The Argosy — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

THE PRIZE OF THE MISSING GOLD MINE. 225 “Why should you? Because I say’ so!’’ thundered Don Albino. It was a new thing to him to have his will or word withstood in his household, or elsewhere about Los Majones. ‘‘Silence! I will inform you when the marriage is to be after I have talked further with Don Enrico and your aunt.’’ Don Albino asserting his authority was not a pleasant person to with- stand. But Lola, now very pale, answered her father, her eyes. looking straight into his. Her cheek gained a spot of color as she spoke. ‘“T will not marry Don Enrico,’’ she said. ‘‘I don’t wish to matry any one now—and if I did, it should not be he!’’ Perhaps it was fortunate that indignation for a few moments fairly choked Don Albino’s speech. His inability to find words to fit the occasion, gave him time to reflect, and to note an expression in his daughter’s eyes that reminded him of the way her mother had looked on certain rare occasions—her mother, who was of that imperious, hot blooded family, the Mondragons—when. Don Albino had found that it saved trouble to yield his point without insistence. He saw that Lola in her present mood could not be made to marry Don Enrico by force of threats or authority, and he turned to sarcasm. ‘Perhaps you refuse Don Enrico because you hope to marry a gringo ; some worthless Americano, with no money or character, seeking a wealthy Spanish American wife. That Alejandro Campthorne perhaps, the unlucky prospector, who never finds anything but misfortune.’’ ee turned her head slightly away, and smiled. Words could not have said, ‘‘ You have named the man I love,’’ more plainly, nor half so prettily. But she also spoke. ‘‘ You were willing enough that he should marry me last year,’’ she said. ‘‘ You the same thing as promised it. It was only when he met with misfortune that you turned against him.’’ ‘You should never marry him with my consent,’’ cried her father, as- tounded at her frank avowal. ‘‘I would rather see you dead !’’ ‘“ Wait, and say no words that.you will repent of,’’ she said. ‘‘ You will give your cofisent willingly some day. He will find his gold mine and be very rich, and then you will be proud of him for a son in law.”’ Don Albino lost patience again. ‘‘Go to bed, undutiful child !’’ he shouted angrily. ‘‘ You will see what will come to pass tomorrow. Go to bed I say, and sleep may bring you to reason.”’ In the dawning of the next day Hechicera, the witch, wrinkled and weird, looked forth from the door of her house in the outskirts of Los Majones, and watched the flight of the birds. More than any other person in the whole alcalderia she was hated, feared, and consulted by people of all degrees. Many were the tales, told under the breath, lest she overhear and avenge the telling, of her dark doings abroad in guise of wolf or night bird, of her power of divination, and of her sinister art in bringing strange things to pass. She looked to the east, the west, and the south, and Jaughed, as she watched the birds circling against the sky. (c) —ecomlcboolks (S@)