Senora Gonzales was leaning upon the corral gate in the shade of the
pomegranates, looking out over the lake. The lake itself was not more
placid than the senora's face under her black rebozo. Perhaps a long
life of leaning and gazing had given her those calm, slow-moving eyes,
full of the wisdom of unfathomable ignorance. The landscape on the
opposite shore was repeated in the water below, as if to save her the
trouble of raising her heavily fringed lids. To the southward a line of
wild geese gleamed snow-white, like the crest of a wave. Half a dozen
dogs were asleep in the smoothly swept dooryard behind her, and a young
Mexican, whose face was pitted by smallpox, like the marks of raindrops
in dry sand, leaned against the gnarled trunk of a trellised grapevine,
clasping his knees, and sending slow wreaths of smoke from his
cigarette. The barley in the field behind the house was beginning to
head, and every breath of wind stirred it in glistening waves. Beyond
the field shone a yellow mist of wild mustard. The California spring,
more languorous, even with its hint of moisture, than the cloudless
summer, sent a thousand odors adrift upon the air. Even the smell of
garlic hanging about the senora could not drown the scent of the
orange-blooms, and as for Ricardo's cigarette, surely no reasonable
mortal could object to that. Ricardo himself would have questioned the
sanity of any one who might have preferred the faint, musky fragrance of
the alfilaria to the soothing odor of tobacco. He closed his eyes in
placid unconsciousness of such vagaries of taste, and rocked himself
rhythmically, as if he were a part of the earth, and felt its motion.
A wagon was creaking along the road behind the house, but it did not
disturb him. There were always wagons now; Ricardo had grown used to
them, and so had the senora, who did not even turn her head. These
restless Americanos, who bought pieces of land that were not large
enough to pasture a goat, and called them ranchos--caramba! what fools
they were, always a-hurrying about!
The wagon had stopped. Well, it would be time enough to move when some
one called. A dust-colored hound that slept at the corner of the house,
stretched flat, as if moulded in relief from the soil upon which he lay,
raised his head and pricked up one ear; then arose, as if reluctantly
compelled to do the honors, and went slowly around the house.
"Of course they've got a dawg; forty of 'em, like enough!" It was a
girl's voice, pitched in a high, didactic key. "I guess I c'n make 'em
understand, pappy; I'll try, anyway."
She came around the house, and confronted Ricardo, who took his
cigarette from his mouth, and looked at her gravely without moving. The
senora turned her head slowly, and glanced over her shoulder.
The girl smiled, displaying two rows of sound teeth shut tightly
together.
"How do you do?" she said, raising her voice still higher, and advancing
toward the senora with outstretched hand. "I suppose you're Mrs.
Gonsallies."
The senora disentangled one arm slowly from her rebozo, and gave the
newcomer a large, brown, cushiony hand.
"This is my fawther," continued the girl, waving her left hand toward
her companion; "sabby?"
The man stepped forward, and confronted the senora. She looked at him
gravely, and shook her head. He was a small, heavily bearded man, with
soft, bashful brown eyes, which fell shyly under the senora's placid
gaze.
"She don't understand you, Idy," he said helplessly.
The girl caught his hand, and squeezed it reassuringly. "Never mind,
pappy," she said, lowering her voice; "I'll fetch her. Now, listen," she
went on, fixing her wide gray eyes on the senora, and speaking in a
loud, measured voice. "I--am--Idy Starkweather. This--is--my--fawther.
There! Now! Sabby?"
Evidently she considered failure to understand English a species of
physical disability which might be overcome by strong concentration of
the will.
The senora turned a bland, unmoved face upon her son. The eyes of the
newcomers followed her gaze. Ricardo held his cigarette between his
fingers, and blew a cloud of smoke above his head.
"She don' spik no Englis'," he said, looking at them mildly.
The girl flushed to the roots of her hay-colored frizz of hair. "You're
a nice one!" she said. "Why didn't you speak up?"
Ricardo gave her another gentle, undisturbed glance. "Ah on'stan' a
leetle Englis'; Ah c'n talk a leetle," he said calmly.
The girl hesitated an instant, letting her desire for information
struggle with her resentment. "Well, then," she said, lowering her voice
half sullenly, "my fawther here wants to ask you something. We live a
mile or so down the road. We've come out from Ioway this summer--me and
mother, that is; pappy here come in the spring, didn't you, pappy? An'
he bought the Slater place, an' there's ten acres of vineyard, an'
Barden,--he's the real 'state agent over t' Elsmore, you know 'im,--he
told my fawther they wuz all raisin-grapes, white muscat,--didn't he,
pappy?--an' my fawther here paid cash down fer the place, an' the
vineyard's comin' into bearin' next fall, an' Parker Lowe,--he has a
gov'ment claim on section eighteen, back of our ranch,---maybe you know
'im,--he says they're every one mission grapes--fer makin' wine. He
helped set 'em out, an' he says they got the cuttin's from your folks;
but I thought he wuz sayin' it just to plague me, so my fawther here
thought he'd come an' ask. If they are wine-grapes, that felluh Barden
lied--didn't he, pappy?"
The Mexican gazed at her pensively through the smoke of his cigarette.
"Yass, 'm," he said slowly and softly--"yass, 'm; Ah gass he tell good
deal lies. Ah gass he don' tell var' much trut'."
"Then they _are_ mission grapes?"
"Yass, 'm; dey all meession grapes; dey mek var' good wahn."
The girl's face flamed an angry red under her crimpled thatch of hair.
She put out her hand with a swift, protecting gesture, and caught her
father's sleeve.
The little man's cheeks were pale gray above his shaggy beard. He took
off his hat, and nervously wiped the damp hair from his forehead. His
daughter did not look at him. Ricardo could see the frayed plume on her
jaunty turban quiver.
"My fawther here's a temperance man, a prohibitionist: he don't believe
in wine; he hates it; he wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. That
felluh Barden knowed it--didn't he, pappy? He lied!" She spoke fiercely,
catching her breath between her sentences.
The Mexican threw away the end of his cigarette, and gazed after it with
pensive regret.
"Some folks don' lak wahn," he said amiably. "Ah lak it var' well
mahse'f. Ah gass he al's tell var' big lies, Mist' Barrd'n."
The girl turned away, still grasping her father's arm. Then she came
back, with a sudden and somewhat bewildering accession of civility.
"Addyoce," she said, bowing loftily toward the senora. The plume in her
hat had turned in the afternoon breeze, and curved forward, giving her a
slightly martial aspect.
"Addyoce, Mr. Gonsallies. We're much obliged,--ain't we, pappy?
Addyoce."
Ricardo touched his sombrero. "Good-evenin', mees," he said in his
soft, leisurely voice; "good-evenin', senor."
When the last ruffle of Miss Starkweather's green "polonay" had
disappeared around the corner of the adobe house, the senora drifted
slowly across the dooryard in her voluminous pink drapery, and sat down
beside her son. There was a thin stratum of curiosity away down in her
Latin soul. What had Ricardo done to make the senorita so very angry?
She was angry, was she not?
Oh, yes, she was very angry, but Ricardo had done nothing. Senor Barden
had sold her father ten acres of wine-grapes, and the old man did not
like wine; he liked raisins. Santa Maria! Did he mean to eat ten acres
of raisins? He need not drink his wine; he could sell it. But the
senorita was very angry; she would probably kill Senor Barden. She had
said she would kill him with a very long pole--ten feet. Ricardo would
not care much if she did. Senor Barden had called him a greaser. But as
for a man who did not like wine--caramba!