Across the Mesa. Helen Bagg
were a good many people traveling, for a country in a reputedly unsettled condition, Polly thought, and wished that she could understand the fragments of conversation that she heard.
“Why didn’t I take Spanish instead of French at school? I always seem to have chosen the most useless things to study! I wish I knew what those two fat women without any hats on are talking about—me, I suppose, for they keep looking over here. That man is American—or English. If I were Bob, I’d amble over and get up a conversation with him and find out all the interesting things I’m missing. I’ll bet he owns a mine down here somewhere. How fascinating!”
Polly’s imagination immediately forsook the American and indulged in a rosy picture of herself as the owner of a mine—a gold mine—coal was too unromantic. She saw herself in a short skirt and a sombrero superintending the exertions of a number of dusky workers who were loading neat little gold bars on the backs of patient burros.
This delightful picture occupied her fully until the train stopped and she had to get out. This train did not go all the way to Conejo, but left one at a junction called Pecos where twice a week if convenient for all parties a smaller train rattled its way across the plain and into the mountains among which Conejo nestled. It is not necessary to describe Pecos; its only reason for existence was the fact that it owned and operated a smelter.
This second train was the shortest that Polly had ever seen. It consisted of an engine, two coal cars, a baggage car, and one passenger coach—this last very dirty as to floor and windows and very creaky as to joints. There were on this occasion but four passengers beside Polly; the two fat ladies, who were, if she had only known it, members of the first families of Conejo; an old man who sat in a corner and read a German paper; and a young Mexican, well dressed and of a gentlemanly appearance, who sat across the narrow aisle from Polly, smoking innumerable cigarettes and glancing at her whenever he thought she was not looking.
Polly, however, was too much interested in the changes of scenery to notice anything as ordinary as a good-looking young man. The country was changing, gradually, but still unmistakably changing, from a desert, flat and stifling, to a region of small hills and valleys; still brownish yellow, but with the monotony of mesquite varied by live oaks, and in some cases by shallow little streams along whose banks grew cottonwoods, their green foliage restful to the eye weary of desert bareness.
Many of the cacti were in their beautiful bloom and gave to the country the needed dash of color. Occasionally one saw small herds of cattle feeding off the short stubby vegetation. They were drawing near the mountains, whose gauntness seemed less when approached.
“They’re like ugly people—grow better looking as you get to know them,” mused Polly. “Oh, my gracious, what’s the matter now?” The puffing little engine had given up trying to make the steep grade it had been negotiating, and had stopped with one last desperate wheeze. No one seemed surprised. The fat ladies went on talking and the old man continued to read his paper. The trainmen were outside, doing something, Polly couldn’t make out what, perhaps only talking about doing something. “Oh, dear, I wonder what has happened!”
In her excitement she must have said it aloud, for the young man across the way sprang to his feet and was at her side instantly. A keen observer might have drawn the conclusion that he had been waiting for some such opportunity.
“I beg pardon, señorita, but it is that the engine cannot make the grade,” he volunteered, politely, in English almost without an accent—or perhaps I should say with an intonation English rather than American, though with a slightly Latin arrangement of phrase.
“Oh, I see,” Polly replied blankly. The young man had been rather sudden, and he continued to stand in a disconcerting way, hat in hand, in the aisle. He appeared to be very young, hardly more than nineteen, Polly thought, and handsome in a dark way. He had large dark eyes, very white teeth, a smooth olive skin without the mustache which so many Spaniards wear, and a rather prominent under jaw and chin.
“You see,” he continued, “they take the first car over to Conejo and then come back for us.”
“Do you mean to say that they’ll leave us here, perched on the side of this hill, while they run off with the engine?” demanded Polly, eyeing the trainmen indignantly. In fact, she was so busy being indignant with them that she omitted to notice that the young man had slipped into the seat opposite her. That fact, however, had not escaped the fat ladies in the rear, one of whom said to the other in shocked Spanish:
“It is Juan Pachuca!”
“So it is,” replied the other. “I had thought him in the South.”
“Who knows where he is? A wicked person, my dear, a very wicked person. My sister’s husband says he will get himself shot before he finishes.”
“Undoubtedly,” said the other, placidly. “So many young men are being shot these days. I thought that young woman was an actress—now I am sure of it.”
“Yes,” replied Juan Pachuca to Polly’s question. “But do not be alarmed. They will come back in a couple of hours.”
“A couple of hours!” The girl’s voice was horrified. “But I expected to be in Conejo in a couple of hours. I’m in a hurry.”
“One should never be in a hurry in Mexico, señorita, it does not—what is it you say—it does not pay.”
“Apparently.” Polly replied coolly, realizing suddenly that this good-looking boy was regarding the conversation as a thing established.
The stranger was correct in his guess. Uncoupled from the rest of the train, their coach remained poised uncomfortably half-way up the hill, while the engine, still puffing and wheezing like a stout man going upstairs, pulled the open cars and the baggage car up the grade and, disappearing through a gap in the hill, became only a faint noise and a trail of thin smoke. Polly laughed in spite of herself and the young man responded with a smile that revealed two dazzling rows of teeth.
“Mañana!” he laughed. “So we say down here and so we do. You find it amusing, señorita, after your country?”
“It’s different, you must admit. We at least aim to reach places on time.”
“Yes, that is the difference—you aim, we do not,” replied the other, thoughtfully. “Some day—but perhaps the señorita will get out and have a breath of fresh air? There is, alas, plenty of time.”
A mischievous impulse seized the girl. She felt as she used to feel when as a small, fat, freckled youngster she had sat still as long as she possibly could in school and then despite the teacher’s stern eye her nervous energy had got the better of her.
“After all he’s only a boy,” she told herself. “I’ll bet he isn’t any older than my freshmen cousins. What’s the harm?”
Outside the sun was hot but the wind was fresh and cool.
“Through that cut in the mountains and around a curve is Conejo,” said Juan Pachuca, as Polly, glad to be out of the hot car, drew long breaths of the splendid air. “You have friends there?”
“In Conejo? Oh no, my brother lives in Athens. That’s where I am going. He is superintendent of a coal mine there.”
“Athens? That is some distance from Conejo. Of course your brother will meet you?”
“Of course,” replied Polly, with the faith of the American girl in the male of the species. “They have a little coal train that runs to Conejo and he’ll probably come in on that.”
“I think you must be Señorita Street?” mused the young man.
“Oh,” Polly dimpled pleasantly. “You know Bob then?”
Juan Pachuca’s dark eyes smiled. “Not exactly—but I have met him. Me, I have a place south of Conejo—quite a long way—I am what you might call a long-distance neighbor. My name is Pachuca—Juan Pachuca.”
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