santan made a mad effort to release himself.

"Hurry up, and remember she is dying. Go softly and speak gently, or by the God of heaven, you'll go with her to the Judgment Seat to answer for that deed right now!"

Slowly the two rose. Their clothes were torn, their hair disheveled, the ground at their feet was red with their blood. They were as bitter, as distrustful now as when their struggle began. For brute force never conquers anything. It can only hold in check by fear of its power to destroy the body. Above the iron fist of the fighter, and the sword and cannon of the soldier, stands the risen Christ who carried his own cross up Mount Calvary--and "there they crucified him."

The two young men, spent with their struggle, their faces stained with dirt and bloody sweat, crossed the river and sought the shadowy place where Little Blue Flower sat beside Sister Anita. Twice Santan tried to escape, and twice Beverly brought him quickly to his place. It must have been here that I caught sight of them from the rock above.

"One more move like that and the ghost of Sister Anita will walk behind you on every trail you follow as long as your flat feet hit the earth," Beverly declared.

"All Indians are afraid of ghosts and I was just too tired to fight any more," he said to me afterward when he told me the story of that hour by the San Christobal River.

Sister Anita lay with wide-open eyes, her hands moving feebly as she clutched at her crucifix. Her hour was almost spent.

Santan stood motionless before her, as Beverly with a grip on his arm said, firmly:

"Tell her you did not aim at her, and ask her to forgive you. It will help to save your own soul sometime, maybe."

Santan looked at Little Blue Flower. But she gave no heed to him as she put the dropped crucifix into the weakening fingers. Murder, as such, is as horrifying to the gentle Hopi tribe as it is sport for the cruel Apache.

Beverly loosed his hold now.

"I did not want to hurt you. Forgive me!" Santan said, slowly, as though each word were plucked from him by red-hot pincers.

Sister Anita heard and turned her eyes.

"Kneel down and tell her again," Beverly said, more gently.

The Apache dropped on his knees beside the dying woman and repeated his words. Sister Anita smiled sweetly.

"Heaven will forgive you even as I do," she murmured, and closed her eyes.

"Go softly. This is sacred ground," my cousin said.

The Indian rose and passed silently down the trail, leaving Little Blue Flower and Beverly Clarenden together with the dead. At the stream he paused and pulled his knife from the sands beneath the trickling waters, and then went on his way.

But an Indian never forgets.

Rex Krane, who had hurried hither from the chapel, closed the eyes and folded the thin hands of the martyred woman, and sent Beverly forward for help to dispose of the garment of clay that had been Sister Anita. From that day something manly and serious came into Beverly Clarenden's face to stay, but his sense of humor and his fearlessness were unchanged.

That was a solemn hour in the shadow of the rock down in that yellow valley, but beautiful in its forgiving triumph. We who had gathered in the dimly lighted chapel had an hour more solemn for that it was made up of such dramatic minutes as change the trend of life-trails for all the years to come.

The chapel was very old. They tell me that only a broken portion of the circular wall about the altar stands there to-day, a lonely monument to some holy padre's faith and courage and sacrifice in the forgotten years when, in far Hesperia, men dreamed of a Quivera and found only a Calvary.

It may be that I, Gail Clarenden, was also changed as I listened to the deliberations of that day; that something of youth gave place for the stronger manhood that should stay me through the years that came after.

Eloise sat where I could see her face. The pink bloom had come back to it, and the golden hair, disordered by our wild ride and rough climb among the pictured rocks of the cliff, curled carelessly on her white brow and rippled about her shapely head. I used to wonder what setting fitted her beauty best--why wonder that about any beautiful woman?--but the gracious loveliness of this woman was never more appealing to me than in the soft light and sacred atmosphere of the church.

Father Josef's first thought was for her, but he brought water and coarse linen towels, so that, refreshed and clean-faced, we came in to his presence.

"Eloise," his voice was deep and sweet, "so long as you were a child I tried to protect and direct you. Now that you are a woman, you must still be protected, but you must live your own life and choose for yourself. You must meet sorrow and not be crushed by it. You must take up your cross and bear it. It is for this that I have called you back to New Mexico at this time. But remember, my daughter, that life is not given to us for defeat, but for victory; not for tears, but for smiles; not for idle cringing safety, but for brave and joyous struggle."

I thought of Dick Verra, the college man, whose own young years were full of hope and ambition, whose love for a woman had brought him to the priesthood, but as I caught the rich tones of Father Josef's voice, somehow, to me, he stood for success, not failure.

Eloise bowed her head and listened.

"You must no longer be threatened with the loss of your own heritage, nor coerced into a marriage for which the Church has been offered a bribe to help to accomplish. Blood money purifies no altars nor extends the limits of the Kingdom of the Christ. Your property is your own to use for the holy purposes of a goodly life wherever your days may lead you; and whatever the civil law may grant of power to control it for you, you shall no longer be harassed or annoyed. The Church demands that it shall henceforth be yours."

Father Josef's dark eyes were full of fire as he turned to Ferdinand Ramero.

"You will now relinquish all claim upon the control of this estate, whose revenue made your father and yourself to be accounted rich, and upon which your son has been allowed to build up a life expectation; and though on account of it, you go forth a poor man in wordly goods, you may go out rich in the blessing of restoration and repentance."

Ferdinand Ramero's steel eyes were fixed like the eyes of a snake on the holy man's face. Restoration and repentance do not belong behind eyes like that.

"I can fight you in the courts. You and your Church may go to the devil;" he seemed to hiss rather than to speak these words.

"We do go to him every day to bring back souls like yours," Father Josef's voice was calm. "I have waited a long time for you to repent. You can go to the courts, but you will not do it. For the sake of your wife, Gloria Ramero, and Felix Narveo, her brother, we do not move against you, and you dare not move for yourself, because your own record will not bear the light of legal investigation."

Ferdinand Ramero sprang up, the blaze of passion, uncontrolled through all his years, bursting forth in the tragedy of the hour. Eloise was right. In his anger he was a maniac.

"You dare to threaten me! You pen me in a corner to stab me to death! You hold disgrace and miserable poverty over my head, and cant of restoration and repentance! Not until here you name each thing that you count against me, and I have met them point by point, will I restore. I never will repent!"

In the vehemence of anger, Ramero was the embodiment of the dramatic force of unrestraint, and withal he was handsome, with a controlling magnetism even in his hour of downfall.

Jondo had said that Father Josef had somewhere back a strain of Indian blood in his veins. It must have been this that gave the fiber of self control to his countenance as he looked with pitying eyes at Jondo and Eloise St. Vrain.

"The hour is struck," he said, sadly. "And you shall hear your record, point by point, because you ask it now. First: you have retained, controlled, misused, and at last embezzled the fortune of Theron St. Vrain, as it was retained, controlled, misused, and embezzled by your father, Henry Ramer, in his lifetime. Any case in civil courts must show how the heritage of Eloise St. Vrain, heir to Theron St. Vrain at the death of her mother--"

"Not until the death of her mother--" Ferdinand Ramero broke in, hoarsely.

For the first time to-day the priest's cheek paled, but his voice was unbroken as he continued:

"I would have been kinder for your own sake. You desire otherwise. Yes, only after the death of Mary Marchland St. Vrain could you dictate concerning her daughter's affairs, with most questionable legality even then. Mary Marchland St. Vrain is not dead."

The chapel was as silent as the grave. My heart stood still. Before me was Jondo, big, strong, self-controlled, inured to the tragic deeds of the epic years of the West. No pen of mine will ever make the picture of Jondo's face at these words of Father Josef.

Eloise turned deathly pale, and her dark eyes opened wide, seeing nothing. It was not I who comforted her, but Jondo, who put his strong arm about her, and she leaned against his shoulder. Father and daughter in spirit, stricken to the heart.

"For many years she has lived in that lonely ranch-house on the Narveo grant in the little cañon up the San Christobal Arroyo. When the fever left her with memory darkened forever, you recorded her as dead. But your wife, Gloria Ramero, spared no pains to make her comfortable. She has never known a want, nor lived through one unhappy hour, because she has forgotten."

"A priest, confessor for men's inmost souls, who babbles all he knows! I wonder that this roof does not fall on you and strike you dead before this altar." Ferdinand Ramero's voice rose to a shout.

"It was too strongly built by one who knew men's inmost souls, and what they needed most," Father Josef replied. "You drove me to this by your insistence. I would have shielded you--and these."

He turned to Eloise and Jondo as he spoke.

"One more point, since you hold it ready to spring when I am through. You stand accused of plotting for your father's murder. The evidence still holds, and some men who rode with you to-day to seize this gentle girl and drag her back to a marriage with your son--and save your ill-gotten gold thereby--some of these men who will confess to me and do penance to-morrow night, are the same men who long ago confessed to other crimes--you can guess what they were.

"It pays well to repent before such a holy tattler as yourself." Ramero's blue eyes burned deep as their fire was centered on the priest.

"These are the counts against you," Father Josef said in review, ignoring the last outburst of wrath. "A life of ease and inheritance through money not your own, nor even rightly yours to control. A stricken woman listed with the dead, whose memory might have come again--God knows--if but the loving touch of childish hands had long ago been on her hands. It is years too late for all that now. A brave young ward rescued from your direct control by Esmond Clarenden's force of will and daring to do the right. You know that last pleading cry of Mary Marchland's, for Jondo to protect her child, and how Clarenden, for love of this brave man, came to New Mexico on perilous trails to take the little Eloise from you. And lastly in this matter, the threats to force a marriage unholy in God's sight, because no love could go with it. Your mad chase and villainous intention to use brute force to secure your will out yonder on the rocks above the cliff. You have debauched an Apache boy, making him your tool and spy. You sanctioned the seizing of a Hopi girl whose parents you permitted to be murdered, and their child sold into slavery among foreign tribes. You have stirred up and kept alive a feud of hatred and revenge among the Kiowa people against the life and property of Esmond Clarenden and all who belong to him. And, added to all these, you stand to-day a patricide in spirit, accused of plotting for the murder of your own father. Do not these things call for restoration and repentance?"

Ferdinand Ramero rose to his feet and stood in the aisle near the door. His face hardened, and all the suave polish and cool concentration and dominant magnetism fell away. What remained was the man as shaped by the ruling passions of years, from whose control only divine power could bring deliverance. And when he spoke there was a remorseless cruelty and selfishness in his low, even tones.

"You have called me a plotter for my father's life--based on some lying Mexican's love of blackmail. You do not even try to prove your charge. The man who would have killed him was Theron St. Vrain, and his brother, Bertrand. That Theron was disgraced by the fact you know very well, and the blackness of it drove him to an early grave. So this young lady here, whom I would have shielded from this stain upon her name in the marriage to my son, may know the truth about her father. He was what you, Father Josef, try to prove me to be."

He paused as if to gather venom for his last shaft.

"These two, Theron and Bertrand, were equally guilty, but through tricks of their own, Theron escaped and Bertrand took the whole crime on himself. He disappeared and paid the penalty by his death. His body was recovered from the river and placed in an unmarked grave. Why go back to that now? Because Bertrand St. Vrain's clothes alone on some poor drowned unknown man were buried. Bertrand himself sits here beside his niece, Eloise St. Vrain. John Doe to the world, the man who lives without a name, and dares not sign a business document, a walking dead man. I could even pity him if he were real. But who can pity nothing?"

A look of defiance came into the man's glittering eyes as he took one step nearer to the door and continued:

"Esmond Clarenden drove me out of the United States with threats of implicating me in the death of my father, and I knew his power and brutal daring to do anything he chose to do. It was but his wish to have revenge for this nameless thing--"

The scorn of Ramero's eyes and voice as he looked at Jondo were withering.

"And this thing keeps me here by threats of attacks, even when he knows that by such attacks he will reveal himself. It has been a grim game." Something of a grin showed all of the man's fine teeth. "A grim game, and never played to a finish till now. I leave it to you, Father Josef, to judge who has been the stronger and who comes out of it victor. I make restoration--of what? I leave the St. Vrain money that I have guarded for Eloise, the daughter of the man who killed, or helped to kill, my father. You can control it now, among you: Clarenden, already rich; your Church, notorious in its robbery of the poor by enriching its coffers; or this uncle here, who is dead and buried in an unknown grave. That is all the restoration I can make. Repentance, I do not know what that word means. Keep it for the poor devils you will gather in to-morrow night to be shriven. They need it. I do not."

He turned and strode out of the church and, mounting his horse, rode like a madman up the yellow valley of the San Christobal. In after years I could find no term to so well describe that last act as the words of Beverly Clarenden, who came to the chapel just in time to hear Ferdinand Ramero's closing declaration, and to see his black scowl and scornful air, as, in a royal madness, he defied the power of man and denounced the all-pitying love that is big enough for the most sinful.

"It was Paradise lost," Beverly declared, "and Satan falling clear to hell before the Archangel's flaming sword. Only he went east and the real Satan dropped down to his place. But they will meet up somewhere, Ramero and the real one, and not be able to tell each other apart."

And Jondo. My boyhood idol, brave, gentle, unselfish, able everywhere! Jondo, who had kept my toddling feet from stumbling, who had taught me to ride and swim and shoot, who had made me wise in plains lore, and manly and clean among the rough and vulgar things of the Missouri frontier. Jondo, whose big, cool hand had touched my feverish face, whose deep blue eyes had looked love into my eyes when I lay dying on Pawnee Rock! A man without a name! A murderer who had by a trick escaped the law, and must walk evermore unknown among his fellow-men! Something went out of my life as I looked at him. The boy in me was burned and seared away, and only the man-to-be, was left.

He offered no word of defense from the accusation against him, nor made a plea of innocence, but sat looking straight at Father Josef, who looked at him as if expecting nothing. And as they gazed into each other's eyes, a something strong and beautiful swept the face of each. I could not understand it, and I was young. My lifetime hero had turned to nothingness before my eyes. The world was full of evil. I hated it and all that in it was, my trusting, foolish, short-sighted self most of all.

But Eloise--the heart of woman is past understanding--Eloise turned to the man beside her and, putting both arms around his neck, she pressed one fair cheek against his brown bearded one, and kissed him gently on the forehead. Then turning to Father Josef, no longer the dependent, clinging maiden, but the loving woman, strong and sure of will, she said:

"I must go to my mother. So long as she lives I will never leave her again."

She did not even look at me, nor speak a word of farewell, as if I were the murderer instead of that man, Jondo, whom she had kissed.

I saw her ride away, with Little Blue Flower beside her. I saw the green mesa, the red cliffs above the growing things, the glitter of the San Christobal water on yellow sands, the level plain where the narrow white trail crept far away toward Gloria Narveo's lonely ranch-house, strong as a fort built a hundred years ago, in a little cañon of the valley. I saw a young, graceful figure on horseback, and the glint of sunlight on golden hair. But the rider did not turn her head and I could not get one glance of those beautiful dark eyes. A great mass of rock hid the line of the trail, and the two, Eloise and Little Blue Flower, rounded the angle and rode on out of my sight.

I helped to dig open the curly mesquite and to shovel out the sand. I heard the burial service, and saw a rudely coffined form lowered into an open grave. I saw Rex Krane at the head, and Jondo at the foot, and Beverly's bleeding hands as he scraped the loose earth back and heaped it over that which had been called Sister Anita; I heard Father Josef's voice of music repeating the "Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." And then we turned away and left the spot, as men turn every day to the common affairs of life.

Four days later Little Blue Flower came to me as I, still numb and cold and blankly unthinking, sat beside Fort Marcy and looked out with unseeing eyes at the glory of a New-Mexican sunset.

"I come from Eloise." The sadness of her face and voice even the Indian's self-control could not conceal.

"She is sad, but brave, and her mother loves her and calls her 'Little One.' She will never grow up to her mother. But"--Little Blue Flower's voice faltered and she gazed out at the far Sandia peaks wrapped in the rich purple folds of twilight, with the scarlet of the afterglow beyond them--"Eloise loves Beverly. She will always love him. Heaven meant him for her." There were some other broken sentences, but I did not grasp them clearly then.

The world was full of gray shadows. The finishing touches had been put on life for me. I looked out at the dying glow in the west, and wondered vaguely if the sun would ever cross the Gloriettas again, or ever the Sangre-de-Christo grow radiant with the scarlet stain of that ineffable beauty that uplifts and purifies the soul of him who looks on it. k9XESBz8f+HQ+s4ps18mqXRs1aH2TFHVN4fm8aJYTz60nj6iz138urrnez0cnwwK

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