The rest of the winter Ramon spent in an aimlessly pleasant way. He tried
to work but without arousing in himself enough enthusiasm to insure
success. He played pool, gambled a little and hunted a great deal. He
relished his pleasures with the keen appetite of health and youth, but
when they were over he felt empty-minded and restless and did not know
what to do about it.
Some business came to his law office. Because of his knowledge of Spanish
and of the country he was several times employed to look up titles to
land, and this line of work he might have developed into a good practice
had he possessed the patience. But it was monotonous, tedious work, and it
bored him. He would toil over the papers with a good will for a while, and
then a state of apathy would come over him, and like a boy in school he
would sit vaguely dreaming.… Such dull tasks took no hold upon his mind.
He defended several Mexican criminals, and found this a more congenial
form of practice, but an unremunerative one. The only case which advanced
him toward the reputation for which every young attorney strives brought
him no money at all. A young Mexican farmer of good reputation named Juan
Valera had been converted to the Methodist faith. Like most of the few
Mexicans who are won over to Protestantism, he had brought to his new
religion a fanatical spirit, and had made enemies of the priests and of
many of his neighbours by proselyting. Furthermore, his young and pretty
wife remained a Catholic, which had caused a good deal of trouble in his
house. But the couple were really devoted and managed to compromise their
differences until a child was born. Then arose the question as to whether
it should be baptized a Catholic or a Methodist. The girl wanted her baby
to be baptized in the Catholic faith, and was fully persuaded by the
priests that it would otherwise go to purgatory. She was backed by her
father, whose interference was resented by Juan more than anything else.
He consulted the pastor of his church, a bigoted New Englander, who
counselled him on no account to yield.
One evening when Juan was away from home, his father-in-law came to his
house and persuaded the girl to go with him and have the child baptized in
the Catholic faith, in order that it might be saved from damnation. After
the ceremony they went to a picture-show by way of a celebration. When
Juan came home he learned from the neighbours what had happened. His face
became very pale, his lips set, and his eyes had a hot, dangerous look. He
got out a butcher knife from the kitchen, whetted it to a good point, and
went and hid behind a big cottonwood tree near the moving-picture theatre.
When his wife with the child and her father came out, he stepped up behind
the old man and drove the knife into the back of his neck to the hilt,
severing the spinal column. Afterward he looked at the dead man for a
moment and at his wife, sitting on the ground shrieking, then went home
and washed his hands and changed his shirt—for blood had spurted all over
him—walked to the police station and gave himself up.
This man had no money, and it is customary in such cases for the court to
appoint a lawyer to conduct the defence. Usually a young lawyer who needs
a chance to show his abilities is chosen, and the honor now fell upon
Ramon.
This was the first time since he had begun to study law that he had been
really interested. He understood just how Juan Valera had felt. He called
on him in jail. Juan Valera was composed, almost apathetic. He said he was
willing to die, that he did not fear death.
“Let them hang me,” he said. “I would do the same thing again.”
Ramon studied the law of his case with exhaustive thoroughness, but the
law did not hold out much hope for his client. It was in his plea to the
jury that he made his best effort. Here again he discovered the eloquence
that he had used the summer before in Arriba County. Here he lost for a
moment his sense of aimlessness, felt again the thrill of power and the
joy of struggle. He described vividly the poor Mexican’s simple faith, his
absolute devotion to it, showed that he had killed out of an
all-compelling sense of right and duty. He found a good many witnesses to
testify that Juan’s father-in-law had hectored the young man a good deal,
insulted him, intruded in his home. Half of the jurors were Mexicans. For
a while the jury was hung. But it finally brought in a verdict of murder
in the first degree, which was practically inevitable. Juan accepted this
with a shrug of his shoulders and announced himself ready to hang and meet
his Methodist God. But Ramon insisted on taking an appeal. He finally got
the sentence commuted to life imprisonment. He then felt disgusted, and
wished that he had let the man hang, feeling that he would have been
better off dead than in the state penitentiary. But Juan’s wife, who
really loved him, came to Ramon’s office and embraced his knees and
laughed and cried and swore that she would do his washing for nothing as
long as she lived. For now she could visit her husband once a month and
take him _tortillas!_ Ramon gave her ten dollars and pushed her out the
door. He had worked hard on the case. He felt old and weary and wanted to
get drunk.
One day Ramon received an invitation to go hunting with Joe Cassi and his
friends. He accepted it, and afterward went on many trips with the Italian
saloon-owner, thereby doing further injury to his social standing.
Cassi had come to the town some twenty years before with a hand organ and
a monkey. The town was not accustomed to that form of entertainment; some
of the Mexicans threw rocks at Cassi and a dog killed his monkey. Cassi
was at that time a slender youth, handsome, ragged and full of high hopes.
When his monkey was killed he first wept with rage and then swore that he
would stay in that town and have the best of it. He now owned three
saloons and the largest business building in town. He was a lean, grave,
silent little man.
Cassi had made most of his money in the days when gambling was “open” in
the town, and he had surrounded himself with a band of choice spirits who
were experts in keno, roulette and poker. These still remained on his
hands, some of them in the capacity of barkeepers, and others practically
as pensioners. They were all great sportsmen, heavy drinkers and
loyal-to-the-death friends. At short intervals they went on hunting trips
down the river, generally remaining over the week-end. It was of these
expeditions that Ramon now became a regular member. Sometimes the whole
party would get drunk and come back whooping and singing as the
automobiles bowled along, occasionally firing shotguns into the air. At
other times when luck was good everyone became interested in the sport and
forgot to drink. Ramon had a real respect for Cassi, and a certain amount
of contempt for most of the rest of them; yet he felt more at home with
these easy-going, pleasure-loving, loyal fellows than he did with those
thrifty, respectable citizens in whose esteem the dollar stood so
invariably first.
Cassi and his friends used most often to go to a Mexican village some
fifty miles down the river where the valley was low and flat, and speckled
with shallow alkaline ponds made by seepage from the river. Every evening
the wild ducks flew into these ponds from the river to feed, and the
shooting at this evening flight Ramon especially loved. The party would
scatter out, each man choosing his own place on the East side of one of
the little lakes, so that the red glare of the sunset was opposite him.
There he would lie flat on the ground, perhaps making a low blind of weeds
or rushes.
Seldom even in January was it cold enough to be uncomfortable. Ramon would
lie on an elbow, smoking a cigarette, watching the light fade, and the
lagoon before him turn into molten gold to match the sunset sky. It would
be very quiet save for such sounds as the faraway barking of dogs or the
lowing of cattle. When the sky overhead had faded to an obscure purple,
and the flare of the sunset had narrowed to a belt along the horizon, he
would hear the distant eerie whistle of wild wings. Nothing could be seen
yet, but the sound multiplied. He could distinguish now the roar of a
great flock of mallards, circling round and round high overhead, scouting
for danger. He could hear the sweet flute-notes of teal and pintails, and
the raucous, cautious quack of some old green-head. A teal would pitch
suddenly down to the water before him and rest there, erect and wary,
painted in black upon the golden water. Another would join it and another.
The cautious mallards, encouraged by this, would swing lower. The music of
their wings seemed incredibly close; he would grip his gun hard, holding
himself rigidly still, feeling clearly each beat of his heart.
Suddenly the ducks would come into view … dark forms with ghostly blurs
for wings, shooting with a roar into the red flare of light. The flash of
his shotgun would leap out twice. The startled birds would bound into the
air like blasted rock from a quarry, and be lost in the purple mystery of
sky, except two or three that hurtled over and over and struck the water,
each with a loud spat, throwing up little jets of gold.
Sometimes there were long waits between shots, but at others the flight
was almost continuous, the air seemed full of darting birds, and the gun
barrels were hot in his hands. His excitement would be intense for a time;
yet after he had killed a dozen birds or so he would often lose interest
and lie on his back listening to the music of wings and of bird voices. He
had that aversion to excess which seems to be in all Latin peoples.
Besides, he did not want many ducks to dispose of.… It was the rush and
colour, the dramatic quality of the thing that he loved.
Most of the others killed to the limit with a fine unflagging lust for
blood, giving a brilliant demonstration of the fact that civilized man is
the most destructive and bloodthirsty of all the predatory mammals.
The coming of spring was marked by a few heavy rains, followed by the
faint greening of the cottonwood trees and of the alfalfa fields. The grey
waste of the _mesa_ showed a greenish tinge, too, heralding its brief
springtime splendor when it would be rich with the purple of wild-peas,
pricked out in the morning with white blossoms of the prairie primrose.
Now and then a great flock of geese went over the town, following the Rio
Grande northward half a mile high, their faint wild call seeming the very
voice of this season of lust and wandering.
Ramon felt restless and lost interest in all his usual occupations. He
began to make plans and preparations for going to the mountains. He bought
a tent and a new rifle and overhauled all his camping gear. He thought he
was getting ready for a season of hard work, but in reality his strongest
motive was the springtime longing for the road and the out-of-doors. He
was sick of whisky and women and hot rooms full of tobacco smoke.
Withal it was necessary that he should go to Arriba County, follow up his
campaign of the preceding fall, arrange a timber sale if possible so that
he might buy land, and above all see that his sheep herds were properly
tended. This was the crucial season in the sheep business. Like the other
sheep owners, he ranged his herds chiefly over the public domain, and he
gambled on the weather. If the rain continued into the early summer so
that the waterholes were filled and the grass was abundant, he would have
a good lamb crop. The sale of part of this and of the wool he would shear
would make up the bulk of his income for the year. And he had already
spent that income and a little more. He could not afford a bad year. If it
was a dry spring, so that lambs and ewes died, he would be seriously
embarrassed. In any case, he was determined to be on the range in person
and not to trust the herders. If it came to the worst and the spring was
dry he would rent mountain range from the Forest Service and rush his
herds to the upland pastures as early as possible. He was not at all
distressed or worried; he knew what he was about and had an appetite for
the work.
One morning when he was in the midst of his preparations, he went to his
office and found on the desk a small square letter addressed in a round,
upright, hand. This letter affected him as though it had been some blossom
that filled the room with a fragrant narcotic exhalation. It quickened the
beat of his heart like a drug. It drove thought of everything else out of
his mind. He opened it and the faint perfume of it flowed over him and
possessed his senses and his imagination.…
It was a long, gossipy letter and told him of nearly everything that Julia
had done in the six months since they had parted “forever”. The salient
fact was that she had been married. A young man in a New York brokerage
office who had long been a suitor for her hand, and to whom she had once
before been engaged for part of a summer, had followed the Roths to Europe
and he and Julia had been married immediately after their return.
“I give you my word, I don’t know why I did it,” she wrote. “Mother wanted
me to, and I just sort of drifted into it. First thing I knew I was
engaged and the next thing mother was sending the invitations out, and
then I was in for it. It was a good deal of fun being engaged, but when it
came to being married I was scared to death and couldn’t lift my voice
above a whisper. Since then it has been rather a bore. Now my husband has
been called to London. I am living alone here in this hotel. That is, more
or less alone. A frightful lot of people come around and bore me, and I
have to go out a good deal. I’m supposed to be looking for an apartment,
too; but I haven’t really started yet. Ralph won’t be back for another two
or three weeks, so I have plenty of time.
“I don’t know why in the world I’m writing you this long frightfully
intimate letter. I don’t seem to know why I do anything these days. I know
its most improper for a respectable married lady, and I certainly have no
reason to suppose you want to be bothered by me any more after the way I
did. But somehow you stick in the back of my head. You might write me a
line, just out of compassion, if you’re not too busy with all your sheep
and mountains and things.” She signed herself “as ever”, which, he
reflected bitterly, might mean anything.
At first the fact that she was married wholly engaged his attention. She
was then finally and forever beyond his reach. This was the end sure
enough. He was not going to start any long aimless correspondence with her
to keep alive the memory of his disappointment. He planned various brief
and chilly notes of congratulation.… Then another thought took precedence
over that one. She was alone there in that hotel. Her husband was in
London. She had written to him and given him her address.… His blood
pounded and his breath came quick. He made his decision instantly, on
impulse. He would go to New York.
He wired the hotel where she was stopping for a reservation, but sent no
word at all to her. He gave the bewildered and troubled Cortez brief
orders by telephone to go to Arriba County in his place, arranged a note
at the bank for two thousand dollars, and caught the limited the same
night at seven-thirty-five.