Читать книгу Folded Hills - Stewart Edward White - Страница 6

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Don Andrés sat in a Boston rocker beneath the spreading live-oak tree before his ranch house. His long form looked relaxed and idle; but he was busily engaged in a number of things at once. They were of the utmost diversity, but they did not intermingle or interfere one with the other. They worked in different layers, as it were.

The top of his mind was remembering, with a trace of vexation, that as yet, though they had lived there now for nearly eight months, neither he, nor his young wife Carmel, had been able to think of a good name for the ranch. They had tried dozens, but none seemed to fit with the click of decision that indicates the wholly appropriate. Ramón Rivera, who rode over occasionally to visit his friend and his sister, could suggest nothing better than recourse to the saints’ calendar. But most ranches were San or Santa Something. So up to now the place had been known simply as Don Largo’s place, in reference to its owner’s nickname.

But that was a mere cockle burr, a faint vexation of incompletion; and not, at this moment, the active ingredient of Don Andrés’s mood which was rather of content. If it had a truly active ingredient. The moment was sunset. A drowsing powder of gold was momently deepening in precipitation through all the lower air, draining the zenith sky to the thin green lucence of freed space. Overhead an unseen wild dove uttered its soft notes, a mourning not so much of sadness as of some mysterious farewell. These, and the sleepy distant clucking of Vicenta’s fowls, were almost the only animate sounds. The world seemed to have hushed its voices for the high ceremony of the day’s passing.

So Don Andrés’s mind wandered comfortably among many contemplations and satisfactions. Shortly Panchito would ride in with his vaqueros to tell the state of the cattle and the range. Benito too, with his kindly moon face, and his exquisite manners, hat in hand, would carry the tale of the growing things in the milpas and the grain fields into the high ceremony of consequence. The cattle throve: the milpas and the grain fields flourished. This Don Andrés already knew. It was one of the satisfactions, soothing and warm and quiet and golden, like the light on the hills. It enveloped and supported the freedom of his reverie which floated on it idly, directed by mysterious currents; so that shortly Don Andrés was remembering when he was not Don Largo, but Andy Burnett. And for the first time he looked back on the old fierce life of hardship and warfare and danger and tragedy detachedly, as though they had happened to someone else; or, if to himself, in a different state of being. And this was another of the satisfactions. But the deepest of them lay beneath all the others; it permeated the others as part of their very essence, the very warmth of their life. He did not contemplate it consciously: it had become too much part of himself; though always it waited ready for summoning. It would evoke, smiling, soft, mysterious, with eyes of love. Before he had known Carmel, Andy had fought the world for his foothold in it. Now the fact that she was in that world made Andy part of it. It was very mysterious: a holy miracle, Father Viador would say.

Andy’s gaze wandered over the prospect before him, his eyes unfocused for the details. Nevertheless the impressions came to him and found their welcome in his soul. What he saw was his own; the wide green fields of the milpas and the grain fields, with the wandering dark line of the barranca in which flowed the gift of a living stream; the nun-gray sage of the low rise that bordered it; the smooth hills beyond; the dark high mountains above, veiled now in rose and purple. Tiny specks moved slowly on those hills; his cattle. How suave the blended shadows in the hollows; how soft the surface of their rounded flanks as of folded green——

Andy struck the arm of the old Boston rocker a mighty slap with the palm of his hand.

“Carmel! Carmel!” he cried.

“Querido!” she responded instantly from within; and fluttered through the door to his side. “Querido,” she repeated anxiously, “what is it?”

“Look!” cried Andy. “The hills!”

“The hills? What of the hills?” She laughed a little breathlessly. “But you frightened me, alma de mi alma, you sounded so excited.”

Andy too laughed and drew her to his knee.

“I did not mean to frighten you, querida,” said he, “but look at the hills with the light falling across them and the shadows.”

“Yes, they are very beautiful,” agreed Carmel, nestling into his arms.

“But what do they look like to you?”

“Look like?”

“Yes; how do they seem to you?” The tall young frontiersman was boyishly eager.

Carmel contemplated them doubtfully.

“They are very beautiful,” she repeated. “Yes, and soft—soft like velvet; and they lie there like velvet, folded there——”

The ranchero caught her to him in an ecstatic hug.

“That is it!” he cried triumphantly. “That is what we shall call the rancho!”

“What?”

“Folded Hills.”

“Fol-ded Heels,” she repeated carefully. “But that is a beautiful sound. What means it?”

“Collados plegados,” translated Andy.

“Rancho de los Collados Plegados,” she pronounced experimentally. “Folded Heels—yes, I like better Rancho de los Fol-ded Heels.”

“Folded Hills Ranch,” corrected Andy. “That is how it is said in English. This is a good day.”

“Yes,” assented Carmel. “The Day of Naming.” She dropped her head to his shoulder, “El día del Nombre,” she repeated softly. “Let us then decide on the names for our son.”

Andy thrust her upright until he could see her face.

“It is true then?” he cried excitedly. “Are you sure?”

She broke through to his shoulder again.

“Hijo nuestro,” she repeated: then in painstaking English, each vowel stressed, “Ou-er esson.”

“Querida; querida!” murmured Andy. He gathered her close, as one holds a child, rocking slowly back and forth. “Why have you not told me?” he asked after a little.

“Onlee today do I myself know for essure.” Suddenly she sat bolt upright on his knees, her mood changing to one of sparkling and mocking vivacity.

“But is it esstrange that we who have much love should have a son?” she demanded.

“How do you know it will be a son?” challenged Andy. “Perhaps it will be a little girl. I think I would like a tiny one, like you.”

“Ah no! no-no!” she cried vehemently. “He shall be a esson, tall and esstrong like hees papá, and you shall titch him to be brave and so beeg of the heart, like the you; and when you do ride together to the fiesta the hearts of the doncellitas shall jump up——” She broke off, her head to one side in sudden admiration of herself. “But leesten how I do talk the English! Do I not learn queek? Do I not speak heem perfect?”

“Oh, quite perfect,” agreed Andy gravely. “But when——”

“Oh, not for long long time,” she answered his unspoken question. “Not until the esspring come.”

“That is a long time to wait,” sighed Andy.

“I think yet he is still in heaven with the blessed saints,” said Carmel.

A strongly built broad-headed black dog wandering idly around the corner of the ranch house in abysmal boredom stopped short. Dogs are creatures of routine. The spectacle of his master at this time of day was foreign to his conception of the universe, and was not to be accepted until tested for hallucination by a more trustworthy sense than sight. He raised his nose; sniffed delicately. Convinced, he was suffused with a rapture too intense for ordinary expression. He wrinkled his nose; he ducked his head to sneeze ingratiatingly; he advanced in a series of complicated contortions that attested the wagging incompetency to the occasion of a mere tail.

Carmel clapped her hands joyfully together and uttered her trilling laugh.

“But see!” she cried, “Cazador, he know it is the beeg day! See! He is all smiling behind!”