by Max Brand
“That is enough,” interrupted Caporno with a slight touch of disgust, I thought. “You need not grow poetical about the virtues of your ancestors.”
“At least,” I could not help adding, “there was never a Mendez . . . who ever formed part of the procession at an autodafé. No, our religion was perfect. And our politics were perfect, also. It was only in the very little matter of the legality of certain small actions. . . .”
“I understand.”
“At length, however, we fell upon evil days. My grandfather turned out a law lover. He was a lawyer and a famous one. He interrupted our grand succession of knaves. He broke off our intercourse with ruffians and assassins. He left to my father a perfect desire to resume the grand old family ways, but a perfect inability to keep at the work. All the means, as you will see, had been stripped from his hands. He attempted to remake the old trails, but he slipped upon them and spent the greater part of his life in prison. I, his son, recognized that there was a limited opportunity in the Old World, and therefore I was determined to try the manners and methods of the new one. And here you find me.”
XIII
Here I paused, and the other began to nod and frown to himself and drum the tips of his fat fingers together. At last, he was humming, but still he did not look at, me.
“Enchanting,” he said. “Most enchanting, dear Mendez. And so you are only newly come to our little new world?”
“I have been here these many years.”
“And with good fortune?”
Perhaps it was a foolish thing to do. But I certainly did not do it for ridiculous vanity. It was merely because, in studying this fat fellow before me, I felt that he was bound to be very deeply mixed in the next events of my life and I thought that this might be the proper manner in which to impose upon him. At any rate, I took out my wallet and tossed it to him.
I expected, of course, that he would simply give one glance to the contents. But that was not Caporno. He took out every item of money in the wallet—I thanked heaven that there was nothing but money in it—and counted the paper slowly, with great leisure, with apparent delight, smiling and nodding to himself all of the time. He stacked the $100 bills by themselves and the twenties in other stacks, and so with the tens and the fives.
“Twenty-seven hundred and fifty dollars,” he said at last. “That is not much in a way, and yet it is a great deal in another way. How old are you, my dear son?”
I hesitated for the briefest instant. It was true that I looked thirty or a bit more—at least, according to my own opinion. It was also true that my opinion might not be that of Caporno. There was a mortal shrewdness in the bright eyes of that fat rascal that frightened me and told me that it would be well to proceed most cautiously with him.
I decided, ultimately, that I would split the difference between the truth and what I felt to be the appearance.
“I am twenty-five,” I said.
Here he did at last swing around upon me, with a soft chuckling distorting his face.
“Twenty-five?” he said. “My dear Mendez . . . my dear, foolish, delightful boy.”
I hardly knew whether or not he was laughing at me because he thought that I was overstating or understating my age. At last I decided, almost savagely, that on this one point I should allow him to know the truth.
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “it is sometimes necessary for a man to make a pretense.”
“So long as it is not ridiculous,” he answered me instantly.
“Then I shall tell you the whole truth. I am twenty-two, señor!”
But here he stiffened in his chair and smashed his hands violently together.
“Ten thousand devils!” he cried. “Twenty-two? You? This is worse and worse! Pedro!”
The aged skeleton stepped in before me.
“Look at that man as if he were a horse and tell me what his age may be. Forgive me if I doubt you, Mendez. We must know the truth early in our acquaintance.”
The old Pedro gave me what I thought was only a passing glance, and then he said to his master: “This gentleman is a little above twenty . . . beneath his beard, señor.”
Then he stepped back into his corner.
Señor Caporno clapped his hands loudly together. He seemed delighted, and I think that he was, although his delight was based upon his own mistake.
“Ah, amigo!” he cried. “What a fool I was making of myself, for I should have called you thirty years old to a day . . . yes, or more. My dear Mendez . . . my dear son . . . my dear child . . . do you forgive me for my doubt?”
I could not help smiling on him. From what I have reported of his conversation you may think that this good nature of mine was rather strange, but, as a matter of fact, there was a charm in this rascal that I cannot report or sum up accurately in words. There was a fragrance, I may say, that surrounded him, and that was born of nothing.
“I forgive you, of course,” I said.
“Then our bargain is concluded,” he said.
“I do not exactly know to what you refer,” I said.
“That is nonsense.” He frowned upon me as he said it. “Of course you are perfectly aware that what I mean is that I desire to employ you and pay you regular wages for your services.”
I smiled on him again, but I said nothing. I felt, in a way, that I knew how to handle this man. So I continued to smile, and, smiling, I rose from my seat, and still smiling I bowed in farewell to him.
“¡Peste!” he snapped. “I should have called it a salary, if you are intending to be punctilious.”
I said: “My dear Señor Caporno, I cannot tell what section of your native land produced you, but I assure you that in Arragon we are afflicted with what you might call national idiosyncrasies.”
“Confoundedly proud, I suppose,” he said, smiling at me. “And I hate pride,” he added.
I bowed to him again. “I shall trouble you no longer,” I said. “I have enjoyed the chat and the pleasant drink, señor.”
I was backing away from him.
“Pedro!” gasped Caporno, and his face swelled and turned purple until I actually thought that blood vessels must instantly burst. “Pedro! In the name of heaven, stop him!”
The ancient Pedro glided instantly beside me, and laid upon my arm a withered hand that was rather appealing than restraining. I could not shake off the grasp of that mummied hand. In fact, I did not wish to do so, and I was only waiting for a favorable opportunity to accept the invitation of Caporno to remain and listen to him. And yet I had felt, and I still felt, that, if I allowed him to take me too casually, I would mean to him no more than a dog, and that was an attitude that I was determined to prevent.
“You devil, Mendez,” stammered and gasped Caporno. “Ah, Lord, there is the gout again. You have ruined my day. May you be damned because you know that you are necessary to me. Sit down. No, if you are proud . . . I beg you on my knees to sit and listen to me.”
Of course I sat down at once and told him I was sorry if I had disturbed him very much. He lay back in his chair for a time, mopping his forehead and sighing, and taking his breath again noisily, and all the time flashing side glances at me as though he wished to make sure that I was still there and had not sneaked away from him.
“Ah, Mendez, that was cruel.”
“I did not intend it so.”
“All young men are brutal.”
“Forgive me, señor.”
“I meant salary, Mendez, not wages. On my honor, that was my meaning.”
“You are kind.”
“Lad, you are still cold to me. Why?”
“Señor, the family of Mendez . . .,” I began.
He broke in: “Is not accustomed to taking service. Is not that what you would say?”
“You have put it very tersely.”
“You would not serve. You would be acting as a savior to my family.”
“In what way, may I beg of you?”
“¡Peste!” he cried, bringing out that most un-Sp
anish oath with a rich flavor. “I must explain everything. And yet my habit is to buy a man first, and then afterward explain . . . ten thousand pardons, Mendez. I did not mean to hint that I was buying. . . .”
“I am not offended.”
“Curse your pride.” He breathed. “It has me upon pins and needles every moment.”
“I am sorry.”
“The salary, first.”
“I had rather learn the nature of the employment, señor.”
“Your employment is to condescend to be a protector to my family.”
“Señor, you are pleased to be merry.”
“I? I am the soul of gravity. I swear! I beg of you to consider yourself in the position of a member of the family.”
“You are too kind, indeed.”
“And as for the salary. . . .”
He paused and stabbed me with another flashing side glance like the sliding of a keen knife.
“The salary is five thousand dollars a year!” he cried.
It bewildered me a little—plainly. For four years, living as I had lived upon the spoils of the spoilers, striking where I chose to strike, collecting rich booty three or four times a year and gathering in more thousands than I could ever hope to spend with ease, money had meant little or nothing to me. A thousand a year was sufficient for my needs—enough to keep me in food and ammunition, buy an occasional new gun, and fill the palm of my friends in the mountains—the fellows who, here and there, I could count upon for information and harborage, in time of need. Such had been my life. But, in the days preceding, a man who had $5,000 for an income could hardly be a laborer. Even the head boss of a big ranch would not get, perhaps, more than $100 a month. And so, the thought of the $5,000 staggered me a little.
I hope that I did not show the emotion, however. When one has had to look danger gravely in the face as often as I had had to look at it before my twentieth year, one gains, at the least, a fair control of one’s outward expression. And yet, under the steel-pointed eyes of Caporno, how could I tell what I had revealed?
“Five thousand a year is a handsome thing,” I admitted.
“I see that you like it,” he said. “But what will you think, when I tell you, my dear boy, that five thousand a year is only a small beginning with me? In fact, it is only introductory to my real hopes of what I may be able to do for you. The possibilities are almost limitless. Mendez, if I can find a man who I can trust, I tell you that millions and millions may pass through his fingers . . . and where millions pass through the fingers, is it not impossible that a few of the dollars should not stick to the skin that handles them?”
He said it with an air of the greatest significance.
“Señor,” I broke in rather abruptly, “you are making great professions. You have known me for less than half an hour.”
“False! I have known you for a thousand years. For the instinct in me is a thousand years old, at least . . . and that instinct learns when it stands face to face with an honest man.”
“Señor, you overwhelm me.”
“Then you are with us? You accept a place in my family, my boy?”
“Señor, you are kind. I am as far from your service as ever until I learn . . . what that service may be.”
“Come, come,” he said darkly. “There are limits. Do not try to impose upon me too far.”
“I am adamant,” I said. “I must know everything before a Mendez can take employment.”
I thought of my rough, odd past, and could have smiled at myself.
“Very well,” he said, dark with gloom. “I shall tell you briefly, because, hearing, I know that you will not be afraid. Señor, I tell you that at this moment my happiness stands in danger of the most dreadful and the most famous single warrior in the whole range of the mountains.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” I said. “What is his name?”
“His name is one that you must be familiar with, no matter how short a time you have been in this district. His name, my friend, is Hugo Ames, and from the danger of his hand I expect you to protect me and mine.”
XIV
Of course I was surprised. And I showed it. “You have heard?” he asked anxiously. “And are you afraid to undertake such a task?”
“I have heard of him as a ruffian,” I said. “I confess that I am not afraid of any dishonest man.”
“That is rather a stupid speech, but a very brave one,” decided Caporno.
“How can such a desperado . . . living hundreds of miles from this house . . . how can he have become your deadly enemy, señor?”
“He is not my enemy. He is the enemy of one in my house. It is for the particular protection of that person that I enlist you. But do you accept my proposal?”
“Señor,” I said, after a moment in which I had turned the proposal backward and forward in my mind, “I accept for some limited time.”
“Six months is as good as forever. Your pay shall be advanced to you. Mendez, I am enchanted. Pedro, he is mine. Ah, this is truly a happy day!”
And, rising from his chair, he seized on me with one hand and upon Pedro with the other. At the same instant, it seemed to me that his exultation made the pangs of his gout to disappear—his unwieldy bulk was borne upon his feet as lightly as the slender body of any youth. And the grip of his hand had in it a force that astounded me. In his own youth, surely, Señor Caporno was a man of might.
He was still laughing and clapping his hands together, congratulating himself, when he lowered himself into his chair again. He called for wine and the next ten minutes were devoted to cursing Pedro as that old worthy offered two different glasses, neither of which was of correct temperature. At last, the right degree was found, and the old voluptuary sat back in his chair and sipped the wine until the glass was empty.
“Ah,” he said when that was done, “there is nothing like the reward of an excellent draft at the end of a day of good work. And all of my day’s work is boiled down into this interview with you, my dear young friend.”
“Will you answer some questions?”
“I hate questions, but you are too new a friend to be refused. Continue!”
“Who is the person I am to protect?”
“You have seen him riding, I have no doubt, at the side of my beautiful daughter . . . he who I mean is Mister Lewis Vidett.”
“He is not Spanish!” I exclaimed.
“As charming as though he were, however. Quite!”
“And it is Mister Vidett I am to care for?”
“Not he alone, but my daughter, also.”
“What?” I said. “Is this Ames such a devil that he would cut the throat of a woman, also?”
“Ames! I have named only the smaller half of the danger to you. Only the smaller half.”
It gave me, of course, a severe shock. There was something infinitely soothing in the thought that the only danger from which I was to guard this old rascal was Ames or, in a word, the true self of which Francisco Mendez was the ghost only. But now it appeared that there were still other troubles to be faced in the future.
“There is another danger greater than that from Ames?” I asked. “And, in the first place, why is Ames an enemy? How in the name of the devil can you have come to offend this outlaw?”
“I?” said Caporno, making a large gesture. “My son, my hand has stretched across the world, and has been felt by people of all nations. There is not a country in the world where you will not find men who want my heart’s blood.”
He said this nodding to himself and chuckling and leaning back in his chair rubbing his hands. I think that I have never seen even a painted face with half so much evil in it as there was in the face of Caporno at that moment. And yet it was rather like a boy who revels in the mischief that he has made.
“In the meantime,” he said briskly, “we have gripped hands and made the bargain, have we not?”
“I shall sign a paper, also,” I said, “if you wish me to do so.”
“Signatures are a waste o
f time,” he said. “The record of my life in ink would not fill half a page in a copy book, but that same record in the hearts of men . . . and women, also . . . would fill a library of fat volumes. But now you must meet Lewis Vidett. Pedro!”
Pedro apparently had followed the last speech of his master. He himself did not go to execute the order, but he lifted a hand and from behind him an agile, soft-footed Negro glided out and stood beside the old man. The command of Pedro was repeated in a murmur that I could not overhear, and the Negro instantly vanished.
Caporno went on: “Vidett is a gallant boy, Mendez. To see him is to love him, as my daughter found. You will imagine that I would not give her readily to a nameless young adventurer like Vidett. But what could I do? What could I do? Shall I tell you the story of how he came wooing her?”
I admitted that I was very curious. He began at once, hurrying a little because he could not tell at what moment Vidett himself would appear upon the scene.
“I was at that time the president of a flourishing young republic . . . not so flourishing as it became afterward, however, when I had taught it certain lessons . . . in economy, you may be sure. However, all was well. My policies were popular. The poor believed that I was an honest rich man and the rich believed that I was a clever rich man. So that all classes were satisfied . . . and all classes were deceived. And it was at about this time in my career that I gave a great ball and at the ball my daughter appeared . . . my lovely girl . . . my beautiful Rosa. However, you have seen her, and I shall not waste words even upon such a subject.
“She was the star of the evening. She dazzled old and young and even gray-faced elders smiled and grew foolish in the eye when they passed near her. As for Rosa, she passed like an enchantress among the creations of her own mind . . . quite untouched among the havoc that she was making with her smiles and her laughter. And when she danced, all eyes trailed about the great room after her.
“I was, of course, pleased. Every father is delighted when he sees his daughter making a fool of other men. It is a reward. It is a revenge, you may say, for the hours in one’s own youth when one has been tangled in the net of some silly girl and danced attendance on her, lost in a crowd. Even I, even Caporno, have been in that position. Will you believe it?”