The year that Ramon returned to his native town the annual fair, which
took place at the fair-grounds in Old Town, was an especially gorgeous and
throngful event, rich in spectacle and incident. A steer was roped and
hog-tied in record time by Clay MacGarnigal of Lincoln County. A
seven-mile relay race was won by a buck named Slonny Begay. In the bronco
busting contest two men were injured to the huge enjoyment of the crowd.
The twenty-seventh cavalry from Fort Bliss performed a sham battle. The
home team beat several other teams. Enormous apples raised by irrigation
in the Pecos Valley attracted much attention, and a hungry Mexican
absconded with a prize Buff Orpington rooster.
Twice a day the single narrow street which connected the neat brick and
frame respectability of New Town with the picturesque _adobe_ squalor of
Old Town was filled by a curiously varied crowd. The tourist from the
East, distinguished by his camera and his unnecessary umbrella, jostled
the Pueblo squaw from Isleta, with her latest-born slung over her shoulder
in a fold of red blanket. Mexican families from the country marched in
single file, the men first, then the women enveloped in huge black shawls,
carrying babies and leading older children by the hand. Cowboys, Indians
and soldiers raced their horses through the swarming street with reckless
skill. Automobiles honked and fretted. The street cars, bulging humanity
at every door and window, strove in vain to relieve the situation. Several
children and numerous pigs and chickens were run over. From the unpaved
street to the cloudless sky rose a vast cloud of dust, such as only a
rainless country made of sand can produce. Dust was in every one’s eyes
and mouth and upon every one’s clothing. It was the unofficial badge of
the gathering. It turned the green of the cottonwood trees to grey, and
lay in wait for unsuspecting teeth between the halves of hamburger
sandwiches sold at corner booths.
Ramon, who had obtained a pass to the grounds through the influence of his
uncle, went to the fair every day, although he was not really pleased with
it. He was assured by every one that it was the greatest fair ever held in
the southwest, but to him it seemed smaller, dustier and less exciting
than the fairs he had attended in his boyhood.
This impression harmonized with a general feeling of discontent which had
possessed him since his return. He had obtained a position in the office
of a lawyer at fifty dollars a month, and spent the greater part of each
day making out briefs and borrowing books for his employer from other
lawyers. It seemed to him a petty and futile occupation, and the way to
anything better was long and obscure. The town was full of other young
lawyers who were doing the same things and doing them with a better grace
than he. They were impelled by a great desire to make money. He, too,
would have liked a great deal of money, but he had no taste for piling it
up dollar by dollar. The only thing that cheered him was the prospect of
inheriting his uncle’s wealth, and that was an uncertain prospect. Don
Diego seemed to be doing what he could to get rid of his property before
he died.
Local society did not please Ramon either. The girls of the gringo
families were not nearly as pretty, for the most part, as the ones he had
seen in the East. The dryness and the scorching sun had a bad effect on
their complexions. The girls of his own race did not much interest him;
his liking was for blondes. And besides, girls were relatively scarce in
the West because of the great number of men who came from the East.
Competition for their favours was keen, and he could not compete
successfully because he had so little money.
The fair held but one new experience for him, and that was the Montezuma
ball. This took place on the evening of the last day, and was an exclusive
invitation event, designed to give elegance to the fair by bringing
together prominent persons from all parts of the state. Ramon had never
attended a Montezuma ball, as he had been considered a mere boy before his
departure for college and had not owned a dress suit. But this lack had
now been supplied, and he had obtained an invitation through the Governor
of the State, who happened to be a Mexican.
He went to the ball with his mother and his eldest sister in a carriage
which had been among the family possessions for about a quarter of a
century. It had once been a fine equipage, and had been drawn by a
spirited team in the days before Felipe Delcasar lost all his money, but
now it had a look of decay, and the team consisted of a couple of rough
coated, low-headed brutes, one of which was noticeably smaller than the
other. The coachman was a ragged native who did odd jobs about the
Delcasar house.
The Montezuma ball took place in the new Eldorado Hotel which had recently
been built by the railroad company for the entertainment of its
transcontinental passengers. It was not a beautiful building, but it was
an apt expression of the town’s personality. Designed in the ancient style
of the early Spanish missions, long, low and sprawling, with deep
verandahs, odd little towers and arched gateways it was made of cement and
its service and prices were of the Manhattan school. A little group of
Pueblo Indians, lonesomely picturesque in buck-skin and red blankets, with
silver and turquoise rings and bracelets, were always seated before its
doors, trying to sell fruit and pottery to well-tailored tourists. It had
a museum of Southwestern antiquities and curios, where a Navajo squaw
sulkily wove blankets on a handloom for the edification of the guilded
stranger from the East. On the platform in front of it, perspiring
Mexicans smashed baggage and performed the other hard labour of a modern
terminal.
Thus the Eldorado Hotel was rich in that contrast between the old and the
new which everywhere characterized the town. Generally speaking, the old
was on exhibition or at work, while the new was at leisure or in charge.
When the Delcasar carriage reached the hotel, it had to take its place in
a long line of crawling vehicles, most of which were motor cars. Ramon
felt acutely humiliated to arrive at the ball in a decrepit-looking rig
when nearly every one else came in an automobile. He hoped that no one
would notice them. But the smaller of the two horses, which had spent most
of his life in the country, became frightened, reared, plunged, and
finally backed the rig into one of the cars, smashing a headlight,
blocking traffic, and making the Delcasars a target for searchlights and
oaths. The Dona Delcasar, a ponderous and swarthy woman in voluminous
black silk, became excited and stood up in the carriage, shouting shrill
and useless directions to the coachman in Spanish. People began to laugh.
Ramon roughly seized his mother by the arm and dragged her down. He was
trembling with rage and embarassment.
It was an immense relief to him when he had deposited the two women on
chairs and was able to wander away by himself. He took up his position in
a doorway and watched the opening of the ball with a cold and disapproving
eye. The beginning was stiff, for many of those present were unknown to
each other and had little in common. Most of them were “Americans,” Jews
and Mexicans. The men were all a good deal alike in their dress suits, but
the women displayed an astonishing variety. There were tall gawky blonde
wives of prominent cattlemen; little natty black-eyed Jewesses, best
dressed of all; swarthy Mexican mothers of politically important families,
resplendent in black silk and diamonds; and pretty dark Mexican girls of
the younger generation, who did not look at all like the se�oritas of
romance, but talked, dressed and flirted in a thoroughly American manner.
The affair finally got under way in the form of a grand march, which
toured the hall a couple of times and disintegrated into waltzing couples.
Ramon watched this proceeding and several other dances without feeling any
desire to take part. He was in a state of grand and gloomy discontent,
which was not wholly unpleasant, as is often the case with youthful
glooms. He even permitted himself to smile at some of the capers cut by
prominent citizens. But presently his gaze settled upon one couple with a
real sense of resentment and uneasiness. The couple consisted of his
uncle, Diego Delcasar, and the wife of James MacDougall, the lawyer and
real estate operator with whom the Don had formed a partnership, and whom
Ramon believed to be systematically fleecing the old man.
Don Diego was a big, paunchy Mexican with a smooth brown face, strikingly
set off by fierce white whiskers. His partner was a tall, tight-lipped,
angular woman, who danced painfully, but with determination. The two had
nothing to say to each other, but both of them smiled resolutely, and the
Don visibly perspired under the effort of steering his inflexible friend.
Although he did not formulate the idea, this couple was to Ramon a symbol
of the disgust with which the life of his native town inspired him. Here
was the Mexican sedulously currying favour with the gringo, who robbed him
for his pains. And here was the specific example of that relation which
promised to rob Ramon of his heritage.
For the gringos he felt a cold hostility—a sense of antagonism and
difference—but it was his senile and fatuous uncle, the type of his own
defeated race, whom he despised.