Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 3 — page 114: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

896 = have I seen such wind and rain. A wall “ of-water eight feet high came down the Chituah like thunder, and the hills groaned on either side. “In the middle of the storm I thought of het and rose and went to her in the night.” H> paused, and there drove home in the silence a picture of the young padre bowing against the storm, and the wind wrenching at his robe, and the rain crashing about him. ‘““T came near the cabin, and a bough _ was torn from a tree above me and flung on my head.” Automatically he raised his hand. There was a jagged white scar that ran from his ‘temple into his thick, black hair. “ After a time I roused out of my miser- able trance.. There was a sad voice blowing down the valley, a wail that went through me. It seemed to come from the cabin, and I thought of the devil that had lived in Carnahan’s eyes, and I was afraid and turned and ran down the valley.” The brown hand of the padre rose and pressed against the scar, and all his face wrinkled with pain as though he felt again the torment of that distant moment, and he shivered as if the rain were beating on his sodden body once again. “JT was afraid, sexer. And it was long before I had the strength to turn again and go back through the storm. Before I reached the cabin the wails had ceased. I opened the door!”’ He could not speak for a moment, but his lips moved rapidly, aad pain closed up his eyes. ‘Tt was the voice of the woman’s pain— think—-which had gone out to me through the storm and turned me back. It was her own voice which had slain her. For if I had come straight on at first—no matter. When I came at last, it was too late. The Gild was born two months before its time, and the mother. was dying—terribly. ‘‘ And in that horror, senor, will you be- lieve that I thought still and always of the Holy Mother and the Child and the winter night in Bethlehem? Blasphemy? “She knew that she was dying, but she did not cling to me and beg for life. She ‘ARGOSY-ALLSTORY. WEEKLY. did not speak a word, but her look went ever from the child to my face, and to and fro and back again. And the child leoked at us both with its red, wrinkled, ancient eyes. | “‘ Well, it would have been strange if the mother lived; it was a miracle that the child did not die. We took it to the mission and cared for it, and the next day Carna- han came back. “It was then that I was punished with @ mortal sin. Consider, ensigo mio, that I had sometimes looked on the young wife and had remembered that San Vicente must take all the place of woman in my life. And this led me to my mortal sin, for when Carnahan came back I told him all that he had done, and it took his reason from him. To this day his wits live in his violin alone. And that, sexer, is my penance, for every day I go to hear him play and to remember the mother of Rona Carnahan. It is true! “ We buried her here—that is her grave. And whenever the moon is full Carnahan comes and plays all night at the grave the same songs he used to play to his wife when she lived. “‘ Now, friend, I am come to the girl. At her birth She had lost both father and mother, and she got two fester parents—a padre for one, and for the other, the Indian, El Toro. How he came to her is another story. “But you will see that God and the devil both had parts in her birth, and she has lived her life under El Tore on the one part, and under the padre on the other. So I say to you, sefor, that there is a day and a night to her nature—a smile and a blasphemy on her lips—a rose and a dagger in her hand. “Senor Tyson, she is so simple that she hates the dam and all things connected with it- because she knows that the water it backs up will cover the grave of her mother. All her life she has come every day to this grave—you see it there? And she has sat singing. And in her childhood she used to talk to her dead mother. “Now, the coming of the water is more terrible to ‘her than a secend death. Yes, she would give her body and soul te the NCO TL OOKGKEO THE HIC one ATE ASITY