DESDEMONA LISTENS
It was but slowly that Manuelita obeyed her father's order to return
home; her little feet lagged as the girl dwelt on the scene she had just
witnessed, and wondered what it meant. Somehow this American always set
her wondering about something. His very unlikeness to the men whom she
had hitherto lived among made him appear almost as strange to her as a
visitor from another world. He had begun by half repelling, and had
ended by fascinating her; on this point the guess of the coarse-minded
but quick-witted Texan was not mistaken. Although in speech and manners,
in all his tastes and habits, Stephens offered a complete contrast to
her Mexican fellow-countrymen, he himself with his light hair and fair
complexion was not a type absolutely new to this girl, for in the place
of honour in her grandfather's dining-room had hung a portrait of a
golden-haired _caballero_, the great Manuel Sanchez, the friend of
Cortez; and Manuelita had woven so many romantic dreams about her
glorious ancestor that this fair-haired American had come to seem to her
a sort of copy of her hero of romance. It was only in dreams and
traditions that the girl had met with heroes; the secluded life led by
Mexican ladies was in her case more solitary than usual, for the Sanchez
family was poor (poor for its position, that is) but proud, and
Manuelita turned up her pretty nose at the few young rancheros of the
neighbourhood, and held them beneath the notice of the daughter of a
_conquistador_. The girl's passionate southern nature, with all its
capacity for devotion, had slept longer than was usual among her people,
and when her heart should awake it would be the heart of a woman, not of
a schoolgirl. The young rancheros flaunted their silver spurs and velvet
jackets at the Fiestas in vain; they swore the señorita was as wild as
an antelope; and, like an antelope, she was caught by her curiosity. She
could not keep from speculating on the strange character of this
American who bore the golden locks of her great ancestor. The character
of a handsome young man is a dangerous study for the peace of mind of a
girl, and her interest in the stranger grew so rapidly that soon it
seemed to her that there was little else worth studying "beneath the
visiting moon."
Nor was the opportunity lacking. Stephens had struck up quite a
friendship with her father in the course of the winter, and had got into
the way, especially on mail days, of dropping in for a chat with his
Mexican crony, who, within his somewhat narrow intellectual limits, was
a man both of strong character and active mind. She had listened to them
talking together by the hour. The Mexican had many incidents to tell of
the ceaseless struggles of his people with the marauding Navajo Indians,
who had been but lately reduced to subjection, and of the hardly less
constant struggle between the rival great families, the Bacas, the
Armijos, the Chavez, and the rest, for supremacy among themselves. The
American found no lack of matter in the tale of his wanderings between
the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, and of the toils and hopes
of a seeker after gold. To her, directly, he had not spoken very much;
as an unmarried girl, under the watchful tutelage of her aunt, she was
not expected to take a prominent part in conversation, but she went and
came freely between the living-room where her father entertained his
guest, and the sleeping-chambers which opened off it and the kitchen
communicating with it on the other side.
Once, too, it had been her luck to see the American perform a feat that
impressed her not a little. She had gone out one evening with Juana, the
Navajo captive who had been brought up in the house as a bondservant, to
bring in the milk from the corral, when she caught sight in the dusk of
an animal prowling near that seemed like a dog, and yet was assuredly
something other than a dog. The two girls ran indoors, crying out that
there was a wild beast of some kind, a wolf they thought, close by, and
Stephens, who was sitting with her father, sprang up, seized his
Winchester, which stood in the corner, and hastily threw a cartridge
into it as he stepped forth, while she followed to point out the
marauder. There, in the dim light, some seventy yards away, the animal
stood, hesitating whether to advance or to fly. She well remembered the
quick, smooth, steady action with which the rifle came up, came level,
went off; the loud clap of the bullet hitting the object; and the
nonchalant way in which the tall American had turned on his heel and,
without any apparent interest in the effect of his shot, had gone in and
replaced the rifle in its corner, merely remarking, "I reckon it's
nothing but a coyote."
Pedro, the peon, had run to see, and presently brought in the limp body
of the animal, a coyote as he had guessed, its skull shattered to a pulp
by the deadly hollow bullet. But what impressed her more than the
death-dealing powers of the terrible weapon, was the quiet confidence
exhibited by the marksman in his rapid aim, a confidence so entirely
justified by the event; and it was this that struck deep into her
imagination.
Yes, in her eyes, without doubt, the American was a hero; and yet he was
but a cold-hearted hero after all. He could turn a compliment because he
had picked up the trick of it from the young Mexicans whom he met
occasionally in Don Nepomuceno's house, but his compliments lacked the
fanciful gallantry of the words of her countrymen; yes, he was hard, she
was sure of it, hard and cold as the ice-bound soil of his own frozen
North; she would waste no more thoughts on him, she resolved; and then
she thought of him more than ever, and it was in such a mood as this
that she re-entered her father's door.
* * * * *
When Stephens turned his back somewhat ungraciously on Mr. Backus in
front of the stage station, he rode off without casting a look behind
him, and urged his mule forward at an easy amble towards the house where
he was expected. Those last words of the storekeeper had jarred on him
very unpleasantly. Who had asked this intruder to spy on the expression
of the girl's face? What business was it of his anyhow? Of course it was
all rubbish. He himself had never said a single word to Manuelita that
all the world might not hear. Of course he had to pay her a compliment
once in a while; he could hardly do less, coming and going at the house
as he did, and all these Mexican señoras and señoritas expected it, just
as the girls back in Ohio expected you to treat them to candy and
ice-cream. That never meant anything particular, neither did his
compliments, and she was much too sensible a girl to think they did. It
was characteristic of the man that he never for a moment thought of
himself as likely by his person and his character to make an impression
on a girl's heart. The idea that came into his head when Backus made the
suggestion was that if there was anything in it it must be due to this
precious art of paying compliments, which was about the only point in
Mexican manners that he had taken any special pains to acquire. But the
whole thing was rubbish, so he assured himself again and again. Sanchez
was no fool, and no more was his daughter. They were kindly people, who
had behaved with true Mexican hospitality to a stranger--but they were
people of another race: their customs, their beliefs, their ideals, were
all strange to him. Between an American and a Mexican there could be no
real community of feeling. And yet some Americans did marry Mexicans,
and did not seem to repent it. Even that low-down skunk of a
storekeeper, who was an American of sorts, had a Mexican wife. Probably
she was not much to boast of, a mere peon's daughter most likely,--well,
that was his taste. But there were other Americans who had Mexican
wives; he could count up several whom he had seen in Santa Fé,--traders,
Government employés, and the like,--and they had as comfortable homes as
if they had gone back to the States and married American girls. But
confound that Backus's impudence! What should he know about these
Sanchez folks anyway?
Beneath all this anger lay two very uncomfortable suspicions. One was
that the storekeeper was a man with a great deal of low cunning, and
might have, as indeed he boasted, most confoundedly sharp eyes for
prying into other people's affairs; and the other was that he,
Stephens, had never given such an affair as this a serious thought
before, and knew precious little about womankind in general; and this
last thought of his was much truer than he himself realised.
There are no men whose experience of women, as a rule, is so small as
the pioneers of a new country. In older countries there are unmarried
men in plenty, but they are brought into frequent daily contact with the
other sex unless they take deliberate pains to prevent it, and not
seldom they prove to understand women better than those who might be
supposed to have a better right. But the celibates of a new country are
quite different. In their case it is not choice but necessity that makes
the mere sight of a woman's face a rare thing. In the wild, remote
mining camps where Stephens's years of adventure had been mostly passed,
among a thousand men there would barely be a score or so who ever
brought their women-folks along. True enough, where the miners had
struck it rich, and hundreds and thousands of dollars were being taken
out by eager crowds of men, another class of women did not delay long in
appearing upon the scene; but that was a class from which Stephens
studiously kept aloof. He had not even the perverted experience that may
be thus gained; and he positively knew less at nine-and-twenty about the
ways in which girls think and feel than he had known before he left home
at nineteen. If he knew little he had been contented with his ignorance,
but now this random shaft of the storekeeper had gone home, and he was
contented no longer.
Alighting from Captain Jinks before Don Nepomuceno's door, he was
welcomed by the Mexican, who insisted on unsaddling the mule for him
himself, loudly calling meanwhile for Pedro to come and take him round
to the corral and give him some corn. The house was built in Mexican
style, of sun-dried bricks, in the form of a hollow square, with a
patio, or courtyard, in the centre on which all the doors and windows
gave, the outer wall being blank except for a peephole or two high up.
It had a flat clay roof, with a low parapet all round. It was, in fact,
a miniature castle, as was every house in the country of any pretensions
built during the days when the Navajos and Apaches were a constant
terror in the land. Stephens followed his host inside after taking off
his spurs, Spanish fashion. He had unbuckled his belt and handed it,
revolver and all, to his host, begging him to take charge of it. This,
too, he had learned was a piece of Spanish etiquette. You give him your
arms to keep, for you are under his protection. Don Nepomuceno bustled
around, laying the saddle with its "cantines" neatly in a corner, with
the saddle blanket over it, and hanging up the belt on a peg, while he
kept calling out to his sister to bring in the dinner, and to the Navajo
captive, Juana, to bring water for washing. There were no chairs or
tables, but a broad divan covered with gaily striped serapes ran all
along one side of the room and served as a seat.
On this Stephens sat down, and, while the master of the house showed his
hospitable ardour by urging the women in the kitchen to make a wholly
unnecessary haste, the American drew from his pocket the letter he had
received at the stage station, and proceeded to read it. It ran as
follows:
"THE WHAT CHEER HOUSE, DENVER, COL.,
"April 2, 187-.
"_To Mr. John Stephens, among the Pueblo Indians of Santiago,
N.M._
"FRIEND STEPHENS,--It's two years and a half ago that you and me
parted company in Helena, Montana, after I'd done my best to bust
you that time, you remember. I've knocked around and had my ups and
downs since, but I haven't done so badly on the whole. Last summer
I was in Col. here, and I got on to a goodish thing up on Boulder.
I wish you would come up here this summer and join me in trying to
work it, for I think if it was handled right there's big money in
it for both of us. I don't want to say too much, for I don't feel
plumb sure of this letter reaching you. And for the same reason I
don't put in a draft for what I owe you still, but I've got it here
for you all right and regular, and if you can't come you've only
got to let me know where and how to send it, and it's yours. I'm
well enough fixed now to be able to do it right enough. I don't
know if there's any chance of this letter finding you. I haven't
heard sign or sound of you since we quit being pardners, till
yesterday I run on to that Sam Argles as you may remember in Helena
in old times; he'd been wintering away down in Arizona, and he said
as how when he was passing through New Mexico a stage driver there
told him as he knowed of a white man, calling himself John
Stephens, that had been a miner, and was living now with the
Indians of Santiago, N.M. That Sam Argles is an old gasbag, sure,
but I had to allow as it sounded like you in some ways, for he said
the driver said this Stephens wouldn't never drink nor gamble; but
he said too another thing, that he was living there with 'em as a
squawman, and then I didn't hardly believe as it could be you, but
I guessed that stage driver might have been lying, and so figuring
on it like that I calculated I might as well write you there.
Hoping as it is you, and that you're going strong and doing fine, I
remain, your former pard,
"JEFF. A. ROCKYFELLER.
"You can address me, care of Hepburn & Davis, 397 Arapahoe,
Denver."
Stephens perused this letter with a dry smile upon his face.
"Yes, Rocky," he said, apostrophising his ex-partner, "it's me, sure
pop, that Mr. Sam Argles heard of here; but I'm not a squawman yet, not
quite; you were right not to believe that, not if all the darned fool
stage drivers in the country were to swear to it."
By the code of the West, a squawman is nothing less than a renegade to
his own race, and is hated accordingly.
He refolded the letter and placed it back in his pocket, as Juana
appeared bearing a towel and soap and a bowl, which she placed on the
clean-swept floor in front of him preparatory to aiding him to wash by
pouring a little stream of water over his hands. The Navajo handmaiden,
having been captured as a child, had been brought up in Mexican style,
but her blood was pure Indian; that showed plainly in her impassive face
as she held the towel for him to wipe his hands, and the strong animal
expression given by the heavy jaw and dark skin struck him forcibly. He
wondered what she was thinking of as she stood there as still as if she
had been cast in bronze, and he reflected, with some disgust at his own
stupidity, that that 'cute storekeeper down below could probably have
made a pretty accurate guess. Yes, in future he positively would pay
more attention to what women were thinking about. In that respect there
was no doubt he must amend his ways.
At last Don Nepomuceno condescended to settle down and seat himself on
the divan beside his guest; a low table was brought in and placed before
them, and on it were set two bowls of rich mutton-broth. When the empty
bowls were removed by Juana, the master of the house called out loudly,
so as to be heard in the kitchen through the open door, "It is very
excellent broth! Ah, what capital broth!"
"I have often heard it said," remarked Stephens, by way of showing his
appreciation, "that the Mexican ladies make the best soup in the world."
"It is true, Don Estevan, it is quite true. They are capital cooks,
capital. I wonder now, Don Estevan, that you can be contented to cook
for yourself. Cooking seems such a waste of time for a man!"
Stephens laughed. "It's my bad luck, señor," he said. "You see, the
ladies wouldn't ever look at a rover like myself."
"Don't you believe it, don't you believe it," cried the other; "indeed
you have no call to say so. Ah, here is the stew," he added, as Juana
set down before each of them two small saucers, one of frijoles, or
Mexican beans boiled with onions, and one of stewed mutton with red
pepper; in fact both dishes were made nearly red-hot by a liberal
admixture of the famous chili colorado. For bread she laid before them
tortillas, large thin pancakes of the blue Indian corn, peculiar to New
Mexico.
Following the example of his host, Stephens broke off a piece of
tortilla, formed it into a scoop, and dipping up mouthfuls of the two
messes alternately, thus consumed both bread and meat together. His
host's approval of this course was delivered for the benefit of the
kitchen as emphatically as it had been of the soup.
"It is very savoury meat," he shouted in his commanding voice, as soon
as he had tasted two or three mouthfuls from each saucer, "very savoury;
and they are excellent beans, delicious beans. Ah yes, Don Estevan," he
continued to his guest, "what a pity it is that you have not someone to
cook for you like this. To live all by yourself is so solitary, so
_triste_."
"Yes," answered the American quietly; "but how should I do when I went
off to the mountains prospecting? I'm off again, I expect, shortly, to
Colorado, you see; and what would I do with the cook then?"
"But why do you go?" queried his host. "Is it not time for you to leave
off this wandering, roving life of yours and settle down? You are rich,
everybody knows. You should marry, man, marry, and enjoy yourself"; he
dropped into a more familiar tone,--"yes, marry before old age comes.
You are a young man still, but age will be upon you before you know it."
Stephens, instead of giving a direct answer, made play with the tortilla
and the stew. "I do begin to believe that cunning Backus was nearer
right than I had any idea of," he said to himself. "I suppose this means
that my good friend here wants to suggest that he'll find me a wife in
short order if I say so--only, as it happens, he's a little too
previous; I aint ready just yet." By this time he had consumed
sufficient of the stew to set a dry man on fire, and utilised this fact
to change the subject.
"Excuse me," said he, "but may I, by your permission, beg for a drink of
water? This meat is delicious, but the chili makes me rather thirsty."
"Oh, certainly," cried his hospitable host; "but we have coffee coming.
We have coffee here. Bring the coffee, Juana, at once," he shouted to
the bondmaid.
"Water, please, if I may be so bold, Don Nepomuceno," pleaded Stephens,
whose mouth was really burning.
"Yes, yes; bring water, then, Juana," cried the other, anxious to
accommodate his guest. "Or would you not like a little atole? There is
atole, too, plenty of it."
Atole is an old and favourite Mexican drink made of the finest Indian
corn meal boiled till it becomes a thin gruel.
A jug of atole presently appeared with two cups, and the American was
permitted to ease the burning sensations of his palate.
"Thank you," he said gratefully, putting down the cup; "that's very
refreshing. Atole is a real good drink, Don Nepomuceno."
"Oh, yes," said the latter, "it's a good drink enough; but now that
coffee has come in so much, it is used more by our handmaidens and the
peons. All the well-to-do people here buy coffee, with sugar, now. We
will have the coffee in in a minute. Tell them to make haste with the
coffee, Juana. Did you never hear," he continued to Stephens, "the song
that the musician of San Remo has made about Mr. Coffee and Mr. Atole?
It is comic, you must know, very comic. You see Mr. Coffee comes from
far, far away off in Tamaulipas, or farther still, to cut out his rival
Mr. Atole. And then they meet, and the pair have a conversation, and Mr.
Coffee tells poor Mr. Atole that he is doomed. Let me see, how does it
go? Oh yes, Mr. Coffee begins, and he says to the other jokingly:
"'Como te va, amigo Atole?
Como has pasado tu tiempo;
Desde lejos hé venido
Para hacer tu testamento.'
"'How do you do, Mr. Gruel?
I fear you are rather unwell;
I've taken a mighty long journey
To ring your funeral knell.'
That's how it goes, Don Estevan. There's a great deal more of it; they
go on arguing ever so long. We must get him in some time and make him
repeat it all for you."
"You're most kind, I'm sure," said the American, wondering in himself
the while how any human being could be amused by such a rigmarole
concerning Messrs. Coffee and Atole. But there was no accounting for
tastes; and he had found out that American humour did not seem at all
funny to Mexican ears, while his recent experience in blasting the ditch
had taught him that the mildest of American jokes might send red Indians
on the war-path. A difference in the sense of humour goes down to the
very roots of our nature.
They had finished dinner by this time, and the American, declining a
cigarette, filled his pipe, and rising went over to his saddle and
extracted from the "cantines" the packet which had come for him by mail.
He brought this over to his host and offered it to him.
"Here, señor," said he, "is a little bag I will beg you to accept. It is
from Denver; it contains some seed of alfalfa, that clover I told you
about, that grows so splendidly in California and Colorado."
The Mexican was warm in his thanks as he untied the bag and took a
sample in his hand.
"I told them to send me the best seed," said Stephens. "I think it ought
to grow well in this country. You'd better sow it soon in a piece of
your ploughed land, and irrigate it when it comes up."
"Yes, I will," said the Mexican. "I'll have it planted to-morrow in the
land I am preparing for corn. Come and see my seed corn; I am not
content with this common blue corn of the Indians. I have white corn
with big ears that I mean to sow. Come along to the storeroom and look
at it."
He led the way, and as they passed through the door they almost stepped
over Manuelita, who was seated on the ground just outside, busy cleaning
a large basket of frijoles. Stephens paused idly to look at what she was
doing, while her father bustled around, noisily demanding of his sister
where the key of the storeroom was. The girl's task struck him as
terribly tedious. She took up a small handful of beans at a time and
picked out one by one the little bits of stone that had got in when the
threshing was done, in the good old style, by the feet of the wild mares
on a floor of clay and gravel concrete.
"That's a long business you're in there," he remarked sympathetically.
"Yes," she answered, glancing up at him with a shy smile, "it takes
time," and she bent her eyes on her hand again so as not to interrupt
her work. He caught the beautiful smooth outline of her cheek with the
long dark lashes showing distinct against it.
"You don't mean to say you have to do the lot that way, picking out all
those bits of rock one at a time?" he asked.
"Oh, but yes, of course," she answered. "You would break your teeth if
we did not take them out before we cook them."
"But," he rejoined, his practical mind revolting against waste of
labour, "it'll take you a good hour to do that lot the way you're doing
it, and you could do it better in three minutes." His tone was oracular.
"I don't think it's possible," she said, "unless you had a witch to do
it. There is an old woman, the mother of Pedro, that we get sometimes,
but she often leaves some in, and then my father hurts his teeth. The
people here call her a witch, but she would take three hours instead of
three minutes."
"Well, I'm no witch," said he, "though the Indians here wanted to play
me for one this morning. But you give me a pan--a milk-pan'll do--and
I'll show you."
The pan was brought, and he put in the beans and poured in water enough
to set them a-swim. He gave the pan a few deft twirls and shook it from
side to side.
"This is the way we wash gravel to get the gold, señorita," he said, as
he set it down. "The rocks are all at the bottom of that pan now, you
bet. If you'll kindly give me another pan to put the beans into," he
went on, "I'll prove it to you."
The girl hastened to bring a second pan and put it beside the first, and
in doing so their hands touched.
"You'd better hold it there," said he, "while I shovel them across," and
with his hollowed palms he scooped the beans from one to the other. In
the pan he had shaken there now remained a little discoloured water, and
at the bottom about a teacupful of gravel.
"There you are," said he triumphantly; "here's your gravel in this one,
and there's your frijoles in that one. It's as easy as rolling off a
log." She looked agreeably surprised, and he laughed.
"How would you look," said he, "if those little rocks were nuggets, eh?
Coarse gold, heavy gold, eh?" He smiled a strange smile, and a strange
light shone in his eyes. "Many a thousand pounds of gravel I've washed,
looking for gold in the bottom of every one; but this is the first time
I ever panned out beans to get gravel. Maybe some day I'll find that
heavy gold yet, but God knows where."
He straightened himself up to his full height, leaving on the ground
the pan over which he had been stooping. His eyes ranged out across the
courtyard through the open gateway to distant pine-clad peaks standing
out against the intense blue of the sky.
Manuelita had likewise set down her pan, and was leaning her hand
against the side of the doorway and her head against her hand.
"I hope you will find it," she said, with a glance from the depths of
her liquid eyes. His eyes met hers and dwelt there for a moment.
"Thanks," he said; "your good wishes should bring good luck."
"I wish they might"; she half sighed as she spoke; "but which of us can
ever tell where good fortune comes from?"
And then broke in the voice of Don Nepomuceno, "Come along and see the
seed corn, Don Estevan. I have found the key."