Stories in Light and Shadow by Bret Harte (100 best novels of all time TXT) 📖

that quick sense of humor which dominates the American male in exigencies of this kind kept the extravagances from being merely bizarre and grotesque, and it was presently known that the hotel and its menage were to be appropriately burlesqued by some of the guests, who, attired as Indians, would personate the staff, from the oracular hotel proprietor himself down to the smart hotel clerk.

During these arrangements I had a chance of drawing near Mrs. Saltillo. I fancied she gave a slight start as she recognized me; but her greetings were given with her usual precision. “Have you been here long?” she asked.

“I have only just come,” I replied laughingly; “in time for the shock.”

“Ah, you felt it, then? I was telling these ladies that our eminent geologist, Professor Dobbs, assured me that these seismic disturbances in California have a very remote centre, and are seldom serious.”

“It must be very satisfactory to have the support of geology at such a moment,” I could not help saying, though I had not the slightest idea whose the figure was that I had seen, nor, indeed, had I recognized it among the guests. She did not seem to detect any significance in my speech, and I added: “And where is Enriquez? He would enjoy this proposed picnic tonight.”

“Enriquez is at Salvatierra Rancho, which he lately bought from his cousin.”

“And the baby? Surely, here is a chance for you to hang him up on a redwood tonight, in his cradle.”

“The boy,” said Mrs. Saltillo quickly, “is no longer in his cradle; he has passed the pupa state, and is now free to develop his own perfected limbs. He is with his father. I do not approve of children being submitted to the indiscriminate attentions of a hotel. I am here myself only for that supply of ozone indicated for brain exhaustion.”

She looked so pretty and prim in her gray dress, so like her old correct self, that I could not think of anything but her mental attitude, which did not, by the way, seem much like mental depression. Yet I was aware that I was getting no information of Enriquez’s condition or affairs, unless the whole story told by the broker was an exaggeration. I did not, however, dare to ask more particularly.

“You remember Professor Dobbs?” she asked abruptly.

This recalled a suspicion awakened by my vision, so suddenly that I felt myself blushing. She did not seem to notice it, and was perfectly composed.

“I do remember him. Is he here?”

“He is; that is what makes it so particularly unfortunate for me. You see, after that affair of the board, and Enriquez’s withdrawal, although Enriquez may have been a little precipitate in his energetic way, I naturally took my husband’s part in public; for although we preserve our own independence inviolable, we believe in absolute confederation as against society.”

“But what has Professor Dobbs to do with the board?” I interrupted.

“The professor was scientific and geological adviser to the board, and it was upon some report or suggestion of his that Enriquez took issue, against the sentiment of the board. It was a principle affecting Enriquez’s Spanish sense of honor.”

“Do tell me all about it,” I said eagerly; “I am very anxious to know the truth.”

“As I was not present at the time,” said Mrs. Saltillo, rebuking my eagerness with a gentle frigidity, “I am unable to do so. Anything else would be mere hearsay, and more or less ex parte. I do not approve of gossip.”

“But what did Enriquez tell you? You surely know that.”

“THAT, being purely confidential, as between husband and wife,— perhaps I should say partner and partner,—of course you do not expect me to disclose. Enough that I was satisfied with it. I should not have spoken to you about it at all, but that, through myself and Enriquez, you are an acquaintance of the professor’s, and I might save you the awkwardness of presenting yourself with him. Otherwise, although you are a friend of Enriquez, it need not affect your acquaintance with the professor.”

“Hang the professor!” I ejaculated. “I don’t care a rap for HIM.”

“Then I differ with you,” said Mrs. Saltillo, with precision. “He is distinctly an able man, and one cannot but miss the contact of his original mind and his liberal teachings.”

Here she was joined by one of the ladies, and I lounged away. I dare say it was very mean and very illogical, but the unsatisfactory character of this interview made me revert again to the singular revelation I had seen a few hours before. I looked anxiously for Professor Dobbs; but when I did meet him, with an indifferent nod of recognition, I found I could by no means identify him with the figure of her mysterious companion. And why should I suspect him at all, in the face of Mrs. Saltillo’s confessed avoidance of him? Who, then, could it have been? I had seen them but an instant, in the opening and the shutting of a door. It was merely the shadowy bulk of a man that flitted past my door, after all. Could I have imagined the whole thing? Were my perceptive faculties—just aroused from slumber, too insufficiently clear to be relied upon? Would I not have laughed had Urania, or even Enriquez himself, told me such a story?

As I reentered the hotel the clerk handed me a telegram. “There’s been a pretty big shake all over the country,” he said eagerly. “Everybody is getting news and inquiries from their friends. Anything fresh?” He paused interrogatively as I tore open the envelope. The dispatch had been redirected from the office of the “Daily Excelsior.” It was dated, “Salvatierra Rancho,” and contained a single line: “Come and see your old uncle ‘Ennery.”

There was nothing in the wording of the message that was unlike Enriquez’s usual light-hearted levity, but the fact that he should have TELEGRAPHED it to me struck me uneasily. That I should have received it at the hotel where his wife and Professor Dobbs were both staying, and where I had had such a singular experience, seemed to me more than a mere coincidence. An instinct that the message was something personal to Enriquez and myself kept me from imparting it to Mrs. Saltillo. After worrying half the night in our bizarre camp in the redwoods, in the midst of a restless festivity which was scarcely the repose I had been seeking at Carquinez Springs, I resolved to leave the next day for Salvatierra Rancho. I remembered the rancho,—a low, golden-brown, adobe-walled quadrangle, sleeping like some monstrous ruminant in a hollow of the Contra Costa Range. I recalled, in the midst of this noisy picnic, the slumberous coolness of its long corridors and soundless courtyard, and hailed it as a relief. The telegram was a sufficient excuse for my abrupt departure. In the morning I left, but without again seeing either Mrs. Saltillo or the professor.

It was late the next afternoon when I rode through the canada that led to the rancho. I confess my thoughts were somewhat gloomy, in spite of my escape from the noisy hotel; but this was due to the sombre scenery through which I had just ridden, and the monotonous russet of the leagues of wild oats. As I approached the rancho, I saw that Enriquez had made no attempt to modernize the old casa, and that even the garden was left in its lawless native luxuriance, while the rude tiled sheds near the walled corral contained the old farming implements, unchanged for a century, even to the ox-carts, the wheels of which were made of a single block of wood. A few peons, in striped shirts and velvet jackets, were sunning themselves against a wall, and near them hung a half-drained pellejo, or goatskin water-bag. The air of absolute shiftlessness must have been repellent to Mrs. Saltillo’s orderly precision, and for a moment I pitied her. But it was equally inconsistent with Enriquez’s enthusiastic ideas of American progress, and the extravagant designs he had often imparted to me of the improvements he would make when he had a fortune. I was feeling uneasy again, when I suddenly heard the rapid clack of unshod hoofs on a rocky trail that joined my own. At the same instant a horseman dashed past me at full speed. I had barely time to swerve my own horse aside to avoid a collision, yet in that brief moment I recognized the figure of Enriquez. But his face I should have scarcely known. It was hard and fixed. His upper lip and thin, penciled mustache were drawn up over his teeth, which were like a white gash in his dark face. He turned into the courtyard of the rancho. I put spurs to my horse, and followed, in nervous expectation. He turned in his saddle as I entered. But the next moment he bounded from his horse, and, before I could dismount, flew to my side and absolutely lifted me from the saddle to embrace me. It was the old Enriquez again; his face seemed to have utterly changed in that brief moment.

“This is all very well, old chap,” I said; “but do you know that you nearly ran me down, just now, with that infernal half-broken mustang? Do you usually charge the casa at that speed?”

“Pardon, my leetle brother! But here you shall slip up. The mustang is not HALF-broken; he is not broke at all! Look at his hoof—never have a shoe been there. For myself—attend me! When I ride alone, I think mooch; when I think mooch I think fast; my idea he go like a cannon-ball! Consequent, if I ride not thees horse like the cannon-ball, my thought HE arrive first, and where are you? You get left! Believe me that I fly thees horse, thees old Mexican plug, and your de’ uncle ‘Ennery and his leetle old idea arrive all the same time, and on the instant.”

It WAS the old Enriquez! I perfectly understood his extravagant speech and illustration, and yet for the first time I wondered if others did.

“Tak’-a-drink!” he said, all in one word. “You shall possess the old Bourbon or the rhum from the Santa Cruz! Name your poison, gentlemen!”

He had already dragged me up the steps from the patio to the veranda, and seated me before a small round table still covered with the chocolate equipage of the morning. A little dried-up old Indian woman took it away, and brought the spirits and glasses.

“Mirar the leetle old one!” said Enriquez, with unflinching gravity. “Consider her, Pancho, to the bloosh! She is not truly an Aztec, but she is of years one hundred and one, and LIFS! Possibly she haf not the beauty which ravishes, which devastates. But she shall attent you to the hot water, to the bath. Thus shall you be protect, my leetle brother, from scandal.”

“Enriquez,” I burst out suddenly, “tell me about yourself. Why did you leave the El Bolero board? What was the row about?”

Enriquez’s eyes for a moment glittered; then they danced as before.

“Ah,” he said, “you have heard?”

“Something; but I want to know the truth from you.”

He lighted a cigarette, lifted himself backward into a grass hammock, on which he sat, swinging his feet. Then, pointing to another hammock, he said: “Tranquillize yourself there. I will relate; but, truly, it ees nothing.”

He took a long pull at his cigarette, and for a few moments seemed quietly to exude smoke from his eyes, ears, nose, even his finger-ends—everywhere, in fact, but his mouth. That and his mustache remained fixed. Then he said slowly, flicking away the ashes with his little finger:—

“First you understand, friend Pancho, that I make no row. The other themself make the row, the shindig. They make the dance,