The Gringos<br />A Story Of The Old California Days In 1849, B. M. Bower [cheapest way to read ebooks TXT] 📗
- Author: B. M. Bower
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Dade first went over to the steps before their sleeping-room and deposited Jack's personal belongings; and Jack seized the minute of grace to call a peon and order the horses saddled.
He turned from watching proudly the glitter of the trimmings on his new saddle as the peon bore it away on his shoulder, and confronted Dade with a tinge of defiance in his manner.
"Well, what have I done now?" he challenged. "Anything particularly damnable about talking five minutes to a girl in plain sight of her—"
Dade threw out both hands in a gesture of impatience. "That isn't the only important thing in the world," he pointed out sarcastically. If the inner hurt served to sharpen his voice, he did not know it. "Don Andres wants to make me his majordomo."
Jack's eyes bulged a little; and if Dade had not wisely side-stepped he would have received another one of Jack's muscle-tingling slaps on the shoulder. "Whee-ee! Say, you're getting appreciated, at last, old man. Good for you! Give me a job?"
"I'm not going to take it," said Dade. "I was going to ask you if you want to pull out with me to-morrow."
Jack's jaw went slack. "Not going to take it!" He leaned against the adobe wall behind him and stuck both hands savagely into his pockets. "Why, you darned chump, how long ago was it that you talked yourself black in the face, trying to make me say I'd stay? Argued like a man trying to sell shaving soap; swore that nobody but a born idiot would think of passing up such a chance; badgered me into giving in; and now when you've got a chance like this, you—Say, you're loco!"
"Maybe." Dade's eyes went involuntarily toward the veranda, where Teresita appeared for an instant, looking questioningly towards them. "Maybe I am loco. But Manuel's mad because the don offered me the place, and has quit; and he says half the vaqueros will leave, that they won't work under a gringo."
Jack's indignant eyes changed to a queer, curious stare. "Dade Hunter! If I didn't know you, if I hadn't seen you in more tight places than I've got fingers and toes, I'd say—But you aren't scared; you never had sense enough to be afraid of anything in your life. You can't choke that down me, old man. What's the real reason why you want to leave?"
The real reason came again to the doorway sixty feet away and looked out impatiently to where the señors were talking so earnestly and privately; but Dade would have died several different and unpleasant deaths before he would name that reason. Instead:
"It will be mighty disagreeable for Don Andres, trying to keep things smooth," he said. "And it isn't as if he were stuck for a majordomo. Manuel has turned against me from pure jealousy. He opened his heart, one night when we were alone together, and told me that when Carlos Pacorra went—and Manuel said the patron would not keep him long, for his insolence—he, Manuel, would be majordomo. He's mad as the deuce, and I don't blame him; and he's a good man for the place; the vaqueros like him."
"You say he's quit?"
"Yes. He got pretty nasty, and the don has gone to pay him off."
"Well, what good would it do for you to turn down the offer, then? Manuel wouldn't get it, would he?"
"No-o, he wouldn't."
"Well, then—oh, thunder! Something ought to be done for that ingrowing modesty of yours! Dade, if you pass up that place, I'll—I'll swear you're crazy. I know you like it, here. You worked hard enough to convert me to that belief!"
A sudden thought made him draw a long breath; he reached out and caught Dade by both shoulders.
"Say, you can't fool me a little bit! You're backing up because you're afraid I may be jealous or something. You're afraid you're standing in my light. Darn you, I've had enough of that blamed unselfishness of yours, old man." The endearing smile lighted his face then and his eyes. "You go ahead and take the job, Dade. I don't want it. I'll be more than content to have you boss me around." He hesitated, looking at the other a bit wistfully. "Of course, you know that if you go, old boy, I'll go with you. But—" The look he sent towards Teresita, who appeared definitely upon the porch and stood waiting openly and impatiently, amply finished the sentence.
Dade's eyes followed Jack's understandingly, and the thing he had meant to do seemed all at once contemptible, selfish, and weak. He had meant to leave and take Jack with him, because it hurt him mightily to see those two falling in love with each other. The trouble his staying might bring to Don Andres was nothing more nor less than a subterfuge. If Teresita's smiles had continued to be given to him as they had been before Jack came, he told himself bitterly, he would never have thought of going. And Jack thought he hesitated from pure unselfishness! The fingers that groped mechanically for his tobacco, though he had no intention of smoking just then, trembled noticeably.
"All right," he said quietly. "I'll stay, then." And a moment after: "Go ask her if she wants to ride Surry. I promised her she could, next time she rode."
The señorita, it would seem, had lost interest in the white horse as well as in his master. That was the construction which Dade pessimistically put upon her smiling assurance that she could never be so selfish as to take Señor Hunter's wonderful Surry and condemn him to some commonplace caballo; though she gave also a better reason than that, which was that her own horse was already saddled—witness the peon leading the animal into the patio at that very moment—and that an exchange would mean delay. Dade took both reasons smilingly, and mentally made a vow with a fearsome penalty attached to the breaking of it. After which he felt a little more of a man, with his pride to bear him company.
Manuel came out from the room which Don Andres used for an office, saluted the señorita with the air of a permanent leave-taking, as well as a greeting, and passed the gringos with face averted. A moment later the don followed him with the look of one who would dismiss a distasteful business from his mind; and entered amiably into the pleasure-seeking spirit of the ride.
With the March sun warm upon them when they rode out from the wide shade of the oaks, they faced the cooling little breeze which blew out of the south.
"Valencia tells me that the prairie schooner which José spoke of has of a truth cast anchor upon my land," observed the don to Dade, reining in beside him where he rode a little in advance of the others. "Since we are riding that way, we may as well see the fellow and make him aware of the fact that he is trespassing upon land which belongs to another; though if he has halted but to rest his cattle and himself, he is welcome. But Valencia tells me that the fellow is cutting down trees for a house, and that I do not like."
"Some emigrants seem to think, because they have traveled over so much wilderness, there is no land west of the Mississippi that they haven't a perfect right to take, if it suits them. They are a little like your countryman Columbus, I suppose. Every man who crosses the desert feels as if he's out on a voyage of discovery to a new world; and when he does strike California, it's hard for him to realize that he can't take what he wants of it."
"I think you are right," admitted Don Andres after a minute. "And your government also seems to believe it has come into possession of a wilderness, peopled only by savages who must give way to the march of civilization. Whereas we Spaniards were in possession of the land while yet your colonies paid tribute to their king in England, and we ourselves have brought the savages to the ways of Christian people, and have for our reward the homes which we have built with much toil and some hardships, like yourselves when your colonies were young. Twenty-one years have I looked upon this valley and called it mine, with the word of his Majesty for my authority! And surely my right to it is as the right of your people to their haciendas in Virginia or Vermont. Yet men will drive their prairie schooners to a spot which pleases them and say: 'Here, I will have this place for my home.' That is not lawful, or right."
Ten steps in the rear of them Teresita was laughing her mocking little laugh that still had in it a maddening note of tenderness. Dade tried not to hear it; for so had she laughed at him, a week ago, and set his blood leaping towards his heart. He was not skilled in the ways of women, yet he did not accuse her of deliberate coquetry, as a man is prone to do under the smart of a hurt like his; for he sensed dimly that it was but the seeking sex-instinct of healthy youth that brightened her eyes and sent the laugh to her lips when she faced a man who pleased her; and if she were fickle, it was with the instinctive fickleness of one who has not made final choice of a mate. Hope lifted its head at that, but he crushed it sternly into the dust again; for the man who rode behind was his friend, whom he loved.
It is to be feared that the voice of the girl held more of his attention than the complaint of the don, just then, and that the sting of injustice under which Don Andres squirmed seemed less poignant and vital than the hurt he himself was bearing. He answered him at random; and he might have betrayed his inattention if they had not at that moment caught sight of the interlopers.
Valencia had not borne false witness against them; the emigrants were indeed cutting down trees. More, they were industriously hauling the logs to the immediate vicinity of their camp, which was chosen with an eye to many advantages; shade, water, a broad view of the valley and plenty of open grass land already fit for the plow, if to plow were their intention.
A loose-jointed giant of a man seated upon the load of logs which two yoke of great, meek-eyed oxen had just drawn up beside a waiting pile of their fellows, waited phlegmatically their approach. A woman, all personality hidden beneath flapping calico and slat sunbonnet, climbed hastily down upon the farther side of the wagon and disappeared into the little tent that was simply the wagon-box with its canvas covering, placed upon the ground.
"Valencia told me truly. Señor Hunter, will you speak for me? Tell the big hombre that the land is mine."
To do his bidding, Dade flicked the reins upon Surry's neck and rode ahead, the others closely following. Thirty feet from the wagon a great dog of the color called brindle disputed his advance with bristling hair and throaty grumble.
"Lay down, Tige! Wait till you're asked to take a holt," advised the man on the wagon, regarding the group with an air of perfect neutrality. Tige obeying sullenly, to the extent that he crouched where he was and still growled; his master rested his elbows on his great, bony knees, sucked at a short-stemmed clay pipe and waited developments.
"How d'yuh do?" Dade, holding Surry as close to the belligerent Tige as was wise, tried to make his greeting as neutral as the attitude of the other.
"Tol'ble, thank yuh, how's y'self? Shet your trap, Tige! Tige thought you was all greasers, and he ain't made up his mind yet whether he likes 'em mixed—whites and greasers. I dunno's I blame 'im, either. We ain't either of us had much call to hanker after the dark meat. T'other day a bunch come boilin' up outa the dim distance like they was sent fur and didn't have much time to git here. Tied their tongues into hard knots tryin' to tell me somethin' I didn't have time to listen to, and looked like they wanted to see my hide hangin' on a fence.
"Tige, he didn't take to 'em much. He kept walkin' back and forth between me and them, talking as sensible as they did, I must say, and makin' his meanin' full as clear. I dunno how we'd all 'a' come out, if I hadn't brought Jemimy and the twins out and let 'em into the argument. Them greasers didn't like the looks of old Jemimy, and
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