Читать книгу A Volunteer with Pike - Robert Ames Bennet - Страница 7

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The first time I was blessed with a sight of the señorita was on the day of my arrival in the Federal City—in fact, it was upon my arrival. An inquiry in the neighborhood of the President's House for my sole acquaintance in the city, Senator Adair of Kentucky, had resulted in my being directed to Conrad's boarding house on the Capitol Hill.

In the Fall of 1805 Indian Summer had lingered on through the month of November. As a consequence, so I had been informed, Pennsylvania Avenue was in a state of unprecedented passableness for the season. Yet as, weary and travel-begrimed, I urged my jaded nag along the broad way of yellow mud toward the majestic Capitol on its lofty hill, I observed more than one coach and chariot in trouble from the chuck-holes of semi-liquid clay.

It was midway of the avenue that I came upon her coach, fast as a grounded flatboat, both of the forewheels being mired to the hub. The driver, a blear-eyed fellow, sat tugging at the reins and alternately plying the whip and swearing villanously. I have ever been a lover of horseflesh, and it cut me to see the sleek-coated, spirited pair plunge and strain at the harness, in their brave efforts to perform a task utterly beyond them.

I drew rein alongside. The driver stopped his cursing to stare at me, purple-faced.

"Are you blind drunk?" I demanded. "They'll never make it without a lift to the wheels."

"Lift!" he spluttered—"lift! Git along, ye greasy cooncap!"

He raised his whip as if to strike me. I reined my horse within arm's-length.

"Put down that whip, or I'll put you down under the wheel," I said cheerfully. He looked me in the eye for a moment; then he dropped his gaze, and thrust the whipstock into its socket. "Good! You are well advised. Now keep your mouth shut, and get off your coat."

Again I smiled, and again he obeyed. We Western men have a reputation on the seaboard. It may have been this, or it may have been the fact that my buckskin shirt draped a pair of lean shoulders quite a bit broader than the average. At the least, the fellow kept his mouth closed and started to strip off his coat.

I rode over to the nearest fence and borrowed two of the top rails. Returning, I found the fellow in his shirt-sleeves. Yet he seemed not over-willing to jump down into the mud. One more smile fetched him. He took his rail and descended on the far side, muttering, while I swung off at the head of his lathered team and stroked them. Once they had been soothed and quieted, I dropped back, took the reins in hand, and thrust my rail beneath the hub of the wheel. I heard the driver do the same on his side.

"Ready?" I called.

"Ready, sir!" he answered.

A voice came from over my shoulder "Por Dios! It is not possible, señor, to lift. First I will descend."

The knowledge that I had put my shoulder to the wheel for a Spaniard caused my tightening muscles to relax in disgust. But the don had spoken courteously, his one thought being to relieve us of his weight, at the risk of ruining his aristocratic boots.

"Sit still. Quien sabe?" I replied, without looking about, and bore up on the rail. "Heave away!"

The rails bowed under the strain, but the clay held tenaciously to the embedded wheels. I drew the reins well in and called to the willing team. They put their weight against the breast bands steadily and gallantly. The wheels rose a little, the coach gave forward.

"Heave!" I called. The wheels drew up and forward. "Steady! steady, boys! Pull away!"

Out came the forewheels; in went the rear. We caught them on the turn. One last gallant tug, and all was clear. The driver plodded around by the rear, a hand at his forelock.

"Return the rails," I said. "I'll hold them."

He took my rail with his own and toiled over to the roadside. I called up my horse and swung into the saddle, little the worse for my descent into the midst of the redoubtable avenue, for my legs had already been smeared and spattered to the thigh before I entered the bounds of the city.

Again I heard the voice at the coach window: "Muchas gracias, señor! A thousand thanks—and this."

He proved to be what I had surmised—a long-faced Spanish don. What I had not expected to see was the hand extended with the piece of silver. There was more than mere politeness in his smile. It was evident he meant well. None the less, I was of the West, where, in common opinion, Spaniards are rated with the "varmints." I took the coin and dropped it into the mire. He stared at me, astonished.

"Your pardon, señor," I said, "I am not a Spanish gentleman."

The shot hit, as I could see by the quick change in the nature of his smile.

"It is I who should ask pardon," he replied with the haughtiness of your true Spanish hidalgo. "Yet the señor will admit that his appearance—to a foreigner—"

"Few riders wear frills on the long road from Pittsburgh," I replied.

He bowed grandly and withdrew his head into the coach's dark interior. I was about to turn around, when I heard a liquid murmuring of Spanish in a lady's voice, followed by a protest from the don: "Nada, Alisanda! There is no need. He is but an Anglo-American."

The voice riveted my gaze to the coach window in eager anticipation. Nor was I disappointed. In a moment the cherry-wood of the opening framed a face which caused me to snatch the coonskin cap from my wigless yellow curls.

After four years of social life among the Spanish and French of St. Louis and New Orleans, I had thought myself well versed in all the possibilities of Latin beauty. The Señorita Alisanda was to all those creole belles as a queen to kitchen maids. Eyes of velvety black, full of pride and fire and languor; silky hair, not of the hard, glossy hue of the raven's wing, but soft and warming to chestnut where the sun shone through a straying lock; face oval and of that clear, warm pallor unknown to women of Northern blood; a straight nose with well-opened, sensitive nostrils; a scarlet-lipped mouth, whose kiss would have thrilled a dying man. But he is a fool who seeks to set down beauty in a catalogue. It was not at her eyes or hair or face that I gazed; it was at her, at the radiant spirit which shone out through that lovely mask of flesh.

She met my gaze with a directness which showed English training, as did also the slightness of her accent. Her manner was most gracious, without a trace of condescension, yet with an underlying note of haughtiness, forgotten in the liquid melody of her voice.

"Señor, I trust that you will pardon the error of my kinsman—my uncle—and that you will accept our thanks for the service."

"I am repaid—a thousand times—señorita!" I stammered, the while my dazzled eyes drank in her radiant beauty.

She bowed composedly and withdrew into the gloom of the coach. That was all. But it left me half dazed. Not until the driver trudged back and reached for the reins did it come upon me that I was staring blankly in through the empty window at the outline of the don's shoulder. The best I can say is that I did not find my mouth agape.

A touch of my heel and a hint at the bit sent my nag jogging on toward the Capitol, leaving the rescued coach to flounder along its opposite way as best it could, through the avenue already famous for its two miles of length, its hundred yards of width, and its two feet of depth.

Wearied as I was by the last of many days' hard riding from the Ohio, I was the lighter for carrying with me a scarlet-lipped vision with eyes like sloes.