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. 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, 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 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 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
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.