The Rancho of San Antonio might have been a characteristic asylum for
its blessed patron, offering as it did a secure retreat from
temptations for the carnal eye, and affording every facility for
uninterrupted contemplation of the sky above, unbroken by tree or
elevation. Unlike La Mision Perdida, of which it had been part, it was
a level plain of rich adobe, half the year presenting a billowy sea of
tossing verdure breaking on the far-off horizon line, half the year
presenting a dry and dusty shore, from which the vernal sea had ebbed,
to the low sky that seemed to mock it with a visionary sea beyond. A
row of rough, irregular, and severely practical sheds and buildings
housed the machinery and the fifty or sixty men employed in the
cultivation of the soil, but neither residential mansion nor farmhouse
offered any nucleus of rural comfort or civilization in the midst of
this wild expanse of earth and sky. The simplest adjuncts of country
life were unknown: milk and butter were brought from the nearest town;
weekly supplies of fresh meat and vegetables came from the same place;
in the harvest season, the laborers and harvesters lodged and boarded
in the adjacent settlement and walked to their work. No cultivated
flower bloomed beside the unpainted tenement, though the fields were
starred in early spring with poppies and daisies; the humblest garden
plant or herb had no place in that prolific soil. The serried ranks of
wheat pressed closely round the straggling sheds and barns and hid the
lower windows. But the sheds were fitted with the latest agricultural
machinery; a telegraphic wire connected the nearest town with an office
in the wing of one of the buildings, where Dr. West sat, and in the
midst of the wilderness severely checked his accounts with nature.
Whether this strict economy of domestic outlay arose from an
ostentatious contempt of country life and the luxurious habits of the
former landholders, or whether it was a purely business principle of
Dr. West, did not appear. Those who knew him best declared that it was
both. Certain it was that unqualified commercial success crowned and
dignified his method. A few survivors of the old native families came
to see his strange machinery, that did the work of so many idle men and
horses. It is said that he offered to "run" the distant estate of
Joaquin Padilla from his little office amidst the grain of San Antonio.
Some shook their heads, and declared that he only sucked the juices of
the land for a few brief years to throw it away again; that in his
fierce haste he skimmed the fatness of ages of gentle cultivation on a
soil that had been barely tickled with native oaken plowshares.
His own personal tastes and habits were as severe and practical as his
business: the little wing he inhabited contained only his office, his
living room or library, his bedroom, and a bath-room. This last
inconsistent luxury was due to a certain cat-like cleanliness which was
part of his nature. His iron-gray hair--a novelty in this country of
young Americans--was always scrupulously brushed, and his linen
spotless. A slightly professional and somewhat old-fashioned
respectability in his black clothes was also characteristic. His one
concession to the customs of his neighbors was the possession of two or
three of the half-broken and spirited mustangs of the country, which he
rode with the fearlessness, if not the perfect security and ease, of a
native. Whether the subjection of this lawless and powerful survival
of a wild and unfettered nature around him was part of his plan, or
whether it was only a lingering trait of some younger prowess, no one
knew; but his grim and decorous figure, contrasting with the
picturesque and flowing freedom of the horse he bestrode, was a
frequent spectacle in road and field.
It was the second day after his visit to La Mision Perdida. He was
sitting by his desk, at sunset, in the faint afterglow of the western
sky, which flooded the floor through the open door. He was writing,
but presently lifted his head, with an impatient air, and called out,
"Harrison!"
The shadow of Dr. West's foreman appeared at the door.
"Who's that you're talking to?"
"Tramp, Sir."
"Hire him, or send him about his business. Don't stand gabbling there."
"That's just it, sir. He won't hire for a week or a day. He says
he'll do an odd job for his supper and a shakedown, but no more."
"Pack him off! ... Stay.... What's he like?"
"Like the rest of 'em, only a little lazier, I reckon."
"Umph! Fetch him in."
The foreman disappeared, and returned with the tramp already known to
the reader. He was a little dirtier and grimier than on the morning he
had addressed Maruja at La Mision Perdida; but he wore the same air of
sullen indifference, occasionally broken by furtive observation. His
laziness--or weariness--if the term could describe the lassitude of
perfect physical condition, seemed to have increased; and he leaned
against the door as the Doctor regarded him with slow contempt. The
silence continuing, he deliberately allowed himself to slip down into a
sitting position in the doorway, where he remained.
"You seem to have been born tired," said the Doctor, grimly.
"Yes."
"What have you got to say for yourself?"
"I told HIM," said the tramp, nodding his head towards the foreman,
"what I'd do for a supper and a bed. I don't want anything but that."
"And if you don't get what you want on your own conditions, what'll you
do?" asked the Doctor, dryly.
"Go."
"Where did you come from?"
"States."
"Where are you going?"
"On."
"Leave him to me," said Dr. West to his foreman. The man smiled, and
withdrew.
The Doctor bent his head again over his accounts. The tramp, sitting
in the doorway, reached out his hand, pulled a young wheat-stalk that
had sprung up near the doorstep, and slowly nibbled it. He did not
raise his eyes to the Doctor, but sat, a familiar culprit awaiting
sentence, without fear, without hope, yet not without a certain
philosophical endurance of the situation.
"Go into that passage," said the Doctor, lifting his head as he turned
a page of his ledger, "and on the shelf you'll find some clothing
stores for the men. Pick out something to fit you."
The tramp arose, moved towards the passage, and stopped. "It's for the
job only, you understand?" he said.
"For the job," answered the Doctor.
The tramp returned in a few moments with overalls and woolen shirt
hanging on his arm and a pair of boots and socks in his hand. The
Doctor had put aside his pen. "Now go into that room and change. Stop!
First wash the dust from your feet in that bath-room."
The tramp obeyed, and entered the room. The Doctor walked to the door,
and looked out reflectively on the paling sky. When he turned again he
noticed that the door of the bath-room was opened, and the tramp, who
had changed his clothes by the fading light, was drying his feet. The
Doctor approached, and stood for a moment watching him.
"What's the matter with your foot?"[1] he asked, after a pause.
"Born so."
The first and second toe were joined by a thin membrane.
"Both alike?" asked the Doctor.
"Yes," said the young man, exhibiting the other foot.
"What did you say your name was?"
"I didn't say it. It's Henry Guest, same as my father's."
"Where were you born?"
"Dentville, Pike County, Missouri."
"What was your mother's name?"
"Spalding, I reckon."
"Where are your parents now?"
"Mother got divorced from father, and married again down South,
somewhere. Father left home twenty years ago. He's somewhere in
California--if he ain't dead."
"He isn't dead."
"How do you know?"
"Because I am Henry Guest, of Dentville, and"--he stopped, and, shading
his eyes with his hand as he deliberately examined the tramp, added
coldly--"your father, I reckon."
There was a slight pause. The young man put down the boot he had taken
up. "Then I'm to stay here?"
"Certainly not. Here my name is only West, and I have no son. You'll
go on to San Jose, and stay there until I look into this thing. You
haven't got any money, of course?" he asked, with a scarcely suppressed
sneer.
"I've got a little," returned the young man.
"How much?"
The tramp put his hand into his breast, and drew out a piece of folded
paper containing a single gold coin.
"Five dollars. I've kept it a month; it doesn't cost much to live as I
do," he added, dryly.
"There's fifty more. Go to some hotel in San Jose, and let me know
where you are. You've got to live, and you don't want to work. Well,
you don't seem to be a fool; so I needn't tell you that if you expect
anything from me, you must leave this matter in my hands. I have
chosen to acknowledge you to-day of my own free will: I can as easily
denounce you as an impostor to-morrow, if I choose. Have you told your
story to any one in the valley?"
"No."
"See that you don't, then. Before you go, you must answer me a few
more questions."
He drew a chair to his table, and dipped a pen in the ink, as if to
take down the answers. The young man, finding the only chair thus
occupied, moved the Doctor's books aside, and sat down on the table
beside him.
The questions were repetitions of those already asked, but more in
detail, and thoroughly practical in their nature. The answers were
given straightforwardly and unconcernedly, as if the subject was not
worth the trouble of invention or evasion. It was difficult to say
whether questioner or answerer took least pleasure in the
interrogation, which might have referred to the concerns of a third
party. Both, however, spoke disrespectfully of their common family,
with almost an approach to sympathetic interest.
"You might as well be going now," said the Doctor, finally rising. "You
can stop at the fonda, about two miles further on, and get your supper
and bed, if you like."
The young man slipped from the table, and lounged to the door. The
Doctor put his hands in his pockets and followed him. The young man,
as if in unconscious imitation, had put HIS hands in his pockets also,
and looked at him.
"I'll hear from you, then, when you are in San Jose?" said Dr. West,
looking past him into the grain, with a slight approach to constraint
in his indifference.
"Yes--if that's agreed upon," returned the young man, pausing on the
threshold. A faint sense of some purely conventional responsibility in
their position affected them both. They would have shaken hands if
either had offered the initiative. A sullen consciousness of
gratuitous rectitude in the selfish mind of the father; an equally
sullen conviction of twenty years of wrong in the son, withheld them
both. Unpleasantly observant of each other's awkwardness, they parted
with a feeling of relief.
Dr. West closed the door, lit his lamp, and, going to his desk, folded
the paper containing the memoranda he had just written and placed it in
his pocket. Then he summoned his foreman. The man entered, and
glanced around the room as if expecting to see the Doctor's guest still
there.
"Tell one of the men to bring round 'Buckeye.'"
The foreman hesitated. "Going to ride to-night, sir?"
"Certainly; I may go as far as Saltonstall's. If I do, you needn't
expect me back till morning."
"Buckeye's mighty fresh to-night, boss. Regularly bucked his saddle
clean off an hour ago, and there ain't a man dare exercise him."
"I'll bet he don't buck his saddle off with me on it," said the Doctor,
grimly. "Bring him along."
The man turned to go. "You found the tramp pow'ful lazy, didn't ye?"
"I found a heap more in him than in some that call themselves smart,"
said Dr. West, unconsciously setting up an irritable defense of the
absent one. "Hurry up that horse!"
The foreman vanished. The Doctor put on a pair of leather leggings,
large silver spurs, and a broad soft-brimmed hat, but made no other
change in his usual half-professional conventional garb. He then went
to the window and glanced in the direction of the highway. Now that
his son was gone, he felt a faint regret that he had not prolonged the
interview. Certain peculiarities in his manner, certain suggestions of
expression in his face, speech, and gesture, came back to him now with
unsatisfied curiosity. "No matter," he said to himself; "he'll turn up
soon again--as soon as I want him, if not sooner. He thinks he's got a
mighty soft thing here, and he isn't going to let it go. And there's
that same d--d sullen dirty pride of his mother, for all he doesn't
cotton to her. Wonder I didn't recognize it at first. And hoarding up
that five dollars! That's Jane's brat, all over! And, of course," he
added, bitterly, "nothing of ME in him. No; nothing! Well, well,
what's the difference?" He turned towards the door, with a certain
sullen defiance in his face so like the man he believed he did not
resemble, that his foreman, coming upon him suddenly, might have been
startled at the likeness. Fortunately, however, Harrison was too much
engrossed with the antics of the irrepressible Buckeye, which the
ostler had just brought to the door, to notice anything else. The
arrival of the horse changed the Doctor's expression to one of more
practical and significant resistance. With the assistance of two men
at the head of the restive brute, he managed to vault into the saddle.
A few wild plunges only seemed to settle him the firmer in his
seat--each plunge leaving its record in a thin red line on the animal's
flanks, made by the cruel spurs of its rider. Any lingering desire of
following his son's footsteps was quickly dissipated by Buckeye, who
promptly bolted in the opposite direction, and, before Dr. West could
gain active control over him, they were half a mile on their way to La
Mision Perdida.
Dr. West did not regret it. Twenty years ago he had voluntarily
abandoned a legal union of mutual unfaithfulness and misconduct, and
allowed his wife to get the divorce he might have obtained for equal
cause. He had abandoned to her the issue of that union--an infant son.
Whatever he chose to do now was purely gratuitous; the only hold which
this young stranger had on his respect was that HE also recognized that
fact with a cold indifference equal to his own. At present the
half-savage brute he bestrode occupied all his attention. Yet he could
not help feeling his advancing years tell upon him more heavily that
evening; fearless as he was, his strength was no longer equal when
measured with the untiring youthful malevolence of his unbroken
mustang. For a moment he dwelt regretfully on the lazy half-developed
sinews of his son; for a briefer instant there flashed across him the
thought that those sinews ought to replace his own; ought to be HIS to
lean upon--that thus, and thus only, could he achieve the old miracle
of restoring his lost youth by perpetuating his own power in his own
blood; and he, whose profound belief in personality had rejected all
hereditary principle, felt this with a sudden exquisite pain. But his
horse, perhaps recognizing a relaxing grip, took that opportunity to
"buck." Curving his back like a cat, and throwing himself into the air
with an unexpected bound, he came down with four stiff, inflexible
legs, and a shock that might have burst the saddle-girths, had not the
wily old man as quickly brought the long rowels of his spurs together
and fairly locked his heels under Buckeye's collapsing barrel. It was
the mustang's last rebellions struggle. The discomfited brute gave in,
and darted meekly and apologetically forward, and, as it were, left all
its rider's doubts and fears far behind in the vanishing distance.
[1] This apparent classical plagiarism is actually a fact of
identification on record in the California Law Reports. It is
therefore unnecessary for me to add that the attendant circumstances
and characters are purely fictitious.--B. H.