The Blood of the Conquerors Read online

  The Blood of the Conquerors by Harvey Fergusson

  New YorkAlfred . A . Knopf1921

  COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ICHAPTER IICHAPTER IIICHAPTER IVCHAPTER VCHAPTER VICHAPTER VIICHAPTER VIIICHAPTER IXCHAPTER XCHAPTER XICHAPTER XIICHAPTER XIIICHAPTER XIVCHAPTER XVCHAPTER XVICHAPTER XVIICHAPTER XVIIICHAPTER XIXCHAPTER XXCHAPTER XXICHAPTER XXIICHAPTER XXIIICHAPTER XXIVCHAPTER XXVCHAPTER XXVICHAPTER XXVIICHAPTER XXVIIICHAPTER XXIXCHAPTER XXXCHAPTER XXXICHAPTER XXXIICHAPTER XXXIIICHAPTER XXXIVCHAPTER XXXVCHAPTER XXXVIEXTRA PAGESERRATA

  CHAPTER I

  Whenever Ramon Delcasar boarded a railroad train he indulged a habit, notuncommon among men, of choosing from the women passengers the one whoseappearance most pleased him to be the object of his attention during thejourney. If the woman were reserved or well-chaperoned, or if sheobviously belonged to another man, this attention might amount to no morethan an occasional discreet glance in her direction. He never tried tomake her acquaintance unless her eyes and mouth unmistakably invited himto do so.

  This conservatism on his part was not due to an innate lack ofself-confidence. Whenever he felt sure of his social footing, his attitudetoward women was bold and assured. But his social footing was a peculiarlyuncertain thing for the reason that he was a Mexican. This meant that hefaced in every social contact the possibility of a more or less covertprejudice against his blood, and that he faced it with an unduly proud andsensitive spirit concealed beneath a manner of aristocratic indifference.In the little southwestern town where he had lived all his life, exceptthe last three years, his social position was ostensibly of the highest.He was spoken of as belonging to an old and prominent family. Yet he knewof mothers who carefully guarded their daughters from the peril of fallingin love with him, and most of his boyhood fights had started when some onecalled him a "damned Mexican" or a "greaser."

  Except to an experienced eye there was little in his appearance or in hismanner to suggest his race. His swarthy complexion indicated perhaps atouch of the Moorish blood in his Spanish ancestry, but he was no darkerthan are many Americans bearing Anglo-Saxon names, and his eyes were grey.His features were aquiline and pleasing, and he had in a high degree thatbearing, at once proud and unself-conscious, which is called aristocratic.He spoke English with a very slight Spanish accent.

  When he had gone away to a Catholic law school in St. Louis, confident ofhis speech and manner and appearance, he had believed that he was leavingprejudice behind him; but in this he had been disappointed. The raw spotsin his consciousness, if a little less irritated at the college, were byno means healed. Some persons, it is true, seemed to think nothing of hisrace one way or the other; to some, mostly women, it gave him an addedinterest; but in the long run it worked against him. It kept him out of afraternity, and it made his career in football slow and hard.

  When he finally won the coveted position of quarterback, in spite of teampolitics, he made a reputation by the merciless fashion in which he drovehis eleven, and by the fury of his own playing.

  The same bitter emulative spirit which had impelled him in football drovehim to success in his study of the law. Books held no appeal for him, andhe had no definite ambitions, but he had a good head and a great desire toshow the gringos what he could do. So he had graduated high in his class,thrown his diploma into the bottom of his trunk, and departed from hisalma mater without regret.

  The limited train upon which he took passage for home afforded speciallygood opportunity for his habit of mental philandering. The passengers werecontinually going up and down between the dining car at one end of thetrain and the observation car at the other, so that all of the women dailypassed in review. They were an unusually attractive lot, for most of thepassengers were wealthy easterners on their way to California. Ramon hadnever before seen together so many women of the kind that devotes time andmoney and good taste to the business of creating charm. Perfectly gownedand groomed, delicately scented, they filled him with desire and with envyfor the men who owned them. There were two newly married couples among thepassengers, and several intense flirtations were under way before thetrain reached Kansas City. Ramon felt as though he were a spectator atsome delightful carnival. He was lonely and restless, yet fascinated.

  For no opportunity of becoming other than a spectator had come to him. Hehad chosen without difficulty the girl whom he preferred, but had onlydared to admire her from afar. She was a little blonde person, not morethan twenty, with angelic grey eyes, hair of the colour of ripe wheat anda complexion of perfect pink and white. The number of different costumeswhich she managed to don in two days filled him with amazement and gaveher person an ever-varying charm and interest. She appeared alwaysaccompanied by a very placid-looking and portly woman, who was evidentlyher mother, and a tall, cadaverous sick man, whose indifferent and pettishattitude toward her seemed to indicate that he was either a brother or anuncle, for Ramon felt sure that she was not married. She acquired no maleattendants, but sat most of the time very properly, if a littlerestlessly, with her two companions. Once or twice Ramon felt her lookupon him, but she always turned it away when he glanced at her.

  Whether because she was really beautiful in her own petite way, or becauseshe seemed so unattainable, or because her small blonde daintiness had apeculiar appeal for him, Ramon soon reached a state of conviction that sheinterested him more than any other girl he had ever seen. He discreetlyfollowed her about the train, watching for the opportunity that nevercame, and consoling himself with the fact that no one else seemed morefortunate in winning her favour than he. The only strange male whoattained to the privilege of addressing her was a long-winded and elderlygentleman of the British perpetual-travelling type, at least onerepresentative of which is found on every transcontinental train, and itwas plain enough that he bored the girl.

  Ramon took no interest in landscapes generally, but when he awoke on thelast morning of his journey and found himself once more in the wide anddesolate country of his birth, he was so deeply stirred and interestedthat he forgot all about the girl. Devotion to one particular bit of soilis a Mexican characteristic, and in Ramon it was highly developed becausehe had spent so much of his life close to the earth. Every summer of hisboyhood he had been sent to one of the sheep ranches which belonged to thevarious branches of his numerous family. Each of these ranches was merelya headquarters where the sheep were annually dipped and sheared and fromwhich the herds set out on their long wanderings across the open range.Often Ramon had followed them--across the deserts where the heat shimmeredand the yellow dust hung like a great pale plume over the rippling backsof the herd, and up to the summer range in the mountains where they fedabove the clouds in lush green pastures crowned with spires of rock andsnow. He had shared the beans and mutton and black coffee of the herdersand had gone to sleep on a pile of peltries to the evensong of the coyotesthat hung on the flanks of the herd. Hunting, fishing, wandering, he hadlived like a savage and found the life good.

  It was this life of primitive freedom that he had longed for in his exile.He had thought little of his family and less of his native town, but anostalgia for open spaces and free wanderings had been always with him. Hehad come to hate the city with its hard walled-in ways and its dirty air,and also the eastern country-side with its little green prettinesssurrounded by fences. He longed for a land where one can see for fiftymiles, and not a man or a house. He thought that alkaline dust on his lipswould taste sweet.
r />   Now he saw again the scorched tawny levels, the red hills dotted withlittle gnarled _pinon_ trees, the purple mystery of distant mountains. Agreat friendly warmth filled his body, and his breath came a littlequickly with eagerness. When he saw a group of Mexicans jogging along theroad on their scrawny mounts he wanted to call out to them: "_Como lo va,amigos?_" He would have liked to salute this whole country, which was hiscountry, and to tell it how glad he was to see it again. It was the onething in the world that he loved, and the only thing that had ever givenhim pleasure without tincture of bitterness.

  He heard two men in the seat behind him talking.

  "Did you ever see anything so desolate?" one asked.

  "I wouldn't live in this country if they gave it to me," said the other.

  Ramon turned and looked at them. They were solid, important-looking men,and having visited upon the country their impressive disapproval, theyopened newspapers and shut it away from their sight. Dull fools, thoughtRamon, who do not know God's country when they see it.

  And then he continued to look right over their heads and their newspapers,for tripping down the aisle all by herself at last, came the girl of hisfruitless choice. His eyes, deep with dreams, met hers. She smiled uponhim, radiantly, blushed a little, and hurried on through the car.

  He sat looking after her with a foolish grin on his face. He was pleasedand shaken. So she had noticed him after all. She had been waiting for achance, as well as he. And now that it had come, he was getting off thetrain in an hour. It was useless to follow her.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} He turned to the windowagain.