The Blood of the Conquerors

by Harvey Fergusson

  CHAPTER XIV

  All the ceremonies and procedures, religious and legal, which had beenmade necessary by the death of Don Diego Delcasar, were done. The body ofthe Don had been taken to the church in Old Town and placed before thealtar, the casket covered with black cloth and surrounded by candles intall silver candlesticks which stood upon the floor. A Mass of impressivelength had been spoken over it by Father Lugaria assisted by numerouspriests and altar boys, and at the end of the ceremony the hundreds offriends and relatives of the Don, who filled the church, had lifted uptheir voices in one of the loudest and most prolonged choruses of wailingever heard in that country, where wailing at a funeral is as much a matterof formal custom as is cheering at a political convention. Afterwards acortege nearly a mile in length, headed by a long string of carriages andtailed by a crowd of poor Mexicans trudging hatless in the dust, had madethe hot and wearisome journey to the cemetery in the sandhills.

  Then the will had been read and had revealed that Ramon Delcasar was heirto the bulk of his uncle's estate, and that he was thereby placed inpossession of money, lands and sheep to the value of about two hundredthousand dollars. It was said by those who knew that the Don's estate hadonce been at least twice that large, and there were some who irreverentlyremarked that he had been taken off none too soon for the best interestsof his heirs.

  Shortly after the reading of the will, Ramon rode to the Archulera ranch,starting before daylight and returning after dark. He exchanged greetingswith the old man, just as he had always done.

  "Accept my sympathy, _amigo_," Archulera said in his formal, polite way,"that you have lost your uncle, the head of your great family."

  "I thank you, friend," Ramon replied. "A man must bear these things. Hereis something I promised you," he added, laying a small heavy canvas bagupon the table, just as he had always laid a package of tobacco or someother small gift.

  Old Archulera nodded without looking at the bag.

  "Thank you," he said.

  Afterward they talked about the bean crop and the weather, and had anexcellent dinner of goat meat cooked with chile.

  In town Ramon found himself a person of noticeably increased importance.One of his first acts had been to buy a car, and he had attracted muchattention while driving this about the streets, learning to manipulate it.He killed one chicken and two dogs and handsomely reimbursed their owners.These minor accidents were due to his tendency, the result of many yearsof horsemanship, to throw his weight back on the steering wheel and shout"whoa!" whenever a sudden emergency occurred. But he was apt, and soon wasrunning his car like an expert.

  His personal appearance underwent a change too. He had long cherished abarbaric leaning toward finery, which lack of money had prevented him fromindulging. Large diamonds fascinated him, and a leopard skin vest was athing he had always wanted to own. But these weaknesses he now rigorouslysuppressed. Instead he noted carefully the dress of Gordon Roth and ofother easterners whom he saw about the hotel, and ordered from the bestlocal tailor a suit of quiet colour and conservative cut, but of the verybest English material. He bought no jewelry except a single small pearlfor his necktie. His hat, his shoes, the way he had his neck shaved, allwere changed as the result of a painstaking observation such as he hadnever practised before. He wanted to make himself as much as possible likethe men of Julia's kind and class. And this desire modified his manner andspeech as well as his appearance. He was careful, always watching himself.His manner was more reserved and quiet than ever, and this made him appearolder and more serious. He smiled when he overheard a woman say that "hetook the death of his uncle much harder than she would have expected."

  Ramon now received business propositions every day. Men tried to sell himall sorts of things, from an idea to a ranch, and most of them seemed toproceed on the assumption that, being young and newly come into his money,he should part with it easily. Several of the opportunities offered himhad to do with the separation of the poor Mexicans from their landholdings. A prominent attorney came all the way from a town in thenorthern part of the State to lay before him a proposition of this kind.This lawyer, named Cooley, explained that by opening a store in a certainrich section of valley land, opportunities could be created for lendingthe Mexicans money. Whenever there was a birth, a funeral or a marriageamong them, the Mexicans needed money, and could be persuaded to signmortgages, which they generally could not read. In each Mexican familythere would be either a birth, a marriage or a death once in three yearson an average. Three such events would enable the lender to gainpossession of a ranch. And Cooley had an eastern client who would then buythe land at a good figure. It was a chance for Ramon to double his money.

  "You've got the money and you know the native people," Cooley arguedearnestly. "I've got the sucker and I know the law. It's a sure thing."

  Ramon thanked him politely and refused firmly. The idea of robbing a poorMexican of his ranch by nine years of usury did not appeal to him at all.In the first place, it would be a long, slow tedious job, and besides,poor people always aroused his pity, just as rich ones stirred his greedand envy. He was predatory, but lion-like, he scorned to spring on smallgame. He did not realize that a lion often starves where a jackal growsfat.

  Only one opportunity came to him which interested him strongly. A youngIrishman named Hurley explained to him that it was possible to buy mulesin Mexico, where a revolution was going on, for ten dollars each atconsiderable personal risk, to run them across the Rio Grande and to sellthem to the United States army for twenty dollars. Here was a gambler'schance, action and adventure. It caught his fancy and tempted him. But hehad no thought of yielding. Another purpose engrossed him.

  These weeks after his uncle's funeral gave him his first real grapple withthe world of business, and the experience tended to strengthen him in acertain cynical self-assurance which had been growing in him ever since hefirst went away to college, and had met its first test in action when hespoke the words that lead to the Don's death. He felt a deep contempt formost of these men who came to him with their schemes and their wares. Hesaw that most of them were ready enough to swindle him, though few of themwould have had the courage to rob him with a gun. Probably not one of themwould have dared to kill a man for money, but they were ready enough tocheat a poor _pelado_ out of his living, which often came to the samething. He felt that he was bigger than most of them, if not better. Hisself-respect was strengthened.

  "Life is a fight," he told himself, feeling that he had hit upon aprofound and original idea. "Every man wants pretty women and money. Hegets them if he has enough nerve and enough sense. And somebody else getshurt, because there aren't enough pretty women and money to go around."

  It seemed to him that this was the essence of all wisdom.