These were days of power and success, days of a glamour that lingered long
in his mind. Beyond a doubt he was destroying MacDougall’s plan and
realizing his own. Sometimes he met a surly Mexican who would not listen
to him, but nearly always he won the man over in the end. He was amazed at
his own resourcefulness and eloquence. It seemed as though some inhibition
in him had been broken down, some magical elixir poured into his
imagination. He found that he could literally take a sheep camp by storm,
entering into the life of the men, telling them stories, singing them
songs, passing out presents of tobacco and whisky, often delivering a
wildly applauded harangue on the necessity for all Mexicans to act
together against the gringos, who would otherwise soon own the country.
Never once did he think of the incongruity of thus fanning the flames of
race hatred for the love of a girl with grey eyes and yellow hair.
He did not always reach a house or a sheep camp at night. Many a time he
camped alone, catching trout for his supper from a mountain stream, and
going to sleep to the lonely music of running water in a wilderness. At
such times many a man would have lost faith in himself, would have feared
his crimes and lost his hopes. But to Ramon this loneliness was an old
friend. Like all who have lived much out-of-doors he was at heart a
pantheist, and felt more at peace and unity with wild nature than ever he
had with men.
But there was one such night when he felt troubled. As he rode up the
Tusas Canyon at twilight, a sense of insecurity came over him, amounting
almost to fear. He had had a somewhat similar feeling once when a panther
had trailed him on a winter night. Now, as then, he had no idea what it
was that menaced him; he was simply warned by that sixth sense which
belongs to all wild things, and to men in whom there remains something of
the feral. His horses shared his unrest. When he picketed them, just
before dark, they fed uneasily, stopping now and then to stand like
statues with lifted heads, testing the wind with their nostrils, moving
their ears to catch some sound beyond human perception.
When he had eaten his supper and made his bed, Ramon took the little
automatic revolver out of its scabbard and went down the canyon a quarter
of a mile, slipping along in the shadow of the brush that lined the banks
of the stream. This was necessary because a half-moon made the open glades
bright. He paused and peered a dozen times. So cautious were his movements
that he came within forty feet of a drinking deer, and was badly startled
when it bounded away with a snort and a smashing of brush. But he saw
nothing dangerous and went back to his camp and to bed. There he lay awake
for an hour, still troubled, oppressed by a vague feeling of the
littleness and insecurity of human life.
A long, rippling snort of fear from his saddle horse, picketed near his
bed, awakened him and probably saved his life. When he opened his eyes, he
saw the figure of a man standing directly over him. He was about to speak,
when the man lifted his arms, swinging upward a heavy club. With quick
presence of mind, Ramon jerked the blankets and the heavy canvas tarpaulin
about his head, at the same time rolling over. The club came down with
crushing force on his right shoulder. He continued to roll and flounder
with all his might, going down a sharp slope toward the creek which was
only a few yards away. Twice more he felt the club, once on his arm and
once on his ribs, but his head escaped and the heavy blankets protected
his body.
The next thing he knew, he had gone over the bank of the creek, which was
several feet high in that place, and lay in the shallow icy water.
Meantime he had gotten his hand on the automatic pistol. He now jerked
upright and fired at the form of his assailant, which bulked above him.
The man disappeared. For a moment Ramon sat still. He heard footsteps, and
something like a grunt or a groan. Then he extricated himself from the
cold, sodden blankets, climbed upon the bank, and began cautiously
searching about, with his weapon ready. He found the club—a heavy length
of green spruce-and put his hand accidentally on something wet, which he
ascertained by smelling it to be blood.
He was shivering with cold and badly bruised in several places, but he was
afraid to build a fire. In case his enemy were not badly injured or had a
companion, that would have been risking another attack. He stood in the
shadow of a spruce, stamping his feet and rubbing himself, acutely
uncomfortable, waiting for daylight and wondering what this attack meant.
He doubted whether MacDougall would have countenanced such tactics, but it
might well have been an agent of MacDougall acting on his own
responsibility. Or it might have been some one sent by old Archulera.
Then, too, there were many poor connections of the Delcasar family who
would profit by his death.
As he stood there in the dark, shivering and miserable, the idea of death
was not hard for him to conceive. He realized that but for the snort of
the saddle horse he would now be lying under the tree with the top of his
head crushed in. The man would probably have dragged his body into the
thick timber and left it. There he would have lain and rotted. Or perhaps
the coyotes would have eaten him and the buzzards afterward picked his
bones. He shuddered. Despite his acute misery, life had never seemed more
desirable. He thought of sunlight and warmth, of good food and of the love
of women, and these things seemed more sweet than ever before. He
realized, for the first time, too, that he faced many dangers and that the
chance of death walked with him all the time. He resolved fiercely that he
would beat all his enemies, that he would live and have his desires which
were so sweet to him.
Daylight came at last, showing him first the rim of the mountain serrated
with spruce tops, and then lighting the canyon, revealing his disordered
camp and his horses grazing quietly in the open. He went immediately and
examined the ground where the struggle had taken place. A plain trail of
blood lead away from the place, as he had expected. He formed a plan of
action immediately.
First he made a great fire, dried and warmed himself, cooked and ate his
breakfast, drinking a full pint of hot coffee. Then he rolled up all his
belongings, hid them in the bushes, and picketed his horses in a side
canyon where the grass was good. When these preparations were complete, he
took the trail of blood and followed it with the utmost care. He carried
his weapon cocked in his hand, and always before he went around a bend in
the canyon, or passed through a clump of trees, he paused and looked long
and carefully, like an animal stalking dangerous prey.
At last, from the cover of some willows, he saw a man sitting beside the
creek. The man was half-naked, and was binding up his leg with some strips
torn from his dirty shirt. He was a Mexican of the lowest and most brutal
type, with a swarthy skin, black hair and a bullet-shaped head. Ramon
walked toward him.
“_Buenas Dias, amigo_,” he saluted.
The man looked up with eyes full of patient suffering, like the eyes of a
hurt animal. He did not seem either surprised or frightened. He nodded and
went on binding up his leg.
Ramon watched him a minute. He saw that the man was weak from loss of
blood. There was a great patch of dried blood on the ground beside him,
now beginning to flake and curl in the sun.
“I will come back in a minute, friend,” he said.
He went back to his camp, saddled his horses, putting some food in the
saddle pockets. When he returned, the Mexican sat in exactly the same
place with his back against a rock and his legs and arms inert. Ramon
fried bacon and made coffee for him. He had to help the man put the food
in his mouth and hold a cup for him to drink. Afterward, with great
difficulty, he loaded the man on his saddle horse, where he sat heavily,
clutching the pommel with both hands. Ramon mounted the pack horse
bareback.
“Where do you live, friend?” Ramon asked.
“Tusas,” the Mexican replied, naming a little village ten miles down the
canyon.
They exchanged no other words until they came within sight of the group of
_adobe_ houses. Then Ramon stopped his horse and turned to the man.
“You were hunting,” he told him slowly and impressively, “and you dropped
your gun and shot yourself. _Sabes?_”
The man nodded.
“How much were you paid to kill me, friend?” Ramon then asked.
The man looked at the pommel of the saddle, and his swarthy face darkened
with a heavy flush.
“One hundred dollars,” he admitted. “I needed the money to christen a
child. Could I let my child go to hell? But I did not mean to kill you.
Only to beat you, so you would go away. Do not ask who sent me, for the
love of God.…”
“I ask nothing more, friend,” Ramon assured him. “And since you were to
have a hundred dollars for making me leave the country, here is a hundred
dollars for not succeeding.”
Both of them laughed. Ramon then rode on and delivered the man to his
excited and grateful wife. He went back to his camp very weary and sore,
but feeling that he had done an excellent stroke of work for his purpose.