It was astonishing, it was disturbing, it was incomprehensible. And it did not fit in with his plans. He had intended to go North and return before she did; then, with all his affairs in order, ask her to go away with him. Cortez had already sent word to Alfego that Ramon was coming to Arriba County. He could not afford a change of plans now. But the prospect of [pg 148] seeing her again filled him with pleasure, sent a sort of weakening excitement tingling through his body.
And what did it mean that he was to be allowed to call on her? Had she, by any chance, won over her mother and brother? No; he couldn’t believe it. But he went to her house that evening shaken by great hopes and anticipations.
She wore a black dress that left her shoulders bare, and set off the slim perfection of her little figure. Her face was flushed and her eyes were deep. How much more beautiful she was than the image he carried in his mind! He had been thinking of her all this while, and yet he had forgotten how beautiful she was. He could think of nothing to say at first, but held her by both hands and looked at her with eyes of wonder and desire. He felt a fool because his knees were weak and he was tremulous. But a happy fool! The touch and the sight of her seemed to dissolve his strength, and also the hardness and the bitterness that life had bred in him, the streak of animal ferocity that struggle brought out in him. He was all desire, but desire bathed in tenderness and hope. She made him feel as once long ago he had felt in church when the music and the pageantry and sweet odours of the place had filled his childish spirit with a strange sense of harmony. He had felt small and unworthy, yet happy and [pg 149] forgiven. So now he felt in her presence that he was black and bestial beside her, but that possession of her would somehow wash him clean and bring him peace.
When he tried to draw her to him she shook her head, not meeting his eyes and freed herself gently.
“No, no. I must tell you.…” She led him to a seat, and went on, looking down at a toe that played with a design in the carpet. “I must explain. I promised mother that if she would let me see you this once to tell you, I would never try to see you again.”
There was a long silence, during which he could feel his heart pounding and could see that she breathed quickly. Then suddenly he took her face in both hot hands and turned it toward him, made her meet his eyes.
“But of course you didn’t mean that,” he said.
She struggled weakly against his strength.
“I don’t know. I thought I did.… It’s terrible. You know… I wrote you … some one saw us together. Gordon and mother found out about it. I won’t tell you all that they said, but it was awful. It made me angry, and they found out that I love you. It had a terrible effect on Gordon. It made him worse. I can’t tell you how awful it is for me. I love you. But I love him too. And to think I’m hurting him when [pg 150] he’s sick, when I’ve lived in the hope he would get well.…”
She was breathing hard now. Her eyes were bright with tears. All her defences were down, her fine dignity vanished. When he took her in his arms she struggled a little at first; then yielded with closed eyes to his hot kisses.
Afterward they talked a little, but not to much purpose. He had important things to tell her, they had plans to make. But their great disturbing hunger for each other would not let them think of anything else. Their conversation was always interrupted by hot confusing embraces.
The clock struck eleven, and she jumped up.
“I promised to make you go home at eleven,” she told him.
“But I must tell you … I have to leave town for a while.” He found his tongue suddenly. Briefly he outlined the situation he faced with regard to his estate. Of course, he said nothing about the penitentes, but he made her understand that he was going forth to fight for both their fortunes.
“I can’t do it, I won’t go, unless I know I am to have you,” he finished. “Everything I have done, everything I am going to do is for you. If I lose you I lose everything. You promise to go with me?”
His eyes were burning with earnestness, and [pg 151] hers were wide with admiration. He did not really understand her, nor she him. Unalterable differences of race and tradition and temperament stood between them. They had little in common save a great primitive hunger. But that, none-the-less, for the moment genuinely transfigured and united them.
She drew a deep breath.
“Yes. You must promise not to try to see me until then. When you are ready, let me know.”
She threw back her head, opening her arms to him. For a moment she hung limp in his embrace; then pushed him away and ran upstairs, leaving him to find his way out alone.
He walked home slowly, trying to straighten out his thoughts. Her presence seemed still to be all about him. One of her hairs was tangled about a button of his coat; her powder and the scent of her were all over his shoulder; the recollection of her kisses smarted sweetly on his mouth. He was weak, confused, ridiculously happy. But he knew that he would carry North with him greater courage and purpose than ever before he had known.
* * *
[pg 152]
CHAPTER XXI
In the dry clean air of the Southwest all things change slowly. Growth is slow and decay is even slower. The body of a dead horse in the desert does not rot but dessicates, the hide remaining intact for months, the bones perhaps for years. Men and beasts often live to great age. The pinon trees on the red hills were there when the conquerors came, and they are not much larger now—only more gnarled and twisted.
This strange inertia seems to possess institutions and customs as well as life itself. In the valley towns, it is true, the railroads have brought and thrown down all the conveniences and incongruities of civilization. But ride away from the railroads into the mountains or among the lava mesas, and you are riding into the past. You will see little earthen towns, brown or golden or red in the sunlight, according to the soil that bore them, which have not changed in a century. You will see grain threshed by herds of goats and ponies driven around and around the threshing floors, as men threshed grain before the Bible was written. You will see Indian pueblos which have not changed materially since the brave days when [pg 153] Coronado came to Taos and the Spanish soldiers stormed the heights of Acoma. You will hear of strange Gods and devils and of the evil eye. It is almost as though this crystalline air were indeed a great clear crystal, impervious to time, in which the past is forever encysted.
The region in which Ramon’s heritage lay was a typical part of this forgotten land. In the southern end of the Rocky Mountains, it was a country of great tilted mesas reaching above timber line, covered for the most part with heavy forests of pine and fir, with here and there great upland pastures swept clean by forest fires of long ago. Along the lower slopes of the mountains, where the valleys widened, were primitive little adobe towns, in which the Mexicans lived, each owning a few acres of tillable land. In the summer they followed their sheep herds in the upland pastures. There were not a hundred white men in the whole of Arriba County, and no railroad touched it.
In this region a few Mexicans who were shrewder or stronger than the others, who owned stores or land, dominated the rest of the people much as the patrones had dominated them in the days before the Mexican War. Here still flourished the hatred for the gringo which culminated in that war. Here that strange sect, the penitentes hermanos, half savage and half mediaeval, [pg 154] still was strong and still recruited its strength every year with young men, who elsewhere were refusing to undergo its brutal tortures.
For all of these reasons, this was an advantageous field for the fight Ramon proposed to make. In the valley MacDougall’s money and influence would surely have beaten him. But here he could play upon the ancient hatred for the gringo; here he could use to the best advantage the prestige of his family; here, above all, if he could win over the penitentes, he could do almost anything he pleased.
His plan of joining that ancient order to gain influence was not an original one. Mexican politicians and perhaps one or two gringos had done i
t, and the fact was a matter of common gossip. Some of these penitentes for a purpose had been men of great influence, and their initiations had been tempered to suit their sensitive skins. Others had been Mexicans of the poorer sort, capable of sharing the half-fanatic, half sadistic spirit of the thing.
Ramon came to the order as a young and almost unknown man seeking its aid. He could not hope for much mercy. And though he was primitive in many ways, there was nothing in him that responded to the spirit of this ordeal. The thought of Christ crucified did not inspire him to endure suffering. But the thought of a girl with yellow hair did.
* * *
[pg 155]
CHAPTER XXII
Ramon went first to the ranch at the foot of the mountains which his uncle had used as a headquarters, and which had belonged to the family for about half a century. It consisted merely of an adobe ranch house and barn and a log corral for rounding up horses.
Here Ramon left his machine. Here also he exchanged his business suit for corduroys, a wide hat and high-heeled riding boots. He greatly fancied himself in this costume and he embellished it with a silk bandana of bright scarlet and with a large pair of silver spurs which had belonged to his uncle, and which he found in the saddle room of the barn. From the accoutrement in this room he also selected the most pretentious-looking saddle. It was a heavy stock saddle, with German silver mountings and saddle bags covered with black bear fur. A small red and black Navajo blanket served as a saddle pad and he found a fine Navajo bridle, too, woven of black horsehair, with a big hand-hammered silver buckle on each cheek.
He had the old Mexican who acted as caretaker for the ranch drive all of the ranch horses into [pg 156] the corral, and chose a spirited roan mare for a saddle animal. He always rode a roan horse when he could get one because a roan mustang has more spirit than one of any other colour.
The most modern part of his equipment was his weapon. He did not want to carry one openly, so he had purchased a small but highly efficient automatic pistol, which he wore in a shoulder scabbard inside his shirt and under his left elbow.
When his preparations were completed he rode straight to the town of Alfego where the powerful Solomon had his establishment, dismounted under the big cottonwoods and strolled into the long, dark cluttered adobe room which was Solomon Alfego’s store. Three or four Mexican clerks were waiting upon as many Mexican customers, with much polite, low-voiced conversation, punctuated by long silences while the customers turned the goods over and over in their hands. Ramon’s entrance created a slight diversion. None of them knew him, for he had not been in that country for years, but all of them recognized that he was a person of weight and importance. He saluted all at once, lifting his hat, with a cordial “Como lo va, amigos,” and then devoted himself to an apparently interested inspection of the stock. This, if conscientiously [pg 157] done, would have afforded a week’s occupation, for Solomon Alfego served as sole merchant for a large territory and had to be prepared to supply almost every human want. There were shelves of dry goods and of hardware, of tobacco and of medicines. In the centre of the store was a long rack, heavily laden with saddlery and harness of all kinds, and all around the top of the room, above the shelves, ran a row of religious pictures, including popes, saints, and cardinals, Mary with the infant, Christ crucified and Christ bearing the cross, all done in bright colours and framed, for sale at about three dollars each.
It was not long before word of the stranger’s arrival reached Alfego in his little office behind the store, and he came bustling out, beaming and polite.
“This is Senor Solomon Alfego?” Ramon enquired in his most formal Spanish.
“I am Solomon Alfego,” replied the bulky little man, with a low bow, “and what can I do for the Senor?”
“I am Ramon Delcasar,” Ramon replied, extending his hand with a smile, “and it may be that you can do much for me.”
“Ah-h-h!” breathed Alfego, with another bow, “Ramon Delcasar! And I knew you when you were un muchachito” (a little boy). He bent [pg 158] over and measured scant two feet from the floor with his hand. “My house is yours. I am at your service. Siempre!”
The two strolled about the store, talking of the weather, politics, business, the old days—everything except what they were both thinking about. Alfego opened a box of cigars, and having lit a couple of these, they went out on the long porch and sat down on an old buggy seat to continue the conversation. Alfego admired Ramon’s horse and especially his silver-mounted saddle.
“Ha! you like the saddle!” Ramon exclaimed in well-stimulated delight. He rose, swiftly undid the cinches, and dropped saddle and blanket at the feet of his host. “It is yours!” he announced.
“A thousand thanks,” Alfego replied. “Come; I wish to show you some Navajo blankets I bought the other day.” He led the way into the store, and directed one of his clerks to bring forth a great stack of the heavy Indian weaves, and began turning them over. They were blankets of the best quality, and some of the designs in red, black and grey were of exceptional beauty. Ramon stood smiling while his host turned over one blanket after another. As he displayed each one he turned his bright pop-eyes on Ramon with an eager enquiring look. At last when he had [pg 159] seen them all, Ramon permitted himself to pick up and examine the one he considered the best with a restrained murmur of admiration.
“You like it!” exclaimed Alfego with delight. “It is yours!”
Mutual good feeling having thus been signalized in the traditional Mexican manner by an exchange of gifts, Alfego now showed his guest all over his establishment. It included, in addition to the store, several ware rooms where were piled stinking bales of sheep and goat and cow hides, sacks of raw wool and of corn, pelts of wild animals and bags of pinon nuts, and of beans, all taken from the Mexicans in trade. Afterward Ramon met the family, of patriarchal proportions, including an astonishing number of little brown children having the bright eyes and well developed noses of the great Solomon. Then came supper, a long and bountiful feast, at which great quantities of mutton, chile, and beans were served.
Having thus been duly impressed with the greatness and substance of his host, and also with his friendly attitude, Ramon was led into the little office, offered a seat and a fresh cigar. He knew that at last the proper time had come for him to declare himself.
“My friend,” he said, leaning toward Alfego confidentially, “I have come to this country and to you for a great purpose. You know that a rich [pg 160] gringo has been buying the lands of the poor people—my people and yours—all through this country. You know that he intends to own all of this country—to take it away from us Mexicans. If he succeeds, he will take away all of your business, all of my lands. You and I must fight him together. Am I right?”
Solomon nodded his head slowly, watching Ramon with wide bright eyes.
“Verdad!” he pronounced unctuously.
“I have come,” Ramon went on more boldly, “because my own lands are in danger, but also because I love the Mexican people, and hate the gringos! Some one must go among these good people and warn them not to sell their lands, not to be cheated out of their birthrights. My friend, I have come here to do that.”
“Bueno!” exclaimed Alfego. “Muy bueno!”
“My friend, I must have your help.”
Ramon said this as impressively as possible, and paused expectantly, but as Alfego said nothing, he went on, gathering his wits for the supreme effort.
“I know that you are a leader in the great fraternity of the penitent brothers, who are the best and most pious of men. My friend, I wish to become one of them. I wish to mingle my blood with theirs and with the blood of Christ, that all of us may be united in our great purpose [pg 161] to keep this country for the Spanish people, who conquered it from the barbarians.”
Alfego looked very grave, puffed his cigar violently three times and spat before he answered.
“My young friend,” (he spoke slowly and solemnly) “to pour out your blood in penance a
nd to consecrate your body to Christ is a great thing to do. Have you meditated deeply upon this step? Are you sure the Lord Jesus has called you to his service? And what assurance have I that you are sincere in all you say, that if I make you my brother in the blood of Christ, you will truly be as a brother to me?”
Ramon bowed his head.
“I have thought long on this,” he said softly, “and I know my heart. I desire to be a blood brother to all these, my people. And to you—I give you my word as a Delcasar that I will serve you well, that I will be as a brother to you.”
There was a silence during which Alfego stared with profound gravity at the ash on the end of his cigar.
“Have you heard,” Ramon went on, in the same soft and emotional tone of voice, “that the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad is going to build a line through the San Antonio Valley?”
Alfego, without altering his look of rapt meditation, nodded his head slowly.
[pg 162] “Do you suppose that you will gain anything by that, if this gringo gets these lands?” Ramon went on. “You know that you will not. But I will make you my partner. And I will give you the option on any of my mountain land that you may wish to rent for sheep range. More than that, I will make you a written agreement to do these things. In all ways we will be as brothers.”
“You are a worthy and pious young man!” exclaimed Solomon Alfego, rolling his eyes upward, his voice vibrant with emotion. “You shall be my brother in the blood of Christ.”
* * *
[pg 163]
CHAPTER XXIII
Ramon went to the Morada, the chapter house of the penitentes, alone and late at night, for all of the whippings and initiations of the order, except those of Holy Week, are carried on in the utmost secrecy.
The Blood of the Conquerors Page 10
