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kind, they comb and comb their hair.) She rose without
embarrassment or apology, comb in hand, and greeted the
doctor.
"Good-evening; will you go in?" she asked in a low,
musical voice. "He is in the back room. I will make a
light." She followed them indoors, lit a candle and handed
it to the doctor, pointing toward the bedroom. Then she
went back and sat down on her doorstep.
Dr. Archie and Thea went into the bedroom, which was
dark and quiet. There was a bed in the corner, and a man
was lying on the clean sheets. On the table beside him was
a glass pitcher, half-full of water. Spanish Johnny looked
younger than his wife, and when he was in health he was
very handsome: slender, gold-colored, with wavy black
hair, a round, smooth throat, white teeth, and burning
black eyes. His profile was strong and severe, like an
Indian's. What was termed his "wildness" showed itself
only in his feverish eyes and in the color that burned on his
tawny cheeks. That night he was a coppery green, and his
eyes were like black holes. He opened them when the doc-
tor held the candle before his face.
"MI TESTA!" he muttered, "MI TESTA, doctor. "LA
FIEBRE!" Seeing the doctor's companion at the foot of the bed, he
attempted a smile. "MUCHACHA!" he exclaimed deprecat-
ingly.
Dr. Archie stuck a thermometer into his mouth. "Now,
Thea, you can run outside and wait for me."
Thea slipped noiselessly through the dark house and
joined Mrs. Tellamantez. The somber Mexican woman
did not seem inclined to talk, but her nod was friendly.
Thea sat down on the warm sand, her back to the moon,
facing Mrs. Tellamantez on her doorstep, and began to
count the moonflowers on the vine that ran over the house.
Mrs. Tellamantez was always considered a very homely
woman. Her face was of a strongly marked type not sym-
pathetic to Americans. Such long, oval faces, with a full
chin, a large, mobile mouth, a high nose, are not uncom-
mon in Spain. Mrs. Tellamantez could not write her name,
and could read but little. Her strong nature lived upon
itself. She was chiefly known in Moonstone for her forbear-
ance with her incorrigible husband.
Nobody knew exactly what was the matter with Johnny,
and everybody liked him. His popularity would have been
unusual for a white man, for a Mexican it was unprece-
dented. His talents were his undoing. He had a high,
uncertain tenor voice, and he played the mandolin with
exceptional skill. Periodically he went crazy. There was
no other way to explain his behavior. He was a clever
workman, and, when he worked, as regular and faithful
as a burro. Then some night he would fall in with a crowd
at the saloon and begin to sing. He would go on until
he had no voice left, until he wheezed and rasped. Then
he would play his mandolin furiously, and drink until his
eyes sank back into his head. At last, when he was put
out of the saloon at closing time, and could get nobody
to listen to him, he would run away--along the railroad
track, straight across the desert. He always managed to
get aboard a freight somewhere. Once beyond Denver,
he played his way southward from saloon to saloon until
he got across the border. He never wrote to his wife; but
she would soon begin to get newspapers from La Junta,
Albuquerque, Chihuahua, with marked paragraphs an-
nouncing that Juan Tellamantez and his wonderful man-
dolin could be heard at the Jack Rabbit Grill, or the Pearl
of Cadiz Saloon. Mrs. Tellamantez waited and wept and
combed her hair. When he was completely wrung out and
burned up,--all but destroyed,--her Juan always came
back to her to be taken care of,--once with an ugly knife
wound in the neck, once with a finger missing from his
right hand,--but he played just as well with three fingers
as he had with four.
Public sentiment was lenient toward Johnny, but every-
body was disgusted with Mrs. Tellamantez for putting up
with him. She ought to discipline him, people said; she
ought to leave him; she had no self-respect. In short, Mrs.
Tellamantez got all the blame. Even Thea thought she
was much too humble. To-night, as she sat with her back
to the moon, looking at the moonflowers and Mrs. Tella-
mantez's somber face, she was thinking that there is noth-
ing so sad in the world as that kind of patience and resigna-
tion. It was much worse than Johnny's craziness. She even
wondered whether it did not help to make Johnny crazy.
People had no right to be so passive and resigned. She
would like to roll over and over in the sand and screech at
Mrs. Tellamantez. She was glad when the doctor came out.
The Mexican woman rose and stood respectful and ex-
pectant. The doctor held his hat in his hand and looked
kindly at her.
"Same old thing, Mrs. Tellamantez. He's no worse than
he's been before. I've left some medicine. Don't give him
anything but toast water until I see him again. You're a
good nurse; you'll get him out." Dr. Archie smiled en-
couragingly. He glanced about the little garden and
wrinkled his brows. "I can't see what makes him behave
so. He's killing himself, and he's not a rowdy sort of fel-
low. Can't you tie him up someway? Can't you tell when
these fits are coming on?"
Mrs. Tellamantez put her hand to her forehead. "The
saloon, doctor, the excitement; that is what makes him.
People listen to him, and it excites him."
The doctor shook his head. "Maybe. He's too much for
my calculations. I don't see what he gets out of it."
"He is always fooled,"--the Mexican woman spoke
rapidly and tremulously, her long under lip quivering.
"He is good at heart, but he has no head. He fools himself.
You do not understand in this country, you are progressive.
But he has no judgment, and he is fooled." She stooped
quickly, took up one of the white conch-shells that bordered
the walk, and, with an apologetic inclination of her head,
held it to Dr. Archie's ear. "Listen, doctor. You hear
something in there? You hear the sea; and yet the sea is
very far from here. You have judgment, and you know
that. But he is fooled. To him, it is the sea itself. A
little thing is big to him." She bent and placed the shell
in the white row, with its fellows. Thea took it up softly
and pressed it to her own ear. The sound in it startled
her; it was like something calling one. So that was why
Johnny ran away. There was something awe-inspiring
about Mrs. Tellamantez and her shell.
Thea caught Dr. Archie's hand and squeezed it hard
as she skipped along beside him back toward Moonstone.
She went home, and the doctor went back to his lamp
and his book. He never left his office until after midnight.
If he did not play whist or pool in the evening, he read.
It had become a habit with him to lose himself.
VII
Thea's twelfth birthday had passed a few weeks
before her memorable call upon Mrs. Tellamantez.
There was a worthy man in Moonstone who was already
planning to marry Thea as soon as she should be old enough.
His name was Ray Kennedy, his age was thirty, and he was
conductor on a freight train, his run being from Moonstone
to Denver. Ray was a big fellow, with a square, open
American face, a rock chin, and features that one would
never happen to remember. He was an aggressive idealist,
a freethinker, and, like most railroad men, deeply senti-
mental. Thea liked him for reasons that had to do with
the adventurous life he had led in Mexico and the South-
west, rather than for anything very personal. She liked
him, too, because he was the only one of her friends who
ever took her to the sand hills. The sand hills were a con-
stant tantalization; she loved them better than anything
near Moonstone, and yet she could so seldom get to them.
The first dunes were accessible enough; they were only a
few miles beyond the Kohlers', and she could run out there
any day when she could do her practicing in the morning
and get Thor off her hands for an afternoon. But the real
hills--the Turquoise Hills, the Mexicans called them--
were ten good miles away, and one reached them by a
heavy, sandy road. Dr. Archie sometimes took Thea on
his long drives, but as nobody lived in the sand hills, he
never had calls to make in that direction. Ray Kennedy
was her only hope of getting there.
This summer Thea had not been to the hills once, though
Ray had planned several Sunday expeditions. Once Thor
was sick, and once the organist in her father's church was
away and Thea had to play the organ for the three Sunday
services. But on the first Sunday in September, Ray drove
up to the Kronborgs' front gate at nine o'clock in the morn-
ing and the party actually set off. Gunner and Axel went
with Thea, and Ray had asked Spanish Johnny to come
and to bring Mrs. Tellamantez and his mandolin. Ray was
artlessly fond of music, especially of Mexican music. He
and Mrs. Tellamantez had got up the lunch between them,
and they were to make coffee in the desert.
When they left Mexican Town, Thea was on the front
seat with Ray and Johnny, and Gunner and Axel sat be-
hind with Mrs. Tellamantez. They objected to this, of
course, but there were some things about which Thea would
have her own way. "As stubborn as a Finn," Mrs. Kron-
borg sometimes said of her, quoting an old Swedish saying.
When they passed the Kohlers', old Fritz and Wunsch
were cutting grapes at the arbor. Thea gave them a busi-
nesslike nod. Wunsch came to the gate and looked after
them. He divined Ray Kennedy's hopes, and he dis-
trusted every expedition that led away from the piano.
Unconsciously he made Thea pay for frivolousness of this
sort.
As Ray Kennedy's party followed the faint road across
the sagebrush, they heard behind them the sound of church
bells, which gave them a sense of escape and boundless
freedom. Every rabbit that shot across the path, every
sage hen that flew up by the trail, was like a runaway
thought, a message that one sent into the desert. As they
went farther, the illusion of the mirage became more in-
stead of less convincing; a shallow silver lake that spread
for many miles, a little misty in the sunlight. Here and
there one saw reflected the image of a heifer, turned loose
to live upon the sparse sand-grass. They were magnified
to a preposterous height and looked like mammoths, pre-
historic beasts standing solitary in the waters that for
many thousands of years actually washed over that desert;
--the mirage itself may be the ghost of that long-vanished
sea. Beyond the phantom lake lay the line of many-c...
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