posts he had visited, until long after luncheon. Then
Cairness, having to ride to the salt lick at the other
end of the ranch, up in the Huachuca foot-hills, sug-
gested that Forbes go with him.

It was plain, even to Felipa, how thoroughly he
enjoyed being with one who could talk of the past and
of the present, from his own point of view. His Cov-
entry had been almost complete since the day that the
entire army, impersonated in Crook, had turned dis-
approving eyes upon him once, and had then looked
away from him for good and all. It had been too bitter



310 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

a humiliation for him ever to subject himself to the
chance of it again.

The better class of citizens did not roam over the
country much, and no officers had stopped at his ranch
in almost two years, though they had often passed by.
And he knew well enough that they would have let
their canteens go unfilled, and their horses without
fodder, for a long time, rather than have accepted
water from his wells or alfalfa from his land. He
could understand their feeling, too, that was the
worst of it ; but though his love and his loyalty toward
Felipa never for one moment wavered, he was learning
surely day by day that a woman, be she never so much
beloved, cannot make up to a man for long for the
companionship of his own kind ; and, least of all,
he was forced to admit it in the depths of his con-
sciousness now, one whose interests were circum-
scribed.

They had lived an idyl for two years apast, and he
begrudged nothing ; yet now that the splendor was
fading, as he knew that it was, the future was a little
dreary before them both, before him the more, for he
meant that, cost him what it might, Felipa should
never know that the glamour was going for himself.
It would be the easier that she was not subtle of per-
ception, not quick to grasp the unexpressed. As for
him, he had wondered from the first what price the
gods would put upon the unflawed jewel of their hap-
piness, and had said in himself that none could be too
high.



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 311

Forbes and her husband having gone away, Felipa
lay in the hammock upon the porch and looked up
into the vines. She thought hard, and remembered
many things as she swayed to and fro. She remem-
bered that one return to Nature long ago of which
Landor had not known.

There had been an afternoon in Washington when,
on her road to some reception of a half-official kind,
she had crossed the opening of an alleyway and had
come upon three boys who were torturing a small,
blind kitten ; and almost without knowing what she
did, because her maternal grandfather had done to the
children of his enemies as the young civilized savages
were doing to the kitten there, she stopped and watched
them, not enjoying the sight perhaps, but not recoiling
from it either. So intent had she been that she had
not heard footsteps crossing the street toward her, and
had not known that some one stopped beside her with
an exclamation of wrath and dismay. She had turned
suddenly and looked up, the pupils of her eyes con-
tracted curiously as they had been when she had watched
the tarantula-vinagrone fight years before.

The man beside her was an attache of the British
legation, who had been one of her greatest admirers to
that time, but thereafter he sought her out no more.
He had driven the boys off, and taking the kitten,
which mewed piteously all the way, had gone with her
to her destination and left her.

She had been sufficiently ashamed of herself there-
after, and totally unable to understand her own evil



312 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

impulse. As she lay swinging in the hammock, she
remembered this and many other things connected with
that abhorred period of compulsory civilization and of
success. The hot, close, dead, sweet smell of the petu-
nias, wilting in the August sun, and the surface-baked
earth came up to her. It made her vaguely heartsick
and depressed. The mood was unusual with her.
She wished intensely that her husband would come
back.

After a time she roused herself and went into the
house, and directly she came back with the baby in
her arms. The younger of the two children that she
had taken under her care at Stanton, the little girl,
followed after her.

It was a long way to the salt lick, and the chances
were that the two men would be gone the whole after-
noon. The day was very hot, and she had put on a
long, white wrapper, letting her heavy hair fall down
over her shoulders, as she did upon every excuse now,
and always when her husband was out of the way.
There was a sunbonnet hanging across the porch rail-
ing. She put it on her head and went down the steps,
carrying the child.

Back of her, a score or more of miles away, were the
iron-gray mountains ; beyond those, others of blue ; and
still beyond, others of yet fainter blue, melting into the
sky and the massed white clouds upon the horizon edge.
But in front of her the flat stretched away and away, a
waste of white-patched soil and glaring sand flecked
with scrubs. The pungency of greasewood and sage



THE HEKITAQB OF UNREST 313

was thick in the air, which seemed to reverberate with
heat. A crow was flying above in the blue ; its shadow
darted over the ground, now here, now far off.

Half a mile beyond, within the same barbed-wire
enclosure as the home buildings and corrals, was a
spring-house surrounded by cottonwoods, just then
the only patch of vivid green on the clay-colored
waste. There were benches under the cottonwoods,
and the ground was cool, and thither Felipa took her
way, in no wise oppressed by the heat. Her step was
as firm and as quick as it had been the day she had
come so noiselessly along the parade, across the path
of the private who was going to the barracks. It was
as quiet, too, for she had on a pair of old red satin
slippers, badly run down at the heel.

Cairness started for the salt lick, then changed his
mind and his destination, and merely rode with Forbes
around the parts of the ranch which were under more
or less cultivation, and to one of the water troughs
beneath a knot of live oaks in the direction of the
foot-hills. So they returned to the home place earlier
than they otherwise would have done, and that, too,
by way of the spring-house.

They caught sight of Felipa, and both drew rein
simultaneously. She was leaning against a post of
the wire fence. The baby was carried on her hip,
tucked under her arm, the sunbonnet was hanging by the
strings around her neck, and her head, with its straight
loose hair, was uncovered. The little girl stood beside
her, clutching the white wrapper which had trailed in



314 THE HERITAGE OP UNREST

the spring-house acequia, and from under which a
muddy red slipper showed. That she was imposing
still, said much for the quality of her beauty. She
did not hear the tramp of the two horses, sharp as her
ears were, for she was too intent upon watching a
fight between two steers.

One had gone mad with loco-weed, and they gored
each other's sides until the blood ran, while only a low,
moaning bellow came from their dried throats. A
cloud of fine dust, that threw back the sun in glitters,
hung over them, and a flock of crows, circling above
in the steel-blue sky, waited.

" Felipa ! " shouted Cairness. He was angry
almost as angry as Forbes had been when he had
come upon Mrs. Landor watching the boys and the
kitten in the alleyway.

She heard, and again her eyes met Forbes's. There
was a flash of comprehension in them. She knew
what he was thinking very well. But she left the
fence, and, pushing the sunbonnet over her head,
joined them, not in the least put out, and they dis-
mounted and walked beside her, back to the house.

Cairness was taciturn. It was some moments before
he could control his annoyance, by the main strength
of his sense of justice, by telling himself once again
that he had no right to blame Felipa for the manifesta-
tions of that nature he had known her to possess from
the first. It was not she who was changing.

Forbes explained their early return, and spoke of
the ranch. "It might be a garden, this territory, if



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 315

only it had water enough," he said; "it has a future,
possibly, but its present is just a little dismal, I think.
Are you greatly attached to the life here, Mrs. Cair-
ness ? " He was studying her, and she knew it, though
his glance swept the outlook comprehensively, and she
was watching the mail-carrier riding toward them along
the road. It was the brother of the little girl who
followed along behind them, and who ran off now to
meet him, calling and waving her hand.

"Yes," she said, "I am very much attached to it.
I was born to it."

" Do you care for it so much that you would not
be happy in any other ? "

"That would depend," she answered with her enig-
matical, slow smile; " I could be happy almost anywhere
with Mr. Cairness."

" Of course," he laughed tolerantly, " I dare say
any wilderness were paradise with him."

Felipa smiled again. " I might be happy," she went
on, " but I probably should not live very long. I
have Indian blood in my veins ; and we die easily in
a too much civilization."

That evening they sat talking together long after
the late dinner. But a little before midnight Felipa
left them upon the porch, smoking and still going over
the past. They had so much to say of matters that
she in no way understood. The world they spoke of
and its language were quite foreign to her. She knew
that her husband was where she could never follow
him, and she felt the first utter dreariness of jealousy



816 THE HERITAGE OP UNREST

the jealousy of the intellectual, so much more unendur-
able than that of the material.

With the things of the flesh there can be the vindic-
tive hope, the certainty indeed, that they will lose their
charm with time, that the gold will tarnish and the gray
come above the green, but a thought is dearer for every
year that it is held, and its beauty does not fade away.
The things of the flesh we may even mar ourselves, if
the rage overpowers us, but those of the intellect are
not to be reached or destroyed ; and Felipa felt it as
she turned from them and went into the house.

There was a big moon, already on the wane, floating
very high in the heavens, and the plain was a silvery
sheen.

"This is all very beautiful," said Forbes, after a
silence.

Cairness did not see that it called for a reply, and
he made none.

" But it is doing Mrs. Cairness an injustice, if you
don't mind my saying so."

" What do you mean ? " asked Cairness, rather more
than a trifle coldly. He had all but forgotten the
matter of that afternoon. Felipa had redeemed herself
through the evening, so that he had reason to be proud
of her.

" I used to know Mrs. Cairness in Washington,"
Forbes went on, undisturbed; " she has probably told
you so."

Cairness was surprised almost into showing his sur-
prise. Felipa had said nothing of it to him. And he



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 317

knew well enough that she never forgot a face. He
felt that he was in a false position, but he answered
" Yes ? " non-committally.

" Yes," answered Forbes, " she was very much ad-
mired." He looked a little unhappy. But his mind
was evidently made up, and he went on doggedly :
" Look here, Merely, old chap, I am going to tell you
what I think, and you may do as you jolly well please
about it afterward kick me off the ranch, if you like.
But I can see these things with a clearer eye than
yours, because I am not in love, and you are, dreadfully
so, you know, not to say infatuated. I came near to
being once upon a time, and with your wife, too. I
thought her the most beautiful woman I had ever
known, and I do yet. I thought, too, that she was a
good deal unhappier with Landor than she herself
realized ; in which I was perfectly right. It's plainer
than ever, by contrast. Of course I understand that
she is part Indian, though I've only known it recently.
And it's because I've seen a good deal of your Apaches
of late that I appreciate the injustice you are doing
her and Cairness Junior, keeping them here. She is
far and away too good for all this," he swept the scene
comprehensively with his pipe. " She'd be a sensation,
even in London. Do you see what I mean, or are you
too vexed to see anything ? "

Cairness did not answer at once. He pushed the to-
bacco down in his brier and sat looking into the bowl.
" No," he said at last, " I'm not too vexed. The fact is,
I have seen what you mean for a long time. But what



318 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

would you suggest by way of remedy, if I may ask ? "
They were both talking too low for their voices to
reach Felipa through the open window of her bed-
room.

"That you take them to civilization the missus
and the kid. It's the only salvation for all three of
you for you as well as them."

" You heard what Mrs. Cairness said this afternoon.
She was very ill in school when she was a young girl,
and still more so in Washington afterward." He
shook his head. "No, Forbes, you may think you
know something about the Apache, but you don't
know him as I do, who have been with him for years.
I've seen too much of the melting away of half and
quarter breeds. They die without the shadow of an
excuse, in civilization."

But Forbes persisted, carried away by his idea
and the determination to make events fit in with it.
" She was ill in Washington because she wasn't happy.
She'd be happy anywhere with you; she said so this
afternoon, you remember."

"She also said that it would kill her."

Forbes went on without noticing the interruption.
" You are a great influence in her life, but you aren't
the only one. Her surroundings act powerfully upon
her. When I knew her before, she was like any other
beautiful woman "

"I am far from being sure that that is entirely to
be desired, very far," said Cairness, with conviction.
He had never ceased to feel a certain annoyance at



THE HERITAGE OP UNREST 319

the memory of that year and a half of Felipa's life in
which he had had no part.

Forbes shrugged his shoulders. " You'll pardon me
if I say that here she is a luxurious semi-barbarian."
It was on his tongue's tip to add, " and this afternoon,
by the spring-house, she was nearly an Apache," but he
checked it. " It's very picturesque and poetical and all
that, from the romantic point of view it's perfect,
but it isn't feasible. You can't live on honeycomb for
more than a month or twain. I can't imagine a greater
misfortune than for you two to grow contented here,
and that's what you'll do. It will be a criminal waste
of good material."

Cairness knew that it was true, too true to refute.

"I am speaking about Mrs. Cairness," Forbes went
on earnestly, " because she is more of an argument for
you than the child is, which is un-English too, isn't
it ? But the child is a fine boy, nevertheless, and there
will be other children probably. I don't need to paint
their future to you, if you let them grow up here.
You owe it to them and to your wife and to yourself
to society for that matter not to retrograde. Oh !
I say, I'm out and out lecturing on sociology. You're
good-tempered to put up with it, but I mean well
like most meddlers."

" I have the ranch; how could I get away ? " Cairness
opposed.

But the argument was weak. Forbes paid small
heed to it. " You've a great deal besides. Every one
in the country knows your mines have made you a



320 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

rich man. And you are better than that. You are
a talented man, though you've frittered away your
abilities too long to amount to anything much, now.
You ought to get as far off from this kind of thing as
you can."

He did not even hint that he knew of the isolation
of their lives, but Cairness was fully aware that he
must, and that it was what he meant now. "You
ought to go to another country. Not back to Aus-
tralia, either ; it is too much this sort, but somewhere
where the very air is civilizing, where it's in the atmos-
phere and you can't get away from it. I'll tell you
what you do." He stood up and knocked the ashes
from his pipe against the porch rail. " You've plenty
of friends at home. Sell the ranch, or keep it to come
back to once in a way if you like. I'm going back in
the autumn, in October. You come with ine, you and
Mrs. Cairness and the boy."

Cairness clasped his hands about one knee and bent
back, looking up at the stars, and far beyond them
into the infinity of that Cause of which they and he and
all the perplexing problems were but the mere effects.
"You mustn't think I haven't thought it over, time
and again," he said, after a while. " It's more vital
to me than to you ; but my way isn't clear. I loved
Mrs. Cairness for more than ten years before I could
marry her. I should lose her in less than that, I am
absolutely certain, if I did as you suggest. She is not
so strong a woman as you might suppose. This dry
air, this climate, are necessary to her." He hesitated a



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 321

little, rather loath to speak of his sentiments, and yet
glad of the chance to put his arguments in words, for
his own greater satisfaction. " You call it picturesque
and poetical and all that," he said, " but you only half
mean it after all. It is picturesque. It has been abso-
lutely satisfactory. I'm not given to talking about this
kind of thing, you know ; but most men who have been
married two years couldn't say truthfully that they
have nothing to regret ; that if they had had to buy
that time with eternity of damnation and the lake of
fire, it would not have come too dear. And I have had
no price to pay " he stopped short, the ring of con-
viction cut off, as the sound of a bell is when a hand
is laid upon it. The hand was that of a fact, of the
fact that had confronted him in the Canon de los
Embudos, and that very day by the cottonwoods of
the spring-house.

" Mrs. Cairness would go where I wished gladly," he
added, more evenly; "but if it were to a life very dif-
ferent from this, it would end in death and I should
be the cause of it. There it is." He too rose, impa-
tiently.

" Think it over, in any case," urged Forbes ; " I am
going in, good night."

" I have thought it over," said Cairness; " good night."

Cairness sat for a long time, smoking and thinking.
Then Felipa's voice called to him and he went in to her.
She was by the window in a flood of moonlight, herself
all in flowing white, with the mantle of black hair upon
her shoulders.



322 THE HERITAGE OP UNREST

He put his arm about her and she laid her head against
his breast. " I am jealous of him," she said, without
any manner of preface.

He made no pretence of not understanding. " You
have no need to be, dear," he said simply.

" He gives you what I can't give," she said.

" You give me what no one else could give the best
things in life."

" Better than the other things ? " she asked, and he
answered, unhesitating, " Yes."

There was another silence, and this time he broke it.

" Why did you not tell me you had known Forbes,
Felipa ? " If it had not been that she was commonly
and often unaccountably reticent, there might have been
some suspicion in the question. But there was only a
slight annoyance. Nor was there hesitation in her
reply.

" It brought back too much that was unpleasant for
me. I did not want to talk about it. He saw that I
did not, too, and I can't understand why he should have
spoken of it. I should have told you after he had
gone." She was not disconcerted in the slightest, only
a little vindictive toward Forbes, and he thought it
would hardly be worth his while to point out the curi-
ous position her silence put him in.

He gathered his courage for what he was going to
say next, with a feeling almost of guilt. " Forbes says
that I am doing you an injustice, keeping you here ;
that it is no life for you."

" It is the only one I can live," she said indifferently



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 323

enough, stating it as an accepted, incontrovertible fact,
"and it's the one you like best."

He had told her that many times. It had been true ;
perhaps it was true still.

"He does not understand," she continued; "he was
always a society man, forever at receptions and dances
and teas. He doesn't see how we can make up to each
other for all the world."

She moved away from him and out of the ray of
moonlight, into the shadow of the other side of the
window, and spoke thoughtfully, with more depth to
her voice than usual. " So few people have been as
happy as we have. If we went hunting for more hap-
piness somewhere else, we should be throwing away the
gifts of the gods, I think."

Cairness looked over at her in some surprise, but her
face was in the shadow. He wondered that she had
picked up the phrase. It was a common one with him,
a sort of catchword he had the habit of using. But
she was not given to philosophy. It was oddly in line
with his own previous train of thought.

He laughed, a little falsely, and turned back into the
room.

" The gods sell their gifts," he said.



XXVI

FORBES left the ranch after breakfast the next day,
and Cairness went with him to Tombstone. He had
business there, connected with one of his mines.

Felipa spent the day, for the most part, in riding
about the ranch and in anticipating the night. Her
husband had promised to be back soon after moonrise.
When it had begun to turn dark, she dressed herself all
in white and went out to swing in the hammock until
it should be time for her lonely dinner.

Before long she heard a horse coming at a gallop up
the road, to the front of the house. She put out her
hand and pushed aside the vines, but could see little
until the rider, dismounting and dropping his reins to
hang on the ground, ran up the steps. It was the mail
carrier, the young hero of the Indian massacre. Felipa
saw in a moment that he was excited. She thought of
her husband at once, and sat up in the hammock.

" Well ? " she said peremptorily.

"It's " the boy looked around nervously. "If
you'd come into the house " he ventured.

She went into the bedroom, half dragging him by the
shoulder, and shut the door. " Now ! " she said, " make
haste."

" It's Mr. Cairness, ma'am," he whispered.

324



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 325

" Is he hurt ? " she shook him sharply.

The boy explained that it was not that, and she let
him go, in relief.

" But he is goin' to be. That's what I come so quick
to tell you." He stopped again.

" Will you make haste ? " cried Felipa, out of patience.

" He's coming back from Tombstone with some money,
ain't he ? "

Felipa nodded. " A very little," she said.

" Well, they think it's a lot."

"Who?"

" The fellers that's after him. They're goin' to hold
him up fifteen miles out, down there by where the
Huachuca road crosses. He's alone, ain't he ? "

" Yes," said Felipa.

" How do you know this ? "

" Old Manuel he told me. You don't know him.
It's an old Greaser, friend of mine. He don't want no
one to tell he told, they'd get after him. But it's so,
all right. There's three of them."

A stable man passed the window. Felipa called to
him. "Bring me my horse, quick, and mount
four men ! Don't take five minutes and be well armed,"
she ordered in a low voice. Hers was the twofold de-
cision of character and of training that may not be
disregarded. The man started on a run.

" What you goin' to do ? " the boy asked. He was
round-eyed with dismay and astonishment.

Felipa did not answer. She broke her revolver and
looked into the chambers, Two of them were empty,



326 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

and she took some cartridges from a desk drawer and
slipped them in. The holster was attached to her sad-
dle, and she rarely rode without it.

" You ain't goin' to try to stop him ? " the boy said
stupidly. " He was goin' to leave Tombstone at sun-
down. He'll be to the place before you ken ketch him,
sure."

" We'll see," she answered shortly; "it is where the
Huachuca road crosses, you are certain ? "

He nodded forcibly. " Where all them mesquites is
to one side, and the arroyo to the other. They'll be
behind the mesquite. But you ain't goin' to head him
off," he added, " there ain't even a short cut. The
road's the shortest."

The stableman came on a run, leading her horse, and
she fairly leaped down the steps, and slipping the pistol
into the holster mounted with a spring. " All of you
follow me," she said; " they are going to hold up Mr.
Cairness."

On the instant she put her horse to a run and tore
off through the gate toward the open country. It was