The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1904-03-10

turbed him in the least when he lay
sick and helpless in Nita's hands.
One evening, as he sat watching her
def brown fingers weaving reds and
browns into mat, he tried to speak
to her as if ne had not planned out the
whole dialogue days before.
Bonita" he said, pointing to the mat.
"Mucha," she answered, in an &C.
stacy of happiness at his appreciation.
She raised her great black eyes that
had grown deep and earnest since he
had known her, and her clear, straight
outlines stood out against the sunset
sky like a young Greek goddess done
in bronze.
Jackson suddenly found himself at a
loss for further words and realized
he had set himself difficult task. 1t
would probably be better to slope"
some night and let her find it out for
herself; but this newborn sense of
moral responsibility would not let him
rest at that, so with highly virtuous
air he continued in his broken Spanish:
This is not right, Nita. Malo, malo,
Nita mia"
The brown fingers stopped their
braiding, and the eyes widened in ap-
prehension. How could she have dis
pleased him?
This is not good, tell you" he
went on. This is sin. You better
to home, Nita. You not mi mujer, this
is not bueno," he explained, with
comprehensive wave of his hand that
included the little shack she had made
so habitable for him and the happy life
it had sheltered. Il have to go back
over the mountain where came from;
so you be a good girl, Nita, and go
home"
The mat dropped to the ground, and
the brown figure covered in the dust
as the import of his words slowly
dawned upon her mind. AS for the
sin, that didn't matter so long as she
had him.
ME voy contigo," she pleaded.
Whenever he was ready to go across
the mountain she was ready, too.
Jackson set his teeth. This thing
had to be settled, and she might as well
be made to understand tonight. The
primitive nature, he told himself, did
not feel poignantly, and as soon as he
was gone she would forget.
Il can't take you with me over the
mountain; it would be sin, tell you"
he repeatedly gruff1y.
This, then, was the reaSon-it would
be sin. Her mind grappled with the
argument He could not take her with
him because she was not his wife. But
he had never asked her to be his wife,
and she could not have let him die
alone with no one to take care of him.
Jackson felt his spine stiffening with
conscious virtue as he proceeded.
"Now you go home Nita, and be good,
and don't make fuss about it, and by
and by you will forget all about me-"
Go home and be good: She could,
not go home. But if she had been
good, she reasoned, if she had not ia
ken care of him and worked for him,
if she had left him alone to die of his
wound, then she would have been good.
During the next few days Jackson
was bored to- death by Nita's weeping
and moaning. Like all men, the thing
in the world he most dreaded and
quailed before was womans tears,
even though he had been the cause of
them He had hoped her Navajo sto-
lidity would spare a ''scene," but in
stead she gave herself up to her wall
ing as assiduously as if it had been
a death dance; until at last, yielding
to the farce and eloquence of his per-
suasions, she had slipped away as I'M
tremendously as she had appeared.
And now it was Holy Week in Taos,
and Jackson's thoughts were for the
time diverted from his own problem
in moral ethics by the doings of the
Order of Penitentes.
In the little shack, with his limb
comfortably bound, Jackson had known
little of the life of the natives, and,
with his customary Indifference to
never cared enough to ask what the
Penitentes were; but there was not one
detail of the life he had lived since his
lot had been cast among them that his
! dusky neighbors did not know. And
now that he no longer had Nita for a
go-between, it did not take him long
to find he was held in anything but
friendly light by the natives.
When, after the first day of Nita's
absence, Jackson fully realized she was
gone, and that he was alone with no
one to look after his wants, he began
to wonder what had ever possessed him
to disturb matters as they stood. The
next day he found his foot, without the
cooling herbs and careful dressing, was
not as we'll as he had supposed it to be;
lie necessity of fOraging for himself
also was not so agreeable as having his
wants anticipated. By the third day
he discovered his present condition was
uncomfortable, and began to long for
Nita to come back, and, recalling her
devotion during all the weeks that had
passed, had no doubt that she would
come.
But while Jackson sat alone in his
doorway straining his ears for every
r,lstling twig or Fastening footstep,
the little group of Penitentes in the
Morada welcomed silently the new can