The Blood of the Conquerors Read online

  CHAPTER VII

  During the following weeks Ramon worked even less than was his custom. Healso neglected his trips to the mountains and most of his otheramusements. They seemed to have lost their interest for him. But he was aregular attendant upon the weekly dances which were held at the countryclub, and to which he had never gone before.

  The country club was a recent acquisition of the town, backed by a numberof local business men. It consisted of a picturesque little frame lodgefar out upon the _mesa_, and a nine-hole golf course, made of sand andhaunted by lizards and rattlesnakes. It had become a centre of localsociety, although there was a more exclusive organization known as theForty Club, which gave a formal ball once a month. Ramon had never beeninvited to join the Forty Club, but the political importance of his familyhad procured him a membership in the country club and it served hispresent purpose very well, for he found Julia Roth there every Saturdaynight. This fact was the sole reason for his going. His dances with herwere now the one thing in life to which he looked forward with pleasure,and his highest hope was that he might be alone with her.

  In this he was disappointed for a long time because Julia was the belle ofthe town. Her dainty, provocative presence seemed always to be the centreof the gathering. Women envied her and studied her frocks, which wereeasily the most stylish in town. Men flocked about her and guffawed at herelfin stabs of humour. Her program was always crowded with names, and whenshe went for a stroll between dances she was generally accompanied by atleast three men of whom Ramon was often one. And while the others made herlaugh at their jokes or thrilled her with accounts of their adventures, hewas always silent and worried--an utter bore, he thought.

  This girl was a new experience to him. With the egotism of twenty-four, hehad regarded himself as a finished man of the world, especially withregard to women. They had always liked him. He was good to look at and hissilent, self-possessed manner touched the feminine imagination. He had hadhis share of the amorous adventures that come to most men, and hisattitude toward women had changed from the hesitancy of adolesence to thepurposeful, confident and somewhat selfish attitude of the male accustomedto easy conquest.

  This girl, by a smile and touch of her hand, seemed to have changed him.She filled him with a mighty yearning. He desired her, and yet there was apuzzling element in his feeling that seemed to transcend desire. And hewas utterly without his usual confidence and purpose. He had reason enoughto doubt his success, but aside from that she loomed in his imagination assomething high and unattainable. He had no plan. His strength seemed tohave oozed out of him. He pursued her persistently enough--in fact toopersistently--but he did it because he could not help it.

  The longer he followed in her wake, the more marked his weakness became.When he approached her to claim a dance he was often aware of a fainttremble in his knees, and was embarrassed by the fact that the palms ofhis hands were sweating. He felt that he was a fool and swore at himself.And he was wholly unable to believe that he was making any impression uponher. True, she was quite willing to flirt with him. She looked up at himwith an arch, almost enquiring glance when he came to claim her for adance, but he seldom found much to say at such times, being too whollyabsorbed in the sacred occupation of dancing with her. And it seemed tohim that she flirted with every one else, too. This did not in the leastmitigate his devotion, but it made him acutely uncomfortable to watch herdance with other men, and especially with Conny Masters.

  Masters was the son of a man who had made a moderate fortune in thetin-plate business. He had come West with his mother who had a weakthroat, had fallen in love with the country, and scandalized his family byresolutely refusing to go back to Indiana and tin cans. He spent most ofhis time riding about the country, equipped with a note book and a camera,studying the Mexicans and Indians, and taking pictures of the scenery. Hesaid that he was going to make a literary career, but the net product ofhis effort for two years had been a few sonnets of lofty tone but vaguemeaning, and a great many photographs, mostly of sunsets.

  Conny was not a definite success as a writer, but he was unquestionably agifted talker, and he knew the country better than did most of thenatives. He made real to Julia the romance which she craved to find in theWest. And her watchful and suspicious family seemed to tolerate if not towelcome him. Ramon knew that he went to the Roth's regularly. He began tofeel something like hatred for Conny whom he had formerly liked.

  This feeling was deepened by the fact that Conny seemed to be speciallybent on defeating Ramon's ambition to be alone with the girl. If no oneelse joined them at the end of a dance, Conny was almost sure to do so,and to occupy the intermission with one of his ever-ready monologues,while Ramon sat silent and angry, wondering what Julia saw to admire inthis windy fool, and occasionally daring to wonder whether she really sawanything in him after all.

  But a sufficiently devoted lover is seldom wholly without a reward. Therecame an evening when Ramon found himself alone with her. And he was awarewith a thrill that she had evaded not only Conny, but two other men. Hersmile was friendly and encouraging, too, and yet he could not findanything to say which in the least expressed his feelings.

  "Are you going to stay in this country long?" he began. The questionsounded supremely casual, but it meant a great deal to him. He was hauntedby a fear that she would depart suddenly, and he would never see heragain. She smiled and looked away for a moment before replying, as thoughperhaps this was not exactly what she had expected him to say.

  "I don't know. Gordon wants mother and me to go back East this fall, but Idon't want to go and mother doesn't want to leave Gordon alone.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Wehaven't decided. Maybe I won't go till next year."

  "I suppose you'll go to college won't you?"

  "No; I wanted to go to Vassar and then study art, but mother says collegespoils a girl for society. She thinks the way the Vassar girls walk isperfectly dreadful. I offered to go right on walking the same way, but shesaid anyway college makes girls so frightfully broad-minded.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}"

  Ramon laughed.

  "What will you do then?"

  "I'll come out."

  "Out of what?"

  "Make my di?1/2but, don't you know?"

  "O, yes."

  "In New York. I have an aunt there. She knows all the best people, mothersays."

  "What happens after you come out?"

  "You get married if anybody will have you. If not, you sort of fade awayand finally go into uplift work about your fourth season."

  "But of course, you'll get married. I bet you'll marry a millionaire."

  "I don't know. Mother wants me to marry a broker. She says the bigfinancial houses in New York are conducted by the very best people. ButGordon thinks I ought to marry a professional man--a doctor or something.He thinks brokers are vulgar. He says money isn't everything."

  "What do you think?"

  "I haven't a thought to my name. All my thinking has been done for mesince infancy. I don't know what I want, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn'tget it if I did.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Come on. They've been dancing for ten minutes. If westay here any longer it'll be a scandal."

  She rose and started for the hall. He suddenly realized that hislong-sought opportunity was slipping away from him. He caught her by thehand.

  "Don't go, please. I want to tell you something."

  She met his hand with a fair grip, and pulled him after her with a laugh.

  "Some other time," she promised.