Читать книгу Ranchero - Stewart Edward White - Страница 16

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The ranch house, which they reached near sunset, proved to be a long adobe structure roofed with tules. It stood bare on a low hill. Not a spear of anything green lived within a hundred yards of it. The roof had been extended the length of one side to form a sort of veranda with an earth floor. From a smaller detached structure smoke was rising. Beyond that stood a circular corral of greasewood bound with rawhide thongs. That was the whole visible equipment of the place. From a distance it seemed to be surrounded by a wide ring of white. As they rode nearer Andy saw that this ring was composed of bones, the bones of cattle slaughtered for the ranch’s use. A swarm of dogs bounded forth in greeting. Ramón and Andy dismounted at the veranda. Following the example of his host Andy stripped his saddle and pack and bestowed them on pegs beneath the roof. Panchito and José drove away the horses.

To the veranda opened a number of doorways. There were, however, no doors. The gaps, both of the doorways and the few windows, were hung with serapes or hides. Ramón pushed one of these aside.

“Es tu casa.” He murmured the familiar form of the conventional welcome.

The room was long and low. It was lighted by a number of crudely made candles of tallow. Its floor was of earth that had been watered and beaten until it was as hard as cement. Except for two chairs made ingeniously from elk horns and rawhide, and a long table, there was no movable furniture. Along one side ran a bench of adobe, a mere thickening of the wall. On this four vaqueros were lounging, smoking cigarettes. One fingered a guitar softly. They arose to their feet, saluting Ramón and Andy with the soft ceremonial buenas tardes, eyeing Andy with veiled but avid curiosity. They did not remove their hats. After a few moments Panchito and José slipped in and sat down. They joined the other vaqueros. A respectfully lowered hum of conversation arose, heads gathered close together. Andy could not hear; but he knew himself to be the subject. He sat apart, smoking his pipe philosophically.

Ramón’s high spirits were not in evidence. He had flung himself into one of the elk-horn chairs and was lost in a brown study, his eyes abstracted, his brow frowning. After a while a squat old Indian woman, clad apparently in a single garment and with bare feet, pushed aside the serape and deposited on the table a pile of earthen plates and a handful of spoons rudely fashioned of horn and of wood. Two others, equally squat but somewhat younger, followed, bearing a pot of beans, an earthen plate of meat, and a great pile of tortillas. They set them also on the table and withdrew.

Ramón apparently did not notice them. The vaqueros fell silent, glanced uneasily at him. Finally Panchito ventured to stand before him.

“Comida, señor,” he said respectfully.

Ramón came to with a start.

Each helped himself on one of the earthen plates, took one of the horn or wooden spoons, unsheathed his knife from the scabbard in his garter. They ate standing, without removing their hats; but Ramón motioned Andy to the other chair, so the two of them sat at table. Still he had no conversation, and as Andy dwelt easily in silence the room was quiet except for an occasional muttered remark of one of the men to another. And as, after the meal was finished and the Indian women had carried out the dishes, Ramón seemed still lost in his thoughts, the men tiptoed out. So for an hour, while Andy smoked placidly.

Then abruptly Ramón stirred.

“Your pardon, amigo,” said he, “I am not discourteous. I think. And I get nowhere. I search in my mind for this way and that way. But there is no way. It grieves me to the heart. I would take you to the hacienda. I would bring you to my father, saying, ‘Here, Papá, is your other son,’ and he would welcome you for my sake, and soon we would go together to search you out a rancho, and the governor would grant you leagues of land, and you would become californio, and we would ride together and find you a señorita who shall look softly upon the so-great largeness of Don Largo—I would like that, alma de mi alma.” He turned his black eyes, aglow with frank affection, toward the tall grave young frontiersman.

“I would like it, too,” returned Andy, warmed to unwonted demonstration. “Only I don’t know about the señorita,” he added.

Ramón laughed.

“Not too soon. We are bronco, we two, eh? But some day. Perhaps we find for ourselves sisters—with the gray eyes of Castile, I think, pequeñas! That is nice for us, so tall ones; so that the chin just touches the top of the small shining head.” His teeth flashed, and he blew a kiss from the tips of his fingers. But instantly his animation died. “But that is espoil,” he said sadly. “I think and think, but I cannot see. My father, my family, they are very great; but they are not so great as that; no, not when you have beat with his own sword upon the behind of that so-great papagayo the Señor Teniente Don Jesús—María—Corbedo—de Cortilla,” he checked the names sneeringly one by one on his fingers. “I love you for that, you understand,” he said parenthetically. “It is impossible. But you must not go away. You will stay here, no? It is rude. It is not the hacienda. There are no señoritas, no gente de razón, nothing, nothing! It is a barren land, a place of exile. But it is safe. No one will know. My peoples are true. We will ride together. I will make of you ranchero. And we shall see. No?”

He leaned forward, searching Andy’s face with the urging of a real desire. Andy’s heart warmed. His mind passed lightly by the young Californian’s depreciations. Hardships meant nothing to him; indeed, this simple house seemed to his wilderness-trained mind abundantly luxurious, adequate to every desire.

He nodded, unable to speak. Even Ramón’s quick intuitions were as yet unable to fathom the strength of his emotions so long pent beneath an iron and stoic repression, nor his shamefaced Anglo-Saxon reluctance to allow them to rise to the surface. Ramón had no such inhibitions.

“Hoop-la!” he cried delightedly. He snatched the guitar from its hanging place on one of the room’s low beams. His fingers swept its strings.

“La vida es sueño——” he sang sweetly, and vehemently struck the chords flat with the palm of his hand.

“La vida es sueño—” he repeated the words—“that song is wrong, señor. Life is a dream! Bah! Life is not a dream. Life is esport, a game! And we shall play it together, you and I!”