Nan’s fears were realized. She was being pursued. The rider she knew even at that distance, to be Vestor, a cruel man who would do anything his master Anselo Spico commanded.
Where could she hide? It would have been easier if she had been alone, but it would not be a simple matter to conceal the pony. Mounting, the girl raced ahead. A turn in the mountain road brought her to a ranch. It was so very early that no one was astir. Riding in and trusting to fate to protect her, she went at once to a great barn and seeing a stack of hay in one corner, she wedged her pony back of it and stood, scarcely breathing, waiting for, she knew not what, to happen.
But, although the moments dragged into an hour, no one came. At last, unable to endure the suspense longer, the girl slipped from her hiding-place, and, keeping close to the wall of the old barn she sidled slowly toward a wide door. She heard voices not far away.
“You ain’t seen nothing of a black-haired wench in a yellar an’ red dress?”
It was Vestor speaking and it was quite evident that he was snarling angry. Nan peered through a knot-hole, her heart beating tempestuously. The gypsy’s gimlet-like black eyes were keeping a sharp lookout all about him as he talked. The rancher’s back was toward the girl. He, at first, quietly replied, but when Vestor took a step toward the barn, saying he’d take a look around himself, the brawny rancher caught his arm, whirled him about and pointed toward the road. “I’ll have none of your kind prowlin’ about my place. You’d lake a look, all right, but I reckon you’d take everything else that wa’n’t held down wi’ a ton of rock.
“I know the thievin’, lying lot of you. I’d as soon shoot one of you down as I would a skunk, an’ sooner, if ’twant for the law upholding of you, though gosh knows why it does.” Then, as Vestor kept looking intently at the open barn door, the rancher, infuriated by the man’s doggedly remaining when he had been told to be off, sprang toward a wagon, snatched a whip and began to lash the gypsy about the legs.
With cries of pain, Vestor turned an ugly visage toward the rancher, but meeting only determination and equal hatred, he thought better of his attempt to spring at him, turned, went to his black pony, mounted it and rode rapidly back the way he had come.
He didn’t want to be too far behind the caravan fearing that the gorigo police might take him up and put him in jail on Anselo’s offense.
The rancher stood perfectly still for sometime after the gypsy had ridden away, then he also turned and looked toward the barn. Nan had at once sidled to her place back of the hay stack and so she did not see that he slowly walked that way.
Stopping in the door he listened intently. Then shrugging his shoulders, he went into the house to his breakfast. Half an hour later he again sauntered to the barn door. “Gal,” he called. “Hi, there, you gypsy gal! That black soul’d critter’s gone this long while. Don’t be afeard to come out. Ma’s waitin’ to give you some breakfast.”
Surely Nan could trust a voice so kindly. Timidly she appeared, leading the pony who was munching a mouthful of hay. The rancher smiled at the girl in a way to set her fears at rest, at least as far as he was concerned, but once out in the open she glanced around wildly. – “Where is he? Where’s that Vestor gone? Will he be back?”
For answer, the rancher motioned the girl to follow him. He led her to a high peak back of the barn. “You kin see from here to all sides,” he said: “You lie low, sort of, behind that big rock an’ keep watchin’. The scoundrel rode off that a-way. If he keep’s a goin’, you’ll see him soon. If he turned back, well, I’ll let out the dogs.” Nan did as she had been told and from that high position, she soon saw, far across the canyon, riding rapidly to the south, the black pony bearing the man she feared.
She rose greatly relieved. “He’s gone sure enough, Vestor has.” Then, suspiciously she turned toward the man. “How did you know where I was?”
“I saw you go in,” the rancher told her, “an’ I was settin’ outside waitin for you to come out with whatever ’twas, you’d gone in to steal.”
A dark red mantled the girl’s face, and she said in a low voice. “I don’t steal an’ I don’t lie, but he does.” She jerked her head in the direction Vestor had taken. “So do the rest, mostly, but, they don’t all. Manna Lou don’t steal and she don’t lie. She fetched me up not to.”
The girl’s dark eyes looked into the penetrating grey eyes of the rancher with such a direct gaze that he believed her.
A woman appeared on the back porch and called to them. “Fetch the gal in for a bite of breakfast if she ain’t too wild like.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want any breakfast,” Nan said. Then, noting that Binnie was still chewing on the hay he had pulled from the stack, she added, – “I haven’t any money, or I’d pay for what he’s had. I couldn’t keep him from eating it.”
“Of course you couldn’t, gal,” the rancher said kindly. Then, as he saw that the girl was determined to mount her pony and ride away, he asked – “Where are you going to? I don’t have to ask what you’re running away from? I know that purty well.”
The girl shook her head and without a smile, she again said “Thanks.” Then, quite unexpectedly, for the man had seen her make no sign, the pony broke into a run and she was gone.
CHAPTER V.
NAN REVISITS THE GARDEN
For half an hour Nan rode, bent low in her saddle possibly with the thought that she would be less noticeable. Each time that the winding road brought her to an open place where she could see across the valley, she drew rein and gazed steadily at the ribbon-like trail which appeared, was lost to sight, and re-appeared for many miles to the south.
At last what she sought was seen, a horseman so small because of the distance that he appeared no larger than a toy going rapidly away. Sitting erect, the girl gazed down in the other direction and saw the garden city of San Seritos between the mountains and the sea.
“Ho, Binnie!” she cried, her black eyes glowing. “I know where we’ll go. – Back to that beach place where the flowers of gold are.”
And then, in the glory of the still early morning, with her black hair flying back of her, the girl in the red and yellow dress galloped down to the highway and rode around the village, that no-one might see her and arrest her because she was a gypsy.
There were but few astir at so early an hour, but the sun was high in the heavens when at last she reached the little ravine that led down to the sea.
This time she breakfasted alone in the shadow of the high hedge, and the shining white birds did not come.
“Perhaps they only came for little Tirol,” she thought. Then springing up, she stretched her arms toward the gleaming blue sky as she said: “I do want little Tirol to be happy.”
This was an impulse and not a prayer, for the gypsies had no religion, and Nan knew nothing really of the heaven of the gorigo.
Then, telling Binnie to wait for her she opened the gate and entered the garden. The masses of golden and scarlet bloom, the glistening of many colors in the fountain, the joyous song of birds in the red-berried pepper trees fascinated the gypsy girl, and she danced about like some wild thing, up and down the garden paths, pausing now and then to press her cheek passionately against a big yellow crysanthemum that stood nearly as tall as she, and to it she would murmur lovingly in strange Romany words.
She was following a path which she and Tirol had not found, suddenly she paused and listened. She had heard voices, and peering through the low hanging branches of an ornamental tree, she saw a pretty cottage by the side of great iron gates that stood ajar. Here lived the head gardener and his little family. A buxum, kindly faced young woman was talking to a small girl of seven.
“Now, Bertha, watch Bobbie careful,”