RESENTLY the promoter drew on Tilita's arm and moderated what was a flight down to a walk. He could not hurry so fast; his head was aching too badly. The girl slowed up trembling and glanced back through the jungle. Her breast rose and fell sharply under her green bodice.
“H-He is a terrible man, primo,” she panted.
Lassiter glanced down at his companion. The struggle with Nunes had left red welts on her neck and breast and cheeks. One of her ears was crimson where his beard had scraped. Such tangibilia of her outrage renewed Lassiter's fury. The pressure in his aching head increased.
“I—I ought to have killed him!” he gasped remorsefully. “I—I wonder why I didn't kill him”
He tried to think. The fight was blurred in his mind. He plodded on trying to reconstruct it, trying to discover why he had failed to kill the Colombian.
Tilita moved at his side through splotches of shade and sunshine. Presently it gave her the appearance of moving under some some sort of luminous tapestry that rose and fell with her gliding progress. She gave Lassiter brief side glances and presently said, quite unexpectedly—
“I mean, primo, that Señor Birdsong is a terrible man.”
Lassiter looked around, quite taken aback.
“Birdsong!”
“Si, I hate him!” she accented the word with a narrowing of her black eyes.
“And not Nunes!”
“O-h—no”
She shrugged and evidently dismissed the Colombian's case with slight concern.
“After what he's done”
“The-poor fellow could not help himself.”
“Couldn't help himself!”
“He said he couldn't help himself, primo—” defensively.
A foolish feeling came over Lassiter. Apparently he had been attempting murder over a foible, over mere bad manners—such as the Stendill typists used when they buffed their finger-nails in public. Lassiter felt trifled with.
“Tilita,” he said grimly, “if you didn't object to his”
“I did object, and fight every time!” defended the girl sharply.
The number of times implied left Lassiter blank and simple. Tilita proceeded with some embarrassment:
“He said he couldn't help—er—the way he did. He said every time he looked at me, a—a sort of—well, I—I don't know, primo, I don't understand it— He said a sort of wild
“Oh, good Lord!” groaned the promoter, “has he been telling you that sort of stuff—and you believing
“Well, primo, he acted as if it were true—” Her voice tilted up in a clear note on “true,” which signified that while she deferred to Lassiter's wider experience, to the best of her knowledge and belief, an amorous mania certainly seized Dom Pedro Balthasar Nunes when he came into her presence.
Lassiter was utterly disgusted, and yet somehow obscurely pleased with her innocent stupidity.
“Tilita,” he remonstrated, “you can't believe what a man says—no pretty girl can. Good Lord, I can hear him now, buzzing away, working himself up, explaining how he has been dreaming, yearning, burning for a beautiful arbol-de-vaca gatherer, and how the sight of you causes a madness to rush upon him—then I suppose he made a dive at you for a stranglehold”
A chastened nodding affirmed these deductions.
“Well, take it from me, Tilita, no man ever gets so far but what he can turn around and walk off if he wants to—just turn around and walk off—like that—” he snapped his fingers—“they can all do it—if they want to. The trouble is, getting them to want
Here he broke off. His head throbbed too badly for talk. He kicked out of his path a scarlet and purple orchid which he could have sold for a thousand or two to the New York greenhouses as an unknown variety.
Tilita rolled her black eyes around at him, and he was unable to tell whether his counsel had impressed her or not. It irritated him.
“Look here,” he burst out, “how many times has he—no—don't answer that—It's none of my affair— We'll drop the subject.”
“Two times.”
Lassiter drew an easier breath. It eased his head somewhat. But nevertheless he wondered why women would listen to such piffle. It was amazing in a girl of Tilita's intelligence! It seemed to him that the most inexperienced female could penetrate so impudent
He became aware that the girl was smiling to herself. The whiteness of her teeth lit up her black eyes and scarlet lips in a lovely way. The smile somehow vexed the dignified Stendill agent.
“Tilita,” he suggested, “it seems to me after what has occurred”
She became serious again—almost serious.