HOSPITALITY
If you would enjoy that fine hospitality which gives gladly to
strangers and to friends alike of its poverty or plenty, and for the
giving asks nothing in return, you should seek the far frontiers;
but if you would see hospitality glorified into something more than a
simple virtue, then you should find, if you can, one of the old-time
haciendas that were the pride of early California.
Time was when the wild-eyed cattle which bore upon their fat-cushioned
haunches the seared crescent that proclaimed them the property of old
Don Andres Picardo (who owned, by grant of the king, all the upper
half of the valley of Santa Clara) were free to any who hungered. Time
was when a traveler might shoot a fat yearling and feast his fill,
unquestioned by the don or the don's dark-eyed vaqueros.
Don Andres Picardo was a large-hearted gentleman; and to deny any man
meat would bring to his cheeks a blush for his niggardliness. That was
in the beginning, when he reigned in peace over the peninsula. When
the vaqueros, jingling indignantly into the patio of his home, first
told of carcasses slaughtered wantonly and left to rot upon the range
with only the loin and perhaps a juicy haunch missing, their master
smiled deprecatingly and waved them back whence they came. There were
cattle in plenty. What mattered one steer, or even a fat cow, slain
wastefully? Were not thousands left?
But when tales reached him of cattle butchered by the hundred, and of
beef that was being sold for an atrocious price in San Francisco, the
old Spaniard was shocked into laying aside the traditions and placing
some check upon the unmannerly "gringos" who so abused his generosity.
He established a camp just within the northern boundary of his land;
and there he stationed his most efficient watch-dog, Manuel Sepulveda,
with two vaqueros whose business it was to stop the depredations.
Meat for all who asked for meat, paid they in gold or in
gratitude--that was their "patron's" order. But they must ask. And
the vaqueros rode diligently from bay to mountain slopes, and each day
their hatred of the Americanos grew deeper, as they watched over the
herds of their loved patron, that the gringos might not steal that
which they might, if they were not wolves, have for the asking.
The firelight in the tule-thatched hut of Manuel Sepulveda winked
facetiously at the black fog that peered in at the open door. A night
wind from the north crept up, parted the fog like a black curtain and
whispered something which set the flames a-dancing as they listened.
The fog swung back jealously to hear what it was, and the wind went
away to whisper its wonder-tale to the trees that rustled astonishment
and nodded afterward to one another in approval, like the arrant
gossips they were. The chill curtain fell straight and heavy again
before the door, so that the firelight shone dimly through its folds;
but not before Dade, riding at random save for the trust he put in the
sure homing instinct of his horse, caught the brief gleam of light and
sighed thankfully.
"We'll stop with old Manuel to-night," he announced cheerfully.
"Here's his cabin, just ahead."
"And who's old Manuel?" asked Jack petulantly, because of the pain in
his feet and his own unpleasant memories of that day.
"Don Andres Picardo's head vaquero. He camps here to keep an eye on
the cattle. Some fellows from town have been butchering them right
and left and doing a big business in beef, according to all accounts.
Manuel hates gringos like centipedes, but I happened to get on the
good side of him--partly because my Spanish is as good as his own. An
Americano who has black hair and can talk Spanish like the don himself
isn't an Americano, in Manuel's eyes."
While they were unsaddling under the oak tree, where the vaqueros kept
their riding gear in front of the cabin, Manuel himself came to the
door and stood squinting into the fog, while he flapped a tortilla
dexterously between his brown palms.
"Is it you, Valencia??" he called out in Spanish, giving the tortilla
a deft, whirling motion to even its edges.
Dade led the way into the zone of light, and Manuel stepped back with
a series of welcoming nods. His black eyes darted curiously to the
stranger, who, in Manuel's opinion, looked unpleasantly like a gringo,
with his coppery hair waving crisply under his sombrero, and his
eyes that were blue as the bay over there to the east. But when Dade
introduced him, Jack greeted his squat host with a smile that was
disarming in its boyish good humor, and with language as liquidly
Spanish as Manuel's best Castilian, which he reserved for his talks
with the patron on the porch when the señora and the young señorita
were by.
The distrust left Manuel's eyes as he trotted across the hard-trodden
dirt floor and laid the tortilla carefully upon a hot rock, where
three others crisped and curled their edges in delectable promise of
future toothsomeness.
He stood up and turned to Dade amiably, his knuckles pressing lightly
upon his hips that his palms might be saved immaculate for the next
little corn cake which he would presently slap into thin symmetry.
"Madre de Dios!" he cried suddenly, quite forgetting the hospitable
thing he had meant to say about his supper. "You are hurt, Señor! The
blood is on your sleeve and your hand."
Dade looked down at his hand and laughed. "I did get a scratch. I'll
let you see what it's like."
"You never told me you got shot!" accused Jack sharply, from where he
had thrown himself down on a bundle of blankets covered over with a
bullock hide dressed soft as chamois.
"Never thought of it," retorted Dade in Spanish, out of regard for his
host.
"We had some trouble with the gringos," he explained to Manuel. "There
was a little shooting, and a bullet grazed my arm. It doesn't amount
to much, but I'll let you look at it."
"Ah, the gringos!" Manuel spat after the hated name. "The patron is
too good, too generous! They steal the cattle of the patron, though
they might have all they need for the asking. Like the green worms
upon the live oaks, they would strip the patron's herds to the last,
lean old bull that is too tough even for their wolf teeth! Me, I
should like to lasso and drag to the death every gringo who comes
sneaking in the night for the meat which tastes sweeter when it is
stolen. To-day Valencia rode down to the bayou--"
While he told indignantly the tale of the latest pillage, he bared the
wounded arm. Jack got stiffly upon his swollen feet to look. It was
not a serious wound, as wounds go; a deep gash in the bicep, where a
bullet meant for Dade's heart had plowed under his upraised arm four
inches wide of its mark. It must have been painful, though he had
not once mentioned it; and a shamed flush stung Jack's cheeks when he
remembered his own complaints because of his feet.
"You never told me!" he accused again, this time in the language of
his host.
"The Señor Hunter has the brave heart of a Spaniard, though his blood
is light," said Manuel rebukingly. "The Señor Hunter would not cry
over a bigger hurt than this!"
Jack sat down again upon the bull-hide seat and dropped his face
between his palms. Old Manuel spoke truer than he knew. Dade Hunter
was made of the stuff that will suffer much for a friend and say
nothing about it, and to-day was not the first time when Jack had all
unwittingly given that friendship the test supreme.
Manuel carefully inspected the wound and murmured his sympathy. He
pulled a bouquet of dry herbs from where it hung in a corner, under
the low ceiling, and set a handful brewing in water, where the coals
were golden-yellow with heat. He tore a strip of linen off Valencia's
best shirt which he was saving for fiestas, and prepared a bandage,
interrupting himself now and then to dart over and inspect the
tortillas baking on the hot rock. For a fat man he moved with
extraordinary briskness, and so managed to do three things at one time
and do them all thoroughly; he washed and dressed the wound with the
herbs squeezed into a poultice, rescued the tortillas from scorching,
and spake his mind concerning the gringos who, he declared, were
despoiling this his native land. Then he lifted certain pots and
platters to the center of the hut and cheerfully announced supper; and
squatted on the floor, facing his guests over the food.
"There's another thing that bothers me, Manuel," Dade announced
humorously, when they three were seated around the pot of frijoles,
the earthen pan of smoking carne-seco (which is meat flavored hotly
after the Spanish style) and a stack of the tortillas Manuel's fat
hands had created while he talked.
Manuel, bending a tortilla into a scoop wherewith to help himself
to the brown beans, raised his black eyes anxiously. "But is there
further hurt?" he asked, and glanced wistfully at the tortilla before
laying it down that he might minister further to the señor.
"No--go on with your supper. There's a buckskin horse out there
that the gringos may say I stole. I don't want the beast; he's about
fourteen years old and he's got a Roman nose to beat Caesar himself,
and a bad eye and a wicked heart."
"Dios!" murmured Manuel over the list of equine shortcomings and took
a large, relieved bite of tortilla and beans. The señor was pleased
to jest with a poor vaquero, but the señor would doubtless explain. He
chewed luxuriously and waited, his black eyes darting from this face
which he knew and liked, to that strange one of the blue eyes and the
hair that was like the dullest of dull California gold.
"I don't like that caballo," went on Dade, helping himself to meat,
"and so I'd hate like the deuce to be hung for stealing him; sabe?"
Manuel licked a finger before he spread his hands to show how
completely he failed to understand. "But if the caballo does not
please the señor, why then did the señor steal--"
"You see, I wanted to bring my partner--Señor Jack Allen--down here
with me. And he was riding the caballo, and he couldn't get off--"
Manuel swore a Spanish oath politely, to please his guest who wished
to amaze him.
"Because he was tied on." Dade failed just there to keep a betraying
hardness out of his voice. "The Viligantes were--going to--hang him."
The last two words were cut short off with the click of his jaws
coming together.
Manuel thereupon swore more sincerely and spilled beans from his
tortilla scoop. He knew the ways of the Committee. Four months
ago--when the Committee was newer and more just--they had hanged the
third cousin of his half-sister's husband. It is true, the man had
killed a woman with a knife; yet Manuel's black beard bristled when he
thought of the affront to his hypothetical kinship.
"I had to take the two together," Dade explained, trying with better
success to speak lightly. "And now, if I turn the buckskin loose, he
may go back--and he may not. I was wondering--"
Manuel cut him short. "To-morrow I ride to town," he said. "I will
take the caballo back with me, if that pleases the señors. I will turn
him loose near the Mission, and he will go to his stable.
"The señor," he added, "was very brave. _Madre de Dios!_ To run away
with a prisoner of the Vigilantes! But they will surely kill the señor
for that; the taking of the horse, that is nothing." His teeth shone
briefly under his black mustache. "One can die but once," he pointed
out, and emphasized his meaning by a swift glance at Jack, moodily
nibbling the edge of a corn cake. "But if the horse does not please
the señor--"
Dade caught his meaning and laughed a little over it. "The horse," he
said, "belongs to the Committee; my friend does not."
"Sí, Señor--but surely that is true. Only--" he stroked his crisp
beard thoughtfully--"the señors would better go to-morrow to the
patron. There the gringos dare not come. In this poor hut the señors
may not be safe--for we are but three poor vaqueros when all are here.
We will do our best--"
"Three vaqueros," declared Dade with fine diplomacy, "as brave as the
three who live here, would equal twenty of the Committee. But we will
not let it come to that."
Manuel took the flattery with a glimpse of white teeth and a
deprecatory wave of the hand, and himself qualified it modestly
afterward.
"With the knife--perhaps. But the gringos have guns which speak fast.
Still, we would do our best--"
"Say, if he's going back to town to-morrow," spake Jack suddenly,
from where he reclined in the shadow "why can't I write a note to Bill
Wilson and have him send down my guns? The Captain took them away,
you know; but he won't object to giving them back now!" His voice was
bitter.
"The rest of them might. You seem to think that when you killed
Perkins you wiped out the whole delegation--which you didn't. What was
the row about; if you don't mind telling me?"
"I thought you knew," said Jack quite sincerely, which proved more
than anything how absorbed he was in his own part in the affair. He
shifted his head upon his clasped hands so that his eyes might rest
upon the waning firelight, where the pot of frijoles, set back from
supper, was still steaming languidly in the hot ashes.
"You started it yourself, two weeks ago," he announced whimsically,
to lighten a little the somber tale. "If you hadn't bought that white
horse from that drunken Spaniard, I'd be holding a handful of aces
and kings to-night, most likely, in Bill Wilson's place. And my legs
wouldn't be aching like the devil," he added, reminded anew of his
troubles, when he shifted his position. "It's all your fault, bought
the horse."
Dade grinned and bent to hold a twig in the coals, that he might
light a cigarette. "All right, I'm the guilty party. Let's have the
consequences of my evil deed," he advised, settling back on his heels
and lowering an eyelid at Manuel in behalf of this humorous partner of
his.
"You bought the horse and broke the Spaniard's heart and ruined his
temper. And he and Sandy had a fight, and--So," he went on, after
a two-minute break in the argument, "when I heard Swift sneering
something about Sandy, last night, I rose up in meeting and told
him and some others what I thought of 'em. I was not," he explained,
"thinking nice thoughts at the time. You see, Perkins, since he got
the lead, has gathered a mighty scaly bunch around him, and they've
been running things to suit themselves.
"Then, Swift and two or three others held up a boy from the mines
to-day, and I happened to see it. I interfered; fact is, I killed
a couple of them. So they arrested both of us, went through a farce
trial, and were trying to hurry me into Kingdom Come before Bill
Wilson got a rescue party together, when you come along. That's all.
They let the kid go--which was a good thing. I don't think they'll be
down here after me. In fact, I've been thinking maybe I'd go back, in
a day or so, and have it out with them."
"Yes, that's about what you'd be thinking, all right," retorted Dade
unemotionally. "Sounds perfectly natural." The tone of him, being
unsympathetic, precipitated an argument which flung crisp English
sentences back and forth across the cabin. Manuel, when the words
grew strange and took on a harsh tang which to his ear meant anger,
diplomatically sought his blankets and merged into the shadow of the
corner farthest from the fire and nearest the door. The señors were
pleased to disagree; if they fought, he had but to dodge out into
the night and neutrality. The duties of hospitality weighed hard upon
Manuel during that half-hour or so.
Dade's cigarette stub, flung violently into the heart of the fire
glow, seemed to Manuel a crucial point in the quarrel; he slipped back
the blankets, ready to retreat at the first lunge of open warfare. He
breathed relief, however, when Dade got up and stretched his arms
to the dried tules overhead, and laughed a lazy surrender of the
argument, if not of his opinion upon the subject.
"You're surely the most ambitious trouble-hunter I ever saw," he said,
returning to his habitual humorous drawl, with the twinkle in his eyes
that went with it. "Just the same, we'll not go back to the mine just
yet. Till the dust settles, we're both better off down here with
Don Andres Picardo. I don't want to be hung for the company I keep.
Besides--"
"I'll bet ten ounces there's a señorita," hazarded. Jack maliciously.
"You're like Bill Wilson; but you can preach caution till your jaws
ache; you can't fool me into believing you're afraid to go back to the
mine. Is there a señorita?"
"You shut up and go to sleep," snapped Dade, and afterward would not
speak at all.
Manuel, in the shadow, frowned over the only words he understood--Don
Andres Picardo and señorita. The señors were agreeable companions, and
they were his guests. But they were gringos, after all. And if
they should presume to lift desireful eyes to the little Señorita
Teresa--Teresita, they called her fondly who knew her--Manuel's
mustache lifted suddenly at one side at the bare possibility.