to the rancho. I confess my thoughts were somewhat gloomy, in spite of
my escape from the noisy hotel; but this was due to the sombre scenery
through which I had just ridden, and the monotonous russet of the
leagues of wild oats. As I approached the rancho, I saw that Enriquez
had made no attempt to modernize the old casa, and that even the garden
was left in its lawless native luxuriance, while the rude tiled sheds
near the walled corral contained the old farming implements, unchanged
for a century, even to the ox-carts, the wheels of which were made of a
single block of wood. A few peons, in striped shirts and velvet
jackets, were sunning themselves against a wall, and near them hung
a half-drained pellejo, or goatskin water-bag. The air of absolute
shiftlessness must have been repellent to Mrs. Saltillo's orderly
precision, and for a moment I pitied her. But it was equally
inconsistent with Enriquez's enthusiastic ideas of American progress,
and the extravagant designs he had often imparted to me of the
improvements he would make when he had a fortune. I was feeling uneasy
again, when I suddenly heard the rapid clack of unshod hoofs on a rocky
trail that joined my own. At the same instant a horseman dashed past me
at full speed. I had barely time to swerve my own horse aside to avoid a
collision, yet in that brief moment I recognized the figure of Enriquez.
But his face I should have scarcely known. It was hard and fixed. His
upper lip and thin, penciled mustache were drawn up over his teeth,
which were like a white gash in his dark face. He turned into the
courtyard of the rancho. I put spurs to my horse, and followed, in
nervous expectation. He turned in his saddle as I entered. But the next
moment he bounded from his horse, and, before I could dismount, flew to
my side and absolutely lifted me from the saddle to embrace me. It was
the old Enriquez again; his face seemed to have utterly changed in that
brief moment.
“This is all very well, old chap,” I said; “but do you know that you
nearly ran me down, just now, with that infernal half-broken mustang? Do
you usually charge the casa at that speed?”
“Pardon, my leetle brother! But here you shall slip up. The mustang is
not HALF-broken; he is not broke at all! Look at his hoof--never have
a shoe been there. For myself--attend me! When I ride alone, I
think mooch; when I think mooch I think fast; my idea he go like a
cannon-ball! Consequent, if I ride not thees horse like the cannon-ball,
my thought HE arrive first, and where are you? You get left! Believe
me that I fly thees horse, thees old Mexican plug, and your de' uncle
'Ennery and his leetle old idea arrive all the same time, and on the
instant.”
It WAS the old Enriquez! I perfectly understood his extravagant speech
and illustration, and yet for the first time I wondered if others did.
“Tak'-a-drink!” he said, all in one word. “You shall possess the old
Bourbon or the rhum from the Santa Cruz! Name your poison, gentlemen!”
He had already dragged me up the steps from the patio to the veranda,
and seated me before a small round table still covered with the
chocolate equipage of the morning. A little dried-up old Indian woman
took it away, and brought the spirits and glasses.
“Mirar the leetle old one!” said Enriquez, with unflinching gravity.
“Consider her, Pancho, to the bloosh! She is not truly an Aztec, but
she is of years one hundred and one, and LIFS! Possibly she haf not the
beauty which ravishes, which devastates. But she shall attent you to the
hot water, to the bath. Thus shall you be protect, my leetle brother,
from scandal.”
“Enriquez,” I burst out suddenly, “tell me about yourself. Why did you
leave the El Bolero board? What was the row about?”
Enriquez's eyes for a moment glittered; then they danced as before.
“Ah,” he said, “you have heard?”
“Something; but I want to know the truth from you.”
He lighted a cigarette, lifted himself backward into a grass hammock, on
which he sat, swinging his feet. Then, pointing to another hammock, he
said: “Tranquillize yourself there. I will relate; but, truly, it ees
nothing.”
He took a long pull at his cigarette, and for a few moments
seemed quietly to exude smoke from his eyes, ears, nose, even his
finger-ends--everywhere, in fact, but his mouth. That and his mustache
remained fixed. Then he said slowly, flicking away the ashes with his
little finger:--
“First you understand, friend Pancho, that I make no row. The other
themself make the row, the shindig. They make the dance, the howl, the
snap of the finger, the oath, the 'Helen blazes,' the 'Wot the devil,'
the 'That be d--d,' the bad language; they themselves finger the
revolver, advance the bowie-knife, throw off the coat, square off, and
say 'Come on.' I remain as you see me now, little brother--tranquil.”
He lighted another cigarette, made his position more comfortable in the
hammock, and resumed: “The Professor Dobbs, who is the geologian of the
company, made a report for which he got two thousand dollar. But thees
report--look you, friend Pancho--he is not good for the mine. For in the
hole in the ground the Professor Dobbs have found a 'hoss.'”
“A what?” I asked.
“A hoss,” repeated Enriquez, with infinite gravity. “But not, leetle
Pancho, the hoss that run, the hoss that buck-jump, but what the miner
call a 'hoss,' a something that rear up in the vein and stop him. You
pick around the hoss; you pick under him; sometimes you find the vein,
sometimes you do not. The hoss rear up, and remain! Eet ees not good for
the mine. The board say, 'D--- the hoss!' 'Get rid of the hoss.' 'Chuck
out the hoss.' Then they talk together, and one say to the Professor
Dobbs: 'Eef you cannot thees hoss remove from the mine, you can take
him out of the report.' He look to me, thees professor. I see nothing; I
remain tranquil. Then the board say: 'Thees report with the hoss in
him is worth two thousand dollar, but WITHOUT the hoss he is worth five
thousand dollar. For the stockholder is frighted of the rearing hoss. It
is of a necessity that the stockholder should remain tranquil. Without
the hoss the report is good; the stock shall errise; the director
shall sell out, and leave the stockholder the hoss to play with.' The
professor he say, 'Al-right;' he scratch out the hoss, sign his name,
and get a check for three thousand dollar.”
“Then I errise--so!” He got up from the hammock, suiting the action
to the word, and during the rest of his narrative, I honestly believe,
assumed the same attitude and deliberate intonation he had exhibited at
the board. I could even fancy I saw the reckless, cynical faces of
his brother directors turned upon his grim, impassive features. “I am
tranquil. I smoke my cigarette. I say that for three hundred year my
family have held the land of thees mine; that it pass from father to
son, and from son to son; it pass by gift, it pass by grant, but that
NEVARRE THERE PASS A LIE WITH IT! I say it was a gift by a Spanish
Christian king to a Christian hidalgo for the spread of the gospel, and
not for the cheat and the swindle! I say that this mine was worked
by the slave, and by the mule, by the ass, but never by the cheat and
swindler. I say that if they have struck the hoss in the mine, they have
struck a hoss IN THE LAND, a Spanish hoss; a hoss that have no bridle
worth five thousand dollar in his mouth, but a hoss to rear, and a
hoss that cannot be struck out by a Yankee geologian; and that hoss is
Enriquez Saltillo!”
He paused, and laid aside his cigarette.
“Then they say, 'Dry up,' and 'Sell out;' and the great bankers say,
'Name your own price for your stock, and resign.' And I say, 'There is
not enough gold in your bank, in your San Francisco, in the mines of
California, that shall buy a Spanish gentleman. When I leave, I leave
the stock at my back; I shall take it, nevarre! Then the banker he say,
'And you will go and blab, I suppose?' And then, Pancho, I smile, I
pick up my mustache--so! and I say: 'Pardon, senor, you haf mistake, The
Saltillo haf for three hundred year no stain, no blot upon him. Eet is
not now--the last of the race--who shall confess that he haf sit at a
board of disgrace and dishonor!' And then it is that the band begin to
play, and the animals stand on their hind leg and waltz, and behold, the
row he haf begin!”
I ran over to him, and fairly hugged him. But he put me aside with
a gentle and philosophical calm. “Ah, eet is nothing, Pancho. It is,
believe me, all the same a hundred years to come, and where are you,
then? The earth he turn round, and then come el temblor, the earthquake,
and there you are! Bah! eet is not of the board that I have asked you
to come; it is something else I would tell you. Go and wash yourself
of thees journey, my leetle brother, as I have”--looking at his narrow,
brown, well-bred hands--“wash myself of the board. Be very careful of
the leetle old woman, Pancho; do not wink to her of the eye! Consider,
my leetle brother, for one hundred and one year he haf been as a nun, a
saint! Disturb not her tranquillity.”
Yes, it was the old Enriquez; but he seemed graver,--if I could use that
word of one of such persistent gravity; only his gravity heretofore had
suggested a certain irony rather than a melancholy which I now fancied I
detected. And what was this “something else” he was to “tell me later”?
Did it refer to Mrs. Saltillo? I had purposely waited for him to speak
of her, before I should say anything of my visit to Carquinez Springs.
I hurried through my ablutions in the hot water, brought in a bronze jar
on the head of the centenarian handmaid; and even while I was smiling
over Enriquez's caution regarding this aged Ruth, I felt I was getting
nervous to hear his news.
I found him in his sitting-room, or study,--a long, low apartment with
small, deep windows like embrasures in the outer adobe wall, but glazed
in lightly upon the veranda. He was sitting quite abstractedly, with a
pen in his hand, before a table, on which a number of sealed envelopes
were lying. He looked SO formal and methodical for Enriquez.
“You like the old casa, Pancho?” he said in reply to my praise of its
studious and monastic gloom. “Well, my leetle brother, some day that is
fair--who knows?--it may be at your disposicion; not of our politeness,
but of a truth, friend Pancho. For, if I leave it to my wife”--it was
the first time he had spoken of her--“for my leetle child,” he added
quickly, “I shall put in a bond, an obligacion, that my friend Pancho
shall come and go as he will.”
“The Saltillos are a long-lived race,” I laughed. “I shall be a
gray-haired man, with a house and family of my own by that time.” But I
did not like the way he had spoken.
“Quien sabe?” he only said, dismissing the question with the national
gesture. After a moment he added: “I shall tell you something that is
strrange, so strrange that you shall say, like the banker say, 'Thees
Enriquez, he ees off his head; he ees a crank, a lunatico;' but it ees a
FACT; believe me, I have said!”
He rose, and, going to the end of the room, opened a door. It showed
a pretty little room, femininely arranged in Mrs. Saltillo's refined
taste. “Eet is pretty; eet is the room of my wife. Bueno! attend me
now.” He closed the door, and walked back to the table. “I have sit here
and write when the earthquake arrive. I have feel the shock, the grind
of the walls on themselves, the tremor, the stagger, and--that--door--he
swing open!”
“The door?” I said, with a smile that I felt was ghastly.
“Comprehend me,” he said quickly; “it ees not THAT which ees strrange.
The wall lift, the lock slip, the door he fell open; it is frequent; it
comes so ever when the earthquake come. But eet is not my wife's room
I see; it is ANOTHER ROOM, a room I know not. My wife Urania, she stand
there, of a fear, of a tremble; she grasp, she cling to someone. The
earth shake again; the door shut. I jump from my table; I shake and
tumble to the door. I fling him open. Maravilloso! it is the room of my
wife again. She is NOT there; it is empty; it is nothing!”
I felt myself turning hot and cold by turns. I was horrified, and--and I
blundered. “And who was the other figure?” I gasped.
“Who?” repeated Enriquez, with a pause, a fixed look at me, and a
sublime gesture. “Who SHOULD it be, but myself, Enriquez Saltillo?”
A terrible premonition that this was a chivalrous LIE, that it was NOT
himself he had seen, but that our two visions were identical, came upon
me. “After all,” I said, with a fixed smile, “if you could imagine you
saw your wife, you could easily imagine you saw yourself too. In the
shock of the moment you thought of HER naturally, for then she would as
naturally seek your protection. You have written for news of her?”
“No,” said Enriquez quietly.
“No?” I repeated amazedly.
“You understand, Pancho! Eef it was the trick of my eyes, why should
I affright her for the thing that is not? If it is the truth, and it
arrive to ME, as a warning, why shall I affright her before it come?”
“Before WHAT comes? What is it a warning of?” I asked impetuously.
“That we shall be separated! That I go, and she do not.”
To my surprise, his dancing eyes had a slight film over them. “I don't
understand you,” I said awkwardly.
“Your head is not of a level, my Pancho. Thees earthquake he remain for
only ten seconds, and he fling open the door. If he remain for twenty
seconds, he fling open the wall, the hoose toomble, and your friend
Enriquez is feenish.”
“Nonsense!” I said. “Professor--I mean the geologists--say that the
centre of disturbance of these Californian earthquakes is some far-away
point in the Pacific and there never will be any serious convulsions
here.”
“Ah, the geologist,” said Enriquez gravely, “understand the hoss that
rear in the mine, and the five thousand dollar, believe me, no more.
He haf lif here three year. My family haf lif here three hundred. My
grandfather saw the earth swallow the church of San Juan Baptista.”
I laughed, until, looking up, I was shocked to see for the first time
that his dancing eyes were moist and shining. But almost instantly he
jumped up, and declared that I had not seen the garden and the corral,
and, linking his arm in mine, swept me like a whirlwind into the patio.
For an hour or two he was in his old invincible spirits. I was glad
I had said nothing of my visit to Carquinez Springs and of seeing his
wife; I determined to avoid it as long as possible; and as he did not
again refer to her, except in the past, it was not difficult. At last
he infected me with his extravagance, and for a while I forgot even the
strangeness of his conduct and his confidences. We walked and talked
together as of old. I understood and enjoyed him perfectly, and it
was not strange that in the end I began to believe that this strange
revelation was a bit of his extravagant acting, got up to amuse me. The
coincidence of his story with my own experience was not, after all,
such a wonderful thing, considering what must have been the nervous
and mental disturbance produced by the earthquake. We dined together,
attended only by Pedro, an old half-caste body-servant. It was easy to
see that the household was carried on economically, and, from a word
or two casually dropped by Enriquez, it appeared that the rancho and
a small sum of money were all that he retained from his former fortune
when he left the El Bolero. The stock he kept intact, refusing to take
the dividend upon it until that collapse of the company should occur
which he confidently predicted, when he would make good the swindled
stockholders. I had no reason to doubt his perfect faith in this.
The next morning we were up early for a breezy gallop over the three
square miles of Enriquez's estate. I was astounded, when I descended to
the patio, to find Enriquez already mounted, and carrying before him,
astride of the horn of his saddle, a small child,--the identical papoose
of my memorable first visit. But the boy was no longer swathed and
bandaged, although, for security, his plump little body was engirt by
the same sash that encircled his father's own waist. I felt a stirring
of self-reproach; I had forgotten all about him! To my suggestion
that the exercise might be fatiguing to him, Enriquez shrugged his
shoulders:--
“Believe me, no! He is ever with me when I go on the pasear. He is not
too yonge. For he shall learn 'to rride, to shoot, and to speak the
truth,' even as the Persian chile. Eet ees all I can gif to him.”
Nevertheless, I think the boy enjoyed it, and I knew he was safe with
such an accomplished horseman as his father. Indeed, it was a fine sight
to see them both careering over the broad plain, Enriquez with jingling
spurs and whirling riata, and the boy, with a face as composed as his
father's, and his tiny hand grasping the end of the flapping rein with
a touch scarcely lighter than the skillful rider's own. It was a lovely
morning; though warm and still, there was a faint haze--a rare thing in
that climate--on the distant range. The sun-baked soil, arid and thirsty
from the long summer drought, and cracked into long fissures, broke
into puffs of dust, with a slight detonation like a pistol-shot, at each
stroke of our pounding hoofs. Suddenly my horse swerved in full gallop,
almost lost his footing, “broke,” and halted with braced fore feet,
trembling in every limb. I heard a shout from Enriquez at the same
instant, and saw that he too had halted about a hundred paces from me,
with his hand uplifted in warning, and between us a long chasm in the
dry earth, extending across the whole field. But the trembling of the
horse continued until it communicated itself to me. I was shaking,
too, and, looking about for the cause, when I beheld the most weird and
remarkable spectacle I had ever witnessed. The whole llano, or plain,
stretching to the horizon-line, was DISTINCTLY UNDULATING! The faint
haze of the hills was repeated over its surface, as if a dust had arisen
from some grinding displacement of the soil. I threw myself from my
horse, but the next moment was fain to cling to him, as I felt the
thrill under my very feet. Then there was a pause, and I lifted my
head to look for Enriquez. He was nowhere to be seen! With a terrible
recollection of the fissure that had yawned between us, I sprang to the
saddle again, and spurred the frightened beast toward that point. BUT
IT WAS GONE, TOO! I rode backward and forward repeatedly along the line
where I had seen it only a moment before. The plain lay compact and
uninterrupted, without a crack or fissure. The dusty haze that had
arisen had passed as mysteriously away; the clear outline of the valley
returned; the great field was empty!
Presently I was aware of the sound of galloping hoofs. I remembered
then--what I had at first forgotten--that a few moments before we had
crossed an arroyo, or dried bed of a stream, depressed below the level
of the field. How foolish that I had not remembered! He had evidently
sought that refuge; there were his returning hoofs. I galloped toward
it, but only to meet a frightened vaquero, who had taken that avenue of
escape to the rancho.
“Did you see Don Enriquez?” I asked impatiently.
I saw that the man's terror was extreme, and his eyes were staring in
their sockets. He hastily crossed himself:--
“Ah, God, yes!”
“Where is he?” I demanded.
“Gone!”
“Where?”
He looked at me with staring, vacant eyes, and, pointing to the ground,
said in Spanish: “He has returned to the land of his fathers!”
We searched for him that day and the next, when the country was aroused
and his neighbors joined in a quest that proved useless. Neither he
nor his innocent burden was ever seen again of men. Whether he had been
engulfed by mischance in some unsuspected yawning chasm in that brief
moment, or had fulfilled his own prophecy by deliberately erasing
himself for some purpose known only to himself, no one ever knew. His
country-people shook their heads and said “it was like a Saltillo.” And
the few among his retainers who knew him and loved him, whispered
still more ominously: “He will yet return to his land to confound the
Americanos.”
Yet the widow of Enriquez did NOT marry Professor Dobbs. But she too
disappeared from California, and years afterward I was told that she was
well known to the ingenuous Parisians as the usual wealthy widow “from
South America.”
End of Project Gutenberg's Stories in Light and Shadow, by Bret Harte