When the Arragonese laborers who had emigrated to Argentina carrying
along that most cherished of their possessions, the guitar with which
they accompany the couplets they improvise, saw her flit by on her pony,
they made a song about “The Flower of Black River.” And at once the name
was caught up by the whole countryside.
As a matter of fact her name was Celinda and she was the only daughter
of the rancher Rojas. She was small for her eighteen years, but agile
and energetic as a thoroughbred colt. Most of the men of the region,
who, like Orientals, considered obesity an indispensable part of
feminine attractiveness, merely shrugged by way of reply when someone
praised the Rojas girl’s beauty. Yes, her face was right enough,
mischievous looking, with delicately up-turned nose, mouth red as a
blood lily, sharp white teeth, and enormous eyes that were, it might be
objected by a connoisseur, a little too round. But when you got through
with her face, well, for the rest she was just as slim as a boy. At a
short distance you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
“What’s the good of a woman who doesn’t look like one?” they inquired.
In boy’s clothes, mounted on a broncho, circling a lassoo above her
head, she could ride down a wild mare or young steer with as much skill
as one of her father’s peons.
Carlos Rojas, as everyone in the county knew, belonged to an old Buenos
Aires family. In his youth he had led an extravagant life in several of
the European capitols. But marriage and an establishment in Buenos Aires
proved just as costly as his bachelor wanderings in the old world, and
little by little the fortune he had inherited from his father dwindled
away, spent for the most part in ostentation and unsuccessful business
ventures. At the moment when he became convinced that ruin was upon him,
his wife died. She had been a delicate and melancholy woman, given to
writing sentimental verse which she published under a pseudonym in the
fashion papers; and it was she who had selected for her daughter the
romantic name of Celinda.
It became necessary then for Rojas to give up the old farm that had been
in the family for several generations, and that was worth several
millions. When the three mortgages on it had been paid and his other
debts settled there was nothing for Rojas to do but strike out into the
less civilized parts of the Argentine. When money was more plentiful he
had bought a section in Rio Negro as a speculation, and to this
property, which he had never seen, he now betook himself.
Farming is the last resort of many a man who has dissipated his fortune.
In spite of entire ignorance of the principles, to say nothing of the
practice, of agriculture, the man who has failed in other occupations
expects to make a success of this most laborious and difficult of
professions. Rojas, accustomed to a life of spending, believed that by
transferring himself to Rio Negro he would be able to accomplish this
miracle. He had never been willing to bother with the management of the
farm near Buenos Aires, with its rich pasture lands capable of
supporting thousands of steers. Yet now he was planning to lead the
rough life of the pioneer farmer, who must conquer the wilderness if he
is to live. What his ancestors had done in the rich lands near Buenos
Aires, where rains are opportune, he now had to do under the brazen
skies of Patagonia that rarely, throughout the whole length of the year,
let more than a few drops fall on the parched prairie.
But the erstwhile millionaire bore his misfortune with immense dignity.
He was a man of fifty or thereabouts, somewhat short in stature, with a
nose of roman proportions, and a beard streaked with white. In the midst
of his rustic surroundings he preserved something of the manners
acquired by contact with a more polished society. As they said at the
settlement up at the dam, it didn’t matter how Rojas dressed, you could
always tell he had been born a gentleman. He always wore high boots, a
wide-brimmed hat, and a poncho, and in his right hand carried a
_revenque_ or small whip.
The buildings on his ranch were of a most modest sort. They had been put
up as temporary structures in the hope that a turn for the better in his
fortunes would soon make it possible to improve them. But, as so often
happens in rustic settlements, these makeshift buildings were destined
to last even longer than some of those erected with great care as
permanent ones.
Over the walls of baked brick, with no other supports, or of simple
adobe, rested the roof of corrugated tin. Inside, the partitions came
only part way to the roof so that air could circulate freely through the
entire building. The rooms did not contain much in the way of furniture.
The one used by Don Carlos as office and reception room was adorned with
a few rifles and the skins of some of the pumas he had shot in the
surrounding plateau lands. It was the rancher’s custom to spend most of
his time inspecting the corrals close by; but now and then he would
start his horse off at a gallop for a sudden descent upon the peons at
the other end of the ranch. One could never be sure that they weren’t
sleeping while the cattle strayed....
The lunch hour had passed, and still Celinda had not come in. Her father
every now and then looked impatiently out of the door. He had no fears
whatever on her account. Ever since she had come to Rio Negro, at the
age of eight, she had fairly lived on horseback, treating the Patagonian
plateau lands as her playhouse.
“No one is going to take any chances with Celinda,” her father used to
say proudly. “She’s a better shot with the revolver than I am. And
besides, there is no two-legged or four-legged beast can get away from
her when she has her lassoo along. My girl is as good as any man!”
In one of his pauses at the door he caught sight of her, approaching
rapidly along the dark line that plain and sky make where they meet. The
little mounted figure running along the horizon looked like a small tin
horseman escaped from a box of toys.
In front of her pony ran a diminutive steer. And now the group, at full
gallop, was growing larger with amazing rapidity. Anything moving on
that immense plain appears to the bewildered eye, unaccustomed to the
optical tricks of the desert, to change its size without going through
the customary gradations.
The girl was close at hand now, uttering cowboy cries and cracking her
lassoo in order to excite the steer to a quicker pace and rush him
through the gate of the corral. With a great snort he dove through the
opening in the wooden stakes, whereupon Mlle. Celinda dropped lightly
from her horse and came to greet her father. But the latter, after
kissing her cheek, held her away from him, and looked severely at her.
“Haven’t I told you that I didn’t want to see you wear men’s clothes?
Trousers are for men, just as skirts are for women. I won’t have a
daughter of mine looking like a movie actress!”
Celinda received her father’s reproof with lowered eyes, and an air of
graceful hypocrisy. Dutifully promising to dress as he required, she
restrained the amusement his allusion caused her, for as a matter of
fact, she scarcely ever thought of anything but those movie actresses in
knickerbockers that figure so largely in American films; for their sake
she had taken many a five hour gallop to Fuerte Sarmiento, the nearest
town, where, on a sheet hung up in the only hotel, wandering film
operators showed films which Celinda watched with breathless attention.
It wasn’t that the stories were so interesting, but what a good idea
they gave her of the prevailing styles!
As they lunched Don Carlos inquired of his daughter if she had been
near the camp at the dam. How was the work getting on?
The hope, which daily grew brighter, of becoming rich again, had, of
late, changed Rojas from the gloomy and discouraged man he had been for
so many years, into one capable now of smiling once more. If the
engineers of the Argentine government succeeded in damming the Rio
Negro, the canals even then under construction, according to the plans
of a fellow named Robledo and his partner, would irrigate the lands that
these two engineers had bought; and since those lands adjoined his own,
he, too, would benefit from the irrigation system, and the value of his
property would go up by leaps and bounds.
Celinda listened to her father’s comments on the engineering work and
its possible consequences for themselves with the indifference youth
generally exhibits toward money matters. But the discourse of Don Rojas
on riches and what could be done with them was cut short by the arrival
of a mulatto of overflowing proportions, fat cheeked, with slanting
eyes, her coarse black hair gathered into a thick braid that undulated
along the elevations and declivities of her back and then hung free,
endeavoring apparently to reach the ground.
Before coming into the dining room she deposited a bag full of clothes
at the door. Then she made a rush for Celinda, kissed her, and even
spattered some of her tears over her:
“My pretty little one! My baby, my own little Señorita!”
When Celinda first came to the ranch the mulatto had been hired to take
care of her, and it had been a real hardship for the woman to leave the
girl. But she had never been able to get on with Don Carlos. The rancher
was abrupt in his manner of giving orders, and would take no argument
from women, especially when they had reached a certain age.
“The boss is a gay old boy,” Sebastiana confided to her friends. “I’m
getting too old for him, and it’s the younger ones that catch all the
smiles and pretty speeches, while all I get is sharp words and threats
of the _rebenque_!”
When she had finished exclaiming over Celinda, the mulatto looked at Don
Carlos with an indignation that was comical in effect.
“Well, since the boss and I can’t get on together, I’m going to the dam
to keep house for the Italian contractor!”
Rojas shrugged to indicate that she could go wherever she pleased for
all of him, and Celinda followed her old servant to the front door.
The afternoon was half gone when Don Carlos, who had been taking his
siesta in a huge canvas armchair, and reading several of the Buenos
Aires newspapers, which the train brought out to the desert three times
a week, left the ranch house.
Hitched to a post of the portico which shaded the door was a horse. The
rancher smiled as he noticed that the animal bore a side saddle. In a
moment Celinda appeared, wearing a black riding skirt. She tossed her
father a kiss from the end of her riding whip, and then, without setting
foot in the stirrup or accepting a helping hand, with one leap she
landed on the saddle, and the horse started off at full gallop toward
the river.
But his rider did not let him go very far. Celinda dismounted in a grove
of willows where a second horse, the same one she had ridden that
morning with a cross saddle, was waiting for her. Dropping her skirt and
the rest of her feminine costume, she stood revealed in knickerbockers,
riding boots, and a boyish shirt and necktie. She smiled as she thought
of how she was disobeying “the old man,” as, in accordance with local
custom, she called her father.
But how surprised that other man would be to see her in a feminine
riding skirt! No, she didn’t want to surprise him that way.... He had
always seen her in boy’s clothes and so he always treated her with the
friendly confidence he would have for someone of his own sex. Who could
tell what would happen were he to see her wearing skirts, just like a
young lady? He might grow shy and begin being tremendously polite, and
finally stop seeing her altogether!
So she left her girl’s clothes on the horse she had ridden to the
willows, gaily mounted the other, and pressing her slim feet against his
flanks, tossed her lassoo in the air, making spirals of rope above her
head.
And now the Flower of Rio Negro was galloping along the river bank
through the aged willow trees that droop their festoons of delicate
green over the gliding water. This solitary river roadway, that
stretched from the storm-beaten peaks of the Andes, on the Pacific side,
to its wide outlet in the Atlantic, had been named Black River because
of the dark-colored plants which covered its bed, giving a greenish
tinge to the snow waters of the distant mountains.
The thousand-year-old erosion of the swift stream had cut a deep gash,
two or three leagues wide in certain places, in the Patagonian table
land. The river slid along through this cut between two banks of earth
brought down by the stream in the flood season. These banks were of a
rich and light soil, extremely fertile wherever the river water reached
it. But beyond this point the ground rose to form steep, yellow, sinuous
walls that gazed unblinkingly at one another across the gliding black
water; and beyond these heights stretched the mesa, that region where
icy cold alternates with suffocating heat, where hurricanes torment the
harsh vegetation that will yield a living only to those flocks that can
scour many leagues of that arid plain.
All the life of the region was concentrated in the wide fissure carved
by the river waters across the desert. The two strips of soil on its
banks represented so many thousand miles of fertile earth brought down
by the river from its wanderings in the Andes. And it was in one part of
this great cleft that the government engineers were at work in an
attempt to raise the level of the waters the few yards necessary in
order to inundate the adjoining lands.
Celinda was uttering sharp cries to excite her horse; it seemed as
though she must share her delight with him. In a little while she was
going to meet what interested her most in that whole wide countryside!
As she followed a turn in the river bank, the surface of the stream
suddenly widened before her eyes, forming a quiet and solitary lake. At
its farthest limit, at the point where the banks pressed in and
disturbed its waters, were outlined the iron profiles of several great
derricks, and the tin or straw roofs of a settlement. This was the
little town that had grown up near the dam, a town of houses that had
risen but a slight distance above the ground, with not a single second
story to break the monotonous level of its roof line.
But Celinda’s curiosity stopped short of the settlement. Reining in her
horse, she walked him through several squads of men working at some
distance from the river, at the point where the level of the ground
began to rise abruptly.
These peons, some of them Europeans, others half-breeds, were removing
and heaping up the soil which they took from the ditches that were to
become part of the irrigation system. Two ditching machines, with a
great roar of motors, were also attacking the ground in an attempt to
facilitate this human labor.
Celinda looked about her with keen exploring eyes, and turning her back
on the workmen she went toward a man she had spied on a small elevation
of ground. He sat on a canvas folding chair, before a small table; his
sombrero lay at his feet which were encased in thick muddy boots, as
rough and serviceable as the rest of his clothing. His head on his hand,
he was studying the charts spread out before him.
He was one of those blond clear-eyed young men who remind us of the
Greek youths immortalized in sculpture, and who for some unexplainable
reason reappear, with surprising frequency, in the northern races of
Europe. Straight-nosed, with curly hair growing low over his forehead,
and a firm and powerful neck line, he was an unexpected apparition in
that barren spot. So absorbed was he in his calculations that he did not
notice Celinda’s arrival.
She still had her lassoo in her hand, and with the cunning and noiseless
step of an Indian, she began to climb up the slope. Not the slightest
sound betrayed her approach. Within a few yards of her goal she
straightened up, laughing silently at her prank, and giving the lassoo a
few vigorous preliminary swings, she suddenly let it fly. The noose
poised over the youth and descended upon him in a flash. Then it
tightened, pinning down his arms, and a slight jerk nearly upset him.
Angrily he looked about him, his fists doubled up, his muscles tense;
then suddenly he burst out laughing. To complete her impudent
performance, Celinda was gently tugging at the lassoo, and in order not
to be overturned, there was nothing for the youth to do but move towards
her. When he stood close beside her she looked up at him apologetically.
“It’s such a long time since we’ve seen one another ...! _Tanto tiempo!_
I thought I’d better get you on the other end of this rope, so you can’t
get away!”
The youth looked his astonishment. In a drawling voice that made his
slow Spanish sound amusingly foreign, he exclaimed.
“Such a long time! Why, what about this morning?”
“_Tanto tiempo!_” She mimicked his accent. “Well, what of it, you
ungrateful _gringo_? Is it such a small matter to you that we haven’t
seen one another since this morning?”
Then they both burst out laughing, like two children.
By this time they had reached the hitching post where she had left her
horse. Hurriedly she sprang to his back, as though it made her feel
uncomfortable and helpless to stand on the ground. Besides, in spite of
his six feet and over, this point of vantage made it possible for her to
look down at him.
The rope was still wound about his arms and shoulders, but Celinda
determined to let her captive go.
“Listen, don Ricardo, I’m going to set you free, but only so you can do
a little work!”
With a quick twist she tossed the rope off his shoulders. But as though
her presence robbed him of all initiative, the youth remained motionless
before her. Majestically she offered him her hand.
“Don’t be ill-bred, Mr. Watson! That is for you to kiss. You seem to be
losing all your manners out here in the desert.”
Amused by the girl’s mock gravity, the young engineer bent over her
hand. But his air of treating her with the good-natured condescension an
older person displays toward a mischievous child, annoyed her.
“One of these days I’m going to get really cross with you, and then
you’ll never see me again. You always treat me as though I were a little
girl, when I’m not! I’m the first lady of the land, I’m the Princess
_Flor de Rio Negro_!”
But Watson was still laughing at her; and finally the girl laughed too;
whereupon, the Princess Flor began exhibiting a serious and maternal
interest in her friend’s welfare.
“You are working too hard, and I don’t like to see you get so tired,
_gringo mio_! There’s too much work here for one man to do. When is
Robledo going to come back? He must be having a gay time over there in
Paris!”
Watson, as she mentioned his partner’s name, caught up her serious tone.
He was already back, the engineer replied, and might put in an
appearance at any moment. As to the work, it didn’t seem so heavy to
him. He had held more difficult jobs in other countries. Until the
government engineers finished the dam, his work and Robledo’s would be
comparatively light, since most of the ditches were ready, waiting for
the water that was to pour through them.
They were moving along side by side now, unconsciously going toward the
engineering camp. Richard, as he walked along, kept a hand on her
horse’s neck, and looked up at Celinda, whose quick motions of her eyes
and lips while she talked were often easier for him to understand than
her rapidly uttered words. The peons, considering the day’s work ended,
were putting their tools together. The rider and her escort, to avoid
the groups of laborers returning to the town, took a path at some
distance from the river, and wound slowly up the slope that led to the
mesa.
As they ascended a spur of ground that was like a buttress in the great
wall of parched clay, stretching as far as the eye could reach, they
saw, far below them, the lake-like width of the river above the narrow
point selected for the construction of the dam. The camp, a medley of
strangely assorted buildings, scattered about without any attempt at
order, contained adobe huts covered with straw, houses of brick with tin
roofs, tents of dirty canvas, and, most comfortable of the lot, the
portable houses occupied by the engineers, overseers, and other
employees. Above all the other houses, one in particular stood out, a
wooden building mounted on piles, with a porch running around all four
sides. It was the bungalow that, a few weeks before, had been received
at Bahia Blanca for Pirovani, the Italian contractor of the works at the
dam.
The streets of this hastily improvised town were always empty during the
day. But as dusk set in they began to be peopled by groups of peons who,
returning from their work, met other groups and mingled with them, until
finally hundreds of workmen were assembled on the main thoroughfare; and
they were all going in the same direction.
A frame house, the only one that, in size, compared with the bungalow of
the Italian contractor, was the goal of the slowly moving crowd. Above
the door was a sign on which was written in ordinary long hand, “The
Galician’s Resort.” The Galician was, as a matter of fact, an
Andalucian, but it is the prevailing assumption in those regions that
any Spaniard who comes to Argentina must by that fact be a Galician.
“The Resort,” of course, was chiefly useful to the community as a
saloon, but it also served as a store where the most diverse articles
could be purchased.
A group of faithful customers occupied by right of their patronage the
vicinity of the counter or “bar.” Some of them were emigrants who, once
cut adrift from their native Europe, had wandered through the three
Americas, from Canada to Tierra del Fuego. Others, half-breeds, or even
whites, had, after a few years in the desert, returned to a state
approaching that of primitive man; their features were harsh and
hawk-like, their beards thick and rough, and on their long hair they
wore wide-brimmed sombreros. Thrust negligently through their belts of
leather adorned with silver coins, they carried their revolvers and
knives.
Outside the café, waiting for their husbands, in the hope that the
latter would not drink too much if they knew that their wives were
waiting for them, or watching for the companions of their nights, were
assembled the beauties of the settlement, half-breed women of a light
cinnamon color, with eyes like coals, coarse hair of the thick blackness
of ink, and teeth of a luminous whiteness; some of them were so fat they
looked like the grotesque exaggerations of caricature; others were as
absurdly thin, as though they had just come out of a town besieged by
hunger, or as if they were being consumed by flames incessantly burning
within.
And now lights were twinkling in the town, their reddish points piercing
through the violet veils of the twilight.
Celinda and her companion were still watching the settlement and the
wide spreading river in silence, as though afraid that the scene before
them would vanish at the sound of their voices.
“Come, _Señorita Rojas_,” exclaimed Watson suddenly, feeling the need
perhaps of dispelling the seductive influence of the evening, “Come! It
will soon be dark, and your ranch is a good distance from here.”
The girl laughed at the suggestion of there being any danger for her in
that, but at last she bade her friend good-by and set her horse at a
gallop.
Richard started back to the camp. He went down a rough road that passed
for the main thoroughfare of the town, although there were many others
of as great a width, the government at Buenos Aires having decreed that
all the towns springing up in the desert should allow their streets a
minimum width of twenty yards. No one could tell how soon they might
become cities! Meanwhile, the low buildings of a single storey were
separated from those opposite by a space swept by the icy winds that
whirled great columns of dust through them. At times the sun baked the
soil, and from its cracks, whenever a passer-by disturbed them, arose
swarms of buzzing flies; and then again, the puddles formed in the clay
by the infrequent but ferocious downpours made it necessary for the
inhabitants to walk through water up to their knees if they wished to
call on a neighbor living opposite.
As Watson went along between the two rows of buildings he met all the
principal personages of the camp. First to cross his path was the
_señor_ de Canterac, formerly a captain in the French artillery, who,
according to the statements of many who called themselves his friends,
had, because of certain private enterprises, been forced to flee his
country. At present he was employed as engineer by the Argentine
government; and it always fell to his lot to work on the difficult jobs
that the other engineers took good care to avoid. But de Canterac,
being a foreigner, had to take what the native sons refused.
He was a man of forty odd, inclined to stoutness, his hair and mustache
turning white. Yet he preserved a certain youthfulness of appearance. As
though still wearing the uniform, he walked with military bearing, and
in spite of his surroundings, paid considerable attention to the
elegance of his attire.
Watson caught sight of him coming down the street on horseback, wearing
a handsome riding suit, and a white helmet. The Frenchman greeted the
engineer, and dismounting, walked along beside him, leading his horse by
the reins, while he looked at some of the young American’s drawings.
“And when do you expect Robledo?” he inquired.
“He’ll be getting here at any time now. He has probably already landed
at Buenos Aires. Some friends are coming along with him, it seems.”
They had reached the small frame house where the Frenchman lodged.
Tossing his horse’s reins with military abruptness to the mulatto
servant, de Canterac turned to Richard.
“In six weeks’ time, my friend, the first dam will be finished, and you
and Robledo will be able to irrigate a part of your property right
away.”
Watson smiled. With a gesture of leave-taking, he went on towards his
quarters. But at the end of a few yards he stopped to reply to the
greeting of a young man, who in his city clothes looked as though he
might be a government clerk. His round, shell-rimmed glasses re-enforced
this impression, as well as the memorandum books and loose papers that
he was carrying under his arm. He gave every indication of being one of
those hard-working employees, who, falling into the deep ruts of
routine, become incapable of initiative, or of any project requiring
ambition, but live along from year to year, perfectly satisfied with the
mediocrity of which they have become a part.
This was Timoteo Moreno, born in Argentina of Spanish parents. The
Commissioner of Public Works had sent him as his representative to the
works at the dam, and it was his chief responsibility to pay to the
contractor Pirovani the money sent on for that purpose by the
government.
He had just greeted Watson when he slapped his forehead, and stepped
back, searching among his papers as he did so.
“I forgot to leave Captain Canterac’s check at his place.... Oh,
well....” He shrugged, and went along beside Watson. “I’ll give it to
him when I go back. Anyway there’s no out-going mail until day after
tomorrow.”
Now they were standing in front of the bungalow belonging to the rich
man of the settlement. Just at that moment he came out and stood for a
moment leaning over the railing of the balcony, but no sooner had he
recognized them than he came rushing down the wooden steps. “They must
come in, they must have a glass of something with him,” he insisted.
The rings he wore, his heavy gold watch chain and showy clothes did not
conceal the fact that this was the Pirovani who had arrived in Argentina
ten years earlier as a common laborer; but they did give everyone to
understand that he was one of the richest men to be found between Bahia
Blanca and the steep wall of the Andes forming the Chilian frontier.
There was not a bank in the region that would not honor his signature.
Although barely forty his heavy muscular frame and plump clean-shaven
face already showed that softening of tissue that betrays the invasion
of fat cells.
Beaming with pleasure at having someone come his way to whom he could
display the magnificence of his bungalow, he pressed his invitation upon
them.
“Even though I am a widower, and live alone here, I like to have some of
the comforts of Buenos Aires. Just got some new furniture, too, I want
to show you. Come on in, Moreno, you haven’t seen it all, and Mr. Watson
here doesn’t know half what I’ve got to show him!”
The two men followed their enthusiastic host up the wooden outside steps
into the dining room, which contained a large number of heavy and showy
pieces of furniture. Pirovani exhibited them proudly, slapping them to
show the fine quality of the oak, and rolling his eyes toward the
ceiling whenever he alluded to the prices he had paid for them. The
parlor too, which he insisted on showing, contained an excessive number
of chairs and tables among which the visitors had to thread their way;
and the bedroom, with its elaborate furnishings, would have been far
more suitable for a variety hall actress than for Mr. Pirovani, the
contractor. In all the rooms of course, the contrast between the
over-elaborate furniture and the rough frame-work of the bungalow was
startling.
“A pretty sum, it cost me,” exclaimed the Italian proudly. “What do you
think of it, don Ricardo? You’ve seen a lot of fine things in your
travels.... How do you like my little place?”
Watson replied as best he could; but the proud possessor of the bungalow
needed very little encouragement for his outbursts of satisfaction.
When they returned to the dining room, a young half-breed servant, her
thick braid hanging down her back, placed some bottles and glasses on
the table.
“I’m going to have a new housekeeper,” announced Pirovani. “This place
needs someone who knows how to take care of it. Rojas, the rancher, is
going to let me have his Sebastiana.”
Certain that Moreno and the contractor wanted to talk over the
construction plans, Watson refused a second glass of his host’s wine,
and left the bungalow.
It was dark now in the streets and all the life of the town seemed
concentrated in the tavern. Through the glass of its double swinging
doors two rectangles of red lights fell on the road providing the only
illumination in the settlement.
Most of the patrons of the establishment were standing, taking their
drinks over the bar. A Spaniard was playing the accordeon, while some of
the other workmen were dancing with the half-breed girls. There was, an
abundance of Chilians who had strayed in from the other side of the
mountains, and who, after a few days of work, would be sure to wander
off to some other camp, driven by their eternal restlessness; a strange
and disturbing lot, these, always ready with their knives, yet always
ready to smile and speak softly. In another group were the natives of
the land, with their thick beards, ponchos on their backs, and heavy
spurs clicking, stray horsemen who lived no one knew how, nor did anyone
know where they came from. Like the cowboys of former times they wore
the wide leather belt ornamented with silver coins which served as a
rack for their revolvers and knives.
All of these Americans treated the accordeon playing and the waltzes of
the Galicians and _gringos_ with scornful silence, until finally one of
them demanded the “cueca” in so threatening a tone that the couples who
were dancing with their arms about one another’s necks in European
fashion, hastily left the floor. Then the native dances began, the
“pericon,” the “gato,” those old Argentine dances, for so many
generations the chief diversion of the natives, and more popular among
them than any other, the Chilian “cueca,” which, for hours at a time,
with its accompaniment of hand-clapping and sharp cries, excited the
crowd gathered in the tavern.
The proprietor of the _boliche_ handed out two guitars, carefully kept
under the counter, whereupon the players squatted with their instruments
on the ground; but at once a half-breed servant girl hurried towards the
musicians to offer them the horse skulls which were the places of honor
of the establishment.
Besides possessing this distinction, they were also the best seats in
the place. The proprietor owned a couple of chairs which were always
brought out when the commissioner of police or some other dignitary came
to call, but they were rickety, and gave small promise of lasting out
the evening. The steadiest and safest seats in the _boliche_ were those
provided by the skeletons of animals, dragged in for this useful
purpose from the mesa.
At the sound of the guitars the couples stepped out from the groups
along the wall. The girls, a handkerchief in their left hands, held out
their skirts with the right, and slowly revolved. The men, also holding
a handkerchief in their left hands, gave it a rotary motion, as they
circled round their partners, for the “cueca,” like the dances of
primitive times, tells the eternal story of the male’s pursuit of the
female. The women meanwhile danced in small circles, fleeing from the
men, whose wider circles enclosed those of their partners.
The girls who were not dancing clapped their hands continuously,
emphasizing the purring rhythm of the guitars. Now and then one of them
would sing a couplet of the “cueca,” at which the men would shout and
toss up their hats.
A horseman dismounted in front of the tavern. He tied his mount to a
post of the leaf screen, and came in, receiving full in his face as he
stood in the door, the red light of the lamps that hung from the
ceiling. The newcomer, whom the men greeted with respect, might have
been about thirty years of age. Like all the other horsemen of the
region, he wore a poncho and heavy spurs; his hair and beard were long,
and his sharply outlined profile might have been taken for that of an
Arab. Although handsome, his bearing was harsh and repellent, and in his
black eyes shone at times an expression that was both imperious and
cruel. This was “Manos Duras,” notorious in the territory, and a
somewhat disquieting neighbor, for he lived from the sale of cattle;
but no one had ever been able to discover where he bought his steers.
The proprietor made haste to offer him a glass of gin, while even the
roughest looking _gauchos_ raised a hand to their hats as though he were
their chief. The Galicians looked curiously at him, repeating his name
to one another, while the _mestizas_ went towards him smiling like
slave-girls.
Manos Duras accepted this reception somewhat haughtily. One of the
women, eager to provide him with a seat of honor, dragged out another
horse-skull, on which the fear-inspiring _gaucho_ sat down, while the
patrons of the tavern squatted around him on the floor.
The “cueca,” interrupted for a moment by this arrival, went on again,
and did not stop even at the entrance of another personage of important
demeanor, to whom, as soon as he appeared on the threshold, the
tavern-keeper began bowing most respectfully, from the other side of the
bar.
This was Don Roque, Commissioner of Police at the dam, and the only
representative of Argentine authority in the settlement. As the governor
of the territory of Rio Negro lived in a town on the Atlantic, which it
required a journey of twelve days on horseback to reach--six times what
it required to go to Buenos Aires by train--the Commissioner, who was
his representative, enjoyed an ample freedom for the simple reason that
he was forgotten. The Governor lived too far away to send for him, and
the Minister of the Interior, who resided in the capitol of the
Republic, did not deign even to notice the Commissioner’s existence.
As a matter of fact he did not abuse his authority, nor did he have at
his disposal the means of making others feel it too heavily. Fat,
good-natured, and of somewhat rustic manners, he was a native of Buenos
Aires, who, falling on evil days, had been forced to ask for a
government job, and had resigned himself to accepting the one offered
him in Patagonia. He wore city clothes, adapted, however, to the
discharge of his duties by the addition of high boots and a wide-brimmed
sombrero. A revolver in full view on his waistcoat was the only insignia
of authority he displayed.
The proprietor handed out his best chair, kept under the counter for
guests of unusual distinction, and the commissioner set it down near
Manos Duras, who, by way of acknowledging the Police Commissioner’s
presence removed his hat but did not stir from the horse skull in which
he was sitting.
The dance went on. Don Roque was puffing with great satisfaction at a
huge cigar, which the _gaucho_, in a lordly manner, had offered.
“Do you know,” said the Commissioner, speaking in a low tone, “they say
you’re the fellow who stole three steers from the Pozo Verde ranch last
week. That’s outside my jurisdiction, since it’s in the Rio Colorado
limits, but my associate, the commissioner over that way, thinks you’re
the one that did it.”
Manos Duras went on smoking in silence. Finally he spat.
“They don’t want me to sell meat to the camp up here at the dam.”
“Well, they told the governor of the territory that it was you who
killed those two peddlers a few months back.”
The terrible _gaucho_ shrugged and said coldly, as if bored by this
dialogue,
“Why don’t they prove what they say?”
And the dance in the “Galician’s Resort” went on until ten o’clock, this
being, in a land where everyone gets up with the dawn, the equivalent of
those early morning hours at which the night revels of city dwellers
come to an end.
But the chief citizens of the settlement were not asleep. Nearly all of
them could be found late in the evening, sitting at a desk or table
somewhere, pen in hand, while scenes very different from those actually
around them floated before their eyes.
Canterac, his head leaning on his arm, was looking at a little house
near the Champ de Mars. In it was a woman, of rather sad expression,
whose hair was turning grey, although her cheeks still had the freshness
of girlhood. Two little girls sat near her at the table, and a boy,
_his_ boy, fourteen years old now, sat in his father’s place.... They
were talking of him, and Canterac, sitting at his rough oak table in
Patagonia, put out a hand to speak to them.... The stiff pen fell out of
his hand. Smiling to himself he went on with his writing.
“And I shall see you soon. Within a few days I shall make the last
payment on those debts of honor that drove me away from you.... And that
I have at last cancelled them is due to you, my brave comrade, and to
your wise management of the savings I have sent you. How good it will
be to see you and the children....”
For the moment he had lost his expression of stern authority. This was
another de Canterac, one never seen in that Patagonian settlement.
Then, as he was about to slip his letter into an envelope, a postscript
occurred to him.
“I enclose this month’s check. Next month I shall have more to send you
as I shall receive my pay for some of the extra jobs I have been doing
lately.”
Pirovani too was writing a letter that evening. In a nun’s school in
Italy, among classmates, some of whom bore the most aristocratic names
in the kingdom, his daughter was being educated. He smiled as he wrote,
pouting out his lips as he used to do when he played with his little
daughter.
“You must learn everything a fine young lady should know, my little Ida.
Your old father got the money he is spending now on your education by
good hard work, and sometimes when you were a little girl he deprived
himself of a lot of things. You mustn’t forget that I had a hard time of
it when I was a boy, and had none of your advantages. But just the same
I made my way in the world. I know I’m ignorant, but my little Ida will
know enough for two when she leaves school. And this is something else I
want her to know. If I haven’t married again, it was on your account,
_Ida mía_, it was for you that I have worked so hard.
“Next year I am coming home, and we shall buy a castle, and you will
rule it like a queen, and then some fine young cavalry officer will fall
in love with you, and you will marry him, and bear his aristocratic
name, and your poor old father will be jealous....”
Moreno, too, in the modest building where his office adjoined his living
quarters, was writing to his wife all about the fine dream he cherished
of finally landing a government job in Buenos Aires....
Richard Watson was not writing letters that evening. His drawing board
on his knees, he was tracing on a large sheet of paper the path of one
of the main canals. But as he worked the definite outlines of board and
tracings on it became blurred. The red and blue inks on the paper became
a river bordered with willow trees standing out with refreshing beauty
in a land of parched soil and choking dust.
The landscape he saw was of a diminutive scale. The whole extent of the
district around the camp fitted into the limits of his drawing paper. At
the far end of the plain he suddenly saw a rider, no bigger than a small
fly, moving towards him with a graceful swing and something joyous about
its free motion.... Was it the _Señorita Rojas_, in her boy’s clothes,
whirling her lassoo?
Watson raised his hand to his eyes, and rubbed them. No, there was
nothing there. He brushed the paper as though to sweep away the
intruding vision, and the canal, with its red and blue lines,
reappeared.
Once more he set to work on his monotonous task, but in a few moments he
raised his eyes again from the paper, for now Celinda was appearing at
the back of the room, mounted on her horse; the apparition was not of
pigmy proportions this time, but life sized....
The girl threw her lassoo at him, breaking out into unrestrained
youthful laughter that displayed all her sharp young teeth; and
automatically Richard moved his head to dodge the descending circles of
rope.
“I must be asleep,” he thought. “There’s no use trying to work tonight.
Well, let’s go to bed.”
But before he went to sleep, he saw the whole camp spread out before
him, and looked down on it from a height in the sunset, just as when
Celinda, on her horse, had been beside him.
But this time the ground below was dark, and on the blue background of
the sky, pierced with lights, an apparition grew before him, a woman, of
a grave beauty, with stars in her hair, and on her dark tunic, a woman
of great size who spread out her arms, plucking in the darkness the
dreams that grow in the wide meadows of the infinite, and scattering a
rain of soft fragrant petals over the earth.... It was Night herself
comforting with dreams the restless striving exiles of that faraway
Patagonian settlement....
But, as Richard Watson was young, the dewiest, freshest petals were for
him; as they touched him he shrank away, and then felt a terror lest
there should be no more; for the petals that startled him even as they
caressed were the first dreams of youthful love.