He was all ready to leave for Arriba County when one more black mischance
came to bedevil him. Cortez came into the office with a worried look in
his usually unrevealing eyes.
“There’s a woman in town looking for you,” he announced. “A Mexican girl
from the country. She was asking everybody she met where to find you. You
ought to be more careful. I took her to my house and promised I would
bring you right away.”
Cortez lived in a little square box of a brick cottage, which he had been
buying slowly for the past ten years and would probably never own. In its
parlour, gaudy with cheap, new furniture, Ramon confronted Catalina
Archulera. She was clad in a dirty calico dress, and her shoes were
covered with the dust of long tramping, as was the black shawl about her
head and shoulders. Once he had thought her pretty, but now she looked to
him about as attractive as a clod of earth.
She stood before him with downcast eyes, speechless with misery and
embarassment. At first he was utterly puzzled as to what could have
brought her there. Then with a queer mixture of anger and pity and
disgust, he noticed the swollen bulk of her healthy young body.
“Catalina! Why did you come here?” he blurted, all his self-possession
gone for a moment.
“My father sent me,” she replied, as simply as though that were an
all-sufficient explanation.
“But why did you tell him … it was I? Why didn’t you come to me first?”
“He made me tell,” Catalina rolled back her sleeve and showed some blue
bruises. “He beat me,” she explained without emotion.
“What did he tell you to say?”
“He told me to come to you and show you how I am.… That is all.”
Ramon swore aloud with a break in his voice. For a long moment he stood
looking at her, bewildered, disgusted. It somehow seemed to him utterly
wrong, utterly unfair that this thing should have happened, and above all
that it should have happened now. He had taken other girls, as had every
other man, but never before had any such hard luck as this befallen him.
And now, of all times!
In Catalina he felt not the faintest interest. Before him was the proof
that once he had desired her. Now that desire had vanished as completely
as his childhood.
And she was Archulera’s daughter. That was the hell of it! Archulera was
the one man of all men whom he could least afford to offend. And he knew
just how hard to appease the old man would be. For among the Mexicans,
seduction is a crime which, in theory and often in practice, can be atoned
only by marriage or by the shedding of blood. Marriage is the door to
freedom for the women, but virginity is a thing greatly revered and
carefully guarded. The unmarried girl is always watched, often locked up,
and he who appropriates her to his own purpose is violating a sacred right
and offending her whole family.
In the towns, all this has been somewhat changed, as the customs of any
country suffer change in towns. But old Archulera, living in his lonely
canyon, proud of his high lineage, would be the hardest of men to appease.
And meantime, what was to be done with the girl?
It was this problem which brought his wits back to him. A plan began to
form in his mind. He saw that in sending her to him Archulera had really
played into his hands. The important thing now was to keep her away from
her father. He looked at her again, and the pity which he always felt for
weaklings welled up in him. He knew many Mexican ranches in the valley
where he could keep her in comfort for a small amount. That would serve a
double purpose. The old man would be kept in ignorance as to what Ramon
intended, and the girl would be saved from further punishment. Meantime,
he could send Cortez to see Archulera and find out what money would do.
The whole affair was big with potential damage to him. Some of his enemies
might find out about it and make a scandal. Archulera might come around in
an ugly mood and make trouble. The girl might run away and come to town
again. And yet, now that he had a plan, he was all confidence.
Cortez kept Catalina at his house while Ramon drove forty miles up the
valley and made arrangements with a Mexican who lived in an isolated
place, to care for her for an indefinite period. When he took Catalina
there, he told her on the way simply that she was to wait until he came
for her, and above all, that she must not try to communicate with her
father. The girl nodded, looking at him gravely with her large soft eyes.
Her lot had always been to obey, to bear burdens and to suffer. The stuff
of rebellion and of self-assertion was not in her, but she could endure
misfortune with the stoical indifference of a savage. Indeed, she was in
all essentials simply a squaw. During the ride to her new home she seemed
more interested in the novel sensation of travelling at thirty miles an
hour than in her own future. She clung to the side of the car with both
hands, and her face reflected a pathetic mingling of fear and delight.
The house of Nestor Gomez to which Ramon took her was prettily set in a
grove of cottonwoods, with white hollyhocks blooming on either side of the
door, and strings of red chile hanging from the rafter-ends to dry. Half a
dozen small children played about the door, the younger ones naked and all
of them deep in dirt. A hen led her brood of chicks into the house on a
foray for crumbs, and in the shade of the wall a mongrel bitch luxuriously
gave teat to four pups. Bees humming about the hollyhocks bathed the scene
in sleepy sound.
Catalina, utterly unembarassed, shook hands with her host and hostess in
the limp, brief way of the Mexicans, and then, while Ramon talked with
them, sat down in the shade, shook loose her heavy black hair and began to
comb it. A little half-naked urchin of three years came and stood before
her. She stopped combing to place her hands on his shoulders, and the two
regarded each other long and intently, while Catalina’s mouth framed a
smile of dull wonder.
As Ramon drove back to town, he marvelled that he should ever have desired
this clod of a woman; but he was grateful to her for the bovine calm with
which she accepted things. He would visit her once in a while. He felt
pretty sure that he could count on her not to make trouble.
Afterward he discussed the situation with Cortez. The latter was worried.
“You better look out,” he counselled. “You better send him a message you
are going to marry her. That will keep him quiet for a while. When he gets
over being mad, maybe you can make him take a thousand dollars instead.”
Ramon shook his head. If he gave Archulera to understand that he would
marry the girl, word of it might get to town.
“He’ll never find her,” he said confidently. “I’ll do nothing unless he
comes to me.”
“I don’t know,” Cortez replied doubtfully. “Is he a _penitente_?”
“Yes; I think he is,” Ramon admitted.
“Then maybe he’ll find her pretty quick. There are some _penitentes_ still
in the valley and all _penitentes_ work together. You better look out.”