CARLOTA OF THE RANCHOCHAPTER IBORDER LAND
CARLOTA OF THE RANCHO
“My head is in the United States and my feet are in Mexico!” cried Carlos sprawling at ease upon the sun-warmed grass.
Whereupon Carlota, not to be outdone in anything, promptly rolled her plump little person over the sward until its length lay along a lime-line running due east and west across the plain. Her yellow curls touched her twin’s yet her body formed a right angle to his. Then she remarked:
“Pooh! I’m better than that! My heart is in my own country and my—my— What is it that’s on the other side of you from your heart, brother?”
“I don’t know. Maybe gizzard.”
Carlota sat up, amazed and indignant.
“Girls don’t have gizzards, Carlos Manuel. Only chickens and geeses and things like those. You haven’t paid attention when my father teached you.”
Carlos laughed; so merrily and noisily that old Marta came to the door of the adobe house to see what was the fun. Nobody knew the housekeeper’s real age, it was so very great. None could remember things so far back as she, but she had ceased to count the years long, long ago, why not? What matter, if she still had the heart of a child, yes?
Certainly, neither Carlos nor Carlota cared. To them she had never changed, either in appearance or kindness, and they found no birthdays worth remembering except their own. These only, probably, because of the gifts andfiestas[1]then made upon the whole rancho.
“Perhaps, I didn’t, little sister, but neither did you, or you’d never have said ‘geeses’ nor ‘teached’.”
“Both of us was wrong, weren’t we?” returned the girl, with as fine a disregard of grammar as of ill temper. “We’ll be more ’tentivewhen our father comes home, won’t we? When will that be, Carlos?”
It was a perplexing question, and the boy put it aside, as he put all difficulties, until a more convenient season. Crossing his arms above his head, he gazed unblinkingly upward into the brilliant sky, proposing:
“Let’s find things in the clouds, Carlota. I see a ship, I do, truly. It’s just like the pictures in the books. All its sails are set and flying. Oh! can’t you see? Right there? There! It’s moving northward fast—fast! It might be the ship in which our father will come home.”
He meant to comfort her, but Carlota would not look up. She could not. The sunbeams made prisms of the teardrops on her lashes and blinded her. She buried her face in the grass to escape these tiny “rainbows,” and all at once fell to sobbing bitterly.
Carlos hated that. He hated anything dark or unhappy. He sat up and patted his sister’s shoulder, soothingly, entreating:
“There, don’t! Don’t, girlie. Our father wouldn’t like it if he should come home now, this minute, and find you crying.”
The words were magic. Carlota sprang to her feet and earnestly peered into the distance, crying:
“Is he? Do you see him, brother? Do you?”
Carlos, also, leaped up and threw his arm about her waist:
“I didn’t say that, did I? I only said ‘if.’”
“I don’t like ‘ifs,’” sobbed Carlota.
“Oh, Carlota, don’t cry. You shall not. If you do I will go away myself, to the northwest, to find my father.”
“Oh! let’s!”
“I said ‘I.’ Not you. Girls never go anywhere, because they always cry. If it hadn’t been for that my father might have taken me with him. You see, he couldn’t take you, on account of it; and he couldn’t leave you at home with only Marta and the men, for then—that would make more tears. So I had to stay to take care of you, and I do think, if I were a girl, the very first thing I would do—I wouldn’t cry. Criers never have real good times, I guess.”
This was logic, and from Carlos, whom Carlota idolized only less than their absent father,most convincing. She winked very fast and drew her sleeve across her eyes, to dry the drops which would not be shaken off.
“I—I won’t cry any more, brother; that is, not where anybody can see me.”
“Can’t you manage not to do it at all. It’s so dreadfully silly. It doesn’t bring father back; does it?”
“No—o,” assented the other, with a catch in her voice.
“Nor—Oh! brother! If you won’t, you won’t, so that’s a dear, and don’t let’s talk any more about it. One—two—three! Who is first at the corral shall have first ride on Benoni!”
Now, Carlos was an honorable boy, if a rather lazy and pompous one, so he waited until his sister had placed her feet exactly alongside his own, on that convenient lime-line, before he repeated:
“One—two—three! Off!”
Like arrows they sped across the plain, past the ancient adobe which was their home, and again old Marta hobbled to its door to watch the sturdy little figures, graceful as all other wild, young creatures of that wide, free land.Yet they looked more like children of some Indian race, which disdained the dress of civilization, than of white and cultured people. Unshorn and bare headed, their yellow curls floated backward over shoulders clad in kid-skin. Each wore a costume of the same pattern, save that Carlota’s tunic reached to her knees, while her brother’s was cut short at the waist, where a sash of crimson was loosely knotted. At the ankles, their leather leggings were met by gaily embroidered moccasins; and, indeed, their whole garb was simple and comfortable, though exquisitely fine and dainty, and had been designed by their father to meet the needs of the peculiar life they led.
“Together!” shouted Carlos, as they reached their goal; and Carlota’s delight in thus equalling her brother banished all lonely thoughts. She did not suspect, nor he tell her, that her twin had purposely shortened his steps to suit her own. Instead, he proposed:
“Let’s ride him together! I heard Miguel talking about a ‘shearing,’ this morning.”
“Oh! let’s!”
“Then run to Marta for a bit of luncheon while I bridle Benoni. Tell her we may not behome till nightfall, for father said we were never to worry the dear old thing—so don’t forget that, and be sure to bring a lot of her freshestbollos.”[2]
Carlota had already started, but paused astonished to ask:
“Why, brother, does old Marta ever worry? I didn’t know it. Worrying is what my father does sometimes, isn’t it? When people come to talk to him about their troubles?”
Carlos felt that any conversation with the word “father” in it was to be avoided, so answered indifferently:
“Oh! not really worry, you know. She wouldn’t do that about me; nor about you, if I were with you. And I s’pose I’m master of the rancho when my father”—but there was that word forcing itself in again, and the boy hurried past it to add, convincingly: “A master, a Don or a Señor, a gentleman, always looks out for the comfort of all his old women and little girls.”
They would never get the delectablebollosat this rate! For the mood and manner which had fallen upon her twin was so new to Carlota thatshe could only stand and stare at his swaggering movements. Seeing this, he promptly assumed his natural manner, which was not that of a care-taker, and, springing to Benoni’s back laid himself down along it while, clasping the animal’s beautiful neck, he rode out of the corral.
Again standing at her doorway, old Marta awaited the children’s approach, reflecting:
“Ah! little ones! So it is always. The easy things of life fall to my Carlos, by right, is it not? While to thee,niñathe speeding feet of my service, the burden and the care. But not yet, heart of mine. Look not so at Marta with thy great eyes. There shall be no care for thee, beloved, while I live. What do I hear?Bollos?Sweets? Not home till nightfall?Caramba!With whom, then, shall I play when all my tasks are done?Si,[3]I know. I will take me my guitar and I will to myself sing, why not. But to myself,en verdad,[4]quite to my own self.”
Now, this wise old dame knew that nothing would more easily lure her charges home in good season than this suggestion of songs and guitar.To hear old Marta sing, in her cracked and toothless voice, was the funniest experience of their gay young lives. It was rarely she could be prevailed upon to so amuse them and Carlota hesitated and called to Carlos:
“Brother, did you hear that? This is the night when Marta sings. If we shouldn’t get back in time! But—they will be shearing for many days to come.”
“So will our Marta sing, at any hour, to please her ‘heart’s dearest’!” retorted the boy, laughing and sitting upright upon Benoni, while he bowed so profoundly that he lost his balance and slipped to the ground, at the old woman’s feet.
“Woulds’t jeer at thy Marta, woulds’t thou?” she demanded, and playfully cuffed him. Then, laughing as merrily as they, she swung Carlota up into her brother’s place, exclaiming: “’Tis thou, soul of my life, shall ride ‘before’ this day!”
She seized the loosened bridle just in time. Another instant and Benoni would have been off over the plain for a wild gallop with the now rising wind. He, too, was young and full of caprice as these other children—golden-hairedand gray. None of the four knew any other home than Refugio, that cluster of venerable adobe buildings, nor much further restraint than the needs of nature imposed.
To live always in the open, save when hunger or drowsiness drove them indoors, to love all men and fear none—such was their habit. As yet, of things deeper than habit only Marta ever thought, and she but seldom. Their moods were their rulers and the present mood of the twins was for a long holiday at the sheep-shearing, a dozen miles away.
So, indulgent Marta brought out her finest basket—of such exquisite workmanship that it could be folded like a cloth, yet so tightly woven it would hold water—and packed it with a generous luncheon. Yet, as she finished her task, she lifted her face and sniffed suspiciously, saying:
“Ha! The wind rises faster. That is not good. There may be a ‘norther.’ Best safe at home, to-day, my children. To-morrow,mañana, there will yet be the shearing.”
“Of course, Marta. Didn’t s’pose they could finish it in one day, did you? This year thereare more sheep than ever and my father—”
Carlos paused and glanced at his sister. That day, it seemed as if he couldn’t open his lips without mentioning that absent loved one, which was natural enough. Their father was the center of their existence, and for the first time in their memories, he had been away for many days; they had not yet learned to live without him.
However, Carlota had not noticed anything save that mention of the sheep-shearing and a dreadful possibility had entered her mind concerning it. Impatient to be away, she exclaimed:
“Never mind the wind, Marta, dear. It’s delicious, for the sun is so hot. But if you fear a ‘norther,’ just please give us our blankets and sombreros and let us go. Do you know, I haven’t seen—Santa Maria—this day!”
“Nor I, San Jose! Do you s’pose—would they dare—just because our father is away—”
Whatever Carlota’s fear, Carlos now shared it. He added his entreaties to hers and Marta limped into the house after their little Navajo blankets and sombreros, which they put betweenthem upon Benoni’s back, while Carlos cried:
“Now we’re ready for anything that comes. Don’t sing till we get home, dear Marta, and—Adios! Guay, Benoni! Vamos!”[5]