The Love Thief
Summary
Under a bruised frontier sky where the Rio Grande hisses like a serpent, Juanita—half-veil, half-viper—spies the immaculate uniform of Captain Arthur Boyce and decides that possession is nobler than consent. She weaves a mirage of midnight trysts, letting the scent of her skin linger on the officer’s jacket so that Clare Nelson, his porcelain-fiancée, tastes betrayal in every kiss thereafter. The engagement shatters like a dropped rosary; Boyce, bewildered, finds himself shackled not by iron but by rumor. Juanita’s ardor sours into venom when Boyce’s heart remains a citadel she cannot storm; she forges a murder charge as deftly as a lace fan, and the gallows rise like a cathedral of injustice. While the court chews on perjured syllables, Juanita and Costa—bandit, smuggler, secret supplier of Uncle Nelson’s munitions—sweep down on a dust-drowned hamlet, abducting Clare as easily as snatching a hummingbird from a bloom. In a plank-and-tar hovel Juanita plots a grotesque wedding: Clare in sackcloth, Lopez the brigand as groom, the priest a cocked pistol. Salvation arrives handcuffed: Boyce, exonerated by an assassin’s deathbed hymn, storms the hideout only to be unhorsed, bound, and dumped at his beloved’s feet. Together they re-orbit each other’s gravity while Lopez snores; Clare unpicks the window’s rawhide latch with a hairpin dipped in starlight, and they bolt across salt flats that glimmer like smashed mirrors. Bugles from the nearest fort flare; carbines crack; Juanita, hair unbraided and whipping like a comet tail, gallops to reclaim her ruin. A stray bullet—kismet’s signature—punches the air from her lungs. She falls, a scarlet comet extinguished, cursing the woman who carries off the tenderness she could only counterfeit.
Synopsis
The senorita, Juanita, loves gallant Capt. Arthur Boyce, on duty near the border. He does not love her, but she contrives to make his fiancée, Clare Nelson, think that he does. The result is that Clare breaks off the engagement. Juanita's passion turns to hatred when she finds she cannot compel Boyce to love her. In a fit of rage, she arranges a scheme by which the officer is accused of having murdered a woman. In the trial that follows, Boyce is convicted. Meantime, a hand of Mexicans led by Juanita and Costa, a Mexican in love with Clare, raids an American town. In the place are Clare and her uncle, Nelson, who has been secretly furnishing the Mexicans with munitions. Costa takes Clare prisoner. Juanita finds the girl with her uncle and Costa in a rude shack. She sees a way to get revenge on Clare. She will force her to marry Lopez, one of the bandits in her employ. While she is thinking over this plan, Arthur Boyce is brought into the hut. He had been exonerated of wrong, when the real murderer, stirred by the pangs of conscience, confessed. Resuming his command, he rushed to the rescue of the captured party, only to be defeated by the Mexicans and taken prisoner himself. Clare and Boyce are left with Lopez in the shack. By a skillful piece of maneuvering, the girl outwits the guard, and she and Boyce escape from the building. Rescue is fast arriving from a nearby American army post. The bandits are pursuing Clare and Boyce, and Juanita rides frantically in the vanguard. But she is too late. A stray shot brings her from her horse, and she dies with a curse on her lips for the woman who won the love she could not have.
