One of his first acts in town was to negotiate a note at the bank for
several thousand dollars. This was necessary because he had little cash
and would not have much until spring, when he would sell lambs and shear
his sheep. He not only needed money for himself, but his mother and
sister, after many lean years, were eager to spend.
He drove out to see Catalina, and found her big with child and utterly
indifferent to him, which piqued him slightly and relieved him a great
deal. She had heard nothing about her father, and Ramon sent Cortez out to
Domingo Canyon to see what had become of the old man. Cortez reported the
place deserted. Ramon made inquiry in town and learned that Archulera had
been seen there in his absence, very much dressed-up and very drunk,
followed by a crowd of young Mexicans who were evidently parasites on his
newly-acquired wealth. Then he had disappeared, and some thought he had
gone to Denver. It was evident that his five thousand dollars had proved
altogether too much for him.
Ramon now hung out a shingle, announcing himself as an attorney-at-law. Of
course, no business came to him. The right way to get a practice would
have been to go back to the office of Green or some other established
lawyer for several years. But Ramon had no idea of doing anything so
tiresome and so relatively humiliating. The idea of running errands for
Green again was repugnant to him.
He went every morning to his office and for a while he took a certain
amount of satisfaction in merely sitting there, reading the local papers,
smoking a cigar, now and then taking down one of his text books and
reading a little. But study as such had absolutely no appeal to him. He
might have dug at the dry case books to good purpose if he had been driven
by need, but as it was he would begin to yawn in ten or fifteen minutes,
and then would put the book away. He went home to a noonday dinner rather
early and came back in the afternoon, feeling sleepy and bored. Now the
office, and indeed the whole town, seemed a dreary place to him. At this
season of the year there were often high winds which mantled the town in a
yellow cloud of sand, and rattled at every loose shutter and door with
futile dreary persistence. Ramon would wander about the office for a
little while with his hands in his pockets and stare out the window,
feeling depressed, thoughts of his disappointment coming back to him
bitterly. Then he would take his hat and go out and look for some one to
play pool with him. Often he took an afternoon off and went hunting, not
alone as formerly he had done, but with as large a party as he could
gather. They would drive out into the sand hills and _mesas_ twenty or
thirty miles from town, where the native quail and rabbits were still
abundant as automobiles had just begun to invade their haunts. When they
found a covey of quail the sport would be fast and furious, with half a
dozen guns going at once and birds rising and falling in all directions.
Ramon keenly enjoyed the hot excitement and dramatic quality of this.
At night he was usually to be found at the White Camel Pool Hall where the
local sporting element foregathered and made its plans for the evening.
Sometimes a party would be formed to “go down the line,” as a visit to the
red light district was called. Sometimes the rowdy dance halls of Old Town
were invaded. On Saturday nights the dance at the country club always drew
a considerable attendance. There was also a “dancing class” conducted by
an estimable and needy spinster named Grimes, who held assembly dances
once in two weeks in a little hall which had been built by the Woman’s
Club. This event always drew a large and very mixed crowd, including some
of the “best people” and others who were considered not so good. Usually
two or three different sets were represented at these gatherings, each
tending to keep to itself. But there was also a tendency for the sets to
overlap. Thus a couple of very pretty German girls, who were the daughters
of a local saloon keeper, always appeared accompanied by young men of
their own circle with whom they danced almost exclusively at first. But
young men of the first families could not resist their charms, and they
soon were among the most popular girls on the floor. This was deplored by
the young women of more secure social position, who were wont to remark
that the crowd was deteriorating frightfully. Some of these same superior
virgins found it necessary for politeness to dance with Joe Bartello, the
son of an Italian saloon owner, and a very handsome and nimble-footed
youth. In a word, this was a place of social hazard and adventure, and
that was more than half its charm. It finally became so crowded that
dancing was almost impossible.
The back room at the White Camel, where poker games were nightly in
progress, also afforded Ramon frequent diversion. He played in the “big”
game now, where the stakes and limits were high, and was one of the most
daring and dangerous of its patrons. He had more money back of him than
most of the men who played there, and he also had more courage. If he
started a bluff he carried it through to the end, which was always bitter
for some one. He had been known to stand pat on a pair and scare every one
else out of the game by the resolute confidence of his betting. His
plunges, of course, sometimes cost him heavily, but for a long time he was
a moderate winner. His limitations as a poker player were finally
demonstrated to him by one Fitzhugh Chesterman, a man with one lung.
Chesterman was about twenty-six years old and had come from Richmond,
Virginia, about two years before, with most of one lung gone and the other
rapidly going. He was a tall, thin blond youth with the sensitive,
handsome face which so often marks the rare survivor of the old southern
aristocracy. He was totally lacking in the traditional southern
sentimentality. His eye had a cold twinkle of courage that even the
imminent prospect of death could not quench, and his thin shapely lips
nearly always wore a smile slightly twisted by irony. He established
himself at the state university, which had almost a hundred students and
boasted a dormitory where living was very cheap. Chesterman sat before
this dormitory twelve to fourteen hours a day, even in relatively cold
weather. He made a living by coaching students in mathematics and Greek.
He never raised his voice, he seldom laughed, he never lost his temper.
With his unwavering ironical smile, as though he appreciated the keen
humour of taking so much trouble over such an insignificant thing as a
human life, he husbanded his energy and fought for health. He took all the
treatments the local sanatoria afforded, but he avoided carefully all the
colonies and other gatherings of the tubercular. When his lung began to
heal, as it did after about a year, and his strength to increase, he
enlarged his earnings by playing poker. He won for the simple reason that
he took no more chances than he had to. He systematically capitalized
every bit of recklessness, stupidity and desperation in his opponents.
When Ramon first encountered him, the game soon simmered down to a
struggle between the two. Never were the qualities of two races more
strikingly contrasted. Ramon bluffed and plunged. Chesterman was caution
itself, playing out antes in niggardly fashion until he had a hand which
put the law of probabilities strongly on his side. Ramon was full of
daring, intuition, imagination, bidding always for the favour of the
fates, throwing logic to the winds. He was not above moving his seat or
putting on his hat to change his luck. Chesterman smiled at these things.
He was cold courage battling for a purpose and praying to no deities but
Cause and Effect. Ramon thought he was playing for money, but he was
really playing for the sake of his own emotions, revelling alike in hope
and despair, triumph and victory, flushed and bright-eyed. Chesterman
stifled every emotion, discounted every hope, said as little as possible,
never relaxed his faint twisted smile.
Ramon made some spectacular winnings, but Chesterman wore him down as
surely as a slow hound wears down a deer despite its astounding bursts of
speed. Ramon was sure to lose in the long run because he was always piling
up odds against himself by the long chances he took, while his bluffs
seldom deceived his cool and courageous opponent. The finish came at one
o’clock in the morning. Chesterman was pale with exhaustion, but otherwise
unchanged. Ramon was hoarse and flushed, chewing a cigar to bits. He held
a full house and determined to back it to the limit. Chesterman met him,
bet for bet, raising every time. Ramon knew that he must be beaten. He
knew that Chesterman would not raise him unless he had a very strong hand.
But he was beaten anyway. At the bottom of his consciousness, he knew that
he had met a better man. He wanted to end the contest on this hand. When
Chesterman showed four kings, Ramon fell back in his chair, weak and
disgusted. The other players, most of whom had long been out of the game,
got up and said good night one by one. Only the two were left, Ramon
plunged in gloomy reaction, Chesterman coolly counting his money, putting
it away.
“I seem to have made quite a killing,” he remarked, “how much did you
lose?”
“O, I don’t know … about five hundred. Hell, what’s five hundred to me … I
don’t give a damn … I’m rich.…”
Chesterman glanced at him keenly.
“Well,” he remarked, “I’m glad you feel that way about it, because I sure
need the money.”
He got up and walked away with the short careful steps of a man who
cherishes every ounce of his energy.
Ramon was disgusted with himself. Chesterman had made him feel like a
weakling and a child. He had thought himself a lion in this game, and he
had found out that he was an easily-shorn lamb. He could not afford to
lose five hundred dollars either. He was not really a rich man. He went
home feeling deeply depressed and discouraged. Vaguely he realized that in
Chesterman he had encountered the spirit which he felt against him
everywhere—a cool, calculating, unmerciful spirit of single purpose,
against which the play and flow of his emotional and imaginative nature
was as ineffectual as mercury against the point of a knife.