Felice and her harmless blandishments at their true
worth. For all Lockwood’s culture, his
own chuck-tenders, unlettered fellows, cumbersome,
slow-witted, “knew women”—at
least, women of their own world, like Felice—better
than he. On the other hand, his intelligence
was no such perfected instrument as Hicks’s,
as exact as logarithms, as penetrating as a scalpel,
as uncoloured by emotions as a steel trap.
Lockwood’s life had been a narrow one.
He had studied too hard at Columbia to see much of
the outside world, and he had come straight from his
graduation to take his first position. Since then
his life had been spent virtually in the wilderness,
now in Utah, now in Arizona, now in British Columbia,
and now, at last, in Placer County, California.
His lot was the common lot of young mining engineers.
It might lead one day to great wealth, but meanwhile
it was terribly isolated.
Living thus apart from the world, Lockwood very easily
allowed his judgment to get, as it were, out of perspective.
Class distinctions lost their sharpness, and one woman—as,
for instance, Felice—was very like another—as,
for instance, the girls his sisters knew “back
home” in New York.
As a last result, the passions were strong.
Things were done “for all they were worth”
in Placer County, California. When a man worked,
he worked hard; when he slept, he slept soundly; when
he hated, he hated with primeval intensity; and when
he loved he grew reckless.
It was all one that Felice was Chino’s wife.
Lockwood swore between his teeth that she should be
his wife. He had arrived at this conclusion
on the night that he sat on the back porch of his office
and watched the moon coming up over the Hog Back.
He stood up at length and thrust his pipe into his
pocket, and putting an arm across the porch pillar,
leaned his forehead against it and looked out far
in the purple shadows.
“It’s madness,” he muttered; “yet,
I know it—sheer madness; but, by the Lord!
I am mad—and I don’t care.”
As time went on the matter became more involved.
Hicks was away. Chino Zavalla, stolid, easy-going,
came and went about his work on the night shift, always
touching his cap to Lockwood when the two crossed each
other’s paths, always good-natured, always respectful,
seeing nothing but his work.
Every evening, when not otherwise engaged, Lockwood
threw a saddle over one of the horses and rode in
to Iowa Hill for the mail, returning to the mine between
ten and eleven. On one of these occasions, as
he drew near to Chino’s cabin, a slim figure
came toward him down the road and paused at his horse’s
head. Then he was surprised to hear Felice’s
voice asking, “’Ave you a letter for me,
then, Meester Lockwude?”
Felice made an excuse of asking thus for her mail
each night that Lockwood came from town, and for a
month they kept up appearances; but after that they
dropped even that pretense, and as often as he met
her Lockwood dismounted and walked by her side till
the light in the cabin came into view through the
chaparral.
