[pg 52]CHAPTER VIAt ten o’clock in the morning Ramon was hard at work in the office of James B. Green. He worked efficiently and with zest as he always did after one of his trips to the mountains. He got out of these ventures into another environment about what some men get out of sprees—a complete change of the state of mind. Archulera and his daughter were now completely forgotten, and all of his usual worries and plans were creeping back into his consciousness.But this day he had a feeling of pleasant anticipation. At first he could not account for it. And then he remembered the girl—the one he had seen on the train and had met again at the Montezuma ball. It seemed as though the thought of her had been in the back of his mind all the time, and now suddenly came forward, claiming all his attention, stirring him to a quick, unwonted excitement. She had said he might come to see her. He was to ’phone first. Maybe she would be alone.…In this latter hope he was disappointed. She gave him the appointment, and she herself admitted him. He thought he had never seen such[pg 53]a dainty bit of fragrant perfection, all in pink that matched the pink of her strange little crinkled mouth.“I’m awfully glad you came,”she told him. (Her gladness was always awful.) She led him into the sitting room and presented him to the tall emaciated sick man and the large placid woman who had watched over her so carefully on the train.Gordon Roth greeted him with a cool and formal manner into which he evidently tried to infuse something of cordiality, as though a desire to be just and broad-minded struggled with prejudice. Mrs. Roth looked at him with curiosity, and gave him a still more restrained greeting. The conversation was a weak and painful affair, kept barely alive, now by one and now by another. The atmosphere was heavy with disapproval. If their greetings had left Ramon in any doubt as to the attitude of the girl’s family toward him, that doubt was removed by the fact that neither Mrs. Roth nor her son showed any intention of leaving the room. This would have been not unusual if he had called on a Mexican girl, especially if she belonged to one of the more old-fashioned families; but he knew that American girls are left alone with their suitors if the suitor is at all welcome.He knew a little about this family from hear-say.[pg 54]They came from one of the larger factory towns in northern New York, and were supposed to be moderately wealthy. They used a very broad“a”and served tea at four o’clock in the afternoon. Gordon Roth was a Harvard graduate and did not conceal the fact. Neither did he conceal his hatred for this sandy little western town, where ill-health had doomed him to spend many of his days and perhaps to end them.The girl was strangely different from her mother and brother. Whereas their expressions were stiff and solemn, her eyes showed an irrepressible gleam of humour, and her fascinating little mouth was mobile with mirth. She fidgeted around in her chair a good deal, as a child does when bored.Mrs. Roth decorously turned the conversation toward the safe and reliable subjects of literature and art.“What do you think of Maeterlinck, Mr. Delcasar?”she enquired in an innocent manner that must have concealed malice.“I don’t know him,”Ramon admitted,“Who is he?”Mrs. Roth permitted herself to smile. Gordon Roth came graciously to the rescue.“Maeterlinck is a great Belgian writer,”he explained.“We are all very much interested in him.…”[pg 55]Julia gave a little flounce in her chair, and crossed her legs with a defiant look at her mother.“I’m not interested in him,”she announced with decision.“I think he’s a bore. Listen, Mr. Delcasar. You know Conny Masters? Well, he was telling me the most thrilling tale the other day. He said that the country Mexicans have a sort of secret religious fraternity that most of the men belong to, and that they meet every Good Friday and beat themselves with whips and sit down on cactus and crucify a man on a cross and all sorts of horrible things … for penance you know, just like the monks and things in the Middle Ages.… He claims he saw them once and that they had blood running down to their heels. Is that all true? I’ve forgotten what he called them.…”Ramon nodded.“Sure. Thepenitentes. I’ve seen them lots of times.”“O, do tell us about them. I love to hear about horrible things.”“Well, I’ve seen lots ofpenitenteprocessions, but the best one I ever saw was a long time ago, when I was a little kid. There are not so many of them now, and they don’t do as much as they used to. The church is down on them, you know, and they’re afraid. Ten years ago if you tried[pg 56]to look at them, they would shoot at you, but now tourists take pictures of them.”Gordon Roth’s curiosity had been aroused.“Tell me,”he broke in.“What is the meaning of this thing? How did it get started?”“I don’t know exactly,”Ramon admitted.“My grandfather told me that they brought it over from Spain centuries ago, and the Indians here had a sort of whipping fraternity, and the two got mixed up, I guess. The church used to tolerate it; it was a regular religious festival. But now it’s outlawed. They still have a lot of political power. They all vote the same way. One man that was elected to Congress—they say that thepenitentestripes on his back carried him there. And he was a gringo too. But I don’t know. It may be a lie.…”“But tell us about that procession you saw when you were a little boy,”Julia broke in. She was leaning forward with her chin in her hand, and her big grey eyes, wide with interest, fixed upon his face.“Well, I was only about ten years old, and I was riding home from one of our ranches with my father. We were coming throughTijerascanyon. It was March, and there was snow on the ground in patches, and the mountains were cold and bare, and I remember I thought I was going to freeze. Every little while we would get off and set fire to[pg 57]a tumble-weed by the road, and warm our hands and then go on again.…“Anyway, pretty soon I heard a lot of men singing, all together, in deep voices, and the noise echoed around the canyon and sounded awful solemn. And I could hear, too, the slap of the big wide whips coming down on the bare backs, wet with blood, like slapping a man with a wet towel, only louder. I didn’t know what it was, but my father did, and he called to me and we spurred our horses right up the mountain, and hid in a clump of cedar up there. Then they came around a bend in the road, and I began to cry because they were all covered with blood, and one of them fell down.… My father slapped me and told me to shut up, or they would come and shoot us.”“But what did they look like? What were they doing?”Julia demanded frowning at him, impatient with his rambling narrative.“Well, in front there wasun carreta del muerto. That means a wagon of death. I don’t think you would ever see one any more. It was just an ordinary wagon drawn by six men, naked to the waist and bleeding, with other men walking beside them and beating them with blacksnake whips, just like they were mules. In the wagon they had a big bed of stones, covered with cactus, and a man sitting in the cactus, who was supposed to represent death. And then they had a Virgin Mary,[pg 58]too. Fourpenitentesjust like the others, with nothing on but bloody pants and black bandages around their eyes, carried the image on a litter raised up over their heads, and they had swords fastened to their elbows and stuck between their ribs, so that if they let down, the swords would stick into their hearts and kill them. And behind that came theCristo—the man that represented Jesus, you know, dragging a big cross. Behind him came twenty or thirty morepenitentes, the most I ever saw at once, some of them whipping themselves with big broad whips made out ofamole. One was too weak to whip himself, so two others walked behind him and whipped him. Pretty soon he fell down and they walked over him and stepped on his stomach.…”“But did they crucify the man, the whatever-you-call-him?”Gordon demanded.“TheCristo. Sure. They crucify one every year. They used to nail him. Now they generally do it with ropes, but that’s bad enough, because it makes him swell up and turn blue.… Sometimes he dies.”Julia was listening with lips parted and eyes wide, horrified and yet fascinated, as are so many women by what is cruel and bloody. But Gordon, who had become equally interested, was cool and inquisitive.“And you mean to tell me that at one time[pg 59]nearly all the—er—native people belonged to this barbaric organization, and that many of them do yet?”“Nearly all the commonpelados,”Ramon hastened to explain.“They are nearly all Indian or part Indian, you know. Not the educated people.”Here a note of pride came into his voice.“We are descended from officers of the Spanish army—the men who conquered this country. In the old days, before the Americans came, all these common people were our slaves.”“I see,”said Gordon Roth in a dry and judicial tone.Thepenitentes, as a subject of conversation, seemed exhausted for the time being and Ramon had given up all hope of being alone with Julia. He rose and took his leave. To his delight Julia followed him to the door. In the hall she gave him her hand and looked up at him, and neither of them found anything to say. For some reason the pressure of her hand and the look of her eyes flustered and confused him more than had all the coldness and disapproval of her family. At last he said good-bye and got away, with his hat on wrong side before and the blood pounding in his temples.[pg 60]CHAPTER VIIDuring the following weeks Ramon worked even less than was his custom. He also neglected his trips to the mountains and most of his other amusements. They seemed to have lost their interest for him. But he was a regular attendant upon the weekly dances which were held at the country club, and to which he had never gone before.The country club was a recent acquisition of the town, backed by a number of local business men. It consisted of a picturesque little frame lodge far out upon themesa, and a nine-hole golf course, made of sand and haunted bylizardsand rattlesnakes. It had become a centre of local society, although there was a more exclusive organization known as the Forty Club, which gave a formal ball once a month. Ramon had never been invited to join the Forty Club, but the political importance of his family had procured him a membership in the country club and it served his present purpose very well, for he found Julia Roth there every Saturday night. This fact was the sole reason for his going. His dances with her were now the one thing in life to which he[pg 61]looked forward with pleasure, and his highest hope was that he might be alone with her.In this he was disappointed for a long time because Julia was the belle of the town. Her dainty, provocative presence seemed always to be the centre of the gathering. Women envied her and studied her frocks, which were easily the most stylish in town. Men flocked about her and guffawed at her elfin stabs of humour. Her program was always crowded with names, and when she went for a stroll between dances she was generally accompanied by at least three men of whom Ramon was often one. And while the others made her laugh at their jokes or thrilled her with accounts of their adventures, he was always silent and worried—an utter bore, he thought.This girl was a new experience to him. With the egotism of twenty-four, he had regarded himself as a finished man of the world, especially with regard to women. They had always liked him. He was good to look at and his silent, self-possessed manner touched the feminine imagination. He had had his share of the amorous adventures that come to most men, and his attitude toward women had changed from the hesitancy of adolesence to the purposeful, confident and somewhat selfish attitude of the male accustomed to easy conquest.[pg 62]This girl, by a smile and touch of her hand, seemed to have changed him. She filled him with a mighty yearning. He desired her, and yet there was a puzzling element in his feeling that seemed to transcend desire. And he was utterly without his usual confidence and purpose. He had reason enough to doubt his success, but aside from that she loomed in his imagination as something high and unattainable. He had no plan. His strength seemed to have oozed out of him. He pursued her persistently enough—in fact too persistently—but he did it because he could not help it.The longer he followed in her wake, the more marked his weakness became. When he approached her to claim a dance he was often aware of a faint tremble in his knees, and was embarrassed by the fact that the palms of his hands were sweating. He felt that he was a fool and swore at himself. And he was wholly unable to believe that he was making any impression upon her. True, she was quite willing to flirt with him. She looked up at him with an arch, almost enquiring glance when he came to claim her for a dance, but he seldom found much to say at such times, being too wholly absorbed in the sacred occupation of dancing with her. And it seemed to him that she flirted with every one else, too. This did not in the least mitigate his devotion, but it[pg 63]made him acutely uncomfortable to watch her dance with other men, and especially with Conny Masters.Masters was the son of a man who had made a moderate fortune in the tin-plate business. He had come West with his mother who had a weak throat, had fallen in love with the country, and scandalized his family by resolutely refusing to go back to Indiana and tin cans. He spent most of his time riding about the country, equipped with a note book and a camera, studying the Mexicans and Indians, and taking pictures of the scenery. He said that he was going to make a literary career, but the net product of his effort for two years had been a few sonnets of lofty tone but vague meaning, and a great many photographs, mostly of sunsets.Conny was not a definite success as a writer, but he was unquestionably a gifted talker, and he knew the country better than did most of the natives. He made real to Julia the romance which she craved to find in the West. And her watchful and suspicious family seemed to tolerate if not to welcome him. Ramon knew that he went to the Roth’s regularly. He began to feel something like hatred for Conny whom he had formerly liked.This feeling was deepened by the fact that Conny seemed to be specially bent on defeating[pg 64]Ramon’s ambition to be alone with the girl. If no one else joined them at the end of a dance, Conny was almost sure to do so, and to occupy the intermission with one of his ever-ready monologues, while Ramon sat silent and angry, wondering what Julia saw to admire in this windy fool, and occasionally daring to wonder whether she really saw anything in him after all.But a sufficiently devoted lover is seldom wholly without a reward. There came an evening when Ramon found himself alone with her. And he was aware with a thrill that she had evaded not only Conny, but two other men. Her smile was friendly and encouraging, too, and yet he could not find anything to say which in the least expressed his feelings.“Are you going to stay in this country long?”he began. The question sounded supremely casual, but it meant a great deal to him. He was haunted by a fear that she would depart suddenly, and he would never see her again. She smiled and looked away for a moment before replying, as though perhaps this was not exactly what she had expected him to say.“I don’t know. Gordon wants mother and me to go back East this fall, but I don’t want to go and mother doesn’t want to leave Gordon alone.… We haven’t decided. Maybe I won’t go till next year.”[pg 65]“I suppose you’ll go to college won’t you?”“No; I wanted to go to Vassar and then study art, but mother says college spoils a girl for society. She thinks the way the Vassar girls walk is perfectly dreadful. I offered to go right on walking the same way, but she said anyway college makes girls so frightfully broad-minded.…”Ramon laughed.“What will you do then?”“I’ll come out.”“Out of what?”“Make my d�but, don’t you know?”“O, yes.”“In New York. I have an aunt there. She knows all the best people, mother says.”“What happens after you come out?”“You get married if anybody will have you. If not, you sort of fade away and finally go into uplift work about your fourth season.”“But of course, you’ll get married. I bet you’ll marry a millionaire.”“I don’t know. Mother wants me to marry a broker. She says the big financial houses in New York are conducted by the very best people. But Gordon thinks I ought to marry a professional man—a doctor or something. He thinks brokers are vulgar. He says money isn’t everything.”[pg 66]“What do you think?”“I haven’t a thought to my name. All my thinking has been done for me since infancy. I don’t know what I want, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get it if I did.… Come on. They’ve been dancing for ten minutes. If we stay here any longer it’ll be a scandal.”She rose and started for the hall. He suddenly realized that his long-sought opportunity was slipping away from him. He caught her by the hand.“Don’t go, please. I want to tell you something.”She met his hand with a fair grip, and pulled him after her with a laugh.“Some other time,”she promised.[pg 67]CHAPTER VIIIIn most of their social diversions the town folk tended always more and more to ape the ways of the East. Local colour, they thought, was all right in its place, which was a curio store or a museum, but they desired their town to be modern and citified, so that the wealthy eastern health-seeker would find it a congenial home. The scenery and the historic past were recognized as assets, but they should be the background for a life of“culture, refinement and modern convenience”as the president of the Chamber of Commerce was fond of saying.Hence the riding parties and picnics of a few years before had given way to aggressively formal balls and receptions; but one form of entertainment that was indigenous had survived. This was known as a“mesasupper.”It might take place anywhere in the surrounding wilderness of mountain and desert. Several auto-loads of young folk would motor out, suitably chaperoned and laden with provisions. Beside some water hole or mountain stream fires would be built, steaks broiled and coffee brewed. Afterward[pg 68]there would be singing and story-telling about the fire, and romantic strolls by couples.It was one of these expeditions that furnished Ramon with his second opportunity in three weeks to be alone with Julia Roth. The party had journeyed to Los Ojuellos, where a spring of clear water bubbled up in the centre of themesa. A grove of cottonwood trees shadowed the place, and there was an ancientadoberuin which looked especially effective by moonlight.The persistent Conny Masters was a member of the party, but he was handicapped by the fact that he knew more about camp cookery than anyone else present. He had made a special study of Mexican dishes and had written an article about them which had been rejected by no less than twenty-seven magazines. He made a specialty of theenchilada, which is a delightful concoction of corn meal, eggs and chile, and he had perfected a recipe of his own for this dish which he had named the Conny Masters junior.As soon as the baskets were unpacked and the chaperones were safely anchored on rugs and blankets with their backs against trees, there was a general demand, strongly backed by Ramon, that Conny should cook supper. He was soon absorbed in the process, volubly explaining every step, while the others gathered about him and offered[pg 69]encouragement and humorous suggestion. But there was soon a gradual dispersion of the group, some going for wood and some for water, and others on errands unstated.Ramon found himself strolling under the cottonwoods with Julia. Neither of them had said anything. It was almost as though the tryst had been agreed upon before. She picked her way slowly among the tussocks of dried grass, her skirt daintily kilted. A faint but potent perfume from her hair and dress blew over him. He ventured to support her elbow with a reverent touch. Never had she seemed more desirable, nor yet, for some reason, more remote.Suddenly she stopped and looked up at the great desert stars.“Isn’t it big and beautiful?”she demanded.“And doesn’t it make you feel free? It’s never like this at home, somehow.”“What is it like where you live?”he enquired. He had a persistent desire to see into her life and understand it, but everything she told him only made her more than ever to him a being of mysterious origin and destiny.“It’s a funny little New York factory city with very staid ways,”she said.“You go to a dance at the country club every Saturday night and to tea parties and things in between. You fight,[pg 70]bleed and die for your social position and once in a while you stop and wonder why.… It’s a bore. You can see yourself going on doing the same thing till the day of your death.…”Her discontent with things as they are found ready sympathy.“That’s just the way it is here,”he said with conviction.“You can’t see anything ahead.”“Oh, I don’t think its the same here at all,”she protested.“This country’s so big and interesting. It’s different.”“Tell me how,”he demanded.“I haven’t seen anything interesting here since I got back,—except you.”She ignored the exception.“I can’t express it exactly. The people here are just like people everywhere else—most of them. But the country looks so big and unoccupied. And blue mountains are so alluring. There might be anything beyond them … adventures, opportunities.…”This idea was a bit too rarefied for Ramon, but he could agree about the mountains.“It’s a fine country,”he assented.“For those that own it.”“It’s just a feeling I have about it,”she went on, trying to express her own half-formulated idea.“But then I have that feeling about life in[pg 71]general, and there doesn’t seem to be anything in it. I mean the feeling that it’s full of thrilling things, but somehow you miss them all.”“I have felt something like that,”he admitted.“But I never could say it.”This discovery of an idea in common seemed somehow to bring them closer together. His hand tightened gently about her arm; almost unconsciously he drew her toward him. But she seemed to be all absorbed in the discussion.“You have no right to complain,”she told him.“A man can do something about it.”“Yes,”he agreed, speaking a reflection without stopping to put it in conventional language.“It must be hell to be a woman … excuse me … I mean.…”“Don’t apologize. It is—just that. A man at least has a fighting chance to escape boredom. But they won’t even let a woman fight. I wish I were a man.”“Well; I don’t,”he asserted with warmth, unconsciously tightening his hold upon her arm.“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re a woman.”“Oh, are you?”She looked up at him with challenging, provocative eyes.For an instant a kiss was imminent. It hovered between them like an invisible fairy presence[pg 72]of which they both were sweetly aware, and no one else.“Hey there! all you spooners!”came a jovial and irreverent voice from the vicinity of the camp fire.“Come and eat.”The moment was lost; the fairy presence gone. She turned with a little laugh, and they went in silence back to the fire. They were last to enter the circle of ruddy light, and all eyes were upon them. She was pink and self-conscious, looking at her feet and picking her way with exaggerated care. He was proud and elated. This, he knew, would couple their names in gossip, would make her partly his.[pg 73]CHAPTER IXHe wanted to call on her again, but he felt that he had been insulted and rejected by the Roths, and his pride fought against it. Unable to think for long of anything but Julia he fell into the habit of walking by her house at night, looking at its lighted windows and wondering what she was doing. Often he could see the moving figures and hear the laughter of some gay group about her, but he could not bring himself to go in and face the chilly disapproval of her family. At such times he felt an utter outcast, and sounded depths of misery he had never known before. For this was his first real love, and he loved in the helpless, desperate way of the Latin, without calculation or humour.One evening there was a gathering on the porch of the Roth house. She was there, sitting on the steps with three men about her. He could see the white blur of her frock and hear her funny little bubbling laugh above the deeper voices of the men. Having ascertained that neither Gordon Roth nor his mother was there, he summoned his courage and went in. She[pg 74]could not see who he was until he stood almost over her.“O, it’s you! I’m awfully glad.…”Their hands met and clung for a moment in the darkness. He sat down on the steps at her feet, and the conversation moved on without any assistance from him. He was now just as happy as he had been miserable a few minutes before.Presently two of the other men went away, but the third, who was Conny Masters, stayed. He talked volubly as ever, telling wonderful and sometimes incredible stories of things he had seen and done in his wanderings. Ramon said nothing. Julia responded less and less. Once she moved to drop the wrap from about her shoulders, and the alert Conny hastened to assist her. Ramon watched and envied with a thumping heart as he saw the gleam of her bare white shoulders, and realized that his rival might have touched them.Conny went on talking for half an hour with astonishing endurance and resourcefulness, but it became always more apparent that he was not captivating his audience. He had to laugh at his own humour and expatiate on his own thrills. Finally a silence fell upon the three, broken only by occasional commonplace remarks.“Well, I guess it’s time to drift,”Conny observed at last, looking cautiously at his watch.[pg 75]This suggestion was neither seconded by Ramon nor opposed by Julia. The silence literally pushed Conny to his feet.“Going, Ramon? No? Well, Good night.”And he retired whistling in a way which showed his irritation more plainly than if he had sworn.The two impolite ones sat silent for a long moment. Ramon was trying to think of what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. Finally without looking at her he said in a low husky voice.“You know … I love you.”There was more silence. At last he looked up and met her eyes. They were serious for the first time in his experience, and so was her usually mocking little mouth. Her face was transformed and dignified. More than ever she seemed a strange, high being. And yet he knew that now she was within his reach.… That he could kiss her lips … incredible.… And yet he did, and the kiss poured flame over them and welded them into each others’ arms.They heard Gordon Roth in the house coughing, the cough coming closer.She pushed him gently away.“Go now,”she whispered.“I love you … Ramon.”[pg 76]CHAPTER XHis conquest was far from giving him peace. Her kiss had transformed his high vague yearning into hot relentless desire. He wanted her. That became the one clear thing in life to him. Reflections and doubts were alien to his young and primitive spirit. He did not try to look far into the future. He only knew that to have her would be delight almost unimaginable and to lose her would be to lose everything.His attitude toward her changed. He claimed her more and more at dances. She did not want to dance with him so much because“people would talk,”but his will was harder than hers and to a great extent he had his way. He now called on her regularly too. He knew that she had fought hard for him against her family, and had won the privilege for him of calling“not too often.”“I’ve lied for you frightfully,”she confessed.“I told them I didn’t really care for you in the least, but I want to see you because you can tell such wonderful things about the country. So talk about the country whenever they’re listening. And don’t look at me the way you do.…”[pg 77]Mother and brother were alert and suspicious despite her assurance, and manœuvred with cool skill to keep the pair from being alone. Only rarely did he get the chance to kiss her—once when her brother, who was standing guard over the family treasure, was seized with a fit of coughing and had to leave the room, and again when her mother was called to the telephone. At such times she shrank away from him at first as though frightened by the intensity of the emotion she had created, but she never resisted. To him these brief and stolen embraces were almost intolerably sweet, like insufficient sips of water to a man burned up with thirst.She puzzled him as much as ever. When he was with her he felt as sure of her love as of his own existence. And yet she often sought to elude him. When he called up for engagements she objected and put him off. And she surrounded herself with other men as much as ever, and flirted gracefully with all of them, so that he was always feeling the sharp physical pangs of jealousy. Sometimes he felt egotistically sure that she was merely trying by these devices to provoke his desire the more, but at other times he thought her voice over the phone sounded doubtful and afraid, and he became wildly eager to get to her and make sure of her again.Just as her kiss had crystallized his feeling for[pg 78]her into driving desire, so it had focussed and intensified his discontent. Before he had been more or less resigned to wait for his fortune and the power he meant to make of it; now it seemed to him that unless he could achieve these things at once, they would never mean anything to him. For money was the one thing that would give him even a chance to win her. It was obviously useless to ask her to marry him poor. He would have nothing to bring against the certain opposition of her family. He could not run away with her. And indeed he was altogether too poor to support a wife if he had one, least of all a wife who had been carefully groomed and trained to capture a fortune.There was only one way. If he could go to her strong and rich, he felt sure that he could persuade her to go away with him, for he knew that she belonged to him when he was with her. He pictured himself going to her in a great motor car. Such a car had always been in his imagination the symbol of material strength. He felt sure he could destroy her doubts and hesitations. He would carry her away and she would be all and irrevocably his before any one could interfere or object.This dream filled and tortured his imagination. Its realization would mean not only fulfilment of his desire, but also revenge upon the Roths for[pg 79]the humiliations they had made him feel. It pushed everything else out of his mind—all consideration of other and possibly more feasible methods of pushing his suit. He came of a race of men who had dared and dominated, who had loved and fought, but had never learned how to work or to endure.When he gave himself up to his dream he was almost elated, but when he came to contemplate his actual circumstances, he fell into depths of discouragement and melancholy. His uncle stood like a rock between him and his desire. He thought of trying to borrow a few thousand dollars from old Diego, and of leaving the future to luck, but he was too intelligent long to entertain such a scheme. The Don would likely have provided him with the money, and he would have done it by hypothecating more of the Delcasar lands to MacDougall. Then Ramon would have had to borrow more, and so on, until the lands upon which all his hopes and dreams were based had passed forever out of his reach.The thing seemed hopeless, for Don Diego might well live for many years. And yet Ramon did not give up hope. He was worried, desperate and bitter, but not beaten. He had still that illogical faith in his own destiny which is the gift that makes men of action.At this time he heard particularly disquieting[pg 80]things about his uncle. Don Diego was reputed to be spending unusually large sums of money. As he generally had not much ready cash, this must mean either that he had sold land or that he had borrowed from MacDougall, in which case the land had doubtless been given as security. Once it was converted into cash in the hands of Diego, Ramon knew that his prospective fortune would swiftly vanish. He determined to watch the old man closely.He learned that Don Diego was playing poker every night in the back room of the White Camel pool hall. Gambling was supposed to be prohibited in the town, but this sanctum was regularly the scene for a game, which had the reputation of causing more money to change hands than any other in the southwest. Ramon hung about the White Camel evening after evening, trying to learn how much his uncle was losing. He would have liked to go and stand behind his chair and watch the game, but both etiquette and pride prevented him doing this. On two nights his uncle came out surrounded by a laughing crowd, a little bit tipsy, and was hurried into a cab. Ramon had no chance to speak either to him or to any one else who had been in the game.But the third night he came out alone, heavy with liquor, talking to himself. The other players had already gone out, laughing. The place was nearly[pg 81]deserted. The Don suddenly caught sight of Ramon and came to him, laying heavy hands on his shoulders, looking at him with bleary, tear-filled eyes.“My boy, my nephew,”he exclaimed in Spanish, his voice shaking with boozy emotion,“I am glad you are here. Come I must talk to you.”And steadied by Ramon he led the way to a bench in a corner. Here his manner suddenly changed. He threw back his head haughtily and slapped his knee.“I have lost five hundred dollars tonight,”he announced proudly.“What do I care? I am a rich man. I have lost a thousand dollars in the last three nights. That is nothing. I am rich.”He thumped his chest, looking around defiantly. Then he leaned forward in a confidential manner and lowered his voice.“But these gringos—they have gone away and left me. You saw them?Cabrones!They have got my money. That is all they want. My boy, all gringos are alike. They want nothing but money. They can hear the rattle of apesoas far as aburrocan smell a bear. They are mean, stingy! Ah, my boy! It is not now as it was in the old days. Then money counted for nothing! Then a man could throw away his last dollar and there were always friends to give him more. But now your dollars are your only true[pg 82]friends, and when you have lost them, you are alone indeed. Ah, my boy! The old days were the best!”The old Don bent his head over his hands and wept.Ramon looked at him with a mighty disgust and with a resentment that filled his throat and made his head hot. He had never before realized how much broken by age and drink his uncle was. Before, he had suspected and feared that Don Diego was wasting his property; now he knew it.The Don presently looked up again with tear-filled eyes, and went on talking, holding Ramon by the lapel of the coat in a heavy tremulous grip. He talked for almost an hour, his senile mind wandering aimlessly through the scenes of his long and picturesque career. He would tell tales of his loves and battles of fifty years ago—tales full of lust and greed and excitement. He would come back to his immediate troubles and curse the gringos again for a pack of miserable dollar-mongers, who knew not the meaning of friendship. And again his mind would leap back irrelevantly to some woman he had loved or some man he had killed in the spacious days where his imagination dwelt. Ramon listened eagerly, hoping to learn something definite about the Don’s dealings with MacDougall, but the old man never touched upon this. He did tell one story to which Ramon listened with interest. He told[pg 83]how, twenty-five years before, he and another man named Cristobal Archulera had found a silver mine in the Guadelupe Mountains, and how he had cheated the other out of his interest by filing the claim in his own name. He told this as a capital joke, laughing and thumping his knee.“Do you know where Archulera is now?”Ramon ventured to ask.“Archulera? No, No; I have not seen Archulera for twenty years. I heard that he married a very common woman, half Indian.… I don’t know what became of him.”The last of the pool players had now gone out; a Mexican boy had begun to sweep the floor; the place was about to close for the night. Ramon got his uncle to his feet with some difficulty, and led him outdoors where he looked about in vain for one of the cheap autos that served the town as taxicabs. There were only three or four of them, and none of these were in sight. The flat-wheeled street car had made its last screeching trip for the night. There was nothing for it but to take the Don by the arm and pilot him slowly homeward.Refreshed by the night air, the old man partially sobered, walked with a steady step, and talked more eloquently and profusely than ever. Women were his subject now, and it was a subject upon which he had great store of material. He[pg 84]told of the women of the South, of Sonora and Chihuahua where he had spent much of his youth, of how beautiful they were. He told of a slim little creature fifteen years old with big black eyes whom he had bought from herpeonfather, and of how she had feared him and how he had conquered her and her fear. He told of slave girls he had bought from the Navajos as children and raised for his pleasure. He told of a French woman he had loved in Mexico City and how he had fought a duel with her husband. He rose to heights of sentimentality and delved into depths of obscenity, now speaking of his heart and what it had suffered, and again leering and chuckling like a satyr over some tale of splendid desire.Ramon, walking silent and outwardly respectful by his side, listened to all this with a strange mixture of envy and rage. He envied the old Don the rich share he had taken of life’s feast. Whatever else he might be the Don was not one of those who desire but do not dare. He had taken what he wanted. He had tasted many emotions and known the most poignant delights. And now that he was old and his blood was slow, he stood in the way of others who desired as greatly and were as avid of life as ever he had been. Ramon felt a great bitterness that clutched at his throat and half blinded his eyes. He too[pg 85]loved and desired. And how much more greatly he desired than ever had this old man by his side, with his wealth and his easy satisfactions! The old Don apparently had never been thwarted, and therefore he did not know how keen and punishing a blade desire may be!Tense between the two was the enmity that ever sunders age and youth—age seeking to keep its sovereignty of life by inculcating blind respect and reverence, and youth rebellious, demanding its own with the passion of hot blood and untried flesh.Between Old Town and New Town flowed an irrigating ditch, which the connecting street crossed by means of an old wooden bridge. The ditch was this night full of swift water, which tore at the button willows on the bank and gurgled against the bridge timbers. As they crossed it the idea came into Ramon’s head that if a man were pushed into the brown water he would be swiftly carried under the bridge and drowned.
[pg 52]CHAPTER VIAt ten o’clock in the morning Ramon was hard at work in the office of James B. Green. He worked efficiently and with zest as he always did after one of his trips to the mountains. He got out of these ventures into another environment about what some men get out of sprees—a complete change of the state of mind. Archulera and his daughter were now completely forgotten, and all of his usual worries and plans were creeping back into his consciousness.But this day he had a feeling of pleasant anticipation. At first he could not account for it. And then he remembered the girl—the one he had seen on the train and had met again at the Montezuma ball. It seemed as though the thought of her had been in the back of his mind all the time, and now suddenly came forward, claiming all his attention, stirring him to a quick, unwonted excitement. She had said he might come to see her. He was to ’phone first. Maybe she would be alone.…In this latter hope he was disappointed. She gave him the appointment, and she herself admitted him. He thought he had never seen such[pg 53]a dainty bit of fragrant perfection, all in pink that matched the pink of her strange little crinkled mouth.“I’m awfully glad you came,”she told him. (Her gladness was always awful.) She led him into the sitting room and presented him to the tall emaciated sick man and the large placid woman who had watched over her so carefully on the train.Gordon Roth greeted him with a cool and formal manner into which he evidently tried to infuse something of cordiality, as though a desire to be just and broad-minded struggled with prejudice. Mrs. Roth looked at him with curiosity, and gave him a still more restrained greeting. The conversation was a weak and painful affair, kept barely alive, now by one and now by another. The atmosphere was heavy with disapproval. If their greetings had left Ramon in any doubt as to the attitude of the girl’s family toward him, that doubt was removed by the fact that neither Mrs. Roth nor her son showed any intention of leaving the room. This would have been not unusual if he had called on a Mexican girl, especially if she belonged to one of the more old-fashioned families; but he knew that American girls are left alone with their suitors if the suitor is at all welcome.He knew a little about this family from hear-say.[pg 54]They came from one of the larger factory towns in northern New York, and were supposed to be moderately wealthy. They used a very broad“a”and served tea at four o’clock in the afternoon. Gordon Roth was a Harvard graduate and did not conceal the fact. Neither did he conceal his hatred for this sandy little western town, where ill-health had doomed him to spend many of his days and perhaps to end them.The girl was strangely different from her mother and brother. Whereas their expressions were stiff and solemn, her eyes showed an irrepressible gleam of humour, and her fascinating little mouth was mobile with mirth. She fidgeted around in her chair a good deal, as a child does when bored.Mrs. Roth decorously turned the conversation toward the safe and reliable subjects of literature and art.“What do you think of Maeterlinck, Mr. Delcasar?”she enquired in an innocent manner that must have concealed malice.“I don’t know him,”Ramon admitted,“Who is he?”Mrs. Roth permitted herself to smile. Gordon Roth came graciously to the rescue.“Maeterlinck is a great Belgian writer,”he explained.“We are all very much interested in him.…”[pg 55]Julia gave a little flounce in her chair, and crossed her legs with a defiant look at her mother.“I’m not interested in him,”she announced with decision.“I think he’s a bore. Listen, Mr. Delcasar. You know Conny Masters? Well, he was telling me the most thrilling tale the other day. He said that the country Mexicans have a sort of secret religious fraternity that most of the men belong to, and that they meet every Good Friday and beat themselves with whips and sit down on cactus and crucify a man on a cross and all sorts of horrible things … for penance you know, just like the monks and things in the Middle Ages.… He claims he saw them once and that they had blood running down to their heels. Is that all true? I’ve forgotten what he called them.…”Ramon nodded.“Sure. Thepenitentes. I’ve seen them lots of times.”“O, do tell us about them. I love to hear about horrible things.”“Well, I’ve seen lots ofpenitenteprocessions, but the best one I ever saw was a long time ago, when I was a little kid. There are not so many of them now, and they don’t do as much as they used to. The church is down on them, you know, and they’re afraid. Ten years ago if you tried[pg 56]to look at them, they would shoot at you, but now tourists take pictures of them.”Gordon Roth’s curiosity had been aroused.“Tell me,”he broke in.“What is the meaning of this thing? How did it get started?”“I don’t know exactly,”Ramon admitted.“My grandfather told me that they brought it over from Spain centuries ago, and the Indians here had a sort of whipping fraternity, and the two got mixed up, I guess. The church used to tolerate it; it was a regular religious festival. But now it’s outlawed. They still have a lot of political power. They all vote the same way. One man that was elected to Congress—they say that thepenitentestripes on his back carried him there. And he was a gringo too. But I don’t know. It may be a lie.…”“But tell us about that procession you saw when you were a little boy,”Julia broke in. She was leaning forward with her chin in her hand, and her big grey eyes, wide with interest, fixed upon his face.“Well, I was only about ten years old, and I was riding home from one of our ranches with my father. We were coming throughTijerascanyon. It was March, and there was snow on the ground in patches, and the mountains were cold and bare, and I remember I thought I was going to freeze. Every little while we would get off and set fire to[pg 57]a tumble-weed by the road, and warm our hands and then go on again.…“Anyway, pretty soon I heard a lot of men singing, all together, in deep voices, and the noise echoed around the canyon and sounded awful solemn. And I could hear, too, the slap of the big wide whips coming down on the bare backs, wet with blood, like slapping a man with a wet towel, only louder. I didn’t know what it was, but my father did, and he called to me and we spurred our horses right up the mountain, and hid in a clump of cedar up there. Then they came around a bend in the road, and I began to cry because they were all covered with blood, and one of them fell down.… My father slapped me and told me to shut up, or they would come and shoot us.”“But what did they look like? What were they doing?”Julia demanded frowning at him, impatient with his rambling narrative.“Well, in front there wasun carreta del muerto. That means a wagon of death. I don’t think you would ever see one any more. It was just an ordinary wagon drawn by six men, naked to the waist and bleeding, with other men walking beside them and beating them with blacksnake whips, just like they were mules. In the wagon they had a big bed of stones, covered with cactus, and a man sitting in the cactus, who was supposed to represent death. And then they had a Virgin Mary,[pg 58]too. Fourpenitentesjust like the others, with nothing on but bloody pants and black bandages around their eyes, carried the image on a litter raised up over their heads, and they had swords fastened to their elbows and stuck between their ribs, so that if they let down, the swords would stick into their hearts and kill them. And behind that came theCristo—the man that represented Jesus, you know, dragging a big cross. Behind him came twenty or thirty morepenitentes, the most I ever saw at once, some of them whipping themselves with big broad whips made out ofamole. One was too weak to whip himself, so two others walked behind him and whipped him. Pretty soon he fell down and they walked over him and stepped on his stomach.…”“But did they crucify the man, the whatever-you-call-him?”Gordon demanded.“TheCristo. Sure. They crucify one every year. They used to nail him. Now they generally do it with ropes, but that’s bad enough, because it makes him swell up and turn blue.… Sometimes he dies.”Julia was listening with lips parted and eyes wide, horrified and yet fascinated, as are so many women by what is cruel and bloody. But Gordon, who had become equally interested, was cool and inquisitive.“And you mean to tell me that at one time[pg 59]nearly all the—er—native people belonged to this barbaric organization, and that many of them do yet?”“Nearly all the commonpelados,”Ramon hastened to explain.“They are nearly all Indian or part Indian, you know. Not the educated people.”Here a note of pride came into his voice.“We are descended from officers of the Spanish army—the men who conquered this country. In the old days, before the Americans came, all these common people were our slaves.”“I see,”said Gordon Roth in a dry and judicial tone.Thepenitentes, as a subject of conversation, seemed exhausted for the time being and Ramon had given up all hope of being alone with Julia. He rose and took his leave. To his delight Julia followed him to the door. In the hall she gave him her hand and looked up at him, and neither of them found anything to say. For some reason the pressure of her hand and the look of her eyes flustered and confused him more than had all the coldness and disapproval of her family. At last he said good-bye and got away, with his hat on wrong side before and the blood pounding in his temples.[pg 60]CHAPTER VIIDuring the following weeks Ramon worked even less than was his custom. He also neglected his trips to the mountains and most of his other amusements. They seemed to have lost their interest for him. But he was a regular attendant upon the weekly dances which were held at the country club, and to which he had never gone before.The country club was a recent acquisition of the town, backed by a number of local business men. It consisted of a picturesque little frame lodge far out upon themesa, and a nine-hole golf course, made of sand and haunted bylizardsand rattlesnakes. It had become a centre of local society, although there was a more exclusive organization known as the Forty Club, which gave a formal ball once a month. Ramon had never been invited to join the Forty Club, but the political importance of his family had procured him a membership in the country club and it served his present purpose very well, for he found Julia Roth there every Saturday night. This fact was the sole reason for his going. His dances with her were now the one thing in life to which he[pg 61]looked forward with pleasure, and his highest hope was that he might be alone with her.In this he was disappointed for a long time because Julia was the belle of the town. Her dainty, provocative presence seemed always to be the centre of the gathering. Women envied her and studied her frocks, which were easily the most stylish in town. Men flocked about her and guffawed at her elfin stabs of humour. Her program was always crowded with names, and when she went for a stroll between dances she was generally accompanied by at least three men of whom Ramon was often one. And while the others made her laugh at their jokes or thrilled her with accounts of their adventures, he was always silent and worried—an utter bore, he thought.This girl was a new experience to him. With the egotism of twenty-four, he had regarded himself as a finished man of the world, especially with regard to women. They had always liked him. He was good to look at and his silent, self-possessed manner touched the feminine imagination. He had had his share of the amorous adventures that come to most men, and his attitude toward women had changed from the hesitancy of adolesence to the purposeful, confident and somewhat selfish attitude of the male accustomed to easy conquest.[pg 62]This girl, by a smile and touch of her hand, seemed to have changed him. She filled him with a mighty yearning. He desired her, and yet there was a puzzling element in his feeling that seemed to transcend desire. And he was utterly without his usual confidence and purpose. He had reason enough to doubt his success, but aside from that she loomed in his imagination as something high and unattainable. He had no plan. His strength seemed to have oozed out of him. He pursued her persistently enough—in fact too persistently—but he did it because he could not help it.The longer he followed in her wake, the more marked his weakness became. When he approached her to claim a dance he was often aware of a faint tremble in his knees, and was embarrassed by the fact that the palms of his hands were sweating. He felt that he was a fool and swore at himself. And he was wholly unable to believe that he was making any impression upon her. True, she was quite willing to flirt with him. She looked up at him with an arch, almost enquiring glance when he came to claim her for a dance, but he seldom found much to say at such times, being too wholly absorbed in the sacred occupation of dancing with her. And it seemed to him that she flirted with every one else, too. This did not in the least mitigate his devotion, but it[pg 63]made him acutely uncomfortable to watch her dance with other men, and especially with Conny Masters.Masters was the son of a man who had made a moderate fortune in the tin-plate business. He had come West with his mother who had a weak throat, had fallen in love with the country, and scandalized his family by resolutely refusing to go back to Indiana and tin cans. He spent most of his time riding about the country, equipped with a note book and a camera, studying the Mexicans and Indians, and taking pictures of the scenery. He said that he was going to make a literary career, but the net product of his effort for two years had been a few sonnets of lofty tone but vague meaning, and a great many photographs, mostly of sunsets.Conny was not a definite success as a writer, but he was unquestionably a gifted talker, and he knew the country better than did most of the natives. He made real to Julia the romance which she craved to find in the West. And her watchful and suspicious family seemed to tolerate if not to welcome him. Ramon knew that he went to the Roth’s regularly. He began to feel something like hatred for Conny whom he had formerly liked.This feeling was deepened by the fact that Conny seemed to be specially bent on defeating[pg 64]Ramon’s ambition to be alone with the girl. If no one else joined them at the end of a dance, Conny was almost sure to do so, and to occupy the intermission with one of his ever-ready monologues, while Ramon sat silent and angry, wondering what Julia saw to admire in this windy fool, and occasionally daring to wonder whether she really saw anything in him after all.But a sufficiently devoted lover is seldom wholly without a reward. There came an evening when Ramon found himself alone with her. And he was aware with a thrill that she had evaded not only Conny, but two other men. Her smile was friendly and encouraging, too, and yet he could not find anything to say which in the least expressed his feelings.“Are you going to stay in this country long?”he began. The question sounded supremely casual, but it meant a great deal to him. He was haunted by a fear that she would depart suddenly, and he would never see her again. She smiled and looked away for a moment before replying, as though perhaps this was not exactly what she had expected him to say.“I don’t know. Gordon wants mother and me to go back East this fall, but I don’t want to go and mother doesn’t want to leave Gordon alone.… We haven’t decided. Maybe I won’t go till next year.”[pg 65]“I suppose you’ll go to college won’t you?”“No; I wanted to go to Vassar and then study art, but mother says college spoils a girl for society. She thinks the way the Vassar girls walk is perfectly dreadful. I offered to go right on walking the same way, but she said anyway college makes girls so frightfully broad-minded.…”Ramon laughed.“What will you do then?”“I’ll come out.”“Out of what?”“Make my d�but, don’t you know?”“O, yes.”“In New York. I have an aunt there. She knows all the best people, mother says.”“What happens after you come out?”“You get married if anybody will have you. If not, you sort of fade away and finally go into uplift work about your fourth season.”“But of course, you’ll get married. I bet you’ll marry a millionaire.”“I don’t know. Mother wants me to marry a broker. She says the big financial houses in New York are conducted by the very best people. But Gordon thinks I ought to marry a professional man—a doctor or something. He thinks brokers are vulgar. He says money isn’t everything.”[pg 66]“What do you think?”“I haven’t a thought to my name. All my thinking has been done for me since infancy. I don’t know what I want, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get it if I did.… Come on. They’ve been dancing for ten minutes. If we stay here any longer it’ll be a scandal.”She rose and started for the hall. He suddenly realized that his long-sought opportunity was slipping away from him. He caught her by the hand.“Don’t go, please. I want to tell you something.”She met his hand with a fair grip, and pulled him after her with a laugh.“Some other time,”she promised.[pg 67]CHAPTER VIIIIn most of their social diversions the town folk tended always more and more to ape the ways of the East. Local colour, they thought, was all right in its place, which was a curio store or a museum, but they desired their town to be modern and citified, so that the wealthy eastern health-seeker would find it a congenial home. The scenery and the historic past were recognized as assets, but they should be the background for a life of“culture, refinement and modern convenience”as the president of the Chamber of Commerce was fond of saying.Hence the riding parties and picnics of a few years before had given way to aggressively formal balls and receptions; but one form of entertainment that was indigenous had survived. This was known as a“mesasupper.”It might take place anywhere in the surrounding wilderness of mountain and desert. Several auto-loads of young folk would motor out, suitably chaperoned and laden with provisions. Beside some water hole or mountain stream fires would be built, steaks broiled and coffee brewed. Afterward[pg 68]there would be singing and story-telling about the fire, and romantic strolls by couples.It was one of these expeditions that furnished Ramon with his second opportunity in three weeks to be alone with Julia Roth. The party had journeyed to Los Ojuellos, where a spring of clear water bubbled up in the centre of themesa. A grove of cottonwood trees shadowed the place, and there was an ancientadoberuin which looked especially effective by moonlight.The persistent Conny Masters was a member of the party, but he was handicapped by the fact that he knew more about camp cookery than anyone else present. He had made a special study of Mexican dishes and had written an article about them which had been rejected by no less than twenty-seven magazines. He made a specialty of theenchilada, which is a delightful concoction of corn meal, eggs and chile, and he had perfected a recipe of his own for this dish which he had named the Conny Masters junior.As soon as the baskets were unpacked and the chaperones were safely anchored on rugs and blankets with their backs against trees, there was a general demand, strongly backed by Ramon, that Conny should cook supper. He was soon absorbed in the process, volubly explaining every step, while the others gathered about him and offered[pg 69]encouragement and humorous suggestion. But there was soon a gradual dispersion of the group, some going for wood and some for water, and others on errands unstated.Ramon found himself strolling under the cottonwoods with Julia. Neither of them had said anything. It was almost as though the tryst had been agreed upon before. She picked her way slowly among the tussocks of dried grass, her skirt daintily kilted. A faint but potent perfume from her hair and dress blew over him. He ventured to support her elbow with a reverent touch. Never had she seemed more desirable, nor yet, for some reason, more remote.Suddenly she stopped and looked up at the great desert stars.“Isn’t it big and beautiful?”she demanded.“And doesn’t it make you feel free? It’s never like this at home, somehow.”“What is it like where you live?”he enquired. He had a persistent desire to see into her life and understand it, but everything she told him only made her more than ever to him a being of mysterious origin and destiny.“It’s a funny little New York factory city with very staid ways,”she said.“You go to a dance at the country club every Saturday night and to tea parties and things in between. You fight,[pg 70]bleed and die for your social position and once in a while you stop and wonder why.… It’s a bore. You can see yourself going on doing the same thing till the day of your death.…”Her discontent with things as they are found ready sympathy.“That’s just the way it is here,”he said with conviction.“You can’t see anything ahead.”“Oh, I don’t think its the same here at all,”she protested.“This country’s so big and interesting. It’s different.”“Tell me how,”he demanded.“I haven’t seen anything interesting here since I got back,—except you.”She ignored the exception.“I can’t express it exactly. The people here are just like people everywhere else—most of them. But the country looks so big and unoccupied. And blue mountains are so alluring. There might be anything beyond them … adventures, opportunities.…”This idea was a bit too rarefied for Ramon, but he could agree about the mountains.“It’s a fine country,”he assented.“For those that own it.”“It’s just a feeling I have about it,”she went on, trying to express her own half-formulated idea.“But then I have that feeling about life in[pg 71]general, and there doesn’t seem to be anything in it. I mean the feeling that it’s full of thrilling things, but somehow you miss them all.”“I have felt something like that,”he admitted.“But I never could say it.”This discovery of an idea in common seemed somehow to bring them closer together. His hand tightened gently about her arm; almost unconsciously he drew her toward him. But she seemed to be all absorbed in the discussion.“You have no right to complain,”she told him.“A man can do something about it.”“Yes,”he agreed, speaking a reflection without stopping to put it in conventional language.“It must be hell to be a woman … excuse me … I mean.…”“Don’t apologize. It is—just that. A man at least has a fighting chance to escape boredom. But they won’t even let a woman fight. I wish I were a man.”“Well; I don’t,”he asserted with warmth, unconsciously tightening his hold upon her arm.“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re a woman.”“Oh, are you?”She looked up at him with challenging, provocative eyes.For an instant a kiss was imminent. It hovered between them like an invisible fairy presence[pg 72]of which they both were sweetly aware, and no one else.“Hey there! all you spooners!”came a jovial and irreverent voice from the vicinity of the camp fire.“Come and eat.”The moment was lost; the fairy presence gone. She turned with a little laugh, and they went in silence back to the fire. They were last to enter the circle of ruddy light, and all eyes were upon them. She was pink and self-conscious, looking at her feet and picking her way with exaggerated care. He was proud and elated. This, he knew, would couple their names in gossip, would make her partly his.[pg 73]CHAPTER IXHe wanted to call on her again, but he felt that he had been insulted and rejected by the Roths, and his pride fought against it. Unable to think for long of anything but Julia he fell into the habit of walking by her house at night, looking at its lighted windows and wondering what she was doing. Often he could see the moving figures and hear the laughter of some gay group about her, but he could not bring himself to go in and face the chilly disapproval of her family. At such times he felt an utter outcast, and sounded depths of misery he had never known before. For this was his first real love, and he loved in the helpless, desperate way of the Latin, without calculation or humour.One evening there was a gathering on the porch of the Roth house. She was there, sitting on the steps with three men about her. He could see the white blur of her frock and hear her funny little bubbling laugh above the deeper voices of the men. Having ascertained that neither Gordon Roth nor his mother was there, he summoned his courage and went in. She[pg 74]could not see who he was until he stood almost over her.“O, it’s you! I’m awfully glad.…”Their hands met and clung for a moment in the darkness. He sat down on the steps at her feet, and the conversation moved on without any assistance from him. He was now just as happy as he had been miserable a few minutes before.Presently two of the other men went away, but the third, who was Conny Masters, stayed. He talked volubly as ever, telling wonderful and sometimes incredible stories of things he had seen and done in his wanderings. Ramon said nothing. Julia responded less and less. Once she moved to drop the wrap from about her shoulders, and the alert Conny hastened to assist her. Ramon watched and envied with a thumping heart as he saw the gleam of her bare white shoulders, and realized that his rival might have touched them.Conny went on talking for half an hour with astonishing endurance and resourcefulness, but it became always more apparent that he was not captivating his audience. He had to laugh at his own humour and expatiate on his own thrills. Finally a silence fell upon the three, broken only by occasional commonplace remarks.“Well, I guess it’s time to drift,”Conny observed at last, looking cautiously at his watch.[pg 75]This suggestion was neither seconded by Ramon nor opposed by Julia. The silence literally pushed Conny to his feet.“Going, Ramon? No? Well, Good night.”And he retired whistling in a way which showed his irritation more plainly than if he had sworn.The two impolite ones sat silent for a long moment. Ramon was trying to think of what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. Finally without looking at her he said in a low husky voice.“You know … I love you.”There was more silence. At last he looked up and met her eyes. They were serious for the first time in his experience, and so was her usually mocking little mouth. Her face was transformed and dignified. More than ever she seemed a strange, high being. And yet he knew that now she was within his reach.… That he could kiss her lips … incredible.… And yet he did, and the kiss poured flame over them and welded them into each others’ arms.They heard Gordon Roth in the house coughing, the cough coming closer.She pushed him gently away.“Go now,”she whispered.“I love you … Ramon.”[pg 76]CHAPTER XHis conquest was far from giving him peace. Her kiss had transformed his high vague yearning into hot relentless desire. He wanted her. That became the one clear thing in life to him. Reflections and doubts were alien to his young and primitive spirit. He did not try to look far into the future. He only knew that to have her would be delight almost unimaginable and to lose her would be to lose everything.His attitude toward her changed. He claimed her more and more at dances. She did not want to dance with him so much because“people would talk,”but his will was harder than hers and to a great extent he had his way. He now called on her regularly too. He knew that she had fought hard for him against her family, and had won the privilege for him of calling“not too often.”“I’ve lied for you frightfully,”she confessed.“I told them I didn’t really care for you in the least, but I want to see you because you can tell such wonderful things about the country. So talk about the country whenever they’re listening. And don’t look at me the way you do.…”[pg 77]Mother and brother were alert and suspicious despite her assurance, and manœuvred with cool skill to keep the pair from being alone. Only rarely did he get the chance to kiss her—once when her brother, who was standing guard over the family treasure, was seized with a fit of coughing and had to leave the room, and again when her mother was called to the telephone. At such times she shrank away from him at first as though frightened by the intensity of the emotion she had created, but she never resisted. To him these brief and stolen embraces were almost intolerably sweet, like insufficient sips of water to a man burned up with thirst.She puzzled him as much as ever. When he was with her he felt as sure of her love as of his own existence. And yet she often sought to elude him. When he called up for engagements she objected and put him off. And she surrounded herself with other men as much as ever, and flirted gracefully with all of them, so that he was always feeling the sharp physical pangs of jealousy. Sometimes he felt egotistically sure that she was merely trying by these devices to provoke his desire the more, but at other times he thought her voice over the phone sounded doubtful and afraid, and he became wildly eager to get to her and make sure of her again.Just as her kiss had crystallized his feeling for[pg 78]her into driving desire, so it had focussed and intensified his discontent. Before he had been more or less resigned to wait for his fortune and the power he meant to make of it; now it seemed to him that unless he could achieve these things at once, they would never mean anything to him. For money was the one thing that would give him even a chance to win her. It was obviously useless to ask her to marry him poor. He would have nothing to bring against the certain opposition of her family. He could not run away with her. And indeed he was altogether too poor to support a wife if he had one, least of all a wife who had been carefully groomed and trained to capture a fortune.There was only one way. If he could go to her strong and rich, he felt sure that he could persuade her to go away with him, for he knew that she belonged to him when he was with her. He pictured himself going to her in a great motor car. Such a car had always been in his imagination the symbol of material strength. He felt sure he could destroy her doubts and hesitations. He would carry her away and she would be all and irrevocably his before any one could interfere or object.This dream filled and tortured his imagination. Its realization would mean not only fulfilment of his desire, but also revenge upon the Roths for[pg 79]the humiliations they had made him feel. It pushed everything else out of his mind—all consideration of other and possibly more feasible methods of pushing his suit. He came of a race of men who had dared and dominated, who had loved and fought, but had never learned how to work or to endure.When he gave himself up to his dream he was almost elated, but when he came to contemplate his actual circumstances, he fell into depths of discouragement and melancholy. His uncle stood like a rock between him and his desire. He thought of trying to borrow a few thousand dollars from old Diego, and of leaving the future to luck, but he was too intelligent long to entertain such a scheme. The Don would likely have provided him with the money, and he would have done it by hypothecating more of the Delcasar lands to MacDougall. Then Ramon would have had to borrow more, and so on, until the lands upon which all his hopes and dreams were based had passed forever out of his reach.The thing seemed hopeless, for Don Diego might well live for many years. And yet Ramon did not give up hope. He was worried, desperate and bitter, but not beaten. He had still that illogical faith in his own destiny which is the gift that makes men of action.At this time he heard particularly disquieting[pg 80]things about his uncle. Don Diego was reputed to be spending unusually large sums of money. As he generally had not much ready cash, this must mean either that he had sold land or that he had borrowed from MacDougall, in which case the land had doubtless been given as security. Once it was converted into cash in the hands of Diego, Ramon knew that his prospective fortune would swiftly vanish. He determined to watch the old man closely.He learned that Don Diego was playing poker every night in the back room of the White Camel pool hall. Gambling was supposed to be prohibited in the town, but this sanctum was regularly the scene for a game, which had the reputation of causing more money to change hands than any other in the southwest. Ramon hung about the White Camel evening after evening, trying to learn how much his uncle was losing. He would have liked to go and stand behind his chair and watch the game, but both etiquette and pride prevented him doing this. On two nights his uncle came out surrounded by a laughing crowd, a little bit tipsy, and was hurried into a cab. Ramon had no chance to speak either to him or to any one else who had been in the game.But the third night he came out alone, heavy with liquor, talking to himself. The other players had already gone out, laughing. The place was nearly[pg 81]deserted. The Don suddenly caught sight of Ramon and came to him, laying heavy hands on his shoulders, looking at him with bleary, tear-filled eyes.“My boy, my nephew,”he exclaimed in Spanish, his voice shaking with boozy emotion,“I am glad you are here. Come I must talk to you.”And steadied by Ramon he led the way to a bench in a corner. Here his manner suddenly changed. He threw back his head haughtily and slapped his knee.“I have lost five hundred dollars tonight,”he announced proudly.“What do I care? I am a rich man. I have lost a thousand dollars in the last three nights. That is nothing. I am rich.”He thumped his chest, looking around defiantly. Then he leaned forward in a confidential manner and lowered his voice.“But these gringos—they have gone away and left me. You saw them?Cabrones!They have got my money. That is all they want. My boy, all gringos are alike. They want nothing but money. They can hear the rattle of apesoas far as aburrocan smell a bear. They are mean, stingy! Ah, my boy! It is not now as it was in the old days. Then money counted for nothing! Then a man could throw away his last dollar and there were always friends to give him more. But now your dollars are your only true[pg 82]friends, and when you have lost them, you are alone indeed. Ah, my boy! The old days were the best!”The old Don bent his head over his hands and wept.Ramon looked at him with a mighty disgust and with a resentment that filled his throat and made his head hot. He had never before realized how much broken by age and drink his uncle was. Before, he had suspected and feared that Don Diego was wasting his property; now he knew it.The Don presently looked up again with tear-filled eyes, and went on talking, holding Ramon by the lapel of the coat in a heavy tremulous grip. He talked for almost an hour, his senile mind wandering aimlessly through the scenes of his long and picturesque career. He would tell tales of his loves and battles of fifty years ago—tales full of lust and greed and excitement. He would come back to his immediate troubles and curse the gringos again for a pack of miserable dollar-mongers, who knew not the meaning of friendship. And again his mind would leap back irrelevantly to some woman he had loved or some man he had killed in the spacious days where his imagination dwelt. Ramon listened eagerly, hoping to learn something definite about the Don’s dealings with MacDougall, but the old man never touched upon this. He did tell one story to which Ramon listened with interest. He told[pg 83]how, twenty-five years before, he and another man named Cristobal Archulera had found a silver mine in the Guadelupe Mountains, and how he had cheated the other out of his interest by filing the claim in his own name. He told this as a capital joke, laughing and thumping his knee.“Do you know where Archulera is now?”Ramon ventured to ask.“Archulera? No, No; I have not seen Archulera for twenty years. I heard that he married a very common woman, half Indian.… I don’t know what became of him.”The last of the pool players had now gone out; a Mexican boy had begun to sweep the floor; the place was about to close for the night. Ramon got his uncle to his feet with some difficulty, and led him outdoors where he looked about in vain for one of the cheap autos that served the town as taxicabs. There were only three or four of them, and none of these were in sight. The flat-wheeled street car had made its last screeching trip for the night. There was nothing for it but to take the Don by the arm and pilot him slowly homeward.Refreshed by the night air, the old man partially sobered, walked with a steady step, and talked more eloquently and profusely than ever. Women were his subject now, and it was a subject upon which he had great store of material. He[pg 84]told of the women of the South, of Sonora and Chihuahua where he had spent much of his youth, of how beautiful they were. He told of a slim little creature fifteen years old with big black eyes whom he had bought from herpeonfather, and of how she had feared him and how he had conquered her and her fear. He told of slave girls he had bought from the Navajos as children and raised for his pleasure. He told of a French woman he had loved in Mexico City and how he had fought a duel with her husband. He rose to heights of sentimentality and delved into depths of obscenity, now speaking of his heart and what it had suffered, and again leering and chuckling like a satyr over some tale of splendid desire.Ramon, walking silent and outwardly respectful by his side, listened to all this with a strange mixture of envy and rage. He envied the old Don the rich share he had taken of life’s feast. Whatever else he might be the Don was not one of those who desire but do not dare. He had taken what he wanted. He had tasted many emotions and known the most poignant delights. And now that he was old and his blood was slow, he stood in the way of others who desired as greatly and were as avid of life as ever he had been. Ramon felt a great bitterness that clutched at his throat and half blinded his eyes. He too[pg 85]loved and desired. And how much more greatly he desired than ever had this old man by his side, with his wealth and his easy satisfactions! The old Don apparently had never been thwarted, and therefore he did not know how keen and punishing a blade desire may be!Tense between the two was the enmity that ever sunders age and youth—age seeking to keep its sovereignty of life by inculcating blind respect and reverence, and youth rebellious, demanding its own with the passion of hot blood and untried flesh.Between Old Town and New Town flowed an irrigating ditch, which the connecting street crossed by means of an old wooden bridge. The ditch was this night full of swift water, which tore at the button willows on the bank and gurgled against the bridge timbers. As they crossed it the idea came into Ramon’s head that if a man were pushed into the brown water he would be swiftly carried under the bridge and drowned.
[pg 52]CHAPTER VIAt ten o’clock in the morning Ramon was hard at work in the office of James B. Green. He worked efficiently and with zest as he always did after one of his trips to the mountains. He got out of these ventures into another environment about what some men get out of sprees—a complete change of the state of mind. Archulera and his daughter were now completely forgotten, and all of his usual worries and plans were creeping back into his consciousness.But this day he had a feeling of pleasant anticipation. At first he could not account for it. And then he remembered the girl—the one he had seen on the train and had met again at the Montezuma ball. It seemed as though the thought of her had been in the back of his mind all the time, and now suddenly came forward, claiming all his attention, stirring him to a quick, unwonted excitement. She had said he might come to see her. He was to ’phone first. Maybe she would be alone.…In this latter hope he was disappointed. She gave him the appointment, and she herself admitted him. He thought he had never seen such[pg 53]a dainty bit of fragrant perfection, all in pink that matched the pink of her strange little crinkled mouth.“I’m awfully glad you came,”she told him. (Her gladness was always awful.) She led him into the sitting room and presented him to the tall emaciated sick man and the large placid woman who had watched over her so carefully on the train.Gordon Roth greeted him with a cool and formal manner into which he evidently tried to infuse something of cordiality, as though a desire to be just and broad-minded struggled with prejudice. Mrs. Roth looked at him with curiosity, and gave him a still more restrained greeting. The conversation was a weak and painful affair, kept barely alive, now by one and now by another. The atmosphere was heavy with disapproval. If their greetings had left Ramon in any doubt as to the attitude of the girl’s family toward him, that doubt was removed by the fact that neither Mrs. Roth nor her son showed any intention of leaving the room. This would have been not unusual if he had called on a Mexican girl, especially if she belonged to one of the more old-fashioned families; but he knew that American girls are left alone with their suitors if the suitor is at all welcome.He knew a little about this family from hear-say.[pg 54]They came from one of the larger factory towns in northern New York, and were supposed to be moderately wealthy. They used a very broad“a”and served tea at four o’clock in the afternoon. Gordon Roth was a Harvard graduate and did not conceal the fact. Neither did he conceal his hatred for this sandy little western town, where ill-health had doomed him to spend many of his days and perhaps to end them.The girl was strangely different from her mother and brother. Whereas their expressions were stiff and solemn, her eyes showed an irrepressible gleam of humour, and her fascinating little mouth was mobile with mirth. She fidgeted around in her chair a good deal, as a child does when bored.Mrs. Roth decorously turned the conversation toward the safe and reliable subjects of literature and art.“What do you think of Maeterlinck, Mr. Delcasar?”she enquired in an innocent manner that must have concealed malice.“I don’t know him,”Ramon admitted,“Who is he?”Mrs. Roth permitted herself to smile. Gordon Roth came graciously to the rescue.“Maeterlinck is a great Belgian writer,”he explained.“We are all very much interested in him.…”[pg 55]Julia gave a little flounce in her chair, and crossed her legs with a defiant look at her mother.“I’m not interested in him,”she announced with decision.“I think he’s a bore. Listen, Mr. Delcasar. You know Conny Masters? Well, he was telling me the most thrilling tale the other day. He said that the country Mexicans have a sort of secret religious fraternity that most of the men belong to, and that they meet every Good Friday and beat themselves with whips and sit down on cactus and crucify a man on a cross and all sorts of horrible things … for penance you know, just like the monks and things in the Middle Ages.… He claims he saw them once and that they had blood running down to their heels. Is that all true? I’ve forgotten what he called them.…”Ramon nodded.“Sure. Thepenitentes. I’ve seen them lots of times.”“O, do tell us about them. I love to hear about horrible things.”“Well, I’ve seen lots ofpenitenteprocessions, but the best one I ever saw was a long time ago, when I was a little kid. There are not so many of them now, and they don’t do as much as they used to. The church is down on them, you know, and they’re afraid. Ten years ago if you tried[pg 56]to look at them, they would shoot at you, but now tourists take pictures of them.”Gordon Roth’s curiosity had been aroused.“Tell me,”he broke in.“What is the meaning of this thing? How did it get started?”“I don’t know exactly,”Ramon admitted.“My grandfather told me that they brought it over from Spain centuries ago, and the Indians here had a sort of whipping fraternity, and the two got mixed up, I guess. The church used to tolerate it; it was a regular religious festival. But now it’s outlawed. They still have a lot of political power. They all vote the same way. One man that was elected to Congress—they say that thepenitentestripes on his back carried him there. And he was a gringo too. But I don’t know. It may be a lie.…”“But tell us about that procession you saw when you were a little boy,”Julia broke in. She was leaning forward with her chin in her hand, and her big grey eyes, wide with interest, fixed upon his face.“Well, I was only about ten years old, and I was riding home from one of our ranches with my father. We were coming throughTijerascanyon. It was March, and there was snow on the ground in patches, and the mountains were cold and bare, and I remember I thought I was going to freeze. Every little while we would get off and set fire to[pg 57]a tumble-weed by the road, and warm our hands and then go on again.…“Anyway, pretty soon I heard a lot of men singing, all together, in deep voices, and the noise echoed around the canyon and sounded awful solemn. And I could hear, too, the slap of the big wide whips coming down on the bare backs, wet with blood, like slapping a man with a wet towel, only louder. I didn’t know what it was, but my father did, and he called to me and we spurred our horses right up the mountain, and hid in a clump of cedar up there. Then they came around a bend in the road, and I began to cry because they were all covered with blood, and one of them fell down.… My father slapped me and told me to shut up, or they would come and shoot us.”“But what did they look like? What were they doing?”Julia demanded frowning at him, impatient with his rambling narrative.“Well, in front there wasun carreta del muerto. That means a wagon of death. I don’t think you would ever see one any more. It was just an ordinary wagon drawn by six men, naked to the waist and bleeding, with other men walking beside them and beating them with blacksnake whips, just like they were mules. In the wagon they had a big bed of stones, covered with cactus, and a man sitting in the cactus, who was supposed to represent death. And then they had a Virgin Mary,[pg 58]too. Fourpenitentesjust like the others, with nothing on but bloody pants and black bandages around their eyes, carried the image on a litter raised up over their heads, and they had swords fastened to their elbows and stuck between their ribs, so that if they let down, the swords would stick into their hearts and kill them. And behind that came theCristo—the man that represented Jesus, you know, dragging a big cross. Behind him came twenty or thirty morepenitentes, the most I ever saw at once, some of them whipping themselves with big broad whips made out ofamole. One was too weak to whip himself, so two others walked behind him and whipped him. Pretty soon he fell down and they walked over him and stepped on his stomach.…”“But did they crucify the man, the whatever-you-call-him?”Gordon demanded.“TheCristo. Sure. They crucify one every year. They used to nail him. Now they generally do it with ropes, but that’s bad enough, because it makes him swell up and turn blue.… Sometimes he dies.”Julia was listening with lips parted and eyes wide, horrified and yet fascinated, as are so many women by what is cruel and bloody. But Gordon, who had become equally interested, was cool and inquisitive.“And you mean to tell me that at one time[pg 59]nearly all the—er—native people belonged to this barbaric organization, and that many of them do yet?”“Nearly all the commonpelados,”Ramon hastened to explain.“They are nearly all Indian or part Indian, you know. Not the educated people.”Here a note of pride came into his voice.“We are descended from officers of the Spanish army—the men who conquered this country. In the old days, before the Americans came, all these common people were our slaves.”“I see,”said Gordon Roth in a dry and judicial tone.Thepenitentes, as a subject of conversation, seemed exhausted for the time being and Ramon had given up all hope of being alone with Julia. He rose and took his leave. To his delight Julia followed him to the door. In the hall she gave him her hand and looked up at him, and neither of them found anything to say. For some reason the pressure of her hand and the look of her eyes flustered and confused him more than had all the coldness and disapproval of her family. At last he said good-bye and got away, with his hat on wrong side before and the blood pounding in his temples.
At ten o’clock in the morning Ramon was hard at work in the office of James B. Green. He worked efficiently and with zest as he always did after one of his trips to the mountains. He got out of these ventures into another environment about what some men get out of sprees—a complete change of the state of mind. Archulera and his daughter were now completely forgotten, and all of his usual worries and plans were creeping back into his consciousness.
But this day he had a feeling of pleasant anticipation. At first he could not account for it. And then he remembered the girl—the one he had seen on the train and had met again at the Montezuma ball. It seemed as though the thought of her had been in the back of his mind all the time, and now suddenly came forward, claiming all his attention, stirring him to a quick, unwonted excitement. She had said he might come to see her. He was to ’phone first. Maybe she would be alone.…
In this latter hope he was disappointed. She gave him the appointment, and she herself admitted him. He thought he had never seen such[pg 53]a dainty bit of fragrant perfection, all in pink that matched the pink of her strange little crinkled mouth.
“I’m awfully glad you came,”she told him. (Her gladness was always awful.) She led him into the sitting room and presented him to the tall emaciated sick man and the large placid woman who had watched over her so carefully on the train.
Gordon Roth greeted him with a cool and formal manner into which he evidently tried to infuse something of cordiality, as though a desire to be just and broad-minded struggled with prejudice. Mrs. Roth looked at him with curiosity, and gave him a still more restrained greeting. The conversation was a weak and painful affair, kept barely alive, now by one and now by another. The atmosphere was heavy with disapproval. If their greetings had left Ramon in any doubt as to the attitude of the girl’s family toward him, that doubt was removed by the fact that neither Mrs. Roth nor her son showed any intention of leaving the room. This would have been not unusual if he had called on a Mexican girl, especially if she belonged to one of the more old-fashioned families; but he knew that American girls are left alone with their suitors if the suitor is at all welcome.
He knew a little about this family from hear-say.[pg 54]They came from one of the larger factory towns in northern New York, and were supposed to be moderately wealthy. They used a very broad“a”and served tea at four o’clock in the afternoon. Gordon Roth was a Harvard graduate and did not conceal the fact. Neither did he conceal his hatred for this sandy little western town, where ill-health had doomed him to spend many of his days and perhaps to end them.
The girl was strangely different from her mother and brother. Whereas their expressions were stiff and solemn, her eyes showed an irrepressible gleam of humour, and her fascinating little mouth was mobile with mirth. She fidgeted around in her chair a good deal, as a child does when bored.
Mrs. Roth decorously turned the conversation toward the safe and reliable subjects of literature and art.
“What do you think of Maeterlinck, Mr. Delcasar?”she enquired in an innocent manner that must have concealed malice.
“I don’t know him,”Ramon admitted,“Who is he?”
Mrs. Roth permitted herself to smile. Gordon Roth came graciously to the rescue.
“Maeterlinck is a great Belgian writer,”he explained.“We are all very much interested in him.…”
Julia gave a little flounce in her chair, and crossed her legs with a defiant look at her mother.
“I’m not interested in him,”she announced with decision.“I think he’s a bore. Listen, Mr. Delcasar. You know Conny Masters? Well, he was telling me the most thrilling tale the other day. He said that the country Mexicans have a sort of secret religious fraternity that most of the men belong to, and that they meet every Good Friday and beat themselves with whips and sit down on cactus and crucify a man on a cross and all sorts of horrible things … for penance you know, just like the monks and things in the Middle Ages.… He claims he saw them once and that they had blood running down to their heels. Is that all true? I’ve forgotten what he called them.…”
Ramon nodded.
“Sure. Thepenitentes. I’ve seen them lots of times.”
“O, do tell us about them. I love to hear about horrible things.”
“Well, I’ve seen lots ofpenitenteprocessions, but the best one I ever saw was a long time ago, when I was a little kid. There are not so many of them now, and they don’t do as much as they used to. The church is down on them, you know, and they’re afraid. Ten years ago if you tried[pg 56]to look at them, they would shoot at you, but now tourists take pictures of them.”
Gordon Roth’s curiosity had been aroused.
“Tell me,”he broke in.“What is the meaning of this thing? How did it get started?”
“I don’t know exactly,”Ramon admitted.“My grandfather told me that they brought it over from Spain centuries ago, and the Indians here had a sort of whipping fraternity, and the two got mixed up, I guess. The church used to tolerate it; it was a regular religious festival. But now it’s outlawed. They still have a lot of political power. They all vote the same way. One man that was elected to Congress—they say that thepenitentestripes on his back carried him there. And he was a gringo too. But I don’t know. It may be a lie.…”
“But tell us about that procession you saw when you were a little boy,”Julia broke in. She was leaning forward with her chin in her hand, and her big grey eyes, wide with interest, fixed upon his face.
“Well, I was only about ten years old, and I was riding home from one of our ranches with my father. We were coming throughTijerascanyon. It was March, and there was snow on the ground in patches, and the mountains were cold and bare, and I remember I thought I was going to freeze. Every little while we would get off and set fire to[pg 57]a tumble-weed by the road, and warm our hands and then go on again.…
“Anyway, pretty soon I heard a lot of men singing, all together, in deep voices, and the noise echoed around the canyon and sounded awful solemn. And I could hear, too, the slap of the big wide whips coming down on the bare backs, wet with blood, like slapping a man with a wet towel, only louder. I didn’t know what it was, but my father did, and he called to me and we spurred our horses right up the mountain, and hid in a clump of cedar up there. Then they came around a bend in the road, and I began to cry because they were all covered with blood, and one of them fell down.… My father slapped me and told me to shut up, or they would come and shoot us.”
“But what did they look like? What were they doing?”Julia demanded frowning at him, impatient with his rambling narrative.
“Well, in front there wasun carreta del muerto. That means a wagon of death. I don’t think you would ever see one any more. It was just an ordinary wagon drawn by six men, naked to the waist and bleeding, with other men walking beside them and beating them with blacksnake whips, just like they were mules. In the wagon they had a big bed of stones, covered with cactus, and a man sitting in the cactus, who was supposed to represent death. And then they had a Virgin Mary,[pg 58]too. Fourpenitentesjust like the others, with nothing on but bloody pants and black bandages around their eyes, carried the image on a litter raised up over their heads, and they had swords fastened to their elbows and stuck between their ribs, so that if they let down, the swords would stick into their hearts and kill them. And behind that came theCristo—the man that represented Jesus, you know, dragging a big cross. Behind him came twenty or thirty morepenitentes, the most I ever saw at once, some of them whipping themselves with big broad whips made out ofamole. One was too weak to whip himself, so two others walked behind him and whipped him. Pretty soon he fell down and they walked over him and stepped on his stomach.…”
“But did they crucify the man, the whatever-you-call-him?”Gordon demanded.
“TheCristo. Sure. They crucify one every year. They used to nail him. Now they generally do it with ropes, but that’s bad enough, because it makes him swell up and turn blue.… Sometimes he dies.”
Julia was listening with lips parted and eyes wide, horrified and yet fascinated, as are so many women by what is cruel and bloody. But Gordon, who had become equally interested, was cool and inquisitive.
“And you mean to tell me that at one time[pg 59]nearly all the—er—native people belonged to this barbaric organization, and that many of them do yet?”
“Nearly all the commonpelados,”Ramon hastened to explain.“They are nearly all Indian or part Indian, you know. Not the educated people.”Here a note of pride came into his voice.“We are descended from officers of the Spanish army—the men who conquered this country. In the old days, before the Americans came, all these common people were our slaves.”
“I see,”said Gordon Roth in a dry and judicial tone.
Thepenitentes, as a subject of conversation, seemed exhausted for the time being and Ramon had given up all hope of being alone with Julia. He rose and took his leave. To his delight Julia followed him to the door. In the hall she gave him her hand and looked up at him, and neither of them found anything to say. For some reason the pressure of her hand and the look of her eyes flustered and confused him more than had all the coldness and disapproval of her family. At last he said good-bye and got away, with his hat on wrong side before and the blood pounding in his temples.
[pg 60]CHAPTER VIIDuring the following weeks Ramon worked even less than was his custom. He also neglected his trips to the mountains and most of his other amusements. They seemed to have lost their interest for him. But he was a regular attendant upon the weekly dances which were held at the country club, and to which he had never gone before.The country club was a recent acquisition of the town, backed by a number of local business men. It consisted of a picturesque little frame lodge far out upon themesa, and a nine-hole golf course, made of sand and haunted bylizardsand rattlesnakes. It had become a centre of local society, although there was a more exclusive organization known as the Forty Club, which gave a formal ball once a month. Ramon had never been invited to join the Forty Club, but the political importance of his family had procured him a membership in the country club and it served his present purpose very well, for he found Julia Roth there every Saturday night. This fact was the sole reason for his going. His dances with her were now the one thing in life to which he[pg 61]looked forward with pleasure, and his highest hope was that he might be alone with her.In this he was disappointed for a long time because Julia was the belle of the town. Her dainty, provocative presence seemed always to be the centre of the gathering. Women envied her and studied her frocks, which were easily the most stylish in town. Men flocked about her and guffawed at her elfin stabs of humour. Her program was always crowded with names, and when she went for a stroll between dances she was generally accompanied by at least three men of whom Ramon was often one. And while the others made her laugh at their jokes or thrilled her with accounts of their adventures, he was always silent and worried—an utter bore, he thought.This girl was a new experience to him. With the egotism of twenty-four, he had regarded himself as a finished man of the world, especially with regard to women. They had always liked him. He was good to look at and his silent, self-possessed manner touched the feminine imagination. He had had his share of the amorous adventures that come to most men, and his attitude toward women had changed from the hesitancy of adolesence to the purposeful, confident and somewhat selfish attitude of the male accustomed to easy conquest.[pg 62]This girl, by a smile and touch of her hand, seemed to have changed him. She filled him with a mighty yearning. He desired her, and yet there was a puzzling element in his feeling that seemed to transcend desire. And he was utterly without his usual confidence and purpose. He had reason enough to doubt his success, but aside from that she loomed in his imagination as something high and unattainable. He had no plan. His strength seemed to have oozed out of him. He pursued her persistently enough—in fact too persistently—but he did it because he could not help it.The longer he followed in her wake, the more marked his weakness became. When he approached her to claim a dance he was often aware of a faint tremble in his knees, and was embarrassed by the fact that the palms of his hands were sweating. He felt that he was a fool and swore at himself. And he was wholly unable to believe that he was making any impression upon her. True, she was quite willing to flirt with him. She looked up at him with an arch, almost enquiring glance when he came to claim her for a dance, but he seldom found much to say at such times, being too wholly absorbed in the sacred occupation of dancing with her. And it seemed to him that she flirted with every one else, too. This did not in the least mitigate his devotion, but it[pg 63]made him acutely uncomfortable to watch her dance with other men, and especially with Conny Masters.Masters was the son of a man who had made a moderate fortune in the tin-plate business. He had come West with his mother who had a weak throat, had fallen in love with the country, and scandalized his family by resolutely refusing to go back to Indiana and tin cans. He spent most of his time riding about the country, equipped with a note book and a camera, studying the Mexicans and Indians, and taking pictures of the scenery. He said that he was going to make a literary career, but the net product of his effort for two years had been a few sonnets of lofty tone but vague meaning, and a great many photographs, mostly of sunsets.Conny was not a definite success as a writer, but he was unquestionably a gifted talker, and he knew the country better than did most of the natives. He made real to Julia the romance which she craved to find in the West. And her watchful and suspicious family seemed to tolerate if not to welcome him. Ramon knew that he went to the Roth’s regularly. He began to feel something like hatred for Conny whom he had formerly liked.This feeling was deepened by the fact that Conny seemed to be specially bent on defeating[pg 64]Ramon’s ambition to be alone with the girl. If no one else joined them at the end of a dance, Conny was almost sure to do so, and to occupy the intermission with one of his ever-ready monologues, while Ramon sat silent and angry, wondering what Julia saw to admire in this windy fool, and occasionally daring to wonder whether she really saw anything in him after all.But a sufficiently devoted lover is seldom wholly without a reward. There came an evening when Ramon found himself alone with her. And he was aware with a thrill that she had evaded not only Conny, but two other men. Her smile was friendly and encouraging, too, and yet he could not find anything to say which in the least expressed his feelings.“Are you going to stay in this country long?”he began. The question sounded supremely casual, but it meant a great deal to him. He was haunted by a fear that she would depart suddenly, and he would never see her again. She smiled and looked away for a moment before replying, as though perhaps this was not exactly what she had expected him to say.“I don’t know. Gordon wants mother and me to go back East this fall, but I don’t want to go and mother doesn’t want to leave Gordon alone.… We haven’t decided. Maybe I won’t go till next year.”[pg 65]“I suppose you’ll go to college won’t you?”“No; I wanted to go to Vassar and then study art, but mother says college spoils a girl for society. She thinks the way the Vassar girls walk is perfectly dreadful. I offered to go right on walking the same way, but she said anyway college makes girls so frightfully broad-minded.…”Ramon laughed.“What will you do then?”“I’ll come out.”“Out of what?”“Make my d�but, don’t you know?”“O, yes.”“In New York. I have an aunt there. She knows all the best people, mother says.”“What happens after you come out?”“You get married if anybody will have you. If not, you sort of fade away and finally go into uplift work about your fourth season.”“But of course, you’ll get married. I bet you’ll marry a millionaire.”“I don’t know. Mother wants me to marry a broker. She says the big financial houses in New York are conducted by the very best people. But Gordon thinks I ought to marry a professional man—a doctor or something. He thinks brokers are vulgar. He says money isn’t everything.”[pg 66]“What do you think?”“I haven’t a thought to my name. All my thinking has been done for me since infancy. I don’t know what I want, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get it if I did.… Come on. They’ve been dancing for ten minutes. If we stay here any longer it’ll be a scandal.”She rose and started for the hall. He suddenly realized that his long-sought opportunity was slipping away from him. He caught her by the hand.“Don’t go, please. I want to tell you something.”She met his hand with a fair grip, and pulled him after her with a laugh.“Some other time,”she promised.
During the following weeks Ramon worked even less than was his custom. He also neglected his trips to the mountains and most of his other amusements. They seemed to have lost their interest for him. But he was a regular attendant upon the weekly dances which were held at the country club, and to which he had never gone before.
The country club was a recent acquisition of the town, backed by a number of local business men. It consisted of a picturesque little frame lodge far out upon themesa, and a nine-hole golf course, made of sand and haunted bylizardsand rattlesnakes. It had become a centre of local society, although there was a more exclusive organization known as the Forty Club, which gave a formal ball once a month. Ramon had never been invited to join the Forty Club, but the political importance of his family had procured him a membership in the country club and it served his present purpose very well, for he found Julia Roth there every Saturday night. This fact was the sole reason for his going. His dances with her were now the one thing in life to which he[pg 61]looked forward with pleasure, and his highest hope was that he might be alone with her.
In this he was disappointed for a long time because Julia was the belle of the town. Her dainty, provocative presence seemed always to be the centre of the gathering. Women envied her and studied her frocks, which were easily the most stylish in town. Men flocked about her and guffawed at her elfin stabs of humour. Her program was always crowded with names, and when she went for a stroll between dances she was generally accompanied by at least three men of whom Ramon was often one. And while the others made her laugh at their jokes or thrilled her with accounts of their adventures, he was always silent and worried—an utter bore, he thought.
This girl was a new experience to him. With the egotism of twenty-four, he had regarded himself as a finished man of the world, especially with regard to women. They had always liked him. He was good to look at and his silent, self-possessed manner touched the feminine imagination. He had had his share of the amorous adventures that come to most men, and his attitude toward women had changed from the hesitancy of adolesence to the purposeful, confident and somewhat selfish attitude of the male accustomed to easy conquest.
This girl, by a smile and touch of her hand, seemed to have changed him. She filled him with a mighty yearning. He desired her, and yet there was a puzzling element in his feeling that seemed to transcend desire. And he was utterly without his usual confidence and purpose. He had reason enough to doubt his success, but aside from that she loomed in his imagination as something high and unattainable. He had no plan. His strength seemed to have oozed out of him. He pursued her persistently enough—in fact too persistently—but he did it because he could not help it.
The longer he followed in her wake, the more marked his weakness became. When he approached her to claim a dance he was often aware of a faint tremble in his knees, and was embarrassed by the fact that the palms of his hands were sweating. He felt that he was a fool and swore at himself. And he was wholly unable to believe that he was making any impression upon her. True, she was quite willing to flirt with him. She looked up at him with an arch, almost enquiring glance when he came to claim her for a dance, but he seldom found much to say at such times, being too wholly absorbed in the sacred occupation of dancing with her. And it seemed to him that she flirted with every one else, too. This did not in the least mitigate his devotion, but it[pg 63]made him acutely uncomfortable to watch her dance with other men, and especially with Conny Masters.
Masters was the son of a man who had made a moderate fortune in the tin-plate business. He had come West with his mother who had a weak throat, had fallen in love with the country, and scandalized his family by resolutely refusing to go back to Indiana and tin cans. He spent most of his time riding about the country, equipped with a note book and a camera, studying the Mexicans and Indians, and taking pictures of the scenery. He said that he was going to make a literary career, but the net product of his effort for two years had been a few sonnets of lofty tone but vague meaning, and a great many photographs, mostly of sunsets.
Conny was not a definite success as a writer, but he was unquestionably a gifted talker, and he knew the country better than did most of the natives. He made real to Julia the romance which she craved to find in the West. And her watchful and suspicious family seemed to tolerate if not to welcome him. Ramon knew that he went to the Roth’s regularly. He began to feel something like hatred for Conny whom he had formerly liked.
This feeling was deepened by the fact that Conny seemed to be specially bent on defeating[pg 64]Ramon’s ambition to be alone with the girl. If no one else joined them at the end of a dance, Conny was almost sure to do so, and to occupy the intermission with one of his ever-ready monologues, while Ramon sat silent and angry, wondering what Julia saw to admire in this windy fool, and occasionally daring to wonder whether she really saw anything in him after all.
But a sufficiently devoted lover is seldom wholly without a reward. There came an evening when Ramon found himself alone with her. And he was aware with a thrill that she had evaded not only Conny, but two other men. Her smile was friendly and encouraging, too, and yet he could not find anything to say which in the least expressed his feelings.
“Are you going to stay in this country long?”he began. The question sounded supremely casual, but it meant a great deal to him. He was haunted by a fear that she would depart suddenly, and he would never see her again. She smiled and looked away for a moment before replying, as though perhaps this was not exactly what she had expected him to say.
“I don’t know. Gordon wants mother and me to go back East this fall, but I don’t want to go and mother doesn’t want to leave Gordon alone.… We haven’t decided. Maybe I won’t go till next year.”
“I suppose you’ll go to college won’t you?”
“No; I wanted to go to Vassar and then study art, but mother says college spoils a girl for society. She thinks the way the Vassar girls walk is perfectly dreadful. I offered to go right on walking the same way, but she said anyway college makes girls so frightfully broad-minded.…”
Ramon laughed.
“What will you do then?”
“I’ll come out.”
“Out of what?”
“Make my d�but, don’t you know?”
“O, yes.”
“In New York. I have an aunt there. She knows all the best people, mother says.”
“What happens after you come out?”
“You get married if anybody will have you. If not, you sort of fade away and finally go into uplift work about your fourth season.”
“But of course, you’ll get married. I bet you’ll marry a millionaire.”
“I don’t know. Mother wants me to marry a broker. She says the big financial houses in New York are conducted by the very best people. But Gordon thinks I ought to marry a professional man—a doctor or something. He thinks brokers are vulgar. He says money isn’t everything.”
“What do you think?”
“I haven’t a thought to my name. All my thinking has been done for me since infancy. I don’t know what I want, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get it if I did.… Come on. They’ve been dancing for ten minutes. If we stay here any longer it’ll be a scandal.”
She rose and started for the hall. He suddenly realized that his long-sought opportunity was slipping away from him. He caught her by the hand.
“Don’t go, please. I want to tell you something.”
She met his hand with a fair grip, and pulled him after her with a laugh.
“Some other time,”she promised.
[pg 67]CHAPTER VIIIIn most of their social diversions the town folk tended always more and more to ape the ways of the East. Local colour, they thought, was all right in its place, which was a curio store or a museum, but they desired their town to be modern and citified, so that the wealthy eastern health-seeker would find it a congenial home. The scenery and the historic past were recognized as assets, but they should be the background for a life of“culture, refinement and modern convenience”as the president of the Chamber of Commerce was fond of saying.Hence the riding parties and picnics of a few years before had given way to aggressively formal balls and receptions; but one form of entertainment that was indigenous had survived. This was known as a“mesasupper.”It might take place anywhere in the surrounding wilderness of mountain and desert. Several auto-loads of young folk would motor out, suitably chaperoned and laden with provisions. Beside some water hole or mountain stream fires would be built, steaks broiled and coffee brewed. Afterward[pg 68]there would be singing and story-telling about the fire, and romantic strolls by couples.It was one of these expeditions that furnished Ramon with his second opportunity in three weeks to be alone with Julia Roth. The party had journeyed to Los Ojuellos, where a spring of clear water bubbled up in the centre of themesa. A grove of cottonwood trees shadowed the place, and there was an ancientadoberuin which looked especially effective by moonlight.The persistent Conny Masters was a member of the party, but he was handicapped by the fact that he knew more about camp cookery than anyone else present. He had made a special study of Mexican dishes and had written an article about them which had been rejected by no less than twenty-seven magazines. He made a specialty of theenchilada, which is a delightful concoction of corn meal, eggs and chile, and he had perfected a recipe of his own for this dish which he had named the Conny Masters junior.As soon as the baskets were unpacked and the chaperones were safely anchored on rugs and blankets with their backs against trees, there was a general demand, strongly backed by Ramon, that Conny should cook supper. He was soon absorbed in the process, volubly explaining every step, while the others gathered about him and offered[pg 69]encouragement and humorous suggestion. But there was soon a gradual dispersion of the group, some going for wood and some for water, and others on errands unstated.Ramon found himself strolling under the cottonwoods with Julia. Neither of them had said anything. It was almost as though the tryst had been agreed upon before. She picked her way slowly among the tussocks of dried grass, her skirt daintily kilted. A faint but potent perfume from her hair and dress blew over him. He ventured to support her elbow with a reverent touch. Never had she seemed more desirable, nor yet, for some reason, more remote.Suddenly she stopped and looked up at the great desert stars.“Isn’t it big and beautiful?”she demanded.“And doesn’t it make you feel free? It’s never like this at home, somehow.”“What is it like where you live?”he enquired. He had a persistent desire to see into her life and understand it, but everything she told him only made her more than ever to him a being of mysterious origin and destiny.“It’s a funny little New York factory city with very staid ways,”she said.“You go to a dance at the country club every Saturday night and to tea parties and things in between. You fight,[pg 70]bleed and die for your social position and once in a while you stop and wonder why.… It’s a bore. You can see yourself going on doing the same thing till the day of your death.…”Her discontent with things as they are found ready sympathy.“That’s just the way it is here,”he said with conviction.“You can’t see anything ahead.”“Oh, I don’t think its the same here at all,”she protested.“This country’s so big and interesting. It’s different.”“Tell me how,”he demanded.“I haven’t seen anything interesting here since I got back,—except you.”She ignored the exception.“I can’t express it exactly. The people here are just like people everywhere else—most of them. But the country looks so big and unoccupied. And blue mountains are so alluring. There might be anything beyond them … adventures, opportunities.…”This idea was a bit too rarefied for Ramon, but he could agree about the mountains.“It’s a fine country,”he assented.“For those that own it.”“It’s just a feeling I have about it,”she went on, trying to express her own half-formulated idea.“But then I have that feeling about life in[pg 71]general, and there doesn’t seem to be anything in it. I mean the feeling that it’s full of thrilling things, but somehow you miss them all.”“I have felt something like that,”he admitted.“But I never could say it.”This discovery of an idea in common seemed somehow to bring them closer together. His hand tightened gently about her arm; almost unconsciously he drew her toward him. But she seemed to be all absorbed in the discussion.“You have no right to complain,”she told him.“A man can do something about it.”“Yes,”he agreed, speaking a reflection without stopping to put it in conventional language.“It must be hell to be a woman … excuse me … I mean.…”“Don’t apologize. It is—just that. A man at least has a fighting chance to escape boredom. But they won’t even let a woman fight. I wish I were a man.”“Well; I don’t,”he asserted with warmth, unconsciously tightening his hold upon her arm.“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re a woman.”“Oh, are you?”She looked up at him with challenging, provocative eyes.For an instant a kiss was imminent. It hovered between them like an invisible fairy presence[pg 72]of which they both were sweetly aware, and no one else.“Hey there! all you spooners!”came a jovial and irreverent voice from the vicinity of the camp fire.“Come and eat.”The moment was lost; the fairy presence gone. She turned with a little laugh, and they went in silence back to the fire. They were last to enter the circle of ruddy light, and all eyes were upon them. She was pink and self-conscious, looking at her feet and picking her way with exaggerated care. He was proud and elated. This, he knew, would couple their names in gossip, would make her partly his.
In most of their social diversions the town folk tended always more and more to ape the ways of the East. Local colour, they thought, was all right in its place, which was a curio store or a museum, but they desired their town to be modern and citified, so that the wealthy eastern health-seeker would find it a congenial home. The scenery and the historic past were recognized as assets, but they should be the background for a life of“culture, refinement and modern convenience”as the president of the Chamber of Commerce was fond of saying.
Hence the riding parties and picnics of a few years before had given way to aggressively formal balls and receptions; but one form of entertainment that was indigenous had survived. This was known as a“mesasupper.”It might take place anywhere in the surrounding wilderness of mountain and desert. Several auto-loads of young folk would motor out, suitably chaperoned and laden with provisions. Beside some water hole or mountain stream fires would be built, steaks broiled and coffee brewed. Afterward[pg 68]there would be singing and story-telling about the fire, and romantic strolls by couples.
It was one of these expeditions that furnished Ramon with his second opportunity in three weeks to be alone with Julia Roth. The party had journeyed to Los Ojuellos, where a spring of clear water bubbled up in the centre of themesa. A grove of cottonwood trees shadowed the place, and there was an ancientadoberuin which looked especially effective by moonlight.
The persistent Conny Masters was a member of the party, but he was handicapped by the fact that he knew more about camp cookery than anyone else present. He had made a special study of Mexican dishes and had written an article about them which had been rejected by no less than twenty-seven magazines. He made a specialty of theenchilada, which is a delightful concoction of corn meal, eggs and chile, and he had perfected a recipe of his own for this dish which he had named the Conny Masters junior.
As soon as the baskets were unpacked and the chaperones were safely anchored on rugs and blankets with their backs against trees, there was a general demand, strongly backed by Ramon, that Conny should cook supper. He was soon absorbed in the process, volubly explaining every step, while the others gathered about him and offered[pg 69]encouragement and humorous suggestion. But there was soon a gradual dispersion of the group, some going for wood and some for water, and others on errands unstated.
Ramon found himself strolling under the cottonwoods with Julia. Neither of them had said anything. It was almost as though the tryst had been agreed upon before. She picked her way slowly among the tussocks of dried grass, her skirt daintily kilted. A faint but potent perfume from her hair and dress blew over him. He ventured to support her elbow with a reverent touch. Never had she seemed more desirable, nor yet, for some reason, more remote.
Suddenly she stopped and looked up at the great desert stars.
“Isn’t it big and beautiful?”she demanded.“And doesn’t it make you feel free? It’s never like this at home, somehow.”
“What is it like where you live?”he enquired. He had a persistent desire to see into her life and understand it, but everything she told him only made her more than ever to him a being of mysterious origin and destiny.
“It’s a funny little New York factory city with very staid ways,”she said.“You go to a dance at the country club every Saturday night and to tea parties and things in between. You fight,[pg 70]bleed and die for your social position and once in a while you stop and wonder why.… It’s a bore. You can see yourself going on doing the same thing till the day of your death.…”
Her discontent with things as they are found ready sympathy.
“That’s just the way it is here,”he said with conviction.“You can’t see anything ahead.”
“Oh, I don’t think its the same here at all,”she protested.“This country’s so big and interesting. It’s different.”
“Tell me how,”he demanded.“I haven’t seen anything interesting here since I got back,—except you.”
She ignored the exception.
“I can’t express it exactly. The people here are just like people everywhere else—most of them. But the country looks so big and unoccupied. And blue mountains are so alluring. There might be anything beyond them … adventures, opportunities.…”
This idea was a bit too rarefied for Ramon, but he could agree about the mountains.
“It’s a fine country,”he assented.“For those that own it.”
“It’s just a feeling I have about it,”she went on, trying to express her own half-formulated idea.“But then I have that feeling about life in[pg 71]general, and there doesn’t seem to be anything in it. I mean the feeling that it’s full of thrilling things, but somehow you miss them all.”
“I have felt something like that,”he admitted.“But I never could say it.”
This discovery of an idea in common seemed somehow to bring them closer together. His hand tightened gently about her arm; almost unconsciously he drew her toward him. But she seemed to be all absorbed in the discussion.
“You have no right to complain,”she told him.“A man can do something about it.”
“Yes,”he agreed, speaking a reflection without stopping to put it in conventional language.“It must be hell to be a woman … excuse me … I mean.…”
“Don’t apologize. It is—just that. A man at least has a fighting chance to escape boredom. But they won’t even let a woman fight. I wish I were a man.”
“Well; I don’t,”he asserted with warmth, unconsciously tightening his hold upon her arm.“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re a woman.”
“Oh, are you?”She looked up at him with challenging, provocative eyes.
For an instant a kiss was imminent. It hovered between them like an invisible fairy presence[pg 72]of which they both were sweetly aware, and no one else.
“Hey there! all you spooners!”came a jovial and irreverent voice from the vicinity of the camp fire.“Come and eat.”
The moment was lost; the fairy presence gone. She turned with a little laugh, and they went in silence back to the fire. They were last to enter the circle of ruddy light, and all eyes were upon them. She was pink and self-conscious, looking at her feet and picking her way with exaggerated care. He was proud and elated. This, he knew, would couple their names in gossip, would make her partly his.
[pg 73]CHAPTER IXHe wanted to call on her again, but he felt that he had been insulted and rejected by the Roths, and his pride fought against it. Unable to think for long of anything but Julia he fell into the habit of walking by her house at night, looking at its lighted windows and wondering what she was doing. Often he could see the moving figures and hear the laughter of some gay group about her, but he could not bring himself to go in and face the chilly disapproval of her family. At such times he felt an utter outcast, and sounded depths of misery he had never known before. For this was his first real love, and he loved in the helpless, desperate way of the Latin, without calculation or humour.One evening there was a gathering on the porch of the Roth house. She was there, sitting on the steps with three men about her. He could see the white blur of her frock and hear her funny little bubbling laugh above the deeper voices of the men. Having ascertained that neither Gordon Roth nor his mother was there, he summoned his courage and went in. She[pg 74]could not see who he was until he stood almost over her.“O, it’s you! I’m awfully glad.…”Their hands met and clung for a moment in the darkness. He sat down on the steps at her feet, and the conversation moved on without any assistance from him. He was now just as happy as he had been miserable a few minutes before.Presently two of the other men went away, but the third, who was Conny Masters, stayed. He talked volubly as ever, telling wonderful and sometimes incredible stories of things he had seen and done in his wanderings. Ramon said nothing. Julia responded less and less. Once she moved to drop the wrap from about her shoulders, and the alert Conny hastened to assist her. Ramon watched and envied with a thumping heart as he saw the gleam of her bare white shoulders, and realized that his rival might have touched them.Conny went on talking for half an hour with astonishing endurance and resourcefulness, but it became always more apparent that he was not captivating his audience. He had to laugh at his own humour and expatiate on his own thrills. Finally a silence fell upon the three, broken only by occasional commonplace remarks.“Well, I guess it’s time to drift,”Conny observed at last, looking cautiously at his watch.[pg 75]This suggestion was neither seconded by Ramon nor opposed by Julia. The silence literally pushed Conny to his feet.“Going, Ramon? No? Well, Good night.”And he retired whistling in a way which showed his irritation more plainly than if he had sworn.The two impolite ones sat silent for a long moment. Ramon was trying to think of what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. Finally without looking at her he said in a low husky voice.“You know … I love you.”There was more silence. At last he looked up and met her eyes. They were serious for the first time in his experience, and so was her usually mocking little mouth. Her face was transformed and dignified. More than ever she seemed a strange, high being. And yet he knew that now she was within his reach.… That he could kiss her lips … incredible.… And yet he did, and the kiss poured flame over them and welded them into each others’ arms.They heard Gordon Roth in the house coughing, the cough coming closer.She pushed him gently away.“Go now,”she whispered.“I love you … Ramon.”
He wanted to call on her again, but he felt that he had been insulted and rejected by the Roths, and his pride fought against it. Unable to think for long of anything but Julia he fell into the habit of walking by her house at night, looking at its lighted windows and wondering what she was doing. Often he could see the moving figures and hear the laughter of some gay group about her, but he could not bring himself to go in and face the chilly disapproval of her family. At such times he felt an utter outcast, and sounded depths of misery he had never known before. For this was his first real love, and he loved in the helpless, desperate way of the Latin, without calculation or humour.
One evening there was a gathering on the porch of the Roth house. She was there, sitting on the steps with three men about her. He could see the white blur of her frock and hear her funny little bubbling laugh above the deeper voices of the men. Having ascertained that neither Gordon Roth nor his mother was there, he summoned his courage and went in. She[pg 74]could not see who he was until he stood almost over her.
“O, it’s you! I’m awfully glad.…”Their hands met and clung for a moment in the darkness. He sat down on the steps at her feet, and the conversation moved on without any assistance from him. He was now just as happy as he had been miserable a few minutes before.
Presently two of the other men went away, but the third, who was Conny Masters, stayed. He talked volubly as ever, telling wonderful and sometimes incredible stories of things he had seen and done in his wanderings. Ramon said nothing. Julia responded less and less. Once she moved to drop the wrap from about her shoulders, and the alert Conny hastened to assist her. Ramon watched and envied with a thumping heart as he saw the gleam of her bare white shoulders, and realized that his rival might have touched them.
Conny went on talking for half an hour with astonishing endurance and resourcefulness, but it became always more apparent that he was not captivating his audience. He had to laugh at his own humour and expatiate on his own thrills. Finally a silence fell upon the three, broken only by occasional commonplace remarks.
“Well, I guess it’s time to drift,”Conny observed at last, looking cautiously at his watch.
This suggestion was neither seconded by Ramon nor opposed by Julia. The silence literally pushed Conny to his feet.
“Going, Ramon? No? Well, Good night.”And he retired whistling in a way which showed his irritation more plainly than if he had sworn.
The two impolite ones sat silent for a long moment. Ramon was trying to think of what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. Finally without looking at her he said in a low husky voice.
“You know … I love you.”
There was more silence. At last he looked up and met her eyes. They were serious for the first time in his experience, and so was her usually mocking little mouth. Her face was transformed and dignified. More than ever she seemed a strange, high being. And yet he knew that now she was within his reach.… That he could kiss her lips … incredible.… And yet he did, and the kiss poured flame over them and welded them into each others’ arms.
They heard Gordon Roth in the house coughing, the cough coming closer.
She pushed him gently away.
“Go now,”she whispered.“I love you … Ramon.”
[pg 76]CHAPTER XHis conquest was far from giving him peace. Her kiss had transformed his high vague yearning into hot relentless desire. He wanted her. That became the one clear thing in life to him. Reflections and doubts were alien to his young and primitive spirit. He did not try to look far into the future. He only knew that to have her would be delight almost unimaginable and to lose her would be to lose everything.His attitude toward her changed. He claimed her more and more at dances. She did not want to dance with him so much because“people would talk,”but his will was harder than hers and to a great extent he had his way. He now called on her regularly too. He knew that she had fought hard for him against her family, and had won the privilege for him of calling“not too often.”“I’ve lied for you frightfully,”she confessed.“I told them I didn’t really care for you in the least, but I want to see you because you can tell such wonderful things about the country. So talk about the country whenever they’re listening. And don’t look at me the way you do.…”[pg 77]Mother and brother were alert and suspicious despite her assurance, and manœuvred with cool skill to keep the pair from being alone. Only rarely did he get the chance to kiss her—once when her brother, who was standing guard over the family treasure, was seized with a fit of coughing and had to leave the room, and again when her mother was called to the telephone. At such times she shrank away from him at first as though frightened by the intensity of the emotion she had created, but she never resisted. To him these brief and stolen embraces were almost intolerably sweet, like insufficient sips of water to a man burned up with thirst.She puzzled him as much as ever. When he was with her he felt as sure of her love as of his own existence. And yet she often sought to elude him. When he called up for engagements she objected and put him off. And she surrounded herself with other men as much as ever, and flirted gracefully with all of them, so that he was always feeling the sharp physical pangs of jealousy. Sometimes he felt egotistically sure that she was merely trying by these devices to provoke his desire the more, but at other times he thought her voice over the phone sounded doubtful and afraid, and he became wildly eager to get to her and make sure of her again.Just as her kiss had crystallized his feeling for[pg 78]her into driving desire, so it had focussed and intensified his discontent. Before he had been more or less resigned to wait for his fortune and the power he meant to make of it; now it seemed to him that unless he could achieve these things at once, they would never mean anything to him. For money was the one thing that would give him even a chance to win her. It was obviously useless to ask her to marry him poor. He would have nothing to bring against the certain opposition of her family. He could not run away with her. And indeed he was altogether too poor to support a wife if he had one, least of all a wife who had been carefully groomed and trained to capture a fortune.There was only one way. If he could go to her strong and rich, he felt sure that he could persuade her to go away with him, for he knew that she belonged to him when he was with her. He pictured himself going to her in a great motor car. Such a car had always been in his imagination the symbol of material strength. He felt sure he could destroy her doubts and hesitations. He would carry her away and she would be all and irrevocably his before any one could interfere or object.This dream filled and tortured his imagination. Its realization would mean not only fulfilment of his desire, but also revenge upon the Roths for[pg 79]the humiliations they had made him feel. It pushed everything else out of his mind—all consideration of other and possibly more feasible methods of pushing his suit. He came of a race of men who had dared and dominated, who had loved and fought, but had never learned how to work or to endure.When he gave himself up to his dream he was almost elated, but when he came to contemplate his actual circumstances, he fell into depths of discouragement and melancholy. His uncle stood like a rock between him and his desire. He thought of trying to borrow a few thousand dollars from old Diego, and of leaving the future to luck, but he was too intelligent long to entertain such a scheme. The Don would likely have provided him with the money, and he would have done it by hypothecating more of the Delcasar lands to MacDougall. Then Ramon would have had to borrow more, and so on, until the lands upon which all his hopes and dreams were based had passed forever out of his reach.The thing seemed hopeless, for Don Diego might well live for many years. And yet Ramon did not give up hope. He was worried, desperate and bitter, but not beaten. He had still that illogical faith in his own destiny which is the gift that makes men of action.At this time he heard particularly disquieting[pg 80]things about his uncle. Don Diego was reputed to be spending unusually large sums of money. As he generally had not much ready cash, this must mean either that he had sold land or that he had borrowed from MacDougall, in which case the land had doubtless been given as security. Once it was converted into cash in the hands of Diego, Ramon knew that his prospective fortune would swiftly vanish. He determined to watch the old man closely.He learned that Don Diego was playing poker every night in the back room of the White Camel pool hall. Gambling was supposed to be prohibited in the town, but this sanctum was regularly the scene for a game, which had the reputation of causing more money to change hands than any other in the southwest. Ramon hung about the White Camel evening after evening, trying to learn how much his uncle was losing. He would have liked to go and stand behind his chair and watch the game, but both etiquette and pride prevented him doing this. On two nights his uncle came out surrounded by a laughing crowd, a little bit tipsy, and was hurried into a cab. Ramon had no chance to speak either to him or to any one else who had been in the game.But the third night he came out alone, heavy with liquor, talking to himself. The other players had already gone out, laughing. The place was nearly[pg 81]deserted. The Don suddenly caught sight of Ramon and came to him, laying heavy hands on his shoulders, looking at him with bleary, tear-filled eyes.“My boy, my nephew,”he exclaimed in Spanish, his voice shaking with boozy emotion,“I am glad you are here. Come I must talk to you.”And steadied by Ramon he led the way to a bench in a corner. Here his manner suddenly changed. He threw back his head haughtily and slapped his knee.“I have lost five hundred dollars tonight,”he announced proudly.“What do I care? I am a rich man. I have lost a thousand dollars in the last three nights. That is nothing. I am rich.”He thumped his chest, looking around defiantly. Then he leaned forward in a confidential manner and lowered his voice.“But these gringos—they have gone away and left me. You saw them?Cabrones!They have got my money. That is all they want. My boy, all gringos are alike. They want nothing but money. They can hear the rattle of apesoas far as aburrocan smell a bear. They are mean, stingy! Ah, my boy! It is not now as it was in the old days. Then money counted for nothing! Then a man could throw away his last dollar and there were always friends to give him more. But now your dollars are your only true[pg 82]friends, and when you have lost them, you are alone indeed. Ah, my boy! The old days were the best!”The old Don bent his head over his hands and wept.Ramon looked at him with a mighty disgust and with a resentment that filled his throat and made his head hot. He had never before realized how much broken by age and drink his uncle was. Before, he had suspected and feared that Don Diego was wasting his property; now he knew it.The Don presently looked up again with tear-filled eyes, and went on talking, holding Ramon by the lapel of the coat in a heavy tremulous grip. He talked for almost an hour, his senile mind wandering aimlessly through the scenes of his long and picturesque career. He would tell tales of his loves and battles of fifty years ago—tales full of lust and greed and excitement. He would come back to his immediate troubles and curse the gringos again for a pack of miserable dollar-mongers, who knew not the meaning of friendship. And again his mind would leap back irrelevantly to some woman he had loved or some man he had killed in the spacious days where his imagination dwelt. Ramon listened eagerly, hoping to learn something definite about the Don’s dealings with MacDougall, but the old man never touched upon this. He did tell one story to which Ramon listened with interest. He told[pg 83]how, twenty-five years before, he and another man named Cristobal Archulera had found a silver mine in the Guadelupe Mountains, and how he had cheated the other out of his interest by filing the claim in his own name. He told this as a capital joke, laughing and thumping his knee.“Do you know where Archulera is now?”Ramon ventured to ask.“Archulera? No, No; I have not seen Archulera for twenty years. I heard that he married a very common woman, half Indian.… I don’t know what became of him.”The last of the pool players had now gone out; a Mexican boy had begun to sweep the floor; the place was about to close for the night. Ramon got his uncle to his feet with some difficulty, and led him outdoors where he looked about in vain for one of the cheap autos that served the town as taxicabs. There were only three or four of them, and none of these were in sight. The flat-wheeled street car had made its last screeching trip for the night. There was nothing for it but to take the Don by the arm and pilot him slowly homeward.Refreshed by the night air, the old man partially sobered, walked with a steady step, and talked more eloquently and profusely than ever. Women were his subject now, and it was a subject upon which he had great store of material. He[pg 84]told of the women of the South, of Sonora and Chihuahua where he had spent much of his youth, of how beautiful they were. He told of a slim little creature fifteen years old with big black eyes whom he had bought from herpeonfather, and of how she had feared him and how he had conquered her and her fear. He told of slave girls he had bought from the Navajos as children and raised for his pleasure. He told of a French woman he had loved in Mexico City and how he had fought a duel with her husband. He rose to heights of sentimentality and delved into depths of obscenity, now speaking of his heart and what it had suffered, and again leering and chuckling like a satyr over some tale of splendid desire.Ramon, walking silent and outwardly respectful by his side, listened to all this with a strange mixture of envy and rage. He envied the old Don the rich share he had taken of life’s feast. Whatever else he might be the Don was not one of those who desire but do not dare. He had taken what he wanted. He had tasted many emotions and known the most poignant delights. And now that he was old and his blood was slow, he stood in the way of others who desired as greatly and were as avid of life as ever he had been. Ramon felt a great bitterness that clutched at his throat and half blinded his eyes. He too[pg 85]loved and desired. And how much more greatly he desired than ever had this old man by his side, with his wealth and his easy satisfactions! The old Don apparently had never been thwarted, and therefore he did not know how keen and punishing a blade desire may be!Tense between the two was the enmity that ever sunders age and youth—age seeking to keep its sovereignty of life by inculcating blind respect and reverence, and youth rebellious, demanding its own with the passion of hot blood and untried flesh.Between Old Town and New Town flowed an irrigating ditch, which the connecting street crossed by means of an old wooden bridge. The ditch was this night full of swift water, which tore at the button willows on the bank and gurgled against the bridge timbers. As they crossed it the idea came into Ramon’s head that if a man were pushed into the brown water he would be swiftly carried under the bridge and drowned.
His conquest was far from giving him peace. Her kiss had transformed his high vague yearning into hot relentless desire. He wanted her. That became the one clear thing in life to him. Reflections and doubts were alien to his young and primitive spirit. He did not try to look far into the future. He only knew that to have her would be delight almost unimaginable and to lose her would be to lose everything.
His attitude toward her changed. He claimed her more and more at dances. She did not want to dance with him so much because“people would talk,”but his will was harder than hers and to a great extent he had his way. He now called on her regularly too. He knew that she had fought hard for him against her family, and had won the privilege for him of calling“not too often.”
“I’ve lied for you frightfully,”she confessed.“I told them I didn’t really care for you in the least, but I want to see you because you can tell such wonderful things about the country. So talk about the country whenever they’re listening. And don’t look at me the way you do.…”
Mother and brother were alert and suspicious despite her assurance, and manœuvred with cool skill to keep the pair from being alone. Only rarely did he get the chance to kiss her—once when her brother, who was standing guard over the family treasure, was seized with a fit of coughing and had to leave the room, and again when her mother was called to the telephone. At such times she shrank away from him at first as though frightened by the intensity of the emotion she had created, but she never resisted. To him these brief and stolen embraces were almost intolerably sweet, like insufficient sips of water to a man burned up with thirst.
She puzzled him as much as ever. When he was with her he felt as sure of her love as of his own existence. And yet she often sought to elude him. When he called up for engagements she objected and put him off. And she surrounded herself with other men as much as ever, and flirted gracefully with all of them, so that he was always feeling the sharp physical pangs of jealousy. Sometimes he felt egotistically sure that she was merely trying by these devices to provoke his desire the more, but at other times he thought her voice over the phone sounded doubtful and afraid, and he became wildly eager to get to her and make sure of her again.
Just as her kiss had crystallized his feeling for[pg 78]her into driving desire, so it had focussed and intensified his discontent. Before he had been more or less resigned to wait for his fortune and the power he meant to make of it; now it seemed to him that unless he could achieve these things at once, they would never mean anything to him. For money was the one thing that would give him even a chance to win her. It was obviously useless to ask her to marry him poor. He would have nothing to bring against the certain opposition of her family. He could not run away with her. And indeed he was altogether too poor to support a wife if he had one, least of all a wife who had been carefully groomed and trained to capture a fortune.
There was only one way. If he could go to her strong and rich, he felt sure that he could persuade her to go away with him, for he knew that she belonged to him when he was with her. He pictured himself going to her in a great motor car. Such a car had always been in his imagination the symbol of material strength. He felt sure he could destroy her doubts and hesitations. He would carry her away and she would be all and irrevocably his before any one could interfere or object.
This dream filled and tortured his imagination. Its realization would mean not only fulfilment of his desire, but also revenge upon the Roths for[pg 79]the humiliations they had made him feel. It pushed everything else out of his mind—all consideration of other and possibly more feasible methods of pushing his suit. He came of a race of men who had dared and dominated, who had loved and fought, but had never learned how to work or to endure.
When he gave himself up to his dream he was almost elated, but when he came to contemplate his actual circumstances, he fell into depths of discouragement and melancholy. His uncle stood like a rock between him and his desire. He thought of trying to borrow a few thousand dollars from old Diego, and of leaving the future to luck, but he was too intelligent long to entertain such a scheme. The Don would likely have provided him with the money, and he would have done it by hypothecating more of the Delcasar lands to MacDougall. Then Ramon would have had to borrow more, and so on, until the lands upon which all his hopes and dreams were based had passed forever out of his reach.
The thing seemed hopeless, for Don Diego might well live for many years. And yet Ramon did not give up hope. He was worried, desperate and bitter, but not beaten. He had still that illogical faith in his own destiny which is the gift that makes men of action.
At this time he heard particularly disquieting[pg 80]things about his uncle. Don Diego was reputed to be spending unusually large sums of money. As he generally had not much ready cash, this must mean either that he had sold land or that he had borrowed from MacDougall, in which case the land had doubtless been given as security. Once it was converted into cash in the hands of Diego, Ramon knew that his prospective fortune would swiftly vanish. He determined to watch the old man closely.
He learned that Don Diego was playing poker every night in the back room of the White Camel pool hall. Gambling was supposed to be prohibited in the town, but this sanctum was regularly the scene for a game, which had the reputation of causing more money to change hands than any other in the southwest. Ramon hung about the White Camel evening after evening, trying to learn how much his uncle was losing. He would have liked to go and stand behind his chair and watch the game, but both etiquette and pride prevented him doing this. On two nights his uncle came out surrounded by a laughing crowd, a little bit tipsy, and was hurried into a cab. Ramon had no chance to speak either to him or to any one else who had been in the game.But the third night he came out alone, heavy with liquor, talking to himself. The other players had already gone out, laughing. The place was nearly[pg 81]deserted. The Don suddenly caught sight of Ramon and came to him, laying heavy hands on his shoulders, looking at him with bleary, tear-filled eyes.
“My boy, my nephew,”he exclaimed in Spanish, his voice shaking with boozy emotion,“I am glad you are here. Come I must talk to you.”And steadied by Ramon he led the way to a bench in a corner. Here his manner suddenly changed. He threw back his head haughtily and slapped his knee.
“I have lost five hundred dollars tonight,”he announced proudly.“What do I care? I am a rich man. I have lost a thousand dollars in the last three nights. That is nothing. I am rich.”
He thumped his chest, looking around defiantly. Then he leaned forward in a confidential manner and lowered his voice.
“But these gringos—they have gone away and left me. You saw them?Cabrones!They have got my money. That is all they want. My boy, all gringos are alike. They want nothing but money. They can hear the rattle of apesoas far as aburrocan smell a bear. They are mean, stingy! Ah, my boy! It is not now as it was in the old days. Then money counted for nothing! Then a man could throw away his last dollar and there were always friends to give him more. But now your dollars are your only true[pg 82]friends, and when you have lost them, you are alone indeed. Ah, my boy! The old days were the best!”The old Don bent his head over his hands and wept.
Ramon looked at him with a mighty disgust and with a resentment that filled his throat and made his head hot. He had never before realized how much broken by age and drink his uncle was. Before, he had suspected and feared that Don Diego was wasting his property; now he knew it.
The Don presently looked up again with tear-filled eyes, and went on talking, holding Ramon by the lapel of the coat in a heavy tremulous grip. He talked for almost an hour, his senile mind wandering aimlessly through the scenes of his long and picturesque career. He would tell tales of his loves and battles of fifty years ago—tales full of lust and greed and excitement. He would come back to his immediate troubles and curse the gringos again for a pack of miserable dollar-mongers, who knew not the meaning of friendship. And again his mind would leap back irrelevantly to some woman he had loved or some man he had killed in the spacious days where his imagination dwelt. Ramon listened eagerly, hoping to learn something definite about the Don’s dealings with MacDougall, but the old man never touched upon this. He did tell one story to which Ramon listened with interest. He told[pg 83]how, twenty-five years before, he and another man named Cristobal Archulera had found a silver mine in the Guadelupe Mountains, and how he had cheated the other out of his interest by filing the claim in his own name. He told this as a capital joke, laughing and thumping his knee.
“Do you know where Archulera is now?”Ramon ventured to ask.
“Archulera? No, No; I have not seen Archulera for twenty years. I heard that he married a very common woman, half Indian.… I don’t know what became of him.”
The last of the pool players had now gone out; a Mexican boy had begun to sweep the floor; the place was about to close for the night. Ramon got his uncle to his feet with some difficulty, and led him outdoors where he looked about in vain for one of the cheap autos that served the town as taxicabs. There were only three or four of them, and none of these were in sight. The flat-wheeled street car had made its last screeching trip for the night. There was nothing for it but to take the Don by the arm and pilot him slowly homeward.
Refreshed by the night air, the old man partially sobered, walked with a steady step, and talked more eloquently and profusely than ever. Women were his subject now, and it was a subject upon which he had great store of material. He[pg 84]told of the women of the South, of Sonora and Chihuahua where he had spent much of his youth, of how beautiful they were. He told of a slim little creature fifteen years old with big black eyes whom he had bought from herpeonfather, and of how she had feared him and how he had conquered her and her fear. He told of slave girls he had bought from the Navajos as children and raised for his pleasure. He told of a French woman he had loved in Mexico City and how he had fought a duel with her husband. He rose to heights of sentimentality and delved into depths of obscenity, now speaking of his heart and what it had suffered, and again leering and chuckling like a satyr over some tale of splendid desire.
Ramon, walking silent and outwardly respectful by his side, listened to all this with a strange mixture of envy and rage. He envied the old Don the rich share he had taken of life’s feast. Whatever else he might be the Don was not one of those who desire but do not dare. He had taken what he wanted. He had tasted many emotions and known the most poignant delights. And now that he was old and his blood was slow, he stood in the way of others who desired as greatly and were as avid of life as ever he had been. Ramon felt a great bitterness that clutched at his throat and half blinded his eyes. He too[pg 85]loved and desired. And how much more greatly he desired than ever had this old man by his side, with his wealth and his easy satisfactions! The old Don apparently had never been thwarted, and therefore he did not know how keen and punishing a blade desire may be!
Tense between the two was the enmity that ever sunders age and youth—age seeking to keep its sovereignty of life by inculcating blind respect and reverence, and youth rebellious, demanding its own with the passion of hot blood and untried flesh.
Between Old Town and New Town flowed an irrigating ditch, which the connecting street crossed by means of an old wooden bridge. The ditch was this night full of swift water, which tore at the button willows on the bank and gurgled against the bridge timbers. As they crossed it the idea came into Ramon’s head that if a man were pushed into the brown water he would be swiftly carried under the bridge and drowned.