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Updated: May 10, 2025
"From my friend," Rita explained, spreading the sheets of thin blue paper, crossed and recrossed, on her lap; "my Conchita, the other half of my soul. You shall hear part of it, Marguerite, but other parts are too sacred. She begins so beautifully: 'Mi alma' but you have no Spanish yet; the pity, to turn it into cold English! 'My soul' has a foolish sound.
In the conversation passing between them Conchita is the comforter. "Don't grieve so, senorita," she says, "I'm sure it will be all right yet. Something whispers me it will. It may be the good Virgin bless her! I heard one of the soldiers say they're taking us to Santa Fe, and that Don Valerian will be tried by a court martial I think that's what he called it. Well, what of it?
It can give no painful sensation to tell that Colonel Miranda and his sister accompanied Frank Hamersley on his return to the States, Don Prospero and the New Mexican damsel, Conchita, being of the party, which had for escort across the plains Captain Haynes and his company of Texan Rangers, their old comrade, Walt Wilder, travelling along, and, with Nat Cully, narrating around their nightly camp fires many a strange "scrape" of the mountains and prairies.
Soon after a human voice, quickly followed by a second; these not echoes or repetitions of the same; for one is the coarse guttural cry of a man, the other a scream in the shrill treble of of a woman. The first is the shout of surprise uttered by Chico, the second the shriek of alarm sent forth by Conchita.
"The rancheria of Don Ramon was one of the first attacked, and the proud old Don and his three sons, with most of their rancheros and vaqueros, were surprised and slaughtered. Of my own family, my sister Conchita, a girl of sixteen, and myself, alone escaped death; and we, with many other captives, were hurried off in charge of a small detachment of Camanches.
But as the triangular conference proceeds; above all, when it arrives at its conclusion, and he sees the Texan raise Conchita in his arms, giving her that kiss, the echo of which is distinctly audible to him, his blood boils, and with difficulty does he restrain himself from rushing up to the spot, and taking the lives of all three, or ending his own if he fail.
For all that, he has pursued her with zealous solicitation, regardless of rebuffs and apparently unconscious of her scorn. Hitherto he has had no rival, which has hindered him from despairing. Conchita is still young, in her earliest teens, having just turned twelve.
Then they looked at the child, lying there, pink checked with the flush of the blood returning; and such a sudden tenderness touched them as they had known long years before, while together bending above the slumbering loveliness of lost Conchita. They were singular eyes, large, dark, and wonderfully fringed.
In the companionship of such kind friends he can afford to be patient. Walt Wilder has no curiosity of any kind. His thoughts have become centred, his whole soul wrapped up in Conchita. The heart of the colossal hunter has received a shock such as it never had before; for, as he declared himself, he is in love for the first time in his life. Not but that he has made love before, after a fashion.
Adela Miranda has in her veins the purest sangre azul of Andalusia. Her ancestors came to New Spain among the proud conquistadores; while those of Conchita, at least on the mother's side, were of the race conquered, outraged, and humiliated.
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