"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 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 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 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 and 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.

"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."



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 Morada stood halfway up the slope north of the little town, at the elevation where the tall yellow pines of the mountains begin to replace the scrubby juniper and pinon of the mesas and foothills. It was a cool moonlit night of late summer. A light west wind breathed through the trees, making the massive black shadows of the juniper bushes faintly alive. As he toiled up the rocky path Ramon heard the faraway yap and yodel of a coyote, and the still more distant answer of another one. From the valley below came the intermittent bay of a cur, inspired by the moon and his wild kin, and now and then the tiny silver tinkle of a goat bell.

The Morada stood in an open space. It was an oblong block of adobe, and gave forth neither light nor sound. Ramon stopped a little way from it in the shadow of a tree and lit a cigarette to steady his nerves. He felt now for the first time something of the mystery and terribleness of this barbaric order which he proposed to use for his purpose. All his life the penitentes had been to him a well-known fact of life. For the past week he had spent much of his time with the maestro de novios of the local chapter, a wizened old sheep herder, who had instructed him monotonously in the secrets of the order, almost lulling him to sleep with his endless mumblings of the ritual that was written in a little leather book a century old. He had learned that if he betrayed the secrets of the order, he would be buried alive with only his head sticking out of the ground, so that the ants might eat his face. He had been informed that if he fell ill he would be taken to the Morada where his brothers in Christ would pray for him, and seek to drive the devil out of his body, and that if he died, they would send his shoes to his family as a notice of that event; and would bury him in consecrated ground. Some of the things he had learned had bored him and some had made him want to laugh, but none of them had impressed him, as they were intended to do, with the might and dignity of the ancient order.

He was impressed now as he stood before this dark still house where a dozen ignorant fanatics waited to take his blood for what was to them a holy purpose. He knew that this Morada was a very old one. He thought of all the true penitents who had knocked for admission at its door and had gone through its bloody ordeal with a zeal of madness which had enabled them to cry loudly for blows and more blows until they fell insensible. He tried to imagine their state of mind, but he could not. He was of their race and a growth of the same soil, but an alien civilization had touched him and sundered him from them, yet without taking him for its own. He could only nerve himself to face this ordeal because it would serve his one great purpose.

As he stood there, a curious half-irrelevant thought came into his mind. He knew that the marks they would make on his back would be permanent. He had seen the long rough scars on the backs of sheep-herders, stripped to the waist for the hot work of shearing. And he wondered how he would explain these strange scars to Julia. He imagined her discovering them with her long dainty hands, her round white arms. A great longing surged up in him that seemed to weaken the very tissues of his body. He shook himself, threw away his cigarette, went to the heavy wooden door and knocked.

Now he spoke a rigamarole in Spanish which had been taught him by rote.

"God knocks at this mission's door for His clemency," he called.

From within came a deep-voiced chorus, the first sound he had heard from the house, seeming weirdly to be the voice of the house itself.

"Penance, penance, which seeks salvation!" it chanted.

"Saint Peter will open to me the gate, bathing me with the light, in the name of Mary, with the seal of Jesus," Ramon went on, repeating as he had learned. "I ask this confraternity. Who gives this house light?"

"Jesus," answered the chorus within.

"Who fills it with joy?"

"Mary."

"Who preserves it with faith?"

"Joseph!"

The door opened and Ramon entered the chapel room of the Morada. It was lighted by a single candle, which revealed dimly the rough earthen walls, the low roof raftered with round pine logs, the wooden benches and the altar, covered with black cloth. This was decorated with figures of the skull and cross-bones cut from white cloth. A human skull stood on either side of it, and a small wooden crucifix hung on the wall above it. The solitary candle—an ordinary tallow one in a tin holder—stood before this.

The men were merely dark human shapes. The light did not reveal their faces. They said nothing to Ramon. He could scarcely believe that these were the same good-natured pelados he had known by day. Indeed they were not the same, but were now merely units of this organization which held them in bondage of fear and awe.

One of them took Ramon silently by the arm and led him through a low door into the other room which was the Morada proper. This room was supposed never to be entered except by a member of the order or by a candidate. It was small and low as the other, furnished only with a few benches about the wall, and lighted by a couple of candles on a small table. A very old and tarnished oil painting of Mary with the Babe hung at one end of it. All the way around the room, hanging from pegs driven into the wall, was a row of the broad heavy braided lashes of amole weed, called disciplinas, used in Holy Week, and of the blood-stained drawers worn on that occasion by the flagellants.

Still in complete silence Ramon was forced to his knees by two of the men, who quickly stripped him to the waist. Beside him stood a tall powerfully-built Mexican with his right arm bared. In his hand he held a triangular bit of white quartz, cleverly chipped to a cutting edge. This man was the sangredor, whose duty it was to place the seal of the order upon the penitent's back. His office required no little skill, for he had to make three cuts the whole length of the back and three the width, tearing through the skin so as to leave a permanent scar, but not deep enough to injure the muscle. Ramon, glancing up, saw the gleam of the candle light on the white quartz, and also in the eyes of the man, which were bright with eagerness.

Now came the supreme struggle with himself. How could he go through with this ugly agony? He longed to leap to his feet and fight these ignorant louts, who were going to mangle him and beat him for their own amusement. He held himself down with all his will, striving to think of the girl, to hold his purpose before his mind, to endure.…

He felt the hand of the sangredor upon his neck, and gritted his teeth. The man's grip was heavy, hot and firm. A flash of pain shot up and down his back with lightning speed, as though a red hot poker had been laid upon it. Again and again and again! Six times in twice as many seconds the deft flint ripped his skin, and he fell forward upon his hands, faint and sick, as he felt his own blood welling upon his back and trickling in warm rivulets between his ribs.

But this was not all. To qualify, he knew, he must call for the lash of his own free will.

"For the love of God," he uttered painfully, as he had been taught, "the three meditations of the passion of our Lord."

On his torn back a long black snake whip came down, wielded with merciless force. But he felt the full agony of the first blow only. The second seemed faint, and the third sent him plunging downward through a red mist into black nothingness.



CHAPTER XXIV

A few days later one bright morning Ramon was sitting in the sun before the door of his friend, Francisco Guiterrez, feeling still somewhat sore, but otherwise surprisingly well. Guiterrez, a young sheep-herder, held the position of coadjutor of the local penitente chapter, and one of his duties as such was to take the penitent to his house and care for him after the initiation. He had washed Ramon's wounds in a tea made by boiling Romero weed. This was a remedy which the penitentes had used for centuries, and its efficacy was proved by the fact that Ramon's cuts had begun to heal at once, and that he had had very little fever.

For a couple of days Ramon had been forced to lie restlessly in the only bed of the Guiterrez establishment. The Senora Guiterrez, a pretty buxom young Mexican woman, had fed him on atole gruel and on all of the eggs which her small flock of scrub hens produced; the seven little dirty brown Guiterrez children had come in to marvel at him with their fingers in their mouths; the Guiterrez goats and dogs and chickens had wandered in and out of the room in a companionable way, as though seeking to make him feel at ease; and Guiterrez himself had spent his evenings sitting beside Ramon, smoking cigarettes and talking.

This time of idleness had not been wholly wasted, either, for it had come out in the course of conversation that Guiterrez had been offered a thousand dollars for his place by a man whom he did not know, but whom Ramon had easily identified as an agent of MacDougall. Tempted by an amount which he could scarcely conceive, Guiterrez was thinking seriously of accepting the offer.

Now that he had won over Alfego and had gotten the influence of the penitentes on his side, Ramon's one remaining object was to defeat just such deals as this, which MacDougall already had under way. He intended to stir up feeling against the gringos, and to persuade the Mexicans not to sell. Later, such lands as he needed in order to control the right-of-way, he would gain by lending money and taking mortgages. But he did not intend to cheat any one. Such Mexicans as he had to oust from their lands, he would locate elsewhere. He was filled with a large generosity, and with a real love for these, his people. He meant to dominate this country, but his pride demanded that no one should be poor or hungry in his domain. So now he argued the matter to Guiterrez with real sincerity.

"A thousand dollars? Por Dios, man! Don't you know that this place is worth many thousand dollars to you?"

"How can it be worth many thousand?" Guiterrez demanded. "What have I here? A few acres of chile and corn, a little hay, some range for my goats, a few cherry trees, a house.… Many thousands? No."

"You have here a home, amigo," Ramon reminded him. "Do you know how long a thousand dollars would support you? A year, perhaps. Then you would have to work for other men the rest of your life. Here you are free and independent."

Guiterrez said nothing, but he had obviously received a new idea, and was impressed. Ramon never returned to the direct argument, but he missed no chance to stimulate Guiterrez's pride in his establishment.

"This is a good little house you have amigo," he would observe. And Guiterrez would tell him that the house had been built by his grandfather, but that its walls were as firm as ever, and that he had been intending for several years to plaster it, but had never gotten time. Before he was out of bed, Ramon was reasonably sure that Guiterrez would never sell.

The house was indeed charmingly situated on a hillside at the foot of which a little clear trout stream, called Rio Gallinas, chuckled over the bright pebbles in its bed and ran to hide in thickets of willow.

Sitting on the portal, which ran the length of the house and consisted of a projection of the roof supported by rough pine logs, Ramon could look down the canyon to where it widened into a little valley that lost itself in the vast levels of the mesa. There thirsty sands swallowed the stream and not a sprig of green marred the harmony of grey and purple swimming in vivid light, reaching away to the horizon where faint blue mountains hung in drooping lines.

By turning his head, Ramon could look into the heart of the mountains whence the stream issued through a narrow canyon, with steep, forested ridges on either side, and little level glades along the water, set with tall, conical blue spruce trees, pines with their warm red boles, and little clumps of aspen with gleaming white stems, and trembling leaves of mingled gold and green.

Ramon spent many hours with his back against the wall, his knees drawn up under his chin, Mexican fashion, smoking and vaguely dreaming of the girl he loved and of the things he would do. The vast sun drenched landscape before him was too much a part of his life, too intimate a thing for him to appreciate its beauty, but after his struggles with doubt and desire, it filled him with an unaccountable contentment. Its warmth and brightness, its unchanging serenity, its ceaseless soft voices of wind and water, lulled his mind and comforted his senses. The country was like some great purring creature that let him lie in its bosom and filled his body with the warm steady throb of its untroubled strength.

After a week of recuperation, he bought a horse from Guiterrez for a pack animal, loaded it with bedding and provisions and rode away into the mountains. His task was now to find other men who had fallen under the influence of MacDougall, and to persuade them not to sell their lands. Some of them would be at their homes, but others would be with the sheep herds, scattered here and there in the high country. He faced long days of mountain wandering, and for all that he longed to be done with his task, this part of it was sweet to him.



CHAPTER XXV

These were days of power and success, days of a glamour that lingered long in his mind. Beyond a doubt he was destroying MacDougall's plan and realizing his own. Sometimes he met a surly Mexican who would not listen to him, but nearly always he won the man over in the end. He was amazed at his own resourcefulness and eloquence. It seemed as though some inhibition in him had been broken down, some magical elixir poured into his imagination. He found that he could literally take a sheep camp by storm, entering into the life of the men, telling them stories, singing them songs, passing out presents of tobacco and whisky, often delivering a wildly applauded harangue on the necessity for all Mexicans to act together against the gringos, who would otherwise soon own the country. Never once did he think of the incongruity of thus fanning the flames of race hatred for the love of a girl with grey eyes and yellow hair.

He did not always reach a house or a sheep camp at night. Many a time he camped alone, catching trout for his supper from a mountain stream, and going to sleep to the lonely music of running water in a wilderness. At such times many a man would have lost faith in himself, would have feared his crimes and lost his hopes. But to Ramon this loneliness was an old friend. Like all who have lived much out-of-doors he was at heart a pantheist, and felt more at peace and unity with wild nature than ever he had with men.

But there was one such night when he felt troubled. As he rode up the Tusas Canyon at twilight, a sense of insecurity came over him, amounting almost to fear. He had had a somewhat similar feeling once when a panther had trailed him on a winter night. Now, as then, he had no idea what it was that menaced him; he was simply warned by that sixth sense which belongs to all wild things, and to men in whom there remains something of the feral. His horses shared his unrest. When he picketed them, just before dark, they fed uneasily, stopping now and then to stand like statues with lifted heads, testing the wind with their nostrils, moving their ears to catch some sound beyond human perception.

When he had eaten his supper and made his bed, Ramon took the little automatic revolver out of its scabbard and went down the canyon a quarter of a mile, slipping along in the shadow of the brush that lined the banks of the stream. This was necessary because a half-moon made the open glades bright. He paused and peered a dozen times. So cautious were his movements that he came within forty feet of a drinking deer, and was badly startled when it bounded away with a snort and a smashing of brush. But he saw nothing dangerous and went back to his camp and to bed. There he lay awake for an hour, still troubled, oppressed by a vague feeling of the littleness and insecurity of human life.

A long, rippling snort of fear from his saddle horse, picketed near his bed, awakened him and probably saved his life. When he opened his eyes, he saw the figure of a man standing directly over him. He was about to speak, when the man lifted his arms, swinging upward a heavy club. With quick presence of mind, Ramon jerked the blankets and the heavy canvas tarpaulin about his head, at the same time rolling over. The club came down with crushing force on his right shoulder. He continued to roll and flounder with all his might, going down a sharp slope toward the creek which was only a few yards away. Twice more he felt the club, once on his arm and once on his ribs, but his head escaped and the heavy blankets protected his body.

The next thing he knew, he had gone over the bank of the creek, which was several feet high in that place, and lay in the shallow icy water. Meantime he had gotten his hand on the automatic pistol. He now jerked upright and fired at the form of his assailant, which bulked above him. The man disappeared. For a moment Ramon sat still. He heard footsteps, and something like a grunt or a groan. Then he extricated himself from the cold, sodden blankets, climbed upon the bank, and began cautiously searching about, with his weapon ready. He found the club—a heavy length of green spruce-and put his hand accidentally on something wet, which he ascertained by smelling it to be blood.

He was shivering with cold and badly bruised in several places, but he was afraid to build a fire. In case his enemy were not badly injured or had a companion, that would have been risking another attack. He stood in the shadow of a spruce, stamping his feet and rubbing himself, acutely uncomfortable, waiting for daylight and wondering what this attack meant. He doubted whether MacDougall would have countenanced such tactics, but it might well have been an agent of MacDougall acting on his own responsibility. Or it might have been some one sent by old Archulera. Then, too, there were many poor connections of the Delcasar family who would profit by his death.

As he stood there in the dark, shivering and miserable, the idea of death was not hard for him to conceive. He realized that but for the snort of the saddle horse he would now be lying under the tree with the top of his head crushed in. The man would probably have dragged his body into the thick timber and left it. There he would have lain and rotted. Or perhaps the coyotes would have eaten him and the buzzards afterward picked his bones. He shuddered. Despite his acute misery, life had never seemed more desirable. He thought of sunlight and warmth, of good food and of the love of women, and these things seemed more sweet than ever before. He realized, for the first time, too, that he faced many dangers and that the chance of death walked with him all the time. He resolved fiercely that he would beat all his enemies, that he would live and have his desires which were so sweet to him.

Daylight came at last, showing him first the rim of the mountain serrated with spruce tops, and then lighting the canyon, revealing his disordered camp and his horses grazing quietly in the open. He went immediately and examined the ground where the struggle had taken place. A plain trail of blood lead away from the place, as he had expected. He formed a plan of action immediately.

First he made a great fire, dried and warmed himself, cooked and ate his breakfast, drinking a full pint of hot coffee. Then he rolled up all his belongings, hid them in the bushes, and picketed his horses in a side canyon where the grass was good. When these preparations were complete, he took the trail of blood and followed it with the utmost care. He carried his weapon cocked in his hand, and always before he went around a bend in the canyon, or passed through a clump of trees, he paused and looked long and carefully, like an animal stalking dangerous prey.

At last, from the cover of some willows, he saw a man sitting beside the creek. The man was half-naked, and was binding up his leg with some strips torn from his dirty shirt. He was a Mexican of the lowest and most brutal type, with a swarthy skin, black hair and a bullet-shaped head. Ramon walked toward him.

"Buenas Dias, amigo," he saluted.

The man looked up with eyes full of patient suffering, like the eyes of a hurt animal. He did not seem either surprised or frightened. He nodded and went on binding up his leg.

Ramon watched him a minute. He saw that the man was weak from loss of blood. There was a great patch of dried blood on the ground beside him, now beginning to flake and curl in the sun.

"I will come back in a minute, friend," he said.

He went back to his camp, saddled his horses, putting some food in the saddle pockets. When he returned, the Mexican sat in exactly the same place with his back against a rock and his legs and arms inert. Ramon fried bacon and made coffee for him. He had to help the man put the food in his mouth and hold a cup for him to drink. Afterward, with great difficulty, he loaded the man on his saddle horse, where he sat heavily, clutching the pommel with both hands. Ramon mounted the pack horse bareback.

"Where do you live, friend?" Ramon asked.

"Tusas," the Mexican replied, naming a little village ten miles down the canyon.

They exchanged no other words until they came within sight of the group of adobe houses. Then Ramon stopped his horse and turned to the man.

"You were hunting," he told him slowly and impressively, "and you dropped your gun and shot yourself. Sabes?"

The man nodded.

"How much were you paid to kill me, friend?" Ramon then asked.

The man looked at the pommel of the saddle, and his swarthy face darkened with a heavy flush.

"One hundred dollars," he admitted. "I needed the money to christen a child. Could I let my child go to hell? But I did not mean to kill you. Only to beat you, so you would go away. Do not ask who sent me, for the love of God.…"

"I ask nothing more, friend," Ramon assured him. "And since you were to have a hundred dollars for making me leave the country, here is a hundred dollars for not succeeding."

Both of them laughed. Ramon then rode on and delivered the man to his excited and grateful wife. He went back to his camp very weary and sore, but feeling that he had done an excellent stroke of work for his purpose.



CHAPTER XXVI

After this occurrence his success among the humbler Mexicans was more marked than ever, but some of the men of property who had been subsidized by MacDougall were not so easily won over. Such a case was that of old Pedro Alcatraz who owned a little store in the town of Vallecitos, a bit of land and a few thousand sheep. Alcatraz was a tall boney old man, and was of nearly pure Navajo Indian blood, as one could tell by the queer crinkled character of his beard and moustache, which were like those of a chinaman. He was simple and direct like an Indian, too, lacking the Mexican talent for lying and artifice. In his own town he was a petty czar, like Alfego, but on a much smaller scale. By reason of being Hermano Mayor of the local penitente chapter, and of having most of the people in his own neighbourhood in debt to him, he had considerable power. He was advising men to sell their lands, and was lending more money on land than it was reasonable to suppose he owned. Beyond a doubt, he had been won by MacDougall's dollars.

Ramon found Alcatraz unresponsive. The old man listened to a long harangue on the subject of the race issue without a word of reply, and without looking up. Ramon then played what should have been his strongest card.

"My friend," he said, "you may not know it, but I am your brother in the blood of Christ. Do I not then deserve better of you than a gringo who is trying to take this country away from the Mexican people?"

"Yes," the old man answered quietly, "I know you are a penitente, and I know why. Do you think that I am a fool like these pelados that herd my sheep? You wear the scars of a penitente because you think it will help you to make money and to do what you want. You are just like MacDougall, except that he uses money and you use words. A poor man can only choose his masters, and for my part I have more use for money than for words." So saying, the blunt old savage walked to the other end of his store and began showing a Mexican woman some shawls.

Ramon went away, breathing hard with rage, slapping his quirt against his boots. He would show that old cabron who was boss in these mountains!

He went immediately and hired the little adobe hall which is found in every Mexican town of more than a hundred inhabitants, and made preparations to give a baile.

To give a dance is the surest and simplest way to win popularity in a Mexican town, and Ramon spared no expense to make this affair a success. He sent forty miles across the mountains for two fiddlers to help out the blind man who was the only local musician. He arranged a feast, and in a back room he installed a small keg of native wine and one of beer.

The invitation was general and every one who could possibly reach the place in a day's journey came. The women wore for the most part calico dresses, bright in colour and generous in volume, heavily starched and absolutely devoid of fit. Their brown faces were heavily powdered, producing in some of the darker ones a purplish tint, which was ghastly in the light of the oil lamps. Some of the younger girls were comely despite their crude toilets, with soft skins, ripe breasts, mild dark heifer-like eyes, and pretty teeth showing in delighted grins. The men wore the cheap ready-made suits which have done so much to make Americans look alike everywhere, but they achieved a degree of originality by choosing brighter colours than men generally wear, being especially fond of brilliant electric blues and rich browns. Their broad but often handsome faces were radiant with smiles, and their thick black hair was wetted and greased into shiny order.

The dance started with difficulty, despite symptoms of eagerness on all hands. Bashful youths stalled and crowded in the doorway like a log jam in the river. Bashful girls, seated all around the room, nudged and tittered and then became solemn and self-conscious. Each number was preceded by a march, several times around the room, which was sedate and formal in the extreme. The favourite dance was a fast, hopping waltz, in which the swain seized his partner firmly in both hands under the arms and put her through a vigorous test of wind and agility. The floor was rough and sanded, and the rasping of feet almost drowned the music. There were long Virginia reels, led with peremptory dash by a master of ceremonies, full of grace and importance. Swarthy faces were bedewed with sweat and dark eyes glowed with excitement, but there was never the slightest relaxation of the formalism of the affair. For this dance in an earthen hovel on a plank floor was the degenerate but lineal descendant of the splendid and formal balls which the Dons had held in the old days, when New Spain belonged to its proud and wealthy conquerors; it was the wistful and grotesque remnant of a dying order.

Ramon had a vague realization of this fact as he watched the affair. It stirred a sort of sentimental pity in him. But he threw off that feeling, he had work to do. He entered into the spirit of the thing, dancing with every woman on the floor. He took the men in groups to the back room and treated them. He missed no opportunity to get in a word against the gringos, and incidentally against those Mexicans who betrayed their fellows by advising them to sell their lands. He never mentioned Alcatraz by name, but he made it clear enough to whom he referred.

Late in the evening, when all were mellowed by drink and excited by dancing, he gained the attention of the gathering on the pretext of announcing a special dance, and boldly gave a harangue in which he urged all Mexicans to stick together against the gringos, and above all not to sell their homes which their fathers had won from the barbarians, and were the foundations of their prosperity and freedom.

"Remember," he urged them in a burst of eloquence that surprised himself, "that in your veins is the blood of conquerors—blood which was poured out on these hills and valleys to win them from the Indians, precious blood which has made this land priceless to you for all time!"

His speech was greeted with a burst of applause unquestionably spontaneous. It filled him with a sense of power that was almost intoxicating. In the town he might be neglected, despised, picked for an easy mark, but here among his own people he was a ruler and leader by birth.

The most important result of the baile was that it won over the stubborn Alcatraz. He did not attend it, but he knew what happened there. He realized that advice in favour of selling land would not be popular in that section for a long time, and he acknowledged his defeat by inviting Ramon to dinner at his house, and driving a shrewd bargain with him, whereby he gave his influence in exchange for certain grazing privileges.

On his way home a few days later Ramon looked back at the mountains with the feeling that they belonged to him by right of conquest.



CHAPTER XXVII

A week later Ramon was driving across the mesa west of town, bound for the state capital. He was following the same route that Diego Delcasar had followed on the day of his death, and he passed within a few miles of Archulera's ranch; but no thought either of his uncle or of Archulera entered his mind. For in his pocket was a letter consisting of a single sentence hastily scrawled in a large round upright hand on lavender-scented note paper. The sentence was:



"Meet you at the southwest corner of the Plaza Tuesday at seven thirty.

"Love,

"J. R."



A great deal of trouble and anxiety had preceded the receipt of that message. First he had written her a letter that was unusually long and exuberant for him, telling her of his success and that now he was ready to come and get her in accordance with their agreement, suggesting a time and place. Three days of cumulative doubt and agony had gone by without a reply. Then he had tried to reach her by long distance telephone, but without success. Finally he had wired, although he knew that a telegram is a risky vehicle for confidential business. Now he had her answer, the answer that he wanted. His spirit was released and leapt forward, leaving resentments and doubts far behind.

It was eighty miles to the state capital, the road was good all the way, the day bright and cool. His route lead across the mesa, through the Scissors Pass, and then north and east along the foot of the mountains.

Immense and empty the country stretched before him—a land of far-flung levels and even farther mountains; a land which makes even the sea, with its near horizons, seem little; a land which has always produced men of daring because it inspires a sense of freedom without any limit save what daring sets.

He had dared and won. He was going to take the sweet price of his daring. The engine of his big car sang to him a song of victory and desire. He rejoiced in the sense of power under his hand. He opened the throttle wider and the car answered with more speed, licking up the road like a hungry monster. How easily he mastered time and distance for his purpose!

He was to have her, she would be his. So sang the humming motor and the wind in his ears. Her white arms and her red mouth, her splendid eyes that feared and yielded! She was waiting for him! More speed. He conquered the hills with a roar of strength to spare, topped the crests, and sped down the long slopes like a bird coming to earth.

He was to have her, she would be his. Could it be true? The great machine that carried him to their tryst roared an affirmative, the wind sang of it, his blood quickened with anticipation incredibly keen. And always the distance that lay between them was falling behind in long, grey passive miles.

He had reached his destination a little after six. As he drove slowly through the streets of the little dusty town, the mood of exaltation that had possessed him during the trip died down. He was intent, worried practical. Having registered at the hotel, he got a handful of time tables and made his plans with care. They would drive to a town twenty-five miles away, be married, and catch the California Limited. There would just be time. Once he had her in his car, nothing could stop them.

The plaza or public square about which the old town was built, and which had been its market place in the old days, was now occupied by a neat little park with a band stand. Retail stores and banks fronted on three sides of it, but the fourth was occupied by a long low adobe building which was very old and had been converted into a museum of local antiquities. It was dark and lifeless at night, and in its shadow-filled verandah he was to meet her.

He had his car parked beside the spot ten minutes ahead of time. It was slightly cold now, with a gusty wind whispering about the streets and tearing big papery leaves from the cottonwood trees in the park. The plaza was empty save for an occasional passer-by whose quick footfalls rang sharply in the silence. Here and there was an illuminated shop window. The drug store on the opposite corner showed a bright interior, where two small boys devoured ice cream sodas with solemn rapture. Somewhere up a side street a choir was practising a hymn, making a noise infinitely doleful.

He had a bear-skin to wrap her in, and he arranged this on the seat beside him and then tried to wait patiently. He sat very tense and motionless, except for an occasional glance at his watch, until it showed exactly seven-thirty. Then he got out of his car and began walking first to one side of the corner and then to the other, for he did not know from which direction she would come. At twenty-five minutes of eight he was angry, but in another ten minutes anger had given way to a dull heavy disappointment that seemed to hold him by the throat and make it difficult to swallow. None-the-less he waited a full hour before he started up his car and drove slowly back to the hotel.

On the way he debated with himself whether he should try to communicate with her tonight or wait until the next day. He knew that the wisest thing would be to wait until the next day and send her a note, but he also knew that he could not wait. He would find out where she lived, call her on the telephone, and learn what had prevented her from keeping the appointment. He had desperate need to know that something besides her own will had kept her away.

When he went to the hotel desk, a clerk handed him a letter.

"This was here when you registered, I think," he said. "But I didn't know it. I'm sorry."

When he saw the handwriting of the address he was filled with commotion. Here, then, was her explanation. This would tell him why she had failed him. This, in all probability, would make all right.

He went to his room to read it, sat down on the edge of the bed and ripped the envelope open with an impatient finger. The letter was dated two days earlier—the day after she had received his telegram.

"I don't know what to say," she wrote, "but it doesn't matter much. You will despise me anyway, and I despise myself. But I can't help it—honestly I can't. I meant to keep my promise and I would have kept it, but they found your telegram and mother read it—by mistake, of course. I ought to have had sense enough to burn it. You can't imagine how awful it has been. Mother said the most terrible things about you, things she had heard. And she said that I would be ruining my life and hers. I said I didn't care, because I loved you. I can't tell you what an awful quarrel we had! And I wouldn't have given in, but she told Gordon and he was so terribly angry. He said it was a disgrace to the family, and he began to cough and had a hemorrhage and we thought he was going to die. Mother said he probably would die unless I gave you up.

"That finished me. I couldn't do anything after that—I just couldn't. There was nothing but misery in sight either way, so what was the use? I've lost all my courage and all my doubts have come back. I do love you—terribly. But you are so strange, so different. And I don't think we would have gotten along or anything. I try to comfort myself by thinking it's all for the best, but it doesn't really comfort me at all. I never knew people could be as miserable as I am now. I don't think its fair.

"When you get this I will be on my way to New York and nearly there. We are going to sail for Europe immediately. I will never see you again. I will always love you.

"Julia."



Rage possessed him at first—the rage of defeated desire, of injured pride, of a passionate, undisciplined nature crossed and beaten. He flung the letter on the floor, and strode up and down the room, looking about for something to smash or tear. So she was that kind of a creature—a miserable, whimpering fool that would let an old woman and a sick man rule her! She was afraid her brother might die. What an excuse! And he had killed, or at least sanctioned killing, for her sake. He had poured out his blood for her. There was nothing he would not have dared or done to have her. And here she had the soul of a sheep!

But no—perhaps that was not it. Perhaps she had been playing with him all along, had never had any idea of marrying him—because he was a Mexican!

Bitter was this thought, but it died as his anger died. Something that sat steady and clear inside of him told him that he was a fool. He was reading the letter again, and he knew it was all truth. "There was nothing but misery in sight either way," she had written.

Suddenly he understood; suffering and an awakened imagination had given him insight. For the first time in his life, he realized the feelings of another. He realized how much he had asked of this girl, who had all her life been ruled, who had never tasted freedom nor practised self-reliance. He saw now that she had rebelled and had fought against the forces and fears that oppress youth, as had he, and that she had been bewildered and overcome.

His anger was gone. All hot emotion was gone. In its place was a great loneliness, tinged with pity. He looked at the letter again. Its handwriting showed signs of disturbance in the writer, but she had not forgotten to scent it with that faint delightful perfume which was forever associated in his mind with her. It summoned the image of her with a vividness he could not bear.

But courage and pride are not killed at a blow. He threw the letter aside and shook himself sharply, like a man just awake trying to shake off the memory of a nightmare. She was gone, she was lost. Well, what of it? There were many other women in the world, many beautiful women. And he was strong now, successful. One woman could not hurt him by her refusal. He tried resolutely to put her out of his mind, and to think of his business, of his plans. But these things which had glowed so brightly in his imagination just a few hours before were suddenly as dead as cinders. He knew that he cared little for dollars and lands in themselves. His nature demanded a romantic object, and this love had given it to him. Love had found him a wretch and a weakling, and had made him suddenly strong and ruthless, bringing out all the colours of his being, dark and bright, making life suddenly intense and purposeful.

And she had meant so much to him besides love. To have won her would have been to win a great victory over the gringos—over that civilization, alien to him in race and temper, which antagonized and yet fascinated him, with which he was forced to grapple for his life.

She was gone, he had lost her. Perhaps it was just as well, after all, he told himself, speaking out of his pride and his courage. But in his heart was a great bitterness. In his heart he felt that the gringos had beaten one more Delcasar.



CHAPTER XXVIII

The next few days Ramon spent quietly and systematically drinking whisky. This he did partly because he had a notion that it was an appropriate thing to do under the circumstances, and partly because he had a genuine need for something to jolt his mind out of its rut of misery. He was not sociable in his cups, and did not seek company of either sex, inviting a man to drink with him or accepting such an invitation only when he had to do so. His favourite resort was the Silver Dollar Saloon, which was furnished with tables set between low partitions, so that when he had one of these booths to himself he enjoyed a considerable degree of isolation. He drank carefully, like a Spaniard, never losing control of his feet or of his eyes, taking always just enough to keep his mind away from realities and filled with dreams. In these dreams Julia played a vivid and delightful part. He imagined himself encountering her under all sorts of circumstances, and always she was yielding, repentant, she was his. In a dozen different ways he conquered her, taking in imagination, as men have always done, what the reality had denied. Some of his fancies were delightful and filled him with a sense of triumph, so that men glanced curiously at the bright-eyed boy who sat there in his corner all alone, absorbed and intent. But there were other times at night when his defeated desire came and lay in his arms like an invisible unyielding succuba, torturing, maddening, driving him back to the street to drink until drunken sleep came with its sudden brutal mercy.

But after a few days alcohol began to have little effect upon him, except that when he awoke his hands were all aflutter so that he spilled his coffee and tore his newspaper. He felt sick and weary, his misery numbed by many repetitions of its every twinge. A sure instinct urged him to get out of the town and into the mountains, but he hated to go alone and lacked the initiative to start. He had a friend in the capital named Curtis, who was half Mexican and half Irish. This young man was a dealer in mules and horses, and he had a herd of some twenty head to take across the mountains about sixty miles. Badly in need of a helper and unable to hire one, he asked Ramon to go with him. The proposition was accepted with relief but without enthusiasm.

Trouble started immediately. The horses were only half broken, and the one they chose for a pack animal rebelled ten miles from town and bucked the pack off, scattering tin dishes, sides of bacon, loaves of bread and cans of condensed milk all over a quarter of a mile of rough country. They rounded up the recalcitrant in a pouring rain, and made a wet and miserable camp, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion in sodden blankets. The next morning the pack horse opened the exercises by rolling down a steep bank into the creek, plastering himself on the way from head to tail with a half gallon of high grade sorghum syrup which had been on top of the load. At this Ramon's tortured nerves exploded and he jumped into the water after the floundering animal, belabouring it with a quirt, and cursing it richly in two languages.

He then put a slip noose around its upper lip and led it unmercifully, while Curtis encouraged it from behind with a rope-end. Like all Mexicans, they had little sympathy for horseflesh.

These labours and hardships were Ramon's salvation. The exercise and air restored his health and in fighting the difficulties of unlucky travel he relieved in some degree the rage against life that embittered him.

When he got back to his room in the hotel he felt measurably at peace, though weary in mind and body. He came across Julia's letter, and the sight and scent of it struck him a sharp painful blow, but he did not pause now to savour his pain; he tore the letter into small pieces and threw it away. Then he got out his car and started for home.

He went back beaten over the same road that he had followed in the moment of his highest hope, when life had seemed about to keep all the wonderful promises it whispers in the ear of youth. But strangely this trip was not the sad and sentimental affair it should have been. His rugged health had largely recovered from the shock of disappointment and dissipation, an excellent breakfast was digesting within him, the sky was bright as polished turquoise and the ozonous west wind, which is the very breath of hope, played sweetly in his face. He began to discover various consoling conditions in his lot, which had seemed so intolerable just a few days before.

Probably no man under forty ever lost a woman without feeling in some degree compensated by a sense of freedom regained, and in the man of solitary and self-reliant nature, to whom freedom is a boon if not a necessity, this feeling is not slow to assert itself. Moreover, Ramon was now caught in the inevitable reaction from a purpose which had gathered and concentrated his energies with passionate intensity for almost four months. During that time he had lived with taut nerves for a single hope; he had turned away from a dozen alluring by-paths; he had known that absorbed singleness of purpose which belongs only to lovers, artists and other monomaniacs.

The bright hope that had led him had suddenly exploded, leaving him stunned and flat for a time. Now he got to his feet and looked about. He realized that the world still lay before him, a place of wonderful promise and possibility, and apparently he could stray in any direction he chose. He had money and freedom and an excellent equipment of appetites and curiosities. Things he had dreamed of doing long ago, in case he should ever come into his wealth, now revisited his imagination. He had promised himself for one thing some hunting trips—long ones into the mountains and down the river in his car. Gambling had always fascinated him, and he had longed to sit in a game high enough to be really interesting, instead of the quarter-limit affair that he had always played before. And there were women … other women. And he meant to go to New York or Chicago sometime and sample the fleshpots of a really great city.… Life after all was still an interesting thing.

Not that he forgot his serious purposes. He meant to open a law office, to cultivate his political connections, to pursue his conquest of Arriba County. But although he did not realize it, his plans for making himself a strong and secure position in life had lost their vitalizing purpose. All of these things he would do, but there was no hurry about them. His desire now was to taste the sweetness of life, and to rest. He was without a strong acquisitive impulse, and now that his great purpose in making money was gone, these projects did not strongly engage his imagination. He had plenty of money. He refused to worry. He felt reckless, too. If he had lost his great hope, his reward was to be released from the discipline it had imposed.

Nor was there any other discipline to take its place. If there had been a strong creative impulse in him, or if he had faced a real struggle for his life or his personal freedom, he might now have recovered that condition of trained and focussed energy which civilized life demands of men. But he was too primitive to be engaged by any purely intellectual purpose, and his money was a buffer between him and struggle imposed from without.

As he thought of all the things he would do, he felt strong and sure of himself. He thought that he was now a shrewd, cynical man, who could not be deceived or imposed upon, who could take the good things of life and discount the disillusionments.



CHAPTER XXIX

One of his first acts in town was to negotiate a note at the bank for several thousand dollars. This was necessary because he had little cash and would not have much until spring, when he would sell lambs and shear his sheep. He not only needed money for himself, but his mother and sister, after many lean years, were eager to spend.

He drove out to see Catalina, and found her big with child and utterly indifferent to him, which piqued him slightly and relieved him a great deal. She had heard nothing about her father, and Ramon sent Cortez out to Domingo Canyon to see what had become of the old man. Cortez reported the place deserted. Ramon made inquiry in town and learned that Archulera had been seen there in his absence, very much dressed-up and very drunk, followed by a crowd of young Mexicans who were evidently parasites on his newly-acquired wealth. Then he had disappeared, and some thought he had gone to Denver. It was evident that his five thousand dollars had proved altogether too much for him.

Ramon now hung out a shingle, announcing himself as an attorney-at-law. Of course, no business came to him. The right way to get a practice would have been to go back to the office of Green or some other established lawyer for several years. But Ramon had no idea of doing anything so tiresome and so relatively humiliating. The idea of running errands for Green again was repugnant to him.

He went every morning to his office and for a while he took a certain amount of satisfaction in merely sitting there, reading the local papers, smoking a cigar, now and then taking down one of his text books and reading a little. But study as such had absolutely no appeal to him. He might have dug at the dry case books to good purpose if he had been driven by need, but as it was he would begin to yawn in ten or fifteen minutes, and then would put the book away. He went home to a noonday dinner rather early and came back in the afternoon, feeling sleepy and bored. Now the office, and indeed the whole town, seemed a dreary place to him. At this season of the year there were often high winds which mantled the town in a yellow cloud of sand, and rattled at every loose shutter and door with futile dreary persistence. Ramon would wander about the office for a little while with his hands in his pockets and stare out the window, feeling depressed, thoughts of his disappointment coming back to him bitterly. Then he would take his hat and go out and look for some one to play pool with him. Often he took an afternoon off and went hunting, not alone as formerly he had done, but with as large a party as he could gather. They would drive out into the sand hills and mesas twenty or thirty miles from town, where the native quail and rabbits were still abundant as automobiles had just begun to invade their haunts. When they found a covey of quail the sport would be fast and furious, with half a dozen guns going at once and birds rising and falling in all directions. Ramon keenly enjoyed the hot excitement and dramatic quality of this.

At night he was usually to be found at the White Camel Pool Hall where the local sporting element foregathered and made its plans for the evening. Sometimes a party would be formed to "go down the line," as a visit to the red light district was called. Sometimes the rowdy dance halls of Old Town were invaded. On Saturday nights the dance at the country club always drew a considerable attendance. There was also a "dancing class" conducted by an estimable and needy spinster named Grimes, who held assembly dances once in two weeks in a little hall which had been built by the Woman's Club. This event always drew a large and very mixed crowd, including some of the "best people" and others who were considered not so good. Usually two or three different sets were represented at these gatherings, each tending to keep to itself. But there was also a tendency for the sets to overlap. Thus a couple of very pretty German girls, who were the daughters of a local saloon keeper, always appeared accompanied by young men of their own circle with whom they danced almost exclusively at first. But young men of the first families could not resist their charms, and they soon were among the most popular girls on the floor. This was deplored by the young women of more secure social position, who were wont to remark that the crowd was deteriorating frightfully. Some of these same superior virgins found it necessary for politeness to dance with Joe Bartello, the son of an Italian saloon owner, and a very handsome and nimble-footed youth. In a word, this was a place of social hazard and adventure, and that was more than half its charm. It finally became so crowded that dancing was almost impossible.

The back room at the White Camel, where poker games were nightly in progress, also afforded Ramon frequent diversion. He played in the "big" game now, where the stakes and limits were high, and was one of the most daring and dangerous of its patrons. He had more money back of him than most of the men who played there, and he also had more courage. If he started a bluff he carried it through to the end, which was always bitter for some one. He had been known to stand pat on a pair and scare every one else out of the game by the resolute confidence of his betting. His plunges, of course, sometimes cost him heavily, but for a long time he was a moderate winner. His limitations as a poker player were finally demonstrated to him by one Fitzhugh Chesterman, a man with one lung.

Chesterman was about twenty-six years old and had come from Richmond, Virginia, about two years before, with most of one lung gone and the other rapidly going. He was a tall, thin blond youth with the sensitive, handsome face which so often marks the rare survivor of the old southern aristocracy. He was totally lacking in the traditional southern sentimentality. His eye had a cold twinkle of courage that even the imminent prospect of death could not quench, and his thin shapely lips nearly always wore a smile slightly twisted by irony. He established himself at the state university, which had almost a hundred students and boasted a dormitory where living was very cheap. Chesterman sat before this dormitory twelve to fourteen hours a day, even in relatively cold weather. He made a living by coaching students in mathematics and Greek. He never raised his voice, he seldom laughed, he never lost his temper. With his unwavering ironical smile, as though he appreciated the keen humour of taking so much trouble over such an insignificant thing as a human life, he husbanded his energy and fought for health. He took all the treatments the local sanatoria afforded, but he avoided carefully all the colonies and other gatherings of the tubercular. When his lung began to heal, as it did after about a year, and his strength to increase, he enlarged his earnings by playing poker. He won for the simple reason that he took no more chances than he had to. He systematically capitalized every bit of recklessness, stupidity and desperation in his opponents.

When Ramon first encountered him, the game soon simmered down to a struggle between the two. Never were the qualities of two races more strikingly contrasted. Ramon bluffed and plunged. Chesterman was caution itself, playing out antes in niggardly fashion until he had a hand which put the law of probabilities strongly on his side. Ramon was full of daring, intuition, imagination, bidding always for the favour of the fates, throwing logic to the winds. He was not above moving his seat or putting on his hat to change his luck. Chesterman smiled at these things. He was cold courage battling for a purpose and praying to no deities but Cause and Effect. Ramon thought he was playing for money, but he was really playing for the sake of his own emotions, revelling alike in hope and despair, triumph and victory, flushed and bright-eyed. Chesterman stifled every emotion, discounted every hope, said as little as possible, never relaxed his faint twisted smile.

Ramon made some spectacular winnings, but Chesterman wore him down as surely as a slow hound wears down a deer despite its astounding bursts of speed. Ramon was sure to lose in the long run because he was always piling up odds against himself by the long chances he took, while his bluffs seldom deceived his cool and courageous opponent. The finish came at one o'clock in the morning. Chesterman was pale with exhaustion, but otherwise unchanged. Ramon was hoarse and flushed, chewing a cigar to bits. He held a full house and determined to back it to the limit. Chesterman met him, bet for bet, raising every time. Ramon knew that he must be beaten. He knew that Chesterman would not raise him unless he had a very strong hand. But he was beaten anyway. At the bottom of his consciousness, he knew that he had met a better man. He wanted to end the contest on this hand. When Chesterman showed four kings, Ramon fell back in his chair, weak and disgusted. The other players, most of whom had long been out of the game, got up and said good night one by one. Only the two were left, Ramon plunged in gloomy reaction, Chesterman coolly counting his money, putting it away.

"I seem to have made quite a killing," he remarked, "how much did you lose?"

"O, I don't know … about five hundred. Hell, what's five hundred to me … I don't give a damn … I'm rich.…"

Chesterman glanced at him keenly.

"Well," he remarked, "I'm glad you feel that way about it, because I sure need the money."

He got up and walked away with the short careful steps of a man who cherishes every ounce of his energy.

Ramon was disgusted with himself. Chesterman had made him feel like a weakling and a child. He had thought himself a lion in this game, and he had found out that he was an easily-shorn lamb. He could not afford to lose five hundred dollars either. He was not really a rich man. He went home feeling deeply depressed and discouraged. Vaguely he realized that in Chesterman he had encountered the spirit which he felt against him everywhere—a cool, calculating, unmerciful spirit of single purpose, against which the play and flow of his emotional and imaginative nature was as ineffectual as mercury against the point of a knife.



CHAPTER XXX

Within the next few days Ramon was sharply reminded that he lived in a little town where news travels fast and nobody's business is exclusively his own. Cortez came into his office and accepted a seat and a cigar with that respectful but worried manner which always indicated that he had something to say.

"I hear you lost five hundred dollars the other night," he observed gravely, watching his young employer's face.

"Well, what of it?" Ramon enquired, a bit testily.

"You can't afford it," Cortez replied. "And not only the money … you've got to think of your reputation. You know how these gringos are. They keep things quiet. They expect a young man to lead a quiet life and tend to business. It's all right to have a little fun … they all do it … but for God's sake be careful. You hurt your chances this way … in the law, in politics."

Ramon jerked his head impatiently and flushed a little, but reflection checked his irritation. Hatred of restraint, love of personal liberty, the animal courage that scorns to calculate consequences were his by heritage. But he knew that Cortez spoke the truth.

"All right Antonio," he said with dignity. "I'll be careful."

The next day he got a letter which emphasized the value of his henchman's warning and made Ramon really thoughtful. It was from MacDougall, and made him another offer for his land. It had a preamble to the effect that land values were falling, money was "tight," and therefore Ramon would do well to sell now, before a further drop in prices. It made him an offer of ten thousand dollars less than MacDougall had offered before.

Ramon knew that the talk about falling values was largely bluff, that MacDougall had heard of his losses and of his loose and idle life, and thought that he could now buy the lands at his own price. The gringo had confidently waited for the Mexican to make a fool of himself. Ramon resolved hotly that he would do no such thing. He had no idea of selling. He would be more careful with his money, and next summer he would go back to Arriba County, renew his campaign against MacDougall and buy some land with the money he could get for timber and wool. He replied very curtly to MacDougall that his lands were not for sale.

After that he stayed away from poker games for a while. This was made easier by a new interest which had entered his life in the person of a waitress at the Eldorado Lunch room. The girls at this lunch room had long borne a bad reputation. Even in the days before the big hotel had been built, when the railroad company maintained merely a little red frame building there, known as the Eating House, these waitresses had been a mainstay of local bachelordom. Their successors were still referred to by their natural enemies, the respectable ladies of the town, as "those awful eating house girls"; while the advent of a new "hash-slinger" was always a matter of considerable interest among the unmarried exquisites who fore-gathered at the White Camel. In this way Ramon quickly heard of the new waitress. She was reputed to be both prettier and less approachable than most of her kind. Sidney Felberg had made a preliminary reconnaissance and a pessimistic report.

"Nothing doing," he said. "She's got a husband somewhere and a notion she's cut out for better things.… I'm off her!"

This immediately provoked Ramon's interest. He went to the lunch room at a time when he knew there would be few customers. When he saw the girl he felt a faint thrill. The reason for this was that Dora McArdle somewhat resembled Julia. The resemblance was slight and superficial, yet instantly noticeable. She was a little larger, but had about the same figure, and the same colour of hair, and above all the same sensuous, provocative mouth. Ramon followed her with his eyes until she became conscious of his scrutiny, when she tossed her head with that elaborate affectation of queenly scorn, which seems to be the special talent of waitresses everywhere. Nevertheless, when she came to take his order she gave him a pleasant smile. He saw now that she was not really like Julia. She was coarse and commonplace, but she was also shapely, ripe-breasted, good-natured, full of the appeal of a healthy animalism.

"What time do you get done here?" Ramon enquired.

"Don't know that it's any of your business," she replied with another one of her crushing tosses of the head, and went away to get his order. When she came back he asked again.

"What time did you say?"

"Well, about nine o'clock, if it'll give you any pleasure to know."

"I'll come for you in my car," he told her.

"Oh! will you?" and she paid no more attention to him until he started to go, when she gave him a broad smile, showing a couple of gold teeth.

At nine o'clock he was waiting for her at the door, and she went with him. He took her for a drive on the mesa, heading for the only road house which the vicinity boasted. It was a great stone house, which had been built long ago by a rich man, and had later fallen into the hands of an Italian named Salvini, who installed a bar, and had both private dining rooms and bed rooms, these latter available only to patrons in whom he had the utmost confidence. This resort was informally known as the "chicken ranch."

When Ramon tried to take his fair partner there, on the plea that they must have a bite to eat, she objected.

"I don't believe that place is respectable," she told him very primly. "I don't think you ought to ask me to go there."

"O Hell!" said Ramon to himself. But aloud he proposed that they should drive to an adjacent hill-top from which the lights of the town could be seen. When he had parked the car on this vantage point and lit a cigarette, Dora began a narrative of a kind with which he was thoroughly familiar. She was of that well-known type of woman who is found in a dubious position, but explains that she has known better days. Her father had been a judge in Kansas, the family had been wealthy, she had never known what work was until she got married, her marriage had been a tragedy, her husband had drank, there had been a smash-up, the family had met with reverses. On and on went the story, its very tone and character and the grammar she used testifying eloquently to the fact that she was no such crushed violet as she claimed to be. Ramon was bored. A year ago he would have been more tolerant, but now he had experienced feminine charm of a really high order, and all the vulgarity and hypocrisy of this woman was apparent to him. And yet as he sat beside her he was keenly, almost morbidly conscious of the physical attraction of her fine young body. For all her commonness and coarseness, he wanted her with a peculiarly urgent desire. Here was the heat of love without the flame and light, desire with no more exaltation than accompanies a good appetite for dinner. He was puzzled and a little disgusted.… He did not understand that this was his defeated love, seeking, as such a love almost inevitably does, a vicarious satisfaction.

Repugnance and desire struggled strangely within him. He was half-minded to take her home and leave her alone. At any rate he was not going to sit there and listen to her insane babble all night. To put his fortunes to the test, he abruptly took her in his arms. She made a futile pretence of resistance. When their lips touched, desire flashed up in him strongly, banishing all his hesitations. He talked hot foolishness to which she listened greedily, but when he tried to take her to Salvini's again, she insisted on going home. Before he left her he had made another appointment.

Now began an absurd contest between the two in which Ramon was always manoeuvring to get her alone somewhere so that he might complete his conquest if possible, while her sole object was to have him gratify her vanity by appearing in public with her. This he knew he could not afford to do. He could not even drive down the street with her in daylight without all gossips being soon aware he had done so. No one knew much about her, of course, but she was "one of those eating house girls" and to treat her as a social equal was to court social ostracism. He would win the enmity of the respectable women of the town, and he knew very well that respectable women rule their husbands. His prospects in business and politics, already suffering, would be further damaged.

Here again was a struggle within him. He was of a breed that follows instinct without fear, that has little capacity for enduring restraints. And he knew well that the other young lawyers, the gringos, were no more moral than he. But they were careful. Night was their friend and they were banded together in a league of obscene secrecy. He despised this code and yet he feared it. For the gringos held the whip; he must either cringe or suffer.

So he was careful and made compromises. Dora wanted him to take her to dinner in the main dining room of the hotel, and he evaded and compromised by taking her there late at night when not many people were present. She wanted him to take her to a movie and he pleaded that he had already seen the bill, and asked her if she wanted to bore him. And when she pouted he made her a present of a pair of silk stockings. She accepted all sorts of presents, so that he felt he was making progress. She was making vague promises now of "sometime" and "maybe," and his desire was whipped up with anticipation, making him always more reckless.

One night late he took her to the Eldorado and persuaded her to drink champagne, thinking this would forward his purpose. The wine made her rosy and pretty, and it also made her forget her poses and affectations. She was more charming to him than ever before, partly because of the change in her, and partly because his own critical faculties were blunted by alcohol. He was almost in love with her and he felt sure that he was about to win her. But presently she began wheedling him in the old vein. She wanted him to take her to the dance at the Woman's Club!

This would be to slap convention in the face, and at first he refused to consider it. But he foolishly went on drinking, and the more he drank the more feasible the thing appeared. Dora had quit drinking and was pleading with him.

"I dare you!" she told him. "You're afraid.… You don't think I'm good enough for you.… And yet you say you love me.… I'm just as good as any girl in this town.… Well if you won't, I'm going home. I'm through! I thought you really cared."

And then, when he had persuaded her not to run away, she became sad and just a little tearful.

"It's terrible," she confided. "Just because I have to make my own living.… It's not fair. I ought never to speak to you again.… And yet, I do care for you.…"

Ramon was touched. The pathos of her situation appealed strongly to his tipsy consciousness. Why not do it? After all, the girl was respectable. As she said, nobody "had anything on her." The dance was a public affair. Any one could go. He had been too timid. Not three people there knew who she was. By God, he would do it!

At first they did not attract much attention. Dora was pretty and fairly well dressed, in no way conspicuous. They danced exclusively with each other, as did some other couples present, and nothing was thought of that.

But soon he became aware of glances, hostile, disapproving. Probably it was true that only a few of the men at first knew who Dora was, but they told other men, and some of the men told the women. Soon it was known to all that he had brought "one of those awful eating house girls" to the dance! The enormity of the mistake he had made was borne in upon him gradually. Some of the men he knew smiled at him, generally with an eye-brow raised, or with a shake of the head. Sidney Felberg, who was a real friend, took him aside.

"For the love of God, Ramon, what did you bring that Flusey here for? You're queering yourself at a mile a minute. And you're drunk, too. For Heaven's sake, cart her away while the going's good!"

Ramon had not realized how drunk he was until he heard this warning.

"O, go to hell, Sid!" he countered. "She's as good as anybody … I guess I can bring anybody I want here.…"

Sidney shook his head.

"No use, no use," he observed philosophically. "But it's too bad!"

Ramon's own words sounded hollow to him. He was in that peculiar condition when a man knows that he is making an ass of himself, and knows that he is going right ahead doing it. He was more attentive to Dora than ever. He brought her a glass of water, talked to her continually with his back to the hostile room. He was fully capable of carrying the thing through, even though girls he had known all his life were refusing to meet his eyes.

It was Dora who weakened. She became quiet and sad, and looked infinitely forlorn. When a couple of women got up and moved pointedly away from her vicinity, her lip began to tremble, and her wide blue eyes were brimming.

"Come on, take me away quick," she said pathetically. "I'm going to cry."

When they were in the car again she turned in the seat, buried her face in her arms and sobbed passionately with a gulping noise and spasmodic upheavals of her shoulders. Ramon drove slowly. He was sober now, painfully sober! He was utterly disgusted with himself, and bitterly sorry for Dora. A strong bond of sympathy had suddenly been created between them, for he too had tasted the bitterness of prejudice. For the first time Dora was not merely a frumpy woman who had provoked in him a desire he half-despised; she was a fellow human, who knew the same miseries.… He had intended to take her this night, to make a great play for success, but he no longer felt that way. He drove to the boarding house where she lived.

"Here you are," he said gently, "I'll call you up tomorrow."

Dora looked up for the first time.

"O, no!" she plead. "Don't go off and leave me now. Don't leave me alone. Take me somewhere, anywhere.… Do anything you want with me.… You're all I've got!"



CHAPTER XXXI

The rest of the winter Ramon spent in an aimlessly pleasant way. He tried to work but without arousing in himself enough enthusiasm to insure success. He played pool, gambled a little and hunted a great deal. He relished his pleasures with the keen appetite of health and youth, but when they were over he felt empty-minded and restless and did not know what to do about it.

Some business came to his law office. Because of his knowledge of Spanish and of the country he was several times employed to look up titles to land, and this line of work he might have developed into a good practice had he possessed the patience. But it was monotonous, tedious work, and it bored him. He would toil over the papers with a good will for a while, and then a state of apathy would come over him, and like a boy in school he would sit vaguely dreaming.… Such dull tasks took no hold upon his mind.

He defended several Mexican criminals, and found this a more congenial form of practice, but an unremunerative one. The only case which advanced him toward the reputation for which every young attorney strives brought him no money at all. A young Mexican farmer of good reputation named Juan Valera had been converted to the Methodist faith. Like most of the few Mexicans who are won over to Protestantism, he had brought to his new religion a fanatical spirit, and had made enemies of the priests and of many of his neighbours by proselyting. Furthermore, his young and pretty wife remained a Catholic, which had caused a good deal of trouble in his house. But the couple were really devoted and managed to compromise their differences until a child was born. Then arose the question as to whether it should be baptized a Catholic or a Methodist. The girl wanted her baby to be baptized in the Catholic faith, and was fully persuaded by the priests that it would otherwise go to purgatory. She was backed by her father, whose interference was resented by Juan more than anything else. He consulted the pastor of his church, a bigoted New Englander, who counselled him on no account to yield.

One evening when Juan was away from home, his father-in-law came to his house and persuaded the girl to go with him and have the child baptized in the Catholic faith, in order that it might be saved from damnation. After the ceremony they went to a picture-show by way of a celebration. When Juan came home he learned from the neighbours what had happened. His face became very pale, his lips set, and his eyes had a hot, dangerous look. He got out a butcher knife from the kitchen, whetted it to a good point, and went and hid behind a big cottonwood tree near the moving-picture theatre. When his wife with the child and her father came out, he stepped up behind the old man and drove the knife into the back of his neck to the hilt, severing the spinal column. Afterward he looked at the dead man for a moment and at his wife, sitting on the ground shrieking, then went home and washed his hands and changed his shirt—for blood had spurted all over him—walked to the police station and gave himself up.

This man had no money, and it is customary in such cases for the court to appoint a lawyer to conduct the defence. Usually a young lawyer who needs a chance to show his abilities is chosen, and the honor now fell upon Ramon.

This was the first time since he had begun to study law that he had been really interested. He understood just how Juan Valera had felt. He called on him in jail. Juan Valera was composed, almost apathetic. He said he was willing to die, that he did not fear death.

"Let them hang me," he said. "I would do the same thing again."

Ramon studied the law of his case with exhaustive thoroughness, but the law did not hold out much hope for his client. It was in his plea to the jury that he made his best effort. Here again he discovered the eloquence that he had used the summer before in Arriba County. Here he lost for a moment his sense of aimlessness, felt again the thrill of power and the joy of struggle. He described vividly the poor Mexican's simple faith, his absolute devotion to it, showed that he had killed out of an all-compelling sense of right and duty. He found a good many witnesses to testify that Juan's father-in-law had hectored the young man a good deal, insulted him, intruded in his home. Half of the jurors were Mexicans. For a while the jury was hung. But it finally brought in a verdict of murder in the first degree, which was practically inevitable. Juan accepted this with a shrug of his shoulders and announced himself ready to hang and meet his Methodist God. But Ramon insisted on taking an appeal. He finally got the sentence commuted to life imprisonment. He then felt disgusted, and wished that he had let the man hang, feeling that he would have been better off dead than in the state penitentiary. But Juan's wife, who really loved him, came to Ramon's office and embraced his knees and laughed and cried and swore that she would do his washing for nothing as long as she lived. For now she could visit her husband once a month and take him tortillas! Ramon gave her ten dollars and pushed her out the door. He had worked hard on the case. He felt old and weary and wanted to get drunk.



One day Ramon received an invitation to go hunting with Joe Cassi and his friends. He accepted it, and afterward went on many trips with the Italian saloon-owner, thereby doing further injury to his social standing.

Cassi had come to the town some twenty years before with a hand organ and a monkey. The town was not accustomed to that form of entertainment; some of the Mexicans threw rocks at Cassi and a dog killed his monkey. Cassi was at that time a slender youth, handsome, ragged and full of high hopes. When his monkey was killed he first wept with rage and then swore that he would stay in that town and have the best of it. He now owned three saloons and the largest business building in town. He was a lean, grave, silent little man.

Cassi had made most of his money in the days when gambling was "open" in the town, and he had surrounded himself with a band of choice spirits who were experts in keno, roulette and poker. These still remained on his hands, some of them in the capacity of barkeepers, and others practically as pensioners. They were all great sportsmen, heavy drinkers and loyal-to-the-death friends. At short intervals they went on hunting trips down the river, generally remaining over the week-end. It was of these expeditions that Ramon now became a regular member. Sometimes the whole party would get drunk and come back whooping and singing as the automobiles bowled along, occasionally firing shotguns into the air. At other times when luck was good everyone became interested in the sport and forgot to drink. Ramon had a real respect for Cassi, and a certain amount of contempt for most of the rest of them; yet he felt more at home with these easy-going, pleasure-loving, loyal fellows than he did with those thrifty, respectable citizens in whose esteem the dollar stood so invariably first.

Cassi and his friends used most often to go to a Mexican village some fifty miles down the river where the valley was low and flat, and speckled with shallow alkaline ponds made by seepage from the river. Every evening the wild ducks flew into these ponds from the river to feed, and the shooting at this evening flight Ramon especially loved. The party would scatter out, each man choosing his own place on the East side of one of the little lakes, so that the red glare of the sunset was opposite him. There he would lie flat on the ground, perhaps making a low blind of weeds or rushes.

Seldom even in January was it cold enough to be uncomfortable. Ramon would lie on an elbow, smoking a cigarette, watching the light fade, and the lagoon before him turn into molten gold to match the sunset sky. It would be very quiet save for such sounds as the faraway barking of dogs or the lowing of cattle. When the sky overhead had faded to an obscure purple, and the flare of the sunset had narrowed to a belt along the horizon, he would hear the distant eerie whistle of wild wings. Nothing could be seen yet, but the sound multiplied. He could distinguish now the roar of a great flock of mallards, circling round and round high overhead, scouting for danger. He could hear the sweet flute-notes of teal and pintails, and the raucous, cautious quack of some old green-head. A teal would pitch suddenly down to the water before him and rest there, erect and wary, painted in black upon the golden water. Another would join it and another. The cautious mallards, encouraged by this, would swing lower. The music of their wings seemed incredibly close; he would grip his gun hard, holding himself rigidly still, feeling clearly each beat of his heart.

Suddenly the ducks would come into view … dark forms with ghostly blurs for wings, shooting with a roar into the red flare of light. The flash of his shotgun would leap out twice. The startled birds would bound into the air like blasted rock from a quarry, and be lost in the purple mystery of sky, except two or three that hurtled over and over and struck the water, each with a loud spat, throwing up little jets of gold.

Sometimes there were long waits between shots, but at others the flight was almost continuous, the air seemed full of darting birds, and the gun barrels were hot in his hands. His excitement would be intense for a time; yet after he had killed a dozen birds or so he would often lose interest and lie on his back listening to the music of wings and of bird voices. He had that aversion to excess which seems to be in all Latin peoples. Besides, he did not want many ducks to dispose of.… It was the rush and colour, the dramatic quality of the thing that he loved.

Most of the others killed to the limit with a fine unflagging lust for blood, giving a brilliant demonstration of the fact that civilized man is the most destructive and bloodthirsty of all the predatory mammals.



The coming of spring was marked by a few heavy rains, followed by the faint greening of the cottonwood trees and of the alfalfa fields. The grey waste of the mesa showed a greenish tinge, too, heralding its brief springtime splendor when it would be rich with the purple of wild-peas, pricked out in the morning with white blossoms of the prairie primrose. Now and then a great flock of geese went over the town, following the Rio Grande northward half a mile high, their faint wild call seeming the very voice of this season of lust and wandering.

Ramon felt restless and lost interest in all his usual occupations. He began to make plans and preparations for going to the mountains. He bought a tent and a new rifle and overhauled all his camping gear. He thought he was getting ready for a season of hard work, but in reality his strongest motive was the springtime longing for the road and the out-of-doors. He was sick of whisky and women and hot rooms full of tobacco smoke.