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Updated: June 3, 2025
When small road managers who had known her at the start came into town and asked where "Pancha's Pa" was, nobody knew anything about such a person, and they guessed "the old guy must have died." Since she had lived at the Vallejo Hotel he had been there five times, always after dark. She had told Cushing, the night clerk, that Mr.
Unable to bear her own thoughts, weakened by two sleepless nights, she telephoned to the Argonaut Hotel and said she wanted to speak to Mr. Mayer. The switchboard girl answered that he was in and asked for her name. On Pancha's refusal to give it, the girl had crisply replied that Mr. Mayer had left orders no one was to speak with him unless he knew the name. Pancha gave it and waited.
"I say, old girl," burst from him, "do you know you're looking something grand." She raised her lids and let her glance rest on him, soft and deep. It was a strange look to come from Pancha's bold, defiant eyes. "Am I?" she said gently. "I guess I'm happy, that's all." "Well, it's powerful becoming, believe me. And why are you, especially with 'The Gray Lady' a frost?"
Presently they drew closer together and began to talk; at first of immediate interests food to be procured, the injured woman, how to care for her, find her shelter, discover who she was. Then of themselves how the quake had come to each, that mad, upward rush of Pancha's, Garland's race along the street.
Here the saurians of Pancha's curse worried a drowned pig, there they fought over a cow's swollen carcass; yet because of carrion taste or food plethora, they let her by. There an enormous saber, long and thick as a church, turned and tumbled, threshing air and water with enormous spreading branches, creating dangerous swirls and eddies.
On the table beside her a battered metal tray held a bottle of native Chianti, two glasses and a box of cigarettes. In Pancha's world a visitor was always offered liquid refreshment and she had chosen the Chianti as less plebeian than beer and not so expensive as champagne. She had no acquaintance with either wine or cigarettes; her thrifty habits and care of her voice made her shun both.
If Mayer had the paper and the cache showed it was gone Mayer could direct the pursuit to Pancha and to Pancha's "best beau." So, fact marshaled behind fact, he drew to the truth, grasped it, knew why he had been warned and by whom. Pancha had found out somehow but he did not linger on that; his mind wasted no time filling profitless gaps. Fiercely alive now it only saw what counted.
His immediate desire was for silence and seclusion a place where he could recover from the stunned condition in which Pancha's story had left him. Before he could act on it he would have to get back to a clearness where coordinated thought was possible. He walked down the street in the direction of his old lodgings; he had a latch-key and could get to his room without being heard.
Pancha's hand had caught the dolphin, and the captain showered his loud congratulations, the purser handed her to her seat, and would gladly have sidled into the chair of Señor Sepulvida, who had come aboard with them at Guaymas and kept his berth until the previous evening, yet now came forth to face the gathering company at breakfast.
Good-night." Crowder was not the only one who had noticed Pancha's improved looks and high spirits. Behind the scenes the failure of "The Gray Lady" had produced dejection and rasped tempers. She alone seemed to escape the prevailing gloom.
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