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.
[pg 196] 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 [pg 197] 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.
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[pg 198]
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. [pg 199] 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, [pg 200] 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 [pg 201] 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 [pg 202] 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 [pg 203] 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.
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[pg 204]
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 [pg 205] 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 [pg 206] 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 [pg 207] 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 [pg 208] 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 [pg 209] 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 [pg 210] 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, [pg 211] 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.
The Blood of the Conquerors Page 13