“It’s such a long time since we’ve seen one another ...!Tanto tiempo!I thought I’d better get you on the other end of this rope, so you can’t get away!”
The youth looked his astonishment. In a drawling voice that made his slow Spanish sound amusingly foreign, he exclaimed.
“Such a long time! Why, what about this morning?”
“Tanto tiempo!” She mimicked his accent. “Well, what of it, you ungratefulgringo? Is it such a smallmatter to you that we haven’t seen one another since this morning?”
Then they both burst out laughing, like two children.
By this time they had reached the hitching post where she had left her horse. Hurriedly she sprang to his back, as though it made her feel uncomfortable and helpless to stand on the ground. Besides, in spite of his six feet and over, this point of vantage made it possible for her to look down at him.
The rope was still wound about his arms and shoulders, but Celinda determined to let her captive go.
“Listen, don Ricardo, I’m going to set you free, but only so you can do a little work!”
With a quick twist she tossed the rope off his shoulders. But as though her presence robbed him of all initiative, the youth remained motionless before her. Majestically she offered him her hand.
“Don’t be ill-bred, Mr. Watson! That is for you to kiss. You seem to be losing all your manners out here in the desert.”
Amused by the girl’s mock gravity, the young engineer bent over her hand. But his air of treating her with the good-natured condescension an older person displays toward a mischievous child, annoyed her.
“One of these days I’m going to get really cross with you, and then you’ll never see me again. You always treat me as though I were a little girl, when I’m not! I’m the first lady of the land, I’m the PrincessFlor de Rio Negro!”
But Watson was still laughing at her; and finally the girl laughed too; whereupon, the Princess Florbegan exhibiting a serious and maternal interest in her friend’s welfare.
“You are working too hard, and I don’t like to see you get so tired,gringo mio! There’s too much work here for one man to do. When is Robledo going to come back? He must be having a gay time over there in Paris!”
Watson, as she mentioned his partner’s name, caught up her serious tone. He was already back, the engineer replied, and might put in an appearance at any moment. As to the work, it didn’t seem so heavy to him. He had held more difficult jobs in other countries. Until the government engineers finished the dam, his work and Robledo’s would be comparatively light, since most of the ditches were ready, waiting for the water that was to pour through them.
They were moving along side by side now, unconsciously going toward the engineering camp. Richard, as he walked along, kept a hand on her horse’s neck, and looked up at Celinda, whose quick motions of her eyes and lips while she talked were often easier for him to understand than her rapidly uttered words. The peons, considering the day’s work ended, were putting their tools together. The rider and her escort, to avoid the groups of laborers returning to the town, took a path at some distance from the river, and wound slowly up the slope that led to the mesa.
As they ascended a spur of ground that was like a buttress in the great wall of parched clay, stretching as far as the eye could reach, they saw, far below them, the lake-like width of the river above the narrow point selected for the construction of the dam. The camp, amedley of strangely assorted buildings, scattered about without any attempt at order, contained adobe huts covered with straw, houses of brick with tin roofs, tents of dirty canvas, and, most comfortable of the lot, the portable houses occupied by the engineers, overseers, and other employees. Above all the other houses, one in particular stood out, a wooden building mounted on piles, with a porch running around all four sides. It was the bungalow that, a few weeks before, had been received at Bahia Blanca for Pirovani, the Italian contractor of the works at the dam.
The streets of this hastily improvised town were always empty during the day. But as dusk set in they began to be peopled by groups of peons who, returning from their work, met other groups and mingled with them, until finally hundreds of workmen were assembled on the main thoroughfare; and they were all going in the same direction.
A frame house, the only one that, in size, compared with the bungalow of the Italian contractor, was the goal of the slowly moving crowd. Above the door was a sign on which was written in ordinary long hand, “The Galician’s Resort.” The Galician was, as a matter of fact, an Andalucian, but it is the prevailing assumption in those regions that any Spaniard who comes to Argentina must by that fact be a Galician. “The Resort,” of course, was chiefly useful to the community as a saloon, but it also served as a store where the most diverse articles could be purchased.
A group of faithful customers occupied by right of their patronage the vicinity of the counter or “bar.” Some of them were emigrants who, once cut adriftfrom their native Europe, had wandered through the three Americas, from Canada to Tierra del Fuego. Others, half-breeds, or even whites, had, after a few years in the desert, returned to a state approaching that of primitive man; their features were harsh and hawk-like, their beards thick and rough, and on their long hair they wore wide-brimmed sombreros. Thrust negligently through their belts of leather adorned with silver coins, they carried their revolvers and knives.
Outside the café, waiting for their husbands, in the hope that the latter would not drink too much if they knew that their wives were waiting for them, or watching for the companions of their nights, were assembled the beauties of the settlement, half-breed women of a light cinnamon color, with eyes like coals, coarse hair of the thick blackness of ink, and teeth of a luminous whiteness; some of them were so fat they looked like the grotesque exaggerations of caricature; others were as absurdly thin, as though they had just come out of a town besieged by hunger, or as if they were being consumed by flames incessantly burning within.
And now lights were twinkling in the town, their reddish points piercing through the violet veils of the twilight.
Celinda and her companion were still watching the settlement and the wide spreading river in silence, as though afraid that the scene before them would vanish at the sound of their voices.
“Come,Señorita Rojas,” exclaimed Watson suddenly, feeling the need perhaps of dispelling the seductive influence of the evening, “Come! It will soon be dark, and your ranch is a good distance from here.”
The girl laughed at the suggestion of there being any danger for her in that, but at last she bade her friend good-by and set her horse at a gallop.
Richard started back to the camp. He went down a rough road that passed for the main thoroughfare of the town, although there were many others of as great a width, the government at Buenos Aires having decreed that all the towns springing up in the desert should allow their streets a minimum width of twenty yards. No one could tell how soon they might become cities! Meanwhile, the low buildings of a single storey were separated from those opposite by a space swept by the icy winds that whirled great columns of dust through them. At times the sun baked the soil, and from its cracks, whenever a passer-by disturbed them, arose swarms of buzzing flies; and then again, the puddles formed in the clay by the infrequent but ferocious downpours made it necessary for the inhabitants to walk through water up to their knees if they wished to call on a neighbor living opposite.
As Watson went along between the two rows of buildings he met all the principal personages of the camp. First to cross his path was theseñorde Canterac, formerly a captain in the French artillery, who, according to the statements of many who called themselves his friends, had, because of certain private enterprises, been forced to flee his country. At present he was employed as engineer by the Argentine government; and it always fell to his lot to work on the difficult jobs that the other engineers took good care toavoid. But de Canterac, being a foreigner, had to take what the native sons refused.
He was a man of forty odd, inclined to stoutness, his hair and mustache turning white. Yet he preserved a certain youthfulness of appearance. As though still wearing the uniform, he walked with military bearing, and in spite of his surroundings, paid considerable attention to the elegance of his attire.
Watson caught sight of him coming down the street on horseback, wearing a handsome riding suit, and a white helmet. The Frenchman greeted the engineer, and dismounting, walked along beside him, leading his horse by the reins, while he looked at some of the young American’s drawings.
“And when do you expect Robledo?” he inquired.
“He’ll be getting here at any time now. He has probably already landed at Buenos Aires. Some friends are coming along with him, it seems.”
They had reached the small frame house where the Frenchman lodged. Tossing his horse’s reins with military abruptness to the mulatto servant, de Canterac turned to Richard.
“In six weeks’ time, my friend, the first dam will be finished, and you and Robledo will be able to irrigate a part of your property right away.”
Watson smiled. With a gesture of leave-taking, he went on towards his quarters. But at the end of a few yards he stopped to reply to the greeting of a young man, who in his city clothes looked as though he might be a government clerk. His round, shell-rimmed glasses re-enforced this impression, as well as the memorandum books and loose papers that he was carrying underhis arm. He gave every indication of being one of those hard-working employees, who, falling into the deep ruts of routine, become incapable of initiative, or of any project requiring ambition, but live along from year to year, perfectly satisfied with the mediocrity of which they have become a part.
This was Timoteo Moreno, born in Argentina of Spanish parents. The Commissioner of Public Works had sent him as his representative to the works at the dam, and it was his chief responsibility to pay to the contractor Pirovani the money sent on for that purpose by the government.
He had just greeted Watson when he slapped his forehead, and stepped back, searching among his papers as he did so.
“I forgot to leave Captain Canterac’s check at his place.... Oh, well....” He shrugged, and went along beside Watson. “I’ll give it to him when I go back. Anyway there’s no out-going mail until day after tomorrow.”
Now they were standing in front of the bungalow belonging to the rich man of the settlement. Just at that moment he came out and stood for a moment leaning over the railing of the balcony, but no sooner had he recognized them than he came rushing down the wooden steps. “They must come in, they must have a glass of something with him,” he insisted.
The rings he wore, his heavy gold watch chain and showy clothes did not conceal the fact that this was the Pirovani who had arrived in Argentina ten years earlier as a common laborer; but they did give everyone to understand that he was one of the richest mento be found between Bahia Blanca and the steep wall of the Andes forming the Chilian frontier. There was not a bank in the region that would not honor his signature. Although barely forty his heavy muscular frame and plump clean-shaven face already showed that softening of tissue that betrays the invasion of fat cells.
Beaming with pleasure at having someone come his way to whom he could display the magnificence of his bungalow, he pressed his invitation upon them.
“Even though I am a widower, and live alone here, I like to have some of the comforts of Buenos Aires. Just got some new furniture, too, I want to show you. Come on in, Moreno, you haven’t seen it all, and Mr. Watson here doesn’t know half what I’ve got to show him!”
The two men followed their enthusiastic host up the wooden outside steps into the dining room, which contained a large number of heavy and showy pieces of furniture. Pirovani exhibited them proudly, slapping them to show the fine quality of the oak, and rolling his eyes toward the ceiling whenever he alluded to the prices he had paid for them. The parlor too, which he insisted on showing, contained an excessive number of chairs and tables among which the visitors had to thread their way; and the bedroom, with its elaborate furnishings, would have been far more suitable for a variety hall actress than for Mr. Pirovani, the contractor. In all the rooms of course, the contrast between the over-elaborate furniture and the rough frame-work of the bungalow was startling.
“A pretty sum, it cost me,” exclaimed the Italianproudly. “What do you think of it, don Ricardo? You’ve seen a lot of fine things in your travels.... How do you like my little place?”
Watson replied as best he could; but the proud possessor of the bungalow needed very little encouragement for his outbursts of satisfaction.
When they returned to the dining room, a young half-breed servant, her thick braid hanging down her back, placed some bottles and glasses on the table.
“I’m going to have a new housekeeper,” announced Pirovani. “This place needs someone who knows how to take care of it. Rojas, the rancher, is going to let me have his Sebastiana.”
Certain that Moreno and the contractor wanted to talk over the construction plans, Watson refused a second glass of his host’s wine, and left the bungalow.
It was dark now in the streets and all the life of the town seemed concentrated in the tavern. Through the glass of its double swinging doors two rectangles of red lights fell on the road providing the only illumination in the settlement.
Most of the patrons of the establishment were standing, taking their drinks over the bar. A Spaniard was playing the accordeon, while some of the other workmen were dancing with the half-breed girls. There was, an abundance of Chilians who had strayed in from the other side of the mountains, and who, after a few days of work, would be sure to wander off to some other camp, driven by their eternal restlessness; a strange and disturbing lot, these, always ready with their knives, yet always ready to smile and speak softly. In another group were the natives of the land,with their thick beards, ponchos on their backs, and heavy spurs clicking, stray horsemen who lived no one knew how, nor did anyone know where they came from. Like the cowboys of former times they wore the wide leather belt ornamented with silver coins which served as a rack for their revolvers and knives.
All of these Americans treated the accordeon playing and the waltzes of the Galicians andgringoswith scornful silence, until finally one of them demanded the “cueca” in so threatening a tone that the couples who were dancing with their arms about one another’s necks in European fashion, hastily left the floor. Then the native dances began, the “pericon,” the “gato,” those old Argentine dances, for so many generations the chief diversion of the natives, and more popular among them than any other, the Chilian “cueca,” which, for hours at a time, with its accompaniment of hand-clapping and sharp cries, excited the crowd gathered in the tavern.
The proprietor of thebolichehanded out two guitars, carefully kept under the counter, whereupon the players squatted with their instruments on the ground; but at once a half-breed servant girl hurried towards the musicians to offer them the horse skulls which were the places of honor of the establishment.
Besides possessing this distinction, they were also the best seats in the place. The proprietor owned a couple of chairs which were always brought out when the commissioner of police or some other dignitary came to call, but they were rickety, and gave small promise of lasting out the evening. The steadiest and safest seats in thebolichewere those provided by theskeletons of animals, dragged in for this useful purpose from the mesa.
At the sound of the guitars the couples stepped out from the groups along the wall. The girls, a handkerchief in their left hands, held out their skirts with the right, and slowly revolved. The men, also holding a handkerchief in their left hands, gave it a rotary motion, as they circled round their partners, for the “cueca,” like the dances of primitive times, tells the eternal story of the male’s pursuit of the female. The women meanwhile danced in small circles, fleeing from the men, whose wider circles enclosed those of their partners.
The girls who were not dancing clapped their hands continuously, emphasizing the purring rhythm of the guitars. Now and then one of them would sing a couplet of the “cueca,” at which the men would shout and toss up their hats.
A horseman dismounted in front of the tavern. He tied his mount to a post of the leaf screen, and came in, receiving full in his face as he stood in the door, the red light of the lamps that hung from the ceiling. The newcomer, whom the men greeted with respect, might have been about thirty years of age. Like all the other horsemen of the region, he wore a poncho and heavy spurs; his hair and beard were long, and his sharply outlined profile might have been taken for that of an Arab. Although handsome, his bearing was harsh and repellent, and in his black eyes shone at times an expression that was both imperious and cruel. This was “Manos Duras,” notorious in the territory, and a somewhat disquieting neighbor, for he lived from thesale of cattle; but no one had ever been able to discover where he bought his steers.
The proprietor made haste to offer him a glass of gin, while even the roughest lookinggauchosraised a hand to their hats as though he were their chief. The Galicians looked curiously at him, repeating his name to one another, while themestizaswent towards him smiling like slave-girls.
Manos Duras accepted this reception somewhat haughtily. One of the women, eager to provide him with a seat of honor, dragged out another horse-skull, on which the fear-inspiringgauchosat down, while the patrons of the tavern squatted around him on the floor.
The “cueca,” interrupted for a moment by this arrival, went on again, and did not stop even at the entrance of another personage of important demeanor, to whom, as soon as he appeared on the threshold, the tavern-keeper began bowing most respectfully, from the other side of the bar.
This was Don Roque, Commissioner of Police at the dam, and the only representative of Argentine authority in the settlement. As the governor of the territory of Rio Negro lived in a town on the Atlantic, which it required a journey of twelve days on horseback to reach—six times what it required to go to Buenos Aires by train—the Commissioner, who was his representative, enjoyed an ample freedom for the simple reason that he was forgotten. The Governor lived too far away to send for him, and the Minister of the Interior, who resided in the capitol of the Republic, did not deign even to notice the Commissioner’s existence.
As a matter of fact he did not abuse his authority,nor did he have at his disposal the means of making others feel it too heavily. Fat, good-natured, and of somewhat rustic manners, he was a native of Buenos Aires, who, falling on evil days, had been forced to ask for a government job, and had resigned himself to accepting the one offered him in Patagonia. He wore city clothes, adapted, however, to the discharge of his duties by the addition of high boots and a wide-brimmed sombrero. A revolver in full view on his waistcoat was the only insignia of authority he displayed.
The proprietor handed out his best chair, kept under the counter for guests of unusual distinction, and the commissioner set it down near Manos Duras, who, by way of acknowledging the Police Commissioner’s presence removed his hat but did not stir from the horse skull in which he was sitting.
The dance went on. Don Roque was puffing with great satisfaction at a huge cigar, which thegaucho, in a lordly manner, had offered.
“Do you know,” said the Commissioner, speaking in a low tone, “they say you’re the fellow who stole three steers from the Pozo Verde ranch last week. That’s outside my jurisdiction, since it’s in the Rio Colorado limits, but my associate, the commissioner over that way, thinks you’re the one that did it.”
Manos Duras went on smoking in silence. Finally he spat.
“They don’t want me to sell meat to the camp up here at the dam.”
“Well, they told the governor of the territorythat it was you who killed those two peddlers a few months back.”
The terriblegauchoshrugged and said coldly, as if bored by this dialogue,
“Why don’t they prove what they say?”
And the dance in the “Galician’s Resort” went on until ten o’clock, this being, in a land where everyone gets up with the dawn, the equivalent of those early morning hours at which the night revels of city dwellers come to an end.
But the chief citizens of the settlement were not asleep. Nearly all of them could be found late in the evening, sitting at a desk or table somewhere, pen in hand, while scenes very different from those actually around them floated before their eyes.
Canterac, his head leaning on his arm, was looking at a little house near the Champ de Mars. In it was a woman, of rather sad expression, whose hair was turning grey, although her cheeks still had the freshness of girlhood. Two little girls sat near her at the table, and a boy,hisboy, fourteen years old now, sat in his father’s place.... They were talking of him, and Canterac, sitting at his rough oak table in Patagonia, put out a hand to speak to them.... The stiff pen fell out of his hand. Smiling to himself he went on with his writing.
“And I shall see you soon. Within a few days I shall make the last payment on those debts of honor that drove me away from you.... And that I have at last cancelled them is due to you, my brave comrade, and to your wise management of the savings I havesent you. How good it will be to see you and the children....”
For the moment he had lost his expression of stern authority. This was another de Canterac, one never seen in that Patagonian settlement.
Then, as he was about to slip his letter into an envelope, a postscript occurred to him.
“I enclose this month’s check. Next month I shall have more to send you as I shall receive my pay for some of the extra jobs I have been doing lately.”
Pirovani too was writing a letter that evening. In a nun’s school in Italy, among classmates, some of whom bore the most aristocratic names in the kingdom, his daughter was being educated. He smiled as he wrote, pouting out his lips as he used to do when he played with his little daughter.
“You must learn everything a fine young lady should know, my little Ida. Your old father got the money he is spending now on your education by good hard work, and sometimes when you were a little girl he deprived himself of a lot of things. You mustn’t forget that I had a hard time of it when I was a boy, and had none of your advantages. But just the same I made my way in the world. I know I’m ignorant, but my little Ida will know enough for two when she leaves school. And this is something else I want her to know. If I haven’t married again, it was on your account,Ida mía, it was for you that I have worked so hard.
“Next year I am coming home, and we shall buy a castle, and you will rule it like a queen, and then some fine young cavalry officer will fall in love with you, andyou will marry him, and bear his aristocratic name, and your poor old father will be jealous....”
Moreno, too, in the modest building where his office adjoined his living quarters, was writing to his wife all about the fine dream he cherished of finally landing a government job in Buenos Aires....
Richard Watson was not writing letters that evening. His drawing board on his knees, he was tracing on a large sheet of paper the path of one of the main canals. But as he worked the definite outlines of board and tracings on it became blurred. The red and blue inks on the paper became a river bordered with willow trees standing out with refreshing beauty in a land of parched soil and choking dust.
The landscape he saw was of a diminutive scale. The whole extent of the district around the camp fitted into the limits of his drawing paper. At the far end of the plain he suddenly saw a rider, no bigger than a small fly, moving towards him with a graceful swing and something joyous about its free motion.... Was it theSeñorita Rojas, in her boy’s clothes, whirling her lassoo?
Watson raised his hand to his eyes, and rubbed them. No, there was nothing there. He brushed the paper as though to sweep away the intruding vision, and the canal, with its red and blue lines, reappeared.
Once more he set to work on his monotonous task, but in a few moments he raised his eyes again from the paper, for now Celinda was appearing at the back of the room, mounted on her horse; the apparition was not of pigmy proportions this time, but life sized....
The girl threw her lassoo at him, breaking out intounrestrained youthful laughter that displayed all her sharp young teeth; and automatically Richard moved his head to dodge the descending circles of rope.
“I must be asleep,” he thought. “There’s no use trying to work tonight. Well, let’s go to bed.”
But before he went to sleep, he saw the whole camp spread out before him, and looked down on it from a height in the sunset, just as when Celinda, on her horse, had been beside him.
But this time the ground below was dark, and on the blue background of the sky, pierced with lights, an apparition grew before him, a woman, of a grave beauty, with stars in her hair, and on her dark tunic, a woman of great size who spread out her arms, plucking in the darkness the dreams that grow in the wide meadows of the infinite, and scattering a rain of soft fragrant petals over the earth.... It was Night herself comforting with dreams the restless striving exiles of that faraway Patagonian settlement....
But, as Richard Watson was young, the dewiest, freshest petals were for him; as they touched him he shrank away, and then felt a terror lest there should be no more; for the petals that startled him even as they caressed were the first dreams of youthful love.
AGROUP of children playing on the “main street,” so-called, burst into shouts of astonishment as they caught sight of the coach which three times a week made the trip from the dam to Fuerte Sarmiento, for it presented an extraordinary appearance.
These little ragamuffins, busy with their games in the ruts and holes of the highway, presented all the racial diversities characteristic of the settlement’s population. There were white children shuffling about in their elders’ cast-off shoes, their small forms lost in the baggy folds of their fathers’ trousers; and there were half-breed children whose dress had been simplified to a mere shirt, short enough to expose their little copper-colored bellies to the air.
As the travellers who arrived at the dam had rarely been known to bring anything with them in the way of baggage save a canvas sack in which was heaped whatever clothing they possessed, the young inhabitants were very naturally excited and astonished at sight of the trunks and boxes heaped on the top of the mail coach, as, drawn by four lean and clay-spattered nags, it rattled up the road. So high was the pile of luggage roped on to the coach roof that, as the stage lurched into and out of the ruts of the clay road, the whole structure tipped over at such an angle that it seemed about to upset.
The men who were out of work, attracted by the novel sight, stood watching from the doorway of the tavern. The coach stopped finally in front of the frame house occupied by Watson, who came out in front of his door, his servants peering from the doorway behind him.
As soon as they saw that the passenger stepping down from the coach was Robledo, men and women rushed forward to greet him, stretching out their hands to him in the confident comradeship of the desert. But everyone promptly forgot him at sight of the other passengers.
First came the Marquis de Torre Bianca, who turned around to help his wife to alight from the clumsy steps.
The Marquise, dressed in a luxurious travelling suit which contrasted oddly with her surroundings, wore the hard expression which disfigured her beauty in her bad moments. In spite of her thick veil, the red dust of the long road she had travelled covered her face and hair. With scarcely restrained astonishment and ill-humor, she looked about her, and her eyes betrayed the despair with which she was saying to herself, “Is this what I have come to?”
“Well, here we are,” said Robledo cheerfully. “Two days and two nights from Buenos Aires, and a couple of hours driving through a dust storm, that isn’t so bad! The ends of the earth are quite a way off from here!”
Several of the workmen who had welcomed Robledo began, of their own accord, to unload the baggage. These were Elena’s things sent on to her at Barcelonaby her maid, and she cherished them. They were the chests and boxes saved from her shipwreck!
Meanwhile a group of children and ragged women had gathered around Elena, gazing at her with amazement and admiration, as though she had fallen into their midst from another planet. Some of the little girls timidly felt of the cloth of her dress. Their fingers had never touched anything so wonderful!
By this time the news of Robledo’s arrival had reached Canterac, Pirovani, and Moreno, and the engineer was presenting them to his friends.
Watson, seeing that the multitude of bags and boxes was being carried into the house he occupied with Robledo, said to his partner,
“You don’t expect the lady to share our rough quarters, do you?”
“The lady,” Robledo replied, “is the wife of an old college friend of mine. He is going to take pot luck with us, and so is she. You don’t need to build a palace for her.”
But Elena found it difficult to conceal her distress as she looked about at the rooms that she was henceforth to live in; rough wooden walls, scanty and awkward furniture, and scattered about, on every side, saddles, engineering instruments, and sacks of provisions; and everything in this house, occupied by two busy men who had no thought for anything except their work, was in disorder, and covered with dust.
Torre Bianca was never under any circumstances surprised. As Robledo took him through the house, putting in a word of apology now and then for its appearance, the Marquis smiled gently at his friend.Whatever Manuel did seemed to him worthy of approbation.
“And here are the servants,” said Robledo, introducing to Elena a fat half-breed, already well on in years, who acted as housekeeper, two little barefootedmestizas, who served as errand girls, and the Spanish peasant who took care of the horses. All of this ragged crew expressed with incessant smiles the admiration they felt for the beautiful lady, and Elena finally broke into a laugh as she remembered the servants she had left in Paris.
After supper Robledo took his partner aside to discuss the progress of the work with him.
As Watson showed him the plans and documents, he also mentioned what Canterac had said to him that afternoon.
“He says that in six months we shall be irrigating....”
Robledo looked immensely pleased.
“Then we’ll see this hard baked soil that bears nothing butmatorralesnow, turn into the kind of earth they must have had in the Garden of Eden. Thousands of people will lead happier and better lives here than they could ever do in the old world, and with all that, you and I, Watson, are going to get rich. We’ll get rich because we’ll be helping other people to get rich. That’s the way it goes. If you want progress, you’ve got to make it profitable to somebody.”
The two friends sat silent, looking into the air before them as if they saw there the lands eternally green, and gurgling canals in which gleamed silver water, the roads bordered with tall trees, and the white houses,which were to come to life on the arid mesa at the magic touch of water. Watson, as he saw the picture unfold before him, was reminded of his native California; to Robledo, the scene in his mind’s eye, was very like his beloved Valencia.
It was Watson who came out of his day-dream first. He nodded towards the adjoining room in which they had left the new arrivals. The Marquis was dozing in a canvas chair; Elena sat at a little distance from him, her head in her hands, in a tragic attitude which indicated plainly that the question, “What have I come to?” was throbbing in her mind with desperate persistence.
During the few days she had spent in Buenos Aires her exile had seemed to her tolerable. The capital was like any large European city. It was only after determined search that she had discovered a corner of the old colonial town, a small remnant of earlier and more primitive times, barely sufficient to convince her that she had actually reached America.
The only thing that had seemed really strange to her during her sojourn in Buenos Aires, besides her quarters in a second-class hotel, was the absence of her automobile; aside from this, her manner of living had undergone no great change. But then came that terrible journey across interminable plains through which the train crawled hour-long, and never a house nor a living soul. It was as though the world had suddenly become nothing but space! And then the arrival in this strange land where the turn of a wheel or even a step started up clouds of dust; where the soil which was dissolved and held in suspension in the air clogged andirritated her nose and throat; where the people looked ragged and unkempt, and yet treated everyone else with a certain familiarity, as though they considered anyone who came there, their equal! “What had she come to?”
Robledo answered the question he read in his partner’s eyes.
“My friend is going to help us. He’s an engineer. But don’t worry about him. I am going to give him a share in our business, out of my half of course.”
Then he told Watson the few facts he thought his partner should know about the Marquis.
“As long as your friend is going to help us,” said the young American, “you had better take his share out of my half as well as yours. He seems a nice fellow. Anyway I feel sorry for his wife.”
Robledo took the boy’s hand in his, in quick response to his generosity, and they dropped the subject.
On the very next morning, Elena, who showed a certain easy adaptability to the diverse circumstances of her life, set out to win the admiration of her hosts by her domestic talents, just as, a few weeks earlier, she had sought distinction in Paris drawing rooms through quite other attainments. Dressed in a tailored suit which she had cast aside in Paris, but which caused a great sensation among the engineer’s servants, she started out, with carefully gloved hands, to set the house in order.
The half-breed and her two little helpers submissively followed theseñoraaround, until the moment came when Elena rashly ventured to add example to precept; whereupon her ignorance of housework became immediately apparent. It was only too clear that she did not at all know how to do the things she had ordered to be done, and the half-breed’s help was more than once required in order to get the Marquise out of the difficulties her ignorance had plunged her into.
In the kitchen a stove, in which was burned the same oil as that used for the dredging machines, served for cooking purposes. Elena, delighted by the ease with which the flame could be lighted and put out, determined to have something to do with the preparations of the next meal. But she soon had to retire before the superior skill of the half-breed, who was now frankly laughing at her pretensions as a housekeeper.
Still trying to be useful, Elena took off her gloves in order to wash the dishes, but she at once put them on again, fearful that the very hot water might injure her delicate skin, and destroy the polish of her nails—and she remembered that in her moments of despair, she had felt a certain relief in contemplating her hands.
Torre Bianca, dressed in a tweed riding suit, accompanied Watson and Robledo to the canals. He watched the pile drivers at work, saw what was being done, and talked with the peons. It wasn’t long before he was covered with dust from head to foot; his sunburned hands itched painfully; and yet he already felt the happy tranquillity of the man who knows that he can earn his daily bread.
At nightfall the three engineers returned to the house, where they found dinner awaiting them. Elena had been complaining of the rustic simplicity of the table covers and plates. The half-breed, at her instigation, purchased for a modest price, some additional pieces of china which had found their way from Buenos Aires to the “Galician’s Resort.” The next day some flowers, brought in by the two little copper-colored errand girls, appeared on the table, and it became more evident from day to day that there was now a woman accustomed to the refinements of life in the engineers’ house.
One evening, while the half-breed was serving the first course, Elena threw off from about her shoulders an old evening wrap which, as it was somewhat the worse for its previous services, she now used as a dressing gown. As she emerged from this covering it was revealed that she was in evening dress. Her gown was a little worn, but it was still a brilliant relic of happier days.
Watson looked at her with astonishment, Robledo made a gesture which indicated that he thought she had gone crazy, but the Marquis remained impassive, as though nothing that Elena did could cause him any surprise.
“I’ve always dressed for dinner,” observed Elena, “and I don’t see any reason for changing my habits here. It would make me so uncomfortable!”
The hours after the evening meal were usually spent in long conversations. Robledo did most of the talking. He liked to tell the stories of the various interesting characters he had seen pass through “the land of all the world.” Many of them had already wandered over a great part of the planet before they landed in the port of Buenos Aires. Others eager for adventure hadfled to the new continent in order to begin a new life there.
In the capital they had encountered the same obstacles as those they had run away from in Europe. The big city was already old. Tenements and slums had grown up there too, and it was as hard to make a living as ever it was in Europe. Sometimes it was even harder, so great was the competition between all professions in the crowd thronging into Buenos Aires from every quarter of the globe.
So they sought the waste places of the republic, the territories that were still arid plains, and began transforming them for the future generations of immigrants.
“What a lot of strange characters I have seen pass through here!” Robledo would begin. “I remember one fellow, a peon, who, in spite of his angry-looking, bulbous nose, inflamed by long years of drinking, still had something about him that suggested an interesting history. When he came straggling through here he was nothing but a wreck; but he was like those ruined palaces, the smallest fragment of which, a piece of broken pillar, or a bit of pediment, picked up from among the crumbled walls, evokes the splendors of the past. Yet this fellow would stop at nothing, not even theft, when he craved drink, and would lie for days on the ground dead drunk. But a gesture, a chance word would make us suspect that he had not always been a dirty, drink-sodden vagabond.
“One day I found him brushing the foreman’s hair, just for the joke of the thing, and shaping the fellow’s mustache, making it look like Kaiser Wilhelm’s. SoI gave him a drink, I gave him all the drinks he could hold, because that’s the only way to make that kind of a fellow talk. And so I learned that this broken-down old drunkard was a German baron, once a captain of the Imperial Guard. He had gambled with some money left in his charge by his superior officers, and instead of committing suicide, as his family expected him to do, he came to America, where he began his career as a general. He ended up a useless, drunken, day-laborer.”
Seeing that Elena was interested, Robledo went on modestly,
“This German baron was a general in one of the revolutions in Venezuela. I, too, was once a general in another South American republic. I was even minister of war for ten days ... but they threw me out for being too scientific, and for not knowing how to handle amacheteas well as my aides.”
Then Robledo went on to speak of another peon, a drunkard also, a silent gloomy sort of fellow, who had crawled into the camp up at the dam to die. They had buried him near the river, and Robledo had found some of the poor devil’s papers in the canvas sack the vagabond dragged along with him. He had once been a well-known architect in Vienna. One of the photographs among the papers was of a lady with an impressive head-dress and long pendent earrings, who looked very much like the murdered Empress. This was the architect’s wife. While her husband was accompanying General Gordon on one of his expeditions she had been killed in Khartoum, torn to pieces by the fanatics that the Mahdi was leading through theSudan. The other photograph, that of a handsome Austrian officer, his white coat snugly fitted in at the waist, was the vagabond’s son.
“And it’s no use trying to reform those fellows,” said Robledo. “You may clean them up a bit, and make life a little more comfortable for them, you may preach to them about drinking less, and try in every way to help them ‘get back’—As soon as they are rested and begin to look a little happier, they come up to you some fine morning with packs on their backs. ‘Well, I’m off, boss! What’s due me?’ And it’s no use asking them any questions. Everything is all right, they have no complaints to make; but just the same they light out. No sooner do they get a few square meals than the devil who drives them round and round the globe suddenly remembers them and starts them off again. They know perfectly well that beyond the horizon line out yonder are the Andes, and beyond the Andes, Chile; and beyond that the Pacific and its islands, and then the crowding masses of China.... And so their mania for wandering awakens ... they must always see what is beyond.... They pick up their bundles and start out again, with hunger and exhaustion waiting for them out there.... They die in hospitals, or in the desert; and if they do not die but keep on, always following the ‘beyond’ that mocks and beguiles them, they turn up here again—but only because they have made a complete circuit of the globe.”
Now and then the two engineers spoke of their own lives. Watson’s history was of the briefest. Leaving his native California after graduating from Berkeley, he had taken up his engineering work in the silvermines of Mexico, and from there he had gone to Peru. Finally he had moved on to Buenos Aires where he had met Robledo, and it was there the two men had gone into partnership in order to carry out their Rio Negro enterprise.
The Spaniard did not like to recall his experiences in America before his arrival in Argentina. In that earlier period he had taken part in revolutions for which he felt nothing but contempt, becoming involved in them merely because of his desire for activity. For the same reason he had undertaken various business ventures only to discover in the course of them that he was being deceived and robbed, sometimes by his partners, sometimes by the government. Violent changes in his fortunes had thrown him from absurd abundance into abject want. But he avoided talking of all this, and most of his stories were about life in Patagonia.
Once he had crossed the enormous plateau which begins at the cut of the Black River and stretches toward the Strait of Magellan. He had started out on this exploring expedition after resigning his position with the Argentine government, and to avoid expense he had taken with him only a native peon and a troup of six desert horses capable of feeding on the rough weeds of the mesa. Robledo and the peon rode all day, changing horses at frequent intervals. The engineer had, with the help of some of his friends, made out a map indicating the springs, the only possible camping places.
For several years there had been droughts. On reaching the first spring Robledo found that it was very salty. He was accustomed to the brackish waterwhich the optimism of the desert explorers considers drinkable; but the water in this spring was of saltiness that was more than he or the Indian with him could stomach.
They went on, confident that they would come upon a spring the next day. When they reached it they found that it did not contain salt water, for the reason that there was no water in it at all. So they continued across the plateau that was always endless and always the same. Steering their course by the compass, they suffered a thirst which made them walk with their lower jaws drooping, and through their eyes, starting from their heads, passed now and then the terrifying glitter of madness. And finally they had been forced to resort to a loathesome thing in order to ease the torment of their swollen tongues and throats with a little liquid.
“What tormented me,” said Robledo, “was the memory of all the times when I had been asked to have a drink in some café or other, and had not cared enough about what was set before me to drink it—beer, charged waters, iced drinks—and then I was stricken with remorse at the memory of certain parties I had been to, when I had passed by the buffet full of decanters and bottles without taking any of their contents, for I kept saying to myself, excited with fever as I was, and staggering along under the hard merciless sun, ‘If you had drunk all the beers, and all the soda waters, and all the iced drinks that were offered you and that you didn’t appreciate, you would now have inside of you a reserve store of liquids and you’d be able to stand this awful thirst much better!’ And this absurd idea tormented me like remorse for a crime, andat times I wanted to punch my own head for my stupidity in not having drunk everything that had once been within my reach so that I might have been prepared for that awful desert trip.
“Finally, with only two of our six horses still stumbling along beside us, we reached a well of fresh water. That was the most delicious drink of my whole life! And after all our long hard pull through that desert of death, we found nothing! The information I had been given, and to confirm which I had started off on this expedition, proved to be false.... But that’s the way you have to seek fortune now, for those of us who go to the new world are half a century late. All the rich lands, those easy to develop, have been taken up, and only those that are remote and inhospitable, are left—and often all that they offer is ruin and death.
“However,” Robledo continued, “men go right on coming to this corner of the globe. Hope lives here among us, and without hope life is intolerable. And just consider our own household for instance! Elena there, a Russian, Federico, Italian, Watson from the United States, I a Spaniard. And the people who come to see us are each of them of a different nationality. As I say, it’s the land of all!”
Little by little it became the custom of the most important personages of the settlement to call at the engineers’ house after supper. First to appear was Canterac, in a suit of military cut, and still more carefully brushed and polished than before the arrival of the Torre Biancas. Then came Moreno, betraying a certain nervous agitation at greeting his hostess, uttering a few stammerings instead of words, and almostbiting off his tongue in the tenseness of his embarrassment. And last came Pirovani, displaying a new suit every other night, and always bringing his hostess a present.
Canterac used to laugh at him, asserting that if Pirovani was late it was because he had been polishing his watch charms, watch chain and cuff buttons, so as to dazzle the rest of the company.
One evening the Italian appeared in a startling suit just arrived from Bahia Blanca, bearing in his fat hand a bouquet of enormous roses.
“These were brought down to me today from Buenos Aires,señora marquesa, and I hasten to lay them at your feet!”
Canterac glared at the Italian with mock indignation, and murmured in a loud aside to Robledo,
“That’s a lie! These roses came by telegraph! Moreno, who knows everything, told me so, and this afternoon Pirovani sent a man to get them from the station. He had strict orders to gallop all the way!”
The housekeeper and the two little half-breeds cleared the table, and the living room, in spite of its rough wooden partitions, began to look suggestive of festivity, as the three callers grouped about Elena, offering her compliments and conversation, according to their talents. It was noticeable that they invariably repeated the wordmarquesaat every opportunity, as though they enjoyed being constantly reminded that they were in such distinguished company.
Elena soon discovered a preference for Canterac which she made no attempt to conceal. After all, he was of her world, although his circle in Paris had notbeen the same as hers. Yet it had been adjacent, and though they had never met, they discovered that they had mutual friends.
While the Frenchman and Elena talked, Moreno smoked resignedly, exchanging a few words with Watson, or listening to Pirovani’s discussions with Robledo and the Marquis. But he had little attention for anyone save the Marquise and Canterac, whom he watched with anxious eyes. However, thetertuliaunderwent a transformation after the arrival of Pirovani with his roses.
The next evening Elena and the men of her household were sitting at table, more silent than usual. She was wearing one of her most startling evening dresses, one which, even in Paris, would have been described as daring. But the three engineers, still in their work clothes, appeared to be exhausted by the day’s labors. Robledo yawned several times though he was making valiant efforts to keep awake. The Marquis was quietly nodding in his chair; and Elena meanwhile was looking at Watson as though she had for the first time become aware of him, which caused the young American considerable discomfort.
Suddenly Pirovani appeared at the door, carrying a large package, and arrayed in a new suit of wide checked material whose many colors resembled the mottled patterns of a python’s skin.
“Señora marquesa,” he began solemnly, “a friend of mine in Buenos Aires has just sent me this box of caramels. Allow me to present them to you!”
Elena, amused by the contractor’s new clothes, smilingly acknowledged his present, rewarding him for his attentions with several glances full of coquetry.
At that point, Moreno arrived, recklessly gotten up in patent leather boots, a wide-skirted cutaway, and a high silk hat, just as though he were about to call on his chief, the Minister of the Interior.
Robledo, rousing a little at these arrivals, observed ironically,
“What elegance, Moreno!”
“I was afraid,” exclaimed the latter “that these things would get moth eaten in the trunk, so I put them on to give them an airing.”
Timidly he approached Elena. “Good evening,señora marquesa!” Imitating the personages of elegant life and manners whom he had so often admired in novels and on the stage, he bent over her hand. Then unwilling to leave her side after this successful performance, he did his utmost to keep up a conversation with her, to Pirovani’s intense indignation. Finally the Italian got up, as a protest against this intrusion, and could be heard inquiring of Robledo in his corner,
“Did you ever see anything like the get-up of that jackass?”
But the surprises of the evening were not yet over.
The door opened once more, and Canterac appeared on the threshold, where he paused a moment, giving all his spectators the opportunity to get a good look at him.
He wore a dinner coat, and a fine and exquisitely ironed dress shirt, and when finally he stepped into the room, he did so with a certain languid grace as though he were presenting himself in a Paris drawingroom. After a slight bow to the men, he bent over Elena and kissed her hand.
“I too felt like dressing for dinner this evening, Marquesa, as in the good old times.”
Elena, pleased by this homage, turned her back upon Moreno, and made the new arrival sit down beside her. For the rest of the evening she devoted most of her attentions to the Frenchman, while Pirovani sulked in a corner, making small attempt to conceal his displeasure, though he was obviously impressed by Canterac’s aristocratic appearance.
For several evenings after this the contractor failed to appear. Moreno, curious about the reason for his absence, called at the Italian’s and came back with some news.
“Pirovani’s gone to Bahia Blanca without telling anyone what for. He must have some important business on.”
So thetertuliascontinued. Canterac in his dinner coat still enjoyed Elena’s preference, and Moreno got into his swallow-tail every evening for no other purpose apparently than to carry on his desultory conversations with Torre Bianca. Even the Marquis appeared one evening in a dinner coat, and when Robledo made a gesture of astonishment, he gave a shrug and a nod towards his wife.
On the fifth evening Moreno came rushing in to announce that Pirovani had returned. “He may be here at any moment now!”
And since Pirovani had provided them all with a subject for speculation, everyone had the sense of waiting for him to put in an appearance.
Then the door opened; and pausing on the threshold as Canterac had done, in order to allow the onlookers to get the full effect of his attire, Pirovani appeared, in a frock coat that was resplendent with lapels of a heavily ribbed silk, the fibres of which were as thick as those of wood, a white waistcoat richly embroidered, a white camelia in his buttonhole, and a large ribbon from which dangled a monocle.... Needless to say, he had never learned to wear one!
His aspect was solemn and magnificent, like that of a circus director, or a world-famous prestidigitator. Making manful efforts to preserve his calm and conceal his emotions, he nodded with masculine indifference to the men, and bowed low before themarquesa, whose hand he raised to his lips.
Elena’s eyes gleamed with suppressed amusement. Everything about Pirovani always seemed to her humorous. But, perceiving that this transformation had been accomplished in her honor, she welcomed him affectionately, and made him sit down beside her. Canterac, visibly offended by his rival’s triumph, abruptly left the group, while Moreno, with a scandalized expression, made a gesture towards Pirovani and muttered to Robledo,
“So that’s the important business he took a trip to Bahia Blanca for! That’s what he made such a mystery about!”
Robledo, however, left him to mutter alone, and went on talking to Watson, who, still dazed by the contractor’s theatrical entrance, was watching him with considerable amusement.
“From dinner coats to swallow-tails,” growledRobledo. “We’ll be holding carnival out on the desert soon, and this woman will be driving us all crazy before we get through!”
He glanced with relief at the young American, who, like himself, still wore his simple work clothes, and mentally compared his appearance with that of the other men in the room.
“What a commotion that sort of woman stirs up in a frontier settlement, where men live alone, and have no other distraction from their work!” he thought. “And she’s only just begun.... Who knows what she’ll try next? We may all end up by killing one another on her account! Perhaps this is Helen of Troy in our midst....”
With a cynical shrug, Robledo turned his back on the group around Elena. He had done his best to leave her in the old world—His conscience was clear on that score!
“ANOTHER little glass ofmate,comisario?”
The police commissioner of the camp sat opposite don Carlos Rojas in the latter’s living room. A half-breed girl, standing very straight, was looking at the two men with her slanting eyes, waiting for the master’s orders.
In front of them on the table were two little calabash shells full of a decoction made from themateherb, and they were sipping the liquid through the silver “straw” that is known in these regions as abombilla. No sooner did the servant hear the gurgling of the liquid in the straws, which indicated that the contents of the cup was getting low, than she ran to the stove and brought the “peacock” orpavaas the kettle is called, from the curved neck of which she poured boiling water on the soaking leaves at the bottom of the calabashes, and filled these unique goblets to the brim.
Rojas and his guest, as they talked, took frequent sips of their tea. It was evident from the rancher’s expression that something had gone wrong with him. As a matter of fact he had lost another steer, and he angrily attributed this loss to Manos Duras who, of late, had sold altogether too many pieces of beef to the camp at the Dam. As Rojas himself was its official victualler, the loss of his trade, in addition to the disappearance of his steers, seemed to him an insufferable outrage.
He had sent in hot haste for the commissioner, and together, after don Rojas had told his suspicions, they had counted his herd. It was certain that one was lacking. And, as he talked with don Roque, the rancher worked himself up to the point where he came out flatly with the statement that there was no justice to be had in Rio Negro.
“But,” protested thecomisarioin a tone of discouragement, “I sent that fellow up to the capital of the territory three separate times, under guard, in fact he went as a prisoner, and each time he got off scot-free. No proofs! What could we do? No one will testify against him!”
But Rojas continued his protests, and the commissioner to quiet his growing irritation, promised to make a more determined effort than ever this time to bring the thief to justice.
However, he had at his disposal very few means of carrying out his promise. The police forces at the settlement consisted of four lazy rascals, whose uniforms had grown old and spotted in the service, and whose only weapons were cavalry swords. When they had to pursue a criminal, the well-to-do inhabitants lent the police their rifles; and their horses, of course, were gaunt nags, too ill-nourished to be a menace to anyone intent on escaping.
“That’s what comes of being a federal republic,” lamented don Roque. “The states at least have their own police system. We in the territories who have to depend on the Federal Government for our protection,are so far away from Buenos Aires that they forget all about us. There’s nothing for us to do but trust to our wits for our safety.”
“Yes, here we are, deserted you might say,” continued don Roque, “turning into savings! After all, this is nothing but Patagonia, and it is only a few years ago that anything like civilization began here at all. Meanwhile the rest of the Argentine has forged ahead at a breathless pace in less than half a century.... Pucha! It’s worth seeing just the same!”
And for the moment they forgot their immediate worries, while they talked of that part of their country which had progressed with such dizzying rapidity within their lifetimes. But don Roque had a jealous enthusiasm for Patagonia also.
“Desert though it is at this moment, you’ll see it bloom yet, and in a short time from now, too, when this soil begins to get water. And it’s lucky for us that this land has such an ugly face.... If it hadn’t it would have been stolen from us long ago!”
Wound up by his own words he went on to tell how he had read in a magazine about thatgringoCharles Darwin, the same who had discovered how we had all come from monkeys. He, too, it seemed, had wandered around these parts, when, as a youth, he had landed at Bahia Blanca, arriving there in a British frigate in which he was making a tour of the world. He had taken it into his head to study the plants and animals of the region, not an arduous task because there were so few specimens of either. Finally, in despair, he gave up his search for new flora and went away, leaving to this arid plateau the name “Land of Desolation.”
“That was doing us a favor, if thegringobut knew it! Just as soon as people learn what this country is like when it’s irrigated, the English are sure to take it from us! Didn’t they take ourIslas Malvinas, that they now call Fauckland Islands?”
Rojas too began to talk of past times, lamenting the fact that his forebears had not been able to see where the true riches of the country lay. It had been their misfortune to become well-to-do before the generation of great and rapid fortune-making in the Argentine.
It was in 1870 that the government at Buenos Aires, growing weary of having the Indians, still in a state of savagery, at its very gates, completed the work of theConquistadores, by sending a military expedition out to the desert to take possession of twenty thousand leagues of land, practically all that was capable of cultivation.
“The government sold that land for 1500pesos. The league and thepesoin those days was worth only a fewcentavos. More than that, it allowed several years’ time for payment, and even printed the names of purchasers in the official newspaper, declaring them ‘well-deserving of the country’. The soldiers who had taken part in the expedition also received land as a reward for their services. It wasn’t long before they sold the titles to their acres to the store-keepers in exchange for gin, and canned food. And these are the lands that now supply wheat and beef to half the world! On them have arisen numberless villages and towns. Today a league of land, which once cost a few cents, is worth millions. The owners of all thisproperty have no other merit than that they kept their land, without cultivating it, and with no wish to sell it, waiting for the European immigration which would give it its value. My grandfather was already rich in those days and owned a big ranch. He didn’t want to buy any of the new property. If he had only known!”
Rojas at the moment was quite forgetful of how he had squandered the better part of his inheritance; the thought of the enormous fortune his family might have amassed had it been willing to take advantage of an opportunity provided by the rapid expansion of the country, and seized by so many others, fascinated and tormented him.
But at this point the conversation of the two Argentinians was interrupted by Celinda’s arrival. Dutifully wearing her riding skirt, she came in to give her father a kiss, and greet thecomisario. Taking advantage of the moment during which don Carlos left them to get a box of cigars, don Roque said teasingly to the girl,
“Haven’t I seen you wear a different riding suit when you were out on the mesa!”
Celinda smiled, at the same time indicating by a graceful little threatening gesture, that he must be more discreet.
“Be careful,” she said. “Don’t let my old man hear you.”
While the two men lit their cigars and went on with their talk about Manos Duras, and how he was to be punished for his lawlessness, Celinda knowing the conversation was likely to be a long one, left the ranch, demurely riding her horse with a side-saddle.
A half hour later, however, she was cantering along the river bank; wearing boy’s clothes and mounted on a different horse. Suddenly she caught sight of a group of riders approaching, and stopped to reconnoitre.
Canterac, inspired by his desire to arouse themarquesa’sinterest in him, had invited her to ride on the river path. It would, he believed, give her a heightened estimate of him when she saw the work that was being carried out under his direction. She would realize then that he was the real manager of the enterprise, when she saw hundreds of men obeying his orders....
Elena and the Frenchman were in the lead. Behind them rode Pirovani, who hadn’t a very steady seat, and lurched about rather grotesquely on his saddle, making determined efforts nevertheless to get his horse between Elena’s and the Frenchman’s. Last of the cavalcade came themarqués, Watson and Moreno.
As Elena and Canterac rode past Celinda the two women looked at one another. Themarquesasmiled, as though eager to speak to the young girl; but with a childish frown, Celinda turned severe eyes on her.
“She’s nothing but a girl,” said Canterac, “a mischievous little thing, full of pranks—and, although she looks like a boy, I shouldn’t wonder if she had it in her to turn any man’s head. The people hereabouts call herFlor de Rio Negro.”
Elena, offended by the girl’s attitude, looked haughtily at her.
“Flor, perhaps,” she commented, “but a little too wild!”
And followed by her escort she rode on.
This brief conversation had been carried on in French, so that Celinda caught but a few words of it; but it was easy to guess that themarquesahad said something disparaging, and Celinda did not restrain her impulse to make a grimace at the intruder’s unconscious back.
The other riders then drew near, and themarquésceremoniously greeted the young girl. Moreno, however, did not even see her, so intent was he in watching the group ahead. As for Richard Watson, he indicated by his manner that he intended riding on with the other members of the party; and he pretended not to understand Celinda’s perfectly obvious gestures.
She let him go on, though she wore an expression of childish annoyance. Suddenly, however, she repented of her meekness, and pulling on the reins, wheeled her horse around and followed the group.