Читать книгу The Border Kid - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 5
ОглавлениеA Question Answered
The guest remained for supper. Being a cosmopolitan, William Benn made himself at home. He talked about mules, and their loads, and the sureness with which they moved their narrow hoofs, and about their prices. And with Perez he agreed that no mules north of the Rio were equal to those bred south of that stream from good tough mustang mares and the asses of Andalusia.
He could have a pleasant manner in spite of his ugly face. Indeed, his whole body was ugly. His face was long and narrow, with a protruding jaw and an indentation running across the forehead, and when he smiled, his lips lifted at the corners a trifle, giving him the most sinister look in the world. His body, like his face, was long drawn out; and he had, in spite of that leanness, a neck corded with strength, and great hands, and long, thin feet which were incased in flexible boots. Sometimes, as he sat at the little table, his shoulders somewhat hunched, and his big hands stretched out to the food, he looked like a snapshot out of focus, so exaggerated appeared the length of the arms, the size of the hands.
However, this formidable appearance was masked in a genial manner as he talked to his host. The wife and the three sons kept back in the shadows as much as possible, never daring to speak while the gringo gentleman held forth. Only young Ricardo lingered near the board, unabashed, even after the others hastily had finished their meal and retired. He leaned an elbow on the edge of the table and looked continually into the face of William Benn, and Benn, far from appearing to resent this familiarity, smiled and nodded at the boy now and then, and carefully included him in all his remarks, and even drew out an opinion from Ricardo, from time to time.
Antonio Perez was elated by this gentleness. He produced a bottle of fiery white brandy to crown the feast of beans and tortillas and red peppers, and William Benn drank off that terrible potion of distilled fire, and praised its flavor with a thoughtful, upward eye, and said that it made him think of happy days in Mexico City.
Afterwards, he opened the subject which had brought him to their house. He was, he said, a merchant who had dealings on both sides of the river, and therefore he needed to use, constantly, both Spanish and English. And, above all, he was handicapped by the lack of an assistant, who must have high qualifications. In the first place, his assistant must be young, to learn the business. In the second place, he must speak the two languages perfectly. In the third place, he must be brave. In the fourth place, he must be honest. And all these qualifications, he had seen at a glance, were possessed by young Perez. Forthwith, he invited the lucky Ricardo to accompany him and begin to work as a sort of junior partner, with a salary, to begin, of a hundred dollars a month.
“A hundred dollars a month!” breathed Antonio Perez, and his wild glance looked backward into his past, to the moment when he had been of an age with Ricardo, and when his back and his legs had ached so horribly from the labor in the mines, carrying up a man’s load upon his youthful shoulders. And then he looked to his own present earnings, out of which he was forced to keep three mules, a house, a wife, and four growing young men—except for the seasons when his own three children were able to get employment. “A hundred dollars a month!” murmured Perez again.
Then, as though he misunderstood, William Benn added that this was only named as a sum to begin on, while young Ricardo was learning the business, and while he was being trained in the necessary knowledge. “For a successful merchant can’t be made in a day,” smiled Benn.
The father extended both his hands, to invite the opinion of Heaven upon such generosity, but young Ricardo put in:
“You want me because I am four things. Well, you heard me speak Spanish and English pretty well. You know that I’m young enough to learn. You saw me stand up to the six of them, and that may make you think I’m brave. But what makes you think I’m honest?”
Mr. Benn glanced down at the floor, and then looked up from beneath his brows, with the odd smile lifting the corners of his mouth.
“I know that you will be honest,” he said, “because you are an upstanding boy; and because you are the son of honest Antonio Perez; and, above all, my boy, because I shall attach you to me by a hundred kindnesses which I have in mind at present!”
“Well——” said Ricardo, obviously unimpressed.
His father broke in: “Ricardo, you are talking like a fool! You hear me? Like a fool! Do you hear this kind señor promising a thousand gracious things to you? Saints! And all you do is talk! You talk of what? It is nonsense!”
Ricardo grew silent. But still his eyes were thoughtful. They dwelt fixedly upon William Benn and the uptilt at the corners of the mouth of the stranger.
Then he left the table and went to his foster mother. She was stirring about in a dark corner of the single room which was their house, and trying to clean up and put away, without disturbing the kind stranger who had come to them. He took her by the arm and led her outside the house, where the three foster brothers were gathered. They surrounded him—Pedro and Vicente pushing close up, and only the foxlike Juan holding off to a distance. He rarely committed himself; he never made himself a part and portion of a mass movement of any kind. “And what has happened? And are you going away with him? And will you really get a hundred dollars a month?” demanded Vicente, whose emotions were all on the tip of his tongue.
“You three run away,” said Ricardo carelessly. “I’m not going to talk to you now. If you want something to do, walk over to the gringo’s town and see what happens to you!”
He laughed a little as the three drew back, and Ricardo began to walk up and down, holding the hard, strong hand of his foster mother in his. Labor of the house and the field she had known for many years, and yet she was not bowed, and her step was still majestic and free.
“What do you think of him?” asked Ricardo.
“Of the stranger? Who thinks when Heaven sends a blessing?” she asked. “I do not think. Who thinks when he is hungry and food is put to his lips? He only eats!”
“And swallows poison,” said the boy, “and puffs up like a toad and dies screaming, as Lopez Almagro did.”
“Hah?” cried she. “Ricardo, what are you saying?”
“I don’t know,” murmured Ricardo. “I have brought you out here, because when you are in the house with my father, you never can do any thinking. You only have a tongue to say the things that he expects you to say.”
“You,” said the woman, “are wicked! Besides, you know too much!”
Nevertheless, she laughed a little, her laughter no louder than a soft whisper.
“Now that you are here, with the stars as near as any person——” began the boy.
“What a silly way to speak, my son! The stars are far away. They are the lights in the tepees in the land of the departed——”
“You forget what the priest teaches you,” he reminded her.
She crossed herself suddenly.
“That is true! However, what were you about to say, Ricardo?”
“That I want you to think for me. I cannot think this all out for myself!”
“I? Well, I shall think for you as well as I can,” she replied. “But you had better trust everything to your father!”
“My father may be flattered,” replied the boy. “When he is tickled with flattery, he cannot think at all. He would tell me to go with the stranger. But I don’t want to go!”
“You do not want to leave us,” said the woman gently, “and that is what any boy should feel about his home. Heaven knows that I have tried to make it a home—a true home for you!”
Ricardo took her heavy hand in his and raised it to his lips.
“Ah, well,” sighed she. “But no true son of mine ever would have thought of doing that!”
“Listen to me,” said Ricardo. “The rest are all excited. I mean, my father, Pedro, and Vicente, of course. Even Juan had eyes full of red light while he listened to that talk about so much money every month. Well, but I don’t feel that way. I want you to hear what I say. This man, this Señor Benn, is not telling us everything that is in his mind. He is not telling us half of what is in his mind. I am sure, because I watched his face.”
“Peace, peace, child,” said the mother. “Are you old enough to read the mind of such a great and rich man?”
“Rich men are the same as me, from the skin inwards,” said Ricardo. “When I looked into his eyes, he could bar the way to me and keep me outside and very far from an understanding of him. That is true. Nevertheless, I could try to understand. I did not like a great many things. Besides, he says that he is rich but we don’t know it. He says that he is a great merchant. We never have seen him before. But most of all, I don’t like the way that he looks up through his brows, and the way that his lips lift at the corners when he smiles.”
“Now,” said she, “I see that you are talking like a baby, Ricardo. Women and boys always are apt to think like that. But the face of a man never has anything to do with his heart. Look at your father. He looks as though he were always going to draw a knife, but, as a matter of fact, he has the heart of a lamb.”
“You have had a great many years to learn about my father,” said he. “But you never saw this other man before this evening.”
“Ah, Ricardo,” she replied finally, “how much you could do for us if you were to take this work—you who never have worked before! How much you could do for us! Because,” she said, “you are the one who will lead up my three sons by the hand and place them in good comfortable houses! That is the hope of my life!”
Ricardo said nothing at all, for a moment. Then he sighed: “I think that is the answer for me!”
