第12章

At the time of his meeting with Angele, Vanamee was living on the Los Muertos ranch.It was there he had chosen to spend one of his college vacations.But he preferred to pass it in out-of-door work, sometimes herding cattle, sometimes pitching hay, sometimes working with pick and dynamite-stick on the ditches in the fourth division of the ranch, riding the range, mending breaks in the wire fences, making himself generally useful.

College bred though he was, the life pleased him.He was, as he desired, close to nature, living the full measure of life, a worker among workers, taking enjoyment in simple pleasures, healthy in mind and body.He believed in an existence passed in this fashion in the country, working hard, eating full, drinking deep, sleeping dreamlessly.

But every night, after supper, he saddled his pony and rode over to the garden of the old Mission.The 'dobe dividing wall on that side, which once had separated the Mission garden and the Seed ranch, had long since crumbled away, and the boundary between the two pieces of ground was marked only by a line of venerable pear trees.Here, under these trees, he found Angele awaiting him, and there the two would sit through the hot, still evening, their arms about each other, watching the moon rise over the foothills, listening to the trickle of the water in the moss-encrusted fountain in the garden, and the steady croak of the great frogs that lived in the damp north corner of the enclosure.

Through all one summer the enchantment of that new-found, wonderful love, pure and untainted, filled the lives of each of them with its sweetness.The summer passed, the harvest moon came and went.The nights were very dark.In the deep shade of the pear trees they could no longer see each other.When they met at the rendezvous, Vanamee found her only with his groping hands.They did not speak, mere words were useless between them.

Silently as his reaching hands touched her warm body, he took her in his arms, searching for her lips with his.Then one night the tragedy had suddenly leaped from out the shadow with the abruptness of an explosion.

It was impossible afterwards to reconstruct the manner of its occurrence.To Angele's mind--what there was left of it--the matter always remained a hideous blur, a blot, a vague, terrible confusion.No doubt they two had been watched; the plan succeeded too well for any other supposition.One moonless night, Angele, arriving under the black shadow of the pear trees a little earlier than usual, found the apparently familiar figure waiting for her.All unsuspecting she gave herself to the embrace of a strange pair of arms, and Vanamee arriving but a score of moments later, stumbled over her prostrate body, inert and unconscious, in the shadow of the overspiring trees.

Who was the Other?Angele was carried to her home on the Seed ranch, delirious, all but raving, and Vanamee, with knife and revolver ready, ranged the country-side like a wolf.He was not alone.The whole county rose, raging, horror-struck.Posse after posse was formed, sent out, and returned, without so much as a clue.Upon no one could even the shadow of suspicion be thrown.The Other had withdrawn into an impenetrable mystery.

There he remained.He never was found; he never was so much as heard of.A legend arose about him, this prowler of the night, this strange, fearful figure, with an unseen face, swooping in there from out the darkness, come and gone in an instant, but leaving behind him a track of terror and death and rage and undying grief.Within the year, in giving birth to the child, Angele had died.

The little babe was taken by Angele's parents, and Angele was buried in the Mission garden near to the aged, grey sun dial.

Vanamee stood by during the ceremony, but half conscious of what was going forward.At the last moment he had stepped forward, looked long into the dead face framed in its plaits of gold hair, the hair that made three-cornered the round, white forehead;looked again at the closed eyes, with their perplexing upward slant toward the temples, oriental, bizarre; at the lips with their Egyptian fulness; at the sweet, slender neck; the long, slim hands; then abruptly turned about.The last clods were filling the grave at a time when he was already far away, his horse's head turned toward the desert.

For two years no syllable was heard of him.It was believed that he had killed himself.But Vanamee had no thought of that.For two years he wandered through Arizona, living in the desert, in the wilderness, a recluse, a nomad, an ascetic.But, doubtless, all his heart was in the little coffin in the Mission garden.

Once in so often he must come back thither.One day he was seen again in the San Joaquin.The priest, Father Sarria, returning from a visit to the sick at Bonneville, met him on the Upper Road.

Eighteen years had passed since Angele had died, but the thread of Vanamee's life had been snapped.Nothing remained now but the tangled ends.He had never forgotten.The long, dull ache, the poignant grief had now become a part of him.Presley knew this to be so.