THE GOLD 
 
 CHAIN 
 
 }WENDOLE 
 OVERTON
 
 GENERAL 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class
 
 LITTLE NOVELS BT 
 
 FAVOURITE AUTHORS 
 * J* jt 
 
 The Golden Chain 
 
 * 
 
 GWENDOLEN OVERTON
 
 L 
 
 THE TWO KNELT THERE, SIDE BY SIDE.
 
 The 
 Golden Chain 
 
 BY 
 
 GWENDOLEN OVERTON 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE HERITAGE OF 
 
 UNREST," "ANNE CARMEL," 
 
 ETC. 
 
 -SITY 
 
 Ndji ffotft 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 
 1903 
 AH rights reserved
 
 GENERAL 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1903, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up, clectrotypcd, and published October, 1903. 
 Reprinted November, 1903. 
 
 Nortooott $s 
 
 J. 8. Cashing & Co. - Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 " The two knelt there, side by side " . 
 
 Frontispiece 
 " There was a frown on his forehead, as he 
 
 looked up to the stars " . facing page 66 
 
 2033741
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN
 
 THE GOLDEN C 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 P to then no golden chain-had 
 entered into his experience 
 neither that which hung about 
 the neck of Our Lady of the 
 Carmen at Tierra Blanca, nor that of 
 love which the optimistic old song as- 
 sures us Time cannot break. 
 
 He lounged in his saddle with his 
 arms crossed on the high pommel and 
 indulged himself in idly fancying how 
 an arrow shot from the hill crest where 
 he was would go straight across the 
 clear, pale evening heavens and stick, 
 quivering its feather, in the bright and 
 tiny star which touched one horn of the 
 new moon on the outer edge. He was 
 3
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 on the top of a sheer, steep hill, steepest 
 of the spur it ended, and his view was 
 over all the world, which, in his one 
 and twenty years, he had seen over 
 the mesa to the great blue ranges of 
 the north and east, over the Valle del 
 Muerto, grey and shrub-flecked and bar- 
 ren, to the higher ranges of the south 
 and west. It had been a hard climb, 
 and the cow-pony stood with its fore 
 legs wide apart, its nostrils spreading 
 and sinking, its cream-coloured mane and 
 tail floating in the wind, and its sleek 
 sides going in and out regularly, as it 
 panted for breath. Keble dismounted 
 to give it a better chance. Its nose 
 went down to the sparse grass among 
 the spears of scarlet sage and pink 
 wind-flowers. 
 
 Just below the new crescent was a 
 great snow mountain, gleaming warm 
 tinted with the faint pink flush of the 
 afterglow, its base vague in the mists 
 that rise at nightfall in the distances of 
 the plains. When the crescent and its 
 4
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 star gem began to grow yellower as the 
 sky turned deeper purple, and the snow 
 mountain a cold, hazy violet, his eyes 
 dropped from them to the canon down 
 below. The road was hidden there by 
 the thick pines, but before it entered the 
 gorge it was plain for a long distance, 
 winding around the base of a gentle 
 swell, out into the valley beyond. 
 
 And there were two wagons just 
 emerging along it, from under the shel- 
 ter of the knoll, two covered wagons 
 of which the canvas looked new and 
 white. 
 
 He knitted his brow and shaded his 
 far-visioned blue eyes with his hand. 
 
 There were two horses to the first 
 wagon, the second was drawn by a 
 spike team, the leader of which seemed 
 to be a mule. A speck, which was 
 doubtless a dog, followed. Until the 
 deepening twilight began to make itself 
 felt he watched, imagining who might 
 be beneath the canvas, as he frequently 
 allowed himself to imagine things but 
 5
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 kept the diversion strictly to himself. 
 Imagination, along the majority of lines, 
 was discountenanced among his asso- 
 ciates. 
 
 Presently he began the descent of the 
 steep trail. It was almost dark the 
 clear darkness of southwestern nights, 
 like the depths of a cold, still water pool. 
 And among the pines, when he reached 
 them, the road showed only as a streak 
 of vaguely luminous grey. The pony 
 broke into a long gallop, its unshod 
 hoofs making hardly more than a pat- 
 ter on the pounded gravel. They came 
 to a creek crossing, where the water 
 trickled shallow over the stones, splashed 
 through and went up the slight slope at 
 the farther side. 
 
 Then a dog barked, the sharp, shrill 
 yap of a cur, and a light shone from 
 back among the trunks and branches of 
 the trees. 
 
 The pony turned of its own accord 
 into a branch road, cutting off from the 
 main one to the right, trotted into a 
 6
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 wide clearing, and came to the abrupt 
 halt learned of its lassoing experiences. 
 
 Its rider, whose six feet of stalwart 
 body was ludicrously too big for the 
 diminutive dimensions of his horse, flung 
 himself off and, running his arm through 
 the reins, walked up to two wagons 
 whose fresh-painted bodies and red 
 spokes gave back the shine of the lantern 
 which hung against the log-cabin wall. 
 Two lank beasts, half-dog, half-prairie 
 wolf, sniffed about his heels. A strange 
 dog cowered under a bucket dangling 
 from a rear axle of one of the wagons, 
 his bushy tail curved in under his legs. 
 He looked anxious and deprecating 
 and badly scared. The four horses and 
 one mule were unhitched and tethered 
 to the grain boxes at the backs of their 
 respective turnouts, munching content- 
 edly, snorting, and clanking the rings 
 of their halters against the wood. It 
 looked a prosperous outfit certainly. 
 
 There was nothing in the least unusual 
 in the occurrence of strangers stopping 
 7
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 at the cabin over night. It was the 
 halfway place, between the fort and 
 Gold City, at one end Tierra Blanca 
 and its adjacent mines at the other. 
 He was curious, but not too keenly so 
 as not to stable his pony properly in 
 the corral and give a parting rub to the 
 warm white nose. Then, slapping the 
 lash of his horse hah" quirt against his 
 boot-tops, he crossed to the cabin and 
 opened the door. 
 
 From the threshold he took his obser- 
 vations with deliberation. There were 
 four strangers in the room, two men and 
 two women, and they sat with his father 
 and younger brother at the far end, 
 around a big open fireplace built of 
 stones and after the Mexican fashion, 
 across a corner. Mrs. Keble was visible 
 in the kitchen working over the stove. 
 
 He closed the door behind him and 
 came in. 
 
 The elder Keble had, in his youth, 
 come from out the New England states, 
 where he had been the teacher of the 
 8
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 school in his own town. And, on oc- 
 casions, the traditions of that better 
 land and long past time returned to 
 him. He would revert then to ways 
 and to modes of speech which were not 
 those of the country wherein he had 
 chosen to become a settler, a mere 
 squatter, among the hills on the con- 
 fines of an Indian reservation. He pre- 
 sented his elder son, Dudley, now, with 
 elaboration and formality. The men 
 rose and shook hands. So, likewise, did 
 one of the women. Her black eyes had 
 taken swift and practised appraisal, and 
 her greeting was more than necessarily 
 amiable. Dudley was not without ex- 
 perience of life of a kind, the life of 
 cow camps and of the towns that follow 
 afterward. And his own estimate was, 
 in swiftness, no less than hers, in exact- 
 ness somewhat greater. She, and such 
 as she, he accepted as of a charm by no 
 means equalled in virtue, but having for 
 himself no immediate concern, arousing 
 no particular interest. 
 9
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 The sweetness of her lingering look 
 he met prosaically. Then he turned his 
 attention to the other woman hardly, 
 he saw at once, so much a woman as 
 a child. She had not risen, but she 
 glanced up gravely into his face, and 
 then perhaps because it was a frank 
 and pleasant face under its bronzing tan 
 she smiled, a half -wistful little smile, 
 curling one corner of her mouth. He 
 could see that she was tired out. 
 
 There were very few chairs in the 
 cabin's scant furniture, and those few 
 were in use. He went out again and 
 brought in a potato box for himself, 
 setting it on one end at the side of 
 the hearth. The girl was across from 
 him, but she had become, apparently, 
 oblivious of his existence, and sat with 
 her chin on her fist, absorbed in one 
 blue-centred tongue of flame, which 
 licked intermittently through the knot 
 hole of a log. Her face was without 
 colour, and her rough curls of brown 
 were lustreless under the powder of
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 alkali dust. Now and then she yawned 
 with all a child's weariness and uncon- 
 sciousness, or closed the lids over her 
 big violet eyes. The lashes were long 
 as they lay against her cheeks. But he 
 had made no study of the points and 
 details of feminine beauty, and he did 
 not take note of this one. In a general 
 way he was of the opinion that she 
 was prettier than the other of the swift 
 black glances and the locks of vivid 
 brass beyond that his interest did 
 not go. He had not caught her name, 
 but the men were Lewis and Denison, 
 and the woman was Denison also. As 
 to what the quartet was doing here, 
 from whence it came, and whither it 
 was going, nothing was said or else 
 it had all been said before he had put 
 in his appearance. 
 
 Mrs. Keble was passing in and out, 
 bringing dishes and setting them on the 
 red-covered table with a rap. He left 
 his potato crate and went to her with an 
 offer of help. It was not over-graciously
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 received. He followed her into the 
 kitchen, where they were enveloped and 
 choked in drifting smoke from the burn- 
 ing bacon grease still in the iron pan 
 upon the hottest part of the stove. He 
 took up the griddle and carried it out 
 of doors. Mrs. Keble resented the cor- 
 rection implied, and sneered at his airs 
 of superior nicety. At the best of times 
 she was not a pleasant or lovable per- 
 son. And to-night was by no means 
 the best of times. She had worked 
 since daylight in the cabin and the 
 clearing, being one of those whose toil 
 is unending and hard, but unproductive, 
 too, of much visible result. She was 
 worn out, as she invariably managed to 
 be by nightfall. Moreover, she was of 
 opinion that the other two women should 
 have helped. They were furnishing their 
 own provisions, to be sure, and had, fur- 
 ther, given it to be understood that they 
 would pay liberally. That, as Mrs. Keble 
 saw it, did not end their obligation. To 
 pay without lending a hand was insti- 
 12
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 tuting class privilege. She was no sub- 
 dued New England woman to encourage 
 that. Hers was the rampant democracy 
 of the West which had given her birth. 
 
 Her son ignored the ill humour, which 
 was not so unusual as to be disconcert- 
 ing. He took from her a tin plate full of 
 big, yellow baking-powder biscuits. Then 
 he jerked his head over his shoulder to 
 where the group around the fire could 
 be dimly seen through the streaks of 
 smoke. 
 
 " Who," he asked, " are those ? " 
 
 "Actors," she answered shortly, her 
 lips setting on the word. " Travelling 
 actors." 
 
 She banged the oven door to. He 
 frowned. He had seen other troupes 
 of itinerant players in the towns, after 
 round-ups, and his memories of them 
 and their mode of life were not such as 
 he was glad to have to associate with 
 the girl who sat in there with her cleft 
 chin on her knuckles, and her big, tired 
 eyes watching the flaming knot hole.
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 He carried the heaped biscuits in to 
 the table, and his mother followed with 
 the coffee-pot. They sat down to the 
 supper. 
 
 Mrs. Denison, having accepted her 
 discomfiture so far as the son was con- 
 cerned, after the custom of the free 
 lance took the next at hand with cheer- 
 fulness, and devoted herself, her bright 
 glances, and insistent smile to the father. 
 There was a twinkle of amusement be- 
 hind his eyes ; but he developed a turn 
 for elaborate compliment, and a store of 
 quotations in ornate prose and verse of 
 which he had never before, to the knowl- 
 edge of either his wife or son, given evi- 
 dence. Mrs. Keble was rigidly silent. 
 The men ate hungrily, intent upon just 
 that, and the girl sat through the meal 
 only answering when some one chanced 
 to speak to her. 
 
 When the supper was over the 
 
 strangers went back to the fireplace, 
 
 still with never an offer of help to their 
 
 severe hostess. The blonde was hang- 
 
 14
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 ing on Keble's words. Mrs. Keble 
 demanded assistance of the boys, point- 
 edly and in a raised voice, which, how- 
 ever, missed its aim. Dudley sent her 
 to sit with the others, taking charge of 
 the work himself, clearing the table, 
 washing the dishes, and scraping pots 
 and pans. 
 
 It took him over an hour. When he 
 had finished, his father and mother and 
 younger brother had gone to bed, the 
 others out to the wagons in which they 
 slept. The big room was deserted, and, 
 except for the glow of the coals in 
 the fireplace, dark. But the red light 
 touched the hearthstones and the tines 
 of a great pair of antlers over the door, 
 and played along the backs of a row of 
 books upon a shelf. The chromos and 
 pictures cut from papers and tacked up 
 against the wall rustled a little in the 
 wind that came through the chinks and 
 crevices of the pine half -logs.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 IT was icy cold when Dudley 
 went out, with a panful of 
 corn, to feed the hens icy 
 cold and still barely light. 
 The dawn was stealing through the 
 pines. Out in the valley it was prob- 
 ably broad morning, but the days were 
 shorter by several hours here in the 
 canon. The dogs came rubbing them- 
 selves against his legs, and even the 
 stranger one leapt up and down around 
 him. An Indian, treading noiselessly 
 through the woods at the edge of the 
 clearing, passed between the trunks and 
 out of sight. The hairs on the necks 
 of the animals bristled. They had seen 
 Indians every day of their lives, but had 
 never become accustomed to them. 
 16
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 Dudley went to the chicken coop 
 and opened the trap, then stood off 
 and called, his deep voice melodious, 
 " Hea-a-a-re, chick-a-chick-a-chick, he-a- 
 a-re, chick, chick, chick." 
 
 They came out, the first one stopping in 
 the small opening and peering with the 
 indecision and want of purpose common 
 to its kind; then another pushed her 
 through, and they crowded by twos and 
 threes, tumbling over each other in their 
 greediness, scampering around the wide- 
 tossed corn, golden, white, and red. The 
 stock belonging to the theatrical outfit 
 snorted suggestively. He went up to 
 them and fed each a few grains from the 
 palm of his hand, surreptitiously, lest his 
 mother should come out, and, seeing, 
 object. 
 
 No one was stirring in the wagons 
 yet, but he had been told to call them. 
 His mother was getting breakfast. He 
 scratched on the canvas of the first 
 wagon, at which the strange dog sniffed 
 suspiciously about his heels, showing 
 c 17
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN' 
 
 its teeth. Two women's voices answered 
 him drowsily. That of the girl he recog- 
 nised as lower pitched and softer than 
 the other's. He went away whistling. 
 
 While he was in the corral, milking the 
 half-savage long-horn, whose milk was 
 as thin as herself, the girl came over 
 from the wagons and rested her arms 
 on the top of the fence. He nodded to 
 her. The corner of her mouth curled 
 up into the half-appealing smile, and she 
 answered his "good morning." And 
 then, after a pause of watching him, she 
 put a request if she were to get her- 
 self a cup, might she have some fresh 
 milk ? Fresh milk as a fit drink for any- 
 thing more discriminating than calves, 
 had never before occurred to him. 
 There was, he ventured the suggestion, 
 cold milk from the evening before in the 
 house. If she would wait until he should 
 have finished, he would get her that. 
 And he meant to get it his mother's 
 certain opposition to the contrary not- 
 withstanding. But it was warm and 
 18
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 frothing that she liked it, and she went 
 away for the cup. He filled it, hissing 
 and spurting the milk in, until the foam 
 stood high. She took it from him and 
 drank a fleck of white on the tip of her 
 up-tilted nose. Then she stood beside 
 him, swinging the empty cup. And he 
 explained that one cow had gone dry, and 
 another had eaten loco-weed and died, 
 that the present pair were not much good, 
 and that he was keeping a lookout in 
 the foot-hills for any wandering ones that 
 might look promising. 
 
 When he had finished with the first 
 one, he picked up his box and pail and 
 went over to the other. The girl fol- 
 lowed. She moved to its head and put 
 out her fingers to scratch the white star 
 on its forehead. It was a heifer caught, 
 mean and wild, in the hills. For a second 
 it watched her with rolling, angry eyes. 
 Then it flung its horns at her in a vicious 
 sweep. She sprang back and the horns 
 missed, but Dudley had jumped to his 
 feet and half the small supply of new 
 19
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 milk had spilled on the ground before 
 he could right the pail. He foresaw his 
 mother's indignation and taunts. It 
 would be some time before she would 
 let him hear the end of it. The girl re- 
 treated to the fence and he went back to 
 the milking with closer attention, bending 
 his fair head down close in to the bony 
 red flanks. And because a pair of violet 
 eyes were watching him, and a soft 
 voice spoke admiringly of his skill, the 
 task became suddenly interesting, and he 
 was urged to do his best by the self -same 
 impulse which has sent men to labour 
 willingly since their first father tilled the 
 ground at the east of the Garden. 
 
 And when he had taken the milk into 
 the house and given his account of the 
 shortage boldly, he turned his back on 
 his mother and her remarks, and went 
 out again to sit on the top of the corral 
 fence, his heels hooked on to a lower bar, 
 talking with the little actress who bal- 
 anced on the tongue of one of the green- 
 bodied wagons.
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 In the half hour before they were 
 called to breakfast he had learned many 
 things, her age, primarily, which was 
 seventeen, and her name, which was 
 -Evans Felicia Evans. Her aunt had 
 given her the name in her motherless 
 babyhood. And her aunt was she of 
 the brazen hair. He liked the name. 
 A worn and torn volume of Shakespeare, 
 in microscopic print was among the two 
 dozen books which filled the shelf in 
 the cabin, and which had been almost 
 all brought by his father, a quarter of a 
 century before, from the distant East. 
 He had read it time and again and he 
 liked the names which ended in " a " 
 Viola, Cordelia, Ophelia, Miranda, Per- 
 dita. Felicia it was a good deal like 
 those. 
 
 The morning breeze, much warmer 
 now, blew the unruly brown curls about 
 her face. She kept throwing them back 
 with a toss of the head, smoothing them 
 down with her hand. It dawned upon 
 him with all the force of an original
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN. 
 
 discovery that the hand was small and 
 white, and he kept looking at it while 
 she told him how, for the first time, she 
 had played Juliet at the post before 
 she had come on here. Theretofore she 
 had always, it seemed, been nurse to her 
 aunt's Juliet. There came into his eyes 
 something of the twinkle which had 
 been in his father's the night before, as 
 the erstwhile scholar had encouraged the 
 blandishments of that same aunt. But 
 Felicia was oblivious to it, or to any- 
 thing in the situation which might be 
 provocative of amusement. She was a 
 serious little person, whose forehead 
 wrinkled with earnestness at moments, 
 in a manner which reminded Dudley 
 irresistibly of his dog. 
 
 The commandant at the post, she 
 went on to tell him, had given them the 
 use of the schoolroom, and there had 
 been a platform at one end. For three 
 nights they had played to packed houses. 
 The post band had furnished an or- 
 chestra and some of the soldiers had 
 22
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 been the citizens, kinsfolk, and maskers. 
 They had had no costumes but their 
 uniforms, to be sure, and it had been 
 necessary to do without the ladies Mon- 
 tague and Capulet and certain others ; 
 but there had been a balcony of packing 
 boxes covered with turkey-red, and an 
 orchard of real bushes which the men 
 had chopped. Her own success had sur- 
 passed anything the company had ever 
 before experienced. The second night 
 some of the officers had thrown her 
 bouquets of wild flowers. Her pale 
 little face flushed, and her eyes were 
 shining as she recounted it. 
 
 Then his father came out upon the 
 back steps and called them in to break- 
 fast They started for the cabin to- 
 gether. 
 
 " If you like," she volunteered, still 
 full of her subject, " if you like, I will 
 show you after breakfast how I did the 
 balcony scene." She was looking up to 
 him from under the long lashes. He 
 acquiesced. 
 
 2 3
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 And after breakfast they went out 
 again. She led the way back to the 
 corral. There must be a balcony, she 
 told him, and she had seen an empty 
 stall with a manger. She found a foot- 
 hold and climbed upon it, getting her 
 balance. 
 
 "Now," she admonished, "begin." 
 
 They had brought out the ancient 
 volume of plays, and he was to read the 
 lines of Romeo. He had his thumb at 
 the place and opened to it now, standing 
 down below her, his boots ankle deep 
 in the bedding. He grew burning red 
 under his bronze, to the roots of his 
 hair. But he began. 
 
 " He jests at scars who never felt a 
 wound''' 
 
 He stopped. She had had her back 
 to him in default of a curtain. She 
 turned now, slowly and languidly, lean- 
 ing one arm upon the partition which di- 
 vided the stall from that in which the 
 sorrel cow-pony munched and swished 
 its tail unconcernedly. Her eyes were 
 24
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 gazing dreamily down, and Dudley look- 
 ing into them grew more scarlet and em- 
 barrassed, and forgot to go on. She 
 recalled him. He returned to the book 
 with alacrity. 
 
 " But soft what light through yonder 
 window breaks it is the east and Juliet 
 is the sun." 
 
 He hurried on without punctuation, 
 taking his breath through his nose when 
 he had to, and bringing up winded and 
 by no means impassioned, at the final 
 sigh. 
 
 " O that I were a glove tip on that 
 hand that I might touch that cheek" 
 
 There trembled down to him, just 
 audible, and like the night wind from 
 out the Valle del Muerto, through the 
 pines, a soft " Ay me ! " 
 
 Another full inch of close pressed 
 printing. It was out of proportion, he 
 felt. But he attacked it and came 
 out resolutely sailing upon " the 
 bosom of the air " with much the light- 
 ness with which he stood firmly planted 
 2 5
 
 THf. GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 in the litter of the stall. And then the 
 words which, for him, had never been 
 worn to the threads of ridicule and 
 bathos. 
 
 "O Romeo, Romeo," the tears were 
 on her lashes, "wherefore art thou 
 Romeo ? " 
 
 There was no need of painted canvas 
 trees for her, nor of unsteady balcony to 
 rock with the movements of her arms, 
 nor of curtains behind which to disap- 
 pear. Orchard, balustrade of stone, 
 draperies all were there in that mind 
 which is ever "its own place." And 
 even for him there hardly lacked the 
 trimmed shrubs and tall trees, grav- 
 elled walk and high wall of the cut on 
 the front page of the book. It was not 
 the roof of the stall above them, but a 
 night sky. 
 
 " and I no longer be a Cafulet" 
 she finished. 
 
 She waited, and realising that she did, 
 he broke the interval of sound with his 
 own voice, and learned thereby how one 
 26
 
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 may stun one's loveliest thoughts and 
 cause to vanish those aspirations which 
 have no name, with the dull blow of 
 one's heavy words. 
 
 " Take all myself" she breathed in 
 answer to him. 
 
 The spell of the voice, of the thin, 
 little outstretched arms, of the entreat- 
 ing eyes, was full upon him, the real 
 and commonplace world had melted 
 away. It was brought back. A giggle, 
 a choked and subdued giggle, came 
 from behind them. The beautiful fancy 
 shivered into a million bits, and he 
 whirled around furious and ashamed 
 and mortified. His brother perched on 
 a post of the corral and grinned cheer- 
 fully. 
 
 ' They're waiting for you, miss," he 
 suggested ; " they've been looking for 
 you everywhere this last ten minutes." 
 
 She was down at once without any 
 ladder of ropes. And if the two boys 
 were conscious of absurdity in the situa- 
 tion, she clearly was not. She climbed 
 27
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 up beside her uncle on the seat of the 
 wagon which was drawn by the spike 
 team. The other, with her aunt and 
 Lewis, had already pulled out. 
 
 She leaned over and held out her 
 hand to young Keble. " Good-by," she 
 said. She was smiling with no more 
 than her usual hint of pensiveness. 
 But, as for him, he was not happy as 
 she drew her fingers from his big, hard 
 grasp. The wagon started and rattled 
 away, the dog trotting after it. He 
 stood where she had left him and saw 
 the last flutter of the brown linen skirt 
 at the turn in the road beyond the clear- 
 ing. Then the pine trunks hid her from 
 sight. 
 
 28
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 should be across the fair 
 meadows of Life that Youth 
 follows its first Love to the 
 song of birds and over myriad 
 flowers. But it was across the Valley of 
 Death that Dudley Keble followed his 
 by the double track of wagon wheels 
 sunk in the scorching sands. The sun 
 was a disk of fire in the sky, the air 
 simmered in heat waves and seemed 
 to sing. Away, far beyond the miles 
 upon miles of sparse, cloying-sweet 
 greasewood and glaring dust, rose the 
 barrier mountains like great, deep, un- 
 polished sapphires, set in the desert's raw 
 gold. Yucca stalks and cacti and palo 
 verde stood above the lower bushes here 
 and there. From time to time dead 
 29
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 steers were beside the road, and the hide 
 had dried on their skeletons. The black 
 sockets of their eyes stared with a hollow 
 questioning which had no answer. Liz- 
 ards whisked from behind small stones 
 or under sage clumps, and horned toads 
 gave bright looks around as they scuttled 
 along, leaving the trail of their peaked 
 tails thread-like in the sand. A coyote 
 trotted away from the road, and then, 
 when he was far enough off, waited, 
 coming back afterward to investigate 
 the hoof tracks a wretched, thin, grey 
 little beast getting his mean existence 
 from death, he and the black crow the 
 spirits of the desert places. 
 
 Prairie dogs scurried in and out of 
 their holes, ground owls perched on their 
 knolls, or a hawk sat on a branch, still 
 as stone except for its bright, blinking 
 eyes. And the heat quivered always 
 pitilessly, until the dog, following at 
 the sorrel pony's heels, whined with 
 the sting of its seared eyes and burned 
 feet, and with the pain of thirst. It had 
 30
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 been born to the canon and the shade 
 of pines. 
 
 Dudley rode on, lopsided in his saddle, 
 his reins hanging loose, his sombrero 
 pulled far down, his pony's head drooped, 
 and its neck swinging limply from side to 
 side, the sweat caked in salt on its flanks 
 and withers and belly, and behind its 
 ears. They passed an Indian and his 
 squaw and papoose, following a trail to 
 the agency. The Indian nodded and 
 grunted. Then it was a Mexican riding 
 alone. He smiled, pleased, and spoke a 
 "buenos dias." They both reined up. 
 Where was he going ? the Gringo asked. 
 The man nodded forward, "Adelante," 
 he said. And where did he come from ? 
 His head motioned backward, " Detras " 
 " going ahead," coming " from be- 
 hind " ; it was his race which had learned 
 the philosophy of existence. 
 
 He rode on with an " adios." Dudley 
 turned in the saddle and called after 
 him. How much farther was it to Tierra 
 Blanca ?
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 The Mexican pulled up his pony with 
 a cruel jerk of the spade bit. " Como 
 cuatro horas, sefior," he answered. 
 
 " Muchisimas gracias," said Dudley, 
 and kept on his way. Four hours more 
 if the Greaser knew, which it was 
 more than probable he did not. He came 
 from behind, he was going ahead and 
 time was a thing without meaning. 
 
 Dudley touched the pony with the 
 fringed end of the lariat that hung from 
 his cantle, and it went a little faster. 
 The double tracks were always there 
 on the road before him, cutting it until 
 it merged in the distance of scrub and 
 grey sage. 
 
 It was three o'clock, he judged by 
 the sun, when he stopped at the one 
 ranch house by the way, a mud hut on 
 an alkali patch of earth, where was a 
 windmill and a leaky water-trough. The 
 pony sucked at the water noisily and 
 long. A dozen hens droned and crooned 
 to the heat. Three savage dogs came 
 walking and snarling around his own, 
 32
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 but the latter was too nearly perishing 
 to heed them. Having lapped up all it 
 could drink, it dropped down in a puddle, 
 and panted. A Mexican woman, wrapped 
 to the eyes in a black shawl, crouched in 
 the narrow shadow of the house. There 
 was a litter of cigarette ends and burned 
 matches around her on the ground. 
 Five children were beside her, and a 
 man came to the doorway and stood 
 waiting. To the Gringo's " cuanto 
 cuesta ? " he answered that it should 
 be what he pleased. 
 
 "Lo que quiere;" and he accepted 
 a two-bit piece for the priceless water 
 of a parched land, which he was allowing 
 to go to waste out of the trough because 
 he was too lazy to remedy the matter. 
 
 Would the sefior go in and rest ? 
 And the Mexican pointed to the black 
 interior from which issued the inevitable 
 odour of chili and cigarettes. 
 
 Dudley refused. Had there been two 
 wagons by here? He described them 
 and their occupants. 
 D 33
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 " Si, senor," there had. " Race como 
 una hora." 
 
 Only an hour ahead! He wheeled 
 about with a brief " good-by " and con- 
 tinued on his road. The dog looked 
 piteously after him, then rose slowly to 
 its sore feet and went too. After a 
 while he took mercy upon it, and reach- 
 ing down, swung it up and across his 
 saddle bow. And still the Valle del 
 Muerto stretched on and on ; but finally 
 there rose a few low, stony swells, and 
 the sand grew less deep. Jack-rabbits 
 darted out of the bushes and bounded 
 away, their long ears acock. The tracks 
 of the wagons almost disappeared ex- 
 cept in the soft bottoms of now dry 
 arroyos, where the sand was black 
 streaked, perhaps with washed gold. 
 Ahead he could see two moving specks 
 of white, and presently cottonwoods 
 fresh, pale green trees of the barrens, 
 growing wherever the least little muddy 
 acequia will give their roots moisture, 
 rustling their silver-faced leaves coolly 
 34
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 in the merest breath of a breeze. 
 Where the cottonwoods were, there was 
 the town, and before long he could dis- 
 tinguish the white houses. After forty 
 miles of desert, Tierra Blanca was just 
 ahead. 
 
 He rode into the main street and along 
 it, until he came to where a half-dozen 
 scrawny, overtrapped horses, tied to a 
 hitching-rail in front of an abode, an- 
 nounced unmistakably a saloon. He went 
 up to a Mexican who stood in the door- 
 way leaning against the lintel, soft eyed, 
 his silver-twisted sombrero pulled well 
 down, a zarape, gay and multi-coloured, 
 flung over his shoulders with a grace no 
 courtier could have surpassed. He was 
 from across the border. Had he seen 
 two green-bodied wagons pass ? 
 
 He took a puff of his brown cigarette. 
 Yes, he had seen them. 
 
 Which way had they gone ? 
 
 " For alia," he signed with his head, 
 as requiring less exertion than the out- 
 stretching of a hand. 
 35
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 "The next street?" 
 
 " Si, senor." Dudley rode on. 
 
 He found them in a few minutes. 
 The wagons had stopped at an empty 
 space in the shade of a circle of cotton- 
 woods what answered to the plaza of 
 the town. The horses were unhitched 
 and hobbled out, and the men were 
 busy with the contents of the outfit. 
 But Felicia sat on a gnarled root by the 
 edge of the tinkling acequia, her hands 
 clasped around her knees, looking down 
 the street toward the church. Until he 
 stopped in front of her, she did not see 
 him. Then she jumped to her feet in 
 surprise, her face questioning and 
 lighting. How had he come? 
 
 As she herself, he told her by the 
 Valle del Muerto. 
 
 And why? The answer was in his 
 direct and steady blue eyes. Her own 
 shifted and fell. She fingered the leath- 
 ern rosette and tassel on the headstall of 
 his bridle. But he had not looked away, 
 and she knew it. She met the eyes 
 36
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 again, unwillingly, compelled to it, and 
 smiling rather nervously. 
 
 He sat very upright for a moment. 
 Then he drew up his slack reins. A 
 corral and fodder had to be found for 
 his horse. He would be back directly 
 would she wait? Her answer was 
 not in words, but in one of her compre- 
 hensive gestures which said sometimes 
 more. She threw out her hands with a 
 sweep here was the town, and beyond 
 was the desert; she could not but remain 
 somewhere near by. 
 
 A small, full toned bell began to ring on 
 top of the church, and soon there came 
 from every direction women wrapped in 
 black shawls, some few in the graceful 
 draperies of dull blue and brown rebozos 
 men ragged and lithe, occasionally with 
 zarapes or blankets over their shoulders, 
 and children, all going in the same direc- 
 tion. A fat and untidy priest came out 
 from his house and entered the build- 
 ing. The men lifted their hats, the 
 children and some of the women made 
 37
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 the movement of kissing his hand as he 
 passed. 
 
 Dudley returned on foot. Was he a 
 Catholic ? Felicia asked him. He re- 
 pulsed the idea. He was the son of a New 
 England father, the descendant of Puri- 
 tans, of a family which, though large, 
 and old as New England itself, had never, 
 throughout its remotest offshoot, even 
 bowed the knee to the Scarlet Woman. 
 And the inherited prejudice was added 
 to by that acquired in a country where, 
 generally speaking, only the alien and 
 ignorant Mexican element was under 
 the guidance of priests. 
 
 But the girl, child and companion of 
 those to whom the name of God was, 
 at most, one with which to curse, and 
 whose souls concerned them not at all, 
 was emotional and imaginative, and at 
 that age, which is readiest for religious 
 enthusiasms if presented in picturesque 
 form. A priest in the last town at which 
 the troupe had stopped had made the 
 most of two days and had sown seeds 
 38
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 that needed only a little cultivation to 
 spring up into conversion. 
 
 She was thinking of becoming a 
 Catholic herself, she told Dudley now, 
 with a little unconscious air of sanctity. 
 His opinion of the faith underwent a 
 slight modification forthwith. It was 
 some dia de fiesta. She was going to 
 vespers. Would he go with her ? He 
 hesitated yet. Perhaps not the mark 
 of the Beast, but surely that of the 
 Fool was upon a man who should bow 
 before that altar. For women, possi- 
 bly But she was over the acequia 
 and looking back, waiting. He crossed 
 the ditch, too, and the Rubicon of his 
 prejudices, and followed her through 
 the big door into the cool, shadowy 
 interior. 
 
 She went forward, up the aisle, 
 between the line of rough, wooden 
 benches, and knelt on the earth floor, 
 crossing herself. He knelt, too, but 
 on one knee only, by way of a com- 
 promise. 
 
 39
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 The church was adobe, whitewashed, 
 not only outside, but within as well. 
 In the rafters and the choir balcony, too 
 insecure and worm-eaten now to hold 
 any weight, hundreds of swallows nested, 
 flying in and out and twittering shrilly. 
 The main altar was gay with coloured 
 mosquito netting arsenic green and 
 magenta pink, with paper and wax 
 flowers in vases. Over it all were looped 
 in long festoons, strings of alternate 
 powder puffs and red chilis. At one 
 of the two side altars was the town's 
 patron saint. It was he who brought 
 rain, dearest of benefactions, to this 
 land of parched and blinding white 
 soil, and of many a drought. Dudley, 
 from where he knelt, could see him, a 
 figure of wood some three feet high, 
 attired in a cocked hat, a swallow-tail 
 coat of blue with brass buttons, and a 
 frilled shirt and stock. He had knee- 
 breeches and pumps, and he drove a 
 span of wooden oxen by cotton-ribbon 
 reins. Pendent to his wrist, at his side, 
 40
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 was another figure, smaller still, a tiny 
 image of Napoleon Bonaparte, cocked 
 hat, hand in waistcoat, all complete. 
 There were many offerings at this shrine. 
 
 The other altar was the Virgin's. 
 Only the grotesqueness, the absurdity, 
 of it reached the boy's matter-of-fact, 
 practical mind. That faith might lend 
 a certain dignity to even strings of 
 powder puffs and red chilis, and to 
 carved and painted mannikins, it was 
 not given him to realise. He had, at 
 the best, only a good deal of contempt 
 for these men, women, and children of 
 a gentle, mysterious race, kneeling 
 there in the twilight, mingling the mur- 
 murs of their soft voices with the sleepy 
 twittering of the swallows in the vegas 
 overhead. 
 
 On one of those women his eyes 
 stopped and rested. He recognised 
 her. It was Josefina Arcos. Two 
 years before he had known her. He 
 had come to Tierra Blanca with some 
 cow-boys, whom he had been helping
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 at a round-up. They had urged him, 
 and it was to have been his first de- 
 bauch. As such, however, it had ended 
 almost before it had fairly begun. 
 What the older men had pictured to 
 him as the end, worth any price he 
 might be so fortunate as to be able 
 to pay, worth all the toil it might take 
 to amass that price, he had found Dead 
 Sea fruit at nearly the first taste. It 
 was not, as he had informed those who 
 had undertaken his sophistication, all 
 that it was cracked up to be ; and if it 
 were their idea of a good time, they 
 were welcome to it, but for himself it 
 seemed to lack attraction. He had ex- 
 pected to be scoffed at, or condemned 
 as a prude, but neither had followed. 
 It was a difference of taste, and they 
 were prepared to admit it as such. 
 Possibly he had gained rather than lost 
 in their estimation. 
 
 For a week, however, he had stayed 
 around Tierra Blanca, mainly through 
 disinclination to go back to the cabin in 
 42
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 the clearing, and to the atmosphere of 
 his mother's complaints and bickerings 
 at his father's scholarly ineptitude. But 
 Pepita Arcos had had much to do with 
 it as well. She had been a very pretty 
 little Mexican, some fifteen years old, 
 who had not only accepted his attentions, 
 but sought them. His friends of wider 
 experience, having observed her during 
 one baile, had suggested to him that she 
 was neither more nor less than throwing 
 herself at his head. It had already be- 
 gun to be borne in upon him that such 
 was the case. He liked her more than 
 a little. Her great brown eyes were 
 full of a tragic sadness for all that her 
 little soul was happy and trivial. She 
 had attracted him. The morals all about 
 him were easy to say the least of it. He 
 had had no reason to suppose that the 
 girl was any better than she should have 
 been; that if he were to love and leave 
 her, it would be the first time she had 
 been loved and left. He had met her 
 advances halfway thereafter and then 
 43
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 he had found the error in his conclu- 
 sions ; had found that she was really in 
 love with him, and that she was not as 
 yet, at any rate, to be judged by the 
 company she kept, into which her own 
 sordid, debased old mother urged her. 
 Her first irrevocable step along the road 
 to destruction was yet to be made. 
 And young Keble had had no mind to 
 be the one to start her. Some one else 
 would do it, he supposed, sooner or later, 
 but he himself would not. He had 
 given her to understand as much, and 
 also that he intended going away. Her 
 anguish and despair had put him through 
 a trying ordeal one through which he 
 had no wish ever to be obliged to pass 
 again. In a moment of remorse and 
 pity he had thought of marrying her. 
 But he was too clear headed not to fore- 
 see the results. She was a Mexican 
 and he did not love her. 
 
 If he had not fancied the easy de- 
 bauchery of the other cow-boys, he had 
 liked this less. His week in Tierra 
 44
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 Blanca had not, he felt, been a success. 
 He was so kind to the little Mexican that, 
 not being accustomed to kindness, her 
 heart broke. Yet he said good-by, reso- 
 lute in his determination, and left the 
 town. Since then he had been in other 
 towns, but it was the first time he had 
 returned to Tierra Blanca. 
 
 He wondered now, as he knelt there 
 on one knee, his hat in his hand, and 
 studied the face showing from under 
 the black shawl, whether Josefina had 
 become after all, that which her abomi- 
 nable old mother had tried to make of 
 her. It was probable, he decided. 
 
 When the short sendee was over and 
 the priest and his small acolyte had left 
 the chancel, the figures, grown shadowy 
 in the gathering twilight, rose from the 
 floor and the benches and went shuf- 
 fling out. But Felicia crossed over to the 
 altar of Mary. Josefina had preceded her 
 and the two knelt there, side by side. 
 Felicia had put a shawl over her own 
 head, but a grey one, not black like 
 45
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 those of all the Mexican women. He 
 could see her face from under it, white 
 in the gloom, and upturned. The little 
 Mexican's head was dropped. 
 
 As he stood in the aisle and waited 
 he looked at the statue of the Virgin. 
 It was much like many another that he 
 had seen, but around its neck hung a 
 golden chain, thick as a small rope, and 
 with pendent ornaments of gold, or of 
 brass, as he supposed it, since the com- 
 bined wealth of the devout of Tierra 
 Blanca would hardly have sufficed for 
 the purchasing of the finer metal. 
 
 The chain was of gold, nevertheless, 
 and it was the votive offering of a se- 
 nora whose husband had found riches 
 in the ground not far from the town. 
 For more than a year it had hung about 
 the Virgin's neck day and night, and 
 not even one of the many desperadoes 
 who came and went at Tierra Blanca 
 had attempted to make away with it. 
 As for the faithful, it was held by them 
 in great and peculiar veneration. 
 46
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 The swallows in the rafters and choir 
 were chirruping sleepily, and the church 
 was almost dark. Josefina arose from 
 her knees. She came toward him, 
 glanced up, and stopped, her tapolo 
 falling back from her head, showing 
 the thick hair parted low over her fore- 
 head, and hanging in two braids. Her 
 hand went to her heart. 
 
 " Buenas tardes, Pepita," he whis- 
 pered. She looked quickly back to the 
 girl still kneeling in front of the side 
 altar, then up into his face again. Her 
 lips tried to form an answering " buenas 
 tardes," but it was quite inaudible. She 
 drew the rebozo up and close together, 
 and glided out a shadow through the 
 shadows. 
 
 After a moment Felicia stood up and 
 came to him, and they went together 
 out of the church, into the red light of 
 the sunset. 
 
 47
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 |H E main street of Tierra Blanca 
 was much more crowded than 
 usual, for its whole length of 
 perhaps a thousand yards. It 
 was a dark night, but lanterns were 
 hung against the lintels of some of the 
 houses, and a half-dozen torches flared 
 smokily in front of the music hall in which 
 the performance was to take place. The 
 lurid light glistened redly on the leaves 
 of the rows of cottonwoods and on the 
 ripples of the acequia beside which the 
 trees grew. There might have been 
 five or six hundred in all, walking to 
 and fro in the aimlessness of waiting. 
 Some were Mexicans the majority 
 and some were whites, inhabitants of 
 the town and the neighbouring ranches, 
 48
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 prospectors, miners, and cow-boys. Dark 
 men with bright tinsel on their big hats, 
 with gay blankets swathing them to their 
 chins, the points of yellow light of their 
 cigarettes no more fiery than the two 
 points that peered from under their 
 sombrero brims women, dark too, 
 with bows or paper flowers in their 
 black hair, sometimes with many-hued 
 shawls covering their breasts and white 
 gowns, laughing with teeth and eyes 
 that flashed in the weird light. There 
 were other women, less dark of skin, 
 but often more so of soul, flaunting and 
 playing their parts. And there were 
 men, too, of the fairer race, taller, more 
 massive, as a rule, almost as picturesque, 
 with their boots and showy ties, and 
 even, in instances, gaudy shirts. They 
 moved to and fro, in and out, with some- 
 thing the regularity of a peasant chorus 
 in an opera. Four Mexicans marched 
 up and down the middle of the street, 
 picking and sweeping at wire-stringed 
 guitars and a banjo, singing love songs. 
 E 49
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 They tinkled the first strain of "La 
 Golondrina," and many voices took it 
 up and swelled it, sweet and yearning, 
 to the deep sky. 
 
 " Adonde ird veloz y fatigada, 
 La Golondrina que de aqui se va 
 O, si en el aire gemira extraviada 
 Buscando abrigo, y no lo encontrara 
 Junto a mi lecho, le pondre* su nido 
 En donde puede la estacion pasar. 
 Tambien yo estoy en la region perdido, 
 O, cielo santo, y sin poder volar." 
 
 Felicia, standing with Keble in the 
 shadow of a wall, away from the jostling 
 crowd, had joined in with the plaintive 
 words. There was a pause, then they 
 began again. 
 
 " Deje* tambien mi patria idolotrada 
 Esa mansion que me mir6 nacer. 
 Mi vida es hoy errante y angustiada 
 E ya no puedo a mi casa volver 
 Ah ! ven querida, amada peregrina 
 Mi corazon al tuyo estrechare* 
 Oire* tu canto tierna golondrina 
 Recordare" mi patria y llorareV' 
 
 50
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 He listened to the immature young 
 voice, with its rich, low notes full of the 
 thrill of the song's longing for the aban- 
 doned home. Yet he knew that she had 
 never had a home, that her life of wan- 
 dering had begun when she had been 
 born, fatherless, in a tent on the out- 
 skirts of a mining camp. She had been 
 telling him of it, as they had stood in the 
 darkness and watched the people pass- 
 ing and repassing beyond the row of 
 trees. And she went on with it now, 
 when the song was ended : how that her 
 mother had died there in the tent, and 
 she herself, at the age of two months, 
 had made her first appearance upon a 
 stage, beginning even then the life of 
 the itinerant player. 
 
 He had no need to be told what it 
 meant to follow that profession over the 
 desert and through the mountains, in 
 rough new towns, among miners and 
 cow-boys and desperadoes, and with 
 such a woman as the aunt for only coun- 
 sellor. She must, he realised, have known 
 5 1
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 more than once already the hard neces- 
 sity of self-protection and defence. But 
 that she had met the necessity fairly and 
 come out unscathed, he would have con- 
 tended for against all challengers, as he 
 had only that morning, contended for it 
 against his ridiculing, indignant, and dis- 
 gusted parents. 
 
 A hand-bell was rung vigorously in 
 front of the music-hall. It was the sig- 
 nal that the play would soon be begin- 
 ning, that the doors were opening to 
 admit whosoever had a quarter of a dol- 
 lar to pay, or fifty cents for the reserved 
 benches at the front. 
 
 " I must go," she said, with a note of 
 reluctance. 
 
 He put out his two hands and caught 
 hers, drawing her to him. " Don't," he 
 said unsteadily. The light from a 
 torch which some one was carrying by 
 fell on them, behind him, making a radi- 
 ance through his thick, light hair, and 
 full on her protesting, half-frightened 
 face. He dropped the hands instantly. 
 5 2
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 She moved away and he stooped to take 
 up his soft felt sombrero from where he 
 had laid it on the ground. 
 
 When she was out, well beyond the 
 shadow line, she stopped and looked 
 back. " Be sure to sit well in front," 
 she called to him, " and to wait for me 
 there afterward." 
 
 He answered something indistinctly. 
 She was not angry with him, then. But 
 he was angry with himself, and he stood 
 still, turning the sombrero around and 
 around by the brim, frowning and kick- 
 ing at a stone. He had never meant to 
 use the course with her that one used 
 with the others, that he had used with 
 little Pepita Arcos two years before. 
 He had evolved theories of life and con- 
 duct for himself, unaided by any pre- 
 cept or example, and one of them was 
 that no man who was not either soft 
 and a poor sort, or else coarse-na- 
 tured, attempted with a good woman, 
 to resort to kisses and the like until he 
 should have asked her promise of 
 53
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 marriage. With the others he took 
 that easily any course was justifiable 
 there. 
 
 He jammed the hat down on his head, 
 pulled it over his brows savagely, and 
 in a frame of mind of much disgust with 
 himself went into the crowd. 
 
 He was not oblivious to the glances 
 of many of the women gathered around 
 the door and reading the Spanish and 
 English bill posters in red and blue 
 which were placarded against the wall. 
 He shrugged off good-humouredly fin- 
 gers that touched his broad shoulders, 
 or were laid on his arms as he pushed 
 his way through the press until he stood 
 directly in front of the door. He 
 dropped his four-bit piece into Lewis's 
 palm and made for the middle of the 
 long bench directly in front of the stage. 
 The room filled to overflowing directly, 
 and not more than half of the expectant 
 public could get in. Plays did not hap- 
 pen in Tierra Blanca every week. All 
 the benches were crowded, and as there 
 54
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 were not enough seats, many had brought 
 their own folding chairs, camp-stools, 
 and even boxes, and had seated them- 
 selves where they chose. As for the 
 rest, they crowded against the walls, 
 their figures standing out in bold relief 
 of black and bright colour against the 
 harsh white. The only lights were two 
 bracket lamps with newly polished re- 
 flectors, and four lanterns in front of the 
 flowered-calico drawing curtain, which 
 was hung across the platform. 
 
 Keble looked around for Josefina 
 Arcos. She did not appear to be in the 
 house. He had hardly expected to see 
 her. The inquiries he had made con- 
 cerning her, while he had eaten his sup- 
 per at the restaurant that evening, had 
 brought out the information that she 
 had gone not the way he would have 
 supposed, and which her mother had 
 arranged for her, but the way of reli- 
 gion and a quite superior sanctity. She 
 was known already as Santa Pepita, and 
 was accredited with the working of cer- 
 55
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 tain miracles, the curing of the dis- 
 eased and even of the crippled, and the 
 bringing of rain by her prayers. Among 
 the Mexican population she was greatly 
 revered and implicitly obeyed the 
 power of the padre himself being sec- 
 ondary to hers. The thing was not un- 
 precedented. Nearer the border there 
 dwelt a Mexican girl who had likewise 
 attained wide fame and large influence 
 as a saint among both her own kind and 
 the Indians of a formidable tribe, and 
 who had stirred them up to a fierce 
 conflict against the Mexican govern- 
 ment more than once. Santa Pepita's 
 power was used, however, it seemed, for 
 the promoting of peace, not of bloodshed. 
 
 " Sometime when the rain goes back 
 on her, or a cure don't work, she'll 
 lose the job," had communicated his 
 unregenerate informant; "but so far 
 she's run in luck, and what she says, 
 goes with the Greasers every time." 
 
 Lewis, having abandoned the box 
 office, came through the room and 
 56
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 climbed on to the platform, disappearing 
 behind the curtain. It was the only 
 stage entrance except one counted as 
 such two windows leading from the 
 platform to the ground outside. 
 
 There was a mysterious sound of 
 moving and whispering behind the cur- 
 tain, which keyed expectation to the 
 pitch. Dudley recalled his own infantile 
 conception of a stage. Once as a very 
 small youngster he had heard his father 
 and another man talking together of a 
 play upon a " stage." Having asked 
 for information and been given it pains- 
 takingly by his father, he had arrived 
 at the satisfactory if somewhat confused 
 conclusion that certain people, called 
 actors, told stories while they walked 
 about or sat in a buckboard, such as 
 carried the mail, and went by the cabin 
 once a week on its way from Gold City 
 to the Agency. That was the " stage " ; 
 and several times it had been held up 
 by the white men or Indians, and had 
 failed to pass at the appointed time. 
 57
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 There came now a hush behind the 
 scenes. The bell rang and the red folds 
 parted and were pulled slowly back. 
 Some one turned low the two bracket 
 lamps. 
 
 The play was in four acts, dealing 
 with the thrilling adventures of two 
 beautiful damsels the one very good, 
 the other very bad who loved the 
 same gallant cow-boy. In the last act 
 the attempt of the jealous rival upon the 
 life of the virtuous maiden, being foiled, 
 the virtuous maiden was safely united to 
 the cow-boy, and the other was obliged 
 to content herself with the villain, her 
 suitor and a faro dealer of blackest moral 
 hue. It was not Felicia who played the 
 part of the virtuous one, but her aunt, 
 radiant in pink muslin. And Felicia, 
 her unformed little figure looking more 
 thin and slight than ever in trailing black, 
 her face, too, seeming more colourless 
 and more wistful, threw herself into the 
 part of villainess with a laudable deter- 
 mination not rewarded by the effect. 
 58
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 Dudley's face grew severe with vexa- 
 tion and disapproval. He refrained 
 from joining in the applause of the noble 
 and admirable sentiments uttered by the 
 blond maiden and always paused after, 
 expectantly. He crushed his hat in his 
 fists. 
 
 The curtain came together at the end, 
 and there arose stamping and clapping 
 and calling. The folds parted again and 
 the four came out to bow. Somebody 
 in the middle of the room stood up, 
 and, using the two actresses to point his 
 text, began a scathing of them, and of 
 the other women in the room, in lan- 
 guage of Pentateuchal force and plain- 
 ness. Dudley, turning, recognised him 
 for a man he had seen before, a Mor- 
 mon of hulking, gigantic form and evil 
 countenance, who had his many man- 
 sioned ranch a few miles out from the 
 town. Another man silenced him with 
 a hand over his mouth, and several to- 
 gether bundled him out. Then the 
 audience dispersed, and the room was 
 59
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 empty of all save Keble, who sat wait- 
 ing. The two actors came in front of 
 the curtain and extinguished the lan- 
 terns, then stepped down among the 
 vacant benches and went out. The 
 aunt followed almost at once, and Felicia 
 a few moments later. She had, in that 
 corner of the platform which was parti- 
 tioned off for the women's dressing-room, 
 taken off the black gown, symbolical 
 of her villany, and she was again in the 
 old brown linen. 
 
 They went together out into the 
 street. " Come and get some tamales," 
 he suggested. He was hungry and 
 supposed that she must be. They 
 went to a one-room adobe on the plaza. 
 A rich, greasy odour came out from it, 
 with puffs of the onion-laden smoke 
 of frying things which blurred the light 
 of the one candle set in the neck of a 
 bottle. In the hovel there was only a 
 roll of bedding bundled up into a corner, 
 two stools of hide and willow, and a 
 rickety stove. In the centre of the floor 
 60
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 a circle of blackened stones held a fire 
 of wood coals, on top of which rested a 
 big clay griddle. Cakes of ground corn 
 were frying there, and on the stove were 
 enchiladas and tamales and chili-con- 
 carne being kept warm. The air was 
 thick with the pungent, strong smells. 
 Some chickens roosted on a beam over- 
 head. There were no windows and only 
 one door. Through the smoke a hud- 
 dled figure showed, sitting on the 
 ground behind the fire. And a man 
 was turning the corn gorditas. 
 
 Dudley did the buying while Felicia 
 stood just within, leaning against the 
 wall a little wearily. He came back 
 with four tamales, and they went again 
 into the outer night. The streets were 
 still fairly full. Couples sat close to- 
 gether on the ground, in the blackness 
 under the trees, others strolled back and 
 forth. From the saloons and dance 
 halls came the sounds of violins and 
 guitars, of clattering glass and noisy 
 carousing. The little village, had been 
 61
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 quaint and peaceful enough even vir- 
 tuous, in its way so long as it had 
 been left to its Mexican inhabitants. 
 But now that it had acquired a mining 
 population of whites, it was become 
 a spot of general vice and toughness, 
 on a gala night like this as unhidden 
 and open as well could be. Dudley 
 and the girl went their way in the 
 midst of it, comprehending it fully, but 
 not part of it. And, finding the step 
 of the church deserted, they sat down 
 upon it to eat their tamales. 
 
 "We are not going on to-morrow," 
 she told him. " We will be able to fill 
 another house." They finished the ta- 
 males, but still they sat where they 
 were, silent, watching the moving fig- 
 ures off on the street. He would have 
 put out his hand and taken hers as it 
 lay on her lap but for his determination 
 not to make love to her after any such 
 fashion. When the time should come 
 
 and he planned it for the next night 
 
 he would ask her to marry him, and 
 
 62
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 if she were willing to, they would be 
 married at once. There would be, so 
 far as he could see, no reasons for 
 delay, and many against it. That her 
 aunt and the two men would oppose 
 any such arrangement, he foresaw ; but 
 it was a difficulty he would do what 
 he could to meet when it should present 
 itself. In the meanwhile he was happy 
 enough to have her there beside him. 
 
 The carousing and singing and quar- 
 relling in the saloons grew louder, the 
 passers much less frequent. She asked 
 the time and he took out his watch 
 a big gold one which had been his 
 father's in the New England country. 
 It was two o'clock. " I must go," she 
 said, rising. 
 
 He took her to the wagons. Neither 
 the men nor her aunt were there. 
 The latter, he suggested, might per- 
 haps have gone to look for her. Feli- 
 cia was not inclined to think so, and 
 she explained that her whereabouts, at 
 any hour of the day or night, did not 
 63
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 concern Mrs. Denison, provided always 
 that she was on hand for the perform- 
 ances. 
 
 The abomination of it roused right- 
 eous anger and horror in the young 
 fellow's breast. But he refrained from 
 comment. She could not stay here 
 alone, was all he ventured. 
 
 Why could she not? she asked, a 
 little surprised. " I often do it," she 
 said " generally." 
 
 "Go to bed," he commanded, with 
 authority. " I'll wait here until your 
 aunt conies." 
 
 She laughed with the easy cynicism 
 of long custom. " You may spend the 
 rest of the night there, then," she 
 warned. 
 
 "Very well," he answered deter- 
 minedly, "I'll spend the rest of the 
 night here." And he helped her into 
 one wagon and sat himself down upon 
 the tongue of the other for the vigil. 
 He was spared it, however. Mrs. 
 Denison came back almost at once, and 
 64
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIff 
 
 her husband with her. But Keble walked 
 away far from satisfied, and the more 
 so that a sceptical query of his mother's 
 regarding the trio of grown players 
 occurred to him. He was newly con- 
 scious of the desirability of propriety, 
 though up to then he had been as care- 
 lessly tolerant of all vice, save only 
 horse-stealing and card-cheating, as was 
 the rest of his sparsely populated, hetero- 
 geneous world. 
 
 He sat for a while on a bench outside 
 a saloon, listening to the music within. 
 There were three men with guitars, and 
 two women who sang, and they made 
 real melody. There was the minor wail 
 that lies always in the voices of an op- 
 pressed or a passing race. They were 
 singing over and over the swinging 
 Puritan march, with a fire inspired of 
 mescal. A tipsy Olympias, crowned, 
 not with the leaves of the ivy of Samo- 
 thrace, but with a chaplet of dilapi- 
 dated paper flowers, caught in her 
 dishevelled hair, danced on a table in 
 65
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 the middle of the room, throwing dart- 
 ing black shadows against the stained 
 and broken wall. The men applauded 
 with shouts and yells. The uproar made 
 no difference to Keble. He ran his 
 hands deep into his pockets, crossed 
 his booted legs, and leaned against the 
 front of the house. There was a frown 
 on his forehead as he looked up to the 
 stars, seeing them no more than he saw 
 the woman who came to the threshold 
 and tried to attract his attention. She 
 turned away with a shrug of her shoul- 
 ders when he did not heed her. " Oye 
 amigo!" 
 
 The music rose to a pitch of ecstasy. 
 It ran as an undercurrent to his thoughts, 
 and did not disturb them. The tune had 
 changed, andhehummeditunconsciously 
 between his set teeth as he put himself to 
 planning his future. It was the first time 
 he had looked ahead with any purpose. 
 Up to then he had stayed around the 
 cabin and the adjacent foot-hills most of 
 the time, being of use to his father and 
 66
 
 THF.RE WAS A FROWN O-N HIS KORKHEAD, AS HE 
 LOOKED UP TO THE STARS.
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 mother, going off in the Spring and 
 Fall, perhaps, to help at round-ups. 
 When he had thought about his career 
 at all, he had supposed that he would 
 eventually when his brother should 
 grow large enough to take his place at 
 home be a cow-boy, or, in the inter- 
 vals of that employment, a prospector. 
 He had not wanted to be a rancher. 
 The life of the tiller of the soil had 
 seemed to him too tame and without 
 events. Just at present he was inclined 
 to consider it in another light. To 
 have a good ranch somewhere down by 
 one of the rare river flats, and live on it 
 with one's wife and family it would 
 not be so bad as he had once thought. 
 Money had been a thing for which he 
 had never had much need. He knew of 
 nothing outside the trashy stock of a 
 general merchandise and grocery store 
 that it would buy, save only whiskey 
 and the passing affections of women. 
 And the attraction of either of these 
 last was not apparent to him. Now the 
 67
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 vista of the future was lighted for him 
 by a girl's eyes. Decidedly, if he were 
 going to marry Felicia, he must begin to 
 think of getting her a home in time, of 
 settling down to some one purpose. A 
 woman could not share the life of a pro- 
 spector or a cow-boy. That ambition, as 
 an ultimate, vanished forever. He might, 
 indeed, have to be a cow-boy or a pro- 
 spector for a time, but only as a way to 
 the end which was to earn money. At 
 present he had ten dollars in the world, 
 ten dollars upon which to undertake the 
 providing for two and the entry upon 
 married life. But poverty had no ter- 
 rors for him in this part of the coun- 
 try it did not need to have for any man 
 of common intelligence and a strong 
 arm. Had he had less than half the 
 ten dollars, he would still not have hesi- 
 tated. When he should want work and 
 pay, he would be able to get them. 
 
 And having settled that to his satis- 
 faction, he stood up and walked over to 
 the corral where his horse was and where 
 68
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 he had left his saddle and blanket. He 
 found the blanket and started out again. 
 
 " Que haces ? " demanded the man 
 who was guarding the corral, waking 
 from his doze. " Wat are you doing ? " 
 
 " Voy acostarme," Keble answered. 
 
 "Were?" questioned the Mexican; 
 "donde?" 
 
 " Eu algun rincon," he called back. 
 And so to bed in a corner he went, even 
 as he had said. Funds were not, after 
 all, so plentiful that he had any to waste 
 on the quite unnecessary and superflu- 
 ous comforts of a lodging. He wrapped 
 himself in the blanket, and lying down in 
 a corner formed by the corral wall and 
 that of a house, pillowed his head on his 
 arm and went to sleep not the only 
 one who slept in the streets of the town 
 that night, with the star-flecked sky 
 above, and for lullaby the rustle of the 
 cottonwoods' silvery leaves, and the 
 echoes of song and music that came out 
 from wide open doors. But most of the 
 others slept where they had fallen, and 
 69
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 there were two besides one by the 
 church, and the other in a narrow way 
 between some houses who slept a 
 deeper sleep from which they would not 
 awaken. There was blood on the soft 
 dust where they lay, and a knife wound 
 between the shoulders of each not the 
 greatest harm, perhaps, that mescal and 
 women had led to that night. 
 
 It was beginning to be light when 
 Keble moved his head on his arm and, 
 stirring, opened his eyes. He had not 
 been there for quite two hours. The 
 grey sky was yellowing. A woman, 
 huddled in a black shawl, scuffled by, a 
 cock crowed from some yard, and an- 
 other and many another answered it. 
 His dog, which had slept beside the 
 pony in the stall, came over to him wag- 
 ging its tail and wriggling. He sat up 
 and shivered a little. He was not cold, 
 but the ground had been hard, and his 
 muscles were cramped. The indistinct 
 outlines of the trees and the low, white 
 houses grew slowly clear. He heard the 
 70
 
 /TV 
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 water in the acequia rippling, and the 
 leaves swishing and whispering in the 
 dawn breeze. The sun came up, and with 
 it the priest emerged from his house and 
 went to unlock the doors of the church 
 and throw them open. There were not 
 many who came to the early mass, only 
 old men and women and a few small 
 children. The rest of the town was 
 sleeping deeply after its revelry. 
 
 Keble, after having folded his blanket 
 and put it back, made his toilet at a 
 water trough, combed his still dripping 
 hair and retied his neckerchief, which 
 was red and bright yellow. After that 
 he made no further immediate attempt 
 to see Felicia than merely standing for 
 a time on a corner and watching the 
 wagons until she came out of hers. It 
 was then nearly eight o'clock. He 
 joined her. They were, she told him, 
 going to the hotel for breakfast all 
 four of them. The box-office receipts 
 of the night before, and the probable 
 ones of the night to come, justified the
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 expenditure. That, Dudley knew from 
 past experience, would be decidedly out 
 of all proportion to the merits of the 
 meal. The coffee and the flies were 
 both thick at the hotel, but the town 
 offered nothing a great deal better. He 
 decided to permit himself the extrava- 
 gance of four bits and to breakfast 
 there also. 
 
 They found him already at the long 
 table when they arrived. His coat hung 
 on a peg at the side of the room ; but he 
 had on the garment of all needful cere- 
 mony his vest. To have sat down 
 without that, in the presence of women, 
 would never have occurred to him, nor 
 to most of the men present. 
 
 After the breakfast he waited for 
 Felicia outside, and they strolled off to 
 the outskirts of the town, past the dump- 
 heaps of bottles and glistening cans, and 
 coming to a fair-sized mesquite bush sat 
 in its patch of shade. He took a bright 
 new ten-cent piece from his pocket, and 
 opening his knife began scraping it in 
 72
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 the centre. It was his intention to make 
 a ring for Felicia out of the corrugated 
 rim, and he told her so. Should she 
 give him a curl of her hair in exchange ? 
 she asked, taking one between her 
 thumb and finger, pulling it forward and 
 considering it at an angle of vision. 
 
 He looked at it, then shook his head. 
 "I'll take them all, by and by or 
 none," he announced. 
 
 The process of making the ring was 
 a slow one, and it was by no means 
 completed when the sun had got to 
 well past mid-heaven. It was time, 
 then, to go back to the town for dinner. 
 Moreover, there was no shade under 
 the mesquite, and had not been for 
 some time. Keble went back also, but 
 not to dinner. Two meals a day, he had 
 decided, would suffice him just at pres- 
 ent. And whereas breakfast and supper 
 cost fifty cents, dinners required an extra 
 quarter. 
 
 He found some old friends of his last 
 round-up, and went off with them to 
 73
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 their room at a boarding-house. It was 
 not until late in the afternoon, when it 
 was almost dusk; that he returned to 
 look for Felicia again. She was not 
 with the outfit and not in the streets. 
 He bethought himself of the church 
 and went over there. No one was vis- 
 ible in the deep gloom just at first, but 
 presently a woman came toward him. 
 She had a grey shawl over her head 
 and until she was near, he took her to 
 be Felicia. Then he saw that it was 
 only her aunt. He asked for the girl. 
 Mrs. Denison knew nothing as to her 
 whereabouts. She herself, she ex- 
 plained hastily, had been saying her 
 prayers. He nodded indifferently. The 
 action was doubtless laudable; but de- 
 votions were hardly what he would have 
 expected of her. They left the church 
 together and walked down the street; 
 then, as a last resort, he went over to 
 the hotel. It was possible that Felicia 
 had gone into the big darkened parlour 
 to be cool and quiet. 
 74
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 And there he found her, after his 
 eyes had grown accustomed to the lit- 
 tle light. She had fallen asleep on a 
 lounge, curled up not very comfortably, 
 her cheek in her hand. There was no 
 one else in the room, and though the 
 windows were open, the green shutters 
 were closed. Outside indolent Mexican 
 feet shuffled by on the gravel, or more 
 determined American ones crunched 
 sharply. The cottonwoods rustled and 
 the acequias rippled. He sat down by 
 the sofa to wait until Felicia should 
 awake. 
 
 75
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 |NSIDE the music-hall, on the 
 stage before a breathless audi- 
 ence, the play was reaching its 
 climax. Outside, in the street 
 in front, that which was in serious and 
 dangerous earnest was reaching a climax, 
 too. The golden chain had been missed 
 from the neck of Nuestra Sefiora del 
 Carmen. The priest had had occasion 
 to go into the church about nine o'clock ; 
 he had happened to notice the statue, 
 and had seen that its most valuable or- 
 nament had disappeared. Coming forth 
 in dismay and consternation, he had 
 spread the news. Whom did he sus- 
 pect ? had been asked at once. He did 
 not know, he had no idea, unless it 
 were the nifia Americana, the little one 
 76
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 who was here with the strolling actors. 
 She had been a good deal around the 
 church; and, yes, he recalled that he 
 had seen her with her grey shawl over 
 her head coming out from there late in 
 evening, some time after every one else 
 had left. Still, he hastened to add, 
 fearful of doing an injustice, it might 
 not have been she at all. She had 
 seemed very devout. And there were 
 plenty of others who were certainly not 
 above suspicion in Tierra Blanca. 
 
 Nevertheless, some one or two re- 
 ported that it might, the padre said, 
 have been the nina Gringa. Some eight 
 or ten passed it on that the padre had 
 said it was indeed she. The news had 
 spread fast among the people. An act 
 of sacrilege had been committed, the 
 greatest and most valuable treasure of 
 their church had been robbed and the 
 Gringa girl had done it. 
 
 From the music-hall, in the moment 
 of tense interest, there went out no 
 sound to the street. But from the street 
 77
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 there began to come in, low at first, 
 but rising and swelling, a deep and omi- 
 nous murmur. The actors stopped and 
 waited until they should be able to make 
 themselves heard. The door was tried 
 and rattled. It had been locked from 
 within and did not open. There fol- 
 lowed the noise of bodies throwing 
 themselves against it. It shook, strained 
 under a great pressure, gave, and crashed 
 in. A mob of Mexicans crushed and 
 pressed and struggled through, their 
 murmurs rising to a howl. The audience 
 was up on its feet, and the men, both 
 brown and white, had turned and faced 
 them. Six-shooters and knives were al- 
 ready drawn. Keble, from his place just 
 in front of the platform, could see those 
 who were already in hesitate and at- 
 tempt to fall back ; but, pressed from 
 behind, they were forced on. The re- 
 volvers were levelled now, and some one 
 called out a demand for an explanation. 
 " La cadena de oro," was the answer, 
 yelled from a hundred throats at once. 
 78
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 "La nifia lo ha robado the girl has 
 stolen it, has stolen the golden chain." 
 
 The brown hands stretched out with 
 one accord all pointing to the stage, to 
 Felicia standing in the light of the lan- 
 terns, slight and pale in her long black 
 dress, wide-eyed, frightened, the blotches 
 of rouge vivid and crude against her 
 cheeks. The two men were still with 
 her ; but at the first giving of the door 
 her aunt had drawn back to the turkey- 
 red curtains that served for scenery, and 
 had gradually disappeared. 
 
 " She had stolen it, la muchacha, la 
 nina, the one in black. She has taken 
 the golden chain from the neck of Nu- 
 estra Sefiora del Carmen. The priest 
 said so, and it is gone." 
 
 The little head with its brown curls 
 was thrown back indignantly. " I did 
 not take it," she denied in their own 
 tongue ; " I did not know it was gone." 
 Keble heard, but few others did. The 
 howls and roars had begun again, and 
 the Mexicans in the audience were join- 
 79
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 ing in the noise. They outnumbered 
 the white men greatly, and they were 
 surging forward, their women with 
 them. Such of them as were not 
 drunk with mescal and aguardiente 
 were more so, if anything, with fanati- 
 cism and that mad rage of crowds 
 which gathers from itself. Whether or 
 no the girl had taken the chain, whether 
 or no the priest had actually accused 
 her of it, they were far past stopping to 
 reason upon. She was a heretic and of 
 a troupe of wandering players a class 
 always open to suspicion. In their 
 present frenzy these ordinarily mild 
 and sweet-humoured people would need 
 no more evidence upon which to do 
 murder. And Keble, who had known 
 the race from his childhood, knew that. 
 He went to the foot of the platform. 
 "Put out those lanterns," he commanded. 
 The two men demurred. "Put them 
 out! " he repeated. It was Felicia who 
 obeyed, stooping forward quickly. 
 " Wait for me," he said to her, " go to 
 80
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 the left side window, have it open 
 and wait for me." 
 
 A shot was fired in the back of the 
 room. It was answered by several. 
 There were the yells and shouts and 
 curses of menj the screeches and en- 
 treaties of women. Benches and stools 
 and boxes went banging and scraping 
 over. The Mexicans were pressing for- 
 ward to the shadowy stage. Dudley 
 jumped up on it, grabbing even as 
 he did so a six-shooter from some 
 man beside him. He had his own, but 
 he might have need of more than the 
 one, later on. From the platform he 
 faced about, threw out his arm and fired 
 twice. In the cow camps he had won 
 shooting contests more than once. At 
 each of his shots now a bracket lamp 
 went out. The music-hall was in thick 
 darkness, an invisible pit of uproar, of 
 blows and crashes and wails, down there 
 below him. There were one or two 
 more desultory discharges of firearms. 
 And the cries of "la cadena " were 
 G 81
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 changing to "muera, muera la nifla." 
 They would kill her, too, if they were to 
 get hold of her now, very probably. 
 
 Dudley, on the ground outside, below 
 the window, heard as he reached up his 
 arms. " Quick," he urged, and she was 
 beside him as the first of the mob stum- 
 bled and clambered upon the stage. It 
 was lighter outside than it was in the 
 music-hall, and he knew that it would be 
 only a question of a few moments before 
 he and Felicia would be descried. At 
 the front of the building some of the 
 crowd was still pushing to get in. He 
 drew her into the shadow and hurried 
 her around by the back way and off 
 among some of the houses. No one 
 was about, but there were dogs that 
 barked, and that sound would help to 
 trace them. 
 
 "I haven't the chain," she whispered 
 piteously. " I haven't really. I don't 
 know anything about their old cadena." 
 
 Of course she did not, he answered 
 absently. He was not thinking so much 
 82
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 of what was behind as of what was 
 ahead. As to where the chain was 
 he had already drawn conclusions which 
 amounted to a certainty. That, how- 
 ever, could wait until another time. 
 What mattered now was to get Felicia 
 to some place of safety until daylight or 
 the white population should bring the 
 people to reason. 
 
 Three ways had already suggested 
 themselves, to hide, say in some corral 
 or yard or outhouse, was the first. But 
 that they would be tracked and found, 
 betrayed by the yapping of the innu- 
 merable curs, was more than a chance. 
 They had come to an opening from 
 which they could see back to the music- 
 hall. From the window by which they 
 themselves had escaped, silhouetted 
 heads and shoulders protruded. The 
 heads and shoulders became whole bod- 
 ies, dropping ffom the window to the 
 ground, and starting in different direc- 
 tions in pursuit. Some came directly 
 toward themselves. 
 83
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 The priest they might go to the 
 priest's house and ask protection. But 
 even on the possibility of the padre 
 being there, asylum might be refused 
 through bigotry or fear. Moreover, he 
 mistrusted priests as, at best, given to 
 subterfuge and double dealing. And 
 had not this one accused Felicia of 
 having stolen? 
 
 And last there was Pepita Arcos, 
 Santa Pepita, whom these Mexicans 
 greatly revered. It was almost a cer- 
 tainty that she would be at home at this 
 hour. He believed that she would help 
 him. It was, perhaps, a bold play, and 
 hazardous, but the chance seemed to 
 him the best. He had been circling all 
 the while in that direction as they had 
 hurried along hugging the shadows. 
 But Pepita's house was still a half a 
 mile away, out beyond one end of the 
 main street. The calls and shouts and 
 barkings behind were coming toward 
 them and nearer. 
 
 "Can you run?" he asked quickly; 
 84
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 "for five or ten minutes for half a 
 mile, to the west end of the town?" 
 
 She wasted no words. "Yes," she 
 told him. 
 
 He looked down at the long skirt 
 dragging and hindering. She gathered 
 it up, well up, out of the way. He 
 caught one of her hands ; it belonged 
 to him now, in any case, he felt, by 
 the promise she had given him late that 
 evening in the big, quiet room of the 
 hotel. "When we begin to run," he 
 warned, "we will be seen. And the 
 dogs will come at us. If we start, we 
 have got to keep on. Can you do it ? " 
 She nodded emphatically. 
 
 And it was as he had said. The 
 dogs about the houses gave tongue and 
 chase, and presently the two scurrying 
 figures were observed. 
 
 "Alii alii estan," some one in the 
 distance shouted triumphantly, and the 
 pursuit grew hotter. Once a bullet 
 struck the ground in front of Felicia, 
 a little to the right. She did not waver 
 85
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 or hesitate. It flashed across Keble's 
 mind that she ran well, that he was 
 going his fastest, and she was hardly a 
 hindrance. He bent down his head. 
 Could she keep it up ? he questioned. 
 Her only reply was to do so, without 
 faltering or slackening the pace. But 
 the crowd, gathering from all directions 
 now, was gaining. The leaders were 
 not two hundred yards behind. The 
 straight, wide street stretched ahead. 
 
 They came to the end of it. Beyond 
 was the open country with nothing in 
 sight but the sands and shrubs and 
 cacti, and one very small house, stand- 
 ing alone some distance down the road. 
 There was a light within. 
 
 They reached the house and Dudley 
 tried the door. It opened. He pushed 
 Felicia in, followed, shut it, and braced 
 himself against it, shooting a bolt at 
 the same time. A fat Mexican woman, 
 the Sefiora Arcos, roused from dozing, 
 got up from the dirt floor slowly and 
 laboriously. An inner door opened, and 
 86
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 a girl stood in it, a Mexican also, whose 
 hair, loosed from its braids, fell, blue 
 black about her, over her shoulders 
 well below her knees. It was Josefma. 
 Her whole figure stiffened suddenly 
 and the weighted head went up. She 
 had seen Keble, and had seen, too, the 
 girl beside him, leaning against the 
 wall, shaking with exhaustion and breath- 
 lessness. 
 
 Dudley caught the instant harden- 
 ing of the soft, brown eyes. His heart 
 sank. If this desperate chance were to 
 fail, if the saint were to prove a fanatic, 
 the woman jealous and vindictive 
 then the ten bullets in his two revolvers 
 would be his only hope. 
 
 The shouting and barking were close. 
 "Pepita," he said hurriedly, speaking 
 in Spanish, " the chain has been taken 
 from the Virgin's neck the golden 
 chain. They," he jerked his head over 
 his shoulder toward the town " they 
 believe that she took it," and he laid his 
 hand on Felicia's shoulder. " But she 
 87
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 did not. I give you my word that she 
 knows nothing of it. Will you tell them 
 so ? They will listen to you. If you 
 send them away, they will go. If you 
 don't, they will kill her." He hesitated, 
 then he played his final card. " She is 
 my novia, Pepita. I love her. She is 
 going to marry me. Take care of her 
 for me." And he drew away. 
 
 The Mexican looked at the Gringa 
 whose white and frightened face was 
 daubed with red on the cheeks and lips. 
 There was the noise of many feet on the 
 ground outside. But the shouts had 
 stopped. A blow came upon the door. 
 Pepita pointed to the one out of which 
 she herself had just come. " Pase us- 
 ted," she said. Felicia looked question- 
 ingly at Keble. He nodded, " Do all 
 that she tells you to exactly," he bade 
 her. She obeyed at once, and the Mex- 
 ican girl shut her into the farther room. 
 Then she put Keble aside. 
 
 And she stood forth, black gowned 
 and in the mantle of all her black hair 
 88
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 Santa Pepita speaking to her own people. 
 The candle shine from the hovel was 
 behind her, outlining her vaguely, mak- 
 ing a shimmer about her head. The 
 starlight was on her face. And the 
 men and women fell back from the 
 small cleared space of beaten ground, 
 to the open beyond, among the sparse 
 bushes and the glistening sands. 
 
 It was with the speech of authority 
 that she addressed them. They were 
 several hundred, all of them lashed up 
 to the pitch of murder and blood-lust, 
 for the wiping out of sacrilege, many of 
 them wild drunk, most of them armed. 
 The nickel of revolver barrels and the 
 steel of knives glinted. 
 
 And the figure in the doorway was 
 only that of a girl whom they had known 
 from the time not eighteen years 
 before when she had been born in 
 this same adobe hut. She was defence- 
 less. Almost any woman amongst them 
 could have flung her aside and passed 
 on in. But she was the one who had 
 89
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 laid her hands on sick and crippled folk 
 and so they believed caused them 
 to be healed ; whose prayers were an- 
 swered when others prayed in vain ; 
 whose supplications to the patron saint 
 had brought rain when the earth had 
 been all white-hot dust and the heavens 
 brass. And when she told them now 
 that they were to go back to the town 
 and to their homes, and to attempt no 
 harm toward the nifia Americana, who 
 was innocent and had no knowledge 
 of the chain, they muttered a little, 
 that the chain was gone, and that the 
 padre himself had accused the Gringa; 
 but they went. They broke away on 
 the outskirts first, and falling and slink- 
 ing off, finally departed altogether, aim- 
 less and balked and ashamed. 
 
 The girl turned back into the hut. She 
 was not the Santa Pepita who, standing 
 forth in the starlight, had faced a mob 
 alone, with no weapon save her sanctity 
 and perhaps her soft-eyed gentleness. 
 She was Josefina Arcos, who loved 
 90
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 not her kind or Heaven but one man, 
 a blue-eyed, fair-haired young Gringo, 
 the man who tried now to thank her. 
 She was a woman who had seen about 
 to be destroyed the other woman who 
 had won that man's love. She had 
 saved her,- and now that the instinct of 
 generosity had had its way, regretted it 
 bitterly, angrily, furiously. She was a 
 little fierce creature who struck down the 
 big hand that was put out to her in grati- 
 tude, who ran, with her head back and the 
 magnificence of her black hair flung away 
 from her pitifully drawn and working 
 face, threw open the inner door, snatched 
 at the Gringa's wrist and pulled her forth 
 from the darkness into the candle-light, 
 pushed her out into the night, faced 
 around on the man, and bade him go to. 
 Then, when she had banged the door 
 behind them both, she ignored the fat 
 old woman who stood staring stupidly, 
 and sank huddling on the ground in a 
 corner, and sobbed and tore the black 
 hair and the palms of her hands, and 
 9*
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 even the hard mud floor, moaning re- 
 grets for the thing she had done, rising 
 to a sitting posture now and then and 
 cursing the white girl in the two lan- 
 guages whose oaths she had learned in 
 her time, and wailing defiantly that that 
 girl should yet be killed, shot, stabbed, 
 pulled to pieces should die. 
 
 And the mother, who would have 
 found a daughter in a dance-hall more 
 profitable than a saint in the favour of the 
 church, who had seen the saint in human 
 moments before this, and was sceptical 
 of canonisation, sat down in a grunting 
 heap amid her litter of cigarette ends, 
 rolled with much deftness some straw 
 paper and tobacco, lit it and smoked 
 it, and another, and yet another, until 
 she nodded and fell asleep, and snored. 
 
 92
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 IND if there was wailing in the 
 adobe of the saint, there was 
 gnashing of teeth in the wagon 
 of the sinner. 
 
 Mrs. Denison had seen herself forced 
 by a mere boy and a fat and untidy 
 Mexican priest, by Lewis, and by the 
 husband whom she held in unmixed 
 contempt, to produce from its hiding- 
 place the bauble which, in her opinion, 
 had hung quite long enough around the 
 neck of a wooden figure, and would, at 
 some future time, in some sufficiently 
 distant place, show to much greater 
 advantage upon her own the golden 
 chain. 
 
 The priest, having been all thankful- 
 ness for the recovery of the church's 
 93
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 one valuable votive offering, and all hu- 
 mility and repentance over the results 
 of his ill-considered suggestion, that the 
 nina Americana who had been so much 
 about the church might have been the 
 thief, had refrained from rebuke or ad- 
 monition. Her husband had not. She 
 had broken up the performance, had put 
 them all in imminent peril of then" lives, 
 and had brought the company into a dis- 
 credit which might prove far-reaching, as 
 a band of pilfering vagabonds. And he 
 had told her what he thought about it in 
 convincing and forceful terms. Keble, 
 Lewis, and the priest had been witnesses 
 of her sulky humiliation, as she had 
 stood leaning against a wheel, tossing 
 her becurl-papered head with unsuccess- 
 ful defiance, and sneering unsteadily. 
 
 The priest had finally gone back to 
 his house carrying his rescued treasure ; 
 but young Keble had remained for some 
 while longer, and had taken the occasion 
 to inform them of his intention to deprive 
 the company of the further services of 
 94
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 its youngest member, who would, he 
 explained, be married to him the next 
 morning and stay behind, for the present, 
 at Tierra Blanca. At the moment, he 
 had said, she was over at the hotel, in 
 care of the highly respectable matron 
 who kept it. And she would remain 
 there for the rest of the night. " You 
 can see her in the morning," he had 
 said. " She'll tell you the same thing 
 then." 
 
 He had hooked his thumbs into his 
 cartridge belt, and squaring his wide 
 shoulders, had met, unmoved, first re- 
 fusal, then invective, then persuasion, 
 and even finally the aunt's own tearful 
 entreaties that her niece be not thus 
 ruthlessly torn from her. He would be 
 breaking them up in business, Denison 
 had argued wrathfully. Keble had 
 thought that improbable. They could, 
 he averred, easily pick up some one old 
 enough to be nurse to Mrs. Denison's 
 Juliet. The next good-sized town would 
 very likely produce her. In any case, 
 95
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 it was not of the business that he was 
 thinking. To threats of the enforce- 
 ment of a natural guardian's rights he 
 had opposed an equally unconcerned 
 front. Whether or not Felicia, by the 
 law of the place, was old enough to be 
 her own mistress he did not know. But 
 the priest, he reminded them, was wit- 
 ness as to who had stolen the Virgin's 
 chain had been brought along, indeed, 
 precisely to that end. And a word from 
 him would make not only Tierra Blanca, 
 but most parts of the country where 
 devout and pious Mexicans were to be 
 found, uncomfortable and unprofitable 
 for the troupe for some years to come. 
 " He won't talk now," Keble had told 
 them, "at least, he has said he won't 
 If I give him the word, though, he will 
 in a hurry." 
 
 In the end he had taken his departure 
 still unaffected in his determination. 
 And long after Lewis and Denison had 
 exhausted their well-stocked vocabulary 
 of abuse, in making apparent to the 
 96
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 woman the most salient points of beauty 
 of the situation, and the full extent and 
 purport of the results of her action; 
 long after they were sleeping the sleep 
 of those who have done their utmost and 
 have nothing upon that score to reproach 
 themselves with ; long after the little 
 town had become quiet save for occa- 
 sional sounds from some saloon, and the 
 barking of dogs answering to each other, 
 or to coyotes off on the dim flat, Mrs. 
 Denison came out again from the wagon 
 in which she had been thrashing from 
 side to side. She made her way to the 
 hotel, with the intention of seeing her 
 niece and trying to induce her to leave 
 Tierra Blanca before daylight as they 
 themselves intended to do in order to 
 avoid possible further trouble with the 
 natives. But some one was walking 
 back and forth on the strip of hard soil 
 between the row of cottonwoods and 
 the hotel door. She crept nearer, from 
 trunk to trunk. It was Keble, his 
 thumbs still hooked in his cartridge 
 H 97
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 belt, his shoulders still squared, pacing 
 up and down, mounting guard, full of 
 his new responsibility, and waiting for 
 the daylight 
 
 When that came, the deep blue grow- 
 ing whiter on the sky line to the east, 
 then flushing, then spreading quickly 
 over all the zenith in vivid yellow that 
 foretold the fiery heat to follow ; when 
 the morning was just beginning, he 
 stood, with Felicia beside him, looking 
 blankly at the place where the two 
 wagons and the hobbled horses had 
 been. There were now only the tracks 
 and debris, the scattered hay and grain 
 of what had been a camping spot. The 
 teams had already pulled out. They 
 walked together down the street, past 
 the church, between the low, white 
 houses in which no one seemed to be 
 stirring yet. And coming out into the 
 open, they saw far down the streak of 
 road which stretched away and away 
 across the face of the sun-gilded waste the 
 white canvas tops of two wagons, which 
 98
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 crawled along toward the faint blue 
 range of mountains with its one snow 
 peak. 
 
 They were side by side and hand in 
 hand. He bent his head and looked 
 down into the face that was hardly on 
 a level with his shoulders, a pale and 
 wistful face, with lips which were quiv- 
 ering now. She raised her eyes. And 
 they were full of tears. Two big tears 
 were on her cheeks. 
 
 No one was in the desert that reached 
 away in front of them, no one was out 
 in the street behind. And they neither 
 of them thought of a little Mexican girl 
 who was standing in the doorway of the 
 adobe hut, not a stone's throw in the 
 rear, standing in the same doorway from 
 which she had held back the mob of 
 her fanatic and vengeful people not 
 many hours before. 
 
 For Keble there was, just then, no 
 
 woman in all the fresh, new world save 
 
 only the one whom he took into his 
 
 arms, and held and kissed; while a 
 
 99
 
 THE GOLDEN CHAIN 
 
 linnet on a sahuaro trilled its song to 
 the daybreak, and was answered by the 
 caged and lonely mocking-bird on the 
 wall above Santa Pepita's down-bowed 
 head.
 
 MISS GWENDOLEN OVERTON, whose 
 powerful story, " Anne Carmel," is one 
 of the strongest and finest novels of the 
 year, has come upon very unusual expe- 
 riences during more than half of her 
 twenty-nine years. The daughter of 
 Captain Gilbert Overton was born in 
 what on the frontier passes for a fort, 
 an army post in the far West named 
 Fort Hayes ; and she began her career 
 of continuous travelling when she was a 
 month or two old. At that time she was 
 taken with the troops, in an ambulance, 
 the long march from Kansas to Arizona. 
 She has lived in nearly all the army posts 
 of Arizona and New Mexico. She took 
 to burro-back in her tenderest years. 
 Soon she was promoted to a mule, and 
 by and by she became a finished and noted 
 horsewoman. She was on the frontier 
 most of the time, and in the East part of 
 the time, until she was fourteen. 
 
 Thereafter she and her people lived for a 
 few years in France, where the author of 
 " Anne Carmel " received much of that 
 part of her education which has come from 
 books. To her education in France is 
 doubtless due much of her comparative
 
 horizon ; but the larger preparation for 
 writing her first novel was acquired in 
 the Southwest, that " lonely but master- 
 ful land." Later the Overtons spent a 
 couple of years in Washington ; and when 
 Miss Overton was about twenty-one or 
 twenty-two the family came to live in Los 
 Angeles, California. Here Miss Overton 
 lives when she is not on one of her long 
 periodical trips to the East, to Mexico, to 
 Canada, or elsewhere. She has picked 
 up a good deal of Spanish, as well as an 
 exceptionally fine and accurate know- 
 ledge of the French language, of French 
 life, and of the best French literature. 
 For the most part she is now a quiet 
 dweller in Los Angeles, of no apparent 
 fondness for the white light that beats 
 upon a reception of writerlings. 
 The real West, of plains and mountains, 
 rather than modern California, has made 
 Miss Overton what she is. She is often 
 spoken of as a California writer ; but as 
 a matter of fact, her genius and her out- 
 look upon life, and to a large extent also 
 her character, both as a woman and as a 
 writer, have been formed by the West of 
 the plains and the mountains, where there
 
 are no health resorts. The portions of 
 Arizona and New Mexico in which army 
 posts were situated a score of years ago, 
 were calculated to leave a deep impres- 
 sion on any one who grew up amid them. 
 For this reason the distinction of Miss 
 Overton as a California writer is inexact ; 
 besides, Miss Overton does not, as it 
 happens, write about California. The 
 region that has made her is that de- 
 scribed in her first novel, " The Heri- 
 tage of Unrest." She has lived in so 
 many different places that she is prop- 
 erly spoken of as being of or from that 
 place which has formed her genius, the 
 part of the West that either breeds self- 
 reljance or kills. 
 
 If I can claim to be from or of any one 
 place, I suppose I should say it was of 
 the part of the country I wrote about in 
 my first book. That life influenced me 
 very greatly ; and I dare say that no one 
 who does not know it can understand the 
 hold it takes on the affection and imagi- 
 nation of one who was brought up to it. 
 A reporter asked me a while ago what 
 I read in particular; but as my tastes 
 weren't what seemed to be expected, he 
 3
 
 lost interest in the theme. An author 
 should, I gathered, pore over the lives of 
 other authors, poets and the like ; and 
 unfortunately people of action are more 
 to my fancy when it comes to biography." 
 Miss Overton reads few modern novels. 
 Probably any one who has been brought 
 up and trained on the better French 
 novelists and the French critics becomes 
 hypercritical. " Personally I know I 
 have a standard so severe as a conse- 
 quence of Sainte-Beuve and Brunetiere 
 that I am foredoomed to dissatisfaction 
 with anything I may do." 
 Miss Overton is at her desk by 8.30 every 
 morning, and works until luncheon. She 
 spends her afternoons in recreation. In 
 particular she likes sailing, and much of 
 her playtime is spent on the water in 
 company with her younger brother.
 
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