第14章 THE HUSSY(4)

"My Spiggoty Spanish wasn't much to brag on, but I could see she understood, though she only shook her head and wouldn't speak.But great Moses, she was some looker - "I glanced apprehensively at Mrs.Jones, who must have caught me out of the tail of her eye, for she muttered: "If she hadn't been do you think he'd a-taken her into his house to live?""Now hold on, Sarah," he protested."That ain't fair.Besides, I'm telling this.- Next thing, Seth yells at me, 'Goin' to stay here all night?'

"'Come on,' I said to the girl, 'and climb on board.But next time you want a ride don't flag a locomotive between stations.' She followed along; but when I got to the step and turned to give her a lift-up, she wasn't there.I went forward again.Not a sign of her.Above and below was sheer cliff, and the track stretched ahead a hundred yards clear and empty.And then I spotted her, crouched down right against the cowcatcher, that close I'd almost stepped on her.If we'd started up, we'd have run over her in asecond.It was all so nonsensical, I never could make out her actions.Maybe she was trying to suicide.I grabbed her by the wrist and jerked her none too gentle to her feet.And she came along all right.Women do know when a man means business."I glanced from this Goliath to his little, bird-eyed spouse, and wondered if he had ever tried to mean business with her.

"Seth kicked at first, but I boosted her into the cab and made her sit up beside me - ""And I suppose Seth was busy running the engine," Mrs.Jones observed.

"I was breaking him in, wasn't I?" Mr.Jones protested."So we made the run into Amato.She'd never opened her mouth once, and no sooner'd the engine stopped than she'd jumped to the ground and was gone.Just like that.Not a thank you kindly.Nothing.

"But next morning when we came to pull out for Quito with a dozen flat cars loaded with rails, there she was in the cab waiting for us; and in the daylight I could see how much better a looker she was than the night before.

"'Huh! she's adopted you,' Seth grins.And it looked like it.She just stood there and looked at me - at us - like a loving hound dog that you love, that you've caught with a string of sausages inside of him, and that just knows you ain't going to lift a hand to him.'Go chase yourself!' I told her PRONTO." (Mrs.Jones her proximity noticeable with a wince at the Spanish word.) "You see, Sarah, I'd no use for her, even at the start."Mrs.Jones stiffened.Her lips moved soundlessly, but I knew to what syllables.

"And what made it hardest was Seth jeering at me.'You can't shake her that way,' he said.'You saved her life - ' 'I didn't,' I said sharply; 'it was you.' 'But she thinks you did, which is the same thing,' he came back at me.'And now she belongs to you.Custom of the country, as you ought to know.'""Heathenish," said Mrs.Jones, and though her steady gaze was set upon the Tower of Jewels I knew she was making no reference to its architecture.

"'She's come to do light housekeeping for you,' Seth grinned.I let him rave, though afterwards I kept him throwing in the coal too fast to work his mouth very much.Why, say, when I got to the spot where I picked her up, and stopped the train for her to get off, she just flopped down on her knees, got a hammerlock with her arms around my knees, and cried all over my shoes.What was I to do?"With no perceptible movement that I was aware of, Mrs.Jones advertised her certitude of knowledge of what SHE would have done.

"And the moment we pulled into Quito, she did what she'd done before- vanished.Sarah never believes me when I say how relieved I felt to be quit of her.But it was not to be.I got to my 'dobe house and managed a cracking fine dinner my cook had ready for me.She was mostly Spiggoty and half Indian, and her name was Paloma.- Now, Sarah, haven't I told you she was older'n a grandmother, and looked more like a buzzard than a dove? Why, I couldn't bear to eat with her around where I could look at her.But she did make things comfortable, and she was some economical when it came to marketing.

"That afternoon, after a big long siesta, what'd I find in the kitchen, just as much at home as if she belonged there, but that blamed Indian girl.And old Paloma was squatting at the girl's feet and rubbing the girl's knees and legs like for rheumatism, which I knew the girl didn't have from the way I'd sized up the walk of her, and keeping time to the rubbing with a funny sort of gibberish chant.And I let loose right there and then.As Sarah knows, I never could a-bear women around the house - young, unmarried women, I mean.But it was no go! Old Paloma sided with the girl, and said if the girl went she went, too.Also, she called me more kinds of a fool than the English language has accommodation for.You'd like the Spanish lingo, Sarah, for expressing yourself in such ways, and you'd have liked old Paloma, too.She was a good woman, though she didn't have any teeth and her face could kill a strong man's appetite in the cradle.

"I gave in.I had to.Except for the excuse that she needed Vahna's help around the house (which she didn't at all), old Paloma never said why she stuck up for the girl.Anyway, Vahna was a quiet thing, never in theway.And she never gadded.Just sat in- doors jabbering with Paloma and helping with the chores.But I wasn't long in getting on to that she was afraid of something.She would look up, that anxious it hurt, whenever anybody called, like some of the boys to have a gas or a game of pedro.I tried to worm it out of Paloma what was worrying the girl, but all the old woman did was to look solemn and shake her head like all the devils in hell was liable to precipitate a visit on us.