[Illustration: CARLOS AND CARLOTA]
Carlota of the Rancho
BY EVELYN RAYMOND
AUTHOR OF
“POLLY THE GRINGO”
“MY LADY BAREFOOT,” ETC.
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED BY SARAH A. SHREVE
THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA
MCMIX
COPYRIGHT
1909 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY
Carlota of the Rancho
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BORDER LAND 9
II. UNEXPECTED GUESTS 21
III. REFUGIO 34
IV. WHAT SERVES, SERVES 43
V. A LITTLE EXCURSION 58
VI. THE NORTHER 66
VII. AT THE END OF SEVEN DAYS 76
VIII. BOTANIST AND MINERALOGIST 86
IX. PABLO, THE DANCER 95
X. A PICTURE IN THE SKY 103
XI. FRIENDS IN NEED 114
XII. THE END OF A NOBLE LIFE 122
XIII. BY THE CAPTAIN’S ORDERS 129
XIV. A FIRST RIDE ON THE RAILWAY 137
XV. GETTING ACQUAINTED 145
XVI. THE NEXT MORNING 154
XVII. THE BURNHAMS 166
XVIII. A ROUGH KNIGHT ERRANT 178
XIX. HAPPENINGS BY THE WAY 194
XX. THE SIEGE OF CORK 204
XXI. FOLLOW YOUR LEADER 212
XXII. THE SNARER SNARED 221
XXIII. IN THE DARKNESS 228
XXIV. THE EVENING AND THE MORNING 233
XXV. AN IRISH-INDIAN ONSLAUGHT 244
XXVI. CONFLICTING EMOTIONS 252
XXVII. BY DIFFERENT TONGUES 263
XXVIII. AT THE POINT OF DEATH 278
XXIX. CAMP BURNHAM 288
XXX. THE BLUE FLOWER AND THE BLACK ROCK 296
XXXI. IN THE HOSPITAL 305
XXXII. IN MY LADY’S CHAMBER 313
XXXIII. REFUGIO ONCE MORE 321
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
CARLOS AND CARLOTA _Frontispiece_
“ADIOS! ADIOS!” 48
SHE STARTLED THE MAID 83
“THE CAPTAIN SAID WE WERE TO WAIT” 138
“HE OFTEN CAUGHT A WILD HORSE” 261
CARLOTA OF THE RANCHO
CHAPTER I
BORDER LAND
“My head is in the United States and my feet are in Mexico!” cried
Carlos sprawling at ease upon the sun-warmed grass.
Whereupon Carlota, not to be outdone in anything, promptly rolled
her plump little person over the sward until its length lay along a
lime-line running due east and west across the plain. Her yellow curls
touched her twin’s yet her body formed a right angle to his. Then she
remarked:
“Pooh! I’m better than that! My heart is in my own country and my--my--
What is it that’s on the other side of you from your heart, brother?”
“I don’t know. Maybe gizzard.”
Carlota sat up, amazed and indignant.
“Girls don’t have gizzards, Carlos Manuel. Only chickens and geeses and
things like those. You haven’t paid attention when my father teached
you.”
Carlos laughed; so merrily and noisily that old Marta came to the
door of the adobe house to see what was the fun. Nobody knew the
housekeeper’s real age, it was so very great. None could remember
things so far back as she, but she had ceased to count the years long,
long ago, why not? What matter, if she still had the heart of a child,
yes?
Certainly, neither Carlos nor Carlota cared. To them she had never
changed, either in appearance or kindness, and they found no birthdays
worth remembering except their own. These only, probably, because of
the gifts and _fiestas_[1] then made upon the whole rancho.
“Perhaps, I didn’t, little sister, but neither did you, or you’d never
have said ‘geeses’ nor ‘teached’.”
“Both of us was wrong, weren’t we?” returned the girl, with as fine a
disregard of grammar as of ill temper. “We’ll be more ’tentive when
our father comes home, won’t we? When will that be, Carlos?”
It was a perplexing question, and the boy put it aside, as he put
all difficulties, until a more convenient season. Crossing his arms
above his head, he gazed unblinkingly upward into the brilliant sky,
proposing:
“Let’s find things in the clouds, Carlota. I see a ship, I do, truly.
It’s just like the pictures in the books. All its sails are set and
flying. Oh! can’t you see? Right there? There! It’s moving northward
fast--fast! It might be the ship in which our father will come home.”
He meant to comfort her, but Carlota would not look up. She could not.
The sunbeams made prisms of the teardrops on her lashes and blinded
her. She buried her face in the grass to escape these tiny “rainbows,”
and all at once fell to sobbing bitterly.
Carlos hated that. He hated anything dark or unhappy. He sat up and
patted his sister’s shoulder, soothingly, entreating:
“There, don’t! Don’t, girlie. Our father wouldn’t like it if he should
come home now, this minute, and find you crying.”
The words were magic. Carlota sprang to her feet and earnestly peered
into the distance, crying:
“Is he? Do you see him, brother? Do you?”
Carlos, also, leaped up and threw his arm about her waist:
“I didn’t say that, did I? I only said ‘if.’”
“I don’t like ‘ifs,’” sobbed Carlota.
“Oh, Carlota, don’t cry. You shall not. If you do I will go away
myself, to the northwest, to find my father.”
“Oh! let’s!”
“I said ‘I.’ Not you. Girls never go anywhere, because they always cry.
If it hadn’t been for that my father might have taken me with him. You
see, he couldn’t take you, on account of it; and he couldn’t leave you
at home with only Marta and the men, for then--that would make more
tears. So I had to stay to take care of you, and I do think, if I were
a girl, the very first thing I would do--I wouldn’t cry. Criers never
have real good times, I guess.”
This was logic, and from Carlos, whom Carlota idolized only less than
their absent father, most convincing. She winked very fast and drew
her sleeve across her eyes, to dry the drops which would not be shaken
off.
“I--I won’t cry any more, brother; that is, not where anybody can see
me.”
“Can’t you manage not to do it at all. It’s so dreadfully silly. It
doesn’t bring father back; does it?”
“No--o,” assented the other, with a catch in her voice.
“Nor--Oh! brother! If you won’t, you won’t, so that’s a dear, and don’t
let’s talk any more about it. One--two--three! Who is first at the
corral shall have first ride on Benoni!”
Now, Carlos was an honorable boy, if a rather lazy and pompous one, so
he waited until his sister had placed her feet exactly alongside his
own, on that convenient lime-line, before he repeated:
“One--two--three! Off!”
Like arrows they sped across the plain, past the ancient adobe which
was their home, and again old Marta hobbled to its door to watch the
sturdy little figures, graceful as all other wild, young creatures
of that wide, free land. Yet they looked more like children of some
Indian race, which disdained the dress of civilization, than of white
and cultured people. Unshorn and bare headed, their yellow curls
floated backward over shoulders clad in kid-skin. Each wore a costume
of the same pattern, save that Carlota’s tunic reached to her knees,
while her brother’s was cut short at the waist, where a sash of crimson
was loosely knotted. At the ankles, their leather leggings were met by
gaily embroidered moccasins; and, indeed, their whole garb was simple
and comfortable, though exquisitely fine and dainty, and had been
designed by their father to meet the needs of the peculiar life they
led.
“Together!” shouted Carlos, as they reached their goal; and Carlota’s
delight in thus equalling her brother banished all lonely thoughts. She
did not suspect, nor he tell her, that her twin had purposely shortened
his steps to suit her own. Instead, he proposed:
“Let’s ride him together! I heard Miguel talking about a ‘shearing,’
this morning.”
“Oh! let’s!”
“Then run to Marta for a bit of luncheon while I bridle Benoni. Tell
her we may not be home till nightfall, for father said we were never
to worry the dear old thing--so don’t forget that, and be sure to bring
a lot of her freshest _bollos_.”[2]
Carlota had already started, but paused astonished to ask:
“Why, brother, does old Marta ever worry? I didn’t know it. Worrying is
what my father does sometimes, isn’t it? When people come to talk to
him about their troubles?”
Carlos felt that any conversation with the word “father” in it was to
be avoided, so answered indifferently:
“Oh! not really worry, you know. She wouldn’t do that about me; nor
about you, if I were with you. And I s’pose I’m master of the rancho
when my father”--but there was that word forcing itself in again, and
the boy hurried past it to add, convincingly: “A master, a Don or a
Señor, a gentleman, always looks out for the comfort of all his old
women and little girls.”
They would never get the delectable _bollos_ at this rate! For the mood
and manner which had fallen upon her twin was so new to Carlota that
she could only stand and stare at his swaggering movements. Seeing
this, he promptly assumed his natural manner, which was not that of a
care-taker, and, springing to Benoni’s back laid himself down along it
while, clasping the animal’s beautiful neck, he rode out of the corral.
Again standing at her doorway, old Marta awaited the children’s
approach, reflecting:
“Ah! little ones! So it is always. The easy things of life fall to my
Carlos, by right, is it not? While to thee, _niña_ the speeding feet
of my service, the burden and the care. But not yet, heart of mine.
Look not so at Marta with thy great eyes. There shall be no care for
thee, beloved, while I live. What do I hear? _Bollos?_ Sweets? Not home
till nightfall? _Caramba!_ With whom, then, shall I play when all my
tasks are done? _Si_,[3] I know. I will take me my guitar and I will to
myself sing, why not. But to myself, _en verdad_,[4] quite to my own
self.”
Now, this wise old dame knew that nothing would more easily lure her
charges home in good season than this suggestion of songs and guitar.
To hear old Marta sing, in her cracked and toothless voice, was the
funniest experience of their gay young lives. It was rarely she could
be prevailed upon to so amuse them and Carlota hesitated and called to
Carlos:
“Brother, did you hear that? This is the night when Marta sings. If we
shouldn’t get back in time! But--they will be shearing for many days to
come.”
“So will our Marta sing, at any hour, to please her ‘heart’s dearest’!”
retorted the boy, laughing and sitting upright upon Benoni, while he
bowed so profoundly that he lost his balance and slipped to the ground,
at the old woman’s feet.
“Woulds’t jeer at thy Marta, woulds’t thou?” she demanded, and
playfully cuffed him. Then, laughing as merrily as they, she swung
Carlota up into her brother’s place, exclaiming: “’Tis thou, soul of my
life, shall ride ‘before’ this day!”
She seized the loosened bridle just in time. Another instant and
Benoni would have been off over the plain for a wild gallop with the
now rising wind. He, too, was young and full of caprice as these other
children--golden-haired and gray. None of the four knew any other
home than Refugio, that cluster of venerable adobe buildings, nor much
further restraint than the needs of nature imposed.
To live always in the open, save when hunger or drowsiness drove them
indoors, to love all men and fear none--such was their habit. As yet,
of things deeper than habit only Marta ever thought, and she but
seldom. Their moods were their rulers and the present mood of the twins
was for a long holiday at the sheep-shearing, a dozen miles away.
So, indulgent Marta brought out her finest basket--of such exquisite
workmanship that it could be folded like a cloth, yet so tightly woven
it would hold water--and packed it with a generous luncheon. Yet, as
she finished her task, she lifted her face and sniffed suspiciously,
saying:
“Ha! The wind rises faster. That is not good. There may be a ‘norther.’
Best safe at home, to-day, my children. To-morrow, _mañana_, there will
yet be the shearing.”
“Of course, Marta. Didn’t s’pose they could finish it in one day, did
you? This year there are more sheep than ever and my father--”
Carlos paused and glanced at his sister. That day, it seemed as if he
couldn’t open his lips without mentioning that absent loved one, which
was natural enough. Their father was the center of their existence, and
for the first time in their memories, he had been away for many days;
they had not yet learned to live without him.
However, Carlota had not noticed anything save that mention of the
sheep-shearing and a dreadful possibility had entered her mind
concerning it. Impatient to be away, she exclaimed:
“Never mind the wind, Marta, dear. It’s delicious, for the sun is so
hot. But if you fear a ‘norther,’ just please give us our blankets and
sombreros and let us go. Do you know, I haven’t seen--Santa Maria--this
day!”
“Nor I, San Jose! Do you s’pose--would they dare--just because our
father is away--”
Whatever Carlota’s fear, Carlos now shared it. He added his entreaties
to hers and Marta limped into the house after their little Navajo
blankets and sombreros, which they put between them upon Benoni’s
back, while Carlos cried:
“Now we’re ready for anything that comes. Don’t sing till we get home,
dear Marta, and-- _Adios! Guay, Benoni! Vamos!_”[5]