CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI
EXTRA PAGES
ERRATA
CHAPTER I
Whenever Ramon Delcasar boarded a railroad train he indulged a habit, not
uncommon among men, of choosing from the women passengers the one whose
appearance most pleased him to be the object of his attention during the
journey. If the woman were reserved or well-chaperoned, or if she
obviously belonged to another man, this attention might amount to no more
than an occasional discreet glance in her direction. He never tried to
make her acquaintance unless her eyes and mouth unmistakably invited him
to do so.
This conservatism on his part was not due to an innate lack of
self-confidence. Whenever he felt sure of his social footing, his attitude
toward women was bold and assured. But his social footing was a peculiarly
uncertain thing for the reason that he was a Mexican. This meant that he
faced in every social contact the possibility of a more or less covert
prejudice against his blood, and that he faced it with an unduly proud and
sensitive spirit concealed beneath a manner of aristocratic indifference.
In the little southwestern town where he had lived all his life, except
the last three years, his social position was ostensibly of the highest.
He was spoken of as belonging to an old and prominent family. Yet he knew
of mothers who carefully guarded their daughters from the peril of falling
in love with him, and most of his boyhood fights had started when some one
called him a “damned Mexican” or a “greaser.”
Except to an experienced eye there was little in his appearance or in his
manner to suggest his race. His swarthy complexion indicated perhaps a
touch of the Moorish blood in his Spanish ancestry, but he was no darker
than are many Americans bearing Anglo-Saxon names, and his eyes were grey.
His features were aquiline and pleasing, and he had in a high degree that
bearing, at once proud and unself-conscious, which is called aristocratic.
He spoke English with a very slight Spanish accent.
When he had gone away to a Catholic law school in St. Louis, confident of
his speech and manner and appearance, he had believed that he was leaving
prejudice behind him; but in this he had been disappointed. The raw spots
in his consciousness, if a little less irritated at the college, were by
no means healed. Some persons, it is true, seemed to think nothing of his
race one way or the other; to some, mostly women, it gave him an added
interest; but in the long run it worked against him. It kept him out of a
fraternity, and it made his career in football slow and hard.
When he finally won the coveted position of quarterback, in spite of team
politics, he made a reputation by the merciless fashion in which he drove
his eleven, and by the fury of his own playing.
The same bitter emulative spirit which had impelled him in football drove
him to success in his study of the law. Books held no appeal for him, and
he had no definite ambitions, but he had a good head and a great desire to
show the gringos what he could do. So he had graduated high in his class,
thrown his diploma into the bottom of his trunk, and departed from his
alma mater without regret.
The limited train upon which he took passage for home afforded specially
good opportunity for his habit of mental philandering. The passengers were
continually going up and down between the dining car at one end of the
train and the observation car at the other, so that all of the women daily
passed in review. They were an unusually attractive lot, for most of the
passengers were wealthy easterners on their way to California. Ramon had
never before seen together so many women of the kind that devotes time and
money and good taste to the business of creating charm. Perfectly gowned
and groomed, delicately scented, they filled him with desire and with envy
for the men who owned them. There were two newly married couples among the
passengers, and several intense flirtations were under way before the
train reached Kansas City. Ramon felt as though he were a spectator at
some delightful carnival. He was lonely and restless, yet fascinated.
For no opportunity of becoming other than a spectator had come to him. He
had chosen without difficulty the girl whom he preferred, but had only
dared to admire her from afar. She was a little blonde person, not more
than twenty, with angelic grey eyes, hair of the colour of ripe wheat and
a complexion of perfect pink and white. The number of different costumes
which she managed to don in two days filled him with amazement and gave
her person an ever-varying charm and interest. She appeared always
accompanied by a very placid-looking and portly woman, who was evidently
her mother, and a tall, cadaverous sick man, whose indifferent and pettish
attitude toward her seemed to indicate that he was either a brother or an
uncle, for Ramon felt sure that she was not married. She acquired no male
attendants, but sat most of the time very properly, if a little
restlessly, with her two companions. Once or twice Ramon felt her look
upon him, but she always turned it away when he glanced at her.
Whether because she was really beautiful in her own petite way, or because
she seemed so unattainable, or because her small blonde daintiness had a
peculiar appeal for him, Ramon soon reached a state of conviction that she
interested him more than any other girl he had ever seen. He discreetly
followed her about the train, watching for the opportunity that never
came, and consoling himself with the fact that no one else seemed more
fortunate in winning her favour than he. The only strange male who
attained to the privilege of addressing her was a long-winded and elderly
gentleman of the British perpetual-travelling type, at least one
representative of which is found on every transcontinental train, and it
was plain enough that he bored the girl.
Ramon took no interest in landscapes generally, but when he awoke on the
last morning of his journey and found himself once more in the wide and
desolate country of his birth, he was so deeply stirred and interested
that he forgot all about the girl. Devotion to one particular bit of soil
is a Mexican characteristic, and in Ramon it was highly developed because
he had spent so much of his life close to the earth. Every summer of his
boyhood he had been sent to one of the sheep ranches which belonged to the
various branches of his numerous family. Each of these ranches was merely
a headquarters where the sheep were annually dipped and sheared and from
which the herds set out on their long wanderings across the open range.
Often Ramon had followed them—across the deserts where the heat shimmered
and the yellow dust hung like a great pale plume over the rippling backs
of the herd, and up to the summer range in the mountains where they fed
above the clouds in lush green pastures crowned with spires of rock and
snow. He had shared the beans and mutton and black coffee of the herders
and had gone to sleep on a pile of peltries to the evensong of the coyotes
that hung on the flanks of the herd. Hunting, fishing, wandering, he had
lived like a savage and found the life good.
It was this life of primitive freedom that he had longed for in his exile.
He had thought little of his family and less of his native town, but a
nostalgia for open spaces and free wanderings had been always with him. He
had come to hate the city with its hard walled-in ways and its dirty air,
and also the eastern country-side with its little green prettiness
surrounded by fences. He longed for a land where one can see for fifty
miles, and not a man or a house. He thought that alkaline dust on his lips
would taste sweet.
Now he saw again the scorched tawny levels, the red hills dotted with
little gnarled _pinon_ trees, the purple mystery of distant mountains. A
great friendly warmth filled his body, and his breath came a little
quickly with eagerness. When he saw a group of Mexicans jogging along the
road on their scrawny mounts he wanted to call out to them: “_Como lo va,
amigos?_” He would have liked to salute this whole country, which was his
country, and to tell it how glad he was to see it again. It was the one
thing in the world that he loved, and the only thing that had ever given
him pleasure without tincture of bitterness.
He heard two men in the seat behind him talking.
“Did you ever see anything so desolate?” one asked.
“I wouldn’t live in this country if they gave it to me,” said the other.
Ramon turned and looked at them. They were solid, important-looking men,
and having visited upon the country their impressive disapproval, they
opened newspapers and shut it away from their sight. Dull fools, thought
Ramon, who do not know God’s country when they see it.
And then he continued to look right over their heads and their newspapers,
for tripping down the aisle all by herself at last, came the girl of his
fruitless choice. His eyes, deep with dreams, met hers. She smiled upon
him, radiantly, blushed a little, and hurried on through the car.
He sat looking after her with a foolish grin on his face. He was pleased
and shaken. So she had noticed him after all. She had been waiting for a
chance, as well as he. And now that it had come, he was getting off the
train in an hour. It was useless to follow her.… He turned to the window
again.