by Frank Norris
[Illustration: “‘My Curse Is On Her Who Next Kisses You’”]
“So be it!” Felipe had retorted with vast nonchalance, and had flung out from her presence to saddle his pony and start back to Buelna.
But Felipe was superstitious. He half believed in curses, had seen two-headed calves born because of them, and sheep stampeded over cliffs for no other reason.
Now, as he drew out of Pacheco Pass and came down into the valley the idea of Rubia and her curse troubled him. At first, when yet three days’ journey from Buelna, it had been easy to resolve to brave it out. But now he was already on the Rancho Martiarena (had been traveling over it for the last ten hours, in fact), and in a short time would be at the hacienda of Martiarena, uncle and guardian of Buelna. He would see Buelna, and she, believing always in his fidelity, would expect to kiss him.
“Well, this is to be thought about,” murmured Felipe uneasily. He touched up the pony with one of his enormous spurs.
“Now I know what I will do,” he thought. “I will go to San Juan Bautista and confess and be absolved, and will buy candles. Then afterward will go to Buelna.”
He found the road that led to the Mission and turned into it, pushing forward at a canter. Then suddenly at a sharp turning reined up just in time to avoid colliding with a little cavalcade.
He uttered an exclamation under his breath.
At the head of the cavalcade rode old Martiarena himself, and behind him came a peon or two, then Manuela, the aged housekeeper and — after a fashion — duenna. Then at her side, on a saddle of red leather with silver bosses, which was cinched about the body of a very small white burro, Buelna herself.
She was just turned sixteen, and being of the best blood of the mother kingdom (the strain dating back to the Ostrogothic invasion), was fair. Her hair was blond, her eyes blue-gray, her eyebrows and lashes dark brown, and as he caught sight of her Felipe wondered how he ever could have believed the swarthy Rubia beautiful.
There was a jubilant meeting. Old Martiarena kissed both his cheeks, patting him on the back.
“Oh, ho!” he cried. “Once more back. We have just returned from the feast of the Santa Cruz at the Mission, and Buelna prayed for your safe return. Go to her, boy. She has waited long for this hour.”
Felipe, his eyes upon those of his betrothed, advanced. She was looking at him and smiling. As he saw the unmistakable light in her blue eyes, the light he knew she had kept burning for him alone, Felipe could have abased himself to the very hoofs of her burro. Could it be possible he had ever forgotten her for such a one as Rubia — have been unfaithful to this dear girl for so much as the smallest fraction of a minute?
“You are welcome, Felipe,” she said. “Oh, very, very welcome.” She gave him her hand and turned her face to his. But it was her hand and not her face the young man kissed. Old Martiarena, who looked on, shook with laughter.
“Hoh! a timid lover this,” he called. “We managed different when I was a lad. Her lips, Felipe. Must an old man teach a youngster gallantry?”
Buelna blushed and laughed, but yet did not withdraw her hand nor turn her face away.
There was a delicate expectancy in her manner that she nevertheless contrived to make compatible with her native modesty. Felipe had been her acknowledged lover ever since the two were children.
“Well?” cried Martiarena as Felipe hesitated.
Even then, if Felipe could have collected his wits, he might have saved the situation for himself. But no time had been allowed him to think. Confusion seized upon him. All that was clear in his mind were the last words of Rubia. It seemed to him that between his lips he carried a poison deadly to Buelna above all others. Stupidly, brutally he precipitated the catastrophe.
“No,” he exclaimed seriously, abruptly drawing his hand from Buelna’s, “no. It may not be. I cannot.”
Martiarena stared. Then:
“Is this a jest, señor?” he demanded. “An ill-timed one, then.”
“No,” answered Felipe, “it is not a jest.”
“But, Felipe,” murmured Buelna. “But — why — I do not understand.”
“I think I begin to,” cried Martiarena. “Señor, you do not,” protested Felipe. “It is not to be explained. I know what you believe. On my honour, I love Buelna.”
“Your actions give you the lie, then, young man. Bah! Nonsense. What fool’s play is all this? Kiss him, Buelna, and have done with it.”
Felipe gnawed his nails.
“Believe me, oh, believe me, Señor Martiarena, it must not be.”
“Then an explanation.”
For a moment Felipe hesitated. But how could he tell them the truth — the truth that involved Rubia and his disloyalty, temporary though that was. They could neither understand nor forgive. Here, indeed, was an impasse. One thing only was to be said, and he said it. “I can give you no explanation,” he murmured.
But Buelna suddenly interposed.
“Oh, please,” she said, pushing by Felipe, “uncle, we have talked too long. Please let us go. There is only one explanation. Is it not enough already?”
“By God, it is not!” vociferated the old man, turning upon Felipe. “Tell me what it means. Tell me what this means.”
“I cannot.”
“Then I will tell you!” shouted the old fellow in Felipe’s face. “It means that you are a liar and a rascal. That you have played with Buelna, and that you have deceived me, who have trusted you as a father would have trusted a son. I forbid you to answer me. For the sake of what you were I spare you now. But this I will do. Off of my rancho!” he cried. “Off my rancho, and in the future pray your God, or the devil, to whom you are sold, to keep you far from me.”
“You do not understand, you do not understand,” pleaded Felipe, the tears starting to his eyes. “Oh, believe me, I speak the truth. I love your niece. I love Buelna. Oh, never so truly, never so devoutly as now. Let me speak to her; she will believe me.”
But Buelna, weeping, had ridden on.
CHAPTER II. UNZAR
A fortnight passed. Soon a month had gone by. Felipe gloomed about his rancho, solitary, taciturn, siding the sheep-walks and cattle-ranges for days and nights together, refusing all intercourse with his friends. It seemed as if he had lost Buelna for good and all. At times, as the certainty of this defined itself more clearly, Felipe would fling his hat upon the ground, beat his breast, and then, prone upon his face, his head buried in his folded arms, would lie for hours motionless, while his pony nibbled the sparse alfalfa, and the jack-rabbits limping from the sage peered at him, their noses wrinkling.
But about a month after the meeting and parting with Buelna, word went through all the ranches that a hide-roger had cast anchor in Monterey Bay. At once an abrupt access of activity seized upon the rancheros. Rodeos were held, sheep slaughtered, and the great tallow-pits began to fill up.
Felipe was not behind his neighbours, and, his tallow once in hand, sent it down to Monterey, and himself rode down to see about disposing of it.
On his return he stopped at the wine shop of one Lopez Catala, on the road between Monterey and his rancho.
It was late afternoon when he reached it, and the wine shop was deserted. Outside, the California August lay withering and suffocating over all the land. The far hills were burnt to dry, hay-like grass and brittle clods. The eucalyptus trees in front of the wine shop (the first trees Felipe had seen all that day) were coated with dust. The plains of sagebrush and the alkali flats shimmered and exhaled pallid mirages, glistening like inland seas. Over all blew the trade-wind; prolonged, insistent, harassing, swooping up the red dust of the road and the white powder of the alkali beds, and flinging it — white-and-red banners in a sky of burnt-out blue — here and there about the landscape.
The wine shop, which was also an inn, was isolated, lonely, but it was comfortable, and Felipe decided to lay over there that night, then in the morning reach his rancho by an easy stage.
He had his supper — an om
elet, cheese, tortillas, and a glass of wine — and afterward sat outside on a bench smoking innumerable cigarettes and watching the sun set.
While he sat so a young man of about his own age rode up from the eastward with a great flourish, and giving over his horse to the muchacho, entered the wine shop and ordered dinner and a room for the night. Afterward he came out and stood in front of the inn and watched the muchacho cleaning his horse.
Felipe, looking at him, saw that he was of his own age and about his own build — that is to say, twenty-eight or thirty, and tall and lean. But in other respects the difference was great. The stranger was flamboyantly dressed: skin-tight pantaloons, fastened all up and down the leg with round silver buttons; yellow boots with heels high as a girl’s, set off with silver spurs; a very short coat faced with galloons of gold, and a very broad-brimmed and very high-crowned sombrero, on which the silver braid alone was worth the price of a good horse. Even for a Spanish Mexican his face was dark. Swart it was, the cheeks hollow; a tiny, tight mustache with ends truculently pointed and erect helped out the belligerency of the tight-shut lips. The eyes were black as bitumen, and flashed continually under heavy brows.
“Perhaps,” thought Felipe, “he is a toreador from Mexico.”
The stranger followed his horse to the barn, but, returning in a few moments, stood before Felipe and said:
“Señor, I have taken the liberty to put my horse in the stall occupied by yours. Your beast the muchacho turned into the corrale. Mine is an animal of spirit, and in a corrale would fight with the other horses. I rely upon the señor’s indulgence.”
At ordinary times he would not have relied in vain. But Felipe’s nerves were in a jangle these days, and his temper, since Buelna’s dismissal of him, was bitter. His perception of offense was keen. He rose, his eyes upon the stranger’s eyes.
“My horse is mine,” he observed. “Only my friends permit themselves liberties with what is mine.”
The other smiled scornfully and drew from his belt a little pouch of gold dust.
“What I take I pay for,” he remarked, and, still smiling, tendered
Felipe a few grains of the gold.
Felipe struck the outstretched palm.
“Am I a peon?” he vociferated.
“Probably,” retorted the other.
“I will take pay for that word,” cried Felipe, his face blazing, “but not in your money, señor.”
“In that case I may give you more than you ask.”
“No, by God, for I shall take all you have.”
But the other checked his retort. A sudden change came over him.
“I ask the señor’s pardon,” he said, with grave earnestness, “for provoking him. You may not fight with me nor I with you. I speak the truth. I have made oath not to fight till I have killed one whom now I seek.”
“Very well; I, too, spoke without reflection. You seek an enemy, then, señor?”
“My sister’s, who is therefore mine. An enemy truly. Listen, you shall judge. I am absent from my home a year, and when I return what do I find? My sister betrayed, deceived, flouted by a fellow, a nobody, whom she received a guest in her house, a fit return for kindness, for hospitality! Well, he answers to me for the dishonour.”
“Wait. Stop!” interposed Felipe. “Your name, señor.”
“Unzar Ytuerate, and my enemy is called Arillaga. Him I seek and — —”
“Then you shall seek no farther!” shouted Felipe. “It is to Rubia Ytuerate, your sister, whom I owe all my unhappiness, all my suffering. She has hurt not me only, but one — but —— Mother of God, we waste words!” he cried. “Knife to knife, Unzar Ytuerate. I am Felipe Arillaga, and may God be thanked for the chance that brings this quarrel to my hand.”
“You! You!” gasped Unzar. Fury choked him; his hands clutched and unclutched — now fists, now claws. His teeth grated sharply while a quivering sensation as of a chill crisped his flesh. “Then the sooner the better,” he muttered between his set teeth, and the knives flashed in the hands of the two men so suddenly that the gleam of one seemed only the reflection of the other.
Unzar held out his left wrist.
“Are you willing?” he demanded, with a significant glance.
“And ready,” returned the other, baring his forearm.
Catala, keeper of the inn, was called.
“Love of the Virgin, not here, señors. My house — the alcalde—”
“You have a strap there.” Unzar pointed to a bridle hanging from a peg by the doorway. “No words; quick; do as you are told.”
The two men held out their left arms till wrist touched wrist, and
Catala, trembling and protesting, lashed them together with a strap.
“Tighter,” commanded Felipe; “put all your strength to it.”
The strap was drawn up to another hole.
“Now, Catala, stand back,” commanded Unzar, “and count three slowly. At the word ‘three,’ Señor Arillaga, we begin. You understand.”
“I understand.”
“Ready…. Count.”
“One.”
Felipe and Unzar each put his right hand grasping the knife behind his back as etiquette demanded.
“Two.”
They strained back from each other, the full length of their left arms, till the nails grew bloodless.
“Three!” called Lopez Catala in a shaking voice.
CHAPTER III. RUBIA
When Felipe regained consciousness he found that he lay in an upper chamber of Catala’s inn upon a bed. His shoulder, the right one, was bandaged, and so was his head. He felt no pain, only a little weak, but there was a comfortable sense of brandy at his lips, an arm supported his head, and the voice of Rubia Ytuerate spoke his name. He sat up on a sudden.
“Rubia, you!” he cried. “What is it? What happened? Oh, I remember, Unzar — we fought. Oh, my God, how we fought! But you —— What brought you here?”
“Thank Heaven,” she murmured, “you are better. You are not so badly wounded. As he fell he must have dragged you with him, and your head struck the threshold of the doorway.”
“Is he badly hurt? Will he recover?”
“I hope so. But you are safe.”
“But what brought you here?”
“Love,” she cried; “my love for you. What I suffered after you had gone! Felipe, I have fought, too. Pride was strong at first, and it was pride that made me send Unzar after you. I told him what had happened. I hounded him to hunt you down. Then when he had gone my battle began. Ah, dearest, dearest, it all came back, our days together, the life we led, knowing no other word but love, thinking no thoughts that were not of each other. And love conquered. Unzar was not a week gone before I followed him — to call him back, to shield you, to save you from his fury. I came all but too late, and found you both half dead. My brother and my lover, your body across his, your blood mingling with his own. But not too late to love you back to life again. Your life is mine now, Felipe. I love you, I love you.” She clasped her hands together and pressed them to her cheek. “Ah, if you knew,” she cried; “if you could only look into my heart. Pride is nothing; good name is nothing; friends are nothing. Oh, it is a glory to give them all for love, to give up everything; to surrender, to submit, to cry to one’s heart: ‘Take me; I am as wax. Take me; conquer me; lead me wherever you will. All is well lost so only that love remains.’ And I have heard all that has happened — this other one, the Señorita Buelna, how that she for bade you her lands. Let her go; she is not worthy of your love, cold, selfish — —”
“Stop!” cried Felipe, “you shall say no more evil of her. It is enough.”
“Felipe, you love her yet?”
“And always, always will.”
“She who has cast you off; she who disdains you, who will not suffer you on her lands? And have you come to be so low, so base and mean as that?”
“I have sunk no lower than a woman who could follow after a lover who had grown manifestly cold.”
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“Ah,” she answered sadly, “if I could so forget my pride as to follow you, do not think your reproaches can touch me now.” Then suddenly she sank at the bedside and clasped his hand in both of hers. Her beautiful hair, unbound, tumbled about her shoulders; her eyes, swimming with tears, were turned up to his; her lips trembled with the intensity of her passion. In a voice low, husky, sweet as a dove’s, she addressed him. “Oh, dearest, come back to me; come back to me. Let me love you again. Don’t you see my heart is breaking? There is only you in all the world for me. I was a proud woman once. See now what I have brought myself to. Don’t let it all be in vain. If you fail me now, think how it will be for me afterward — to know that I — I, Rubia Ytuerate, have begged the love of a man and begged in vain. Do you think I could live knowing that?” Abruptly she lost control of herself. She caught him about the neck with both her arms. Almost incoherently her words rushed from her tight-shut teeth.
“Ah, I can make you love me. I can make you love me,” she cried. “You shall come back to me. You are mine, and you cannot help but come back.”
“Por Dios, Rubia,” he ejaculated, “remember yourself. You are out of your head.”
“Come back to me; love me.”
“No, no.”
“Come back to me.”
“No.”
“You cannot push me from you,” she cried, for, one hand upon her shoulder, he had sought to disengage himself. “No, I shall not let you go. You shall not push me from you! Thrust me off and I will embrace you all the closer. Yes, strike me if you will, and I will kiss you.”
And with the words she suddenly pressed her lips to his.
Abruptly Felipe freed himself. A new thought suddenly leaped to his brain.
“Let your own curse return upon you,” he cried. “You yourself have freed me; you yourself have broken the barrier you raised between me and my betrothed. You cursed her whose lips should next touch mine, and you are poisoned with your own venom.”