Chronicles of San Lorenzo—VI. His Next of Kin [pp. 91-106]

CHRONICLES OF SAN LORENZO.
"Can I marry?" asked Arthur nervously.
"Certainly. Not today, perhaps, but
in three months. One lung will recover
entirely. The other," he pursed his lips
and shook his head. "Well, Mr. Little,
the woods here are full of one-lunged
men! But stick to the ranch, sir. Take
no chances."
Little returned, with a grateful heart,
to La Cuyama. As he drove slowly
through tortuous canions, across rocky
divides, through smiling valleys and
fruitful mesas, ever ascending to what
seemed to him "a purer ether, a diviner
air," he told himself again and again that
the lines of his life had fallen in pleasant
places. The bevies of quail, the rabbits
scuttling through the brush, the buzzards
sailing idly in a cloudless sky, the scream
of the blue jays, the lowing of the distant
herds, the fragrance of pines and herbs,sage, thyme, and tarweed,- these things,
animate and inanimate, filled his soul
with delight and thanksgiving. He decided to live here, here where God, in his
infinite goodness, had given him health
and strength, a portion of each year. He
would buy, by the advice of Fawcett, a
league of land and make a home, a home
for himself and Antonia!
He loved her. She had occupied his
heart from the moment she touched, with
compassionate fingers, his poor face.
Since then he had had abundant opportunities of studying her intently. Even
her faults, the faults of a generous, outspoken nature, endeared her to him.
Believing his malady to be past mending,
he had kept his secret well, but nowwith the doctor's permission- he swore
to do all that became a man to woo and
win her.
When he reached home late in the
afternoon, hot and dusty with travel, he
inquired for Remmington. The Chinaman (who acted as valet and was busy
preparing his bath and laying out clean
clothes) answered -
"He go see small-foot,"-Ah Foo
alluded to Antonia,-" he heap likee
small-foot. I know. Pretty soon they
marry. I think so. Jack, heap fine
man, he kissee girl, lotsy, lotsy times.
I see him."
"That will do," said Little quietly.
"You can go, Foo, I don't need you."
Ah Foo glanced at him from the corner
of his almond eyes.
"He likee girl, too," he muttered.
"Girl all same damfool, she likee wrong
man. Jack, big, strong, heap fine, but -
no good!"
Arthur bathed, and lighting a cigar,
sat down upon the porch. He smoked
tranquilly, his eyes resting upon the distant horizon where the jagged peaks of
the San Emigdio Mountains cut sharply
the opalescent sky.
"Fool," he murmured once or twice.
"Blind fool! "
At sundown the night wind rushed
boisterously up the valley, rattling the
dying leaves of the cottonwoods and
white-oaks. Little shivered. He ought
to go in. A sudden chill was more to be
feared than the fangs of a rattlesnake.
But he lingered, smoking and thinking,
until Remmington rode up and overwhelmed him with greetings.
After dinner they sat in the parlor.
Jack lighted the fire and Ah Foo staggered
in with an armful of aromatic pine cones.
By the cheery blaze of these the cousins
talked, Little waiting impatiently for the
inevitable confession, and waiting in
vain. Finally, chafing at the suspense,
he threw out these tentacula.
"You've sometimes thought of marriage, Jack? Eh?"
"Marriage! Why, yes. There was
Mollie Walker, you remember Mollie and
the noise she made eating soup; a gilded
pill. I nearly swallowed her, or 1 should
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