The Blood of the Conquerors Page 6

  CHAPTER VI

  At ten o'clock in the morning Ramon was hard at work in the office ofJames B. Green. He worked efficiently and with zest as he always did afterone of his trips to the mountains. He got out of these ventures intoanother environment about what some men get out of sprees--a completechange of the state of mind. Archulera and his daughter were nowcompletely forgotten, and all of his usual worries and plans were creepingback into his consciousness.

  But this day he had a feeling of pleasant anticipation. At first he couldnot account for it. And then he remembered the girl--the one he had seen onthe train and had met again at the Montezuma ball. It seemed as though thethought of her had been in the back of his mind all the time, and nowsuddenly came forward, claiming all his attention, stirring him to aquick, unwonted excitement. She had said he might come to see her. He wasto 'phone first. Maybe she would be alone.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

  In this latter hope he was disappointed. She gave him the appointment, andshe herself admitted him. He thought he had never seen such a dainty bitof fragrant perfection, all in pink that matched the pink of her strangelittle crinkled mouth.

  "I'm awfully glad you came," she told him. (Her gladness was alwaysawful.) She led him into the sitting room and presented him to the tallemaciated sick man and the large placid woman who had watched over her socarefully on the train.

  Gordon Roth greeted him with a cool and formal manner into which heevidently tried to infuse something of cordiality, as though a desire tobe just and broad-minded struggled with prejudice. Mrs. Roth looked at himwith curiosity, and gave him a still more restrained greeting. Theconversation was a weak and painful affair, kept barely alive, now by oneand now by another. The atmosphere was heavy with disapproval. If theirgreetings had left Ramon in any doubt as to the attitude of the girl'sfamily toward him, that doubt was removed by the fact that neither Mrs.Roth nor her son showed any intention of leaving the room. This would havebeen not unusual if he had called on a Mexican girl, especially if shebelonged to one of the more old-fashioned families; but he knew thatAmerican girls are left alone with their suitors if the suitor is at allwelcome.

  He knew a little about this family from hear-say. They came from one ofthe larger factory towns in northern New York, and were supposed to bemoderately wealthy. They used a very broad "a" and served tea at fouro'clock in the afternoon. Gordon Roth was a Harvard graduate and did notconceal the fact. Neither did he conceal his hatred for this sandy littlewestern town, where ill-health had doomed him to spend many of his daysand perhaps to end them.

  The girl was strangely different from her mother and brother. Whereastheir expressions were stiff and solemn, her eyes showed an irrepressiblegleam of humour, and her fascinating little mouth was mobile with mirth.She fidgeted around in her chair a good deal, as a child does when bored.

  Mrs. Roth decorously turned the conversation toward the safe and reliablesubjects of literature and art.

  "What do you think of Maeterlinck, Mr. Delcasar?" she enquired in aninnocent manner that must have concealed malice.

  "I don't know him," Ramon admitted, "Who is he?"

  Mrs. Roth permitted herself to smile. Gordon Roth came graciously to therescue.

  "Maeterlinck is a great Belgian writer," he explained. "We are all verymuch interested in him.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}"

  Julia gave a little flounce in her chair, and crossed her legs with adefiant look at her mother.

  "I'm not interested in him," she announced with decision. "I think he's abore. Listen, Mr. Delcasar. You know Conny Masters? Well, he was tellingme the most thrilling tale the other day. He said that the countryMexicans have a sort of secret religious fraternity that most of the menbelong to, and that they meet every Good Friday and beat themselves withwhips and sit down on cactus and crucify a man on a cross and all sorts ofhorrible things {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} for penance you know, just like the monks and things inthe Middle Ages.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} He claims he saw them once and that they had bloodrunning down to their heels. Is that all true? I've forgotten what hecalled them.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}"

  Ramon nodded.

  "Sure. The _penitentes_. I've seen them lots of times."

  "O, do tell us about them. I love to hear about horrible things."

  "Well, I've seen lots of _penitente_ processions, but the best one I eversaw was a long time ago, when I was a little kid. There are not so many ofthem now, and they don't do as much as they used to. The church is down onthem, you know, and they're afraid. Ten years ago if you tried to look atthem, they would shoot at you, but now tourists take pictures of them."

  Gordon Roth's curiosity had been aroused.

  "Tell me," he broke in. "What is the meaning of this thing? How did it getstarted?"

  "I don't know exactly," Ramon admitted. "My grandfather told me that theybrought it over from Spain centuries ago, and the Indians here had a sortof whipping fraternity, and the two got mixed up, I guess. The church usedto tolerate it; it was a regular religious festival. But now it'soutlawed. They still have a lot of political power. They all vote the sameway. One man that was elected to Congress--they say that the _penitente_stripes on his back carried him there. And he was a gringo too. But Idon't know. It may be a lie.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}"

  "But tell us about that procession you saw when you were a little boy,"Julia broke in. She was leaning forward with her chin in her hand, and herbig grey eyes, wide with interest, fixed upon his face.

  "Well, I was only about ten years old, and I was riding home from one ofour ranches with my father. We were coming through _Tijeras_ canyon. Itwas March, and there was snow on the ground in patches, and the mountainswere cold and bare, and I remember I thought I was going to freeze. Everylittle while we would get off and set fire to a tumble-weed by the road,and warm our hands and then go on again.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

  "Anyway, pretty soon I heard a lot of men singing, all together, in deepvoices, and the noise echoed around the canyon and sounded awful solemn.And I could hear, too, the slap of the big wide whips coming down on thebare backs, wet with blood, like slapping a man with a wet towel, onlylouder. I didn't know what it was, but my father did, and he called to meand we spurred our horses right up the mountain, and hid in a clump ofcedar up there. Then they came around a bend in the road, and I began tocry because they were all covered with blood, and one of them fell down.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}My father slapped me and told me to shut up, or they would come and shootus."

  "But what did they look like? What were they doing?" Julia demandedfrowning at him, impatient with his rambling narrative.

  "Well, in front there was _un carreta del muerto_. That means a wagon ofdeath. I don't think you would ever see one any more. It was just anordinary wagon drawn by six men, naked to the waist and bleeding, withother men walking beside them and beating them with blacksnake whips, justlike they were mules. In the wagon they had a big bed of stones, coveredwith cactus, and a man sitting in the cactus, who was supposed torepresent death. And then they had a Virgin Mary, too. Four _penitentes_just like the others, with nothing on but bloody pants and black bandagesaround their eyes, carried the image on a litter raised up over theirheads, and they had swords fastened to their elbows and stuck betweentheir ribs, so that if they let down, the swords would stick into theirhearts and kill them. And behind that came the _Cristo_--the man thatrepresented Jesus, you know, dragging a big cross. Behind him came twentyor thirty more _penitentes_, the most I ever saw at once, some of themwhipping themselves with big broad whips made out of _amole_. One was tooweak to whip himself, so two others walked behind him and whipped him.Pretty soon he fell down and they walked over him and stepped on hisstomach.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}"

  "But did they crucify the man, the whatever-you-call-him?" Gordondemanded.

  "The _Cristo_. Sure. They crucify one every year. They used to nail him.Now they generally do it with ropes, but that's bad enough, because itmakes him swell up and turn blue.{~HORIZONTAL ELL
IPSIS~} Sometimes he dies."

  Julia was listening with lips parted and eyes wide, horrified and yetfascinated, as are so many women by what is cruel and bloody. But Gordon,who had become equally interested, was cool and inquisitive.

  "And you mean to tell me that at one time nearly all the--er--native peoplebelonged to this barbaric organization, and that many of them do yet?"

  "Nearly all the common _pelados_," Ramon hastened to explain. "They arenearly all Indian or part Indian, you know. Not the educated people." Herea note of pride came into his voice. "We are descended from officers ofthe Spanish army--the men who conquered this country. In the old days,before the Americans came, all these common people were our slaves."

  "I see," said Gordon Roth in a dry and judicial tone.

  The _penitentes_, as a subject of conversation, seemed exhausted for thetime being and Ramon had given up all hope of being alone with Julia. Herose and took his leave. To his delight Julia followed him to the door. Inthe hall she gave him her hand and looked up at him, and neither of themfound anything to say. For some reason the pressure of her hand and thelook of her eyes flustered and confused him more than had all the coldnessand disapproval of her family. At last he said good-bye and got away, withhis hat on wrong side before and the blood pounding in his temples.