The Blood of the Conquerors Part 7

But no; he would have to wait a decent interval. And the five thousand dollars must be gotten to Archulera. That was obviously important. And there might not be much cash. The Don had never had much ready money. He might have to sell land or sheep first. All of these things to be done, and here he lay, staring at the ceiling and listening to the wailing of old women!

There was a knock on the door.

_Entra!_ he called.

The door opened softly and a tall, black-robed figure was silhouetted for a moment against the daylight before the door closed again. The black figure crossed the room and sat down by the bed, silent save for a faint rustle.

Although he could not see the face, Ramon knew that this was the priest, Father Lugaria. He knew that Father Lugaria had come to arrange for the ma.s.s over the body of Don Delcasar. He disliked Father Lugaria, and knew that the Father disliked him. This mutual antipathy was due to the fact that Ramon seldom went to Church.

There were others of his generation who showed the same indifference toward religion, and this defection of youth was a thing which the Priests bitterly contested. Ramon was perfectly willing to make a polite compromise with them. If Father Lugaria had been satisfied with an occasional appearance at early ma.s.s, a perfunctory confession now and then, the two might have been friends. But the Priest made Ramon a special object of his attention. He continually went to the Dona Delcasar with complaints and that devout woman incessantly nagged her son, holding before him always pictures of the d.a.m.nation he was courting. Once in a while she even produced in him a faint twinge of feara recrudescence of the deep religious feeling in which he was bredbut the feeling was evanescent. The chief result of these labours on behalf of his soul had been to turn him strongly against the priest who instigated them.

Father Lugaria seemed all kindness and sympathy now. He sat close beside Ramon and took his hand. Ramon could smell the good wine on the mans breath, and could see faintly the brightness of his eyes. The grip of the priests hand was strong, moist and surprisingly cold. He began to talk in the low monotonous voice of one accustomed to much chanting, and this droning seemed to have some hypnotic quality. It seemed to lull Ramons mind so that he could not think what he was going to say or do.

The priest expressed his sympathy. He spoke of the great and good man the Don had been. Slowly, adroitly, he approached the real question at issue, which was how much Ramon would pay for a ma.s.s. The more he paid, the longer the ma.s.s would be, and the longer the ma.s.s the speedier would be the journey of the Dons soul through purgatory and into Paradise.

O, my little brother in Christ! droned the priest in his vibrant sing-song, I must not let you neglect this last, this greatest of things which you can do for the uncle you loved. It is unthinkable of course that his soul should go to h.e.l.lh.e.l.l, where a thousand demons torture the soul for an eternity. h.e.l.l is for those who commit the worst of sins, sins they dare not lay before G.o.d for his forgiveness, secret and terrible sinssins like murder. But few of us go through life untouched by sin. The soul must be purified before it can enter the presence of its maker. Doubtless the soul of your uncle is in purgatory, and to you is given the sweet power to speed that soul on its upward way.

Don Delcasar, we all know, killed. More than once, doubtless, he took the life of a fellow man. But he did it in combat as a soldier, as a servant of the State. That is not murder. That would not doom him to h.e.l.l, which is the special punishment of secret and unforgiven murder.

But the soul of the Don must be cleansed of these earthly stains.

The strong, cold grip of the priest held Ramon with increasing power. The monotonous, hypnotic voice went on and on, becoming ever more eloquent and confident. Father Lugaria was a man of imagination, and the special home of his imagination was h.e.l.l. For thirty years he had held despotic sway over the poor Mexicans who made up most of his flock, and had gathered much money for the Church, by painting word-pictures of h.e.l.l. He was a veritable artist of h.e.l.l. He loved h.e.l.l. Again and again he digressed from the strict line of his argument to speak of h.e.l.l. With all the vividness of a thing seen, he described its flames, its fiends, the terrible stink of burning flesh and the vast chorus of agony that filled it. And for some obscure reason or purpose he always spoke of h.e.l.l as the special punishment of murderers. Again and again in his discourse he coupled murder and h.e.l.l.

Ramon was wearied by strong emotions and a shortness of sleep. His nerves were overstrung. This ceaseless iteration of h.e.l.l and murder, murder and h.e.l.l would drive him crazy, he thought. He wished mightily that the priest would have done and name his price and go. What was the sense and purpose of this endless babble about h.e.l.l and murder? A sickening thought struck him like a blow, leaving him weak. What if old Archulera had confessed to the priest?

Well; what if he had? A priest could not testify about what he had heard in confessional. But a priest might tell some one else. O, G.o.d! If the man would only go and leave him to think. h.e.l.l and murder, murder and h.e.l.l. The two words beat upon his brain without mercy. He longed to interrupt the priest and beg him to leave off. But for some reason he could not. He could not even turn his head and look at the man. The priest was but a clammy grip that held him and a disembodied voice that spoke of h.e.l.l and murder. Had he done murder? And was there a h.e.l.l? He had long ceased to believe in h.e.l.l, but h.e.l.l had been real to him as a child. His mother and his nurse had filled him with the fear of h.e.l.l. He had been bred in the fear of h.e.l.l. It was in his flesh and bones if not in his mind, and the priest had hypnotized his mind. h.e.l.l was real to him again.

Fear of h.e.l.l came up from the past which vanishes but is never gone, and gripped him like a great ugly monster. It squeezed a cold sweat out of his body and made his skin p.r.i.c.kle and his breath come short.

The priest dropped the subject of h.e.l.l, and spoke again of the ma.s.s. He mentioned a sum of money. Ramon nodded his head muttering his a.s.sent like a sick man. The grip on his hand relaxed.

Good-bye, my little brother, murmured the priest. May Christ be always with you. His gown rustled across the room and as he opened the door, Ramon saw his face for a momenta sallow, shrewd face, bedewed with the sweat of a great effort, but wearing a smile of triumphant satisfaction.

Ramon lay sick and exhausted. It seemed to him that there was no air in the room. He was suffocating. His body burned and p.r.i.c.kled. He rose and tore loose his collar. He must get out of this place, must have air and movement.

It was dusk now. The wailing of the old women had ceased. Doubtless they were being rewarded with supper. He began stripping off his clotheshis white shirt and his new suit of black. Eagerly rummaging in the closet he found his old clothes, which he wore on his trips to the mountains.

In the dim light he slipped out of the house, indistinguishable from any Mexican boy that might have been about the place. He saddled the little mare in the corral, mounted and galloped awaythrough Old Town, where skinny dogs roamed in dark narrow streets and men and women sat and smoked in black doorwaysand out upon the valley road. There he spurred his mare without mercy, and they flew over the soft dust. The rush of the air in his face, and the thud and quiver of living flesh under him were infinitely sweet.

He stopped at last five miles from town on the bank of the river. It was a swift muddy river, wandering about in a flood plain a quarter of a mile wide, and at this point chewing noisily at a low bank forested with scrubby cottonwoods.

Dismounting, he stripped and plunged into the river. It was only three feet deep, but he wallowed about in it luxuriously, finding great comfort in the caress of the cool water, and of the soft fine sand upon the bottom which clung about his toes and tickled the soles of his feet. Then he climbed out on the bank and stood where the breeze struck him, rubbing the water off of his slim strong body with the flats of his hands.

When he had put on his clothes, he indulged his love of lying flat on the ground, puffing a cigarette and blowing smoke at the first stars. A hunting owl flitted over his head on m.u.f.fled wing; a coyote yapped in the bushes; high up in the darkness he heard the whistle of pinions as a flock of early ducks went by.

He took the air deeply into his lungs and stretched out his legs. In this place fear of h.e.l.l departed from his mind as some strong liquors evaporate when exposed to the open air. The splendid healthy animal in him was again dominant, and it could scarcely conceive of death and had nothing more to do with h.e.l.l than had the owl and the coyote that killed to live. Here he felt at peace with the earth beneath him and the sky above. But one thought came to disturb him and it was also sweetthe thought of a woman, her eyes full of promise, the curve of her mouth. She was waiting for him, she would be his. That was real. h.e.l.l was a dream.

He saw now the folly of his fears about Archulera, too. Archulera never went to church. There was no danger that he would ever confess to any one.

And even if he did, he could scarcely injure Ramon. For Ramon had done no wrong. He had but promised an old man his due, righted an ancient wrong.

He smiled.

Slowly he mounted and rode home, filled with thoughts of the girl, to put on his mourning clothes and take his decorous place in the circle that watched his uncles bier.

CHAPTER XIV

All the ceremonies and procedures, religious and legal, which had been made necessary by the death of Don Diego Delcasar, were done. The body of the Don had been taken to the church in Old Town and placed before the altar, the casket covered with black cloth and surrounded by candles in tall silver candlesticks which stood upon the floor. A Ma.s.s of impressive length had been spoken over it by Father Lugaria a.s.sisted by numerous priests and altar boys, and at the end of the ceremony the hundreds of friends and relatives of the Don, who filled the church, had lifted up their voices in one of the loudest and most prolonged choruses of wailing ever heard in that country, where wailing at a funeral is as much a matter of formal custom as is cheering at a political convention. Afterwards a cortege nearly a mile in length, headed by a long string of carriages and tailed by a crowd of poor Mexicans trudging hatless in the dust, had made the hot and wearisome journey to the cemetery in the sandhills.

Then the will had been read and had revealed that Ramon Delcasar was heir to the bulk of his uncles estate, and that he was thereby placed in possession of money, lands and sheep to the value of about two hundred thousand dollars. It was said by those who knew that the Dons estate had once been at least twice that large, and there were some who irreverently remarked that he had been taken off none too soon for the best interests of his heirs.

Shortly after the reading of the will, Ramon rode to the Archulera ranch, starting before daylight and returning after dark. He exchanged greetings with the old man, just as he had always done.

Accept my sympathy, _amigo_, Archulera said in his formal, polite way, that you have lost your uncle, the head of your great family.

I thank you, friend, Ramon replied. A man must bear these things. Here is something I promised you, he added, laying a small heavy canvas bag upon the table, just as he had always laid a package of tobacco or some other small gift.

Old Archulera nodded without looking at the bag.

Thank you, he said.

Afterward they talked about the bean crop and the weather, and had an excellent dinner of goat meat cooked with chile.

In town Ramon found himself a person of noticeably increased importance.

One of his first acts had been to buy a car, and he had attracted much attention while driving this about the streets, learning to manipulate it.

He killed one chicken and two dogs and handsomely reimbursed their owners.

These minor accidents were due to his tendency, the result of many years of horsemanship, to throw his weight back on the steering wheel and shout whoa! whenever a sudden emergency occurred. But he was apt, and soon was running his car like an expert.

His personal appearance underwent a change too. He had long cherished a barbaric leaning toward finery, which lack of money had prevented him from indulging. Large diamonds fascinated him, and a leopard skin vest was a thing he had always wanted to own. But these weaknesses he now rigorously suppressed. Instead he noted carefully the dress of Gordon Roth and of other easterners whom he saw about the hotel, and ordered from the best local tailor a suit of quiet colour and conservative cut, but of the very best English material. He bought no jewelry except a single small pearl for his necktie. His hat, his shoes, the way he had his neck shaved, all were changed as the result of a painstaking observation such as he had never practised before. He wanted to make himself as much as possible like the men of Julias kind and cla.s.s. And this desire modified his manner and speech as well as his appearance. He was careful, always watching himself.

His manner was more reserved and quiet than ever, and this made him appear older and more serious. He smiled when he overheard a woman say that he took the death of his uncle much harder than she would have expected.

Ramon now received business propositions every day. Men tried to sell him all sorts of things, from an idea to a ranch, and most of them seemed to proceed on the a.s.sumption that, being young and newly come into his money, he should part with it easily. Several of the opportunities offered him had to do with the separation of the poor Mexicans from their land holdings. A prominent attorney came all the way from a town in the northern part of the State to lay before him a proposition of this kind.

This lawyer, named Cooley, explained that by opening a store in a certain rich section of valley land, opportunities could be created for lending the Mexicans money. Whenever there was a birth, a funeral or a marriage among them, the Mexicans needed money, and could be persuaded to sign mortgages, which they generally could not read. In each Mexican family there would be either a birth, a marriage or a death once in three years on an average. Three such events would enable the lender to gain possession of a ranch. And Cooley had an eastern client who would then buy the land at a good figure. It was a chance for Ramon to double his money.

Youve got the money and you know the native people, Cooley argued earnestly. Ive got the sucker and I know the law. Its a sure thing.

Ramon thanked him politely and refused firmly. The idea of robbing a poor Mexican of his ranch by nine years of usury did not appeal to him at all.

In the first place, it would be a long, slow tedious job, and besides, poor people always aroused his pity, just as rich ones stirred his greed and envy. He was predatory, but lion-like, he scorned to spring on small game. He did not realize that a lion often starves where a jackal grows fat.

Only one opportunity came to him which interested him strongly. A young Irishman named Hurley explained to him that it was possible to buy mules in Mexico, where a revolution was going on, for ten dollars each at considerable personal risk, to run them across the Rio Grande and to sell them to the United States army for twenty dollars. Here was a gamblers chance, action and adventure. It caught his fancy and tempted him. But he had no thought of yielding. Another purpose engrossed him.

These weeks after his uncles funeral gave him his first real grapple with the world of business, and the experience tended to strengthen him in a certain cynical self-a.s.surance which had been growing in him ever since he first went away to college, and had met its first test in action when he spoke the words that lead to the Dons death. He felt a deep contempt for most of these men who came to him with their schemes and their wares. He saw that most of them were ready enough to swindle him, though few of them would have had the courage to rob him with a gun. Probably not one of them would have dared to kill a man for money, but they were ready enough to cheat a poor _pelado_ out of his living, which often came to the same thing. He felt that he was bigger than most of them, if not better. His self-respect was strengthened.

Life is a fight, he told himself, feeling that he had hit upon a profound and original idea. Every man wants pretty women and money. He gets them if he has enough nerve and enough sense. And somebody else gets hurt, because there arent enough pretty women and money to go around.

It seemed to him that this was the essence of all wisdom.