Ramon’s life on his farm quickly fell into a routine that was for the most
part pleasant. He hired an old woman to do his cooking and washing, and a
man to work on the place. Other men he hired as he needed them, and he
spent most of his days working with them as a foreman.
He attended to the business of farming ably. The trees of the old orchard
he pruned and sprayed and he set out new ones. He put his idle land under
irrigation and planted it in corn and alfalfa. He set out beds of
strawberries and asparagus. He bought blooded livestock and chickens. He
put his fences in repair and painted the woodwork of his house. The
creative energy that was in him had at last found an outlet which was
congenial though somewhat picayune. For the place was small and easily
handled. As the fall came on, and his crops had been gathered and the work
of irrigation was over for the season, he found himself looking about
restlessly for something to do. On Saturday nights he generally went to
town, had dinner with his mother and sister, and spent the evening
drinking beer and playing pool. But he felt increasingly out of place in
the town; his visits there were prompted more by filial duty and the need
of something to break the monotony of his week than by a real sense of
pleasure in them.
He was still caring for Catalina on the ranch up the valley, and when the
woman who had been doing his work left him, he decided to bring the girl
to his place and let her earn her keep by cooking and washing. He no
longer felt any interest in her, and thought that perhaps she would marry
Juan Cardenas, the man who milked his cows and chopped wood for him. But
Catalina showed no interest in Juan. Instead, she emphatically rejected
all his advances, and displayed an abject, squaw-like devotion to Ramon’s
welfare. Everything possible was done for his comfort without his asking.
The infant, now almost a year old, was trained not to cry in his presence,
and acquired a certain awe of him, watching him with large solemn eyes
whenever he was about. Ramon, reflecting that this was his son, set out to
make the baby’s acquaintance, and became quite fond of it. He often played
with it in the evening.
He paid Catalina regular wages and she spent most of the money on clothes.
When she prepared herself for Church on Sunday she was a truly terrible
spectacle, clad in an ill-fitting ready-made suit of brilliant colour, and
wearing a cheap hat on which a dead parrot sprawled among artificial
poppies, while her swarthy face, heavily powdered, took on a purple tinge.
But about the place, dressed in clean calico, with a shawl over her
shoulders, she was really pretty. Her figure was a good one of peasant
type, and the acquisition of some shoes which fitted her revealed the fact
that she had inherited from her remote Castilian ancestry a small and
shapely foot and ankle.
Ramon could not help noticing all of these things, and so gradually he
became aware of Catalina again as a desirable woman, and one whom it was
easy for him to take.
After this his animal contentment was deeper than ever. He did not go to
town so often, for one of the restlessnesses which had driven him there
was removed. Often for weeks at a stretch he would not go at all unless it
was necessary to get some tools or supplies for the farm. Then rather than
take any of his men away from work, he would himself hitch up a team and
drive the five miles. Sitting hunched over on the spring-seat of a big
farm wagon, clad in overalls and a print shirt, with a wide hat tilted
against the sun and a cigarette dangling from his lips, he was
indistinguishable from any other _paisano_ on the road. This change in
appearance was helped by the fact that he had grown a heavy moustache.
Often, as he drove through the streets of the town, he would pass
acquaintances who did not recognize him, and he was just as well satisfied
that they did not.
As is the way of unreflecting men, Ramon formed no definite opinion of his
life, but liked it more or less according to the mood that was in him.
There were bright, cool days that fall when, lacking work to do, he took
his shot-gun and a saddle horse and went for long rambles. Sometimes he
would follow the river northward, stalking the flocks of teal and mallards
that dozed on the sandbars in the wide, muddy stream, perhaps killing
three or four fat birds. Other times he went to the foot of the mountains
and hunted the blue quail and cotton tail rabbits in the arroyos of the
foot-hills. Once he and his man loaded a wagon with food and blankets and
drove forty miles to a canyon where they killed a big black-tail buck, and
brought him back in high triumph.
Returning from such trips full of healthy hunger and weariness, to find
his hot supper and his woman waiting for him, Ramon would doze off
happily, every want of his physical being satisfied, feeling that life was
good.… But there were other nights when a strange restlessness possessed
him, when he lay miserably awake through long dark hours. The silence of
the black valley was emphasized now and then by the doleful voices of dogs
that answered each other across the sleeping miles. At such times he felt
as though he had been caught in a trap. He saw in imagination the endless
unvaried chain of his days stretching before him, and he rebelled against
it and knew not how to break it. His experience of life was comparatively
little and he was no philosopher. He did not know definitely either what
was the matter with him or what he wanted. But he had tasted high
aspiration, and desire bright and transforming, and wild sweet joy.… These
things had been taken away, and now life narrowed steadily before him like
a blind canyon that pierces a mountain range. The trail at the bottom was
easy enough to follow, but the walls drew ever closer and became more
impassable, and what was the end?…
This sense of dissatisfaction reached its futile crux one day in the
spring when he received a letter from Julia—the last he was ever to get.
The sight and scent of it stirred him as they always had done, filling him
with poignant painful memories.
“This is really the last time I’ll ever bother you,” she wrote, “but I do
want to know what has happened to you, and how you feel about things. I
can’t forget. All our troubles seem to have worn some sort of a permanent
groove in my poor brain, and I believe the thought of you will be there
till the day of my death.
“As, for me, I’m in society up to my eyes, and absolutely without the
courage or energy to climb out. Those days in New York were the first and
the last of my freedom. Now I’ve been introduced to everybody, and I have
an engagement book that tells me what I’m going to do whether I want to or
not for three weeks ahead. I’m a model of conduct and propriety for the
simple reason that I can’t travel over a block without everybody that I
know finding out about it.
“Of course it hasn’t all been a bore. I have had some fun, and I’ve met
some really interesting people. I’ve gotten used to being married and my
husband treats me kindly and gives me a good home. Sounds as if I was a
kitten, doesn’t it? Well, I have very much the same sort of life as a
kitten, but a kitten has no imagination and it has never been in love.
Sometimes I think that I can’t stand it any longer. It seems to me that
I’m not really living, as I used to imagine I would, but just being
dragged through life by circumstances and other people—I don’t know what
all. I still have desperate plans and ideas once in a while, but of
course, I never do anything. When you come right down to it, what can I
do?”
Ramon read this letter sitting on the sunny side of his house with his
heels under him and his back against the wall—a position any Mexican can
hold for hours. When he had finished it he sat motionless for a long time,
painfully going over the past, trying ineptly to discover what had been
the matter with it. More acutely than ever before he felt the cruel
guerdon of youth—the contrast between the promise of life and its
fulfillment. He felt that he ought to do something, that he ought not to
submit. But somehow all the doors that led out of his present narrow way
into wider fields seemed closed. There was no longer any entrancing vista
to tempt him. Mentally he repeated her query, What could he do?
His thoughts went round and round and got nowhere. The spring sunshine
soaked into his body. A faint hum of early insects lulled him, and to his
nostrils came the scent of new-turned earth and manure from the garden
where his man was working. He grew drowsy; his dissatisfaction simmered
down to a vague ache in the background of his consciousness. Idly he tore
the letter to little bits.
THE END
EXTRA PAGES
_The Blood of _
_the Conquerors_
_ _
_ NEW BORZOI NOVELS_
_ _
_ FALL, 1921_
_ _
PAN
_ Knut Hamsun_
DREAMERS
_ Knut Hamsun_
THE TORTOISE
_ Mary Borden_
THE CHINA SHOP
_ G. B. Stern_
THE BRIARY-BUSH
_ Floyd Dell_
DEADLOCK
_ Dorothy Richardson_
THE OTHER MAGIC
_ E. L. Grant-Watson_
WHITE SHOULDERS
_ George Kibbe Turner_
THE CHARMED CIRCLE
_ Edward Alden Jewell_
THE BLOOD OF THE CONQUERORS
_ Harvey __ __Fergusson_
_The Blood of _
_the Conquerors_
ERRATA
CHAPTER II
Changed: they were *untamable*, but boys
To: they were *untameable*, but boys
CHAPTER II
Changed: adventures were *comoposed* and sung
To: adventures were *composed* and sung
CHAPTER IV
Changed: your name,” she admitted*,*
To: your name,” she admitted*.*
CHAPTER V
Changed: only all-night *resturant*. Here he
To: only all-night *restaurant*. Here he
CHAPTER VII
Changed: haunted by lizzards and rattlesnakes.
To: haunted by *lizards* and rattlesnakes.
CHAPTER VIII
Changed: CHAPTER VIII*.*
To: CHAPTER VIII* *
CHAPTER XI
Changed: the game*,* But the
To: the game*.* But the
CHAPTER XV
Changed: nights they *visted* the town’s
To: nights they *visited* the town’s
CHAPTER XIX
Changed: saved from *furthur* punishment. Meantime,
To: saved from *further* punishment. Meantime,
CHAPTER XXXI
Changed: own living.… *Its* not fair.
To: own living.… *It’s* not fair.
CHAPTER XXXII
Changed: of course* *” she added
To: of course*,*” she added
CHAPTER XXXII
Changed: * *For Heaven’s sake, say something!”
To: *“*For Heaven’s sake, say something!”
Page 2
Changed: Harvey *Furgusson*
To: Harvey *Fergusson*