"Oh! I'm _so_ glad to see you!"
With a swish of skirts that spread a delicate odor of violet along the
_corredor_, Lee ran to meet him as he leaped from his horse. Then,
giving him both hands, she inquired after his father, mother, Isabel,
aunts, cousins--goodness knows! the category might have embraced every
one of his _peones_ if she had not been warned by the deepening of the
young fellow's rich color that it was about time to let go.
"Just a bit too effusive," the widow made note. Aloud she broke in, "You
are forgetting Mr. Nevil, dear."
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" But the glint in her eye took it back and she
managed the introductions with malicious skill. "Ramon, this is Mr.
Nevil, our latest acquisition."
"Just as if he'd been a horse," the widow inwardly commented. To prevent
further mischief, she took Lee in to help her set the table.
On first meeting, two women look in each other for possible enemies; two
men for possible friends. Ramon, with his gentle, deprecatory manner,
was so different from the Mexican of American fiction, skulking ever
with a knife behind a bush, that he came to Gordon as a revelation. His
great Spanish eyes glowing softly in the dusk under his huge gold-laced
_sombrero_; the _charro_ suit of soft leather that so finely displayed
his lithe build; his fine horse and silver-crusted saddle--made such a
figure as, in the prosaic East, is to be seen only on the stage.
Gordon, on the other hand, with his frank, breezy manner, appealed just
as strongly to Ramon. After the exchange of cigarettes and a light they
settled down to a friendly chat. Naturally the conversation ran from
Gordon's impressions of the country to a review of its troubles, and in
course thereof he obtained an astonishing glimpse into the Mexican point
of view.
"I do not know of myself," Ramon replied to his question concerning the
outcome, "but one could not listen to my father, who is old and wise,
without forming some opinions. No, señor, we shall never settle our
troubles ourselves--because, first, it isn't in us; second, we do not
try. Any settlement will have to come from the outside--but that we
should fight. You would have every Mexican in the country at your
throats. Even we, the Icarzas, and dozens of others who are now living
on your side of the border, all of us who would have so much to gain and
nothing to lose by a gringo occupation, would turn against you. Like
careless wives we should resent the intrusion of a neighbor to set in
order the house we are too lazy to clean ourselves. To tell the truth,
señor"--he concluded his frank opinion with a gentle shrug--"we should
fight any attempt on your part to limit our 'God-given right'--as your
political speakers would say--to cut one another's throats and run off
with one another's women as we have been doing for thousands of years.
We hated Diaz because he kept us from it. Since his overthrow we have
done our best to make up the arrears."
So quietly was the analysis made, Gordon could not but laugh. "I think
your father must be a bit of a cynic."
"No, señor." Ramon repeated the gentle shrug. "He merely knows us. In
your schools--I know this, for I spent a couple of years in one of your
big military academies--you teach that every American boy has a chance
to be President. This, of course, is foolish. In the average life of
your one hundred of millions, there can only be ten Presidents, so
forty-nine million, nine hundred and ninety thousand others of your men
have no chance at all. Now we do not teach that. We are simply born with
the belief that each one of us is going to be president, if he has to
kill all the others. Moreover, in actual practice, we cut without
scruple the throats of those who come between us and again what your
political speakers would call 'our God-appointed place.' As there are
many millions of us ingrained with this belief, some bloodshed is bound
to result.
"Also my father knows you Yankees. You desire peace, not because it is
right, but in order that you may pursue your commercial wars. Between
our wars we are good friends, visit and love one another till the time
comes for another killing. But you pursue your commerce with absolute
ruth. Nothing, to you, the ruin of a competitor; nothing the crushing of
children's and women's lives in your sweat-shops and factories; no
principle of morality or humanity can stem the tide of your greed. Your
warfare is far more inhuman than ours; slays its tens of thousands to
our thousands; starves your children, debauches your women in a way that
is unknown with us. For when they are not hacking one another to pieces
our _peones_ live in rude comfort on the haciendas with enough to eat
and drink, no more work than they feel like doing, merriment enough in
their bailes and fiestas. No, we prefer our own wars; do not in the
least desire the slums, sweat-shops, rapacity, and greed that go with
your system."
"In other words," Gordon suggested, "'you prefer the frying-pan to the
fire'?"
For a moment Ramon looked mystified. Then, as he grasped the application
of the strange proverb, he laughed. "Exactly, señor. Why trade devils?"
"So that is how you Mexicans feel?" Gordon commented on these strange
ideas after a thoughtful pause. "Then why did you ever let the
foreigners in? Now that a hundred thousand of them have invested
billions here under guarantees from Mexico to their respective
countries, you can never turn them out."
Ramon's nod conceded the fact. Not now were the hands of time to be set
back. The evolutionary process which was sweeping his country from its
ancient foundations, laid in a pastoral age, into the vortex of a
detested commercialism, was not to be stayed.
"Why did we do it? _We_ did not. It was the work of Porfirio Diaz. Lerdo
de Tejada, whom he overthrew, held to the Mexican idea, and would have
built a Chinese Wall around the country to keep the foreigners out. But
after him--Diaz, the Flood!" Flicking the ash carelessly from his
cigarette, he concluded, with a shrug: "No, we cannot throw them
out--now. Some day you gringos will swallow us up even as you swallowed
Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Alta California. But in the mean time--we
shall fight."
From these lines the talk turned to more intimate things and, if let
alone, they would undoubtedly have become friends. But just then Lee
returned and plunged again into family gossip, cutting Gordon out. In
fact, she did it so completely that he looked up, surprised, when she
addressed him half an hour later.
"We are going for a little walk. You may come--if you choose."
He didn't _choose_! As the blue sweater and orange stockings moved off
alongside the _charro_ suit and jingling silver spurs, however, his face
displayed that mixture of exasperation and bewilderment that is common
to two creatures under the sun--to wit, a bull being played with the
_capa_ by a skilful _matador_ and a man under torture by a woman.
When they disappeared around the corner, wrath surged within him. Here
the creature whom, less than an hour ago, he had elected to wander with
him through Java forests and on a personally conducted tour of China had
first flouted him openly, and was now throwing herself at the head of
a--well, a blanked, blanked Mexican! It was hard to swallow, and yet
under his wrath the "wind" was fanning another flame into quite a
respectable blaze.
If he could have seen the celerity with which Lee replaced their
relations on the usual basis after she and Ramon passed from sight,
Gordon might have felt better. But he did not, and when they returned
almost an hour later she behaved just as badly, if not worse. Until the
going down of the sun, in biblical phrase, and then some, she flirted
shamelessly while Gordon exhibited, on his part, the customary phases.
In lack of another girl of flirting age, he concentrated his attentions,
at first, on Betty. But growing desperate as the evening wore on, he
started a flirtation with the widow, whose looks and years brought her
well within the limit. Being neither prim nor prudish, she, on her part,
threw herself into the fray with a certain enjoyment and helped him out.
But never for a moment was she deceived.
"Flirting their young heads off against each other," she summed the
situation.
With secret amusement she observed the dignity of Gordon's good-night at
the close of the evening, and the excessive cordiality of Lee's answer;
also the stiffness of the bows between the young men.
A certain restraint in the girl's good-night to herself caused her
inward laughter. Nevertheless, she observed the scriptural injunction
not to let the sun go down on one's offense. She entered with Lee into
her bedroom, and, judging by the low laughter that escaped under the
door, she quickly removed it. Nevertheless, she was not prevented,
thereby, from a correct judgment of results.
"On the whole honors were even," she mused while making her toilet. "I
wonder who will score to-morrow?"
It was Lee.
"I'm coming home later," she gave Gordon his orders, after breakfast.
"You can go now. Mr. Icarza will ride with me."
There was nothing for it, of course, but to obey. Saddling up, he rode
away, but not before the widow had handed him a hastily scribbled note
that contained--at least so she said--the recipe for a liniment Terrubio
used on their horses which he had promised to Bull.
Going back into the bedroom, she caught Lee watching Gordon behind the
curtains. "That's downright cruelty," she scolded.
"Well?" Lee shrugged. "Didn't he say, yesterday morning, that he didn't
take any interest in girls after they grew up?"
"But he does."
Very illogically, but quite naturally, Lee answered, with a little
laugh, "I know it."
Nevertheless her eyes softened as she watched the lonely figure--that
is, they softened until it turned from the beaten trail and headed on
the path by which they had come in. Then they flashed. "Oh, he's going
back by the _fonda_!"
"Ah-ha!" the widow mused. "Now we shall see."
She did, for having given Gordon barely time to pass from sight, Lee
routed out Ramon from a comfortable smoke, mounted, and rode after.