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Updated: June 2, 2025
I am not sure which came first: the invitation to a celebration out at the Quemado settlement, or the arrival on the border of Runyon, the mounted inspector. The coming of Runyon caused a distinct ripple in the social circles of the two border towns. He was well connected, it was known: he was a cousin to a congressman in the San Angelo district, and he had a brother in the army.
Nevertheless, the fact of her visit has its place in this chronicle, since it had a cruel bearing upon a day which still lay in Sylvia's future. Sylvia's caller went home; and, as it chanced, she never called again at the house on the Quemado Road. As for Sylvia, she did not speak to Harboro of her visitor.
She had been an unfortunate creature when Mendoza married her; and she was perhaps thankful to have even a low-caste Mexican for a husband, and a shelter, and money enough to pay the household expenses. That her life could not have been entirely complete, even from her own way of thinking, was evidenced by the fact that at last she came to call on Sylvia in the house on the Quemado Road.
In the afternoon." Harboro found himself leaning against the wall, his head in his hands. Mendoza! The town's notorious philanderer, who had regarded Sylvia with insolent eyes that night out at the Quemado! Yes, and she had danced with him the minute his back was turned; danced with him with unconcealed joy. Mendoza.... He climbed the stairs slowly.
Time and again, throughout the winter, the same horse made its appearance at Sylvia's gate at the same hour, and Sylvia mounted and rode away out the Quemado Road and disappeared, returning early in the afternoon. If you had asked old Antonia about these movements of her mistress she would have said: "Does not the señora need the air?" And she would have added: "She is young."
Accordingly, an extra horse was rented for Mr. Lang's use. The remainder of the party was started on the road at 1:50, while I waited to give the remedio a chance to operate and the beast an opportunity to rest. At three I started, leading the sick horse. We had a fine ride in the cool of the evening, over a mountain road past the little ranch El Quemado, beyond which we found an immense ascent.
The long ride out to the Quemado was a thing to which he was not accustomed, and the merrymaking had seemed to him quite monotonous after an hour or two. Even the midnight supper had not seemed a particularly gay thing to him. He was not quite a youth any more, and he had never been young, it seemed to him, in the way in which these desert folk were young.
He would be on the lookout, and when the moment of reaction came he would be ready with suggestions. She had spoken of riding. There would be places to go. The bailes out at the Quemado; weddings far out in the chaparral. Many Americans attended these affairs in a spirit of adventure, and the ride was always delightful.
He regarded Harboro expectantly. He was the boy who had brought the horses on the night of that ride to the Quemado. "I didn't want anything," said Harboro; "that is, nothing in particular. I'll be likely to need a horse in a day or two, that's all." He walked leisurely into the shady, cool place of pungent odors.
Sylvia meant to him only a passing pleasure and the relaxation of the night or of a holiday. As he went away he seemed eager to get around a corner somewhere. He seemed to be swelling up again. You might have supposed he was about to explode. Sylvia's dress made its appearance in due course in the house on the Quemado Road.
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