As young Felipe Arillaga guided his pony out of the last intricacies of Pacheco Pass, he
was thinking of Rubia Ytuerate and of the scene he had had with her a few days before.
He reconstructed it now very vividly. Rubia had been royally angry, and as she had stood
before him, her arms folded and her teeth set, he was forced to admit that she was as
handsome a woman as could be found through all California.
There had been a time, three months past, when Felipe found no compulsion in the
admission, for though betrothed to Buelna Martiarena he had abruptly conceived a
violent infatuation for Rubia, and had remained a guest upon her rancho many weeks
longer than he had intended.
For three months he had forgotten Buelna entirely. At the end of that time he had
remembered her--had awakened to the fact that his infatuation for Rubia was infatuation,
and had resolved to end the affair and go back to Buelna as soon as it was possible.
But Rubia was quick to notice the cooling of his passion. First she fixed him with oblique
suspicion from under her long lashes, then avoided him, then kept him at her side for
days together. Then at last--his defection unmistakable--turned on him with furious
demands for the truth.
Felipe had snatched occasion with one hand and courage with the other.
"Well," he had said, "well, it is not my fault. Yes, it is the truth. It is played out."
He had not thought it necessary to speak of Buelna; but Rubia divined the other woman.
"So you think you are to throw me aside like that. Ah, it is played out, is it, Felipe
Arillaga? You listen to me. Do not fancy for one moment you are going back to an old
love, or on to a new one. You listen to me," she had cried, her fist over her head. "I do not
know who she is, but my curse is on her, Felipe Arillaga. My curse is on her who next
kisses you. May that kiss be a blight to her. From that moment may evil cling to her, bad
luck follow her; may she love and not be loved; may friends desert her, enemies beset
her, her sisters shame her, her brothers disown her, and those whom she has loved
abandon her. May her body waste as your love for me has wasted; may her heart be
broken as your promises to me have been broken; may her joy be as fleeting as your
vows, and her beauty grow as dim as your memory of me. I have said it."
[Illustration: "'My Curse Is On Her Who Next Kisses You'"]
"So be it!" Felipe had retorted with vast nonchalance, and had flung out from her
presence to saddle his pony and start back to Buelna.
