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Updated: June 9, 2025
In truth, it was one of Sylvia's pleasures in those days to watch Runyon ride by; and the afternoon seemed unduly filled with tedium when he failed to appear. The little picture in front of Harboro's house dissolved. The three riders turned their horses' heads to the north and rode away. Antonia stood at the gate an instant and looked after them; but she did not derive any pleasure from the sight.
She could not remember ever to have seen him before; but she was curious to know something about the man whose wife had been kind to her, and whose life seemed somehow tragically lonely. Mendoza made no sign of recognition of Harboro's displeasure. He arose with a purposeless air and went farther along the stockade wall. Sylvia's glance followed him.
Harboro's invitation had come to him through one of his fellow employees in the railroad offices a Mexican who had spent four years in an American university, and who was universally respected for his urbane manner and kind heart. Valdez, his name was.
Everybody along the border spoke the language a little; but Harboro's wasn't the canteen Spanish of most border Americans. Accent and enunciation were singularly nice and distinct. His mustache bristled rather fiercely over one or two of the words. Antonia thought very highly of the "child," she admitted. She was bonisima, and other superlatives.
As she placed this cry of defiance into an envelope and sealed and addressed it certain words of Harboro's came back to her. That night of their wedding he had lifted her in his powerful arms and had given her a man's assurance: "I mean that you're to have all the help you want that you're to look to me for your strength."
He had heartily invited Harboro to go to the wedding with him as his guest; and when he saw traces of some sort of difficulty in Harboro's manner, he suggested, with the ready simpatía of his race, that doubtless there was a Mrs. Harboro also, and that he hoped Mrs. Harboro, too, would honor him by accepting his invitation.
If he had thought of reaching for his weapon he had probably realized that he must first get out of reach of Harboro's arm. "You might put that a little different," he said lightly. "You might say the woman I met in Little's house." Harboro took in the insinuated insult. He remained unmoved.
Presently she produced a coin, and then Harboro observed for the first time that the tortured figure of a beggar sat in the sun outside the church door. Sylvia leaned over with an impassive face and dropped the coin into the beggar's cup. She chanced to glance at Harboro's face an instant later, and she was dismayed a little by its expression: that of an almost violent distaste. What did it mean?
"You watched him go?" "When he came into the saloon, like a rock out of a sling, he stopped just long enough to grin, and fling out this to me 'If you want to see a funny sight, go out front. Fectnor never did like me, anyway. Then he scuttled back and out. I followed to see what was the matter. He made straight for the bridge road. He was sprinting. He's gone." Harboro's gun had disappeared.
He held her a long moment in his embrace. Then he gazed into her eyes searchingly. "Everything is all right," he said the words being an affirmation rather than a question. He had read an expression of dread in her eyes. "Yes, everything is all right," she echoed. Everything was right now. She seemed to awaken from a horrible nightmare. Harboro's presence put to flight an army of fears.
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