CHAPTER XXXV
His forebodings were confirmed in detail the next morning when Cortez cameinto his office, his face wrinkled with worry and darkened by exposure tothe weather. He was angry too.
"_Por Dios_, man! To go off like that and not even leave me an address. IfI could have gotten more money to hire men I might have saved some of them{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} yes, more than half of the lambs died, and many of the ewes. There isnothing to do now. They are on the best of the range, and it has begun torain in the mountains. But it is too bad. It cost you many thousands {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}that trip to New York."
Ramon gave Cortez a cigar to soothe his sensibilities, thanked him withdignity for his loyal services, and sent him away. Then he put on his hatand went outside to walk and think.
The town seemed to him quiet as though half-deserted. This was partly bycontrast with the place of din which he had just left, and partly becausethis was the dull season, when the first hot spell of summer drove manyaway from the town and kept those who remained in their houses most of theday. The sandy streets caught the sun and cherished it in a mercilessglare. They were baked so hot that barefoot urchins hopped gingerly fromone patch of shade to the next. In the numerous vacant lots rank junglesof weeds languished in the dry heat, and long blue-tailed lizards,veritable heat-sprites, emerged to frolic and doze on deserted sidewalks.The leaves of the cottonwoods hung limp, and the white downy tufts thatcarried their seeds everywhere drifted and swam in the shimmering air. Theriver had shrunk to a string of shallow pools in a sandy plain, theirrigation ditches were empty, and in Old Town the Mexicans were askingGod for rain by carrying an image of the Virgin Mary about on a litter andfiring muskets into the air.
Quickly wearied, Ramon sat down on a shaded bench in the park and tried tothink out his situation and to decide what he should do. The easy way wasto sell out, pay his debts, provide for his mother and sister and withwhat was left go his own way--buy a little ranch perhaps in the mountainsor in the valley where he could live in peace and do as he pleased.Wearied as he was by struggle and disappointment, this prospect alluredhim, and yet he could not quite accept it. He felt vaguely the fact thatin selling his lands, he would be selling out to fate, he would besurrendering to MacDougall, to the gringos, he would be renouncing all hishigh hopes and dreams. His mountain lands, with their steadily increasingvalue, the power they gave him, would make of his life a thing ofpossibilities--an adventure. Settled on a little ranch somewhere, his wholestory would be told in one of its years.
This he did not reason clearly, but the emotional struggle within him wastherefore all the stronger. It was his old struggle in another guise--thestruggle between the primitive being in him and the civilized, betweenearth and the world of men. Each of them in turn filled his mind withimages and emotions, and he was impotent to judge between them.
His being was fairly rooted in the soil, and the animal happiness itoffered--the free play of instinct, the sweetness of being physically andemotionally at peace with environment--was the only happiness he had everknown. Vaguely yet surely he had felt the world of men and works, theartificial world, to contain something larger and more beautiful thanthis. Julia Roth had been to him a stimulating symbol of this higher, thismore desirable thing. His love for her had been the soil in which hisaspirations had grown. That love had turned to bitterness and lust, andhis aspirations had led him among greeds and fears and struggles thatdiffered from those of the wild things only in that they were covert anddevious, lacking the free beauty of instinct fearlessly followed and thedignity of open battle. Of civilization he had encountered only the rawand ugly edge, which is uglier than savagery. He knew no more of the truespirit of it than a man who has camped in a farmer's back pasture knows ofthe true spirit of wildness. It had treated him without mercy and broughtout the worst of him. And yet because he had once loved and dreamed hecould not go back to the easy but limited satisfactions of the soil and bewholly content.
So he could not make up his mind at first to surrender, but in the nextfew days one thing after another came to tempt him that way. MacDougallmade him an offer for his lands which to his surprise was a little betterthan the last one. He learned afterward that the over-shrewd lawyer hadmisinterpreted his trip to New York, imagining that he had gone there tointerest eastern capital in his lands.
His mother and sister were two very cogent arguments in favour of selling.The Dona Delcasar, a simple and vain old lady, now regarded herself as awoman of wealth, and was always after him for money. Her ambition was tobuild a house in the Highlands and serve tea at four o'clock (although itwas thick chocolate she liked) and break into society. His one discussionof the matter with her was a bitter experience.
"Holy Mary!" she exclaimed in her shrill Spanish, when he broached a planof retrenchment, "What a son I have! You spend thousands on yourself,chasing women and buying automobiles, and now you want us to spend therest of our lives in this old house and walk to church so that you canmake it up. God, but men are selfish!"
He saw that if he tried to save money and make a fight for his lands hewould have to struggle not only with MacDougall and the weather, but withtwo ignorant, ambitious and sharp-tongued women. And family pride herefought against him. He did not want to see his women folk go shabbily inthe town. He wanted them to have their brick house and their tea parties,and to uphold the name of Delcasar as well as they might.
One day while he was still struggling with his problem he went to look ata ranch that was offered for sale in the valley a few miles north of town.It was this place more than anything else which decided him. The old househad been built by one of his ancestors almost a hundred years before, andhad then been the seat of an estate which embraced all the valley and_mesa_ lands for miles in every direction. It had changed hands severaltimes and there were now but a few hundred acres. The woodwork of thehouse was in bad repair, but its adobe walls, three feet thick, were firmas ever. There were still traces of the adobe stockade behind it, withwalls ten feet high, and the building which had housed the _peones_ wasstill standing, now filled with fragrant hay. In front of it stood an oldcedar post with rusty iron rings to which the recalcitrant field hands hadbeen bound for beating.
Every detail of this home of his forefathers stirred his emotions. Theancient cottonwood trees in front of the house with their deep, welcomeshade and the soft voices of courting doves among the leaves; the alfalfafields heavy with purple blossom, ripe for cutting; the orchard of oldapple trees and thickets of Indian plum run wild; the neglected vineyardthat could be made to yield several barrels of red wine--all of thesethings spoke to him with subtle voices. To trade his heritage for this wasto trade hope and hazard for monotonous ease; but with the smell of theyielding earth in his nostrils, he no more thought of this than a man inlove thinks of the long restraints and irks of marriage when the kiss ofhis woman is on his lips.