"I see," responded Enriquez gravely. "You have to attend the obsequies
of your aunt who is dead, at two of the clock. You have to meet your
broker who has bought you feefty share of the Comstock lode[149-1]--at
thees moment--or you are loss! You are excuse! Attend! Gentlemen, make
your bets! The band has arrived to play! 'Ere we are!"
With a quick movement the alert young fellow had vaulted into the
saddle. But, to the astonishment of both of us, the mare remained
perfectly still. There was Enriquez bolt upright in the stirrups,
completely overshadowing by his saddle-flaps, leggings, and gigantic
spurs the fine proportions of Chu Chu, until she might have been a
placid Rosinante,[149-2] bestridden by some youthful Quixote. She
closed her eyes, she was going to sleep! We were dreadfully
disappointed. This clearly would not do. Enriquez lifted the reins
cautiously! Chu Chu moved forward slowly--then stopped, apparently lost
in reflection.
"Affront her on thees side."
I approached her gently. She shot suddenly into the air, coming down
again on perfectly stiff legs with a springless jolt. This she
instantly followed by a succession of other rocket-like propulsions,
utterly unlike a leap, all over the inclosure. The movements of the
unfortunate Enriquez were equally unlike any equitation I ever saw. He
appeared occasionally over Chu Chu's head, astride her neck and tail,
or in the free air, but never in the saddle. His rigid legs, however,
never lost the stirrups, but came down regularly, accentuating her
springless hops. More than that, the disproportionate excess of rider,
saddle, and accoutrements was so great that he had, at times, the
appearance of lifting Chu Chu forcibly from the ground by superior
strength, and of actually contributing to her exercise! As they came
towards me, a wild tossing and flying mass of hoofs and spurs, it was
not only difficult to distinguish them apart, but to ascertain how much
of the jumping was done by Enriquez separately. At last Chu Chu brought
matters to a close by making for the low-stretching branches of an
oak-tree which stood at the corner of the lot. In a few moments she
emerged from it--but without Enriquez.
I found the gallant fellow disengaging himself from the fork of a
branch in which he had been firmly wedged, but still smiling and
confident, and his cigarette between his teeth. Then for the first time
he removed it, and seating himself easily on the branch with his legs
dangling down, he blandly waved aside my anxious queries with a gentle
reassuring gesture.
"Remain tranquil, my friend. Thees does not count! I have conquer--you
observe--for why? I have _never_ for once _arrive at the ground_!
Consequent she is disappoint! She will ever that I _should_! But I
have got her when the hair is not long! Your oncle Henry"--with an
angelic wink--"is fly! He is ever a bully boy, with the eye of glass!
Believe me. Behold! I am here! Big Injun! Whoop!"
He leaped lightly to the ground. Chu Chu, standing watchfully at a
little distance, was evidently astonished at his appearance. She threw
out her hind hoofs violently, shot up into the air until the stirrups
crossed each other high above the saddle, and made for the stable in a
succession of rabbit-like bounds--taking the precaution to remove the
saddle, on entering, by striking it against the lintel of the door.
"You observe," said Enriquez blandly, "she would make that thing of
_me_. Not having the good occasion, she ees dissatisfied. Where
are you now?"
Two or three days afterwards he rode her again with the same
result--accepted by him with the same heroic complacency. As we did
not, for certain reasons, care to use the open road for this exercise
and as it was impossible to remove the tree, we were obliged to submit
to the inevitable. On the following day I mounted her--undergoing the
same experience as Enriquez, with the individual sensation of falling
from a third-story window on top of a counting-house stool, and the
variation of being projected over the fence. When I found that Chu Chu
had not accompanied me, I saw Enriquez at my side. "More than ever it
is become necessary that we should do thees things again," he said
gravely, as he assisted me to my feet. "Courage, my noble General! God
and Liberty! Once more on to the breach! Charge, Chestare, charge! Come
on, Don Stanley! 'Ere we are!"
He helped me none too quickly to catch my seat again, for it apparently
had the effect of the turned peg on the enchanted horse in the Arabian
Nights,[152-1] and Chu Chu instantly rose into the air. But she came
down this time before the open window of the kitchen, and I alighted
easily on the dresser. The indefatigable Enriquez followed me.
"Won't this do?" I asked meekly.
"It ees _better_--for you arrive _not_ on the ground," he said
cheerfully; "but you should not once but a thousand times make trial!
Ha! Go and win! Nevare die and say so! 'Eave ahead! 'Eave! There you
are!"
Luckily, this time I managed to lock the rowels of my long spurs under
her girth, and she could not unseat me. She seemed to recognize the
fact after one or two plunges, when to my great surprise, she suddenly
sank to the ground and quietly rolled over me. The action disengaged my
spurs, but righting herself without getting up, she turned her
beautiful head and absolutely _looked_ at me!--still in the saddle. I
felt myself blushing! But the voice of Enriquez was at my side.
"Errise, my friend; you have conquer! It is _she_ who has arrive at the
ground! _You_ are all right. It is done; believe me, it is feenish! No
more shall she make thees think. From thees instant you shall ride her
as the cow--as the rail of thees fence--and remain tranquil. For she is
a-broke! Ta-ta! Regain your hats, gentlemen! Pass in your checks! It is
ovar! How are you now?" He lit a fresh cigarette, put his hands in his
pockets, and smiled at me blandly.
For all that, I ventured to point out that the habit of alighting in
the fork of a tree, or the disengaging of one's self from the saddle on
the ground, was attended with inconvenience, and even ostentatious
display. But Enriquez swept the objections away with a single gesture.
"It is the _preencipal_--the bottom _fact_--at which you arrive. The
next come of himself! Many horse have achieve to mount the rider by the
knees, and relinquish after thees same fashion. My grandfather had a
barb of thees kind--but she has gone dead, and so have my grandfather.
Which is sad and strange! Otherwise I shall make of them both an
instant example!"
I ought to have said that although these performances were never
actually witnessed by Enriquez's sister--for reasons which he and I
thought sufficient--the dear girl displayed the greatest interest in
them and, perhaps aided by our mutually complimentary accounts of each
other, looked upon us both as invincible heroes. It is possible also
that she over-estimated our success, for she suddenly demanded that I
should _ride_ Chu Chu to her house, that she might see her. It was
not far; by going through a back lane I could avoid the trees which
exercised such a fatal fascination for Chu Chu. There was a pleading,
childlike entreaty in Consuelo's voice that I could not resist, with a
slight flash from her lustrous dark eyes that I did not care to
encourage. So I resolved to try it at all hazards.
My equipment for the performance was modeled after Enriquez's previous
costume, with the addition of a few fripperies of silver and stamped
leather out of compliment to Consuelo, and even with a faint hope that
it might appease Chu Chu. _She_ certainly looked beautiful in her
glittering accoutrements, set off by her jet-black shining coat. With
an air of demure abstraction she permitted me to mount her, and even
for a hundred yards or so indulged in a mincing maidenly amble that was
not without a touch of coquetry. Encouraged by this, I addressed a few
terms of endearment to her, and in the exuberance of my youthful
enthusiasm I even confided to her my love for Consuelo and begged her
to be "good" and not disgrace herself and me before my Dulcinea.[154-1]
In my foolish trustfulness I was rash enough to add a caress and to pat
her soft neck. She stopped instantly with a hysteric shudder. I knew
what was passing through her mind: she had suddenly become aware of my
baleful existence.
The saddle and bridle Chu Chu was becoming accustomed to, but who was
this living, breathing object that had actually touched her? Presently
her oblique vision was attracted by the fluttering movement of a fallen
oak leaf in the road before her. She had probably seen many oak leaves
many times before; her ancestors had no doubt been familiar with them
on the trackless hills and in field and paddock, but this did not alter
her profound conviction that I and the leaf were identical, that our
baleful touch was something indissolubly connected. She reared before
that innocent leaf, she revolved round it, and then fled from it at the
top of her speed.
The lane passed before the rear wall of Saltello's garden.
Unfortunately, at the angle of the fence stood a beautiful
Madroño-tree, brilliant with its scarlet berries, and endeared to me as
Consuelo's favorite haunt, under whose protecting shade I had more than
once avowed my youthful passion. By the irony of fate Chu Chu caught
sight of it, and with a succession of spirited bounds instantly made
for it. In another moment I was beneath it, and Chu Chu shot like a
rocket into the air. I had barely time to withdraw my feet from the
stirrups, to throw up one arm to protect my glazed sombrero and grasp
an over-hanging branch with the other, before Chu Chu darted off. But
to my consternation, as I gained a secure perch on the tree and looked
about me, I saw her--instead of running away--quietly trot through the
open gate into Saltello's garden.
Need I say that it was to the beneficent Enriquez that I again owed my
salvation? Scarcely a moment elapsed before his bland voice rose in a
concentrated whisper from the corner of the garden below me. He had
divined the dreadful truth!
"For the love of God, collect to yourself many kinds of thees berry!
All you can! Your full arms round! Rest tranquil. Leave to your ole
oncle to make for you a delicate exposure. At the instant!"
He was gone again. I gathered, wonderingly, a few of the larger
clusters of parti-colored fruit and patiently waited. Presently he
reappeared, and with him the lovely Consuelo--her dear eyes filled with
an adorable anxiety.
"Yes," continued Enriquez to his sister, with a confidential lowering
of tone but great distinctness of utterance, "it is ever so with the
American! He will ever make _first_ the salutation of the flower or the
fruit, picked to himself by his own hand, to the lady where he call. It
is the custom of the American hidalgo![156-1] My God--what will you?
_I_ make it not--it is so! Without doubt he is in this instant doing
thees thing. That is why we have let go his horse to precede him here;
it is always the etiquette to offer these things on the feet. Ah!
Behold! it is he!--Don Francisco! Even now he will descend from thees
tree! Ah! You make the blush, little sister (archly)! I will retire! I
am discreet; two is not company for the one! I make tracks! I am gone!"
How far Consuelo entirely believed and trusted her ingenious brother I
do not know, nor even then cared to inquire. For there was a pretty
mantling of her olive cheek, as I came forward with my offering, and a
certain significant shyness in her manner that were enough to throw me
into a state of hopeless imbecility. And I was always miserably
conscious that Consuelo possessed an exalted sentimentality, and a
predilection for the highest mediæval romance, in which I knew I was
lamentably deficient. Even in our most confidential moments I was
always aware that I weakly lagged behind this daughter of a gloomily
distinguished ancestry, in her frequent incursions into a vague but
poetic past. There was something of the dignity of the Spanish
_châtelaine_[157-1] in the sweetly grave little figure that advanced to
accept my specious offering. I think I should have fallen on my knees
to present it, but for the presence of the all seeing Enriquez. But why
did I even at that moment remember that he had early bestowed upon her
the nickname of "Pomposa"? This, as Enriquez himself might have
observed, was "sad and strange."
I managed to stammer out something about the Madroño berries being at
her "disposition" (the tree was in her own garden!), and she took the
branches in her little brown hand with a soft response to my
unutterable glances.
But here Chu Chu, momentarily forgotten, executed a happy diversion. To
our astonishment she gravely walked up to Consuelo and, stretching out
her long slim neck, not only sniffed curiously at the berries, but even
protruded a black underlip towards the young girl herself. In another
instant Consuelo's dignity melted. Throwing her arms around Chu Chu's
neck she embraced and kissed her. Young as I was, I understood the
divine significance of a girl's vicarious effusiveness at such a
moment, and felt delighted. But I was the more astonished that the
usually sensitive horse not only submitted to these caresses, but
actually responded to the extent of affecting to nip my mistress's
little right ear.
This was enough for the impulsive Consuelo. She ran hastily into the
house and in a few moments reappeared in a bewitching riding-shirt. In
vain Enriquez and myself joined in earnest entreaty: the horse was
hardly broken for even a man's riding yet; the saints alone could tell
what the nervous creature might do with a woman's skirt flipping at her
side! We begged for delay, for reflection, for at least time to change
the saddle--but with no avail! Consuelo was determined, indignant,
distressingly reproachful! Ah, well! if Don Pancho (an ingenious
diminutive of my Christian name) valued his horse so highly--if he were
jealous of the evident devotion of the animal to herself, he would--but
here I succumbed! And then I had the felicity of holding that little
foot for one brief moment in the hollow of my hand, of readjusting the
skirt as she threw her knee over the saddle-horn, of clasping her
tightly--only half in fear--as I surrendered the reins to her grasp.
And to tell the truth, as Enriquez and I fell back, although I had
insisted upon still keeping hold of the end of the _riata_, it was a
picture to admire. The _petite_[158-1] figure of the young girl and the
graceful folds of her skirt admirably harmonized with Chu Chu's lithe
contour, and as the mare arched her slim neck and raised her slender
head under the pressure of the reins, it was so like the lifted
velvet-capped toreador[159-1] crest of Consuelo herself, that they
seemed of one race.
"I would not that you should hold the _riata_," said Consuelo
petulantly.
I hesitated--Chu Chu looked certainly very amiable--I let go. She began
to amble towards the gate, not mincingly as before, but with a freer
and fuller stride. In spite of the incongruous saddle, the young girl's
seat was admirable. As they neared the gate, she cast a single
mischievous glance at me, jerked at the rein, and Chu Chu sprang into
the road at a rapid canter. I watched them fearfully and breathlessly,
until at the end of the lane I saw Consuelo rein in slightly, wheel
easily, and come flying back. There was no doubt about it; the horse
was under perfect control. Her second subjugation was complete and
final!
Overjoyed and bewildered, I overwhelmed them with congratulations;
Enriquez alone retaining the usual brotherly attitude of criticism and
a superior toleration of a lover's enthusiasm. I ventured to hint to
Consuelo (in what I believed was a safe whisper) that Chu Chu only
showed my own feelings towards her. "Without doubt," responded Enriquez
gravely. "She have of herself assist you to climb to the tree to pull
to yourself the berry for my sister." But I felt Consuelo's little hand
return my pressure, and I forgave and even pitied him.
From that day forward, Chu Chu and Consuelo were not only firm friends
but daily companions. In my devotion I would have presented the horse
to the young girl, but with flattering delicacy she preferred to call
it mine. "I shall erride it for you, Pancho," she said; "I shall feel,"
she continued with exalted although somewhat vague poetry, "That it is
of you! You lofe the beast--it is therefore of a necessity _you_, my
Pancho! It is _your_ soul I shall erride like the wings of the
wind--your lofe in this beast shall be my only cavalier for ever." I
would have preferred something whose vicarious qualities were less
uncertain than I still felt Chu Chu's to be, but I kissed the girl's
hand submissively.
It was only when I attempted to accompany her in the flesh, on another
horse, that I felt the full truth of my instinctive fears. Chu Chu
would not permit any one to approach her mistress's side. My mounted
presence revived in her all her old blind astonishment and disbelief in
my existence; she would start suddenly, face about, and back away from
me in utter amazement as if I had been only recently created, or with
an affected modesty as if I had been just guilty of some grave
indecorum towards her sex which she really could not stand. The
frequency of these exhibitions in the public highway were not only
distressing to me as a simple escort, but as it had the effect on the
casual spectators of making Consuelo seem to participate in Chu Chu's
objections, I felt that, as a lover, it could not be borne. An attempt
to coerce Chu Chu ended in her running away. And my frantic pursuit of
her was open to equal misconstruction. "Go it, Miss, the little dude is
gainin' on you!" shouted by a drunken teamster to the frightened
Consuelo, once checked me in mid-career. Even the dear girl herself saw
the uselessness of my real presence, and after a while was content to
ride with "my soul."
Notwithstanding this, I am not ashamed to say that it was my custom,
whenever she rode out, to keep a slinking and distant surveillance of
Chu Chu on another horse, until she had fairly settled down to her
pace. A little nod of Consuelo's round black-and-red toreador hat or a
kiss tossed from her riding-whip was reward enough!
I remember a pleasant afternoon when I was thus awaiting her in the
village. The eternal smile of the Californian summer had begun to waver
and grow less fixed; dust lay thick on leaf and blade; the dry hills
were clothed in russet leather; the trade winds were shifting to the
south with an ominous warm humidity; a few days longer and the rains
would be here. It so chanced that this afternoon my seclusion on the
roadside was accidentally invaded by a village belle--a Western young
lady somewhat older than myself, and of flirtatious reputation. As she
persistently and--as I now have reason to believe--mischievously
lingered, I had only a passing glimpse of Consuelo riding past at an
unaccustomed speed which surprised me at the moment. But as I reasoned
later that she was only trying to avoid a merely formal meeting, I
thought no more about it.
It was not until I called at the house to fetch Chu Chu at the usual
hour, and found that Consuelo had not yet returned, that a recollection
of Chu Chu's furious pace again troubled me. An hour passed--it was
getting towards sunset, but there were no signs of Chu Chu nor her
mistress. I became seriously alarmed. I did not care to reveal my fears
to the family, for I felt myself responsible for Chu Chu. At last I
desperately saddled my horse and galloped off in the direction she had
taken. It was the road to Rosario and the _hacienda_[162-1] of one of
her relations, where she sometimes halted.
The road was a very unfrequented one, twisting like a mountain
river--indeed, it was the bed of an old watercourse--between brown
hills of wild oats, and debouching at last into a broad blue lake-like
expanse of alfalfa[162-2] meadows. In vain I strained my eyes over the
monotonous level; nothing appeared to rise above or move across it. In
the faint hope that she might have lingered at the _hacienda_, I was
spurring on again when I heard a slight splashing on my left. I looked
around. A broad patch of fresher-colored herbage and a cluster of
dwarfed alders indicated a hidden spring. I cautiously approached its
quaggy edges, when I was shocked by what appeared to be a sudden
vision! Mid-leg deep in the center of a greenish pool stood Chu Chu!
But without a strap or buckle of harness upon her--as naked as when she
was foaled!
For a moment I could only stare at her in bewildered terror. Far from
recognizing me, she seemed to be absorbed in a nymph-like contemplation
of her own graces in the pool. Then I called "Consuelo!" and galloped
frantically around the spring. But there was no response, nor was there
anything to be seen but the all-unconscious Chu Chu. The pool, thank
Heaven! was not deep enough to have drowned any one; there were no
signs of a struggle on its quaggy edges. The horse might have come from
a distance! I galloped on, still calling. A few hundred yards further I
detected the vivid glow of Chu Chu's scarlet saddle-blanket in the
brush near the trail. My heart leaped--I was on the track. I called
again; this time a faint reply, in accents I knew too well, came from
the field beside me!
Consuelo was there! reclining beside a manzanita bush which screened
her from the road, in what struck me, even at that supreme moment, as a
judicious and picturesquely selected couch of scented Indian grass and
dry tussocks. The velvet hat with its balls of scarlet plush was laid
carefully aside; her lovely blue-black hair retained its tight coils
undisheveled, her eyes were luminous and tender. Shocked as I was at
her apparent helplessness, I remember being impressed with the fact
that it gave so little indication of violent usage or disaster.