Far-off--thousands of
miles, it seemed--an owl was hooting, three velvet-soft notes at exact
intervals. A cow in the stable near at hand lay down with a long breath,
while from the back veranda of Chino Zavalla's cabin came the clear
voice of Felice singing "The Spanish Cavalier" while she washed the
dishes.
The twilight was fading; the glory that had blazed in cloudless
vermilion and gold over the divide was dying down like receding music.
The mountains were purple-black. From the canon rose the night mist,
pale blue, while above it stood the smoke from the mill, a motionless
plume of sable, shot through by the last ruddiness of the afterglow.
The air was full of pleasant odours--the smell of wood fires from the
cabins of the married men and from the ovens of the cookhouse, the
ammoniacal whiffs from the stables, the smell of ripening apples from
"Boston's" orchard--while over all and through all came the perfume of
the witch-hazel and tar-weed from the forests and mountain sides, as
pungent as myrrh, as aromatic as aloes.
"And if I should fall,
In vain I would call,"
sang Felice.
Lockwood took his pipe from his teeth and put back his head to listen.
Felice had as good a voice as so pretty a young woman should have had.
She was twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, and was incontestably
the beauty of the camp. She was Mexican-Spanish, tall and very slender,
black-haired, as lithe as a cat, with a cat's green eyes and with all of
a cat's purring, ingratiating insinuation.
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