Читать книгу The Tide of Empire - Peter B. Kyne - Страница 5

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In a grove of black oaks a short distance from the Espinosa hacienda a platform had been erected for dancing. Lanterns burning candles or whale-oil illumined the dance-floor dimly, and an orchestra composed of an accordion, a violin and two guitars was rendering a waltz when Dermod D’Arcy, escorted by Tomas, strolled over after dinner.

Señorita Guerrero was not seated among the women on the line of benches that flanked the dance-floor on all four sides, and D’Arcy wondered, with a faint feeling of disappointment, if she had retired for the night. Don Carlos Montalvo, Don Emilio, and Don José Guerrero were seated at a small table under an adjacent tree, sipping liqueurs, when Tomas brought D’Arcy over and presented him to Don José, who proved to be a stout, jovial man of fair complexion and not so much inclined to the flowery, ultra-polite mode of conversation practiced by the others.

“Hah! So this is our young American who would race his horse against ours for sport, Emilio. Well, that is the proper spirit. Sit down, my friend, and Emilio will see that you are served a liqueur.” He made D’Arcy welcome with a paternal thump on the back, and it was evident to the latter that he was indebted to Carlos Montalvo for this gracious reception.

Don José glanced at his host. “Well, Emilio, to business. What say you to this young man’s proposal?”

Don Emilio shrugged carelessly. He had faith in Rey Del Mundo; even if he had not, it would have been beneath his dignity to express a doubt in the matter. “Don Dermod’s horse has traveled far and will be the better for a day of rest. He is even now receiving the same careful attention as Rey Del Mundo. Carlos tells me this horse Pathfinder has had grain for the past month and is fit for a race. I dare say, José, neither you nor I would care to race our horses twice in the same day.”

“It would be fairer to all concerned if we accepted Don Dermod’s challenge to race the day after tomorrow. For my part, however, a race is a race and my horse never runs for sport. There will be a wager, no?”.

D’Arcy bowed. “I have five hundred dollars and I will wager also my horse against yours or Don Emilio’s.”

Don José pretended to be skeptical. “Is your horse, then, of equal value with my Kitty?”

“Ask Don Carlos,” D’Arcy suggested.

“A better horse, I think,” Don Carlos replied promptly. “I shall wager heavily upon Pathfinder.”

“Blood of the devil! Emilio, let us first look at this gringo’s horse. When you have finished your liqueurs, gentlemen, we will gaze upon this prodigy.”

Ten minutes later a servant led Pathfinder into the light of the lanterns on the dance platform, and trotted him backward and forward to demonstrate his action.

“Too heavy,” Don José decided. “I accept the challenge.”

“I also accept, Señor D’Arcy,” Don Emilio added.

Thus lightly was the matter decided, and not a moment too soon, for the sound of castanets called their attention to the dance platform.

“Ah,” said Don José pridefully, “my daughter is dancing.”

With the others D’Arcy crowded to the platform, in the center of which Josepha Guerrero stood, poised, snapping the castanets while the fiddler put resin on his bow. She seemed like a bird ready for flight. Then the orchestra swung into an old, old tune, jaunty, lilting—and D’Arcy saw the girl’s dainty foot tap the floor before her lithe little body dipped in the formal curtsy preliminary to the dance.

“Your daughter is as radiant as a star, Don José,” D’Arcy murmured, lost in admiration as the bright figure stamped and whirled around the dance-floor. “I have seen dancers in the City of Mexico, but none to compare with her.”

“True words,” Don José replied complacently, “but you should have seen her mother dance, my boy.”

Intuitively D’Arcy gleaned the impression that Josepha’s mother was dead. In the dim light the girl’s black and silver dress flashed as with dainty twists she drew her shawl now about her shoulders, now about her waist, the while her red, high-heeled slippers spurned the rough boards with a tap, tap, tap in unison with the castanets.

Suddenly Tomas Espinosa appeared upon the floor, a vivid, whirling form dancing with an equal grace, an equal agility. The orchestra doubled the time, and without visible effort the dancers met the challenge; amidst universal applause and hearty shouts of approbation, Tomas led the girl to her seat as the music ceased.

D’Arcy felt a hand on his elbow. Carlos Montalvo was beside him. “You have too many eyes, my friend,” he whispered. “Let Tomas see but one of them and—”

“Egad, if a cat may look at a king, may not the same cat gaze upon a queen, Señor Montalvo? What a glorious girl! In all my life I have never seen one so lovely, so vital. What a mate for a man!”

Montalvo smiled paternally. “You are precipitate, my young friend.”

“Tell me, Don Carlos, is Señorita Guerrero the promised wife of young Tomas?”

“The engagement has not been announced, but it is generally understood that both Don José and Don Emilio desire the union, and in such matters our children usually yield to parental pressure. In all probability the matter will be arranged during the visit of the Guerreros here.”

“I am an unlucky dog,” Dermod D’Arcy murmured whimsically.

“You are, unfortunately, a gringo, and no gringo has yet found favor with Josepha Guerrero.”

“Hum-m-m!” D’Arcy’s retort was skepticism raised to the nth degree. Then he remembered the present unenviable state of his fortunes. He was a man with five hundred dollars, a horse, saddle and bridle, two pack-mules, and no definite objective in life. The sky was his only shelter.

“You are right, Don Carlos. Well, when my horse has run his race the day after tomorrow I shall say good-by and proceed north. Should I linger I might be tempted to become a mischief-maker. Meanwhile I think I shall retire. Good night.”

“Good night, boy,” the don answered kindly.

D’Arcy was up early, looking after Pathfinder; he had a seat at the first table for breakfast and thereafter wandered around the hacienda, being careful to avoid meeting Josepha Guerrero. He had not passed a very restful night, since for hours he had lain awake visualizing that radiant figure.

To gay amours he was far from being a stranger; he told himself that the shock of his meeting with this Hispano-Californian girl was largely due to the fact that it had been long since his eyes had been gladdened by the sight of a pretty woman. He tried to analyze his emotions. Why, he asked himself, had he not felt this strange, ecstatic thrill that possessed him now—a thrill that was akin to pain—when Tomas first introduced him to her? Why had he not experienced it at dinner?

He had thought then to indulge in a little guarded flirtation, and this out of a sense of sheer deviltry; through the medium of a glance and a tiny smile he had, he thought, conveyed to her some hint of his impish purpose and, for his pains and to his secret contentment, had drawn a single fleeting look of cool dislike.

It must be that his defeat had come in that instant when, catching sight of his dark head towering above the Hispano-Californians at the edge of the dance platform, she had looked at him again and shaken her castanets in a manner that suggested she would prefer to be shaking him in the same casual manner.

Then young Tomas, following the dictates of his ardent nature, had crushed through the crowd to dance with her, and the fervor of her dancing had, it seemed to D’Arcy, abated a little, but only momentarily; then, as they circled each other, the girl’s eyes had again sought D’Arcy’s, and in them then he had read a mute despair, a dumb pleading, a peculiar wistfulness.

Ah, what lambent eyes she had! In the dim light of the hurricane lamps hung overhead they had glowed suddenly with a profound emotion; the next instant she had stretched forth her dainty arm to Tomas—and in the wild heart of Dermod D’Arcy the miracle had happened. He who had come to scoff remained to pray.

“I’m damned if I’ll fall in love with her,” he told himself, “because that would be disastrous. A fool I am, but not that great a fool. I’m not her kind, nor is she mine. I’m as alien to her as an Arab. Had I the fortune of Omar to lay at her feet I would but demean myself by seeking her favor. Dermod, you ass, you’re going to the gold-fields and forget this silly business in hard work. You’ll forget it, you fool. D’ye hear me? You’ll forget it!”

The race between Rey Del Mundo and Kitty was run just before noon, in order that the assembled guests might immediately thereafter partake of the barbecue furnished by Don Emilio. The mare won by six open lengths, yet, watching her as the Indian boy who rode her flailed her to her best speed and passed Rey Del Mundo, D’Arcy knew she was commonplace, that she would begin to fail at the three-quarter pole, that to Pathfinder she would prove an easy opponent.

Don Emilio did his best to accept defeat gaily, but D’Arcy noticed that for that day, at least, the joy had gone out of his life. “’Tis the way of a Latin,” he told himself. “Good winners but bad losers. Well, tomorrow I’ll take a tuck out of Don José Guerrero and see how he bears up under it.”

During the progress of the barbecue he met Josepha Guerrero twice, but each time she bowed slightly and passed on. D’Arcy observed that Tomas Espinosa was always in her train, and found difficulty in throttling a growing dislike for the boy. “Can’t he see he’s making a nuisance of himself?” he growled under his breath. “There’s no repression to these people. They have too much emotion to conceal any of it.”

He was anxious to be on the road again. He was weary of idle discussion, empty compliments, perfervid phrases, badly barbecued beef, new wine, and string music. He wanted a girl to flirt with, to banter, to make love to after the fashion of his impulsive kind, but haggard duennas with overpowdered faces blocked his aspirations at every turn. He was treated with the utmost civility but little cordiality, and he had no interest in the conversational subjects which interested these people. They were childlike, impractical—dreamers all.

The Americans present—D’Arcy had a feeling that they had come to the hacienda uninvited—were not men he cared to fraternize with. Many of them drank of the new red wine to excess and slept their potations off, open-mouthed and fly-ridden, under the oak-trees; some of them fought and had to be separated by force and disarmed. They were the riffraff of the American invasion, and apparently not a little proud of it. D’Arcy marveled that Don Emilio did not muster his friends and retainers and drive them forth with staves laid to their hulking backs.

Don Carlos Montalvo it was who decided upon a rider for Pathfinder—an intelligent, slender boy, son of his own majordomo; the lad had ridden up from San Miguel for this very purpose. Racing saddles were unknown in California then, and bareback riding was the order of the day. D’Arcy, however, elected to employ a saddle-blanket, held in place by a surcingle, and on the following morning when his horse went to the start his sole instruction to the boy was to make the pace and never slacken until the finish.

Josepha Guerrero sat with her father in the rear seat of the open carriage in which she had journeyed from the Rancho Arroyo Chico, nearly four hundred miles to the north. As the carriage was parked just opposite the finish line, D’Arcy strolled over to pay his respects to her and her father and from the same point of vantage watch his horse come thundering in to victory.

He had scarcely reached the side of the carriage, however, when a shout from the crowd informed him that the race was on. Deliberately he turned his back on the course and loaded his pipe.

“Ah,” the girl said softly, “our American realizes that he is doomed to defeat. He has not the desire to watch the race.”

“You are mistaken,” he answered quietly. “I have a greater desire to watch Señorita Guerrero’s face when, for the first time, she sees a real race-horse. My horse will win, señorita. I do not need to watch the race. For me it is already run.”

“Brave words,” she answered—and stood up to gaze over the heads of the crowd. The thudding of hoofs came faintly to D’Arcy’s ears, growing louder and louder—a triumphant shriek from a rider and a shower of gray dust—and the race had been run.

“Tell me, señorita,” D’Arcy spoke softly. “Was not the winner the brown horse—judged much too large and clumsy to contend with the pride of Arroyo Chico?”

Josepha’s face flushed, her eyes gleamed angrily. “You have won, señor—by a dozen lengths. You own a truly great horse. I felicitate you. But—you brag!”

Don José stared open-mouthed into space. “Santa María la Purísima!” he growled deep in his throat. “Kitty has failed me.”

Don Carlos Montalvo approached and prodded Don José in the ribs. “Eh, my friend? Did I not assure you the horse was not too big for great speed?” He chuckled good-naturedly. “I am a fortunate man. Yesterday, José, you won five thousand three-year-old steers from Emilio. Today I win those steers from you. If you will be good enough to instruct Emilio to deliver them to my rancho I will say that this has been a most excellent horse-race and one long to be remembered.”

Don José crushed Montalvo’s conical hat down on his head. “Son of ten thousand foxes! You were right, Carlos. Well, I have lost the best horse that was in California until this gringo came. And I have also lost to him five hundred dollars in gold. Señor D’Arcy!” D’Arcy looked up and caught the buckskin bag Don José tossed gaily to him. “I congratulate you, señor,” he added manfully.

“Good old sport!” thought D’Arcy. “He’s more amazed than shocked.”

The youth who had ridden Kitty led her over and, at a sign from Don José, laid the bridle-reins in D’Arcy’s hand.

“Don José,” D’Arcy said, “Kitty is not bred in the purple. She has a strain of cold blood in her—a very little strain, ’tis true, but—a strain. She is not a race-horse, but a very beautiful mare for a beautiful lady to ride. With your permission, Don José, I present her to your daughter.” And he passed the reins up to Josepha.

“No, no,” the girl protested. “There are gentlemen here who will gladly give you two thousand dollars for Kitty.”

“There are occasions, señorita, when it pleases me to remember that there are other things in life more important than gold. Moreover, where I go there is gold to be had for the taking. Adios, señorita. Adios, Don José.”

He raised his hat and strode resolutely away. His mules were already packed, and when Pathfinder had been cooled out and wiped, Dermod D’Arcy saddled him, said farewell to his host and Carlos Montalvo and, amidst the cheers of the assembled guests, rode down the palm-lined avenue. To his surprise he found Josepha Guerrero standing at the foot of it, the omni-present Tomas at her side.

“I take the mare for my father’s sake, señor,” she cried to him sharply. “He would be lost without her.”

“I gave her to you—for your father’s sake,” he shot back at her. “Thank you ten thousand times for accepting her. Your father is a good sport and a true gentleman.”

Their glances met and there was a faint film of emotion in her eyes. “Señor D’Arcy will never lack a welcome at the Rancho Arroyo Chico.”

“I thank you, señorita, but I think we shall not meet again. Adios. Adios, Tomas.”

The girl removed a red rose from her corsage, kissed it and tossed it to him. He caught it deftly, caught, too, the low benediction: “Vaya usted con Dios.”

Then he wheeled Pathfinder; herding Shawneen and Michael before him, he headed north to the new El Dorado to seek his fortune in the wilderness.

And he did not look back.