The Blood of the Conquerors by Harvey Fergusson
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Blood of the Conquerors by Harvey Fergusson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at http://www.guten- berg.org/license Title: The Blood of the Conquerors Author: Harvey Fergusson Release Date: March 23, 2007 [Ebook 20888] Language: English ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLOOD OF THE CONQUERORS*** The Blood of the Conquerors [3] by Harvey Fergusson New York Alfred · A · Knopf 1921 COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. [4] PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Contents CHAPTER I ...................... 1 CHAPTER II ...................... 6 CHAPTER III ..................... 13 CHAPTER IV ..................... 18 CHAPTER V ...................... 22 CHAPTER VI ..................... 32 CHAPTER VII .................... 38 CHAPTER VIII ................... 43 CHAPTER IX ..................... 47 CHAPTER X ...................... 50 CHAPTER XI ..................... 57 CHAPTER XII .................... 60 CHAPTER XIII .................... 64 CHAPTER XIV .................... 71 CHAPTER XV .................... 75 CHAPTER XVI .................... 77 CHAPTER XVII ................... 85 CHAPTER XVIII ................... 91 CHAPTER XIX .................... 94 CHAPTER XX .................... 98 CHAPTER XXI .................... 102 CHAPTER XXII ................... 105 CHAPTER XXIII ................... 110 CHAPTER XXIV ................... 115 CHAPTER XXV ................... 119 CHAPTER XXVI ................... 124 CHAPTER XXVII .................. 128 CHAPTER XXVIII ................. 134 CHAPTER XXIX ................... 138 vi The Blood of the Conquerors CHAPTER XXX ................... 144 CHAPTER XXXI ................... 152 CHAPTER XXXII .................. 160 CHAPTER XXXIII ................. 165 CHAPTER XXXIV ................. 169 CHAPTER XXXV .................. 173 CHAPTER XXXVI ................. 177 EXTRA PAGES .................... 183 ERRATA ........................ 189 [7] CHAPTER I Whenever Ramon Delcasar boarded a railroad train he indulged a habit, not uncommon among men, of choosing from the women passengers the one whose appearance most pleased him to be the object of his attention during the journey. If the woman were reserved or well-chaperoned, or if she obviously belonged to another man, this attention might amount to no more than an occasional discreet glance in her direction. He never tried to make her acquaintance unless her eyes and mouth unmistakably invited him to do so. This conservatism on his part was not due to an innate lack of self-confidence. Whenever he felt sure of his social footing, his attitude toward women was bold and assured. But his social footing was a peculiarly uncertain thing for the reason that he was a Mexican. This meant that he faced in every social contact the possibility of a more or less covert prejudice against his blood, and that he faced it with an unduly proud and sensitive spirit concealed beneath a manner of aristocratic indifference. In the little southwestern town where he had lived all his life, except the last three years, his social position was ostensibly of the [8] highest. He was spoken of as belonging to an old and prominent family. Yet he knew of mothers who carefully guarded their daughters from the peril of falling in love with him, and most of his boyhood fights had started when some one called him a “damned Mexican” or a “greaser.” Except to an experienced eye there was little in his appearance or in his manner to suggest his race. His swarthy complexion 2 The Blood of the Conquerors indicated perhaps a touch of the Moorish blood in his Spanish ancestry, but he was no darker than 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 that bearing, 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 of his speech and manner and appearance, he had believed that he was leaving prejudice behind him; but in this he had been disappointed. The raw spots in his consciousness, if a little less irritated at the college, were by no means healed. Some persons, it is true, seemed to think nothing of his race one way or the other; to some, mostly women, it gave him an added interest; but in the long run it worked against him. It kept him out of a [9] fraternity, and it made his career in football slow and hard. When he finally won the coveted position of quarterback, in spite of team politics, he made a reputation by the merciless fashion in which he drove his eleven, and by the fury of his own playing. The same bitter emulative spirit which had impelled him in football drove him to success in his study of the law. Books held no appeal for him, and he had no definite ambitions, but he had a good head and a great desire to show 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 his alma mater without regret. The limited train upon which he took passage for home afforded specially good opportunity for his habit of mental phi- landering. The passengers were continually going up and down between the dining car at one end of the train and the observa- tion car at the other, so that all of the women daily passed in review. They were an unusually attractive lot, for most of the passengers were wealthy easterners on their way to California. Ramon had never before seen together so many women of the CHAPTER I 3 kind that devotes time and money and good taste to the business of creating charm. Perfectly gowned and groomed, delicately scented, they filled him with desire and with envy for the men [10] who owned them. There were two newly married couples among the passengers, and several intense flirtations were under way before the train reached Kansas City. Ramon felt as though he were a spectator at some delightful carnival. He was lonely and restless, yet fascinated. For no opportunity of becoming other than a spectator had come to him. He had chosen without difficulty the girl whom he preferred, but had only dared to admire her from afar. She was a little blonde person, not more than twenty, with angelic grey eyes, hair of the colour of ripe wheat and a complexion of perfect pink and white. The number of different costumes which she managed to don in two days filled him with amazement and gave her person an ever-varying charm and interest. She appeared always accompanied by a very placid-looking and portly wom- an, who was evidently her mother, and a tall, cadaverous sick man, whose indifferent and pettish attitude toward her seemed to indicate that he was either a brother or an uncle, for Ramon felt sure that she was not married. She acquired no male attendants, but sat most of the time very properly, if a little restlessly, with her two companions. Once or twice Ramon felt her look upon him, but she always turned it away when he glanced at her. Whether because she was really beautiful in her own petite way, or because she seemed so unattainable, or because her [11] small blonde daintiness had a peculiar appeal for him, Ramon soon reached a state of conviction that she interested him more than any other girl he had ever seen. He discreetly followed her about the train, watching for the opportunity that never came, and consoling himself with the fact that no one else seemed more for- tunate in winning her favour than he. The only strange male who attained to the privilege of addressing her was a long-winded and elderly gentleman of the British perpetual-travelling type, at least 4 The Blood of the Conquerors one representative of which is found on every transcontinental train, and it was plain enough that he bored the girl. Ramon took no interest in landscapes generally, but when he awoke on the last morning of his journey and found himself once more in the wide and desolate country of his birth, he was so deeply stirred and interested that he forgot all about the girl. Devotion to one particular bit of soil is a Mexican characteristic, and in Ramon it was highly developed because he had spent so much of his life close to the earth. Every summer of his boyhood he had been sent to one of the sheep ranches which belonged to the various branches of his numerous family. Each of these ranches was merely a headquarters where the sheep were annually dipped and sheared and from which the herds set out on [12] their long wanderings across the open range. Often Ramon had followed them—across the deserts where the heat shimmered and the yellow dust hung like a great pale plume over the rippling backs of the herd, and up to the summer range in the mountains where they fed above the clouds in lush green pastures crowned with spires of rock and snow. He had shared the beans and mutton and black coffee of the herders and had gone to sleep on a pile of peltries to the evensong of the coyotes that hung on the flanks of the herd. Hunting, fishing, wandering, he had lived 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 a nostalgia for open spaces and free wanderings had been always with him. He had 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 prettiness surrounded by fences.